“While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Mr. Sirhan because of Sirhan’s impressive record of rehabilitation.” - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr
According to respected LA County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the official autopsy, the three bullets that entered Kennedy’s body were fired from behind him at close range. The fatal shot, Noguchi concluded, was fired from approximately one to three inches behind Kennedy’s right ear, penetrating his brain. Two other bullets entered his right armpit and a fourth went through the shoulder pad of his jacket. 2
Paul Schrade, a United Auto Workers Union executive, walking behind Kennedy, was struck by a different bullet altogether. Witnesses saw Schrade fall before the senator did, suggesting Schrade was hit by the first shot from Sirhan’s gun.3 Noguchi later stated that he believed the fifth shot killed Kennedy. Since Uecker had grabbed Sirhan’s firing hand after the second shot and, with help from others, pinned his arm to a table in front of Kennedy, Sirhan could not have fired the fifth and fatal shot from behind at point-blank range.
In the 1970s, Schrade, along with actor Robert Vaughan and former Congressman, Allard Lowenstein, requested that the LAPD and California courts reopen the case. They were repeatedly denied. Now, at the age of 96, Schrade has long ago forgiven Sirhan for shooting him and has made it his life’s work to seek parole for Sirhan and to reopen the case to determine RFK’s actual killer. He is supported by attorney Denise Bohdan whose father, Fernando Faura, was a journalist at the Ambassador Hotel that night. Faura uncovered significant evidence indicating an accomplice with Sirhan who was never investigated by the authorities. In fact, witnesses to the accomplice were browbeaten by the LAPD investigator to change their accounts.
AUTOPSY INDICATES A SECOND GUNMAN
BULLET COUNT PROVES MULTIPLE GUNMAN
In addition to the three gunshots hitting Kennedy from behind and a fourth bullet that passed through his coat, five other people were shot and injured, totaling nine shots. Sirhan’s .22 caliber gun only held eight bullets so another person would have had to be shooting as well. Within hours, FBI agent William Bailey found two additional bullets lodged in the pantry door frame, increasing the bullet count to 11. 4 Police and FBI photographs showing two more bullet holes in the pantry door divider and another two holes in the jamb of a backstage door suggested four more shots may have been fired. 5 Additionally, two witnesses reported hearing at least 12 shots.