-Caveat Lector-
"I will receive money as per instructions in the bible", so wrote Sirhan
Bishara Sirhan. Sirhan's father said Sirhan came from a big famly
dating back over 1,000 years - well so do I, our family kept careful
records too and once you latch onto the royal line, you can go back as
far as you want......was Sirhan's father suggesting this short little
arab descended from a royal house?
So, Sirhan had also said his "gun was good for shootiong dogs".....he
knew of the deep and secret meanings in the bible, for he had been
carefully taught and brainwashed by masters of this black art - some
call it "mind control", but I have always called it something right out
of Song of Solomon - the Order of the Lily and the Rose, for little
Sirhan had joined the Rosicrucians - Mayor Yorty claimed the
Rosicrucians in California, were Communists?
We know in 1968 the Rosicrucians out of Quakerstown, PA wanted to turn
loose and got caught with, scorpions which they planned to use, at the
Democrat Convention which was the joke of the year.
Seems like a lot of assassins kept diary - police keep diaries only they
call them logs - intelligence agents keep dialy diaries - but Sirhan's
little diary only dwelling upon the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
I had met Bobby Kennedy a week or so before he died - he was with his
wife, who was expecting a child - I had met John F. Kennedy in the
Govenor's Office when he was a young Senator....tall, gracious and so
handsome with gray eyes, for they were not blue.
Also in the period of time, it is said RFK accepted the fact that he
would maybe die in this presidential race, and I always wondered why.
Then in July of 1968, I knew what was happening.......an intelligence
faction had turned loose a homicidal maniac loose upon the Kennedy famly
by the name of Jean Dixon an for enertainment, this woman was permitted
to mark JFK, RFK over and over for murder....they had just buried Bobby
when suddenly - she appeared in Columbus, Ohio - where she then marked
Ted Kennedy for murder by "divine revelation", for this woman had been
proclaimed by this newspaper in lead story, front page that "Divine
Prophetess Jean Dixon"......appeared in our city........
People do not seem to care much about the death of RFK - John Glenn, was
with him and this story does not even mention that fact......Teddy
almost died the eve of the landing on the moon, an then little John John
some years later, met death just prior to the big celebration at the
cape.......the show must go on, so Hilliary was there when little John
John was still in the dark waters......all prepared for a big splash in
the papers, but the shot was called off - weather condtions were not
such that this fat pig would dare desecrate the memories of the Kennedy
famly further along with her goon husband.
So the night RFK died, I watched the show - when RFK was leaving the
scene after stating On To Chicago, he turned and suddenly an excited
voice called out - almost an enfeminate voice of a man saying "This Way
Senator", and he turned with his entourage and was taken the less
traveled road through a pantry, where his killer, a little creep who
followed the path of the rose, awaited.
In 1972 while in the hospital, a letter had been written to me by a Bill
Turner and Jon Christian, who worked with Assassination Committee headed
by Bud Fensterwald - the letter was hand delivered to me by a local
police Lt. whom I know....the stamp was not cancelled - for while in the
hospital my home had been broken into and wrecked.....
Last letter I wrote to Jon C. was "get off your dead asses, they are
going to shoot George Wallace", but they did have me spying out a man by
the name of Jerry Owens, who did respond to my lettrs and his wife said
they wanted to "pay me a visit"....but Owens had had Sirhan in his van,
the night before he murdered RFK - Owens was called the Shepard of the
Hills, and I was sent his "sermons" entitled Seven Sermons by Jerry
Owens....to look through for a code, for Robert Blair Kaiser had sent my
manuscript to these two men .....
Premeditated Murder by Prophecy - The Valley of Hamon Gog "and there
shall they bury Gog and all his multituds, and they shall call it the
Valley of Hamon Gog" and in that title I did not realize what I had -
for even the secrets of Tut-ank-hamon and the death of Pope John, and
the other popes (one ate like a canary he said and then, he was dead
before this story was on the stand see Newsweek) ......
Sirhan had written Beat the drugs, roll the drums in his
diary.......like they had for JFK on his last ride to the Valley of
Hamon Gog, symbolizing Arlington Cemetery - where the day before he left
for Dallas he had climbed the high hill to the Lee Memoria, and looked
down into the valley and said "I could stay here forever"......he got
his wish but he also in death accomplished his dream to send a man to
the moon - and this is what played the major role, in his death.
