One
Wednesday morning in San Diego, Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Bobby
Kennedy, was considered for parole. Sirhan was originally scheduled for release
in 1984 but after intense political pressure, his parole date was rescinded and
he has since been denied 13 times.
At
the hearing, Sirhan came face-to-face with Paul Schrade for the first time — a
close friend of the Kennedy family who, on June 5, 1968, was walking behind the
senator when the shooting started. Schrade was shot in the head by Sirhan.
For
over 40 years, Schrade, now 91, has been campaigning to reopen the case, based
on eyewitness evidence that Sirhan could not have fired the fatal shot
described in Kennedy’s autopsy and an analysis of
the only known audio recording of the shooting which indicates that 13 shots —
and two
guns — were fired.
Schrade
told the parole board that new evidence shows Sirhan shot him and several
others — but did not shoot Kennedy. In a short statement released in advance of
the hearing, he says:
The
LAPD and LA DA knew two hours after the fatal shooting of Robert Kennedy that
he was shot by a second gunman and they had conclusive evidence that Sirhan
Bishara Sirhan could not and did not do it. The official record shows that [the
prosecution at Sirhan’s trial] never had one witness – and had no physical nor
ballistic evidence – to prove Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy. Evidence locked up
for 20 years shows that the LAPD destroyed physical evidence and hid ballistic
evidence exonerating Sirhan, and covered up conclusive evidence that a second
gunman fatally wounded Robert Kennedy.
Schrade
argues that a closer look at the bullet that hit him proves a second gun was
fired and Sirhan could not have killed Robert Kennedy.
As
labor chairman of Kennedy’s presidential campaign, he stood beside the senator
during his victory speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, on the night
of the crucial California Democratic primary that kept hopes of an RFK
Presidency alive.
After
the speech, Schrade was walking six to eight feet behind Kennedy through a
kitchen pantry, en route to a late-night press conference, when the shooting
started. The senator stopped to shake hands with some busboys and had just
turned to walk forward again when Schrade saw flashes, heard “a crackling sound
like electricity” and thought he was being electrocuted by wet television
cables. He was hit in the center of the forehead, fell to the floor and blacked
out.
Later, he said “I was lucky. If the bullet that hit me
in the forehead had been a fraction of an inch lower, I would have been killed
instantly.”
The
autopsy concluded one bullet passed through the right shoulder pad of Kennedy’s
jacket without entering his body, two bullets hit him under his right armpit at
a sharp upward angle, and the fatal shot entered one inch behind the ear and
penetrated the brain.
Kennedy
was hit four times and five others were injured, so the LAPD had to account for
how nine shots were seemingly fired from Sirhan’s eight-shot revolver.
LAPD
criminalist Dewayne Wolfer’s solution was to claim Sirhan’s second bullet
“passed through the right shoulder pad of Kennedy’s suit coat…and traveled
upward [at an 80-degree angle] striking victim Schrade in the center of his
forehead.”
As
Schrade later told author Dan Moldea, the only way a bullet could do this would
be “if I was nine feet tall or had my head on Kennedy’s shoulder.” As Wolfer
had already accounted for all eight bullets in Sirhan’s gun, this meant a ninth
shot was fired, and two more bullets were found in the center divider of the
pantry door frame by FBI agent William Bailey within hours of the shooting.
LAPD
criminalist Dewayne Wolfer (left) and L.A. County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi
(center) trace the trajectories of the bullets fired at Robert F. Kennedy Photo
credit: California State Archives
Fired
From Only An Inch Away
Four
shots were fired at Kennedy from behind, and to his right, with the fatal
bullet fired from only an inch away.
Eyewitnesses
placed the barrel of Sirhan’s gun two to five feet in front of Kennedy, to his
left.
Hotel
maître d’ Karl Uecker, who was leading Kennedy through the pantry while holding
his right arm, insisted he grabbed Sirhan after two shots — and diverted his
gun hand away from the senator. Sirhan, his gun hand pinned to a steam
table, nonetheless continued to fire wildly. But Uecker insisted that Sirhan
could not have fired the four shots that hit Kennedy.
Uecker’s
colleague Eddie Minasian confirmed Uecker grabbed Sirhan after the second shot
and saw Paul Schrade fall before the senator, suggesting Schrade was actually
hit with the first shot.
“It
wasn’t that gun”
Frank
Burns, an attorney who was standing beside him in the pantry, also had a clear
view of Sirhan, and told Dan Rather: ‘It wasn’t that gun.’
As
Kennedy lay on the floor and Paul Grieco tried to staunch the flow of blood
behind his right ear, the senator looked up and asked, “Is Paul all right?” A
photograph taken at the scene shows Schrade’s right shoe by the pool of blood
around the senator’s head.
