Bobby Kennedy is assassinated - Jun 05, 1968 - HISTORY.com Bobby Kennedy is assassinated Publisher A+E Networks Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by the 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He died a day later. The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support. Kennedy was perceived by many to be the only person in American politics capable of uniting the people. He was beloved by the minority community for his integrity and devotion to the civil rights cause.

After winning California’s primary, Kennedy was in the position to receive the Democratic nomination and face off against Richard Nixon in the general election. As star athletes Rafer Johnson and Roosevelt Grier accompanied Kennedy out a rear exit of the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan Sirhan stepped forward with a rolled up campaign poster, hiding his .22 revolver. He was only a foot away when he fired several shots at Kennedy. Grier and Johnson wrestled Sirhan to the ground, but not before five bystanders were wounded. Grier was distraught afterward and blamed himself for allowing Kennedy to be shot. Sirhan, who was born in Palestine, confessed to the crime at his trial and received a death sentence on March 3, 1969. However, since the California State Supreme Court invalidated all death penalty sentences in 1972, Sirhan has spent the rest of his life in prison. According to the New York Times, he has since said that he believed Kennedy was “instrumental” in the oppression of Palestinians. Hubert Humphrey ended up running for the Democrats in 1968, but lost by a small margin to Nixon. Related Videos Who Killed Robert Kennedy? by Philip Melanson p4 Introduction Robert F.

Kennedy was shot down just after midnight on June 5, 1968, minutes after proclaiming victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. His assassination had an enormous effect on the course of American politics. The country lost a prominent critic of the Vietnam war and a committed champion of civil rights: the Democratic party lost its strongest presidential contender, enabling Republican candidate Richard Nixon to win the November election. More than four-fifths of all Americans are convinced that they haven't been told the truth about President John Kennedy's assassination. Far fewer are aware that the investigation into Robert Kennedy's death was just as flawed and corrupt. p5 Murder in Los Angeles Bobby Kennedy (as he was almost always called) hadn't planned to run for the democratic nomination in 1968. Many of his closest political advisors encouraged him to wait until 1972, when he had a better chance of winning. In 1968, Kennedy would be facing an incumbent president, Lyndon Johnson, who was still popular in the polls-despite growing protest against his escalation of the Vietnam War. But then Eugene McCarthy, the other democratic presidential contender, captured 42% of the vote in the March 12 New Hampshire primary.

That meant Johnson was vulnerable-and that Kennedy had a chance to win. Kennedy's entry into the race on March 16 angered Johnson and McCarthy supporters alike. But Kennedy was convinced that if Johnson won, there'd be "more war, more troops [and] more killing"-and less money for the domestic programs he'd so vigorously supported as Senator. McCarthy opposed the war, but Kennedy wasn't convinced he could win the presidency, even if he captured the nomination. By the June 4 California primary, Johnson had dropped out of the race and Hubert Humphrey, his vice-president, had announced his own candidacy. Kennedy had won important victories in the Indiana, District of Columbia and Nebraska primaries, but the nomination was still far from secure. California would be a key test-whoever captured that state's 174 convention delegates would have the best chance of becoming the party's presidential candidate. Early California returns showed McCarthy ahead. But then Kennedy pulled into the lead, and by late evening it was clear he'd taken the state. To celebrate the victory and to hear Kennedy speak, a beyond-capacity crowd of over 1800 supporters began to gather at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

The assassination Tired but jubilant, Robert Kennedy stepped to the podium in the hotel ballroom and stood looking out over the sea of straw hats, balloons and smiling faces. He addressed the crowd with the same message of hope that had characterized his campaign. Lamenting the "division, the violence [and] the disenchantment" within America, he expressed confidence that "we can start to work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. I intend to make that my basis for running." When the applause died down, Kennedy stepped off the podium and started to move toward the crowd. But someone in his party steered him in the opposite direction, toward the backstage exit. Earlier that day, hotel personnel (at the request of Kennedy's aides) had decided to take the Senator on a back route through the hotel's pantry area, to keep him away from the frenzied crowd. Hotel maitre d' Karl Uecker led Kennedy and more than a dozen members of his entourage into a cramped corridor. Even there the crowd couldn't be completely avoided; dozens of busboys, waiters and campaign workers waited, hoping to get a close-up view.

Kennedy smiled, nodded and stopped for an occasional handshake as he moved down the corridor and into the pantry. It was about 12:15 am. Uecker was still slightly ahead of the Senator and to his right. Uniformed security guard Thane Cesar walked slightly behind, also on Kennedy's right. (In 1968, presidential candidates weren't given secret service protection, so the hotel had hired eight private security guards. Kennedy had requested that the guards keep their distance, so he wouldn't be surrounded by uniformed personnel.) A young, dark-haired man began to approach Kennedy from the front. He was smiling, and bystanders thought he wanted to shake the Senator's hand. But the smile was betrayed by his words: "Kennedy, you son of a bitch!" High school student Lisa Urso saw the young man raise the gun and begin to shoot. "I saw the flash [from the gun] and then I saw the Senator .... He went forward, then moved backward... p10 Someone called an ambulance and the Senator was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital. There a team of six surgeons labored to remove the bullet lodged in his brain. But his injuries were too severe.

At 1:44 pm the next day, Robert F. Kennedy was pronounced dead. p11 An open-and-shut case In 1968 it wasn't yet a federal crime to shoot a presidential candidate, so the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) took charge of the investigation into Kennedy's murder. With the FBI's assistance, they spent the next fourteen months investigating the murder. From the beginning, the LAPD claimed the assassination was an open-and-shut case. Numerous witnesses had seen Sirhan Sirhan, the 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant who'd been apprehended at the crime scene, fire at Kennedy. Sirhan himself admitted he must have shot the Senator (since so many witnesses had seen him), even though he couldn't remember anything about the evening from the time he'd had a cup of coffee with an attractive young woman until after he'd emptied his gun and lay pinned to the pantry steam table. Sirhan also seemed to have a clear motive. When he was taken into custody, the police found in his pocket a newspaper clipping criticizing RFK for opposing the Vietnam War while favoring military aid to Israel.

A background check revealed that as a young child in Palestine, Sirhan had seen the bloodied bodies of Arabs bombed by the Israelis, and his own brother was killed by an enemy truck as it veered to avoid sniper fire. Authorities reasoned that those early experiences had left Sirhan embittered against American politicians, like RFK, who supported Israel. Even more incriminating was a notebook found in Sirhan's bedroom at his mother's house, in the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena. It contained anti-American, procommunist sentiments, and two pages of scrawled, repetitive references to killing RFK. The most damning of these read, "May 18 9:45 AM-68 My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more the more [sic] of an unshakable obsession ... RFK must die." p16 The cover-up From the beginning, a handful of journalists and citizens remained skeptical about the LAPD's conclusions. But when these critics tried to substantiate their suspicions with data from police files, they met massive resistance.

