The Day The United States Died
Thursday, June 6, 1968
by Mark R. Elsis
Notice the clip-on tie next to the right hand of Bobby Kennedy.
Bobby grabbed it off the "security guard" Thane Eugene Cesar
who was directly behind him as he was being shot, from behind.
A film taken shortly after shows Thane Eugene Cesar without his tie.
"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and
belief that human history is shaped. Each time a person stands up for
an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out
against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers of energy and daring,
those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest
walls of oppression and resistance."
Robert F. Kennedy
This quote is from his speech on June 6, 1966 (exactly two years
before his death)
at the University of Cape Town, South
Africa.
I woke up the morning of June 5, 1968, and heard the news that my New York Senator, Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy had been shot and was clinging to life. Bobby's assassination was a mere 62 days after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, and only 1,657 days after his elder brother, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963.
The assassination occurred right after Bobby Kennedy delivered a rousing speech to an overflowing ballroom of exuberant campaign supporters thanking them for helping him win the big prize of the California Democratic primary for President.
If this assassination of Bobby Kennedy didn't happen, he would have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 1968, and then would have faced the Republican presidential nominee, Richard Milhouse Nixon, in the November election. Bobby most likely would have won and been the next President of the United States. Since Bobby was opposed to the Vietnam War, this would have put an end to this tragic police action in 1969, instead of 1975, thus saving almost 20,000 young men their lives.
The junior Senator from New York State, Bobby Kennedy, was shot at by an assassin four times within a couple of inches. He was wounded by three of the bullets with the fourth bullet going through the armpit of his jacket. The exact time was 12:16 am PDT on Wednesday, June 5, 1968. The location was the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
Six people were shot in the kitchen pantry that night, Bobby Kennedy, Paul Schrade, William Weisel, Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein, and Irwin Stroll. Lying on the floor, shot three times, Bobby last audible words were "Is everybody okay?"
Twenty-five and a half hours after the shooting, at 1:44 am PDT on June 6, 1968, Bobby Kennedy died from the bullet fired from behind into his head in the back of his right ear, angled slightly up and within a couple of inches.
I thank you for being an honest man under much adversity, Dr. Thomas T. Noguchi. Dr. Noguchi was the chief coroner for Los Angeles and did the autopsy on Bobby Kennedy. In his book King Coroner, he determined that the shot which killed Robert F. Kennedy entered "through the mastoid bone, an inch behind the right ear." Noguchi determined that the shot was fired from no more than four inches from behind Kennedy's head. Every eyewitness in the Ambassador Hotel's kitchen pantry had Sirhan Sirhan, the patsy assassin, two to four feet in front of Bobby.
"Few of us will have the will to bend history itself,
but each of us can work to change a small portion of events,
and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation."
Robert F. Kennedy
Because of the extensive research I've done on all the assassinations, I discovered an interesting fact about the last three major assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr., Bobby Kennedy, and John Lennon. They were all executed during the time of a lame-duck presidency. A lame-duck presidency creates a political power vacuum that demonic forces exploit for their nefarious purposes.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson became a lame-duck on March 31, 1968, when he said he would not run for reelection even if the Democrats wanted him to. Four days later Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Sixty-two days later Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. On November 4, 1980, President James Earl Carter Jr., lost the presidential election to Ronald Wilson Reagan, thus becoming a lame-duck. Thirty-four days later, the greatest singer-songwriter and the most influential political artist of the twentieth century, John Lennon was assassinated.
The United States has never been the same since these assassinations. The dreams of a better and more democratic life for all Americans were brutally slain over and over and over again. We were then, and today we still are living in a fascistic country that is run by an evil banking and military-industrial corporate complex that assassinates leaders for not playing ball, their demonic war machine ball.
In every single major assassination, these black-op conspirator killers have had the balls to blame it on some poor deranged lone gunman. They have had a patsy or a mind-controlled Manchurian candidate fall guy for the last four assassinations. Lee Harvey Oswald, for President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, James Earl Ray, for Martin Luther King Jr., Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, for Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, and Mark David Chapman, for John Winston Lennon.
