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In response to a previous post on the JFK thread, I think there were powder burns behind RFK's ear. Additionally, witnesses counted around fourteen shots being fired - way more than Sirhan's revolver could have fired - I think the capacity was around 8.
The focus seems to be on one of the security guards, whose name escapes me, who was standing in for the regular guard on the night in question and on the whole seems to be a rather shady individual. Also, there's a photo of RFK laying on the floor after the shooting, grasping one of the security guard's ties.
I think most theories point to the mafia being involved in this killing. Can't remember the name of the book I read this in, but when I do, I'll let you know.
Seems there's a lot more loose ends in RFK's killing than that of his brother's and as far as I know, hasn't been investigated to the same degree.
 
I agree - this case hasn't generated nearly as much interest even though there seem to be plenty of glaring inconsistencies, however we're in the unique position that the 'perpetrator' is still alive though claims to remember nothing about it. There are also stories about destroyed evidence and suggestions of government mind control experiments.
I think the mystery revolves around the fact that Sirhan was described by witnesses to fire at RFK from the front, when RFK's wounds show he was shot from the rear and upwards (resonance of JFK here).

I'd be interested in any good quality links on this subject, as it's hard to know what evidence is real and what is drivel when approaching this case from scratch. I've almost convinced myself that LHO did kill JFK without the assistance of a conspiracy, so any sceptical links on RFK would be worth a look if anyone knows any?
 
Hmmmm... according to the Big Book Of Conspiracies...:
The "lone nut", Sirhan Bishara, shot at RFK's front when the fatal (magic?) bullet struck him behind the ear. Bishara was aparently in a trance-like state and claimed to have no recollection of firing his gun.

The gun in question held eight shots, all of which were fired. But when the scene was investigated more then 10 shots were found to have been fired, Theodore Charach (evidence researcher) claims that 12 were fired in total. Furthermore the gun had been seized by the LAPD before the shooting. So they destroyed it.

Then there's the Girl-In-The-Polkadot-Dress and Bishara's "Illuminati" notebook.

So who knows what happened...
Niles
 
Sirhan's lawyer lodged an appeal in '97, but I haven't seen any info on any progress made. As for websites, the only ones I could find were pro-conspiracy rather than taking any kind of sceptical slant.

I always find the best sites on these kind of things are those that hold off on accusing everyone bar the actual assasin of having fired upon either Kennedy, accepting that in the case of JFK, there are a bunch of "tantalising inconsistencies" rather than anything approaching a potential smoking gun.
The problem with JFK is there's too much crap been written on both him and his assasination, which makes it kinda hard for anyone to take many theories seriously.
Also, if there was a conspiracy on a Governmental level or whatever, and today's govt. did say "Well, yeah, we did cover it up at the time" does anyone thing the average Joe American would be bothered about it? I honestly think not.

The book I read up on the assasinations in was a pro-mafia-killing type deal. Said that Sirhan spent a lot of time at racecourses which is supposedly a commonly used place for the mafia to pick up people who will eventually come to "owe them one"?

No progress on the book's name as of yet, but I'll keep looking.
 
Still appealing after all these years

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Robert F. Kennedy's convicted killer wants his bid for a new trial to be heard outside Los Angeles, where the man who helped prosecute him is now a federal judge.

Sirhan Sirhan's attorney, Lawrence Teeter, said Tuesday night that a June 30 hearing has been scheduled to decide whether the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles will transfer Sirhan's writ of habeas corpus to Fresno, near the state prison in Corcoran where Sirhan is serving a life sentence.

Sirhan has been denied parole 12 times, most recently last March.

"It is absurd to suggest that this case should remain in the Central District" in Los Angeles, Teeter wrote in his motion filed Friday. "The interests of justice require this transfer if only for the purpose of preserving an appearance of justice."

U.S. District Judge William Matthew Byrne Jr. in Los Angeles was a deputy U.S. attorney who helped prosecute Sirhan for Kennedy's killing. The New York senator was shot minutes after declaring victory in California's Democratic presidential primary on June 5, 1968, at the now-defunct Ambassador Hotel. He died the next day.

