The official record states that senator Robert F Kennedy,
like his brother before him, was killed by a crazed
lone gunman. But the assassination of a man who
seemed to embody so much hope for a bitterly
divided country embroiled in an unpopular war
still troubles this nation.
Little about the official explanation of the events
at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 1968 makes
sense. Now a new forensic analysis of the only
audio recording of the fatal shots has given new
weight to a controversial theory that there
were in fact two shooters, and that the man
convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan
- did not fire the fatal shots.
Following his victory speech to supporters after
clinching a tight democratic primary victory in California,
Kennedy left the podium in the Embassy ballroom
to address a press conference.
But the shortcut he and his entourage took through
the hotel's pantry quickly descended into bloody
mayhem. As Kennedy turned from shaking hands
with two of the kitchen staff, a gunman stepped
forward and began firing. Kennedy was hit by
four shots including one which lodged in the
vertebrae in his neck and another which entered
his brain from below his right ear. He died in hospital
the following day. Five other people were injured but survived.
Sirhan - a Palestinian refugee who said he wanted to
"sacrifice" Kennedy "for the cause of the poor
exploited people" - was quickly apprehended.
He was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.
"Sirhan was apprehended at the scene with literally
a smoking gun," said acoustic forensic expert Philip
Van Praag of PVP Designs, who has carried out the
new analysis. "At the beginning many people looked
upon this as an open-and-shut case. It was one man,
Sirhan Sirhan, who was observed by a number of
people, who aimed and fired a gun in the direction
of Kennedy's entourage."
But the lone gunman explanation has always looked
shaky. The autopsy of Kennedy's body suggested
that all four shots that hit him came from behind,
and powder marks on his skin showed they must
have been from close range.
But Sirhan was in front of Kennedy when he fired, and
after shooting two shots was overcome by hotel staff,
who pinned him to a table. Also, Sirhan fired eight
shots in total, yet 14 were found lodged around the
room and in the victims.
"There is no doubt in our minds that no fewer than
14 shots were fired in the pantry on that evening and
that Sirhan did not in fact kill Senator Kennedy,"
said Robert Joling, a forensic scientist who has been
involved with the Kennedy case for nearly 40 years.
He and Van Praag have published a book on the killing
this week entitled "An Open and Shut Case".
The inconsistencies in the case have bred numerous
conspiracy theories, including the involvement of the
CIA and the idea that Sirhan - who claims not to
remember the shooting and pleaded insanity at his
trial - was a "Manchurian Candidate" assassin who
was hypnotically programmed to kill the senator.
Now Van Praag has added new weight to the
'two shooters' theory. He reanalysed the only audio
recording of the shooting, which was made by an
independent journalist, Stanislaw Pruszynski. "At
the time Pruszynski was not even aware that his
recorder was still on," said Van Praag.
The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to
make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5
seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-
curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than
the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson
Cadet 55 revolver carried.
Also, there are two pairs of double shots that occurred
so close together it is inconceivable that Sirhan could
have fired them all. The third and fourth shots and the
seventh and eighth were separated by 122 and 149
milliseconds respectively. In tests, a trained firearms
expert firing under ideal conditions could only manage
366 milliseconds between shots using the same weapon.
And he was not being pinned to a table at the time.
Lastly, five of the shots - 3, 5, 8, 10 and 12 in the
sequence - were found to have odd acoustic
characteristics when specific frequencies were analysed
separately. Van Praag thinks this is because they came
from a different gun pointing away from Pruszynski's
microphone.
To recreate this he recorded the sounds made by firing
the Iver Johnson and another revolver, a Harrison and
Richardson 922. At least one member of Kennedy's
entourage was carrying this weapon when the killing
happened. In the acoustic tests it produced the same
frequency anomalies Van Praag had seen in the original
recording but only when fired away from the microphone.
He presented his results on Thursday at the
American Academy of Forensic Sciences annual
meeting in Washington DC.
Paul Schrade, a close associate of Kennedy's who was
director of the United Auto Workers union, was at the
senator's side in the pantry and was shot in the head.