The LAPD replied that the files were under lock-and-key, accessible only to those law-enforcement officials with a "need to know." The Los Angeles authorities even initiated legal proceedings against some critics who questioned the official findings. p16 ... the LAPD continued to resist for three more years-until letter campaigns and media coverage made it politically inexpedient to keep the information secret any longer. On April 19, 1988, the files were sent to the California State Archives in Sacramento, where researchers could evaluate the evidence for themselves. The files made it clear that the LAPD had engaged in a massive cover-up, both during the original investigation and in the intervening twenty years. They'd not only attempted to misconstrue or overlook data that didn't support their lone-assassin view, but they'd actively destroyed evidence that might suggest a conspiracy... Now it learned that: * The results of the 1968 test firing of Sirhan's gun were missing. * The test gun used for ballistics comparison and identification was destroyed. * Over 90% of the audiotaped witness testimony was lost or destroyed. Of the 3470 interviews the LAPD conducted, only 301 were preserved.

Key testimony-like 29 witness accounts that suggested conspiracy-was missing, while less important interviews-like that of Sirhan's Bible teacher-remained. * On August 21, 1968, less than two months after the assassination, 2400 photographs from the original investigation were burned, in the medical-waste incinerator at LA County General Hospital. The LAPD claimed that the photos were duplicates, but there weren't any known logs or inventories of photos that could verify that. Moreover, Scott Enyart, an amateur photographer who'd been taking pictures the night of the assassination and whose film had been confiscated by police, has never been given back all his photos. His pictures, the only ones that might have captured the actual shooting, weren't in the files. But even with the limited data that remained, there was still ample evidence to substantiate what critics had been saying all along-that there was a conspiracy to kill RFK. The evidence for such a conspiracy falls into three key areas. First, it now appears clear that it was impossible for Sirhan to have fired the bullets that killed Kennedy - which means there must have been a second gunman.

Second, an abundance of testimony by eye-witnesses suggests that Sirhan had at least two accomplices. Third, Sirhan's political motive-his hatred of RFK for supporting Israel-seems to be either a fabrication of the LAPD or a motive planted by conspirators to divert suspicion 1 from a more sinister plot. p20 Evidence for a second gunman ... The autopsy revealed three gunshot wounds in Robert Kennedy's body-one behind the right ear, a second near the right armpit and a third 11/2 inches below the armpit wound. A fourth bullet missed his body but pierced the right rear shoulder of his suit coat. All bullets entered from the right rear, at fairly steep upward angles and in a slightly right-to-left direction. p22 ... although witnesses disagree on whether Sirhan shot at RFK while the Senator was turned to his left shaking hands with busboy Juan Romero or whether the handshake had finished and Kennedy was walking forward, all agree that Sirhan approached Kennedy from the front and that the Senator never turned his back to Sirhan. This is totally inconsistent with the autopsy evidence that the shots came from the rear. p25 ...

it's never been shown that it was possible for Sirhan to have fired the fatal shots at RFK. And if he didn't, there must have been a second gunman. p34 The LAPD's response to the question of extra bullets was to conduct a systematic cover-up... they destroyed the ceiling tiles and doorframe wood in 1969, as well as records of tests done on the door frames or ceiling tiles. Then, when photos of this crucial area were released, they were identified only by number but lacked captions or labeling. Since there's no corresponding log to indicate what the numbers refer to, they aren't of much use as evidence. When the destruction of the evidence was revealed in 1975, the LAPD claimed that they'd destroyed the tiles and frame wood because they were "too large to fit into a card file" (needless to say, so is a lot of evidence). Daryl Gates, who at that point was assistant chief of police, claimed that the destruction didn't matter because the tiles and frame wood contained no bullets and therefore weren't evidence.

The DA's office attempted to dispel mounting public suspicion by conducting what critics would dub "the great pantry raid." Investigators descended upon the crime scene to conduct a meticulous search for bullets and bullet holes. Ignoring the fact that the most relevant holes (in the door jamb and ceiling tiles) had been removed and destroyed seven years earlier, they concluded that the one supposedly surviving hole (which in 1968 had allegedly been labeled as a bullet hole) was in fact a nail hole. The day after the raid, an official spokesman dramatically announced that "no other bullets were found last night." p38 Don Schulman, a runner for KNXT-TV in Los Angeles, also reported seeing a gun other than Sirhan's. He'd been standing behind Kennedy as he walked through the pantry and had seen a security guard fire three times. Immediately after the shooting, Schulman reported his story on the radio and insisted that Kennedy was shot three times. Even though the early media reports and crime--scene witnesses generally asserted that the Senator was hit only twice, Schulman stuck to his story. The autopsy proved him right.

(In later law-enforcement interviews, when Schulman was under pressure to be "absolutely positive" about what he saw, Schulman stated that he didn't see the guard shoot Kennedy, as his first statement seemed to imply. He did assert that he saw the guard fire three times and Kennedy hit three times, but admitted he couldn't necessarily connect the two events.) p60 When the FBI followed up on Khaiber Khan's story (he was the Kennedy volunteer who'd seen a blond woman at the Wilshire Boulevard headquarters three times prior to the assassination), they found an interesting discrepancy. Two other workers at the headquarters, Ellenor Severson and Larry Strick, had seen Sirhan there (without a blond companion) at about 2:00 pin on June 2; they also asserted that Khan was present at that time. Strick claimed he'd asked Sirhan if he needed help, and Sirhan had replied, "I'm with him," pointing to Khan. Severson corroborated Strick's story. But Khan claimed that he wasn't at headquarters at that time, that he couldn't remember any such incident and that he'd never seen Sirhan before the assassination.

When the FBI and the LAPD began to pursue this angle of the case, they found that Khan had an interesting history. According to their files, he'd once been influential in the Iranian government and had later fled to the US to escape the Shah. Lately he'd been working at the local Kennedy headquarters, recruiting young volunteers for the campaign. While this information on Khan's background was true, it was incomplete. In a 1965 article in The Nation, Fred J. Cook revealed important facets of Khan's life that never appeared in the official files. In 1944, at age 20, Khan joined British intelligence and ran an Iranian spy ring. After World War II, he served as a liaison between the occupying allied forces in Iran and several Iranian tribes, and was awarded an aristocratic title for his efforts. Cook credited Khan with helping the CIA overthrow Iranian Premier Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953. The coup rid the US of the left-leaning premier who'd nationalized a British oil company and put a puppet ruler, Shah Reza Pahiavi, in power. According to Cook, Khan achieved great power in Iran, until a falling out with the Shah sent him into exile in London.