"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of the colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change. Each time a person stands up for an idea, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."
Robert F. Kennedy
No one has since dared to speak out too loud or long about the multitude of critical environmental problems or the vastly unjust inequality that exists for most of the people in the United States. Everyone has learned to be silently complicit and play ball.
There was only one person left in the united States who could have upset the status quo if he wished to, and it seems like he was going to do just that. Then ever so conveniently on July 16, 1999, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior's plane fell out of the sky and into the Atlantic Ocean. The photograph below is the remains of his Piper Saratoga II cockpit.
After a lifetime of research, I've concluded the same perpetrators who assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Israel, also assassinated Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, and most likely John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior.
Bless you, Bobby, for finally understanding the needs of all Americans, especially the poorer discriminated southern blacks. Bless you, Bobby, for finally realizing the needlessness of the Vietnam War and promising to end it if you became President. Bless you, Bobby, for having the courage to run for President when you knew what would most likely happen to you, and it did, on Thursday, June 6, 1968, the day you and the United States died.
"We all struggle to transcend the cruelties and the follies of mankind.
That struggle will not be won by standing aloof and pointing a finger;
it will be won by action, by men and women
who commit their every resource of mind and body
to the education and improvement and help of their fellow man."
Robert F. Kennedy
"If they're going to shoot, they'll shoot."
Candidate Robert F. Kennedy to aide Fred Dutton, April 11, 1968.
The Following Are Relevant Articles, Audios, Videos, And
Documentaries
Showing The Conspiracy In The Assassination of
Senator Robert Francis Kennedy.
Robert F. Kennedy Biography From The JFK Library
Robert Francis Kennedy was born on November 20, 1925, in Brookline, Massachusetts, the seventh child in the closely knit and competitive family of Rose and Joseph P. Kennedy. "I was the seventh of nine children," he later recalled, "and when you come from that far down you have to struggle to survive."
Robert Francis Kennedy (80 Videos)
Playlist by Mark R. Elsis
Who Killed Senator Robert F. Kennedy?
Fifty years ago, one of the most shocking assassinations in U.S. history took place. Was the wrong man convicted? Who killed RFK? While the conviction of the patsy Sirhan Sirhan was inevitable, evidence showed shots from the rear and prosecutorial misconduct. In addition, the “defense” attorney for the hapless Sirhan sold him down the river. Did a “crowd control” guard named Thane Cesar fire the fatal bullets while witnesses were distracted?
The final tallies from the crucial California presidential primary were in, and the celebration was on. The best-known brand name in American politics was a latecomer to the presidential campaign but one who had already emerged as the frontrunner. At just after midnight, Sen. Robert Kennedy had completed a short victory speech with “… and now it’s on to Chicago [scene of the August Democratic Convention], and let’s win there!”
These were the days before presidential candidates had Secret Service protection, and when Kennedy started toward the front door and a press conference in the Colonial Room, his Press Secretary Frank Mankiewicz turned him around and sent him through the kitchen pantry, apparently because it was a more direct and less hampered route. Was Mankiewicz (on RFK’s left above) in on the plot? No one would ever know. Although the turnaround was caught on film, his suspicious action would be one of the many to go unnoticed by the news media and uninvestigated by law enforcement, once the “lone nut” was captured and sufficiently vilified by the press.
by Pat Shannan
[Ever since I first saw this as a ten-year-old boy on television, I always found it very strange that after the speech, Bobby was going one way and then abruptly was taken another way, to his assassination. Years later when I found out that it was his Jewish Press Secretary Frank Mankiewicz (to be a Jewish male is 1 in 1,000 chance) who did this, I also wondered if he was in on the assassination, for as I mentioned earlier, after a lifetime of research I've concluded, the same perpetrators who assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Israel, also assassinated Senator Robert Francis Kennedy, and most likely John Fitzgerald Kennedy Junior. For more on the means, motive and opportunity of the Israeli perpetrators, see my work in the two links below.]
