Who Killed Rfk?..

Who Killed RFK?

by MARTIN PORTER

Democracy was dealt a devastating blow the night DemocratiC Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy was murdered in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.

It was on that night - June 6, 1968 - that Richard Níxon was assured a free ticket to the White House, and what was to become the most perverted and corrupt period in American government began. It was on that same night thal a Palestinian immigrant, Sirhan B. Sirhan, was booked for the assassination, and there began a long, involved conspiracy on the part of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD)  - and possibly the CIA - to pin him with lone responsibility for the murder.

There is little doubt that Sirhan tried to kill Kennedy. Photographic evidence and eyewitness testimony both find him with a gun amidst the crowd. But was he alone in that pantry? Was he part of a conspiracy to halt what seemed to he the inevitable: that Robert Kennedy, after sweeping the California Democratic primary that same evening, would be his party's nominee for President? Did that man, sentenced to die in the gas chamber, and now sitting out the rest of his life on San Quentin's death row, even pull the trigger of the actual murder weapon?

The evidence seems to declare he did not.

After the Kennedy shooting, the LAPD, in what appears to be an effort to quash all questions once and for all, quickly concluded that all shots that were fired that night carne from the "Sirhan gun and no other."

Evidence conveniently provided by LAPD lab specialist DeWayne Wolfer - who later testified before the Grand Jury and at Sirhan's trial that he had personally test-fired Sirhan's gun - concluded that based on his comparisons of those bullets and slugs taken from the bodies of the Senator and that of William Wiesel , a television producer who was wounded that night, Sirhan acted alone.

Almost immediately, the validity of this claim became questionable. An autopsy report by Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi (famed for his work on the Tate-LaBianca murders) found that all gunshot wounds came from "right to left directions and upward and back to front directions." From deeply ingrained powder burns on the Senator's ear, he concluded that the bullet entered Kennedy's brain from a distance of "one inch and no more than three inches away."

Noguchi's testimony was contrary to all eyewitness reports, placing Sirhan no closer than two feet from and in front of Kennedy.

Donald L. Schulman, an employee of a Los Angeles television station, contends that he saw Sirhan flre his pistol. "He (Sirhan) was quite a distance from him (Kennedy)," he said.

Karl Uecker, the hotel's maitre d', who was beside Kennedy during the shooting, said the gun held by Sirhan was one and one-half feet to two feet away from Kennedy. He maintains that it would have been "completely impossible" for Sirhan to have gotten behind him and have shot Kennedy from behind.

This testimony has been backed up by Eddie Menasian, another witness, who claimed before the original Grand Jury that Sirhan's gun was about three feet away from Kennedy. New York Post columnist Pete Hamill also told pólice Sirhan was several fee! away when he fired.

Eyewitness testimony is unreliable. and in itself does not make for any conclusive argument. But ilieie is more.

Findings by ballistics experts proves that the bullet recovered from Kennedy's body and the bullet recovered from William Wiesel could not have been fired trom Sirhan's .22 calibre, eight-shol Ivor Johnson hand-gun, as originally claimed by Wolfer.

Pasadena forensics expert William Harper, consulted by journalist Ted Charach (maker of the documentary film, The Second Gun) contends that "there is a significant difference in the markings made on the bullets which struck bystanders and those which struck Senator Kennedy's body."

Harper added that "a second gunman to the right rear of the Senator was in a virtual blind spot where no one was looking after Sirhan started firing."

Witnesses have claimed to have seen a security guard, named Thane Eugene Cesar, standing in that "blind spot." pull his gun as the shooting began. Cesar, when briefly questioned by pólice, claimed that he drew his .38 caliber pistol when Kennedy was shot, but didn't fire. He also admitted to once owning a .22 caliber pistol like Sirhan's, but had sold it to a friend, who had had it stolen somewhere in Arkansas.

Harper also stumbled across the fact that Sirhan's gun was never tested, and that Wolfer had used another .22 calibre pistol to tire the test bullets that were later used to confirm that all bullets fired the night of the assassination were fired from Sirhan's gun. Even more inexplicably , after using this other gun to help prove Sirhan killed Kennedy, the LAPD proceeded to destroy it a full seven months before the trial.

Forensic experts nationwide were appalled by the apparent incompetence of the LAPD and DeWayne Wolfer's investigation.

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On Nov. 28, 1973, Herbert Leon MacDonnell. one of the country's leading criminologists and Director of the Laboratory of Forensic Science in Corning, New York, agreed with Harper's earlier findings, stating conclusively that the bullets from Kennedy and Wiesel could not have been fired from the same weapon. "The bullet removed from the late Senator Kennedy was not fired from the Ivor Johnson .22 cadet revolver taken from Sirhan," he said.

Subsequent investigation into the mishaps of the LAPD findings from the shooting have uncovered further irregularities pointing to incompetence and possible cover-up by Los Angeles authorities.

In the course of investigating Wolfer, District Attorney Joseph Busch discovered that evidence in the Sirhan trial had been "contaminated and perhaps tampered with by unauthorized individuals."

Evidence considered vital to proving a possible conspiracy appears to be "missing" from police files, Ceiling panels from above the pantry area where Kennedy was shot are "missing." Allegedly, there are at least three bullet holes in those panels - which, if true, would suggest . that there were more than eight shots fired that night. Three bullets hit Kennedy. Five hit bystanders. Three in the ceiling and another that passed through the Senator's right coat shoulder. A total of twelve. Sirhan's gun allegedly the only weapon, is an eight-shot revolver. Also "missing" trom pólice files is the right sleeve of' Kennedy's coat, which would confirm another bullet.

In February of 1975, the Academy of Forensic Sciences conducted their own in-depth investigation into the ballistic evidence in the Kennedy shooting. The Academy, headed by Dr. Ralph Turner, a professor at Michigan State University's School of' Criminal Justice, found evidence to indicate that two guns may have been fired.

The Academy, which includes most of the nation's leading firearms, pathology and ballistic experts, called tor an immediate reopening of the investigation, and asked for "an independent, non-governmental controlled body of experts, who can really be relied upon to let the arrows of truth come to rest wherever they may be."

On October 6, Sirhan's weapon was finally refired by a panel of ballistics experts. Although the New York Times reported that a second gun was ruled out, and CBS News ran a carefully-edited interview with panel member Lowell Bradford supposedly confirming this conclusion, Bradford and several other panelists immediately protested that their findings had been misrepresented. While they had found no conclusive proof that a second gun existed, they had also determined that three of the bullets on the scene could not be traced to Sirhan's gun, thus leaving open the possibility of another assassin.

In the next segment of this article, the SUN examines the dramatic new evidence in the RIFK case developed by Donald Freed 's Campaign for Democratic Freedoms, including CIA connections to the LAPD investigators; the murder of Sirhan 's farmer cellmate at San Qucntin; and the theory that Sirhan was hypnoprogrammed to kill Kennedy.

Martin Porter, an Ann Arbor-based freelancer, has worked on the Michigan Daily and the Atlanta Constitution.