Since blurting out at trial that he killed Kennedy "premeditatedly with 20 years of malice aforethought," Sirhan, 59, has repeatedly claimed he remembers nothing about the shooting.

In his attempts to get a new trial, Teeter has maintained that Sirhan was framed, that prosecutors blackmailed his defense attorney to throw the case, that evidence was destroyed and that Sirhan couldn't possibly have fired the fatal shot from where he was standing.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/06/04/sirhan.appeal.ap/index.html
 
Niles Calder said:
Hmmmm... according to the Big Book Of Conspiracies...:
The "lone nut", Sirhan Bishara, shot at RFK's front when the fatal (magic?) bullet struck him behind the ear. Bishara was aparently in a trance-like state and claimed to have no recollection of firing his gun.
There's an RFK documentary that cropped up a few times on the History Channel (in the UK) last year where the Hotel guy who was among those who tackled and pinned Shirhan down was interviewed, and he was adamant that Shirhan's gun didn't fire at all until he was already bent backwards over a table with the arm that held the gun held down towards the horizontal. So if his bullets travelled downwards into RFK at all, RFK would have to have been nearly on the floor at the time. The guy was convinced that this meant that Shirhan's bullets couldn't have hit Kennedy at all, but listening to him it struck me as also possible that some Secret Service guys might have accidentally pushed RFK into Shirhan's line of fire when trying to protect him.
 
does anyone have any info on the court case that a photographer fought in order to get back pictures he'd taken of the shooting? lapd supposedly confiscated them. it was sometime in the 90's when he won the case but the photos were lost when in transit when the motorcycle courier was robbed
 
Robin Ramsay's excellent recent book on the JFK assasination has a wee bit on the RFK assasination in which he mentions a book he considers to be pre-eminent in the RFK assasination field, Dan Moldea's "The killing of Robert Kennedy" in which the author spends the majority of the book laying out overwhelming evidence that Sirhan wasn't the shooter, with the only possible candidate being Thane Cesar - a security guard who was the only person standing behind RFK at the time of the shooting.
RFK was shot in the head from behind - therefore it had to have been Mr Cesar, right?
Wrong, according to Moldea, who after tracking Cesar down, convinced him to undertake a polygraph test which Cesar subsequently passes. Moldea then undoes all his good work by then reversing his decision and deciding that regardless of the evidence he personally has amassed, Sirhan must have done it.
As Ramsay points out: Never heard of people learning to beat polygraphs?
 
At long last, something new(?) about the RFK case at the below link:

Nothing all that new though, the article claims:

a) more shots were fired than Sirhan's weapon held
b) the fatal shot was fired at too close a range for Sirhan to do it
c) a security guard may have shot RFK
d) the girl in the Polka Dot Dress may have hypnotised Sirhan
e) the author has a book on the subject coming out...

http://www.salon.com/2011/11/21/the_oth ... onspiracy/
 
RFK assassination witness willing to testify for Sirhan Sirhan's lawyers

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A woman who witnessed the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy says she has agreed to testify for Sirhan Sirhan's new defense team.

Nina Rhodes-Hughes insists Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Sen. Kennedy was murdered only a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. She says there were two guns firing from separate positions and that authorities altered her account of the crime.

"What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right," Rhodes-Hughes has told CNN. "The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups."

As a federal court has been preparing to rule on Sirhan's current legal challenge to his conviction in the Kennedy murder, Rhodes-Hughes says she has been contacted by Sirhan's lead defense lawyer, New York attorney William Pepper. "He asked me if indeed I would testify that there was another shooter and I said yes, I would," she said. Rhodes-Hughes says she has not been contacted by the California attorney general's office, which represents the other side in the Sirhan federal court case.