That line "I could stay here forever" hit me, for JFK read his very
special bible, on the way to Dallas - he loved the chapter from
Ecclesiastics, which reads in part a time to live, and a time to die and
even a time to DANCE.....often followed by mourning and funerals -
Lamenations in the bible speaks of the dancing turning into mourning -
like the wedding in Israel and the kids who died outside a dance hall -
there are those who believe they were punished for their dancing......
The Evil Ones are Alive and Well...........they have not managed to blot
the Kennedy famly names out of the book and never will......they did
make their children fatherless, their wives widows......and another took
their high offices at the summit of their careers......right out of the
vendetta.
Wonder about the Prince and the King and Queen of Nepal......as one
subject put it, they felt like "orphans"......wonder who that guy was, a
Maoist or KGB follower? Orphans?
Saba
THE NATION
For Perspective & Determination
Once again the crackle of gunfire. Once again the long journey home,
the hushed procession, the lowered flags and harrowed faces of a nation
in grief. Once again the simple question: Why?
(TIME, June 14, 1968) -- The second Kennedy assassination -- almost two
months to the day after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. --
immediately prompted, at home and abroad, deep doubts about the
stability of America. Many saw the unleashing of a dark, latent
psychosis in the national character, a stain that had its start with the
first settlement of a hostile continent. For the young people, in
particular, who had been persuaded by the new politics of Robert Kennedy
and Eugene McCarthy to recommit themselves to the American electoral
system, the assassination seemed to confirm all their lingering
suspicions that society could not be reformed by democratic means.
The killing of Kennedy was horrifying in itself and forever haunting to
all who had suffered through the earlier agony. Yet for all the pain and
shame, in retrospect it could hardly be construed in itself as a new
symptom of any intrinsically American malaise. "Violence," said Columbia
University Sociologist Daniel Bell, "flows and ebbs, and I shy away from
easy generalizations such as the country is sick."
Other Hatreds. Kennedy was not shot by a white racist angry with his
defense of the Negro, or a Negro militant incensed with his white
liberalism, or a high-school dropout like Lee Harvey Oswald who felt
himself rejected by a capitalist society. The man charged with his
murder is a virulent Arab nationalist, whose hatreds stem from the land
where he spent the early part of his life, and where political
assassination is commonplace and violence as accepted as the desert
wind.
That, for most Americans, did not make the loss any easier to bear.
Lyndon Johnson, who has more than once brooded late into the night with
friends on the subject of violence, seemed shaken and visibly disturbed
by the shooting in Los Angeles. He did what he thought had to be done.
He promised the stricken family any help that the Government could
provide, appointed a commission to study the causes of violence, and
called, in the most vigorous language at his command, for an end to the
"insane traffic" in guns -- a trade, as he observed, that makes
instruments of death as readily purchasable as baskets of fruit or
cartons of cigarettes. Almost as he spoke, Congress sent him a crime
bill with a gun-control section, but the measure was so flabby as to be
almost as scandalous as the lack of any legislation in all the years.
Congress, on Johnson's request, also passed emergency legislation
authorizing Secret Service protection for the other major presidential
candidates (cost: $400,000 this month alone).
"Must Not Demoralize." Disturbed as he was, Johnson also reminded the
nation in a TV address that "200 million Americans did not strike down
Robert Kennedy" any more than they struck down his brother or Dr. King.
While it would be "self-deceptive to ignore the connection between
lawlessness and hatred and this act of violence," he said, "it would be
just as wrong and just as self-deceptive to conclude from this act that
our country itself is sick, that it's lost its balance, that it's lost
its sense of direction, even its common decency." In his funeral eulogy,
New York's Archbishop Terence Cooke, a member of the new violence
commission, also urged that "the act of one man must not demoralize and
incapacitate 200 million others."
Americans, contemplating both the inexpungible crime of Kennedy's
killing and the prevalence of violence in their proper perspective, can
best maintain the proper processes of American political life by
eradicating the conditions that trigger the assassin's finger.
A Life On the Way to Death
The circumstances were cruel enough: son of a house already in tragedy's
grip, father of ten with the eleventh expected, symbol of the youth and
toughness, the wealth and idealism of the nation he sought to lead --
this protean figure cut down by a small gun in a small cause. Crueler
still, perhaps, was the absence of real surprise.
