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Minutes after two shots hit Bill Gates on December 2, 1999, the so-called Running Man is seen on an amateur videotape sprinting north across 6th Street from the direction of the Park Plaza Hotel and toward the Luna Sol Cafe. One known witness had a close encounter with Running Man and heard him make a statement that apparently implicated the man in the shooting. The witness's name is Julia Serrano, and the LAPD would prefer that you didn't think too much about her and what she has to say. This essay, however, will consider Julia Serrano, her statements on December 2, 1999, and her treatment by the Rampart Division of the LAPD.

Julia Serrano was working behind the counter at Luna Sol on the day of the assassination. She told journalists on December 2 that she saw a man run through the cafe from the front door and out through the back. Serrano stated at the time that the Running Man said, laughing, as he passed her, "We shot him." The Running Man was never identified by the LAPD or the District Attorney, and despite extensive media exposure of the video clip no credible person has come forward claiming to be the Running Man.

Julia Serrano was dismissed in one scant paragraph in the Garcetti Report (the Los Angeles County District Attorney's official version of the Gates assassination), largely because after a six hour "interview" by the LAPD, she agreed to change her recollection of the words the Running Man said. On December 9, 1999, Serrano signed a statement in which she claimed the Running Man "may" have said "They shot him."

Citizens for Truth has obtained the audiotape and transcript of Julia Serrano's interrogation by LAPD Sergeant Marty Hernandez. It is the opinion of Citizens for Truth that Julia Serrano caved under intense psychological pressure from her interrogator, in order simply to get away from him. It is important to note that even under severe pressure by a skilled interrogator, Serrano agreed only to say the Running Man MAY have said "They shot him" and not "We shot him," which was her immediate recollection at the time of the incident.

Julia Serrano is not only important because her initial statements to the media imply the possibility of a conspiracy, but also because her treatment by the LAPD indicates the lengths to which the investigators of this case will go to make the evidence fit their version of events.

First-Day Testimony

On December 2, 1999, Julia Serrano was twenty-six-years-old and and had been working at the cafe for nearly six months while attending Los Angeles Community College during the evenings. She was studying to become a nurse. While working a full shift on the day of December 2, 1999, she was getting ready to take her lunch break. It was 12:30 P.M. After hearing what she thought were backfires from an automobile, she noticed a general confusion and shouting from the area of MacArthur Park. She stepped outside the cafe briefly to see what was going on but returned back to behind the counter area quickly as she feared leaving the cash register unattended. Suddenly a man ran through the cafe from the front door to the back. He was laughing and very much in a hurry. -- "We shot him!" the man exclaimed.

"Who did you shoot?" asked a stunned Serrano.

But no answer was forthcoming as the Running Man had already disappeared into the back of the cafe. Serrano gave chase but soon realized the Running Man had quickly made his exit out the back door. She then once again made her way back outside the front of the cafe. Once outside, she ran into a neighborhood friend Nina Chavez. Worried, and rather confused, she described her strange encounter, only to learn from Chavez that Bill Gates had just been shot. Word of the shooting was beginning to spread. Soon Serrano found herself being interviewed by KCAL Channel 9 correspondent Linda Chang. A shocked Los Angeles heard a dramatic account given by a rattled but coherent young woman:

"This man came running in the door, came running into the cafe and he was laughing. He was just laughing. And then he said, he said, 'We shot him.' And I said, 'Who?' But he didn't answer. He kept running."

"What did he look like?" asked Chang.

"He was Caucasian. He had on a grey sweatshirt and was wearing a red baseball cap. His hair was short and appeared to be dark. He had big ears."

Chang was not the first person to whom Serrano told her story. After initially talking to Chavez, then to a cook at the cafe, Serrano approached LAPD officer Philip Klaber. He calmed Serrano down, then listened to her account. On the evening of December 2, Officer Klaber would file a report of this encounter with the distraught young witness. In this report Klaber recalled Serrano's description of the mystery man as "between 25 and 35 years of age, approximately 5' 10',wearing a grey sweatshirt and red ball cap, with rather large ears."

"Serrano impressed me," Klaber concluded, "As a smart girl who was being very sincere, not interested in publicity."