In
1993, Dan Moldea interviewed coroner Thomas Noguchi about the sequence of
Kennedy’s wounds. Noguchi said the fatal bullet, striking an inch behind
Kennedy’s right ear “would have taken him off his feet,” so he concluded
Kennedy raised his arm to protect himself after seeing a gun or hearing the
first shot, and that the fifth shot was what killed him.
If
Uecker grabbed Sirhan’s hand after the second shot, how could the fatal shot
have been fired by Sirhan?
Phil
van Praag’s analysis of the Pruszynski recording – the only known recording of
the shooting – supports two firing positions, in front of and behind Kennedy.
There’s
a second-and-a-half pause after the first two shots, giving Uecker reaction
time to lunge at Sirhan and grab his gun hand.
Between
shots three and four, and shots seven and eight, Van Praag found “double shot
intervals” – shot sounds so close together, they could not have been fired from
the same gun.
Five
shots – numbered 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 – display a “frequency anomaly” which
indicates a different gun firing in the opposite direction from Sirhan’s
weapon.
Background
Paul
Schrade first called for a reinvestigation of Robert Kennedy’s murder in
December 1974. Two years later, after he brought a civil suit with CBS News,
the firearms evidence was retested but the results were inconclusive.
He
led the campaign to declassify the police investigation files on the case, and
their eventual release in 1988 exposed Wolfer’s failings and the LAPD’s
systematic destruction of evidence.
He
recently worked with the Kennedy family to turn the derelict Ambassador Hotel
into the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools complex, but still believes
justice has not been served in this case. He will address Sirhan directly at
the end of the hearing and is expected to call for his release and a new
investigation into Robert Kennedy’s murder.
*****
In
March, Sirhan will turn 72 years old, having spent two-thirds of his life in
prison for a crime he has consistently said he cannot remember committing.
On
the first day of testimony at his trial, Sirhan’s attorney led him through the
charges and asked: “Did you shoot Paul Schrade?”
“That is what the indictment reads. I must have,” replied Sirhan.
“Were you aware of the fact that you shot Mr. Schrade?” “I was not aware of
anything.”
For
three years prior to his last parole hearing in 2011, Dr. Daniel Brown of
Harvard Medical School spent over sixty hours with Sirhan trying to recover his
memory of the shooting. Dr. Brown concluded Sirhan’s amnesia for events before
and during the shooting was real, but his findings were ignored by the parole board, who
noted “some degree of…distrust, quite frankly [in] you remembering parts of
this and not remembering others.” They claimed the gaps in Sirhan’s memory show
he still lacks remorse and has not accepted full responsibility for his crime.
The
parole board is obliged to accept Sirhan’s first-degree murder conviction and
only the courts have the power to retry the case. Sirhan’s parole denials
repeatedly cite the “RFK must die” automatic writing in his notebooks as
evidence of the cold, callous, premeditated nature of the crime, even though
Sirhan claims no memory of writing in the notebooks or the shooting itself, and
the defense and prison psychiatrists who have worked most closely with him over
the years believe both were done in a dissociated state.
Following
Sirhan’s parole denial in 2011, his attorneys William Pepper and Laurie Dusek
vigorously pursued a habeas corpus petition started by the late Larry Teeter in
1997 and their court filings in their battle with the state of California are now available online.
At
the heart of the petition are detailed declarations concerning two major new
pieces of evidence developed over the last ten years that crystallise the
second gun and Manchurian candidate theories that first emerged in the early
seventies.
•
Forensic audio expert Phil Van Praag documents his findings that at least 13 shot sounds
can be heard on the only known recording of the shooting; and
•
A declaration by Dr. Daniel Brown that authenticates
both Sirhan’s amnesia and the hypnotic programming that generated the “RFK must
die” repetitions in his notebooks and triggered the assassination. In January
2015, the Central District Court of California denied the petition, refusing to
grant Sirhan even an evidentiary hearing to assess the merits of this new
evidence.
The
parole criteria present a number of Catch 22 scenarios for Sirhan. How can you
show remorse and insight into the crime when you can’t remember what
happened? How can you accept full responsibility for the crime when
you’re still contesting the case, and the state’s version of events has been
superseded by new exculpatory evidence the court refuses to hear?
In
1975, the California state legislature moved to introduce fixed sentences and
give those on indeterminate life sentences “a date certain” for their release.
After deductions for his time in jail during the trial, Sirhan was given a
parole date of March 1, 1985.
Other
prisoners convicted of first-degree murder had been freed, on average, after 11
years. Given Sirhan’s record of good behavior, they couldn’t justify giving him
more time because of who he killed.
The
chairman of the panel told the press he was “proud as hell that [they] didn’t
search for some bogus reason to deny him…This should prove we don’t have any
political prisoners.”
An Exemplary
Inmate
With
the support of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, I recently published all available
transcripts of Sirhan’s parole hearings dating back to 1978. They chart Sirhan’s life in prison
over the last 48 years and show he has been an exemplary inmate, with no prison
violations since 1972 and an excellent work record.