From there he lived an opulent lifestyle, directing his spies to gather damaging evidence about the Shah's finances. In 1963, he entered the US; shortly afterwards, he was able to document the Shah's theft of US foreign aid and bring this to the attention of Congress and the Johnson administration. Although his public discrediting of the Shah infuriated certain elements of the US State Department (which believed the Shah was an essential pillar of US interests in the Persian Gull), it undoubtedly also had the blessing, if not the backing, of some elements within government and intelligence circles. There's certainly evidence that Khan was doing something that the British and US governments perceived as worthwhile. In London, two Scotland Yard detectives provided security for him, and he drove a Rolls Royce with Washington DC plates. Once in the US, the House of Representatives filed a bill to grant him political and economic relief from the oppression of the Iranian government. Given Khan's background, political connections and wealth, it's highly unusual that he would choose to serve the Kennedy campaign as a local volunteer. The timing of his volunteer work is also strange.

Although he claimed to have "personally spent considerable time" at Kennedy headquarters, in reality he'd only worked there four days (June 1-4). Of course, none of these oddities render Khan guilty of anything. But the question remains why the investigating agencies simply ignored Khan's background as a master of espionage... was it because Khan might alert the LAPD to conspiratorial leads that they were determined not to pursue? p82 Who had a motive? Who hated Bobby Kennedy enough to have him murdered? RFK began to accrue enemies during his brother's presidency (when he served as attorney general). Both Kennedys angered some of the most powerful individuals or groups in America, including: * the Mafia, who'd been the victim of the administration's unprecedented crackdown on organized crime (RFK had actually deported New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello) * FBI director J.

Edgar Hoover, who'd been forced by the attorney general to go after the Mafia (Hoover had denied for years that organized crime existed and preferred to concentrate on eliminating "communists") * elements of the CIA, who'd participated in the 1961 attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs (the Kennedy brothers who felt they'd been misled by the CIA about the strength of Castro's forces refused to send air support when the invaders met powerful resistance; afterwards, JFK fired CIA director Allen Dulles, and Bobby Kennedy took on a role in CIA policy that was anathema to some of the most swashbuckling CIA veterans) The old animosities only increased when RFK announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination. Both his old enemies and several new ones had a lot to lose from an RFK presidency.

That list included: * ex-Teamsters boss Jimmy Hoffa, whom RFK, as attorney general, had sent to prison for jury tampering (if RFK became president, Hoffa would have had to serve his entire thirteen year sentence, but President Nixon pardoned him) * right-wing and racist groups, like the Ku Klux Klan, who feared RFK's strong commitment to civil rights * Southern California ranchers who feared Kennedy's support of César Chavez and the United Farm Workers Union-and who, according to an FBI report, had once put out a $500,000 contract on RFK's life (if the union leaders succeeded in organizing thousands of farm workers, the ranchers' profits and power would plummet) * hard-line cold warriors in the military and intelligence community-even the defense industry-who saw that an RFK presidency would create a complete reversal of US policy in Vietnam With enemies like these, the pat explanation that Sirhan Sirhan assassinated RFK for his support of Israel seems far less persuasive-especially since RFK's Middle East stance differed very little from the other candidates'. The individuals or groups mentioned above had much more powerful reasons to keep RFK from becoming president in 1968.

p84 Re-opening the case The question is often asked: why bother to re-investigate this case? It's been so long, why stir up painful memories? There are at least three arguments for reinvestigation. First, and most obviously, if Sirhan didn't kill RFK, his murderers should be brought to justice. Second, we need to understand the root causes of the violence that threatens our democratic system. It's important to know whether Robert Kennedy was killed because of a muddled young Palestinian with a political grudge, or because powerful interests in America didn't want him to be president. If the latter's the case, those powerful interests can strike again, whenever they feel threatened. Third, the LAPD's handling of the case must be reviewed, because law enforcement agencies and officials must be accountable to the public. The JFK and MLK assassinations have both been reviewed by organizations beyond the local jurisdiction, but the RFK assassination case has never been. p85 Even if it's too late to bring RFK's murderers to justice, it will strengthen American democracy to know the truth about. his murder. That truth can help check the powerful interests who manipulate the American political process to their own ends.

FBI watch Assassination of Robert Kennedy By Jennifer Rosenberg Updated April 05, 2016. Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was shot three times by Palestinian immigrant Sirhan Sirhan after giving a speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. Robert Kennedy died of his wounds 26 hours later. Robert Kennedy's assassination later led to Secret Service protection for all future major presidential candidates . The Assassination On June 4, 1968, popular Democratic Party presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy waited all day for the election results to come in from the Democratic primary in California. At 11:30 p.m., Kennedy, his wife Ethel, and the rest of his entourage left the Royal Suite of the Ambassador Hotel and headed downstairs to the ballroom, where approximately 1,800 supporters waited for him to give his victory speech. After giving his speech and ending with, "Now on to Chicago, and let's win there!" Kennedy turned and exited the ballroom through a side door that led to a kitchen pantry.

continue reading below our video What are the Seven Wonders of the World Kennedy was using this pantry as a shortcut to reach the Colonial Room, where the press were waiting for him. As Kennedy travelled down this pantry corridor, which was filled with people trying to catch a glimpse of the potential future president, 24-year-old, Palestinian-born Sirhan Sirhan stepped up to Robert Kennedy and opened fire with his .22 pistol. While Sirhan was still firing, bodyguards and others tried to contain the gunman; however, Sirhan managed to fire all eight bullets before being subdued. Six people were hit. Robert Kennedy fell to the floor bleeding. Speechwriter Paul Shrade had been hit in the forehead. Seventeen-year old Irwin Stroll was hit in the left leg. ABC director William Weisel was hit in the stomach. Reporter Ira Goldstein's hip was shattered. Artist Elizabeth Evans was also grazed on her forehead. However, most of the focus was on Kennedy. As he lay bleeding, Ethel rushed to his side and cradled his head. Busboy Juan Romero brought over some rosary beads and placed them in Kennedy's hand.

Kennedy, who had been seriously hurt and looked in pain, whispered, "Is everybody all right?" Dr. Stanley Abo quickly examined Kennedy at the scene and discovered a hole just below his right ear. Robert Kennedy Rushed to the Hospital An ambulance first took Robert Kennedy to the Central Receiving Hospital, which was located just 18 blocks away from the hotel. However, since Kennedy needed brain surgery, he was quickly transferred to Good Samaritan Hospital , arriving around 1 a.m. It was here that doctors discovered two additional bullet wounds, one under his right armpit and another just one-and-a-half inches lower. Kennedy underwent a three-hour brain surgery, in which doctors removed bone and metal fragments. Over the next few hours, however, Kennedy's condition continued to worsen. At 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968, Robert Kennedy died from his wounds at age 42. The nation was severely shocked at the news of yet another assassination of a major public figure. Robert Kennedy was the third major assassination of the decade, following the murders of Robert's brother, John F. Kennedy , five years earlier and of the great civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.

just two months earlier. Robert Kennedy was buried near his brother, President John F. Kennedy, in Arlington Cemetery . What Happened to Sirhan Sirhan? Once police arrived at the Ambassador Hotel, Sirhan was escorted to police headquarters and questioned. At the time, his identity was unknown since he was carrying no identifying papers and refused to give his name. It wasn't until Sirhan's brothers saw a picture of him on TV that the connection was made. It turned out that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born in Jerusalem in 1944 and emigrated to the U.S. with his parents and siblings when he was 12 years old. Sirhan eventually dropped out of community college and worked a number of odd jobs, including as a groom at the Santa Anita Racetrack. Once the police had identified their captive, they searched his house and found handwritten notebooks.