John Fitzgerald Kennedy Timeline (414 Pages)
The Most Comprehensive Timeline On John Fitzgerald Kennedy
by Mark R. Elsis
A Violent Insane Asylum (53 Pages)
by Mark R. Elsis
Just after midnight of June 6, 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated in a backroom of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He had just been celebrating his victory at the California primaries, which made him the most likely Democratic nominee for the presidential election. His popularity was so great that Richard Nixon, on the Republican side, stood little chance.
by Laurent Guyénot
"We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge."
Robert F. Kennedy
Sirhan and the RFK Assassination, Part I: The Grand Illusion
The first part of Lisa Pease's masterful review of the RFK assassination case, which focuses on the evidence as it relates to the gun, bullets and Special Exhibit 10.
This is the first of a two-part series dealing with Sirhan Sirhan's current efforts to win an evidentiary hearing before the California State Supreme Court, and the evidence upon which that request is based. This part will focus on the evidence in the case, particularly as it relates to the gun, the bullets, and a little-known item referred to as Special Exhibit 10. The second part will deal with the question that must logically follow: If Sirhan didn't kill Kennedy, then who did?
by Lisa Pease
Sirhan and the RFK Assassination, Part II: Rubik's Cube
The second part of Lisa Pease's masterful review of the RFK assassination case, which focuses on alternate explanations for how and why RFK was murdered.
In Part I of this article, we saw that Sirhan could not have shot Kennedy. Indeed, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Sirhan was firing blanks. If Sirhan did not shoot Kennedy, who did? Why? And how is it that Sirhan's own lawyers did not reveal the evidence that he could not have committed the crime for which he received a death sentence?
Before one considers the above issues, one larger issue stands out. If Sirhan did not kill Kennedy, how has the cover-up lasted this long? In the end, that question will bring us closer to the top of the conspiracy than any other. No matter who was involved, if there were a will to get to the bottom of this crime, the evidence has been available. The fact that no official body has ever made the effort to honestly examine all the evidence in this case is nearly as chilling as the original crime itself, and points to a high level of what can only be termed government involvement. In the history of this country and particularly the sixties, one entity stands out beyond all others as having the means, the motive, and the opportunity to orchestrate this crime and continue the cover-up to this very day. But the evidence will point its own fingers; it remains only for us to follow wherever the evidence leads.
by Lisa Pease
As many of you know, I've been researching the assassinations of the 1960s for more than 25 years now. I've had a particular interest in the assassination of Robert Kennedy. I started and stopped this book a couple of times over the last ten years, but got really serious about writing it over the last three and a half. Here is a preview of the cover. Jim DiEugenio was kind enough to write a wonderful introduction as well.
by Lisa Pease
The assassination of Robert Kennedy never received the scrutiny it deserves.
by Lisa Pease
The Blatant Conspiracy Behind Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s Assassination
Early in 1968, Clyde Tolson, F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy and bosom buddy, a key player in the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., expressed both the hope and intent of those making sure that there would never be another president by the name Kennedy, when he said about RFK that “I hope someone shoots and kills the son of a bitch.” Earlier, as reported by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in his new book, American Values: Lessons I Learned from My Family, the influential conservative Westbrook Pegler expressed this hope even more depravingly when he wished “that some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter [Robert Kennedy’s] spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies.”
These sick men were not alone. Senator Robert Kennedy was a marked man. And he knew it. That he was nevertheless willing to stand up to the forces of hate and violence that were killing innocents at home and abroad is a testimony to his incredible courage and love of country. To honor such a man requires that we discover and speak the truth about those who killed him. The propaganda that he was killed by a crazed young Arab needs exposure.
by Edward Curtin
The Assassination of Robert Kennedy
The Robert Kennedy Assassination is a gripping documentary by the acclaimed producer Chris Plumley. He exposes how the CIA planted two operatives within the Los Angeles Police Department who manipulated the investigation of Kennedy's killing.