More at: http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/08/justice/c ... index.html
 
Anonymous said:
In response to a previous post on the JFK thread, I think there were powder burns behind RFK's ear. Additionally, witnesses counted around fourteen shots being fired - way more than Sirhan's revolver could have fired - I think the capacity was around 8.
The focus seems to be on one of the security guards, whose name escapes me, who was standing in for the regular guard on the night in question and on the whole seems to be a rather shady individual. Also, there's a photo of RFK laying on the floor after the shooting, grasping one of the security guard's ties.
I think most theories point to the mafia being involved in this killing. Can't remember the name of the book I read this in, but when I do, I'll let you know.
Seems there's a lot more loose ends in RFK's killing than that of his brother's and as far as I know, hasn't been investigated to the same degree.

It is definitely MOB related.. It's spelled out all over the entire case.
 
Nah, the CIA carry out mind-control experiments on postal workers in attempts to create perfect psycho-killers.

If Sirhan Sirhan has any employment in the US Postal Service I am inclined to agree with you. Did you know he was in AMORC?
 
If Sirhan Sirhan has any employment in the US Postal Service I am inclined to agree with you. Did you know he was in AMORC?

By AMORC, do you mean Antiquus Mysticusque Ordo Rosae Crucis ? I would be baffled if Sirhan Sirhan was one of its member, as it is usually considered as the matrix for the Order of Solar temple and other neo-templar organizations. In 'conspiracy' circles they're often seen as front covers for the NATO stay-behind networks (sometimes known collectively under the name of the Italian branch, the 'Gladio'). There is indeed a good amount of evidence linking the infamous OST with them.
So, on a second guess, it would not be so incongruous for Sirhan Sirhan to be a member, as he was a likely victim of mind control.
 
By AMORC, do you mean Antiquus Mysticusque Ordo Rosae Crucis ? I would be baffled if Sirhan Sirhan was one of its member, as it is usually considered as the matrix for the Order of Solar temple and other neo-templar organizations. In 'conspiracy' circles they're often seen as front covers for the NATO stay-behind networks (sometimes known collectively under the name of the Italian branch, the 'Gladio'). There is indeed a good amount of evidence linking the infamous OST with them.
So, on a second guess, it would not be so incongruous for Sirhan Sirhan to be a member, as he was a likely victim of mind control.

Check the bottom of the entry "Early Life": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan

It surprised me too.

As to why a group like AMORC would want Robert Kennedy dead is beyond me. Perhaps NATO was afraid of taking a more dove stance, given JFK's efforts with Kruschev at detente?
 
Check the bottom of the entry "Early Life": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan

It surprised me too.

As to why a group like AMORC would want Robert Kennedy dead is beyond me. Perhaps NATO was afraid of taking a more dove stance, given JFK's efforts with Kruschev at detente?
I suspect that AMORC probably had nothing to do with it, but it was more likely to be the actions of a confused and easily-persuaded young man.
 
I suspect that AMORC probably had nothing to do with it, but it was more likely to be the actions of a confused and easily-persuaded young man.

It was RFK's bodyguard who shot him in the back of his head, behind his ear. Sirhan Sirhan never hit him.
 
For anyone interested in this subject, there in a new Podcast. Find it in the usual spots and here:

http://rfktapes.com/

I've listened to the first three episodes and find it very compelling as it relies largely on source audio tapes.
 
It's being reported that Sirhan Sirhan has been stabbed in prison...

Robert F. Kennedy Assassin Sirhan Sirhan Is Said to Have Been Stabbed

Sirhan B. Sirhan, who is serving a life sentence for the 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, was in stable condition at a Southern California hospital on Friday night after reports that he had been stabbed in prison by another inmate, the state prison system said.

The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would not confirm that Mr. Sirhan, who is now 75, had been attacked, citing a state law shielding the names of crime victims.

But it did confirm that an inmate had been stabbed at 2:21 p.m. at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, where Mr. Sirhan is serving his sentence, and that no other inmates had been attacked on Friday.

