Sirhan Sirhan

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Lore & Background

Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born in Jerusalem's Musrara neighborhood in Mandatory Palestine into an Arab Palestinian Christian family. He became a Jordanian citizen in December 1949. According to his mother, Mary, Sirhan was traumatized by the violence he witnessed in the Arab–Israeli conflict as a child, including the death of his older brother, who was run over by a military vehicle which was swerving to evade gunfire. At age 12, 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, John Marshall Junior High School, and Pasadena City College. Standing 5 feet 5 inches and weighing 120 pounds at age 20, he moved to Corona to train as a horse jockey but lost his job after a head injury in a racing accident. He never became a U.S. citizen, retaining his Jordanian citizenship, and joined the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross in 1966. Around 12:15 a.m. PDT on June 5, 1968, Sirhan fired a .22 LR Iver-Johnson Cadet revolver at Robert F. Kennedy and the crowd surrounding him in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Kennedy was shot three times—once in the head and twice in the back—with a fourth bullet passing through his jacket. He died about 26 hours later at Good Samaritan Hospital. Five other people were also shot, all of whom recovered: Paul Schrade, William Weisel, Ira Goldstein, Elizabeth Evans, and Irwin Stroll. Authors George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin, and Pete Hamill, former professional football player Rosey Grier, and 1960 Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among those who subdued and disarmed Sirhan. Even though Sirhan admitted his guilt in a recorded confession on June 9, the judge did not accept his confession and denied his request to withdraw his plea of 'not guilty' to plead 'guilty'. On February 10, 1969, Sirhan's lawyers made a motion to enter a plea of guilty to first-degree murder in exchange for life imprisonment; Sirhan told Judge Herbert V. Walker he wanted to plead guilty and said, 'I will ask to be executed.' Walker denied the motion. The trial proceeded, and on April 17, 1969, Sirhan was convicted of first-degree murder, among other charges. He was sentenced six days later to death by gas chamber. In 1972, his sentence was commuted to life in prison after the California Supreme Court's decision in People v. Anderson. 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 the assassination was the first major incident of political violence in the United States stemming from the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, occurring on the first anniversary of the 1967 Arab–Israeli War. Sirhan is incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego. On August 27, 2021, after 15 years of being denied parole, he was granted parole by a two-person panel. Prosecutors declined to participate or oppose his release in accordance with Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón's directive. On January 13, 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom blocked Sirhan's release on parole. He was denied parole again on March 1, 2023.

Reader's Guide

The case introduced enduring conspiracy theories, including claims of a second gunman, which Robert F. Kennedy Jr. publicly endorsed in a 2018 interview with The Washington Post after meeting Sirhan in prison. The trial itself was notable for the judge's refusal to accept Sirhan's guilty plea, leading to a full prosecution that highlighted premeditation through journal notebooks admitted into evidence that suggested the crime was 'quite calculating and willful.' Sirhan testified on March 3 that he had shot Kennedy 'with twenty years of malice aforethought,' which he later explained referred to the time since the creation of the State of Israel. The defense based its case on expert testimony from Bernard L. Diamond, a professor of law and psychiatry, who testified that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity. Sirhan's lawyer Lawrence Teeter later argued that defense attorney Grant Cooper was compromised by a conflict of interest and was grossly negligent, moving for a new trial amid claims of setups, police bungles, hypnotism, brainwashing, blackmail, and government conspiracies. On November 26, 2011, Sirhan's defense teams filed court papers for a new trial, saying 'expert analysis of recently-uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.' His repeated parole denials and the involvement of California's governor reflect ongoing legal and public controversy.

Did You Know?

• Sirhan was 24 years old at the time of the assassination on June 5, 1968.
• He never became a U.S. citizen, retaining his Jordanian citizenship.
• In 1966, he joined the esoteric Ancient Mystical Order of the Rose Cross, a Rosicrucian order.
• Sirhan told Judge Herbert V. Walker during his trial, 'I will ask to be executed.'
• On August 27, 2021, after 15 years of being denied parole, Sirhan was granted parole by a two-person panel, but California governor Gavin Newsom blocked it on January 13, 2022.