Robert Kennedy's killing seemed an open and shut case, yet in spite of 77 witnesses, it remains shrouded in mystery. Many witnesses at the time complained of pressure by the LAPD to change their testimony. For the first time, we expose how evidence was changed: how an FBI officer saw bullets being removed from the scene of the assassination and how LAPD officers who didn't toe the line found themselves suspended on ridiculous charges or taken off the case.
"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant."
Robert F. Kennedy
Bobby Kennedy Assassination Recording
A previously unknown audio tape, uncovered in 2004, reveals that Sirhan Sirhan did not act alone in the June 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
In this video, you will hear the sounds of the actual RFK assassination during a two-minute excerpt from the Pruszynski recording, the only known tape of the Bobby Kennedy shooting. The audio recording was made by freelance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski, a Polish journalist covering the RFK presidential campaign for Canadian newspapers. Adrian Finighan in London interviews forensic audio expert Philip Van Praag about the Pruszynski recording, which was uncovered by an American journalist in 2004 and examined extensively by Van Praag beginning in 2005.
Van Praag says the tape shows that in addition to convicted gunman Sirhan, there was a second, hidden gunman in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry who also was firing at RFK. In fact, he says the recording along with other forensic evidence proves that none of Sirhan's bullets hit Kennedy. He says the Democratic presidential candidate was shot by the second unknown gunman and not by Sirhan, who is the only person ever to have been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for the assassination.
Van Praag says all eight bullets fired by Sirhan missed Bobby Kennedy and instead hit bystanders and woodwork inside the kitchen pantry and inside another area near the pantry. He says that RFK was struck four times and that all four Kennedy bullets were fired from extremely close range immediately behind the Senator by someone else other than Sirhan, who was several feet to Kennedy's front and never got behind RFK.
According to Van Praag, the Pruszynski recording reveals that at the moment of the RFK shooting in the hotel kitchen pantry, at least 13 shots were fired: five more bullets fired than Sirhan alone could have expended from his single eight-shot revolver, which he had no opportunity to reload in the pantry. In addition, Van Praag says the recording also reveals two sets of "double shots": shots fired too closely together to have come from the same gun.
Finally, Van Praag says, the Pruszynski recording reveals that the second gunman (RFK's real killer, he believes) likely was firing a .22 caliber 9-shot H&R 922 handgun at the same time that Sirhan was firing his .22 caliber 8-shot Iver Johnson Cadet 55 handgun. He says the hidden H&R weapon fired at least five shots from the rear [exactly where Thane Eugene Cesar a security guard was positioned] while Sirhan fired all eight of his Iver Johnson's bullets from in front. He says Sirhan only had a free hand during his first two shots: that the first two shots Sirhan fired missed Senator Kennedy and Sirhan's last six shots were fired wildly while he was being grabbed by several people in the pantry. He says only the second gunman had a clear shot at RFK and was able to quickly fire his bullets into Kennedy from behind, unseen by most witnesses because all attention in the pantry had shifted to Sirhan and his gun.
Robert Kennedy and five other people were shot at the Ambassador in Los Angeles at 12:16 am pdt on June 5, 1968, only moments after the New York Senator had claimed victory in the California Democratic Presidential Primary. This was the third major American assassination of the 1960s, occurring four and a half years after the assassination of RFK's brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy and 62 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Van Praag presented his RFK assassination findings before the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Washington D.C. on February 21, 2008. On March 25, 2008, he and his co-author Robert Joling likewise presented their RFK findings in Ledyard, Connecticut before hundreds of forensic experts attending the annual Markle Symposium, sponsored by the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. They've done a number of TV, radio, internet and print interviews since. Earlier, on June 6, 2007, the Discovery Times Channel premiered the television documentary, "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination" which featured Van Praag, Stanislaw Pruszynski of Warsaw, Poland and other notables as the program focused in detail on Van Praag's Pruszynski recording findings. Also featured in "Conspiracy Test" was shooting victim Paul Schrade of Los Angeles who is currently spearheading efforts to reopen the RFK assassination case at the local, state or federal level, based in large part on the late-breaking revelations from the Pruszynski recording.
The original CNN International segment was aired on television on April 16, 2008 and an online version was posted on CNN.com on April 19, 2008.
