On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California and pronounced dead the following day.
Kennedy, a United States senator and candidate in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries, won the California and South Dakota primaries on June 4.
He addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Ballroom. After leaving the podium, and exiting through a kitchen hallway, he was mortally wounded by multiple shots fired by Sirhan. Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital nearly 25 hours later. His body was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1. Why was he there?
California Primary
After a long time thinking about it, Kennedy had decided to run for President. In the previous election the people had wanted him to be Johnson’s running mate but he refused and instead ran for and won.
Seat in the United States Senate. During his time there he opposed Johnson’s stance on the war.
Once 1968 came around he finally threw his hat into the ring for president. He did so only a few days before Dr. King was killed. He would end up only being on the campaign trail for a matter of months.
The California presidential primary elections were held on June 4, 1968. Polls by CBS showed Kennedy leading by 7 percent. The statewide results gave Kennedy 46 percent to McCarthy’s 42 percent.
Kennedy also won the South Dakota primary, winning approximately 50 percent of the vote.Author Joseph Palermo referred to the victory as Kennedy’s “greatest”. He was now in second place with 3931⁄2 total delegates, against Humphrey’s 5611⁄2 delegates.
At approximately 12:02 a.m. PDT the next day, Kennedy addressed his campaign supporters in the Ambassador Hotel‘s Embassy Ballroom in the Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles.At the time, the government did not provide Secret Service protection for presidential candidates.
- What happened the night of the shooting? (Midnight)
Kennedy’s only security personnel were former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent William Barry and two unofficial bodyguards: Olympic decathlon gold medalist Rafer Johnson and former football player Rosey Grier.
At approximately 12:10 a.m., concluding his victory speech, Kennedy said: “So my thanks to all of you and on to Chicago and let’s win there.”
Kennedy planned to walk through the ballroom after speaking on his way to another gathering of supporters, but reporters wanted a press conference.
Campaign aide Fred Dutton decided that Kennedy would forgo the second gathering and instead go through the hotel’s kitchen and pantry area behind the ballroom to the press area.
Kennedy had welcomed contact with the public during the campaign, and people had often tried to touch him in excitement.
Soon after Kennedy concluded the speech, he started to exit through the ballroom when Barry stopped him and said, “No, it’s been changed. We’re going this way.”
Barry and Dutton began clearing a way for Kennedy to go left, through swinging doors, to the kitchen corridor, but he was hemmed in by the crowd and followed maître d’hôtel Karl Uecker through a back exit.
Uecker led Kennedy through the kitchen area, holding his right wrist, but frequently releasing it as Kennedy shook hands with people whom he encountered. Uecker and Kennedy started down a passageway narrowed by an ice machine and a steam table to the north.
Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with Juan Romero, just as Sirhan Sirhan stepped down from a low tray-stacker beside the ice-machine, rushed past Uecker, and repeatedly fired an eight-shot .22 Long Rifle caliber Iver Johnson Cadet 55-A revolverat point-blank range.
Kennedy fell to the floor; others, including writer George Plimpton and Grier, tried to disarm Sirhan, as he continued firing his gun in random directions.
Five other people were wounded: William Weisel of ABC News, Paul Schrade of the United Automobile Workers union, Democratic Party activist Elizabeth Evans, Ira Goldstein of the Continental News Service, and Kennedy campaign volunteer Irwin Stroll. A minute later, Sirhan wrestled free and grabbed the revolver again, but others grabbed him.
Barry went to Kennedy and placed his jacket under Kennedy’s head.As Kennedy lay wounded, Romero cradled his head and placed a rosary in his hand.
Kennedy asked Romero, “Is everybody OK?”; Romero responded, “Yes, everybody’s OK.” Kennedy then turned away and said, “Everything’s going to be OK.” The moment was captured by Boris Yaro of the Los Angeles Times and became the iconic image of the assassination.
- Who did the shooting?