Officials would not say what had prompted the attack.

https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/worl...-have-been-stabbed/ar-AAGBdiX?ocid=spartandhp
 
I doubt he'll walk out of prison (just as I doubt any of the Manson Family will) although you never know:

Bobby Kennedy's assassin granted parole in California​

The man convicted of shooting dead Robert F. Kennedy in a 1968 assassination that rocked the United States was granted parole Friday.
Sirhan Sirhan, now 77, has been behind bars for five decades -- despite doubts that he fired the shots that likely changed the course of US politics.

His murder came just months after the killing of Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr, and as a divided America was deep in an unpopular war in Vietnam.

His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment several years later.

- 'Wrong person' -

On a walkabout in the kitchen where he met staff, he was shot, as were several other people in his entourage, among them Paul Schrade, who took a bullet to the head.

"It is a good decision," Schrade told AFP on Friday.

The vote on Friday by a two-person panel of the California parole board does not mean that Sirhan will automatically be released.

During Friday's hearing, Kennedy's youngest son, Douglas, spoke in favor of Sirhan's release, media reports said, adding that Robert F. Kennedy Jr had sent a letter of support to the parole board.
https://www.news.com.au/breaking-ne...a/news-story/bc61c9b0a96b726181c81adaf8275aca
 
Bobby Kennedy's youngest child, who was born after his assassination, has written a public letter urging the full parole board to refuse his release.

It's a powerful read, however one feels about the case, as this paragraph illustrates:

It is true that Mr. Sirhan has been incarcerated for a long time. For 53 years, to be exact. That is, after all, an easy number for me to track. It is the same number of years that my father has been dead. It is the age that I turn on my birthday this year.

Full Article (cancel the page load quickly to view text and bypass registration):
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opinion/sirhan-sirhan-parole-kennedy.html
 
That's not working for me.

Robert Kennedy Was My Dad. His Assassin Doesn’t Deserve Parole.

Sept. 1, 2021

I never met my father. When Sirhan Sirhan murdered him in the kitchen hallway of the Ambassador Hotel in front of scores of witnesses, my mother was three months pregnant with me. Of my 10 older brothers and sisters, Kathleen, the eldest, was 16, and Douglas, the youngest, was little more than 1. I was born six months after my father’s death. My mother and the majority of my siblings agree with what I now write, although a couple do not. But I will say, for myself, while that night of terrible loss has not defined my life, it has had impact beyond measure.

In 1969, when Mr. Sirhan was found guilty by a jury of his peers and sentenced to death, I was barely a toddler. I know, as it is part of the historical record, that my uncle Teddy sent a five-page handwritten letter to the district attorney in a last-minute plea to save the condemned assassin’s life. The letter invoked my father’s beliefs: “My brother was a man of love and sentiment and compassion. He would not have wanted his death to be a cause for the taking of another life.”

Despite this plea, Superior Court Judge Herbert Walker upheld the sentence, ruling that Mr. Sirhan should “die in the manner prescribed by law,” which in California in 1969 was the gas chamber. There was no consideration of future rehabilitation. The court’s decision seemed based entirely upon the prevailing conception of justice in California at that time: As my father was taken forever, so too should Mr. Sirhan be.

My father’s murder was absolute, irreversible, a painful truth that I have had to live with every day of my life; he was indeed taken forever. Because he was killed before I was born, it meant I never had the chance to see my father’s face and he never had the chance to see mine. He never tossed me in the air, taught me to ride a bicycle, dropped me off at my freshman dorm, walked me down the aisle.

For America, the price of my father’s life and ambitions cut short has been incalculable — for the thousands of young men who died in Vietnam as the war my father opposed ground on for nearly seven more years, for the millions living in poverty or under the yoke of racism, for the wrongfully convicted who have languished behind prison walls, for the generation of would-be leaders whose hopes and dreams my father carried with him. Who knows what his death has cost?