The
earliest progress review hearings from 1978 to 1980 show that
while working towards his release date, Sirhan was a straight A student at
Hartnell College, going on to obtain an A.A. degree from the less than ideal
learning environment of a protective housing unit. He received laudatory
commendations from the prison staff and the prison psychologists and the parole
panel deducted a further six months for good behavior.
Then
came the 10-day parole rescission hearings in 1982 that changed all
that and in his closing statement, Sirhan sensed the inevitable:
I
sincerely believe that if Robert Kennedy were alive today, he would not
countenance singling me out for this kind of treatment. I think he would be
amongst the first to say that however horrible a deed I committed 14 years ago,
it should not be the cause for denying me equal treatment under the laws of
this country.
His
parole date was rescinded and Deputy District Attorney Larry Trapp later told
the press, “Political assassination in America must never be rewarded by
freedom.”
Trapp
was the guiding hand behind the rescission hearings and ever-present at
Sirhan’s parole hearings in the eighties and nineties. But as William Klaber
notes in his book, Shadow Play (St. Martin’s Press, 1997), Trapp made
serious factual errors, repeatedly claiming Sirhan began to plot Kennedy’s
death on January 31, 1968. He based this false claim on automatic writing
Sirhan produced under hypnosis eight months after the shooting in preparation
for trial.
In a television
interview after the infamous 1985 hearing – when the assembled press
accidentally listened in to a jokey three-minute deliberation and heard a
member of the parole board discuss transferring Sirhan to another prison and
say, “we’ll send his ass down there for as long as possible” – Sirhan made his
frustration clear:
This
country is governed by the rule of law, it is not governed by terrorist tactics.
Now, if you want to deprive me of my rights under your own established rules
and your own laws, at least come out and tell me that outright rather than to
tell me that you didn’t go to Alcoholics Anonymous programs and on that basis,
we’re going to deprive you of your liberty. Tell me that you’re a terrorist and
we don’t want you out of our prison, I can live with that. But all these
deceptions and devious ways of denying me parole, I don’t think it’s fair.
From
1989 to 1992, Sirhan was chairman of the Alcoholics Anonymous group in his
unit, even though before the four Tom Collins cocktails he consumed on the
night of the shooting, he had only touched alcohol a couple of times in his
life. When the AA meetings clashed with his prison work roster, he had to drop
them. And since his relations with the parole board soured in the nineties, he
openly questioned why he should jump through hoops for them when they showed no
sign of ever granting him parole.
In
1992, the prison guards told Sirhan he had to wear chains and manacles in the
hearing room, so both he and his attorney refused to attend. Two years later,
Larry Teeter took over as Sirhan’s attorney. His habeas corpus petition was
filed two days after the 1997 hearing, in which Sirhan proclaimed his innocence
for the first time, based on new exculpatory evidence in Teeter’s petition.
The
commissioner almost threw Teeter out of the hearing when he skillfully tried to
apply some of this new evidence to Sirhan’s parole criteria. Sirhan was left
fuming that his attorney had been repeatedly told to shut up, and subsequently
refused to cooperate with the parole board or attend his next three hearings.
The
First “Arab Terrorist?”
Then,
a month after 9-11, the Washington Post published the following
scurrilous leak from the California prison system in its ‘Reliable Source’
column:
The
Post’s Petula Dvorak reports that prison authorities in California wonder why
Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan shaved his head and requested a
television on Sunday, Sept. 9, two days before the terrorist attacks. “These
are unusual requests for him; he is usually pretty much isolated and
reclusive,” prison spokesman Lt. Johnny Castro told Dvorak. The 57-year-old
Palestinian immigrant . . . frequently mails letters to outsiders, and the FBI
is probing whether Sirhan’s letters were not monitored because they were
written in Arabic. But Sirhan lawyer Lawrence Teeter said his client “was
outraged at the terrorist attacks and remarked spontaneously in a letter to his
brother he hopes that the people who did this are burning in hell.”
According
to Sirhan’s brother Munir, a departing prisoner had given Sirhan his
television two days before 9-11. And when the prison guards saw Sirhan watching
9-11 coverage with a towel on his head after a shower, they branded him an Arab
terrorist who had foreknowledge of the attacks.
Solitary
Confinement for a Year
Prison
spokesperson Sabrina Johnson later confirmed they had “documentation” to show
that Sirhan was a threat, and he was disciplined accordingly. Sirhan’s brother
said this meant “he was thrown into solitary confinement for the next year
until we were finally able to prove he was innocent of their claims and get him
out. He was allowed out of his cell, I think it was seven minutes twice a week
to shower, and he was shackled, hands and legs.”
Later
parole hearing transcripts show this episode had a profound effect on Sirhan’s
welfare in prison. He stopped cooperating with the parole board and according
to psychological reports, became increasingly withdrawn.