It was the unspoken expectation of the veteran campaigners who traveled
with Robert Francis Kennedy that death was always somewhere out there in
the crowd. Occasionally an ordinary citizen, a Negro more often than
not, gave voice to the same fear: They won't let him live. At the first
word of the shooting, a reporter with Kennedy workers in San Francisco
wrote in his notebook: "They seemed almost to expect it. There is grief.
But more, there is a kind of weird acceptance. Horrible to see. They've
been through assassinations before."
The anthems and eulogies, the bitterness and the indignation, the fears
and the rumors, the mind-numbing saturation of television and radio
coverage engrossed the consciousness and conscience of a nation. The
pronouncements of official bereavement, the calls for constructive
action, for conciliation, for wisdom, all were unexceptionable. The
United Nations lowered its flag to half-staff -- an unprecedented
tribute to one of Kennedy's modest official rank. Pope Paul announced at
a formal audience the shooting of the junior Senator from New York.
Condolences came from Charles de Gaulle, Aleksei Kosygin, Queen
Elizabeth, Marshal Tito and scores of other world leaders.
For many, the only solace was tears openly shed. Not just for the young
and the dispossessed, but for countless people who watched and waited
from a distance and scores of tough-minded men whose lives had become
intertwined with his. Richard Cardinal Cushing, witness and minister to
so much Kennedy sorrow, concluded: "All I can say is, good Lord, what is
this all about? We could continue our prayers that it would never happen
again, but we did that before."
Faraway Tomorrow. More than anyone else, Robert Kennedy had long felt
the possibility that some day people would no longer be able to mention
"the Kennedy assassination" without specifying which one. In 1966, he
responded to a question about his long range political plans by saying:
"Six years is so far away, tomorrow is so far away. I don't even know if
I'll be alive in six years." More recently: "If anyone wants to kill me
it won't be difficult." And he was fond of quoting Edith Hamilton: "Men
are not made for safe havens."
Whether gulping fresh air as a tyro mountain climber or rapids shooter,
staring down hostile students in South America or frenzied crowds at
home, he had only a shrug for death. He made a point of declining police
protection when it was offered -- as it was last week in Los Angeles --
and his unofficial bodyguard went unarmed. To the crowds whose raucous
adulation drew him endlessly to the brink of physical peril, he seemed
to offer a choice: Raise me up with your voices and votes, or trample me
with your strength.
In California, as last week began, it seemed that they had opted to
raise him up. The last day of primary campaigning went well. While the
voters in California and South Dakota were revivifying his candidacy,
Kennedy renewed his morale by romping on the beach at Malibu with Ethel
and six of their children. He had to rescue David, 12, from a strong
undertow -- but what Kennedy day was complete without a little danger?
Characteristic Mixture. Then it was on to the Ambassador Hotel, near
downtown Los Angeles, to wait out the vote count. Already high spirits
rose with the favorable totals. In South Dakota, he won 50% of the vote,
v. 30% for a slate favorable to Native Son Hubert Humphrey and 20% for
Eugene McCarthy; then, in the far more crucial California contest, it
was 46% for Kennedy, 42% for McCarthy and 12% for an uncommitted
delegate group. The two victories gave Kennedy 198 precious delegate
votes. Plans were being made for the campaign's next stages in New York
and other key states, but first, that night, there were some formalities
and fun to attend to: the midnight appearance before loyal campaign
workers (and a national television audience) in the hotel's Embassy
Room, a quiet chat with reporters, then a large, private celebration at
a fashionable nightspot, The Factory.
The winner greeted his supporters with a characteristic mixture of
serious talk and cracks about everything from his dog Freckles to his
old antagonist, Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty. Among Kennedy's last words
from the rostrum: "I think we can end the divisions within the United
States, the violence."
The next stop was to be the press room. For once, Kennedy did not plunge
through the crush to reach the Embassy Room's main door. Bill Barry, his
bodyguard, wanted to go that way despite the crowd; he did not like the
idea of using a back passageway. Said R.F.K.: "It's all right." So they
went directly behind the speaker's platform through a gold curtain
toward a serving kitchen that led to the press room. The Senator walked
amid a clutch of aides, hotel employees and newsmen, with Ethel a few
yards behind. This route took him through a swinging door and into the
hot, malodorous, corridorlike chamber that was to be his place of
execution.
