◆ SpookStack

‘easg! ( _ oe Neer’ The Busch Investigation During those several months of 1971, the District Attorney's office interviewed DeWayne Wolfer, Mrs. Blehr, William Harper (whom Blehr had identified as her chief criminalist source), three criminalists cited in Blehr's letter to the civil Service Commission, several eye witnesses to the shooting in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, all of whom had been previously interviewed subsequent to the 1968 shooting and prior to the 1969 trial, and other persons who claimed special knowledge of the incident. The entire grand jury and trial transcript had been reviewed, and at- tention was directed to the exhibits, namely, the bullets, that had been called into question by Mrs. Blehr's charges. DeWayne Wolfer Mistakes The basic errors in the Blehr allegations according to the Busch report stemmed from two related incidents: 1. L.A.P.D. criminalist DeWayne Wolfer had mislabeled the envelope which was received in Court as People's Exhibit #55. This envelope contained three bullets test fired by Wolfer from the gun taken from Sirhan (Serial #H53725). Wolfer had mistakenly labeled the envelope with the serial #H18602. This latter number was the serial number of an Ivor-Johnson .22 caliber cadet model gun (the same make and model as the weapon seized from Sirhan), which Wolfer had used for muzzle distance and sound tests on June 11, 1968, five days after he test fired the Sirhan weapon. On June 6, 1968, Wolfer recovered seven bullets which had been test fired into a water tank from the Sirhan gun (H53725). The Busch report issued in October, 1971, stated that all seven test fired bullets were compared with the bullet removed from the sixth cervical vertebra of Senator Kennedy, People’s 47, (the neck wound). And after making these comparisons, Wolfer positively identified the Sirhan gun as having fired the bullet removed from Senator Kennedy {Tr the enanrial ralelt lake dienavarny nepnnasdings Met 28 et tr ee wi J Of A dbs wis tl ee er oe Me WH le Whos Ve Re Naa Nar Net See ah de BE called by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Wenke in September 1975, Wolfer testified that he actually compared just one of the test fired bullets to the various victim bullets from senator Kennedy and from Weisel and Goldstein, and that he was, unaeat,*® 1975, to recall the specific test fired bullet he com- pared. Four of these seven 1968 test fired bullets were introduced before the Grand Jury as Grand Jury Exhibit #5-B on June 7, 1968. Three of the remaining bullets remained in the custody of Mr. Wolfer, who intended to compare them with bullets from the other victims not yet recovered by or received at L.A.P.D. These three bullets were later introduced at trial as People's #55 in a mis- labeled envelope. - 19 -