Since
9-11, he has been demonised as the first Arab/Islamic terrorist, even though he
was raised and still is a practicing Christian. He has never had any ties to
terrorist organisations.
In
2011, Sirhan appeared in public for the first time in 14 years, with renewed
hope after his sessions with Dr. Brown and the new court filings by Pepper and
Dusek but once more, he was denied. Self-help programming options have always
been limited in his protective housing unit, so the parole board again touted
the AA 12-step program as the best tool to give him insight into his crime and
seemed to ignore the insight gained through his three years of sessions with
Dr. Brown.
If
released, Sirhan would be deported to Jordan, where he claims he would be a
danger to nobody. But as The Marshall Project recently discovered in a
year-long examination of America’s parole boards, parole decisions are often
driven not by public safety but by politics. Since 1982, California has treated
Sirhan like a political prisoner who will never be released, not a human being
who has served his time and has the right to a fair hearing and the rule of
law.
Since
Sirhan’s interview with David Frost for Inside Edition in 1989,
recorded interviews with inmates have been banned in California, so parole
hearings are his only chance to publicly state his case for release. While
Court TV covered the 1994 proceeding live, generally Sirhan’s hearings get only
the briefest mention on the news but the parole board in California recently
banned audio and video recording of the hearings, censoring Sirhan’s voice from
the continuing debate about his case. At this rate, the public may never see or
hear from him again.
Dr.
Shane O’Sullivan is an author, filmmaker and researcher at Kingston University,
London. His work includes the documentary RFK Must Die (2007)
and the book Who
Killed Bobby? (2008). He blogs on the Sirhan case at
SIRHAN:
A “MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE” IN THE RFK ASSASSINATION?
48
Years and More Evidence that Sirhan Doesn’t Deserve Blame for RFK Death
Forty-eight
years ago (in 1968), the country was in the midst of another presidential
campaign that came at a seminal moment in American history. Five years earlier,
John F. Kennedy had been murdered, and Dr. Martin Luther King had been
assassinated in April of 1968. The Vietnam War was escalating. Race riots were
becoming a fact of urban life. Racial and generational politics as well as
social issues were threatening to tear the country apart.
Then
on the night of June 5th, 1968, after John Kennedy’s brother Robert had won the
all-important California Primary, America got yet another jolt: the younger
Kennedy, too, had been struck down.
Flash
forward to 2016.
Last
week, his alleged killer, Sirhan Sirhan, was up for his 14th parole hearing.
Sitting in the audience was Paul Schrade, one of RFK’s closest confidantes —
who was also shot during the attack; Schrade, now 91, is interesting for many
reasons, not the least of which is his conclusion that, assuming Sirhan was one
of the shooters that night, he was not the only one. Moreover, if Sirhan fired
any shots, Schrade is quite certain that the young Palestinian-American, once
again being denied parole, could not have killed RFK — because it was
a physical impossibility.
Author
and filmmaker Shane O’Sullivan has spent 12 years examining how Sirhan might
have been “programmed”, and by whom; scrutinizing the failures of the Los
Angeles Police Department; bringing forth the sound and ballistic evidence
showing 14 separate shots were fired; and publicizing the efforts by RFK friend
Schrade to reopen the investigation. In this podcast, he talks to WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff
Schectman about where the fact trail points
Related
front page panorama photo credit: Adapted by WhoWhatWhy from RFK Must Die (Wikipedia),
Portion of the most famous page of Sirhan Sirhan’s notebook (California State
Archives) and sound wave (John
Baer / Flickr – CC BY-SA
2.0)
Full
Text Transcript of Audio:
Jeff
Schechtman: Welcome to the program, I’m Jeff Schechtman. 48 years ago we were
in the midst of another presidential campaign not unlike the one we’re in now.
Many felt it was a very seminal moment in American history. JFK and Martin
Luther King had been assassinated, the Vietnam War was escalating and race
riots were becoming a fact of urban life. Racial and generational politics and
social issues were tearing the country apart. Richard Nixon represented what he
perceived as the silent majority, and Hubert Humphrey represented the
Democratic establishment, and Bobby Kennedy had parachuted in to replace Eugene
McCarthy as the great white hope of stitching the country back together. Then
on the night of June 5, 1968 after winning the all-important California
primary, Bobby was assassinated. Last week his alleged assassin, Sirhan Sirhan,
was once again up for his 14th parole hearing. Attending were some of Bobby’s
closest confidants who still believe Sirhan was not the single shooter and not
the one who fired the shot that took Bobby Kennedy’s life. My guest today on
Who What Why is author and filmmaker Shane O’Sullivan, who spent years
researching Bobby Kennedy’s death. He’s the author of the book, Who Killed
Bobby, and the film, RFK Must Die. It is my pleasure to welcome Shane
O’Sullivan to the program. Shane, thanks so much for joining us.
