Silence of Kennedy’s killer

Press, 27 May 1978, Page 16

Silence of Kennedy’s killer

From

ROSS MADDEN

in Washington

A clutch of hidden microphones and a constantly running tape recorder are the sole companions of a silent, brooding Palestinian now serving a life sentence for murder.

It is hoped that the battery of listening devices installed in a narrow cell in Soledad Prison, California, will help to solve one of the most intriguing questions in American criminal history. Did Sirhan Bishara Sirhan really gun down Senator Robert Kennedy on June 5, 1968, in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as a lone political gesture? Or was he merely a pawn in a wider international conspiracy? Sirhan, serving a life sentence for the murder of Kennedy, represents a tantalising enigma to the group of medical men and

lawyers still searching for the truth.

Sirhan, now aged 39, has told his inquisitors little, sticking to his original story that he was unable to remember any details of the crime. He says simply: “I was in a trance.” Psychiatrists now believe that if left to himself Sirhan may one day blurt out the truth, which will be picked up during round-the-clock surveillance of his bugged cell. If Sirhan does speak, moves will be intensified to bring him back to the murder scene to see if this will further jog his clouded memory. It has been claimed that Sirhan himself has raised no objection.

Bids to reopen the Kennedy affair in this sensational way were formulated last year, when applications were made to

take the convicted man back to the rear kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. This is where the shooting took place after Kennedy had made a speech to celebrate his victory as Democratic Presidential candidate.

Sirhan’s lawyer, Mr Godfrey Isaac, told Superior Court Judge William Hogoboom: “My client is perfectly willing to hold the murder weapon as part of the re-enactment.”

But the judge squashed the plan, telling Mr Isaac sharply: “I have heard no evidence, either psychological, medical, or astro* logical, to indicate that this man’s memory can be revived.” A few months before, Judge Hbgoboom’s pro-

nouncement, an investigation by Los Angeles County found that there was no evidence of any “conspiratorial activity” or of a second gun having been used in the killing.

Sirhan, a Palestinian immigrant, pleaded diminished responsibility at his trial. Neither he nor his lawyers contested the prosecution’s assertion that he fired the actual shots that killed Kennedy and wounded five bystanders. Indeed, many of the 100 people present in the rear kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel saw Sirhan, gun in hand, approach Robert Kennedy, who had just completed his victory speech in the ballroom. Immediately after the shooting, Kennedy’s bodyguard, the former Olympic decathlon athlete Rafer Johnson, wrestled, the .22 calibre Iver Johnson revolver from Sirhan.

Despite the chaos, eight witnesses later swore that they had seen Sirhan spring forward and fire on the defenceless Kennedy at close range. Sirhan received a life sentence for first-degree murder. At the Los Angeles investigation. Herbert MacDonnell, director of the New York Forensic Science Laboratory, alleged that tests had shown that a bullet recovered from the neck of Robert Kennedy showed a marked discrepancy from one recovered from the body of another victim, a television producer, Eward Weisal, who had been standing near Kennedy.

Mac Donnell claimed that the rifling marks on the two bullets showed minute differences. “Both could not have been fired from the same gun,” he said. A test firing of the gun which was taken from Sirhan was refused by the Los Angeles police. Furthermore, the autopsy on Senator Kennedy had revealed that the gun which killed him must have been held at no more than six inches away. Yet none of the witnesses placed Sirhan so near Kennedy at the time of the shooting. All witnesses testified that the Senator had been shot head on, yet the autopsy indicated that bullets causing armpit, neck, and head wounds had entered the body from the back.

It was also pointed out that at the grand jury hearing of the case, preceding Sirhan’s trial, two witnesses stated that they saw a gun in a security guard’s hand after the shooting, and a Los Angeles television reporter further stated that he saw a guard fire. None of this swayed the Los Angeles County investigation. Suggestions that anyone else bu Sirhan was involved were rejected. But now, just one year

after that judgment, speculation is rife that there will be a further enquiry. Assassinations of Presi’ dent Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and the attempted assassination of Governbr George Wallace have all been followed by unanswered questions and a string of theories.

Until last year, everyone took it for granted that there was no mystery about the death of Bobby Kennedy. Everyone accepted that Sirhan was guilty.

The shots in the Ambassador Hotel have long died away, but whispers about who caused them refuse to be stilled.

If the psychiatrists and lawyers have their way, Sirhan Sirhan himself might finally supply the answers to the Bobby Kennedy mystery, perhaps on the very spot where the shooting happened a decade ago.