The Witness Becomes the Enemy

The LAPD interviewed Serrano in the early morning of December 3. Two days later she returned to the Luna Sol Cafe to reenact her story for police, FBI, and investigators from the District Attorney's office. The next day she was reinterviewed by the LAPD and taken to Rampart station to view Chris C. Jones, one of several men whom the LAPD would offer up as a possible nonsinister running man. Jones had told police that he was in MacArthur Park at the time of the assassination wearing a grey business suit. Serrano immediately asserted that Jones was not the man she had encountered. Then Serrano was taken to KCAL television studios in Hollywood for a screening of footage from the crowd at the park. On December 7, Serrano was again interviewed by investigators from no less than three different agencies. She was persuaded that afternoon to perform a filmed reenactment. Later that evening the amateur videotaped images of Running Man were first shown on local television. Even with the knowledge of this videotape, the LAPD inexplicably brought Serrano back to Rampart Station in the early morning hours of December 8 to inspect a dozen grey sweatshirts.

The treatment of Julia Serrano by the LAPD was an operation within an operation. The apparent strategy: Break Serrano and the Running Man would vanish. In pursuing their goal the police would attack Serrano's credibility on all fronts, until it had won this most crucial battle in the war to rid itself of the Running Man. Serrano's consistent statements, her going on record before any controversy was known, and the sincerity perceived by LAPD officer Klaber would count for absolutely nothing. She would become the focus of the LAPD's biggest smear campaign since Rodney King.

The LAPD's challenges to Serrano's credibility were almost immediate. Notes in interview summary documents obtained by Citizens for Truth dated December 3 and 6 indicate that, as far as police were concerned, Serrano's story was not to be believed and the Running Man mystery was solved: "running man story N.T."; "running man story 100% fabricated."

In her original interview Serrano had said that she heard "backfires" roughly two minutes before seeing Running Man. The LAPD investigators began referring to the sounds Serrano heard as "gunfire." The fact that this was their word, not hers, would not matter: They would put the word in her mouth try to smash her credibility with it.

In a burst of investigative zeal, the LAPD brought Serrano back to the Luna Sol Cafe and placed her behind the counter. They then went across the street to the roof of the Park Plaza and fired a .22 caliber rifle (significantly dissimilar to the Mauser 7.65, to say the least) and recorded the event with a tape recorder and decibel meter from behind the kitchen counter of the Luna Sol Cafe. During the experiment, audiotaped by the LAPD, Serrano protests: "It sounded like backfires from a car. I never heard a gun. I have no idea what a gun sounds like. I never told anybody I heard a gun." It didn't matter. From that day forward every police report on Serrano would start with the postulation that it was impossible for her to have heard gunshots from inside the cafe, as though even if that were true (and it certainly is not) it would be enough to discredit her story.

During the rooftop sound tests, LAPD Detective Robert Halford began pushing Serrano again. "Now, on television, with Linda Chang," Halford challeged, "you didn't say anything about seeing this man run out the back of the cafe. You only said you saw a man run into the cafe. And later you told the police you saw him run out the back exit. That was one of the most important details you had to tell police and yet you didn't say this in your first interview, your interview on television."

"I can't explain that," a bewildered Serrano cried. "You're trying to trick me by twisting things around. You're lying and trying to trick me. I know what I saw."

Although she wasn't thinking clearly enough at the time to know the answer, Serrano's instincts were right. It was very much a trick question. The most important fact was that the Running Man said, "We shot him." By trying to twist around the other details of the encounter, the LAPD was hoping to create a confused and disoriented witness who then might succumb to their power of intimidation.

Lie Detective

On December 8, Serrano made an effort to defend herself. She called the LAPD and informed Detective Halford that she was in the process of getting a lawyer and would not talk to investigators again unless her counsel could be there. But on December 9, without counsel, Serrano would be certified as a liar by the LAPD's instrument of choice for dealing with possible conspiracy witnesses--the polygraph machine.

The polygraph or "lie detector," as it is more commonly known, was first developed in the early 1900s. It was first greeted with doubts and skepticism, but after being used to solve some of Chicago's notorious gangland killings in the 1930s, it gained a gradual acceptance in the mind of the public as a legitimate way to help law enforcement do its job.