Shane
O’Sullivan: You’re very welcome, pleasure to speak to you, sir.
Jeff:
It’s great to have you here. What was it originally that drew you into this
story, Shane, many years ago?
Shane:
I first got involved about 12 years or so ago, and even though I’m from
Ireland, I didn’t know the Kennedy assassination story that well, but my wife
was researching a program on Kennedy conspiracy theories for Japanese
television, believe it or not, and that’s when I first heard about Sirhan
Sirhan and some of the mysteries around the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. And
in researching that, originally I was working as a screenplay writer and I had
to make a fantastic adapted screenplay. But the more I researched it, and the
more I tried to find out what was the ending to the story, and that kind of led
to my own research and led me towards making the documentary, RFK Must Die.
Jeff:
And as you dug into making the documentary and began to examine the ballistic
evidence, what had happened with the LAPD in the LA district attorney’s office.
Talk about what moved you from thinking that this was more than another
conspiracy story to really something that where the facts had just not come out
in this case.
Shane:
Sure, first of all, the time lapse between the assassination itself and the
release of all the police investigation files is what’s kind of hampered
took the implications away, because it took 20 years of provocation and protest
by Paul Schrade, the guy who was in the news this week, and who was shot in the
head on the night of the assassination. He’s basically been leading the
campaign to reopen the case for 40 years and one of the things that he was able
to do is get the LAPD to release the files in 1988. What they show is that,
Sirhan, according to all the witness testimony and that was gathered by the
police at the time and the FBI. All of the witness statements put the barrel of
Sirhan’s gun two to six feet in front of Kennedy. Whereas the autopsy clearly
states that the fatal shot was fired from one inch behind Kennedy’s right ear.
So that sets up one of the key aspects of the case in terms of two potential
firing positions. Sirhan in front of Kennedy, several feet in front. Several of
the witnesses who were actually trying to restrain Sirhan, said his gun was
never in the position described in the autopsy, an inch behind Kennedy’s right
ear. And then you have the person who was actually behind Kennedy and possibly
in a position to fire the shot who was a part-time security guard called Thane
Eugene Cesar, who was the subject of a feature documentary in the early 70s
that introduced the second gun theory to the case. And you know, he was
interviewed for this film called, ‘The Second Gun’, by Ted Charach, and he was
very right-wing, he was very against Kennedy, and he seemed kind of amused
looking back at the whole assassination and his place in it. I guess a lot of these
things kind of got my interest, as well as the kind of the mystery around
Sirhan’s recall of the shooting. He has no memory of the shooting itself. All
he remembers consistently over the years is being led into a dark place by a
girl who wanted coffee. He later found out that this dark place was the pantry,
and he really has no memory, or kind of blackout in his memory between that
point when he went into the dark place with the girl who wanted coffee and he
was being choked on the steam table after the first round shot had gone off
from his gun. And he’s been very consistent with that for nearly 48 years. I
can see no reason why he would lie about it because in the sense it’s hampering
his case and hampering his chance of parole. Because if he did remember, and he
did recall, he could make a full confession and he would easier meet the parole
criteria. But as it is because he can’t recall and because this is been
verified by the psychologist who worked him over the years, and it sort of sets
up a Catch-22 situation, because had he expressed full remorse, or had he
expressed full insight into your crime if he cannot actually remember
committing it, which really goes to the core of what he’s been struggling with
in the parole process last week.
Jeff:
What have psychologist said with respect to this repressed memory that could
have been from the trauma of the event the way the event went down or has the
assumption been that there is something else that has prevented his recall?
Shane:
We know much better today than we knew I guess 48 years ago, and that trauma
obviously can play a part in that and that may be one thing to attributed it
to. But I think the psychologists and psychiatrists who worked with him in the
most detail are convinced that he was in a hypnotic state on the night of the
shooting and during the shooting itself. It may sound very far-fetched but back
at the time Sirhan was very much into mysticism and self-hypnosis. And he would
spend a lot of time in his room hypnotizing himself in front of the mirror and
then writing as various phrases in his notebook as a means of cost control or
mind control. And so the theory was back in his trial by this defense
psychiatrist, Dr. Bernard Diamond, that the mirrors along the hallways in the
hotel had somehow triggered him into this trance and he had acted out some of
the writings in his notebook, “RFK must die, RFK must die,” repeatedly. He had
kind of gone into that trance state, and kind of reenacted some of these
writings and realized them in the pantry when he saw Bobby Kennedy. So the
theory was that he’d almost hypnotized himself to kill Bobby Kennedy and the
motivation for that would be that Kennedy had agreed or had pledged during his
campaign to sell 50 bombers to Israel if he had been elected the White House to
replenish bombers that were lost in the Six-Day War the year before. So that
was sort of the post-rationalization that the defense came up with, and at the
trial it was kind of laughed out of court at the time because it seemed so
far-fetched, and there was nothing on the records to indicate that hypnosis had
ever played a role in this kind of assassination. But we know a lot more later
on in the 70s when Congressional hearings established that the CIA and other
agencies were trying to do just that in 50s to create programs, hypno-program
assassins, who could be programmed to assassinate and have no memory of
actually having done it. So I think that after the trial some of the
psychiatrists who looked at Sirhan were more aware of that context and I guess
later on saw him as the closest we have to a real-life manchurian candidate in
terms of some of these ideas of what the CIA were trying to do in the 50s, and
how either CIA or other kind of rogue individuals may have gotten to Sirhan in
advance of the assassination.