He told the meeting that America lost an outstanding
leader and potentially great president that day.
"I think we were in a position of really changing this
country," he said. "What we lost was a real hope and
possibility of having a better country and having better
relations around the world."
He wants to see the case reopened and properly
investigated. "We're going to go ahead and do our
best to find out who the second gunman was and that's
going to take a lot of work," he said.
Van Praag also wants the case reexamined.
"We would hope that the evidence that we have
uncovered ... would make a strong enough case to get
serious consideration once again by the authorities," he said.
Most media outlets are ignoring this story because they know full well Van Praag's analysis is flawed. See: http://hnn.us/articles/44466.html
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, Van Praag's claim that up to 13 shots were fired in the pantry has proven to be flawed by a team of UK acoustics experts. It should be noted these experts are ACOUSTICS scientists - Van Praag is an audio engineer - they are totally different areas of science.
Additionally, earwitness testimony had never established a scenario in which 13 shots had been possible. FBI files show that the majority of pantry witnesses never heard such a large number of shots fired. The FBI files, furthermore, show that no one who had been in the pantry when Robert Kennedy was shot told the FBI or LAPD that 13 shots had been fired. Only one witness gave this number but she never said this at the time she made her original statement in 1968. In 1992 Nina Rhodes told conspiracy authors that she heard from 10-14 shots.
Most of the pantry witnesses described the gunshots in terms of a ‘number of shots’, ‘a series of firecrackers’, ‘several shots’ or ‘a number of shots in rapid succession’. Suzanne Locke said she heard ‘8 or 10’ shots. Most witnesses could not remember how many shots had been fired. However, of those witnesses who ventured an opinion about how many shots had been fired the vast majority put the number of shots at 8 or less, including:
Barbara Rubin – ‘3 shots followed by 5 quick shots’.
Lon Bruce Rubin – ‘6 shots’.
Charles Bailey – ‘5 shots’.
Jimmy Breslin – ‘4 or 5 shots’.
Stanley Kawalac – ‘4 shots’.
Robert Ray Breshears – ‘4 shots’.
Thomas Perez - ‘7 shots in about 3 seconds’.
Uno Timanson – ‘3 or 4 shots’.
Rafer Johnson - ‘I don’t know how many shots, I couldn’t count them to tell you the truth, but I know it was like four or five.’
There is also a fair amount of consistency amongst a number of witnesses as to the grouping of the shots – first one, two or three shots then a pause followed by a rapid succession of shots. Kristi Witker said, “People were running in all directions. . . . there were two very distinct series of pop-pop-pop . . . pop-pop-pop-pop-pop. Three pops, then five -eight in all. . . . I saw the gunman standing, pointing the gun and firing.”
Bill Eppridge said that when he got to ‘some doors that seemed small for the crowd’ he heard two shots in very rapid succession – “Eppridge at first thought these were fireworks as they had been in Chinatown, San Francisco, the day before and there were many fireworks there. There was a pause after the second shot and people were scattering. Eppridge realized that what he thought were fireworks were actually shots. He ran forward instinctively thinking he had better count the shots. He counted a total of six shots.”
(FBI interview with Bill Eppridge 19 June 68)
It is also clear from eyewitness testimony that, incredibly, no one saw this purported ‘second shooter’. The pantry was small and the positioning of the people around RFK was well established by the investigations. Therefore the Discovery Channel expert’s claims that Sirhan did not shoot the fatal RFK bullet, which was fired at point blank range, leaves only one suspect for the second gun - Thane Cesar who was positioned behind the Senator.Dan Moldea has established Cesar was telling the truth. See:http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Robert-Kennedy-Investigation-Opportunity/dp/0393315347/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204099072&sr=1-1
Van Praag, in the Discovery Channel story, quickly discounted a ricochet because the end of the room is too far away to produce a ricochet sound as quickly as it is heard on the tape. However, the bullet could have ricocheted off any of the metal surfaces anywhere in the pantry, not just off the far wall. The police even identified a ricochet mark on the ceiling.