SIRHAN SIRHAN
Name: Sirhan Bishara Sirhan
Born: 19 March 1944 Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
Charge(s) assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Penalty death, commuted to life imprisonment 1972
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (born March 19, 1944) is the convicted assassin of United
States Senator Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy. He is currently serving a life
sentence at the state penitentiary in Corcoran, California.
Sirhan was born in Jerusalem to Christian Palestinian parents and was raised in
the Maronite Church. In his adult life however, he made several religious
conversions, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and dabbled in
the occult. His family, which moved to the United States when Sirhan was 12,
briefly lived in New York, and soon moved to California. He attended John Muir
High School and Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California and was employed
as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California.
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver into the
crowd surrounding Senator Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel
in Los Angeles. This occurred shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing
supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George Plimpton, Rosey Grier (a writer,
NFL defensive lineman, and Kennedy's close friend/bodyguard), and Olympic gold
medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan
after a lengthy struggle.
Kennedy was shot three times, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket,
and died nearly 26 hours later. Five other persons in the party also were shot,
but all five recovered: Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile
Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter
with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger,
one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and a teenager, Irwin Stroll, a Kennedy
volunteer.
On February 10, 1969, a motion by Sirhan's lawyers to enter a plea of guilty to
first degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment (rather than the death
penalty) was made in chambers and denied. The court judge, Herbert V. Walker,
ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.
On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Sirhan claimed that he had killed
Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought," although he has maintained since
being arrested that he has no memory of the crime. The judge did not accept this
confession and it was later withdrawn.
Sirhan had long dealt with anger over Israel's creation in 1948 Sirhan
supposedly believed 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
assassination. However, the "RFK must die" diary entries started before Kennedy's
support of Israel became public knowledge. After his arrest,
these journals and diaries were discovered. Most of the entries were incoherent
and repetitive, though a single entry obsessed over a desire to kill Kennedy.
When confronted with this entry, Sirhan couldn't deny writing them, but rather
expressed bafflement.
Name: Sirhan Bishara Sirhan
Born: 19 March 1944 Jerusalem, British Mandate of Palestine
Charge(s) assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Penalty death, commuted to life imprisonment 1972
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan (born March 19, 1944) is the convicted assassin of United
States Senator Robert F. (Bobby) Kennedy. He is currently serving a life
sentence at the state penitentiary in Corcoran, California.
Sirhan was born in Jerusalem to Christian Palestinian parents and was raised in
the Maronite Church. In his adult life however, he made several religious
conversions, joining Baptist and Seventh-day Adventist churches, and dabbled in
the occult. His family, which moved to the United States when Sirhan was 12,
briefly lived in New York, and soon moved to California. He attended John Muir
High School and Pasadena City College in Pasadena, California and was employed
as a stable boy in 1965 at the Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia, California.
On June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver into the
crowd surrounding Senator Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel
in Los Angeles. This occurred shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing
supporters in the hotel's main ballroom. George Plimpton, Rosey Grier (a writer,
NFL defensive lineman, and Kennedy's close friend/bodyguard), and Olympic gold
medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan
after a lengthy struggle.
Kennedy was shot three times, with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket,
and died nearly 26 hours later. Five other persons in the party also were shot,
but all five recovered: Paul Schrade, an official with the United Automobile
Workers union; William Weisel, an ABC TV unit manager; Ira Goldstein, a reporter
with the Continental News Service; Elizabeth Evans, a friend of Pierre Salinger,
one of Kennedy's campaign aides; and a teenager, Irwin Stroll, a Kennedy
volunteer.
On February 10, 1969, a motion by Sirhan's lawyers to enter a plea of guilty to
first degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment (rather than the death
penalty) was made in chambers and denied. The court judge, Herbert V. Walker,
ordered that the record pertaining to the motion be sealed.
On March 3, 1969, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Sirhan claimed that he had killed
Kennedy "with 20 years of malice aforethought," although he has maintained since
being arrested that he has no memory of the crime. The judge did not accept this
confession and it was later withdrawn.
Sirhan had long dealt with anger over Israel's creation in 1948 Sirhan
supposedly believed 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
assassination. However, the "RFK must die" diary entries started before Kennedy's
support of Israel became public knowledge. After his arrest,
these journals and diaries were discovered. Most of the entries were incoherent
and repetitive, though a single entry obsessed over a desire to kill Kennedy.
When confronted with this entry, Sirhan couldn't deny writing them, but rather
expressed bafflement.