On his left were stainless-steel warming counters, on his right a large
ice-making machine. Taped on one wall was a hand-lettered sign: THE ONCE
AND FUTURE KING. At the far end of the ice-making machine stood a man
with a gun. Later, a witness was to say that the young man had been
there for some time, asking if Senator Kennedy would come that way. It
was no trick getting in: there was no serious attempt at security
screening by either the hotel or the Kennedy staff.
"I Can Explain." Kennedy paused to shake hands with a dishwasher,
turning slightly to his left as he did so. Before Bobby released the
hand of Jesus Perez, the gunman managed to get across the room, prop his
right elbow on the serving counter and, from behind two assistant
maitres d'hotel, fire at his victim just four feet away. Kennedy fell.
The hotel men, Karl Eucker and Eddy Minasian, grappled with the
assassin, but could not reach his gun hand. Author George Plimpton and
Kennedy Aide Jack Gallivan joined the wrestling match. The gun, waving
wildly, kept pumping bullets, and found five other human targets. Eight
men in all, including Rafer Johnson, an Olympic champion, and Roosevelt
Grier, a 300-lb. Los Angeles Rams football lineman, attempted to
overpower the slight but lithe assailant.
Johnson finally knocked the pistol out of the stubborn hand. "Why did
you do it?" he screamed. "I can explain! Let me explain!" cried the
swarthy man, now the captive of the two black athletes and spread-eagled
on the counter. Several R.F.K. supporters tried to kill the man with
their hands. Johnson and Grier fended them off. Someone had the presence
of mind to shout: "Let's not have another Oswald!" Johnson pocketed the
gun.
So This Is It. From both ends of the serving kitchen, scores of people
pressed in. All order had dissolved with the first shots ("It sounded
like dry wood snapping," said Dick Tuck of the Kennedy staff). The
sounds of revelry churned into bewilderment, then horror and panic. A
priest appeared, thrust a rosary into Kennedy's hands, which closed on
it. Someone cried: "He doesn't need a priest, for God's sake, he needs a
doctor!" The cleric was shoved aside. A hatless young policeman rushed
in carrying a shotgun. "We don't need guns! We need a doctor!"
Television and still photographers fought for position. Assembly Speaker
Jesse Unruh swung at one of them. Ethel, shoved back to safety by a
hotel employee at the first sound of gunfire, appeared moments later.
While trying to get to her husband, she hears a youth scream something
about Kennedy. "Don't talk that way about the Senator!" she snapped.
"Lady," he replied, "I've been shot." And Ethel knelt to kiss the cheek
of Erwin Stroll, 17, a campaign worker who had been wounded in the left
shin.
Finally she got to Bobby. She knelt over him, whispering. His lips
moved. She rose and tried to wave back the crush. Dick Tuck blew a
whistle. The crowd began to give way. Someone clamped an ice pack to
Kennedy's bleeding head, and someone else made a pillow of a suit
jacket. His blue and white striped tie was off, his shirt open, the
rosary clutched to his hairy chest. An aide took off his shoes.
Amid the swirl, the Kennedys appeared calm. TIME correspondent Hays
Gorey looked at the man he had long observed in constant motion, now
prostrate on a damp concrete floor. Wrote Gorey: "The lips were slightly
parted, the lower one curled downwards, as it often was. Bobby seemed
aware. There was no questioning in his expression. He didn't ask, `What
happened?´ They seemed almost to say, `So this is it.´"
"I Want Him Alive." The word that Kennedy was wounded had spread back to
the ballroom. Amid the screams and the weeping, Brother-in-Law Stephen
Smith's controlled voice came through the loudspeaker system, asking
that the room be cleared and appealing for a doctor. Within a few
minutes, physicians were found and elbowed their way to Kennedy. More
policemen arrived; none had been in the hotel, but a police car had been
outside on other business. Rafer Johnson and Rosy Grier turned over
their prisoner and the gun. The cops hustled the man out, carrying him
part of the way past threatening spectators. Jesse Unruh bellowed: "I
want him alive! I want him alive!"
