By the spring of 1968, Bobby Kennedy was disheartened. Abby O’Malley told Walter she was worried about him. The murder of Martin Luther King Jr. affected him deeply. It seemed he was no closer to finding his brother’s killer than he was five years before. He viewed the list of private individuals he gave to Abby as a desperate move, an indication all hope was lost. While his run for the Democratic nomination did raise Kennedy’s enthusiasm noticeably, Abby could see the despair roiling his gut.

It was on a campaign bus in Indiana, rolling through the foothills in the southern part of the state, with a steady rain more dripping than falling, that Abby first told him it was Frederick Lacey who killed President Kennedy. “He looked at me in disbelief,” she told Walter. “I gave it to him—the whole thing, as I saw it, from start to finish—and he never said a word.” As Abby detailed a sequence of events leading to the assassination, Walter marveled at her concentration, her focus, her ability to relate apparently unrelated facts. Of course, he knew just how accurate her analysis was. He knew what Lacey had written. Abby did not. She knew nothing more than that Lacey had left something in writing, an admission, a confession.

Once she presented her conclusion to Bobby Kennedy, she asked him how he could have left Lacey’s name off the original list of the President’s enemies, the list he prepared immediately following the inauguration. His explanation was weak and tentative. It was almost as if he was making it up as he spoke. That was not like him, Abby said. Without Walter asking, she revealed that the real reason for Bobby’s oversight in 1960 was embarrassment. Robert Kennedy did not want his dead brother’s affair with Audrey Lacey coming to light then, just as he entered the White House, or later, after his death in 1963. In 1968, Abby could see his continuing determination that it never would. Bobby did not see the connections between Lacey’s masterminding of the murder and the evidence trails that, over five years, led them into the FBI and the CIA and others. Abby explained it by showing him that Lacey had contacts within all the suspect groups, all the different organizations. Sure the CIA was involved. And the FBI. Lacey was able to get information from each vital to the success of his plan. His reach extended even into the supposedly unreachable Secret Service. The strings she had been pulling, for five years, had been attached only to the coverup. The assassination itself remained a mystery. Like the mob, which was only hired for Ruby’s cleanup work on Oswald, the intelligence agencies also did not know what Lacey intended to do before he did it. Once the act had been accomplished, it was too late for all of them. In their rush to cover up their unwitting roles, they made many mistakes. There were dozens of sleuths chasing down the facts: newspaper reporters, magazine journalists and freelance writers, Kennedy conspiracy enthusiasts—nuts, if you will—of all sorts. Plus, everyone at CIA and FBI knew Bobby had a crack team working around the clock. Abby’s problem was simple, her delay perfectly understandable. She never heard of Frederick Lacey until 1968.

Robert Kennedy told his mother. Later, Abby was called to her side. Rose Kennedy took great comfort in her religion, and those people, from humble priest to lofty Cardinal, who were significant in it did all they could for her. Had she not forbidden him, Bobby would have flown to England that very day and killed Lacey with his bare hands. His mother insisted he put all thought of that out of his mind. Instead, she called Lacey herself. Abby was with her when she spoke to him. Abby told Walter how shaken she was at the civil nature of the conversation between Rose Kennedy and Lord Frederick Lacey. They had known each other for forty years, Abby said. At one point Rose said, “Frederick, you know why I’ve called.” She stood a few feet away from Mrs. Kennedy, but Abby could not hear Lacey’s voice. “Jack,” Rose said, in a voice cracking like broken glass, a voice fighting a losing battle with itself. Abby saw Rose Kennedy’s eyes tearing. “What . . .” she uttered. “What . . . what are you . . . ?” And then, in a helpless wail, she cried out, “My boys, Frederick! What about my boys!” This time Abby could hear Lacey. He screamed, “What about my Audrey!”

It wasn’t until two days later that Rose told Abby that it had been Lacey who was responsible for the death of Joe Jr. “A mistake,” she said with the most sorrowful laugh Abby ever heard. Abby could hardly believe the viciousness of it. The face of evil had shown itself. Joe Jr., too? It was a little after four in the morning, the next day, when Bobby called. He had just arrived from London. He needed to talk with Abby, immediately. Not later in the day. Not tomorrow. Right then. She was waiting outside her door when his limousine pulled up. They drove through the morning darkness, past daybreak, moving about the city with no purpose other than to stay in motion. Bobby told her how he had confronted Lacey, man-to-man, how the Englishman had told him about his oldest brother, twenty years ago, and Jack on November 22, 1963. “He killed them both,” Bobby said to Abby. “That sonofabitch! I told him I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I do.” She believed him. That meant Lacey had too.

Frederick Lacey was not a man to be lightly threatened. Men far more capable than Robert Kennedy had said much the same thing to him. He had endured tribal curses in savage parts of the world other Westerners had only read about. He had survived the armies of Germany, the emissaries of Russian revolutionaries, angry Turks and other assorted Middle Eastern potentates. His life had been threatened by the best. For fifty years, powerful men had boasted they would do away with Frederick Lacey. Robert Kennedy should not have concerned him.

That was when Lacey revealed the existence of his private journal, the Lacey Confession. He told Bobby Kennedy he had it all written down and hidden safely away. With cold efficiency, Lacey instructed Kennedy, lectured him, scolded him like a child. If anything happened to him, he told Kennedy, the document would be released and the legend of Camelot would come crashing to the ground in a heap of wreckage. “Hypocrisy humbles the highest,” he said. Kennedy reacted badly. He threatened Lacey again. Lacey had disdain for irrational behavior. He rejected Robert Kennedy as unworthy. He also recognized a level of instability in the younger Kennedy, a lack of self-control on his part, a wildness that Lacey felt he had no alternative but to deal with. Who could be certain what such a man as President Kennedy’s brother might do? Bobby needed to be escorted out of Lord Lacey’s presence.

“I suppose the last thing Lacey heard Bobby say was, ‘I’ll kill you!’ He must have believed him,” Abby said to Walter. “Less than a month later, Bobby lay dead on the kitchen floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.”