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional and suspended it. At the time, “life without parole” was not yet an alternative in California; it wouldn’t take effect there for another six years. Mr. Sirhan’s sentence was commuted to “life with the possibility of parole.” Because of this, in legal terms, the word “forever” was taken off the table. This is just an explanation, not an argument; the way it touches upon our specific notions of justice is deeply personal. But the fact stands that while my father would be dead forever, Mr. Sirhan was not sentenced to prison forever.

I return to Uncle Teddy’s words: “My brother was a man of love and sentiment and compassion.” These are qualities I greatly admire, but I wonder, was Mr. Sirhan not already shown compassion when his death sentence was commuted to life in prison? It is a high-minded notion, after all, the belief that everyone — everyone — deserves a chance for rehabilitation and, after having served enough time in prison, even parole. Did Uncle Teddy ever imagine, in asking the court for compassion, that the man who killed his brother might one day walk free? I do not think so.

And what I do know is that Mr. Sirhan is not someone deserving of parole. I believe this despite last week’s recommendation by the Los Angeles County parole board’s two-member panel to consider his release.

For prisoners sentenced to life, parole is based on evidence of their suitability for release — and to a significant degree, that means evidence of rehabilitation. At the time of the assassination, Mr. Sirhan admitted his guilt. At the time of the trial, he moved to plead guilty to murder in the first degree. Yet, across the decades that followed, right up through last week, he has not been willing to accept responsibility for his act and has shown little remorse. At his previous parole hearing, in 2016, when asked by Commissioner Brian Roberts to explain how he was involved in the murder, Mr. Sirhan replied, “I was there, and I supposedly shot a gun.”

The commissioner kept pressing: “I’m asking you to tell me what you believe you’re responsible for.”

Mr. Sirhan replied: “It’s a good question. Legally speaking, I’m not guilty of anything.”

Again, this was in 2016. He was 71 years old and had been incarcerated for 48 years. That he was, of course, denied parole, is easy to understand. And so my question is: What in the intervening five years has changed? We know that one or two laws have changed (as we’ve seen, they frequently do), maybe some attitudes have changed, and Mr. Sirhan is a few years older. For a dash of color, news reports consistently mention his snow white hair, as if somehow that indicates he’s no longer a threat.

But as last Friday’s parole hearing made clear, his suitability for release has not changed. According to Julie Watson, an Associated Press reporter present, Mr. Sirhan still maintains that he does not recall the killing and that “it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed, if I did in fact do that.” If? How can you express remorse while refusing to accept responsibility? And how, having committed one of the most notorious assassinations of the latter part of the 20th century, can you be considered rehabilitated when you won’t even acknowledge your role in the crime itself?

Yet last week’s parole commissioner, Robert Barton, found a way. Although the official transcripts have not yet been released, he is reported as telling Mr. Sirhan, “We did not find that your lack of taking complete responsibility” for the shooting indicates that you are “currently dangerous.”

I know that prisons are overcrowded, and I realize that it is expensive to keep an older man behind bars. But without concern for justice or regard for rehabilitation, the parole panel of two has recommended that the man who killed my father be released. Free to live, perhaps, in Pasadena, Calif., with his brother, less than an hour’s drive from my home. Or, as is more likely, to go to Jordan, where he has citizenship.

It is true that Mr. Sirhan has been incarcerated for a long time. For 53 years, to be exact. That is, after all, an easy number for me to track. It is the same number of years that my father has been dead. It is the age that I turn on my birthday this year.

The decision to release Mr. Sirhan still has to be reviewed by the full parole board and then by California’s governor. I ask them, for my family — and I believe for our country, too — to please reject this recommendation and keep Sirhan Sirhan in prison.


SOURCE:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/01/opinion/sirhan-sirhan-parole-kennedy.html
 
Paul Schrade who was there on the day and was shot in the head by Sirhan says; “Yes, he did shoot me. Yes, he shot four other people and aimed at Kennedy. “The important thing is he did not shoot Robert Kennedy. Why didn’t they go after the second gunman? They knew about him right away. They didn’t want to know who it was. They wanted a quickie.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...n-rfk-jr-doesnt-believe-it-was-sirhan-sirhan/
 
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