Finally, 23 minutes after the shootings, the ambulances collected the
stricken: the youngster Stroll; Paul Schrade, 43, the United Auto
Workers' Pacific Coast regional director, whose profusely bleeding head
rested on a white plastic Kennedy-campaign boater; Ira Goldstein, 19, a
part-time employee of Continental News Service, hit in the left hip;
William Weisel, 30, an American Broadcasting Co. associate director,
wounded in the abdomen; Mrs. Elizabeth Evans, 43, who with her husband
Arthur had been touring the several election-night headquarters and
wound up with a slug in her forehead. Although Schrade was the one who
appeared dead to onlookers, only Kennedy was critically wounded.
Hollow-Nosed Slugs. With Ethel by his side, Kennedy was taken first to
nearby Central Receiving Hospital, where doctors could only keep him
alive by cardiac massage and an injection of Adrenalin, and alert the
better-equipped Good Samaritan Hospital to prepare for delicate brain
surgery. As if there were not already enough grim echoes of Dallas and
Parkland Hospital, the scene at Central Receiving was degraded by human
perversity. A too-eager news photographer tried to barge in and got
knocked to the floor by Bill Barry. A guard attempted to keep both a
priest and Ethel away from the emergency room, flashed a badge, which
Ethel knocked from his hand. The guard struck at her; Tuck and Fred
Dutton swept him aside. Then the priest was allowed to administer
extreme unction.
At Good Samaritan, meanwhile, a team of neurosurgeons was being
assembled. At this stage, there was still some frail hope that Kennedy
would live. It was known that he had been hit twice. One of the
.22-caliber "long rifle," hollow-nose slugs had entered the right armpit
and worked its way up to the neck; it was relatively harmless. The other
had penetrated his skull and passed into the brain, scattering fragments
of lead and bone. It was these that the surgeons had to probe for in
their 3-hr. 40-min. operation. ["Long rifle" bullets are the most lethal
of three types commonly used in.22-caliber weapons. "Shorts" are tiny,
"longs" the intermediate size. Hollow-nosed bullets are particularly
vicious because they spread on impact, enlarging the area of damage.]
Never Alone. In the intensive-care unit after the operation, Kennedy was
never left alone with the hospital staff. Ethel rested on a cot beside
him, held his unfeeling hand, whispered into his now-deaf ear. His
sisters, Jean Smith and Pat Lawford, hovered near by. Ted Kennedy, his
shirttail flapping, strode back and forth, inspecting medical charts and
asking what they meant. Outside on Lucas Street, beneath the fifth-floor
window, hundreds of Angelenos gathered for the vigil; crowds were to be
with Bobby Kennedy the rest of the week. A local printer rushed out
5,000 orange and black bumper stickers: PRAY FOR BOBBY. His daughter and
other girls gave them away to all takers.
More kith and kin gathered. The three eldest children -- Kathleen, 16,
Joseph, 15, and Robert, 14 -- were allowed to see their father. Andy
Williams, George Plimpton, Rafer Johnson and others peeked in. The even
rise and fall of the patient's chest offered some reassurance; the
blackened eyes and the pallor of cheeks that had been healthy and tanned
a few hours before were frightening.
Six Counts. As the doctors fought for one life, Police Chief Thomas
Reddin worried about another. Dallas, 1963, might not have taught the
nation how to preserve its leaders, but it had incontestably
demonstrated the need to protect those accused of political murder. The
inevitable speculation about conspiracy arose again. There was no
support for it, but a dead suspect would certainly become Exhibit A.
The man seized at the Ambassador was taken first to a local police
station, then to North Los Angeles Street police headquarters. His
arraignment would have to take place at the Hall of Justice, a few
blocks away, and Reddin, ever mindful of Dallas, was determined to make
it as private a proceeding as possible. First the police considered
using an armored car for transporting the prisoner, but decided instead
on a patrolman's pickup truck that was, conveniently, rigged as a
camper. A judge was recruited to preside at an unannounced 7:30 a.m.
session, an hour before the court usually convenes. With Public Defender
Richard Buckley representing him, the prisoner was charged with six
counts of assault with intent to kill.
Subsequently the suspect was transferred to a windowless
maximum-security cell in the hospital area of the Central Jail for Men.
A guard remained in the cell with him. Another watched through an
aperture in the door. Altogether, the county sheriff's office assigned
100 men to personal and area security around the cell and the jail. For
the suspect's second court appearance, the judge came to him and
presided at a hearing in the jail chapel.