Much of what they found written inside was incoherent, but amidst the rambling they found "RFK must die" and "My determination to eliminate RFK is becoming more [and] more of an unshakable obsession...[He] must be sacrificed for the cause of the poor exploited people." Sirhan was given a trial, in which he was tried for murder (of Kennedy) and assault with a deadly weapon (for the others that were shot). Although he pleaded not guilty, Sirhan Sirhan was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death on April 23, 1969. Sirhan was never executed, however, because in 1972 California abolished the death penalty and commuted all death sentences to life in prison. Sirhan Sirhan remains imprisoned in Valley State Prison in Coalinga, California. Conspiracy Theories Just as in the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., many people believe there was also a conspiracy involved in the murder of Robert Kennedy. For Robert Kennedy's assassination, there seem to be three main conspiracy theories that are based on inconsistencies found in the evidence against Sirhan Sirhan. Second Shooter The first conspiracy involves the location of the fatal shot.

Los Angeles Coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted the autopsy on Robert Kennedy's body and discovered that not only had Kennedy died from the shot that entered just below and behind his right ear, but that there were scorch marks around the entry wound. This meant that the shot must have come from behind Kennedy and that the muzzle of the gun must have been within an inch or so of Kennedy's head when it was fired. By nearly all accounts, Sirhan had been in front of Kennedy and had never gotten closer than several feet. Could there have been a second shooter? Woman in a Polka-Dot Skirt The second piece of evidence that easily lends itself to conspiracy theories is the multiple witnesses who saw a young woman wearing a polka-dot skirt running from the hotel with another man, exuberantly exclaiming, "We shot Kennedy!" Other witnesses say they saw a man who looked like Sirhan talking to a woman in a polka-dot skirt earlier in the day.

The police reports bypassed this evidence, believing that in the chaos that followed the shooting, it was more likely the couple was crying out, "They shot Kennedy!" Hypno-Programming The third takes a bit more of a stretch of the imagination but is one advocated by Sirhan's lawyers during pleas for parole. This theory claims that Sirhan was "hypno-programmed" (i.e. hypnotized and then told what to do by others). If so, this would explain why Sirhan asserts that he can't remember any of the events from that night. Assassination: The night Bobby Kennedy was shot | The Independent Americas Assassination: The night Bobby Kennedy was shot After the deaths of JFK and Martin Luther King, he was America's great hope. Then Bobby was murdered too. As a new film tells his story, Liz Hoggard explores how history was changed at the Ambassador Hotel Sunday 21 January 2007 00:00 BST Click to follow The Independent US For many, 5 June 1968 represented the end of hopes for a better America. Two months previously, Martin Luther King had been murdered. Now senator Robert F Kennedy, heir apparent to his brother's presidency, was dead too.

The night of 4 June was one of triumph for Bobby and his supporters. Five years after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, his younger brother Bobby had assumed the political mantle. He had just won the Californian primary for the presidency. He was on his way to the White House. But at 12.15am, just after he had given a victory speech, he was shot at close range by a 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, in the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. America was plunged into mourning. The actor Emilio Estevez remembers hearing about the assassination on the news, aged six. He rushed to wake up his father, the actor Martin Sheen - Sheen had worked as a campaign volunteer for Bobby in 1965. The memory stayed with Estevez and, nearly 40 years later, he has written and directed a film, Bobby, out on Friday, which relives the senator's last moments. Bobby is part fact, part fictional account. Estevez tells the story through the eyes of the "little people" who were there that night.

It reminds us of the five by-standers who were shot alongside Bobby, and whose lives were changed irrevocably (see below). In many ways Bobby Kennedy was heir to Martin Luther King's legacy. He campaigned for civil rights and made urban poverty a chief tenet of his campaign. While the Democrat President Lyndon Johnson had escalated the number of soldiers in Vietnam, Bobby openly questioned the war. He was mobbed at rallies. Journalists compared him to a rock star. Many young people, black and white, ducked out of college for the summer of 1968 to join Bobby's campaign. Anti-war protester Diane Huber was 20 and working for Bobby's campaign team on the night of the shooting. "He was a surrogate father for many of us, " she tells me. "Bobby was real. Back then we really believed that one person could make a difference." In Estevez's film, Huber, played by Lindsay Lohan, marries a male friend at the hotel to save him from being drafted to Vietnam, just as Huber did in real life.

"A lot of men I knew in 1968 had come back from the war in flag-draped caskets; others returned missing an arm or a leg. Bobby meant so much to me, not just because he would have taken us out of Vietnam sooner rather than later." Bobby was already looking like a president elect. In March 1968 President Johnson stunned the nation by dropping out of the election race. Bobby had established a clear lead in the primaries. On 4 April, when Martin Luther King was murdered, Bobby gave an impromptu speech from the back of a pick-up truck in a black inner-city ghetto of Indianapolis. He spoke about the shooting of his brother five years before, explaining that, like King, John had been killed by a white man. He is widely credited with averting the sort of rioting that broke out in 100 other cities across America. On the evening of 4 June, Bobby was in his room in the Ambassador Hotel with his wife Ethel, who was six months pregnant with their 11th child, watching the election results on TV.

By 8pm the party downstairs was in full flow: 1,800 people in evening dresses and tuxedos were in the ballroom. Guests included the writer George Plimpton, Olympic gold medal decathlete Rafer Johnson and professional football player Rosey Grier. Singer Rosemary Clooney (George Clooney's aunt) was there with her two children. When Bobby was announced winner of the primary, cries of jubilation filled the hotel. He got up on stage and gave a speech. Afterwards he left the ballroom through a service area to greet supporters working in the hotel's kitchen. He was accompanied by his wife and Grier, who was acting as her bodyguard. Kennedy was engulfed by a mass of wellwishers in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel. Typically, he was not surrounded by security staff. Shortly after midnight shots rang out. At first people thought it was balloons or firecrackers popping, then someone screamed, "Blood!" Sirhan Sirhan had opened fire with a .22 calibre revolver and shot Kennedy, shouting out, "Kennedy, you son of a bitch." Bobby's aides and the hotel maître d' grabbed the killer but he carried on shooting.

