Civil Rights Events

Robert Kennedy Assassination

“Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there!” The senator had won the California primary, a crucial step before the Democratic National Convention just two months away in Chicago. In the early morning hours of June 5, 1968, Kennedy held up his index and middle finger, flashing a “V” for victory sign at the crowd, and departed the stage of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles to the sound of chants.

Within minutes, cheers gave way to screams (Shalby 1).

RFK’s assassination took place shortly after midnight on Wednesday, June 5, 1968, as RFK walked through a crowded food preparation area (better known as the kitchen pantry) in the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles, CA. This hotel was closed in 1989 and torn down in 2005. Six public schools, named the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, now stand on the site.

The alleged assassin, Sirhan B. Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestine-born non-Muslim with Jordanian citizenship, was one of approximately 77 persons in the pantry waiting for RFK to pass through on his way to a press conference. When the senator entered, Sirhan pulled out an eight-shot .22 caliber revolver, pointed it at the senator and fired eight times (Wilkes 3).

Wikipedia offers this detail.

He was on his way to another gathering of supporters elsewhere in the hotel. Reporters wanted a press conference, and 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 finished speaking and started to exit when William 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 Kennedy 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 against the right wall and a steam table to the left. Kennedy turned to his left and shook hands with busboy 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 revolver.

Kennedy fell to the floor, and bodyguard William Barry hit Sirhan twice in the face while others, including writer George Plimpton and football player Rosey Grier, forced him against the steam table and disarmed him, as he continued firing his gun in random directions. Five other people were wounded in addition to Kennedy: 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.

After a minute, Sirhan wrestled free and grabbed the revolver again, but he had already fired all the bullets and was subdued. Barry went to Kennedy and placed his jacket under the candidate's head, later recalling: "I knew immediately it was a .22, a small caliber, so I hoped it wouldn't be so bad, but then I saw the hole in the Senator's head, and I knew". Reporters and photographers rushed into the area from both directions, contributing to the confusion and chaos. As Kennedy lay wounded, Juan Romero cradled his head and placed a rosary in his hand. Kennedy asked Romero, "Is everybody OK?" and Romero responded, "Yes, everybody's OK." Kennedy then turned away and said, "Everything's going to be OK." This moment was captured by Life photographer Bill Eppridge and Boris Yaro of the Los Angeles Times and became the iconic image of the assassination. There was some initial confusion concerning who was shot, one witness believing that the primary victim was Kennedy's campaign manager and brother-in-law Stephen Edward Smith. Another witness stated that a female in a polka-dot dress had exclaimed repeatedly, "We killed him," before running away. Video footage of the witness's testimony can be seen in the Netflix series “Bobby Kennedy for President.”

Kennedy's wife Ethel was three months pregnant; she stood outside the crush of people at the scene seeking help. She was soon led to her husband and knelt beside him. He turned his head and seemed to recognize her. Smith promptly appeared on television and calmly asked for a doctor. Friend and journalist Pete Hamill recalled that Kennedy had "a kind of sweet accepting smile on his face, as if he knew it would all end this way". After several minutes, medical attendants arrived and lifted Kennedy onto a stretcher, prompting him to whisper, "Don't lift me", which were his last words, as he lost consciousness shortly after. He was taken a mile away to Central Receiving Hospital, where he arrived near death. One doctor slapped his face, calling, "Bob, Bob", while another doctor manually massaged his heart. After obtaining a good heartbeat, doctors handed a stethoscope to Ethel so that she could hear his heart beating.

After about 30 minutes, Kennedy was transferred several blocks to the Hospital of the Good Samaritan to undergo surgery (Assassination 4-5).

These are the recorded words of Mutual Broadcasting System reporter Andrew West:

Senator Kennedy has been … Senator Kennedy has been shot! Is that possible? It is possible, ladies and gentlemen! It is possible! He has … Not only Senator Kennedy! Oh my God! … I am right here, and Rafer Johnson has hold of the man who apparently fired the shot! He still has the gun! The gun is pointed at me right this moment! Get the gun! Get the gun! Get the gun! Stay away from the guy! Get his thumb! Get his thumb! Break it if you have to! Get the gun, Rafer [Johnson]! Hold him! We don’t want another Oswald (Kilgore 1).

