On June 5th, 1968, at L.A.’'s Ambassador Hotel, Robert F. Kennedy celebrated his victory in the California Democratic primary with a rousing victory speech anticipating a successful run for the presidency. Moments later, gunshots shattered that dream: like his brother before him, Bobby Kennedy lay mortally wounded at the hand of an assassin. The police quickly apprehended Sirhan Sirhan, who the world believed had single-handedly masterminded the shooting. Shockingly, that may not be so, as documentary filmmaker Shane O’'Sullivan presents powerful new evidence to the contrary. In
Who Killed Bobby? O’'Sullivan makes a stunning case that will fundamentally alter the way the public views Bobby Kennedy’s death. Based on research he undertook for a documentary that will debut this year, O’'Sullivan poses such key questions as:
- “Could Sirhan have fired the fatal shot?” After the autopsy LA County Coroner Thomas Noguchi concluded that the deadly shots had been fired from an inch behind Kennedy’s right ear; yet not a single witness placed Sirhan this close; most placed his gun several feet away, and in front of the senator.
- Who was the girl in the polka-dot dress? Vincent Di Pierro saw Sirhan with a girl in a polka-dot dress in the pantry. And Sandra Serrano described a similar woman fleeing down a fire escape, exclaiming, “We shot him! We shot him!” O’'Sullivan presents new interviews with these key witnesses and details how the LAPD browbeat them into changing their stories, while investigators also insisted to the press that “no such person ever existed.”
- Was Sirhan an unwitting assassin operating under the direction of unseen manipulators? Sirhan repeatedly scrawled “RFK Must Die” in his notebook and recreated the same kind of automatic writing when later hypnotized by his defense team. O’'Sullivan cites psychiatric evidence that Sirhan was an extremely susceptible hypnotic subject, whose behavior on the night of the shooting fit the profile of a programmed assassin. Was Sirhan programmed to be a decoy for the real killer of Bobby Kennedy?
The recent release of the film
Bobby, the 40th anniversary of the shooting, and O’'Sullivan’s upcoming documentary have created renewed interest in the subject, and readers who accepted the conventional wisdom will have their beliefs shaken.
Shane O’Sullivan is an Irish writer and filmmaker based in London. He holds a PhD in Film Studies from Roehampton University and is the award winning director of three documentaries: RFK Must Die: the Assassination of Bobby Kennedy, Children of the Revolution, and Killing Oswald. His work has been featured on the BBC and Netflix, and at the Interantional Documentary Festival Amsterdam. He is the author of several books, including the forthcoming Dirty Tricks: the Dark Side of Democracy.