Jeff:
Is there any evidence that has come out as to who Sirhan Sirhan may have had
contact with that might have somehow been responsible or directly or indirectly
responsible for any kind of hypnosis and/or programming?
Shane:
I think that’s the gap at the moment. We don’t know who it was. We know that he
was away from home and he wasn’t away from home for any lengths of time in the
months leading up to the assassination but he was for several months away from
home at a ranch when he was trying to establish himself as a jockey two years
before the assassination. He had a fall from a horse, which you know according
to the medical records, and he only had a brief stay at the hospital and he had
some minor eye damage and apparently he was fine. According to his mother and
his best friend he went missing for two weeks. So I think Dr. Daniel Brown who
has worked with Sirhan over the last five years to try and help him with his
recall of his memory and try to piece together and if there is such a context
of people working with him to program him for the assassination, they suspect
that experience two years beforehand may have been the start of that process.
But they really haven’t been able to nail it down in a formal way. I think the
strongest evidence we have is that there may have been others involved in
terms of this hypnotic conditioning and it’s that fact that Sirhan in the last
five years and during his work with Dr. Daniel Brown from Harvard Medical
School, and at least three times during their sessions together when he’s been
put in a hypnotic trance, he’s kind of reenacted the range mode of basically
being in a hypnotic trance seeing firing targets in front of his eyes, then
taking a firing position and shooting. So he’s actually reenacted the possible
programming he was under at the time of the assassination. I know it sounds
very far-fetched, but this is actually stuff that he has reenacted in the last
five years for Dr. Daniel Brown in the California prison system. So it’s
obviously there in his psyche, even 40 odd years later. And was then in the
declaration in support of his habeas corpus to petitioners and his attorneys
had petitioned the courts with, in the last 5 to 6 years, and also was put
before the parole board, both back in 2011 and there was a new declaration
submitted to the parole board last week.
Jeff:
There is no question that Sirhan did attempt to assassinate Bobby Kennedy, that
he was there in the pantry, that he fired quite a few shots. And the question
is, whether there was a second shooter?
Shane:
We know that Sirhan was there, we know he fired his gun eight times, but you
know in terms of a second gun being there the strongest evidence to that is
something called the Pruszynski recording which is the only known audio
recording of the shooting that night, and it’s been lying in the California
State archives kind of undiscovered for many years. And then a former CNN
senior writer, Brad Johnson, discovered it in 2004. He got in touch with a
forensic audio expert called Philip Van Praag who did a very detailed analysis
over it for several months and came up with some very key discoveries of what
the recording contains. The first was that there were 13 shot sounds in the key
portion of the recording when shooting was actually taking place. Then when he
analyzed them in more detail he found two double shot intervals which means
basically that there were two shots so close together that they couldn’t have
come from the same gun because even the best shooter couldn’t have fired two
shots as quickly as is evident on the tape from a gun, which is one indication
of the second gun. And also through various frequency anomalies for those
particular thirteen shot sounds, he was able to separate how many came from
Sirhan’s gun and how many came from a second gun, and the fact that those two
different guns were firing in opposite directions. So if we put all this
together we see that eight of the shots according to the frequency anomaly
analysis, eight of the shots could be put down to Sirhan’s gun, which is firing
several feet in front of Kennedy, and five shots were fired from behind Kennedy
in the opposite direction towards Sirhan, and five of them came from behind
Kennedy, including the four that shot him including the fatal shot wound behind
the right ear. So it’s kind of an astonishing piece of work that Philip Van
Praag has been doing on that, and that it is the strongest evidence I feel that
there were two guns in the pantry and that 13 shots were fired and that Sirhan
in all likelihood missed Kennedy and the fatal shot came from the second
shooter behind.
Jeff:
Talk a little bit about the ballistic evidence in the pantry, the number of
shots, the number of people that were hit, bullets that were found, the damage
that was found in the pantry, and the LAPD investigation into this.