CNN: New RFK Assassination Recording (7:00)
A previously unknown audio tape, recently uncovered, reveals that Sirhan Sirhan did not act alone in the June 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
RFK And The Clip On Tie Of Thane Eugene Cesar (3:53)
A closer look at Thane Eugene Cesar at the assassination of Robert Kennedy. Thane Eugene Cesar without his tie at the kitchen pantry, minutes after the shooting of RFK 1968. As Cesar shot Bobby Kennedy from behind, Bobby grabbed Cesar by the tie, which came off.
"Some men see things as they are and say, why:
I dream things that never were and say, why not?"
Robert F. Kennedy
RFK Murder Cover-Up Continues After Dramatic Parole Hearing
A California parole board this month rejected a dramatic plea to release the convicted slayer of 1968 presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy, thereby continuing one of the nation's most notorious murder cover-ups.
Kennedy friend Paul Schrade, 91, argued that the convicted Sirhan B. Sirhan, firing from Kennedy's front, could not have killed the New York senator in a hotel massacre that left Schrade wounded.
Robert F. Kennedy"Kennedy was a man of justice," Schrade told the parole board Feb. 10 in a prepared statement at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, CA.
"But, so far," Schrade continued, "justice has not been served in this case. And I feel obliged as both a shooting victim and as an American to speak out about this - and to honor the memory of the greatest American I’ve ever known, Robert Francis Kennedy."
by Andrew Kreig
Man Shot Alongside RFK Say Sirhan Sirhan Should Be Granted Parole
Paul Schrade, now 91 years old, was shot in the head on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles while standing alongside Kennedy.
Schrade contends that Sirhan was not the only shooter that night. In an exclusive interview that aired on 10News Tuesday night, Schrade stated that Kennedy was actually killed by a second gunman.
Here is the full text of the statement he gave Wednesday to the parole board at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, where the now 71-year-old Sirhan is being held.
by Steve Fiorina
RFK Must Die: The Assassination Of Bobby Kennedy
Investigative Documentary by Shane O'Sullivan
RFK Must Die: The Assassination Of Bobby Kennedy (Trailer) (2:32)
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is a new investigative documentary by Shane O'Sullivan that examines the events of that night and presents compelling evidence that Sirhan did not act alone. Witnesses placed Sirhan several feet in front of Kennedy yet the fatal shot came from one inch behind. And even under hypnosis, Sirhan has never been able to remember the shooting. Leading psychiatrists believe he was a 'Manchurian Candidate', hypnotically programmed to kill Kennedy or act as a decoy for the real assassin.
Shane O'Sullivan, Who Killed Bobby?
Jim DiEugenio reviews the RFK assassination book by Shane O'Sullivan, arguing it is better than the documentary by the same title.
Shane O'Sullivan's book, entitled Who Killed Bobby?, is certainly better than the documentary he made on the RFK case entitled RFK Must Die! There isn't a lot that is new in the book, and the author spends some time interviewing people that I believe were not worth tracking down. But the book seems to me to be thorough in some fundamental aspects of the case. And that is what makes it more worthwhile than his previous work.
by James DiEugenio
Convicted RFK Assassin Sirhan Sirhan Says Girl In Polka-Dot Dress Manipulated Him
Convicted assassin Sirhan Sirhan was manipulated by a seductive girl in a mind control plot to shoot Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, and his bullets did not kill the presidential candidate, lawyers for Sirhan said in new legal papers.
by Linda Deutsch
The Robert Kennedy Assassination
In the assassinations of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the evidence tying the alleged assassins to the case was circumstantial and almost too neat. But here, Sirhan was apprehended on the scene firing a gun within a couple of feet of Kennedy. An open-and-shut case? Ironically, the RFK assassination has the starkest physical and eyewitness evidence indicating a conspiracy...