Who was the man initially designated "John Doe"? The police had few
clues: height, 5 ft. 3 in.; weight, 120 lbs.;eyes, brown; hair, thick,
black; accent, foreign, but not readily classifiable. He had a broken
index finger and a sprained ankle as a result of the struggle in the
pantry, but his basic condition was good. His fingerprints disclosed no
criminal record in any law-enforcement agency. Reddin thought he might
be a Cuban or a West Indian. He carried no identifying papers, but had
four $100 bills, a $5 bill, four singles and some change; a car key; a
recent David Lawrence column noting that Kennedy, a dove on Vietnam, was
a strong defender of Israel.
Silent at first, the suspect later repeated over and over: "I wish to
remain incommunicado." He did not seem particularly nervous. Reddin
described him as "very cool, very calm, very stable and quite lucid."
John Doe demanded the details of a sexy Los Angeles murder case. "I want
to ask the questions now," he remarked. "Why don't you answer my
questions?" He talked about the stock market, an article on Hawaii that
he had read recently, his liking for gardening, his belief that criminal
justice discriminates against the underdog. When he felt that the
investigators were talking down to him, he snapped: "I am not a
mendicant." About the only things he would not discuss were his identity
and the events at the Ambassador Hotel. After a few hours, the police
fed him a pre-dawn breakfast of sausage and eggs and gave up the
interrogation.
Someone Named Joe. By then the snub-nosed Iver Johnson eight-shot
revolver, model 55 SA -- a relatively cheap weapon that retails for
$31.95 -- was yielding information. The serial number had been
registered with the State Criminal Identification and Investigation
Bureau. Within minutes, the bureau's computer system came up with the
pistol's original purchaser: Albert L. Hertz of Alhambra. He had bought
the gun for protection in August 1965, after the Watts riot. He informed
police that he had subsequently given it to his daughter, Mrs. Robert
Westlake, then a resident of Pasadena. Mrs. Westlake became uneasy about
having a gun in the same house with her small children. She gave it to a
Pasadena neighbor, George Erhard, 18. Last December, Erhard sold it to
someone named Joe -- "a bushy-haired guy who worked in a department
store."
With that lead, the police quickly found Munir ("Joe") Sirhan, 20, in
Nash's Department Store. Joe, said Chief Reddin, was "very cooperative."
He and Adel Sirhan, 29, identified the prisoner as their brother, Sirhan
Bishara Sirhan, 24, who goes by the nickname Sol. The identification was
confirmed by a check of fingerprints taken when Sirhan applied for a
state racetrack job in 1965.
All at once, from Washington, Pasadena, Beirut, the Jordanian Village of
Taiyiba and the loose tongue of Mayor Yorty, the life and bad times of
the accused assassin, Sol Sirhan, came into view. [The word derives from
the Arabic hashshashin, "those who use hashish." At the time of the
Crusades, a secret sect of the Mohammedan Ismailians employed terrorists
while they were ritually high on hashish, which is similar to
marijuana.] The middle-class Christian Arab family had lived in
Jerusalem while Palestine was under British mandate, and the father,
Bishara Salameh Sirhan, now 52, was a waterworks employee. The first
Arab-Israeli war cost the elder Sirhan his job. Family life was
contentious, but young Sirhan Sirhan did well at the Lutheran
Evangelical School. (The family was Greek Orthodox, but also associated
with other religious groups.)
The family, which had Jordanian nationality, qualified nonetheless for
expense-free passage to the U.S. under a limited refugee-admission
program sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Welfare Agency and
the World Council of Churches. Soon after reaching the U.S. in January
1957, the parents separated. The father returned to Jordan, settled
alone in his ancestral village of Taiyiba and became prosperous enough
from his olive groves to revisit the U.S. twice. His five sons and their
mother Mary all live now in the Los Angeles area.
In Arab headgear and Western jacket and tie, Bishara Sirhan received a
TIME correspondent and observed that Sirhan had been the best-behaved of
his children. "I don't know," he said, "how this happened and I don't
know who pushed him to do this." Would he now go to the U.S.? He thought
not. "I raised him to love. I tell you frankly: now I am against him."