Shane:
Well, again Paul Schrade kind of holds the key to that in a sense because he
was walking six to eight feet behind Robert Kennedy, Jr., through the pantry
when the shooting started and all the evidence suggests that Paul Schrade was
actually the first person hit probably by one of Sirhan’s bullets, and so
because one of the two witnesses who was right next to Sirhan, kind of between
Sirhan and Paul Schrade at the time. He saw Paul Schrade fall first and then he
saw Sen. Kennedy fall after that. And the fatal shot that hit Kennedy coming
from an inch behind his right ear. So, once he was hit with that fatal shot he
would’ve collapsed to the floor. So basically all the indications are that Paul
Schrade was hit first, then Kennedy fell, and then there were several other
people injured in the crossfire. So if we look at how and the LAPD criminalist
Dwayne Wolfer accounted for the eight shots from Sirhan’s gun, one key error
that he made was that the bullet that hit Paul Schrade according to Wolfer,
went through the suit coat of Kennedy, and went up through the lining without
entering Kennedy’s body and hit Paul Schrade in the head. So he had a very
tight accounting of the bullets. Wolfer had a problem because there were four
bullets fired at Kennedy, three hit his body, one went through his suit coat,
and five others were injured. So in essence, for a potential nine shots that
had to be accounted for, with eight bullets from Sirhan’s gun, so how were they
going to do that? So the magic bullet, if you like. in this case was the one
that was fired at an upward angle through Kennedy’s suit jacket without
entering his body, and going through the shoulder pad of his coat, and then
according to Wolfer, hitting Paul Schrade in the head. Now as I’ve already
said, Schrade was walking six to eight feet behind Kennedy through the pantry,
so for that bullet to go through the shoulder pad of Kennedy’s jacket and hit
him in the head, as he said himself he’d have to be 9 feet tall or literally
sitting on Kennedy’s shoulder when the shooting happened. It’s just absurd.
So one of the benefits of the LAPD files being released in ‘88 was we
could see some of the creative accounting that LAPD were doing in the case to
basically make the evidence fit their version of the crime. And you can see
that there was very little margin for error. And on top of that, we have FBI
agent William Bailey who is in the pantry a couple of hours after the shooting,
and two bullets he had been taken out of the center divider in the pantry door
frame. This center divider of the pantry doorframe was basically the door that
Kennedy had come through when he had come off the stage and walked into the
pantry. Probably these bullets came from Sirhan’s gun because he was firing in
that direction as Kennedy was walking towards him, and all the evidence says
that he missed Kennedy with those bullets, they injured bystanders instead. If
we look at that accounting then, we’ve got two bullets in the pantry center divider,
of the pantry doorframe. We’ve got eight bullets in Sirhan’s gun. We’ve got a
rogue bullet that’s not accounted for because Wolfer’s accounting of the one
that went through Kennedy’s suit coat and hit Schrade doesn’t make any sense.
So already we’re up to possibly 11 bullets there. So you can see that when we
put that together with the Pruszynski recording, 13 shot sounds that
Philip Van Praag had found in the recording, and at a very early stage LAPD had
some indication of the nature of the damage, that it was more than just
Sirhan’s gun. And they just, you know, they refuse to admit or follow up with
it in any proper way. There was an indication with Sandra Serrano, that there
was a girl with a polka dot dress in the pantry, and she was seen by Vincent Di
Pierro with Sirhan in the pantry during the shooting. She was seen fleeing down
a fire escape by Sandra Serrano after the shooting. But again, LAPD just tried
to shut that down, that side of the investigation, and stick to the lone gun
theory throughout.
Jeff:
There is a video that exists of the chaos that took place in the pantry. Talk a
little bit about that and whether that video has been revealing in any way.
Shane:
Well, in a sense it’s been misleading because people get the sense that, “Oh,
you know, I saw Bobby Kennedy being killed live on television,” because they’ve
seen the chaos in the pantry and they assume that when the shooting was taking
place, the nature of television documentaries, sometimes they put fake gunshots
on the footage to just kind of jazz it up. But really, it doesn’t tell us very
much other than that you know I think later the police said that there were up
to 77 people in that pantry in a very low ceiling, small confined space. So I
guess what it does tell us is that if there was a second gunman in there
literally at conflict distance from Kennedy, with a gun, an inch behind his
right ear, it would be very difficult to see who it was, if it was
professional. If it were a professional hitman, and they were able to do the shot
at an upward angle to do the damage from a concealed gun and then be spirited
out from the pantry without anybody really seeing in the confusion what was
going on. And obviously Sirhan drawing all the attention because he was out
there waving his gun and everybody went to try and restrain him and bang his
gun on the steam table. The maître d’ called Uecker who was leading Kennedy
through the pantry insisted that after two shots, Sirhan’s gun was now diverted
from Kennedy. So he was firing wildly and down through the pantry and hit some
the other bystanders and probably, possibly the bullets in the center divider
would be from Sirhan’s gun. Really, it was a very frenzied situation where it
would be no surprise if a professional hitman were able to escape quite easily
and basically without leaving any trace at the time.
Jeff:
I guess the question is just as there has been computer analysis of the sound
that was found, whether or not computer enhancement, computer analysis of the
video might be more revealing today 48 years later.