By the mid 1980s the machine had found its way into mainstream American life. As many as 2 million exams are performed each year, most of these on possible employees by employers. But is the polygraph a legitimate scientific device or a sophisticated carnival trick?

Back in 1983, the US Office of Technology Assessment called the polygraph "virtually useless" for preemployment interviews, and more opposition to its use quickly developed. Psychologist David Larkan of the University of Michigan claims that for discovering truth, the polygraph is "akin to flipping a coin."

In 1989 Congress made the polygraph illegal to use for screening prospective employees. But, at the same time, one has to admit that the polygraph has contributed much to the solving of crimes. Most likely due to the belief that the polygraph actually works, it has been very effective in gaining confessions.

The "lie detector" does no such thing. It does not measure lies but, instead, measures (through physiologic responses) the anxiety that telling a lie apparently causes. Anybody who has ever been to the dentist's office knows about anxiety. Or stuck in traffic. Or asked questions that might lead to the suspicion that one has committed a crime even if one is innocent.

The chances that an innocent person will confess to a crime when confronted with dishonest results are slim. A side effect to this possible reality is that it may encourage over eager operators to continuously present suspects with "guilty" results, hoping to get confessions from those who truly are guilty. But when this same game is played with a witness, instead of a suspect, the situation is much different. With no personal stake in the truth, the witness may decide to end the interrogation altogether and be done with the aggravation.

This leads us to the overzealous application of the polygraph on Julia Serrano and what can only be called tampering of evidence by the LAPD.

Good Cop, Bad Cop

On December 9, Julia Serrano was taken out for a steak lunch by LAPD Sergeant Marty Hernandez. After what must have been an enjoyable meal for Serrano, she was interviewed and polygraphed between 3 and 9 P.M. A tape of Serrano's session with Hernandez was obtained by Citizens for Truth. That the tape contains information potentially embarrassing for the LAPD is indicated by the writing on the label: "Do not play or have transcribed ." Citizens for Truth considers the information contained within this tape and accompanying transcripts some of the most important evidence on the way to discovering the truth.

During the pre-interview phase of the polygraph session, Serrano's sister is present (her parents live in Hawaii). After her sister leaves, Serrano begins to speak of her unhappiness with being polygraphed.

"I don't understand why a polygraph is administered if it won't even stand up in a court of law," she protests,"...if the United States doesn't even recognize it."

"Somebody has given you the wrong information on that," Hernandez falsely assures her. "Julia, if that was in fact true we wouldn't even have polygraphs."

After explaining the wonders and workings of the polygraph (with Serrano remaining skeptical), Hernandez administers the test, asking Serrano many times if she was telling the truth about the Running Man. Serrano answers that she was. But then the questions abruptly end.

"Julia," says Hernandez in a low voice, "I'm not gonna ask you any more questions. But now I'd like to talk to you like a brother. Look, I have no idea what faith, if any, you believe in. I'm Catholic. Are you by chance Catholic?" And with that Hernandez launches into a one man show of "good cop, bad cop," displaying a phony concern for Serrano on one hand, and dropping hints on the other about unpleasant things that could happen if she doesn't change her story. What follows is a number of excerpts from this emotionally charged session.

Hernandez tells Serrano that dozens of witnesses have come forward in the Gates assassination case, but only two "liked Bill Gates as a person." The rest were just publicity hounds looking for attention. He tells Serrano that she is one of the two who liked Gates, and that she is honestly mistaken about what she heard. Then Hernandez becomes aggressive.

"Nobody," he says, "ever told you, 'We shot him.' "

"Yes," Serrano responds, "somebody told me that 'We shot him.' "

"No, Julia."

"Yes, yes," she asserts again, "but that's true. That is very much true."

Hernandez grabs at a wide array of themes for his game of "Truth or Consequences": "One of these days you may be a mother with children of your own," he tells Serrano. "You'll have a husband, you're gonna have kids, and you can't live that life with the shame, knowing that what you are doing now is wrong."

"But I saw and heard that man," Serrano protests.

"Julia, that is just wrong."

"I know what I saw....I remember seeing the man!"

"No. I'm talking about what you have said about a man telling you, 'We have shot Bill Gates.' And that is wrong."