The Assassination of Robert Kennedy (1:50)
Robert Kennedy's death seemed an open and shut case, yet in spite of the testimonies of seventy-seven witnesses, it remains shrouded in mystery. Many witnesses at the time complained of pressure by the LAPD to change their testimony. For the first time, Plumley exposes how evidence was changed: how an FBI officer saw bullets being removed from the scene of the assassination and how LAPD officers who didn't tow the line found themselves suspended on ridiculous charges or taken off the case.
Readers Guide To RFK Assassination: Books, Videos, Archives
This "Readers Guide to the RFK Assassination" presents key books, videos, documents, websites and other archives most relevant to 1968 Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy's fatal shooting just after midnight June 5, 1968.
he materials focus heavily on remaining questions about responsibility and motive for Kennedy's shooting at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles shortly after his victory in the California Democratic primary appeared to pave the way for his presidential nomination. Shown below is his victory speech shortly before he was gunned down while leaving via a kitchen pantry to avoid crowds.
Included also in this guide compiled by our Justice Integrity Project is research that explores the assassination's current implications for the U.S. justice system and other governance.
The materials contain varied perspectives in a style common to other topics in our series, which includes guides to the assassinations of President Kennedy in 1963 and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968.
by Andrew Kreig
Color Footage Of The Robert F Kennedy Assassination (9:44)
"Fear not the path of truth
for the lack of people walking on it."
Robert F. Kennedy
The Assassination of Robert Kennedy - The Number of Bullets
As with John F. Kennedy five years earlier controversy surrounds the number of bullets fired and the gun or guns they were fired from. While nobody seriously disputes the fact that Sirhan shot at Robert Kennedy with the intention of killing him, many dispute whether he fired the fatal shot or any of the shots that hit Kennedy, and evidence suggesting he not only didn't but he couldn't has never been properly reviewed or contested in a court of law. This is worrying!
Sirhan's gun, a .22 caliber eight-shot Iver-Johnson revolver fired all eight shots during the shooting spree. He didn't reload. Yet according to many researchers including Lisa Pease the numerous injuries caused along with the evidence of bullets impacting ceiling tiles and a door frame can only be accounted for by a minimum of ten bullets. These facts present very persuasive evidence of a second gunman. Where are the experts in ballistics and firearms that could resolve this dilemma? Why are they so quiet on this subject? Surely they can make an informed judgement based on all available evidence and once and for all put this issue to bed.
Of the eight bullets Sirhan allegedly fired, all were accounted for except for one which was lost in the ceiling space. Yet there is evidence that a wooden door frame contained an extra two bullets. This door frame was removed by the LAPD, inspected, x-rayed and eventually destroyed. The x-rays were also destroyed. No evidence of bullets or bullet holes were found according to the LAPD.
Scott Enyart And The Stolen RFK Pantry Photographs
Jamie Scott Enyart
Case: Robbery/Conspiracy
Date: June 5, 1968
Location: Los Angeles, California
Details: On June 5, 1968, fifteen-year-old photographer Scott Enyart was at the Ambassador Hotel, taking pictures for his high school newspaper, when senator Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Enyart claims that he took a total of three rolls of film that night. The first depicted the stage before Kennedy started his speech. He loaded the second roll as the speech begun. After the speech concluded, he and several other people followed Kennedy from the stage into the pantry as he shook hands with the kitchen staff. He claims to have had a clear view of Kennedy as the shooting took place. He also claims that he jumped on a table and took more pictures as the alleged shooter, Sirhan Sirhan, was apprehended.
A few minutes later, Enyart returned to the ballroom where pandemonium had broken out. At that time, he says he loaded and clicked off his third roll of film. He claims that later during the night of the shooting, police officers chased him down and confiscated his camera, rolls of film and negatives, presumably in order to use the photos as evidence. At around 3AM, Enyart was brought in for questioning, which lasted about twenty minutes. After Sirhan Sirhan's conviction, the LAPD told Scott that they had his photographs. They told him that his photographs, along with all of the other evidence and documents, would be sealed for twenty years.
In 1988, Enyart, now an established photographer, wrote to the LAPD asking for the return of the photos. Five months later, he received a letter from the California State Archives, which stated that his photographs could not be found. It concluded that his photographs were destroyed by the LAPD in August of 1968. Enyart then filed a lawsuit against the police. Police later found a sheet of negatives that they believed were his.