A bullet entered Bobby's skull from behind the right ear and he fell to the floor. Finally Grier wrestled the gun from Sirhan. A restaurant assistant, Juan Romero, knelt by the senator's side, comforting him and cradling his head - only moments earlier he had been presented to Bobby in the kitchen and shaken his hand. A young man pushed through the crowd and passed a rosary to Romero. Guests were collapsing and crying in shock. "Adults were behaving in ways I'd never seen before, falling to their knees, walking in a daze like zombies," recalls one guest, David Bender, who was 12 years old on the night of the shooting. Bobby was carried out on a stretcher - his last words were "Is everybody all right?" - and rushed to the Good Samaritan Hospital for brain surgery, but died during the day. When the LA police arrived, Sirhan was held down on a pantry table in a headlock. He was handcuffed and bundled through the crowd. On 9 June 1968, President Johnson declared a day of national mourning following Kennedy's death. Rumour has it that the Rolling Stones were recording Beggar's Banquet when Bobby was shot.

A lyric in "Sympathy for the Devil" was subsequently changed from "I shouted out, who killed John Kennedy?" to "I shouted out, who killed the Kennedys?" Bobby's body was returned to New York City, where he lay in state at St Patrick's Cathedral for several days before the funeral mass held there. Later his body was transported by special train to Washington. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations, paying their respects as the train passed by. Kennedy was buried at night near his brother John, in Arlington National Cemetery. Bobby's last child, Rory, was born six months after her father's assassination. There are so many 'what ifs' about Bobby's death. What if Kennedy had gone on to win the next primary in Illinois? Would he have beaten Senator Eugene "Gene" McCarthy to become the undisputed anti-war candidate? Would he have cut short the agony of Vietnam, spared the United States the shame of Watergate (Richard Nixon was elected as Republican president on 5 November that year)? And would he have dramatically changed US foreign policy in countries such as Nicaragua and El Salvador?

In court, Sirhan blamed the killing on Kennedy's support for Israel during the Six-Day War (which had begun exactly one year before the assassination). Born in Jerusalem, Sirhan and his family, who were Maronite Christians, had survived the trauma of being refugees in Israeli-held territory. When Sirhan was 12 years old the family moved to the Unites States, and some see Sirhan's shooting as one of the first acts of Palestinian or Arab terrorism to take place on American soil. Inevitably there has been a slew of conspiracy theories, including the notion that Sirhan was acting under the influence of "hypnotic brainwashing" which many attribute to the CIA's MK-Ultra program (Sirhan claims not to remember the shooting). The conspiracy theory with the most credence, however, is that Sirhan arrived at the hotel with a couple - many witnesses recall a blonde wearing a polka dot dress. The police didn't follow up these accounts. As recently as November last year, Newsnight reported new evidence that two CIA officers were at the scene, which had been denied. It has long been suggested that the CIA, angry over what was seen as betrayal over Cuba, was involved in both Bobby and JFK's murders.

Sirhan was convicted and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison. He remains in Corcoran State Prison in California - his 13th appeal earlier this year failed. After the shooting, the 1,000-room Ambassador Hotel, once a playground for celebrities and kings, fell into neglect. It was demolished last year, and Estevez's team filmed there at the end. On the site there will be a new learning centre for children from poor communities, to teach the importance of civic values. It will be named after Robert F Kennedy, the man whose dream of a presidency ended just at the moment it seemed possible. 'Bobby' is released on 26 January CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE Five people were shot with Bobby that night. Their names are forgotten, but at the time they were major figures. One of them, Ira Goldstein, 19, was a trainee radio reporter who had just shaken hands with Kennedy when he was shot in the hip. For six months afterwards he said Secret Service agents shadowed him. The stories of the other victims are below: 1. William Weisel, 30, of ABC News was shot in the abdomen.

He returned to his job on the White House bureau, but said people would whisper in corners, "You see that guy? He took the second bullet." Weisel met briefly with Sirhan's family; the gunman's mother, Mary, wanted to apologise. He moved out of politics to open a b&b. 2. Democrat activist Elizabeth Evans, 43, was grazed on the forehead by a bullet as she bent to retrieve a shoe she'd lost in the crowd. She had supported Kennedy's opponent, but went to the Ambassador that night because she loved a party. 3. Volunteer Irwin Stroll, 17, was shot in his left leg. His parents saw him on television, stumbling out of the Ambassador' s kitchen,his trouser leg stained with blood. He later became a successful interior designer. He died in 1995. 4. Paul Schrade, a friend of Kennedy and director of the United Auto Workers union, survived being shot in the head. "I started shaking violently. I thought I must have been electrocuted. It felt just like that - an electric shock." He campaigned on behalf of the Kennedy family for a school on the site of the Ambassador.

More about: Robert Kennedy Assassination apparent bullet hole in doorframe, with closeup from photo Freed's account in fact matches Robert Kennedy's autopsy report. Coroner Thomas Naguchi determined that RFK had been shot three times, all from the rear at a steep upward angle, with powder burns indicating that the fatal shot being fired from 1 or 2 inches away . Sirhan's Iverson .22 revolver held a maximum of 8 bullets. Two bullets were removed from RFK, and five from other victims. One of the three bullets to strike RFK grazed him and was determined by LAPD to have gone into the ceiling, though it was never recovered. That accounts for all 8, even conceding the LAPD's reconstruction which explained away bullet holes found in ceiling tiles, by positing that one of the bullets had ricocheted back down and struck victims (causing two ceiling holes in the process). What is not accounted for are bullet holes in the doorframe where RFK's party had entered the pantry. Photographs taken by the FBI, LAPD, and AP show apparent bullet holes, which have been circled and initialed.

Some pictures show police officers pointing at them; one AP photo is labeled "Bullet found near Kennedy shooting scene." Two police officers depicted in the photos told author Vincent Bugliosi that they had observed an actual bullet embedded in the wood of the center door frame. Hotel waiter Martin Patrusky said that police officers told him that they had dug two bullets out of the center divider. FBI agent William Bailey, in the pantry within hours of the shooting, said he could see the base of the bullet in the center divider. Other confirmation comes from photographers and even the carpenter who assisted in removal of the door frame for police evidence. Special Unit Senator What did the LAPD do with all this evidence of conspiracy, and more not mentioned here? The files of their investigation, released twenty years after the assassination, show that the evidence was ignored, and in some cases actively countered. The LAPD set up a Special Unit Senator (SUS) group to handle the investigation, and the tactics of some of its members have been called into question. Enrique Hernandez, who conducted polygraph exams for SUS, was among the most aggressive.

