The assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy appeared to be a cut-and-dried case with Sirhan Sirhan, who undeniably fired a revolver towards Senator Kennedy, being convicted of murder and remaining in prison ever since.
Over the decades, however, overwhelming evidence that RFK’s murder was actually committed by a different gunman has emerged.
The facts of the case need to be exposed, especially since Sirhan Sirhan is currently being considered for parole by the California Parole Board andGovernor Gavin Newsom.
Everyone near Kennedy saw Sirhan Sirhan firing towards him. But for those watching closely, and for those who would later wonder if there was more to the story, there was abundant reason to look beyond first appearances
Just after midnight on June 5th, 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, after Senator Kennedy had won the California Democratic primary and thanked his assembled supporters, assistant maître d’ Karl Uecker led him through a dimly lit kitchen pantry in route to a press conference. Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard hired for the night, followed Kennedy closely behind, holding the senator’s right elbow and appearing to guide him. As Kennedy stopped at the edge of a steam table to shake hands with kitchen workers, a 24-year-old Palestinian Christian, Sirhan Sirhan (who had moved to the LA area as a child),began firing at Kennedy from several feet in front of him. After two shots, Uecker grabbed Sirhan’s arm and, with the help of others, pushed him down on to the steam table, pinning his gun hand. Though his hand was pinned down and pointed away from Kennedy, Sirhan continued firing wildly injuring five bystanders. According to the eyewitness testimony, Sirhan’s gun always remained one and a half to five feet in front of the senator while the coroner’s report determined Kennedy was hit three times from behind, with the fatal shot to the back of his head at point blank range of 1 to 3 inches. He died 26 hours later.
The official Los Angeles County Grand Jury transcript dated 6.7.68 records the revolver taken in evidence as “Exhibit #7." There is no record of the revolver’s serial number in the entire 273 page Grand Jury transcripts
Deputy D.A. Sidney D. Trapp, Jr.’s memorandum to Chief Deputy D.A. John Howard: Subject: Description of Sirhan Case Exhibits Date: June 7, 1971 reports the following: “Exhibit 6” (Sirhan case gun) “Iver-Johnson .22 caliber revolver, serial number H53725. This was contained within one large manila envelope which bore the inscription on the outside ‘Number 6 and 7’. It is presumed that since the transcript indicates that the gun was numbered ‘6’, that this is its present number. No exhibit 7 appeared within the envelope.
original documentWolfer conducted two series of ballistic tests. The first was conducted on June 6, 1968, with the gun seized from Sirhan and the bullets from this test were used to identify the bullets removed from the victims of the crime.
The second tests were conducted on June 11, 1968, and Wolfer used a weapon obtained from the Property Division of L.A.P.D.The use of this weapon (Serial No. H18602) was necessitated by the fact that Sirhan’s weapon had been entered in evidence before the Grand Jury and a court order restricted its availability.
The second tests were conducted to determine sound characteristics and to verify muzzle distance by examining gun powder patterns.
Coroner Thomas Noguchi testified at the Grand Jury that the muzzle of the gun was only 1-3 inches from RFK; later at trial he confirmed this with foresenic testing.
However, after Noguchi's Grand Jury testimony, District Attorney John Miner followed the acclaimed Coroner into the hallway and asked if he meant “feet,” not “inches.” Noguchi answered “My goodness, it’s an inch, not feet, because of the black powder behind the ear.”[1]The D.A. understood the significance of this finding from the autopsy report - the witness accounts all placed Sirhan a few feet in front of Kennedy and Noguchi's testimony on the pysical evidence confirmed that Kennedy was killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head at almost full contact range.
1 Moldea, Dan The Killing of Robert Kennedy, 1995 WW Norton & Company 2006 edition, at p. 92
Wolfer’s having possession of H18602 (the test gun) prior to June 10th can not be underestimated - it is a serious contradiction of the official L.A.P.D./L.A.D.A. reports (that Officer Lee did not take gun H18602 from Property until June 10th).
Wolfer’s knowledge of H18602 before the 10th of June opens the door to further questions about two guns, two tests, two different dates.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors appointed Thomas F. Kranz Special Counsel to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office to independently investigate the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Kranz reproduced Wolfer’s Daily Log in his Report under the Chapter Subpoena Ducus Tecum.
Sirhan was arrested with a newspaper clipping in his pocket criticizing Kennedy’s campaign pledge to sell jet bombers to Israel to replenish jets lost in theArab-Israeli War the year before. A notebook found in his bedroom contained repetitions of the phrase “RFK must die…RFK must be assassinated by June 5th’ 68,” the first anniversary of the Arab-Israeli War.
A trial, the strange “automatic writing” in Sirhan’s notebooks was cited as evidence of the cold, callous, premeditated nature of the crime but Sirhan claims he has no memory of writing in the notebooks nor of the shooting itself. And it has never been explained how it was possible for Sirhan to have written the most incriminating page on May 18th, two days before Kennedy made his first campaign speech promising bombers to Israel.
Supporters of the lone assassin story point to Sirhan’s “confession” in which he stated “I killed Robert Kennedy willfully, premeditatively, with 20 years of malice a forethought.” Sirhan’s claim that he had been planning the RFK killing sincethe age of four was ridiculous and nobody in court took his outburst seriously.The outburst came after days of pleading with the Judge to fire his attorney due to the dismal defense he was being provided. Yet, the “confession” has been taken out of context and used against him ever since.
O'Sullivan {2018), 93-5
lbid., 265