Another eye-witness, Ivor Davis:

Suddenly, I heard balloons popping. One, two, three, four, five and six.

Then screams. I stepped into the pantry — and there on the concrete floor lay the candidate. Blood gushed from a head wound.

The scene was sheer bedlam.

“Get the gun,” yelled a radio newsman.

“Give him air,” screamed Ethel, cushioning her husband’s head on a straw hat on the floor.

“Not again,” shrieked a Bobby supporter (Davis 4-5).

Sirhan [had been] … seized by bystanders, wrestled to the floor and turned over to police when they arrived (Wilkes 3).

… No fewer than five physicians were in attendance at the California presidential primary, including a trauma surgeon. Within minutes of the shooting, the senator was already receiving medical care. RFK was in a semi-conscious state, lying on the kitchen floor for 17 minutes as paramedics were en route. His left eye was shut, his right eye open, but with the pupil shifted to the right. Kennedy was still able to move all four of his limbs.

But then Kennedy began to lose consciousness, prompting one of the doctors, a radiologist named Stanley Abo, to examine the senator’s head wound. A small blood clot had formed at the site of the bullet hole, so Abo inserted his finger into the hole to disrupt the clot. “With that action, the clot dislodged, blood flowed freely from the bullet hole, and Kennedy’s consciousness briefly improved,”…

By 12:32 am, RFK was on a stretcher and on his way to LA’s Central Receiving Hospital, arriving at 12:45 am. He was immediately cared for by Dr. V. Faustin Bazilauskas. At this stage, Kennedy’s gaze became fixed, he wasn’t breathing, and his pulse was almost impossible to detect. The medical staff hooked him up to an IV, inserted an oral airway, placed a respirator mask on his face, and started compressions, which went on for 10 minutes. They also gave him some adrenaline and other medications. Eventually, the senator’s blood pressure returned. It soon became obvious to Bazilauskas and his colleague Dr. Albert Holt that they weren’t able to offer the care required to treat Kennedy’s injuries, so they transferred him to the Good Samaritan Hospital. … the delay in getting the senator to the appropriate hospital was the biggest mistake made that evening—a problem caused when the initial call for ambulance was made, and the nature of Kennedy’s injuries was not fully disclosed.

“If the dispatcher had known the injury was a gunshot to the head, the ambulance driver would likely have been instructed to bypass the smaller hospital and go directly to the nearby 400-bed Good Samaritan Hospital,”…

… the delay ultimately didn’t have an effect on the final outcome.

Once at the ICU unit of the new hospital and placed under the care of Drs. Paul A. Ironside and Hubert Humble, RFK was disrobed so that his other two wounds could be inspected. He had a gunshot wound on the right side of his back, with X-rays showing a bullet lodged in his neck; the injury was not considered life threatening. He also had a wound on his right shoulder, but no other bullets were found lodged within his body.

The senator was now in very bad shape, and he was no longer responding to pain. At 2:45 am, Kennedy was transferred to the operating room where he received an emergency craniotomy. In 1968, doctors did not have the benefit of modern medical tools such as computed tomography (CT) scans, but they did have X-rays, and they were able to perform brain surgery, and in a manner similar to how it’s still done today.

Over the course of the three hour and 45 minute long craniotomy, the doctors worked to remove as many bits of bone and bullet fragments as possible. After the surgery, RFK regained some motor activity on the right side of his body, as shown by his response to a pin prick.

…

RFK remained relatively stable in the hours following the surgery, but by 6:00 pm on June 5, about 12 hours after the craniotomy, his condition began to deteriorate. The pressure in his brain began to rise, his electroencephalogram readings became flat, and he stopped breathing. Kennedy never regained consciousness, and he was pronounced dead at 1:44 am local time on June 6, 1968 (Dvorsky 2-4).

