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By David James
A major public figure is shot by a sniper from the roof of a hotel. In the confusion after the shots, scores of area residents begin to converge on the ground where the victim lay bleeding. One man, however, runs at an extremely fast pace in the opposite direction--out of the hotel and away from the scene. This man is heard to exclaim, "We shot him!" by a witness, and a mysterious vehicle later exits quickly from an area into which the man disappeared. The man is never seen again.
Let's say you're a police detective in this situation. What do you do?
You might think you know the answer: You question witnesses, secure any photographic evidence and doggedly attempt to track down the man's identity and whereabouts. You may even use the news media to help find the man --- and the mysterious vehicle--in the critical 48 hours after the murder.
That answer might score you some points at detective school, but it won't get you a job with the LAPD. L.A.'s finest homicide division has a novel approach to this sort of situation: Brush off the entire matter as if it doesn't exist. Ignore the witnesses who saw the man running. Neglect to view an amateur videotape that is readily available. And coerce that pesky witness to withdraw her claim that the man said "We shot him."
"Approximately two minutes after Bill Gates was shot, a man can be seen on amateur videotape running out of north side exit of the Park Plaza Hotel."
By any objective standard, the LAPD should have considered the person who has come to be known as the Running Man to be a major focal point of their investigation. But, as this article will detail, the LAPD did just the opposite--detectives and the district attorney's investigators went out of their way to ignore key evidence and even to coerce a witness whose statements they found inconvenient. No serious attention was paid to finding or identifying Running Man by district attorney Gil Garcetti, who in his report dismisses the entire matter in three paragraphs. (By way of comparison, the report devotes twice that many paragraphs to Alek Hidell's pornography collection.)
Herein I will examine some of the crucial information that the official investigators into this crime have refused to consider.
The Escape Route?
Approximately two minutes after Bill Gates was shot, a man can be seen on amateur videotape running out of north side exit of the Park Plaza Hotel. He traveled from the direction of an underground ramp leading out of the basement of the hotel, sprinted directly across 6th Street and entered the Luna Sol Cafe. Witness testimony confirms he made his way into, through, and out the rear exit of the cafe. While inside the cafe, witness Julia Serrano heard him say, laughing, as he passed her, "We shot him."
The rear exit of the cafe leads to a corridor, which in turn leads to an underground parking garage for the apartment building in which the Luna Sol Cafe is housed. A white SUV (apparently a Ford Explorer) with tinted windows left at a rapid pace out of that parking garage approximately 25 seconds after the Running Man exited the Luna Sol Cafe. Moments later, a white Explorer with tinted windows was seen by off-duty California Highway Patrol officer J.D. Wilson driving recklessly through an intersection one-quarter mile from the assassination site.
No resident of the apartment building on 6th Street or employee of the Luna Sol Cafe has claimed ownership or prior knowledge of this vehicle. Nobody anywhere has come forward to identify the Running Man.
The Videotape
Maria Nix took a now well-known piece of amateur videotape approximately two minutes after Bill Gates was shot. She was standing on the South side of 6th Street about 100 yards east of the Luna Sol Cafe.
"... the LAPD claimed it could not identify the Running Man using standard computer systems or mug shots."
On December 2, 1999, at about 12:20 p.m., Ms. Nix noticed the activity caused by the arrival of Gates's limousine in MacArthur Park and was walking over from her apartment on 6th Street to test a new video camera she had just purchased by taping whatever action she could find. When she reached her position on 6th Street and was about to cross into the park, shots rang out. About one minute later she had her camera working and recorded most of the aftermath of the assassination in that vicinity. Not believing that she had seen anything important or newsworthy, she kept the videotape in her camera, not viewing it until four days after the assassination. On the night of December 6, she viewed her tape after seeing Julia Serrano's statement about the Running Man on an evening newscast. The next morning she sold broadcast television rights to the videotape to Fox Television for five hundred dollars. Following its debut on the Fox News network December 7, the tape was shown on several broadcast outlets and was the subject of much speculation for three or four days. Then, attention waned, and the Running Man tape was rarely seen again. Despite the extensive media exposure of this clip, Running Man was never identified.