Sandy Serrano, one of the prime witnesses to the girl in the polka-dotted dress and a male companion, was browbeaten by Hernandez into retracting her story. The following exchange is typical of the treatment given Serrano in lengthy interview sessions: Hernandez: "I think you owe it to Senator Kennedy, the late Senator Kennedy, to come forth, to be a woman about this. If he, and you don't know and I don't know whether he's a witness right now in this room watching what we're doing in here. Don't shame his death by keeping this thing up. I have compassion for you. I want to know why. I want to know why you did what you did. This is a very serious thing." Serrano: "I seen those people!" Hernandez: "No, no, no, no, Sandy. Remember what I told you about that: you can't say you saw something when you didn't see it..." Eventually Serrano went along with the LAPD.

And once she had retracted her story, the "fact" that Serrano had made up the story was apparently used to discredit other corroborating witnesses, who generally didn't know that their story was being repeated by others. The pattern of isolation and even intimidation recurs repeatedly in the transcripts and tapes of interviews, many of whom retracted statements under pressure. In other cases, like Evan Freed, the interviews in the record do not contain information that the witness has later stated he or she told the police, and it is not always clear where the truth lies. Some evidence was simply ignored - or lost. This missing evidence included the memo of Paul Sharaga, the officer who interviewed the elderly couple who also saw a woman and man fleeing the scene of the shooting gleefully shouting "We shot him! We shot him!" Sharaga had enough presence of mind to retain the original mimeograph. The door frames, which according to many witnesses had bullets embedded in them, were destroyed by the LAPD after Sirhan's trial. They were not admitted into evidence in that trial. Other evidence, including photographs taken in the pantry by a teenager named Scott Enyart , never saw the light of day.

The LAPD Summary Report deals with many of the witnesses to accomplices or other evidence indicating conspiracy, and dismisses them all in a variety of ways. In some cases, for example polka-dotted dress girl witness Booker Griffin, witnesses are said to have admitted making up their story, but inspection of the raw LAPD files fail to substantiate the alleged retractions. The Trial of Sirhan Sirhan But what about Sirhan's defense team? Wouldn't this evidence have to be given to his lawyers, and then come out a trial? Several factors worked against this. First, not all evidence was shared with Sirhan's lawyers. Even the autopsy report, whose conclusion of point-blank shots from the rear would seemingly exonerate Sirhan of RFK's actual murder, was not given to the defense until they had already stipulated Sirhan's guilt. The defense early on decide to pursue a "diminished capacity" defense, and the autopsy report didn't change that strategy. It is important to understand the motivations of each side in the legal system's "great engine of truth." Neither side had anything to gain by bringing in evidence of conspiracy. For the prosecution, it would simply muddle what otherwise seemed a simple case.

And for the defense, conspiracy implies pre-meditation, and thus knowing guilt. Introducing evidence of accomplices would not be helpful to their client. Sirhan Sirhan was his own worst enemy at the trial, using it as a platform for expressing anti-Semitic political views and touting the Arab cause. Whether these issues were really motivation for a shooting he claims not to remember executing remains a mystery. The late Lawrence Teeter, attorney for Sirhan Sirhan. Finally, Sirhan's later attorney Lawrence Teeter uncovered evidence that Sirhan's lead trial lawyer, Grant Cooper, was compromised. Cooper was on one of the defense teams in the Friar's Club scandal case, a defendant in which was none other than Johnny Roselli, and one day grand jury papers were found on Cooper's desk at counsel table, possibly planted there, perhaps by Roselli himself. Cooper faced a potential indictment over this incident, which could be grounds for disbarment, and the matter was left pending for the duration of the Sirhan trial. Afterwards, Cooper was let off with a $1000 fine. Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.

While he was on death row, California abolished the death penalty, and commuted his sentence to life in prison, where he remains. Attorney Lawrence Teeter was fighting for a retrial at the time of his own death in 2005. Ballistics Reviews Ted Charach produced a documentary entitled "The Second Gun" in 1970, and questions continued to grow around the RFK case in the early 1970s. Criminalistics professor Herbert MacDonnell had signed an affidavit in 1973 stating that a bullet removed from RFK's neck, exhibit #47, could not have been fired from Sirhan's gun. He further stated that, based on the differing number of cannelures (grooves), it could not have been fired from the same gun as exhibit #54, a bullet removed from victim William Weisel. In a 1974 public hearing, California state crime lab veteran Lowell Bradford concurred. Paul Schrade, one of the victims, and Congressman Allard Lowenstein. Both pursued the RFK case for many years. In 1975, a court-appointed panel of seven ballistics experts was convened.

While the headlines coming from the panel's work read "RFK Second Gun Theory Ruled Out," the reality was more subtle. Lowell Bradford, one of the panel members, said the question of a second gunman was "more open than before." Subsequent research has uncovered serious problems with the marking of evidence bullets. Following the trail of Pasadena criminalist William Harper, researcher Rose Lynn Mangan discovered evidence of a switch of crime scene bullets. For example, she found that the Kennedy neck bullet (#47), which should have a "TN31" etched in its base, instead says "DWTN." There is reason to believe that even the Sirhan gun was swapped with another gun. LAPD criminologist DeWayne Wolfer had in fact introduced into evidence at Sirhan's trial the test gun, and represented it as the murder weapon, despite the different serial numbers. It is worth noting that the 1975 panel discovered that two bullets allegedly removed from Sirhan's car contained traces of wood on both the base and the tip. Were these bullets dug out of the door frame? In 2004, a tape recording which featured the gunfire in the pantry surfaced.

Made by Polish freelance journalist Stanislaw Pruszynski, the tape was analyzed by a team led by Philip Van Praag, who announced that the tape revealed thirteen shots fired in the space of five seconds. Sirhan's gun could hold only eight bullets. As in the JFK acoustics evidence, this finding is the subject of debate . Stalking RFK? Such malfeasance on the part of the LAPD may be hard to believe. But the dismissive treatment of witnesses to Sirhan's accomplices is hard to refute, despite attempts to do so . There were pre-assassination sightings of Sirhan in the company of a woman whose description matches the polka-dotted dress girl, and these sightings indicate that they were stalking Robert Kennedy. On May 20, night manager Albert LaBeau of Robbie's Restaurant in Pomona encountered a man with a coat thrown over his arm - in the company of young woman. The pair were aggressively trying to gain access to a lunchroom where RFK would be - climbing over a stair railing in one of multiple attempts. LaBeau picked Sirhan's photo out of a set of 25 pictures of young dark-skinned males.