Here are additional recollections of individuals who were present at the hotel.

Boris Yaro had arrived at the Ambassador Hotel at 10:30 the night of June 4. The Los Angeles Times reporter was off-duty and hoping to grab a photo of Kennedy. Hours later, after Kennedy took the stage and addressed the crowd, Yaro shouted at the senator to hold up two fingers. He missed the shot.

Yaro saw an opening to the kitchen. Maybe now he’d get his chance.

Gunshots rang out.

Six people were wounded by the gunfire. Only one would die.

“The reaction I had was, ‘My God, not again.’”

Yaro saw Kennedy slip to the floor as bystanders grabbed the shooter and slammed his hand down on a freezer top, knocking the gun loose.

“I reached out and picked up that revolver,” Yaro said. “I remember the grip was still warm.”

William Barry, Kennedy’s bodyguard and a former FBI agent, grabbed the gun. Rosey Grier, the football player, reportedly sat on the gunman until police arrived.

Kennedy was on his back, drenched in blood. Yaro took six frames.

He headed to The Times’ office. He turned over his film and, after describing what he had seen to the reporter writing the story, went into the darkroom to see the images.

There, in the darkness, he wept (Shalby 1-2).

Juan Romero is 17, working as a busboy. He hears that Bobby Kennedy has won the California Democratic primary in a bid for the presidency of the United States. Romero rushes to the food service area Kennedy is passing through and reaches out to congratulate the man he had met the night before while delivering room service.

And then the shots, the screams, the commotion.

Kennedy goes down, flat on his back, a ghostly look in his eyes. Romero crouches to help, and the black-and-white photographs freeze forever the image of a young immigrant laborer at the side of fallen American aristocracy.

…

He’d grown up in Mexico, moved to the U.S. at 10, began getting into trouble while going to Hollenbeck Middle School and then Roosevelt High in Boyle Heights. His unfailingly strict stepfather worked at the Ambassador and helped Romero get a job as a busboy to keep him off the street. Romero lifted a pair of rosary beads from the glove compartment of his mother’s car and carried them in his pocket to ward off the temptation to miss school or be late for work.

Bobby Kennedy, candidate for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, checked into the hotel at the end of the California primary. Romero, who recalled homes in Mexico with photos of the pope and of John F. Kennedy, badly wanted to meet a Kennedy. He told other busboys he’d do anything for them if they let him take a room service call from the candidate.

Romero and a waiter knocked at the door, then pushed two food carts into the room. Several people were present. Kennedy stood at a bay window, finished up a phone call and turned to the visitors.

“He said, ‘Come on in, boys,’” Romero recalls, the memory bringing a smile to his face.

“I remember staring at him with my mouth open, and I see him shaking the hand of a waiter and then reaching out to me. I remember him grabbing my hand and he gave me a two-handed shake,” said Romero.

“He had piercing blue eyes, and he looked right at you. You knew he was looking at you and not through you … I remember walking out of that room … feeling 10 feet tall, feeling like an American.… I didn’t feel like I was Mexican, and I didn’t feel like I was a busboy, and I didn’t feel like I was 17 years old. I felt like I was right there with him.”

The next night, when Kennedy won the primary and made his victory speech at the Ambassador, Romero pushed through the crowd, eager to congratulate him, and to shake his hand once more.

He reached out, and the bullets tore into Kennedy. Romero took out his rosary beads and tried to press them into Kennedy’s hand (Lopez 1-2, 4-5).

SMCC student, Vince Dipierro:

"I couldn't eat for two days. I still get a sick feeling when I'm near the place where he was shot . . . when they brought me home from the first FBI interrogation, there were five police cars parked in front of my place. I felt like a star witness! As it turned out I was the only one who actually saw the first fatal shot fired at Robert Kennedy."