Shane:
Obviously well, that’s the $64 question. It would be great if the video was
revealing but I don’t think it’s of sufficient resolution, or sufficiently well
lit to really give us very much. Obviously if we found another audio recording
of the gunshots, that would further corroborate the findings of the Pruszynski
recording that will be very helpful. And even just reading the autopsy report
today, if it was possible to look at some of the fragments of the bullet that
penetrated Kennedy’s brain. You know, this bullet basically mushroomed and
fragmented into many, many different tiny pieces. If it was possible to kind of
establish what was the caliber of bullet and what was the make of bullet and so
on and possibly that might be of some help. But it’s very, very difficult,
there’s a finite amount that we could do at this stage and we have to accept
that.
Jeff:
Talk a little bit about Paul Schrade and all those that want to see this case
reopened and really have shown up at the various parole hearings for Sirhan
Sirhan.
Shane:
Part of the project that I’ve just been doing and actually releasing the
history of all of the transcripts of Sirhan’s parole hearings dating back to
the mid-70s, and really nobody has shown for the parole hearings. Well, people
have been asking for a new investigation, including myself, we’ve kind of
ignored the parole hearing process and what information it can give us about
the case. Now all of those parole hearing transcripts are online and you can go
back and browse them at leisure. This is the first time William Weisel, one of
the shooting victims, went to the last parole hearing in 2011 and he told them
that “You know, I was one of the shooting victims on the night and I’m told
Sirhan’s been making a lot of progress in prison and I would have no problem if
you just judged him eligible for parole,” but the parole boards ignored him and
they denied Sirhan again in 2011. But now Paul Schrade has taken it up a level
by appearing at this year’s hearing because here we have a very close friend of
Bobby Kennedy and it was his labor chair in ‘68 and campaigned for him
throughout California and was actually on stage with Bobby Kennedy and
publically thanked during the victory speech just minutes before Bobby Kennedy
was shot. Of course he was shot himself in the head, and maybe millimeters, he
might’ve been killed as well. So it says a lot if he feels so strongly about
reopening the case and about Sirhan’s innocence, and that he comes to the
parole hearing. And by all accounts, gave a fairly blistering performance and
in terms of telling the parole boards the facts of the case, the way they need
to be looked at again, and you know how it might affect Sirhan’s parole. So you
know, I think it’s very significant that he was there. And also we have
evidence now that perhaps some members of the Kennedy family are beginning to
share the same view because one of the documents that Paul Schrade brought to
the parole board last week was a letter from Bobby Kennedy, Jr., asking the Attorney
General, Eric Holder, back in 2012, to support Paul’s efforts to reopen the
case. And as far as I can determine, that support is still there from Bobby
Kennedy, Jr., that he would like to support Paul Schrade and efforts to get his
father’s case re-investigated by the LA County district attorney. I guess now
that’s the next phase of our efforts after Sirhan’s latest denial.
Jeff:
Is it your sense that even if the case were to be reopened at this point that
they would be anything conclusive from that effort that would lead to really
any kind of revelation that’s different than what’s out there now?
Shane:
Obviously it opens up a very big can of worms because there’s no guarantee that
we can find who’d done this. There’s no guarantee that we can find who
programmed Sirhan or who the second shooter was. But we can, you know, I guess
in a limited sense establish that Sirhan should never have been convicted of
first-degree murder because he probably didn’t fire the fatal shot that killed
Bobby Kennedy, and he certainly wasn’t in any mental state to take full
responsibility for the crime, and all the indications are from the psychiatrist
who worked with him most closely over the years that, you know, he was in a
hypnotic state at the time and whether that was a state of self-hypnosis or
whether there were third parties involved, and he certainly shouldn’t have been
convicted of first-degree murder at the time. And even if it’s a first-degree
murder conviction, make him eligible for parole in the early ‘80s, and that he
was actually due for release in 1984, until a political campaign in California
and basically led to that parole being rescinded. So I think at a minimum we
can say that Sirhan Sirhan should no longer be in prison and he’s really being
kept as a political prisoner because there isn’t the political will to
reinvestigate the case, and say whether if Sirhan wasn’t guilty, then it was
somebody else, even if we can’t find that somebody else, we have to give Sirhan
the full weight the law, in terms of applying it to his case and letting
him live the last years of his life as a is a free man. And even if we can’t
tie up the case and find that you did everything, that you know, just the
system should give him due process in terms of looking at his individual
responsibility and reinvestigating the others who may have been involved.
Jeff:
Shane O’Sullivan, I thank you so much for spending time with us today on Radio
Who What Why.
Shane:
It’s been a pleasure, thank you.
Jeff:
And thank you for listening and joining us here on Radio Who What Why. I hope
you join us next week for another Radio Who What Why podcast. I’m Jeff
Schechtman. You like this podcast? Please feel free to share and help other
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