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mysteries |
Robert Kennedy |
Other Information |
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| In 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot dead by a
crazed lone gunman. Or was he?
On 5th June 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic primary, all but ensuring his party's nomination for President in that Novembers election - a vote he was widely expected to win. That night, Kennedy and his supporters celebrated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. But, in the early hours, as armed guards escorted Kennedy from a press conference through the crowded kitchen of the hotel, a young man of middle-eastern origin stepped out of the crowd and began shooting at the Senator. Kennedy fell to the ground, bleeding from the head and chest. He was rushed to hospital, but died 25 hours later without regaining consciousness. At the time, it looked like this was an open-and-shut case. The murder had been carried out in front of dozens of witnesses and the killer, Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, was immediately arrested. Unanswered Questions. Despite this seemingly neat resolution, the case continues to inspire controversy and a number of questions remain unanswered. To begin with, it is hard to explain how, when Sirhan fired from a metre or so in front of Kennedy, all the Senator's wounds showed characteristics of having been delivered from point-blank range. Furthermore, Sirhan's gun - a.22 calibre - held only eight bullets in its chamber, but there was evidence of at least nine bullets had been fired in the pantry area, and very likely more. This evidence suggested that there had been two guns, and two guns meant a conspiracy. Yet the authorities were so convinced of Sirhan's sole responsibility that when the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) investigator De Wayne Wolfer had accounted for eight bullets, he stopped counting. William Bailey, and FBI agent, also examined the pantry area, and reported having seen a further two bullet holes in the woodwork of the centre-door divider. Yet another bullet hole, lower down in the woodwork, was said to have been examined by two police officers, Rozzi and Wright, but this evidence - and indeed any evidence suggesting a conspiracy - was resolutely ignored by the LAPD. Even more damning of the official version of events was the evidence provided by the coroner , Dr Thomas Noguchi, that Senator Kennedy had been shot in the back. He said that one bullet hit Kennedy about 18 cm below the shoulder, and a second hit him 2.5 cm below that. Most interestingly, Noguchi said that both were fired with the gun not more than 2.5 cm from the victim. A third bullet had struck Kennedy just below the right ear. In what some have suggested was a blatant attempt to shore up a dubious story, the LAPD asked Dr Noguchi to modify his evidence, allowing for the possibility of the bullets having been fired a metre or so from the Senator. Noguchi refused. He was later pressured not to talk about his findings, but again he refused. This led to his dismissal from the case on the grounds of incompetence, but Noguchi fought the LA authorities in the courts and won his case His reputation was cleared and he was reinstated. His evidence in the RFK case, though, was never considered. Condemning Words. Despite the many inconsistencies in the evidence, Sirhan was tried for the murder of Senator Kennedy and found guilty. During the trial, the prosecution made much of what they called Sirhan's 'Diary'. This was actually a notebook Sirhan had used during a course he attended at Pasadena City College. In it, there were notes and doodles unrelated to the classes he was attending, and it was these that commanded the court's interest. Among them were a number of disordered, frequently repetitive notes - 'RFK must die', and 'RFK must be assassinated.' the prosecution naturally seized upon these as evidence of Sirhan's intentions, but it has been suggested that these notes were of the kind of 'automatic writing' carried out to someone else's dictate while hypnotized. Furthermore, certain entries in the notebook were made in the third person. At the trial, Sirhan identified the writing as his own but claimed it was not his usual style. Indeed, he appeared genuinely surprised at some of the entries he was asked to read, even stumbling over what were apparently his own words. Sirhan was sentenced to life imprisonment, but the trial had left much to be desired. The defence failed to exploit important evidence, such as that of Dr Noguchi, and, crucially, failed to spot that the gun that was entered into evidence as the weapon of murder was not, in fact, Sirhan's. The Security Guard. If Sirhan did not kill Kennedy then who did? Initially, suspicion fell on one of the guards that the Ambassador Hotel had hired for the evening, Thane Eugene Cesar, but, since his official weapon was of a different calibre, he was paid little attention by the investigators. Cesar admitted he had once owned a .22, but claimed to have sold it before the shooting. The LAPD could not track down the man who had bought the gun, but a researcher named Theodore Charach did, and, although he never recovered the weapon, he claims to have seen a receipt proving that Cesar sold the gun three months after Kennedy's death. Other evidence also pointed the finger of suspicion at Cesar. As the bullets were flying, he had dropped to the floor with Kennedy, and, when interviewed after the shooting, he knew the Senator had been hit three times, while the guesses of other witnesses were usually wildly out. Of course, none of this proves that Cesar - a man who, some sources suggest, had links to organised crime - killed Robert Kennedy, but he certainly was very close to the Senator when the shooting started. Cesar, it should be pointed out, has always denied any involvement in the murder and has never been charged with any offence. After Kennedy's death, Jon Kimche, the London Evening Standard's Middle Eastern correspondent, unearthed a great deal of information about Sirhan. he found that, between 1964 and 1967, Sirhan had made lengthy visits to military training camps near Damascus in Syria, in Cairo and in Gaza. It seemed as if he was involved in intelligence work, but for whom? Sirhan has allowed us to think that he was pro-Arab, supporting their cause by striking down the pro-Israeli Kennedy, but their is a strong suggestion that Sirhan was working for the US, or at least the CIA. Had this been known at the time of Kennedy's death, it would have compelled an investigation into the possibility of a conspiracy, but not a word of it reached the American people, even though Kimche reported that investigations into his claims were being carried out by the FBI. Dark Eminence. The two LAPD officers who more or less ran the investigation on a day-to-day basis were Lt. Manuel Pena and Sergeant Enrique Hernandez. Both had strong CIA connections. Indeed, the Agency might be said to have been up to its neck in the Robert Kennedy assassination, the investigation and the cover-up |
Sources: The X Factor |