Mary Sirhan, who has worked in a church nursery for the past nine years,
lives with her sons in an old white frame house. The neighbors in the
ethnically mixed, lower-middle-class Pasadena neighborhood describe Sol
as "nice, thoughtful, helpful." He liked to talk about books and tend
the garden; he played Chinese checkers with a couple of elderly
neighbors, one of them a Jewish lady. Sol was no swinger, was rarely
seen with girls. His brothers told police that Sol liked to hoard his
money -- perhaps explaining the $409 he had on him despite his being
unemployed recently. He did well enough at John Muir High School to gain
admission to Pasadena City College, but he dropped out. He wanted to be
a jockey, but could qualify only as a "hot walker," a low-ranking track
factotum who cools down horses after the run. Then he got thrown from a
horse, suffering head and back injuries.
"Political Act." Later he worked for a time as a $2-an-hour food-store
clerk. His former employer, John Weidner, like several others who know
him, remembers his frequently expressed hatred for Israel and his
strident Jordanian loyalty. Sol liked to boast that he was not an
American citizen (as a resident alien, Sirhan could not legally own a
concealable firearm in California). A Dutch underground agent who
assisted Jews during World War II, Weidner says of Sol: "Over and over
he told me that the Jews had everything, but they still used violence to
get pieces of Jordanian land." The Rev. Harry Eberts Jr., pastor of the
Presbyterian church where Mary Sirhan works and prays, says of Sirhan:
"He is a Jordanian nationalist and was committing a political act."
What had this to do with Robert Kennedy? Journalists quickly recalled
that Kennedy, in his campaigning on the West Coast, had restated his
position that the U.S. had a firm commitment to Israel's security. In
New York, Arab Spokesman M.T. Mehdi talked darkly of the "frustration of
many Arabs with American politicians who have sold the Arab people of
Palestine to the Zionist Jewish voters." That suggested a motive, but
District Attorney Evelle Younger and State Attorney General Thomas Lynch
wanted to avoid any such discussion until the trial. Thus they were
aghast, and said so, when Mayor Yorty went before a news conference to
divulge what he described as the contents of Sirhan's private notebooks,
found in the Sirhan home.
According to Yorty, Sirhan wrote that Kennedy must be killed before June
5, the first anniversary of the last Arab-Israeli war, a date that has
detonated demonstrations in some Arab countries. Sirhan was also said to
have written "Long live Nasser." Yorty went on to characterize Sirhan as
pro-Communist and anti-American, and to imply that he might have had
some extremist connections. In contrast, the police and prosecutor had
been bending over backward to protect Sirhan's legal rights -- advising
him of his right to counsel and his right to remain silent, calling in a
representative of the American Civil Liberties Union to watch out for
the suspect's interests.
It Hurt Us Bad. Aside from its legal implications, Yorty's garrulousness
could fuel a new round of conspiracy theories -- although conspirators
with any skill would hardly have used so light a revolver as a .22. Many
found it difficult to believe that the assassinations of John Kennedy,
Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy were unrelated. Some blamed
right-wing extremists; others concluded that all three slayings were
part of a Communist plot to divide and weaken the U.S.
For the principals in last week's drama, the speculative and the
possible were blotted out by all too real events. Robert Kennedy lived
for 25 hours and 27 minutes after being shot on a cruelly elongated
Wednesday that the nation is likely to remember in the context of that
Friday in 1963. Of all the words last week, some of the most poignant
came from Mary Sirhan, who sent a telegram to the Kennedys. "It hurts us
very bad what has happened," Mrs. Sirhan said. "And we express our
feelings with them and especially with the children and with Mrs.
Kennedy and with the mother and the father and I want them to know that
I am really crying for them all. And we pray that God will make peace,
really peace, in the hearts of people."
More Faith. The "mother and father" -- Joseph Kennedy, 79, long
partially paralyzed by a stroke, and Rose, 77, who has survived sorrow
as intense as that meted out by the gods to the houses of Cadmus and
Atreus. Of their nine children, they have buried four; Joe Jr., who died
in World War II; Kathleen, who perished in a 1948 plane crash; John, and
now Bobby, at the age of 42. Rosemary, 48, has been a life-long victim
of mental retardation. Ted, now the only remaining son, nearly died in a
1964 plane accident. While he was recovering Bobby cracked: "I guess the
only reason we've survived is that there are too many of us. There are
more of us than there is trouble." The curse of violent death has
extended beyond the immediate family. Ethel's parents died in one plane
crash, her brother George in another. George's wife Joan later choked to
death on food lodged in her throat. Kathleen's husband was killed in
World War II.
