01.17.19

UNANSWERED
QUESTIONS
LISA PEASE UNCOVERS NEW EVIDENCE IN THE 50-YEAR-OLD RFK
ASSASSINATION IN HER NEW BOOK ‘A LIE TOO BIG TO FAIL’
BY CARL KOZLOWSKI
The assassination of Democratic Party candidate Robert F. Kennedy in Los Angeles the
night he won the California presidential primary in June 1968 dealt a shocking blow to
the national consciousness.
After all, the murder came less than five years after the shooting death of his brother,
President John F. Kennedy, and the official investigations into both deaths would prove
to be highly controversial, creating generations of conspiracy theorists eager to explore
whether there were mysterious forces behind the two deaths.
Lifelong information activist and researcher Lisa Pease has immersed herself in the
case of RFK since 1992, when she stumbled across extensive Los Angeles Police Department
case files on the assassination when she opened the wrong drawer at the Los Angeles
Public Library’s main downtown branch. Delving into the files and conducting countless
interviews ever since, she has crafted the massive 512-page new book “A Lie Too Big to Fail:
The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,” which pokes many holes in
the official story that former Pasadena resident Sirhan Sirhan was his killer.
“I was looking for microfilm on the JFK shooting after seeing the Oliver Stone
movie ‘JFK,’ when I opened the drawer holding the LAPD files on RFK,” Pease
recalls. “I was like, ‘Wow, how many people have been through this?’ There were
only four or five books on the case, saying a lot of the same things as the official
story about Sirhan doing it.
“But these files showed that another guy had been apprehended at the hotel
and handcuffed, and I had never heard of that,” she adds. “In my book I show that
there were six different suspects discussed on police radios right after, who were
quite different in age, size and weight. Witnesses reported men running from
the scene with guns, or who were behaving so suspiciously they drew their
attention. But on the police radio transcripts, the cops were quickly told
to stop talking about it and soon we only had Sirhan accused.”
Pease has had a long and varied career, mixing work as a computer
programmer with stints on the paid staff of two different
presidential campaigns in addition to working for an accounting
firm and occasionally acting. She was also a key player in
a 1990s-era magazine called “Probe,” which investigated
the JFK assassination and other murky incidents in
modern American history via documents that were
declassified by the Assassination Records Review
Board.
When “Probe” ultimately closed up shop,
the specialty publishing company Feral House
published an anthology of its top essays called
“The Assassinations.” As a result, Pease teamed
up with Feral House to release her new book.
She had also been impressed by the fact that
Feral had come out on top when the CIA tried
to sue them to stop the publication of another
author’s book.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 10
01.17.19 | PASADENA WEEKLY 9