(The Running Man videotape clip was also included in "The Plot To Kill Gates," a British half-hour television documentary that was produced a few months after the assassination. In this program, the Running Man was identified as a professional IRA assassin named Sean Green. This documentary, which was shown to millions in Europe, has yet to be aired in the United States. Citizens for Truth has not been able to obtain a copy for viewing, and therefore can offer no definitive opinion as to the validity of its claims. But we remain highly skeptical of any involvement by the Irish Republican Army in the assassination of Bill Gates.)
The Los Angeles Police Department knew of the existence of the Nix videotape about one hour after the assassination, when Maria Nix told a uniformed officer that she has been shooting videotape but "had no idea if it was any good." The officer took down Nix's name and contact information, but Nix did not hear from the LAPD until December 8--six days after the assassination, and a full day after the Nix tape was first broadcast.
The LAPD did secure the original videotape from Serrano, however, and apparently studied it. An LAPD memorandum included in the Garcetti Report found the Nix tape had "been badly shot" and "was of poor quality." Because of these reasons the LAPD claimed it could not identify the Running Man using standard computer systems or mug shots. However, because of "witness statements," the LAPD recommended "...this particular seven seconds should be reexamined." The Garcetti Report contains no evidence that anyone in the LAPD or the D.A.'s office followed this directive.
Citizens for Truth Examination
In June of this year, Citizen for Truth member Jennifer Loren and I began studying the Nix videotape closely. After obtaining a high-quality digital copy made from the original, we examined the seven seconds of mysterious Running Man footage as well as other aspects of the Nix tape, which contains 47 minutes of footage relevant to the Gates assassination. (Maria Nix has not granted Citizens for Truth or any other entity the Internet broadcast rights to her tape. Our legal counsel, Patrick Flaherty, is currently negotiating with Ms. Nix to secure those rights, and we will post highlights of the tape as soon as possible.)
Our focus was first drawn to an interesting phenomenon. The Nix videotape shows many individuals moving about in the area of the assassination. But while virtually all are either running to the site or from one part of the site to another (from the band shell to the hotel, for example), only one figure within the first twelve minutes of the Nix tape is seen moving directly away from the area. While the vast majority of people in the area are running toward the band shell stage to see what is happening there, or into the Park Plaza Hotel to investigate there, only the Running Man seems to be interested in getting away from the whole area.
And there are clues that the Running Man is very interested indeed in getting away from the Park Plaza Hotel. When the tape is blown up, it is clear that Running Man never even looks in the direction of MacArthur Park. Nor does he seem to care about traffic as he sprints from one side of the street to the other. He displays visible determination in getting across 6th Street and apparent lack of regard for personal safety. Not exactly the behavior of a person "oblivious to the assassination" or a "news reporter seeking a telephone to report the event," as the Garcetti Report speculates in dismissing the Running Man.
Other observations: We can determine from the videotape that Running Man is likely Caucasian and, when compared to other people in the videotape and their known heights, it is estimated that he is close to six feet tall. No logo or writing appears on the grey sweatshirt that he is wearing. His pants are of the khaki variety and light blue or grey in color. It appears he is wearing black military paratrooper style boots that zipper up the side. No jewelry of any type is visible.
Field Tests
While conducting reenactments of Running Man's sprint across 6th Street, Jennifer and I discovered a problem. Jennifer was using a stop watch and timing me as I sprinted from the top of the Park Plaza underground basement ramp to inside the Luna Sol Cafe. I made a dozen runs with two of them aborted because of traffic interruption. Of the ten recorded sprints, six of them were made in nine seconds and four of them in ten seconds. Pretty consistent numbers. The problem was that the fastest times were still a full two seconds slower than Running Man's pace. How did he run so fast?