A few weeks later, city attorneys presented him with a proofsheet made from the negatives. He was suspicious because it only showed one roll of film. It was also on Ilford, ASA 125, even though he claimed that he shot the three rolls on Tri-X, ASA 400, manufactured by Kodak. He believes that the police combined his second and third rolls and used the combination as the proofsheet. However, the police claim that the sheet is an entire roll of film. They also do not believe that he was in the pantry at the time of the shooting.
In 1991, a book was released which contained several previously unpublished photographs. Enyart found a photograph of several people in the pantry shortly after the shooting. He believes that he is the young man at the top of the picture, holding a camera and standing on the table. However, the police do not believe that the person in the photograph was Enyart.
Enyart continued to press his case against the LAPD. In January of 1996, the city attorney's office hired a private courier to transfer the negatives from the archives in San Francisco to Los Angeles. After arriving in Los Angeles, the courier rented a car to drive to the courthouse. Along the way there, he got a flat tire that was apparently slashed by a knife. He then pulled into a service station. Within the next ten minutes, the briefcase containing the negatives was stolen. Many believe that Scott Enyart's photographs hold the key to the controversy over who really shot Robert Kennedy.
Suspects: It is not known who may have stolen the negatives from the courier, but some believe that it may have been a conspiracy to keep the real truth about the shooting from being revealed.
Extra Notes: The case was featured as a part of the May 3, 1996 episode.
Results: Unresolved. In August of 1996, a Los Angeles jury awarded Scott Enyart $465,000 in his claim against the city. The jury believed that Enyart was in the pantry when Kennedy was shot and that he took three rolls of film. The city was found to be negligent in returning the photographs that the police had confiscated. Despite this, the photographs have never been found.
The Trial Of Scott Enyart - Transcript
Jamie Scott Enyart was born in 1953. On 6th June, 1968, Enyart, a 15 year old high school student, a high-school student, was taking photographs of Robert F. Kennedy as he was walking from the ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel to the Colonial Room where the press conference was due to take place. Enyart was standing slightly behind Kennedy when the shooting began and snapped as fast as he could.
As Enyart was leaving the pantry, two LAPD officers accosted him at gunpoint and seized his three, 36-exposure rolls of film. Later, he was told by Detective Dudley Varney that the photographs were needed as evidence in the trial of Sirhan Sirhan. The photographs were not presented as evidence but the court ordered that all evidential materials had to be sealed for twenty years.
In 1988 Scott Enyart requested that his photographs should be returned. At first the State Archives claimed they could not find them and that they must have been destroyed by mistake. Enyart filed a lawsuit which finally came to trial in 1996. During the trial the Los Angeles city attorney announced that the photos had been found in its Sacramento office and would be brought to the courthouse by the courier retained by the State Archives. The following day it was announced that the courier’s briefcase, that contained the photographs, had been stolen from the car he rented at the airport. The photographs have never been recovered and the jury subsequently awarded Scott Enyart $450,000 in damages.
From the creators of Crimetown and Cadence13, this is The RFK Tapes - an audio documentary series that takes a new look at the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. For the past fifty years, authorities have claimed that the case was open and shut. Sirhan Sirhan was captured at the scene, gun in hand. He admitted to the crime and is serving a life sentence. But some say there’s evidence of a larger conspiracy. Over ten episodes, The RFK Tapes will use original police tapes, rare recordings, and new interviews with the people who were there to try to understand what happened on June 5, 1968. Hosted by Zac Stuart-Pontier and Bill Klaber.
Who Killed Bobby Kennedy? His Son RFK Jr. Doesn’t Believe It Was Sirhan Sirhan.
Just before Christmas, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled up to the massive Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility, a California state prison complex in the desert outside San Diego that holds nearly 4,000 inmates. Kennedy was there to visit Sirhan B. Sirhan, the man convicted of killing his father, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, nearly 50 years ago.