"That's not what he said."

"No it isn't, Julia. Please stop."

"No! No! No! That is what he said."

"Look, you're shaming, you're not, if right now he-"

"Stop yelling at me."

Hernandez then begins to tell Serrano of his personal affection for Gates "the genius," how Gates revolutionized personal computing and was never really guilty of being a monopolist. He accuses Serrano of sabotaging the investigation. He repeatedly talks about Bill Gates and his family.

"You and I have no idea if he's a witness right now in this room watching what we're doing," says Hernandez. "In the name of everything that's right...don't shame the man's death."

"Don't give me all this sentimental pap," responds Serrano, all of a sudden the more professional of the two. "Let's just finish this."

But Hernandez will not finish. He invokes world history, the founding fathers, the Gates children, law and justice, the Internet, health, happiness, redemption and Serrano's future family in an attempt to persuade the witness to change her story.

"This has been nothing but tragedy for this city," he tells Serrano, and then he sweetens the deal. "...And I know that one day soon, if you're strong enough, you will get a visit from the mayor to thank you personally for at least letting everyone rest on this aspect of the investigation."

People reading this must keep in mind that Serrano was only a witness. She was not and has not been accused of a serious crime, trying to escape punishment. She had no reason in the world to make up such a story, and more important, we must remember that the amateur videotape of Running Man had been disseminated throughout the media by the time of Hernandez's interrogation of Serrano. Nevertheless, Hernandez stays on the attack.

"This never happened," he says forcefully.

"It did happen," Serrano shoots back.

"No, it never did and you damn well know it."

"Yes, yes it did," her voice now fading.

At another moment, when Hernandez again asserts that she did not hear the words "We shot him," Serrano once again disagrees and quietly laughs, now sounding close to tears.

"Don't you laugh and think this is all a big joke," Hernandez says in a harsh tone. He then begs Serrano to "find the grace of God within you and redeem the deep wound inside."

Serrano lets out a long breath and says in a low voice, "Stupid cops, why don't you just go away and leave me alone?"

"The only time you will be left alone," says Hernandez, "is when you decide to tell the truth about what happened inside Luna Sol Cafe."

Hernandez keeps telling Serrano that it will be easy for him to fix everything by himself if she will just change her story. If she doesn't, he will have no choice but to tell the world that she is a liar and the interrogations will have to continue. He says he will have to then turn her over to the "feds" who are presumably not as nice or as understanding as he.

"Now this is how it works." he warns her; "There's two ways that we can do this. The first is for me to appeal to you as a caring young woman who one day wants to become a nurse. The other way is for me to hold up the results of this test, go outside and tell these people, and have them go upstairs and talk to the FBI...and then they're gonna want to talk to you again and again."

"To tell you the truth," Serrano answers wearily, "at this point I don't know anymore what happened. It's all become this huge mess."

"Julia, look. I do know how we can put a stop to this thing. The easiest way to stop it, so nobody will ask you any more questions, so you can go home. I have an idea of what you can do. If I ask you right now and I get a report and we dictate it to someone, you and me together, we can stop this nonsense right there."

Hernandez ultimately gets his way. After six hours of brutal confrontation he wears Serrano down to the point where she agrees to having been "confused." With the stenographer present Hernandez leads Serrano through a maze of questions where she agrees that she had been mixed up the day of the assassination. Now that he had Serrano in his net, Hernandez wasted no time in accelerating the process by offering up scapegoats for her.

"What you really heard," he offered, "was apparently misquoted or mistelevised to the actual true facts."

But even that was too much for a broken Serrano. "Come on, how could they have mistelevised something that I actually did say? I really thought that I heard that. I was nervous and scared. I've been scared for a week."

Hernandez tried to help Serrano reconstruct her story. In his version Serrano was standing behind the counter when someone came in and said Bill Gates had been shot. When she went outside she saw alot of people running. The Running Man was one of them. And alot of people were shouting as well. She heard many different voices and in her confused state began putting words together. Maybe running man could have even bumped into her on the sidewalk.

"So, he may have run by you and he, or somebody else, said 'They shot him.' That is how this whole thing got started," said Hernandez, pushing more than asking.