Our first speculative solution to the two-second dilemma was that Running Man is a faster runner than I. This may be so, but I was a runner in high school, where I was competitive in both dash and distance events, and I still run every day. Running Man also appears to be close to the same height and weight as me. If Running Man really is better than 20% faster than I am at my fastest--and in military boots, no less, while I wore running shoes--he must have either been a highly trained athlete or overdosing on adrenaline.
When Jennifer and I began looking at both videotapes (Nix's of Running Man and Jennifer's of me) side by side, however, it finally struck us: I was starting my sprint from the top of the underground ramp in a standing position. Running Man was already in full sprint when he is first seen on the Nix videotape. This was obvious upon reflection but easily overlooked at first. When Jennifer and I went back for another test, with me starting my run from the bottom of the ramp, the times matched perfectly.
Thus, we made an unintended discovery in the process of resolving this problem: While the Garcetti Report states only that Running Man was coming "from the vicinity" of the ramp--implying that he was standing still at that point or maybe walking down the street--our test adds credence to the notion that he must have been coming up the ramp. In other words, if Running Man was not in fact running at full speed from the bottom of the ramp, he must have been wearing a rocket blaster to be able to get up to the speed seen on the Nix tape from a standstill.
The Getaway Vehicle?
On December 2, 1999, CHP Officer J.D. Wilson was enjoying his day off. He had driven from his home in San Bernadino that morning to pick up his fourteen-year-old son from his ex-wife, who lived in Silver Lake. After meeting up with his son, Wilson decided they should have lunch together at Langers Deli, which is located at 704 S. Alvarado Street. As he was preparing to turn east on 6th Street from Vermont Avenue after a stop for gas, Wilson slammed on his brakes to allow a white SUV to travel through the intersection at "perhaps 80 miles per hour." He shook his head and told his son that they had just learned a good lesson about defensive driving. Wilson puts the time at approximately 12:35 p.m.
"LAPD Homicide is that way. If you don't belong to their posse, they don't even want you in the office."
A white SUV fitting the same description (Wilson, who has seen the videotape, states "it definitely could be the same vehicle") is seen on the Nix videotape, apparently less than one minute prior to Wilson's encounter with the vehicle. The SUV is seen leaving the driveway that leads out of the parking garage. The SUV pulls out of the driveway at a high speed, causing it to wobble slightly, and takes off in an eastward direction--in the direction of Vermont Avenue.
Wilson maintains that he gave a description of his encounter with the SUV, with all pertinent details, via telephone to Lt. David Liddy at Rampart Detective Division on the evening of December 2, 1999, as soon as he realized the potential relevance of the information to the Gates assassination inquiry. He would only discover later, upon reading the Garcetti Report, which omitted any reference to the encounter, that his tip had apparently been ignored.
Wilson told Citizens for Truth:
"LAPD Homicide is that way. If you don't belong to their posse, they don't even want you in the office. Here they were working on this case...they had a dead suspect at the scene [ Hidell ] and had begun clear up the murder of Bill Gates in one day...They didn't want to have to go looking for anybody else and they didn't even want to know about it. All they really wanted was to clear up the case."
Wilson is currently on stress disability leave from the Highway Patrol and states that his condition had "nothing to do with" his involvement in the Gates murder investigation.
Conclusions
Conclusions about Running Man are defined by what is unknown: Who he was, why he was running, whether he was in the white SUV. However, despite all that is unknown, it can be determined with relative confidence that he was running with great speed and purpose out of the Park Plaza Hotel. That fact in and of itself makes his presence in the vicinity of the assassination deserving of suspicion and further investigation.
However, the greatest evidence that Running Man may have a connection to the assassination lies in the testimony of Julia Serrano, who was working behind the counter of the Luna Sol Cafe, and heard the Running Man say "We shot him." Serrano's story is so significant that it has been reserved for an entire article on this site, called "False Witness? Julia Serrano and the LAPD." If this article has intrigued you at all about the Running Man, Serrano's story will surely send a chill down your spine.
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