It all started as Vince, a part time Ambassador Hotel waiter, was standing five feet from Kennedy: Sirhan's sickly smile, a smiling girl in a polka dot dress, a quickly raised pistol, and bang! bang! bang! bang! and bang! Fifth Shot. It was the fifth shot that, according to FBI investigators, could have hit Vince in the neck if he hadn't been knocked to the floor by the men wounded on each side of him. "I was scared and numb, never so scared in my life. I trembled for the next two days, couldn't work for ten days. I was still upset when I went back to work." …

… "Sirhan knew exactly what he was doing. That smile on his face; he thought he was making a hero out of himself. He deserves the death penalty. "You know, I'll never forget the feel of Kennedy's blood as it splattered gently on the side of my face. Like someone had dipped his hand in warm water and flicked his fingers at me . . . and the ten hours of questioning by the LAPD and the FBI . . . the lie detector test a month later ... to prove that I had really seen the girl in the polka dot dress . . . and the four days in court as a prosecution witness." … (RFK 1-2).

"I have those dreams of seeing Bobby’s body fall down," Corbett said Tuesday. "It’s very strong, and it doesn’t go away. Despite 50 years behind me, I still replay those memories in slow motion."

Dick Corbett was Kennedy’s presidential campaign head of finance. Corbett remembers passing rows of stainless steel work tables littered with dirty dishes and Kennedy shaking the hand of a skinny busboy.

Then, a small man with a .22-caliber revolver stepped out from behind a rack of trays.

Corbett was standing over Kennedy’s right shoulder and saw the gun but didn’t react. It didn’t seem real. By the time the shooter was done, Kennedy was hit three times — once behind his ear, once in his chest and once in the back of his neck. Three other people also had been hit.

Kennedy crumpled to the floor, and the busboy — Juan Modesto [actually Romero], now 67 and living in Modesto, Calif. — found himself cradling Kennedy’s bleeding head in his hands. Corbett remembers bending down and loosening Kennedy’s tie. Blood and the smell of gunpowder was everywhere.

Kennedy was pronounced dead at 1:44 a.m. at Good Samaritan hospital. The family wanted somebody they knew and trusted to remain with the body as an autopsy was performed.

"So I stayed in the morgue, in the basement, the whole night. I watched the coroner perform the autopsy," Corbett said. "The smell of embalming fluid still turns my stomach."

Two days later, Corbett was part of the funeral train that traveled from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

…

"It was a complete change in my life. All the starry-eyed excitement of youth, when you are following somebody who had such an important cause, just dimmed. Bobby’s death killed me" (Fanning 1-3).

Sirhan’s California state court trial for the murder of RFK began on Feb. 13, 1969, and ended two months later on Apr. 17, when the jury found Sirhan guilty. The trial judge imposed a death sentence, reduced to life imprisonment by the California Supreme Court in 1972. Incarcerated now for 51 years, Sirhan is still serving that sentence.

The official government version of the RFK assassination—the stated view of the FBI, the Los Angeles Police Department and prosecutors in the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office—is that Sirhan was the lone assassin, that Sirhan fired all the shots in the pantry and that there was no conspiracy. According to the official narrative of the assassination, therefore, a single assassin acting alone slew RFK.

However, for persons who have scrutinized the facts surrounding the RFK assassination, or examined the quality of the official investigation, the official account lacks credibility.

Today, it is evident that there are glaring weaknesses in the official account—particularly its no-conspiracy contention. Major discrepancies exist between the official account and the actual evidence. The official probe of the murder was substandard and amounted to a cover-up. There is ballistics and autopsy evidence establishing the existence of a conspiracy (Wilkes 3).

Critics of the police investigation have alleged the following. There had been a second shooter, possibly a woman in a polka-dot dress or the man allegedly seen accompanying her, both supposedly seen with Sirhan several days earlier. Sirhan may have been hypnotized. At least 13 shots had been fired; Sirhan’s pistol had had no more than 8 bullets. The three bullets that had struck Kennedy had come from behind him, not from the front of him.