"Maybe," answered Serrano, disinterested and not seeming to care anymore.

The Lie Comes Out

On December 10, the LAPD called a press conference. At the meeting Inspector Ian Murphy, assistant commander of the detective bureau, publicly canceled the all points bulletin for the Running Man. "It has been determined that the person who claimed to hear the man exclaim 'We shot him' was in fact mistaken," explained Murphy, apparently referring to Hernandez's session the day before. Murphy went on to explain that "the key witness, the one who caused the alert to be put out, has admitted to being confused on the day of the assassination and has signed a statement now saying she may have heard the person in question say, 'They shot him.'" He went on to dismiss any further concern for obtaining the identity of Running Man. "The park and streets were full of people running and shouting different things," he said.

Citizens for Truth believes that the breaking of Julia Serrano by the LAPD was the "turning point" in the Bill Gates murder investigation. The congratulatory mood within the police investigation was contagious, and Sergeant Hernandez's work with Serrano drew special praise from senior members of the LAPD. Three weeks later Marty Hernandez was promoted to the rank of lieutenant.

Sergeant Hernandez's superior Joseph DiPierro openly defended Serrano's treatment at the hands of the polygraph operator. "It was a necessary move I had to make," he told Citizens for Truth. "We tried every way possible to find this running man to see if we could substantiate Serrano's story. And we couldn't find him. There was absolutely no way I was going to leave the case just hanging there."

DiPierro's words illustrate rather clearly the mindset of the LAPD. First, they take their own inability to locate and identify the Running Man as evidence that Serrano is lying. Actually, when one thinks about it, this fact should help to confirm her story. If Serrano misheard the Running Man who actually said, "They shot him," then one might expect this man--or anyone who recognized him from the videotape--to come forward after all the publicity. That he or they didn't would support Serrano's more sinister interpretation of events. But DiPierro and the LAPD seemed unwilling to leave questions unanswered. "We came to a time," he said, "when we had to nail down something on an investigative basis that proved to us she was wrong."

Serrano's recantation was a remarkable accomplishment for the LAPD. In about six hours time Sergeant Hernandez and his polygraph had managed to take an apparently truthful and coherent witness (albeit a bit worn out by a week of adversarial attention) with a story that was corroborated at least in part by her initial statement to KCAL 9 as well as the irrefutable video footage of Running Man and got her to recant, agreeing instead to Hernandez's version of what happened on December 2, 1999.

Shortly after her dramatic session with Sergeant Marty Hernandez, Julia Serrano quit her job, dropped out of school, and moved to the San Fernando Valley. She lived a life of seclusion for nearly eight months, refusing to talk to anyone regarding the case, until Citizens For Action investigator David James (then representing Citizens for Truth) was able to contact her in August of 2000. Then began a series of interviews in which Serrano talked openly to James about what happened the day of the assassination and her treatment by the LAPD during the week that followed. David James has obtained a statement for Citizens for Truth from Julia Serrano reversing her statement to the LAPD. She now insists that she "very definitely" heard the Running Man say "We shot him." She now "regrets" that she gave a contrary statement to the LAPD, complains of the "psychological torture" she endured, and firmly believes "they only would hear what they wanted to hear." It must be mentioned that under the advice of her attorney, Serrano has not signed a sworn statement for Citizens For Truth as of the writing of this report.

Star Witness

Julia Serrano and what she has to say should not be marginalized, ignored outright, ridiculed or distorted. But this is exactly what the LAPD and the Garcetti Report have done. The District Attorney reduces her to one paragraph in his report. It refers to Serrano as "an overwrought young woman" and goes on to conclude that the actions of Running Man were "neither unique nor suspicious." No evidence is presented anywhere in the entire Garcetti Report to back up these assertions.

That is not the methodology of independent analysis. It is the flat out dismissal of an important witness whose testimony contradicts the official interpretation. But Julia Serrano cannot be dismissed any longer by the District Attorney or the LAPD. She knows what she saw and heard on December 2, 1999. And now she's willing to stand by her initial statements from that day. We must be strong enough to accept the possibility of a conspiracy in the murder of William Henry Gates lll. But first we must be strong enough to look at all the facts openly. And in the light of fairness and reason hope to see the truth.