An armed security guard with strong anti-Kennedy views admitted that he was standing directly in contact with the Senator to the rear, that he dropped down when the shooting began and that he then pulled his gun. One witness ignored by police claimed he saw the guard fire. The guard’s weapon was never checked. Meanwhile, the one person who photographed the assassination, Jamie Scott Enyart, was tackled and arrested at gun point. His camera was seized by police, and his photographs have never been recovered. Los Angeles Police secretly burned 2,410 assassination-related photographs in a county hospital incinerator long before Sirhan’s trial. A Los Angeles jury later awarded Enyart a substantial verdict for the loss of his photographs. Lawrence Teeter
I was notified by the California state archives that my photographs along with two thousand four hundred other pieces of evidence had been destroyed by the LAPD two weeks before Sirhan’s trial. Scott Enyart
I arrived at the hotel, and there was mass confusion. I got up on the parking lot, and there were people running in all directions.
Right away, an older Jewish couple ran up to me, and they were hysterical. I asked them, ‘What happened?’ The woman said that they were coming out of the Ambassador Hotel by the Embassy Room, when a young couple in their late teens or early twenties, well dressed, came running past them. They were in a state of glee. They were very happy, shouting, ‘We shot him! We shot him!’ The older woman asked, ‘Who did you shoot?’ The girl said, ‘Kennedy, we shot him! We killed him!’
… This put this old Jewish woman into hysterics. She was still in hysterics at the time I talked to her. The one thing I learned during my many years in the police department is that remarks that are made spontaneously are seldom coloured by people’s imagination. These were spontaneous remarks from this couple. As far as I was concerned, that was the most valid description available. Sergeant Paul Sharaga to author Dan Moldea
A bullet entered RFK’s head just behind the right ear and slightly above the level of the ear canal. It shattered and then tore through RFK’s brain, severing a major blood-carrying ‘sinus’ in its course. Kennedy crumpled to the ground, grievously wounded. Blood leaked into the cranial cavity and poured from the entry wound. The brain began to swell and blood accumulated within the inter-cranial space, exerting life-threatening pressure on the mid-brain, which controls the involuntary heart and lung functions.
Dr Stanley Abo was among the RFK supporters in the Embassy Ballroom that night, and upon hearing of the shooting, rushed to the pantry to render aid and assistance to the wounded. Abo located the bullet hole behind RFK’s right ear, but it was not bleeding at that point as a clot had plugged the hole. Abo understood that pressure was building up inside RFK’s skull, and if it was allowed to continue would be imminently fatal. And so Abo stuck his finger in the hole to flush out the clot. It worked and blood began to pour from RFK’s head once more. John Hunt, The Case for Conspiracy
Well there were thirteen shot sounds that I found on that recording. Philip van Praag, forensic expert
The assassination of Robert F Kennedy is also a carefully constructed illusion, designed to confuse and obfuscate. Imagine what the eyewitnesses in the crowded pantry saw. Robert Kennedy had obviously been shot, and Sirhan was firing a weapon. Sirhan must have killed Kennedy. And yet, the physical evidence does not support this conclusion. Sirhan cannot have killed Kennedy any more than the magician could be both in the box and in the audience. It is not physically possible. And just as only another magician or an extremely perceptive observer can tell you the truth behind the box illusion, only the conspirators themselves or perceptive observers can throw light on the events of June 5, 1968. Lisa Pease, Sirhan and the RFK Assassination
In the centre divider between the two doors clearly two bullet holes at approximately my chest height. William Bailey, special FBI agent, televised interview
One gunshot wound was found behind the right ear and there was abundance of power deposit on the edge of the right ear, and after test-firing a similar weapon we came to the conclusion that the muzzle distance would be one inch from the right ear edge and no more than three inches. Dr Thomas Noguchi
Sirhan Sirhan never got closer than three or four feet in front of Kennedy, and yet Thomas Noguchi, a world-class medical examiner, testified under oath in court that the shot that killed Robert Kennedy was fired right behind the right ear ... at no more than three inches. Jim Marrs, interview Alex Jones, ‘RFK Killed by CIA’
This investigation wasn’t bodged, it was deliberately covered up. William Turner, author
Sirhan would have been directly across from me ... I would estimate the distance between him and the Senator at that point was about five feet. Evan Freed, press photographer, witness
We don’t know who the suspect is. He [Sirhan Sirhan] has made no statement. He would not speak, except once he said, Yes. Walter Cronkite CBS, reading statement of Los Angeles rozzer chief Thomas Reddin
One witness said that those shots came so close together he could scarcely believe they were fired from one gun. Walter Cronkite, CBS News 5th June 1968
I would describe him [Sirhan Sirhan] as a wonderful boy. An example for anybody. Female elderly neighbour of Sirhan Sirhan
And I definitely wouldn’t have voted for Bobby Kennedy ’cause he had the same ideas as John did, and I think John sold the country down the road. He gave it to the commies, he gave it to everyone you wanted to, he literally gave it to the minority. He says, Here, you take over. I’m giving it to you; you run the white man. Nobody should be run. Thane Eugene Cesar, recorded statement
The total and complete amnesia that Sirhan demonstrated from the very beginning to this very day suggests strongly that he was highly hypnotisable and programmed to perform that act ... It is possible to instruct a highly hypnotisable person to perform many acts including assassination. Dr Herbert Spiegel, psychiatrist
This is obviously an open and shut case. Right from the beginning with all the witnesses and the physical evidence. I don’t think it could have been handled in any better fashion than it was. Edward M Davis, Los Angeles chief rozzer
They had to do some very interesting things with the bullets ... This bullet then has to go backwards to hit Paul Schrade ... Then you have bullets going off the ceiling going downward but they then bounce upwards ... There are three bullets in this case that do the magic bullet stuff we know about from the John F Kennedy case. James di Eugenio, author The Assassinations
The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use – of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public. Robert Kennedy, The Pursuit of Justice, 1964
About one-fifth of the people are against everything all the time. Robert Kennedy, May 1964
Thank you very much. I want to express my gratitude to my dog Freckles who has been maligned. As Franklin Roosevelt said, I don’t care what they say about me, but when start to attack my dog ... I’m not doing this with an order of importance but I also want to thank my wife Ethel. Robert Kennedy
Every dictatorship has ultimately strangled in the web of repression it wove for its people, making mistakes that could not be corrected because criticism was prohibited. Robert Kennedy, March 1968
I think back to what Camus wrote about the fact that perhaps this world is a world in which children suffer, but we can lessen the number of suffering children, and if you do not do this, then who will do this? I’d like to feel that I’d done something to lessen that suffering. Robert Kennedy
If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. John F Kennedy
The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any Western society. Robert Kennedy, June 1966 South Africa
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black – considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible – you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.
We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization – black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love. Robert Kennedy, April 1968
What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis, and that what has been going on in the United States over the period of the last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions whether it’s between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent. Or between age groups or the war in Vietnam. That we can start to work together. We are a great country and a selfish country and a compassionate country, and I intend to make that my basis for running. Robert Kennedy, Los Angeles