A 2018 medical research team from Duke University School of Medicine, after reviewing a number of sources while conducting its review of the assassination -- including eyewitness accounts, various medical records, and the autopsy report itself – did concluded that Sirhan’s bullets struck Kennedy and that he was the lone shooter.

… many people witnessed the shooting. Much has been made of the fact that the assassin approached Kennedy from the front, but the gunshot wounds were in the back. Several witnesses documented that Kennedy’s head was turned to his left as he was shot, which explains the trajectory of the bullets. In addition, witnesses claim that Sirhan came no closer than a foot from Kennedy when the shooting occurred, but the autopsy report estimates that the gun was within inches of the skin based on the presence of gunpowder in the wound. The same witnesses did not see another shooter. Despite concern over the trajectory of the bullet and controversy about gunpowder on the skin, there was never clear evidence of conspiracy and Sirhan was ruled the lone gunman (Dvorsky 6).

You may read a detailed argument for a second shooter by accessing https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Robert_Kennedy_Assassination.html

Inside St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, before 2,100 people wearing black, the last surviving Kennedy brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, began his unannounced eulogy for Bobby.

“On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world,” the young senator from Massachusetts said on June 8, 1968. “We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son.”

…

“He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side,” Ted Kennedy said at the funeral. “Love is not an easy feeling to put into words. Nor is loyalty, or trust, or joy. But he was all of these. He loved life completely and he lived it intensely.”

…

“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it,” he said. “Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him.”

He paused, regaining his composure to quote Bobby a final time: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not” (Mettler 1, 2, 4).

Works cited:

“Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.” Wikipedia. Web. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Robert_F._Kennedy#Assassination

Davis, Ivor. “The Night Bobby Kennedy Was Shot – An Eyewitness Account 50 Years Later.” The Wrap. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.thewrap.com/night-bobby-kennedy-died-eyewitness-account-ivor-davis/

Dvorsky, George. “New Medical Analysis Shows What Really Happened on the Night Robert F. Kennedy Was Assassinated.” Gizmodo. June 19, 2018. Web. https://gizmodo.com/new-medical-analysis-shows-what-really-happened-on-the-1826949062

Fanning, Ed. “Dick Corbett of Tampa, Witness to RFK Assassination, Still Feels the Loss Every Day.” Tampa Bay Times. June 5, 2018. Web. https://www.tampabay.com/news/Dick-Corbett-of-Tampa-witness-to-RFK-assassination-still-feels-the-loss-every-day_168875497

Kilgore, Ed. “The Powerful Myth of Would-Be President RFK, 50 Years Later.” Intelligencer. June 5, 2018. Web. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/06/the-50th-anniversary-of-robert-f-kennedys-assassination.html

Lopez, Steve. “Column: 50 Years Later, the RFK Busboy Still Waits on Someone to Follow in Kennedy’s Footsteps.” Los Angeles Times. June 2, 2018. Web. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lopez-rfk-busboy-20180602-story.html

Mettler, Katie. “‘Those He Youched’: Ted Kennedy’s Heartbreaking Eulogy for His Slain Brother, Bobby.” The Washington Post. June 8, 2018. Web. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/06/08/those-he-touched-ted-kennedys-heartbreaking-eulogy-for-his-slain-brother-bobby/?noredirect=on

“RFK Assassination Eyewitness Recalls Horror Of June 6,1968.” California Digital Newspaper Collection. April 30, 1969. Web. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=CRS19690430.2.15&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1

Shalby, Colleen. “The Assassination of Robert Kennedy, as Told 50 Years Later.” Los Angeles Times. June 4, 2018. Web. https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-na-robert-f-kennedy/

Wilkes Jr., Donald E. “The Real Story of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.” Flagpole. June 19, 2019. Web. https://flagpole.com/news/news-features/2019/06/19/the-real-story-of-the-assassination-of-robert-f-kennedy