Ten days later, a campaign worker named Laverne Botting was approached by a young woman and two men, trying to get a copy of Robert Kennedy's schedule. Her story was corroborated by another volunteer, Ethel Crehan. Portion of Sirhan's May 18 diary entry (click to enlarge) On June 1, three days before the primary, Dean Pack was hiking with his son in the Santa Ana mountains when they came upon a young man who resembed Sirhan, shooting a pistol in the company of a girl and another man. The three were quite hostile; Pack had a "funny sensation that it would be possible for them to put a bullet in your back." Several witnesses saw a similar-looking girl, in a polka-dotted dress, in the Ambassador Hotel on the night of the primary. Irene Gizzi saw three people, matching the trio seen by others, and noted that they didn't seem to fit in with the exuberant crowd.

As noted before, the girl and another man were seen in the pantry, rushing out of it, and leaving the hotel gleefully shouting "We shot him!" The "Walking Bible" Another strange story in the RFK case concerns Jerry Owen, the "Walking Bible." Owen himself went to authorities shortly after the assassination, with the story that he had happened to give Sirhan and another man a lift, and had subsequently gone to the Ambassador Hotel to collect $300 for a horse he was going to sell to Sirhan. Owen said he encountered there a blonde girl and two other men. In the end, the LAPD determined that Owen, whose background of criminal violations included a conviction for arson in conjunction with a church building, was telling a tale. But why would he make up such a story? Authors Bill Turner and Jonn Christian researched the Owen story and interviewed Bill Powers, a cowboy who ran Wild Bill's Stables less than a mile from where Owen lived. Powers told them that Owen had told him, before the assassination, about a horse trainer named Sirhan, and further that Powers had seen Sirhan in the back seat of Owen's car during a visit where Owen flashed large bills to pay off a pickup truck Powers had sold him.

If Owen knew Sirhan, was his story a pre-emptive cover story for meeting up at the Ambassador Hotel, possibly to supply a getaway vehicle? Who Killed RFK? Sirhan Sirhan was in the pantry firing a gun that night at Robert Kennedy, with intent to kill. But the autopsy report, coupled with dozens of eyewitnesses to the scene, cast grave doubt on the otherwise obvious conclusion that Sirhan actually fired the shots that hit RFK. Furthermore, the evidence is strong that Sirhan was stalking Kennedy in the company of a young blond girl and another male companion. Many researchers have cast suspicion on Thane Eugene Cesar, a security guard with right-wing views on race who was escorting Kennedy by the arm through the pantry, was seen drawing his gun and possibly firing it, and told false stories about a .22 he owned (that he had sold it before the assassination, rather than after). But at least one witness claimed to see a different gunman to the rear of Kennedy firing the fatal shots. The girl in the polka-dotted dress was never found - the LAPD insisted that campaign worker Valerie Schulte was the girl seen by some, despite differences in her appearance and clothing.

There was another man, Michael Wayne, who was seen running from the pantry and subsequently tackled and taken away for questioning. Wayne had similarity in appearance to one of the individuals reported to have been seen in the company of Sirhan, and more intriguingly he had in his possession the business card of radical Minuteman Keith Duane Gilbert. John and Robert Kennedy Sirhan may be lying when he claims to have no memory of the assassination. Journalist Robert Kaiser, who worked with Sirhan extensively as part of the defense team, caught him in several lies and presents in his book R.F.K. Must Die! a nuanced treatment of Sirhan as having multiple sides: at different times clever and evasive, mystical, ingratiating, studious, and schizophrenic. Sirhan may be lying about his lack of memory; it is also at least possible that he and his accomplices did stalk RFK, but that the highly suggestible Sirhan had been hypnotically programmed to block memory of the shooting and his associates. Who were the accomplices? The LAPD decided not to try to find out. Sirhan's sometimes-stated contention that he killed Kennedy for political reasons, in particular RFK's support for Israel, doesn't hold up well under analysis.

For one thing, the TV documentary he cited as provoking him was seen in L.A. on May 20, and Kennedy's speech supporting fighter jets to Israel wasn't given until the 26th. But it was on May 18 that Sirhan wrote "RFK must die" over and over in his notebook. Political views related to the Arab-Israeli conflict may have motivated Sirhan Sirhan. But that motivation was not necessarily that of his accomplices, whoever they were. The tenuous conspiracy leads that exist, including Jerry Owen and perhaps Michael Wayne, point toward right-wing religious extremists, but there is not enough to go on to make any definitive statement. The giddy behavior of the polka-dotted dress girl and her companion seem hardly that of professional killers. But Robert Kennedy had accumulated many powerful enemies during his career - CIA officers, organized crime bosses, Vietnam war hawks, ardent segregationists. Given the fear that Kennedy's achieving the Presidency could induce in them, it is not at all clear who the ultimate sponsors of Sirhan and his accomplices might have been.

Search RFK Documents Kennedy is Dead, Victim of Assassin; Suspect, Arab Immigrant, Arraigned; Johnson Appoints Panel on Violence Kennedy is Dead, Victim of Assassin; Suspect, Arab Immigrant, Arraigned; Johnson Appoints Panel on Violence Surgery in Vain President Calls Death Tragedy, Proclaims a Day of Mourning Arab Arraigned; $250,000 Bail Set By GLADWIN HILL Special to The New York Times RELATED HEADLINES A Pall Over Politics: Murder Raises Grave Questions for Presidency Races Now and in Future Notes On Kennedy In Suspect's Home: Cite 'Necessity' to Murder Senator Before June 5, Anniversary of War Father of Suspect 'Sickened' by News OTHER HEADLINES Marcus Testifies De Sapio Had Role In A Con Ed Deal: Says Itkin Sought Delay of Permit to Aid Own Scheme With Ex-Tammany-Head Transit Package Submitted to City: M.T.A. Seeks Approval of 8 New Subway Routes Jerusalem Police Clash With Arabs: Israelis Halt Procession on Anniversary of War--U.N.

Council Meets on Fighting France Will Meet Tariff Deadline; Strikes Dwindling 6 In Race Guarded: Secret Service Given Campaign Security Task by President Hanoi Insists U.S. Halt Its Bombing: Aides Call Talks Response to Johnson--Suspicion Voiced of a Plot Against Kennedy Italy's Cabinet Quits As Parliament Opens Big Board Weighs 4 Special Closings Los Angeles, Thursday, June 6--Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of a murdered President, died at 1:44 A.M. today of an assassin's shots. The New York Senator was wounded more than 20 hours earlier, moments after he had made his victory statement in the California primary. At his side when he died today in Good Samaritan Hospital were his wife Ethel; his sisters, Mrs. Stephen Smith and Mrs. Patricia Lawford; his bother-in-law, Stephen Smith; and his sister-in-law, Mrs. John F. Kennedy, whose husband was assassinated 4 1/2 years ago in Dallas. In Washington, President Johnson issued a statement calling the death a tragedy. He proclaimed next Sunday a national day of mourning.