While his wife, the actress Cheryl Hines, waited in the car, Kennedy met with Sirhan for three hours, he revealed to The Washington Post last week. It was the culmination of months of research by Kennedy into the assassination, including speaking with witnesses and reading the autopsy and police reports.
“I got to a place where I had to see Sirhan,” Kennedy said. He would not discuss the specifics of their conversation. But when it was over, Kennedy had joined those who believe there was a second gunman, and that it was not Sirhan who killed his father.
by Tom Jackman
Failures to Confront the Unspeakable, and The Way Ahead. Part I
by Elizabeth Woodworth
"I'm afraid there are guns between me and the White House"
Robert F. Kennedy, 1968
The Second Gun (1973) (1:39:08)
The Golden Globe-nominated documentary about the Robert F. Kennedy assassination by the late Ted Charach and Gerard Alcan.
This film ignited a worldwide controversy on 3 level, journalistic, legal and forensic. It continues today. The entire film, director's copy and out-takes are housed at the Pickford Center for Motion Picture Study/Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Hollywood CA. The Ted Charach RFK documentary archive, the world's largest private collection on the Second Gun discovery, is located at the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven, New Haven, CT.
Who Killed Robert Kennedy? by Al Jazeera (2018) (46:23)
Filmmaker: Bahiya Namour
Fifty years ago, United States Senator Robert F Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just moments after he'd won California's Democratic presidential primary.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, was arrested at the scene of the shooting in what the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) thought was an open-and-shut case.
Sirhan was tried and jailed for Robert Kennedy's murder. But since the 1970s, there have been calls for a new investigation into the assassination, based on differing witness accounts, the number of shots fired and distance of Sirhan from Kennedy when he fired.
"We're trying to prove there was a travesty of justice in 1969 at Sirhan's trial. We're trying to prove that there was no way that he could have shot the senator, let alone have killed the senator," says Laurie Dusek, a member of Sirhan's defence team.
Kennedy's wounds suggest his assassin - or assassins - stood behind him, but eyewitnesses place Sirhan about a metre away and almost in front of him. This has led to suggestions that a second gunman may have fired the fatal shot, a theory supported by Chief Medical Examiner-Coroner for the County of Los Angeles, Thomas Noguchi, who stated in his report that the shot that killed Kennedy was fired at the point-blank range next to his right ear.
"The only way to explain this that there was a second gunman in a position behind Kennedy, but the prosecution never proved that Sirhan was behind Kennedy or was able to shoot him point blank," says eyewitness Paul Schrade.
Witness accounts and more recent forensic analysis support the view that more bullets were fired at the scene than Sirhan could have had in his gun.
Sirhan's .22 Iver-Johnson revolver could only hold eight bullets, yet as many as 13 shots may have been fired at the scene. Two FBI investigators who attended the crime scene right after the assassination stated that they had discovered two bullets in a door frame - bullets that were not mentioned in the LAPD's report.
"If a second gun is not firing, there cannot be any bullet holes in the wooden door frames," explains William Klaber, a journalist and writer who has studied the case extensively. "So the police take those door frames down and they bring them to the police station to do work on them. It turns out these bullets represent too many bullets. Sirhan's gun holds eight bullets."
Robert Kennedy's death, like the 1963 assassination of his older brother, President John F Kennedy, has been the subject of many conspiracy theories.
One suggests that if Bobby were ever elected president, it's almost certain he would have ordered a fresh investigation into his brother's assassination, unconvinced as he was by the official version in the Warren Commission report. Other theories include had Robert Kennedy been elected president, he would have taken steps to end the war in Vietnam.
RFK was a principled politician, a New York senator who cared about poverty in the south and racial segregation everywhere. His ideals of a more equal society were never realised but the scale of grief following his death showed how much people appreciated him.
After his body had been flown from California to New York, it was put on board a train to Washington, DC for burial next to his brother John at Arlington National Cemetery - and the railway line was lined with millions of mourners. The journey, however, to establish clearly how he died is still incomplete.
"When we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy, or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice."
Robert F. Kennedy
EarthNewspaper.com
All The Honest News Fit To Publish