Last week, like most Americans, Rose and Joe Kennedy were asleep when
the bullets struck. Ann Gargan, the niece who lives with them in
Hyannisport, Mass., did not awaken them. But Rose got up around 6, as
usual, to prepare for a 7 a.m. Mass. She heard the news then. Joe heard
it later when Ted telephoned him. Rose went to St. Francis Xavier
Church, where a wing had been built in Joe Jr.'s memory, where a bronze
plaque marks the pew that Jack used to occupy, where Bobby once served
as an altar boy. Later that day, Cardinal Cushing came to offer what
comfort he could. "She has more confidence in Almighty God," he said,
"than any priest I have ever met."
Three Widows. Next morning came the news that the family had feared. At
1:44 a.m., Pacific Daylight Time, Bobby Kennedy had died under the eyes
of his wife, his brother, his sisters Pat and Jean and his sister-in-law
Jackie.
The Los Angeles medical examiner, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, presided over a
six-hour autopsy attended not only by members of his own staff but also
by three Government doctors summoned from Washington -- again a lesson
from Dallas. Sirhan was indicted for murder by a grand jury. Meanwhile,
once again, the nation watched the grim logistics of carrying the coffin
of a Kennedy home in a presidential Boeing 707.
This time the craft carried three widows: Ethel, Jackie and Coretta
King.
Everywhere, hundreds and thousands watched the cortege firsthand.
Millions bore witness by television. The party arrived in New York City
at 9 p.m. Thursday, and already the crowd was beginning to form outside
St. Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue.
Along the lamplit streets, past a luminescence of sad and silent faces,
the cavalcade wound through the federal city and across the Potomac,
where in a green grove up the hill in Arlington, John Kennedy's grave
looks out over the city and the river.
The moon, the slender candles, the eternal flame at John's memorial --
47 feet away -- and the floodlights laved Robert Kennedy's resting place
beneath a magnolia tree. It was 11 o'clock, the first nighttime burial
at Arlington in memory.
There was no playing of taps, no rifle volley.
After a brief and simple service, the coffin flag was folded into a
triangle for presentation to Ethel, and the band played America the
Beautiful.
When the Height Is Won, Then There Is Ease
There were two Robert Kennedys -- the one who was loved and the one who
was hated. To many, he was the relentless prosecutor, vindictive young
aide to Joe McCarthy and pitiless interrogator of the racket-busting
McClellan Committee, a cocksure combatant who was not too scrupulous
about his methods.
Many politicians and businessmen not only disliked him but also
genuinely feared him for what he was and for what he might become.
Not a few saw unprincipled ambition in every gesture he made and every
step he took.
To many more, he came across as a man of infinite compassion, a leader
with unique empathy for the poor, the hungry, the minorities, and all
those whom he termed the "suffering children of the world." As Attorney
General, his brusqueness often offended high-level politicians and
bureaucrats -- yet he was every ready to stand on his desk for half an
hour to explain the workings of the Justice Department to a swarm of
schoolchildren, whom he always addressed as important, interesting
people.
As a Senator, John Kennedy explained the family mystique: "Just as I
went into politics because Joe died, if anything happened to me
tomorrow, my brother would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby
died, Teddy would take over for him." In the end, Bobby, with his merry,
energetic wife and his happy band of children, created a charisma of his
own.
Pain Which Cannot Forget
Never an intellectual, Bobby nonetheless read a great deal, particularly
after Dallas. While Jack would read simply for delight, Bobby would
always choose a writer who had something practical to tell him.
Aeschylus, who introduced the tragic hero to literature, was his
"favorite poet." On the death of Martin Luther King Jr., he used the
lines: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop
upon the heart until, in our despair, against our will, comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God." Asked once why he strove so hard,
Kennedy again quoted from Aeschylus: "When the height is won, then there
is ease."
Bobby never reached the height, nor found the ease for which he quested.
Rocking across Nebraska in a train, he mused on all the things that he
wanted to do and all that he felt he could do: reconcile the races,
summon the "good that's in America," end the war, get the best and most
creative minds into government, broaden the basic idea of the Peace
Corps so that people in all walks of life would try to help one another.
He was ambitious, but not for himself. He ended his musing: "I don't
know what I'll do if I'm not elected President." As his body lay in St.
Patrick's Cathedral, there was agreement on one point. Whoever became
President would always have known that Robert Kennedy was around. So
would the nation. So would the world.
Check out the Back in TIME Archive
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