The Final Report Hopes had risen slightly when more than eight hours went by without a new medical bulletin on the stricken Senator, but the grimness of the final announcement was signaled when Frank Mankiewicz, Mr. Kennedy's press secretary, walked slowly down the street in front of the hospital toward the littered gymnasium that served as press headquarters. Mr. Mankiewicz bit his lip. His shoulders slumped. He stepped to a lectern in front of a green-tinted chalkboard and bowed his head for a moment while the television lights snapped on. Then, at one minute before 2 A.M., he told of the death of Mr. Kennedy. Following is the text of the statement from Mr. Mankiewicz: "I have a short announcement to read which I will read at this time. Senator Robert Francis Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today, June 6, 1968. With Senator Kennedy at the time of his death was his wife, Ethel; his sisters, Mrs. Patricia Lawford and Mrs. Stephen Smith, his brother-in-law, Stephen Smith and his sister-in-law, Mrs. John F. Kennedy.

"He was 42 years old." Senator Kennedy's body will be taken to New York this morning and then to Washington. The man accused of shooting Mr. Kennedy early yesterday in a pantry of the Ambassador Hotel was identified as Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, 24 years old, who was born in Palestinian Jerusalem of Arab parentage and had lived in the Los Angeles area since 1957. Sirhan had been a clerk. $250,000 Bail Yesterday, he was hurried through an early-morning court arraignment and held in lieu of $250,000 bail. Sirhan was charged with six counts of assault with intent to murder, an offense involving a prison term of 1 to 14 years. Five other persons in addition to the 42-year-old Senator were wounded by the eight bullets from a .22-caliber revolver fired at almost point-blank range into a throng of Democratic rally celebrants surging between ballrooms in the hotel. The shots came moments after Senator Kennedy had made a speech celebrating his victory in yesterday's Democratic Presidential primary in California. The defendant, seized moments after the shooting, refused to give the police any information about himself.

He was arraigned as "John Doe." Three hours later, Mayor Samuel W. Yorty announced at a news conference at police headquarters that the defendant had been identified as Sirhan. He said the identity had been confirmed by Sirhan's brother and a second individual. Senator Kennedy, accompanied by his wife, Ethel, was wheeled into the Good Samaritan Hospital shortly after 1 A.M. yesterday after a brief stop at the Central Receiving Hospital. A score of the Senator's campaign aides swarmed around the scene. Grim Reminder Less than five years back many of them had experienced the similar tragedy that ended the life of President John F. Kennedy. At 2:22 A.M., Senator Kennedy's campaign press secretary, Frank Mankiewicz, came out of the hospital into a throng of hundreds of news people to announce that the Senator would be taken into surgery "in five or ten minutes" for an operation of "45 minutes or an hour." One bullet had gone into the Senator's brain past the mastoid bone back of the right ear, with some fragments going near the brain stem. Another bullet lodged in the back of the neck. A third and minor wound was an abrasion on the forehead.

It was after 7 A.M. when Mr. Mankiewicz reported that more than three hours of surgery had been completed, and all but one fragment of the upper bullet had been removed. The neck bullet was not removed but "is not regarded as a major problem," Mr. Mankiewicz said. He also reported that the Senator's vital signs remained about as they had been, except that he was now breathing on his own, which he had not been doing before the surgery. Then Mr. Mankiewicz said: "There may have been an impairment of the blood supply to the mid-brain, which the doctors explained as governing certain of the vital signs--heart, eye track, level of consciousness--although not directly the thinking process." Senator Kennedy was taken from surgery to an intensive-care unit. At 2:15 P.M. Mr. Mankiewicz announced that Senator Kennedy had not regained consciousness and that a series of medical tests had been "inconclusive and don't show measurable improvement in Senator Kennedy's condition." "His condition as of 1:30 P.M. remains extremely critical," the spokesman continued.

"His life forces--pulse, temperature, blood pressure and heart--remain good, and he continues to show the ability to breathe on his own, although he is being assisted by a resuscitator." The tests included X-rays and electroencephalograms. Mrs. Kennedy remained at the hospital. Mrs. John F. Kennedy arrived at the hospital at 7:30 P.M. yesterday, after a chartered plane flight from New York. A team of surgeons treating Senator Kennedy included Dr. James Poppen, head of neurosurgery at the Lahey Clinic in Boston. He was rushed to Los Angeles in an Air Force plane on instructions from Vice President Humphrey. Mr. Humphrey and Senator Eugene J. McCarthy of Minnesota have been Senator Kennedy's rivals in the Democratic Presidential competition. Mayor Yorty said the defendant's identification had come through a brother, Adel Sirhan, after the police had traced the ownership of the .22-caliber revolver involved in the shooting to a third brother, Munir Bishari Salameh Sirhan, also known as Joe Sirhan.

The weapon was traced through three owners, one in suburban Alabama, the next in Marin County, adjacent to San Francisco, and back to an 18-year-old youth in suburban Pasadena. The youth said he had sold it to "a bushy-haired guy named Joe" whom he knew only as an employee of a Pasadena department store. Detectives identified the bushy haired man as Munir Sirhan. From him, the trail led to the two other brothers, who have been living together in Pasadena. The snubnosed .22-caliber Iver Johnson Cadet model revolver seized after the shooting was described as having been picked out of a list of 2.5 million weapons registered in California in "just seconds" after the disclosure of its serial number. This was done by a new computer used by the State Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Identification in Sacramento, according to State Attorney General Thomas Lynch. The defendant was arraigned at 7 A.M., unusually early, before Municipal Judge Joan Dempsey Klein on a complaint issued by District Attorney Evelle Younger after all-night consultation with the police. Deputy District Attorney William Ritzi said the case would be presented to the county grand jury on Friday.

The other victims of the shooting were Paul Schrade, 43 years old, a regional director of the United Automobile and Aerospace Workers Union, a prominent Kennedy campaigner; William Weisel, 30, a unit manager for the American Broadcasting Company; Ira Goldstein, 19, an employee of Continental New Service at nearby Sherman Oaks; Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, 43, of Sangus, in Los Angeles County, and Irwin Stroll, 17. Mr. Schrade, the most seriously wounded of the five, underwent an apparently successful operation at the Kaiser Foundation Hospital today to remove a bullet from his skull. Mr. Weisel was reported in good condition after removal of a bullet from his abdomen.

The court complaint against Sirhan charged that "on or about the fifth day of June, 1968, at and in the county of Los Angeles a felony was committed by John Doe, who at the time and place aforesaid, did willfully, unlawfully and feloniously commit an assault with a deadly weapon upon Robert Francis Kennedy, a human being, with the intent then and there willfully, unlawfully, feloniously and with malice aforethought to kill and murder the said Robert Francis Kennedy." Sirhan was represented at the arraignment by the chief public defender, Richard S. Buckley. He asked Mr. Buckley to get in touch with the American Civil Liberties Union about getting private counsel for him.

Question: Who assassinated Robert Kennedy in June 1988?
Answer: Sirhan Sirhan