Sirhan Sirhan
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (/sɪərˈhɑːn/; born March 19, 1944) is a Palestinian-Jordanian man who was convicted of murdering American politician Robert F. Kennedy, the younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy.
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert shortly after 12 a.m. at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; Robert died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital.
The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after John’s assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories.
In 1989, Sirhan told British journalist David Frost: “My only connection with Robert Kennedy was his sole support of Israel and his deliberate attempt to send those 50 fighter jets to Israel to obviously do harm to the Palestinians.”
Some scholars believe that the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Sirhan carried out the attack on the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War), though it occurred at a time when the American public was overwhelmingly focused on the Vietnam War.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born into an Arab Palestinian Christian family in Mandatory Palestine, in Jerusalem‘s Musrara neighborhood, and became a Jordanian citizen after Jordan annexed the West Bank.
According to his mother, Sirhan was traumatized as a child by the violence he witnessed in the Arab–Israeli conflict, including the death of his older brother, who was run over by a military vehicle that was swerving to evade gunfire.
When Sirhan was 12 years old, his family immigrated to the U.S., moving briefly to New York and then to California. He attended Eliot Junior High School, John Muir High School, and Pasadena City College.
Shortly after the family’s move to California, Bishara returned alone to the Middle East. Standing 5 feet 5 inches (165 cm) and weighing 120 pounds (54 kg) at age 20, Sirhan moved to Corona to train to be a jockey while working at a stable, but lost his job and abandoned the pursuit after suffering a head injury in a racing accident.
Sirhan never became a U.S. citizen, instead retaining his Jordanian citizenship.
As an adult, Sirhan changed church denominations several times, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches.
In 1966, he joined the esoteric organization Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, one of the Rosicrucian Orders.
4 Why did he do it?
A motive cited for Sirhan’s actions is the Middle East conflict. After his arrest, Sirhan said, “I can explain it. I did it for my country.”
Sirhan believed that he was deliberately betrayed by Kennedy’s support for Israel in the June 1967 Six-Day War,which had begun exactly one year before the date of the assassination.
During a search of Sirhan’s apartment after his arrest, a spiral-bound notebook was found containing a diary entry that demonstrated that his anger had gradually fixated on Kennedy, who had promised to send 50 fighter jets to Israel if elected president.
Sirhan’s journal entry of May 18, 1968, read: “My determination to eliminate R.F.K. is becoming the more and more [sic] of an unshakable obsession…Kennedy must die before June 5th.”
They found other notebooks and diary entries expressing his growing rage at Kennedy; his journals also contained many aphorisms that were thought to be his version of “free writing“.
He wrote in support of communism: “Long live Communism… I firmly support the communist cause and its people… American capitalism will fall and give way to the worker’s dictatorship.
What happened to the shooter?
Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death but his sentenced was commuted to life in prison due to a court decision in 1972 called People V. Anderson.
He is still alive today. He was almost parolled multiple times. As recently as 2022 his parole was denied by Gavin Newsome who said he doesn’t seem to have what it takes to be a good addition to society (I’m paraphrasing)
Conspiracies?
They have tried to create conspiracies with this murder. The same ones come about that we have talked about with the last 2 assassinations. CIA and the idea of there being another shooter.
Some witnesses there that night claim to have seen a second gunmen or that they saw a bullet come in from a different direction in addition to Sirhan Sirhan.
In addition, RFK JR. who is currently running for President said in a 2018 interview that after speaking with Sirhan Sirhan behind closed doors he was convinced of his innonence.
I’m not sure with this one. Sirhan’s reason seems pretty straight forward, but I think its like what we talked about with the murders of Dr. King hand his family. All of the murders by themselves don’t warrant cause for conspiracy but when you add them all up it starts to get a little suspect.
When you add in JFK’s murder, with Dr. King’s murder it makes you wonder if maybe there was some government conspiracy to maintain the status quo and each one of these men were working to change with that.
Work Cited
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._Kennedy#cite_note-FOOTNOTEAyton2007x-2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People_v._Anderson