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Revision as of 14:46, 29 March 2005
U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968. At the time he was killed, Kennedy had just won the June 4 Democratic Presidential primaries in South Dakota and California, making him the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for President during the 1968 presidential election. He died the next day, on June 6.
The convicted assassin, 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan B. Sirhan, attributed the killing to Kennedy's support for Israel during the Six-Day War. On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles, California court, Sirhan admitted that he had killed Kennedy.
Five other people were wounded, and FBI testimony is that 8 shots were fired and 8 bullets were recovered.
Kennedy addressed his supporters on the evening of June 5 in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. As he and his entourage walked through the kitchen hallway, Sirhan shot into the crowd. Olympic gold medalist decathlete Rafer Johnson and football player Roosevelt Grier helped detain Sirhan, with Grier jamming his thumb behind the trigger of the gun to prevent further shots from being fired.
There seems to be no dispute that Sirhan did fire; what is disputed is whether there was another gunman, behind Kennedy, at the scene who fired. Like his brother John's 1963 assassination, RFK's death has been analyzed by many conspiracy theorists, who have developed various alternative scenarios for the crime.
Though some say Sirhan was about one-and-a-half feet from Kennedy, many of the witnesses to the shooting said that Sirhan was at least three feet away from Kennedy. Los Angeles coroner Thomas Noguchi, however, found powder burns on Kennedy's ear and gunpowder residue in his hair. Noguchi said this meant the gun was just inches from Kennedy's head when he was shot. (When a firearm is discharged, the powder travels only a few inches because the gas is very light.) It was later revealed a photographer had taken many pictures at the exact moment of the shooting, but these were confiscated by the LAPD and never found. It was also later revealed a young Kennedy supporter named Sandy Serrano said a couple burst out of the hotel the night of the shooting exclaiming, "We shot Kennedy."
Sirhan later claimed he acted unconsciously, and that he has no memory of the event. This has led to speculations that he was acting under the influence of "hypnotic brainwashing" which many attribute to the CIA's MK-Ultra program (similar to the plot of The Manchurian Candidate).
External links
- Los Angeles Police Dept. Records -- From the Online Archive of California
- Who Killed Robert F. Kennedy? -- From conspiracy theorist Pat Shannan
- Articles about the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy -- From Citizens for the Truth about the Kennedy Assassination
- Bobby, I didn't know! -- From Mike Ruppert
- FBI report summary -- Released under the Freedom of Information Act
- The Assassinations -- Book on the assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X
- Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Collections -- Articles disputing that Sirhan killed Kennedy