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Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Moves Closer to the Courtroom!

 

COMMENT: The assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy con­tin­ues to move toward a for­mal re-open­ing. Due to the efforts of attor­neys William Pep­per and Lau­rie Dusek, the evi­dence of a sec­ond gun gains cred­i­bil­i­ty and momen­tum.

(The offi­cial ver­sion of the assas­si­na­tion has Sirhan Sirhan as the “lone nut” assas­sin who killed Kennedy. The foren­sic evi­dence has long been rec­og­nized to dis­prove this the­o­ry, since Sirhan was in front of Kennedy and the fatal shot was fired from a dis­tance of a few inch­es from the back of the Sen­a­tor’s head.)

The argu­ment pre­sent­ed by Pep­per dis­counts secu­ri­ty guard Thane Eugene Cesar as the sec­ond gun­man, although Pep­per does not dis­count the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Cesar may have been part of a con­spir­a­cy to kill Kennedy. (Many ana­lysts have seen Cesar as the prob­a­ble sec­ond gun in the assas­si­na­tion.)

Although adamant­ly oppos­ing a new tri­al for Sirhan, Cal­i­for­nia State Attor­ney Gen­er­al Kamala Har­ris has con­ced­ed that Pep­per’s team can prove that there was a sec­ond gun.

As we have seen, there are evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries con­nect­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Robert F. Kennedy with that of his broth­er, the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King and the shoot­ing of George Wal­lace.

“Attor­neys for RFK Con­vict­ed Killer Sirhan Push ‘Sec­ond Gun­man’ Argu­ment” by Michael Mar­tinez and Brad John­son; CNN; 3/5/2012.

EXCERPT: If there was a sec­ond gun­man in Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion, who was it?

Lawyers for con­vict­ed assas­sin Sirhan Sirhan claim their client did not fire any of the gun­shots that struck the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in 1968. And in their lat­est fed­er­al court fil­ing, they also rule out anoth­er man some have con­sid­ered a sus­pect — a pri­vate secu­ri­ty guard named Thane Eugene Cesar, who was escort­ing Kennedy at the time he was shot.

Attor­neys William Pep­per and Lau­rie Dusek insist some­one oth­er than their client, Sirhan, fatal­ly shot Kennedy. They now say the real killer was not Cesar, a part-time uni­formed offi­cer long sus­pect­ed by some con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists of play­ing a sin­is­ter role in the sen­a­tor’s mur­der. . . .

. . . . In their court brief filed Feb­ru­ary 22, Sirhan’s lawyers said that Cesar is “believed in some quar­ters (not here) to be the sec­ond gun­man.”

“It is my per­son­al belief, at this time, that the secu­ri­ty guard, Cesar, was not the sec­ond shoot­er,” William Pep­per said in e‑mail to CNN.

But Pep­per added Cesar still might have been involved in an assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy.

“He may well have played a role,” he said.

“I have infor­ma­tion but can­not reveal it at this time,” said Pep­per, who insist­ed that his infor­ma­tion requires a new tri­al for Sirhan or, at min­i­mum, an evi­den­tiary hear­ing. “We need an evi­den­tiary hear­ing to deal with the sec­ond shoot­er and his iden­ti­ty,” he added. . . .

. . . . Pep­per and his co-coun­sel also allege fraud was com­mit­ted at Sirhan’s 1969 tri­al when pros­e­cu­tors allowed sub­sti­tute bul­lets to be admit­ted as evi­dence in place of the real bul­lets removed from Kennedy’s neck and shoot­ing sur­vivor Ira Gold­stein’s hip.

“There was a fraud on the court with respect to the bal­lis­tics evi­dence, I think this is quite clear,” Pep­per told CNN. “The rem­e­dy is a new tri­al or (Sirhan’s) release.”. . . .

. . . . Sirhan’s lawyers say the [Stanis­law Pruszyn­s­ki] audio­tape reveals that a sec­ond gun fired at least five shots in addi­tion to the eight shots fired by their client. Pep­per and Dusek base this on an analy­sis of the record­ing by audio expert Philip Van Praag, who has con­clud­ed that the sounds of at least 13 shots can be count­ed on the tape, even though there were only eight bul­lets in Sirhan’s one and only gun, which he had no oppor­tu­ni­ty to reload.

All of that means that a sec­ond gun had to be involved, accord­ing to Van Praag’s analy­sis. . . .

. . . . Pep­per and Dusek say Van Praag’s con­clu­sions are not spec­u­la­tion, but are “based on sol­id sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence,” and Pep­per says Har­ris’ recent court fil­ing has now raised pub­lic recog­ni­tion of the sec­ond-gun­man sce­nario that he and Dusek are advanc­ing.

“What is of inter­est is that there now seems to be more recog­ni­tion of the fact that there was a sec­ond shoot­er, well posi­tioned to put three bul­lets into the sen­a­tor from close pow­der-burn range behind him, whilst Sirhan was always some dis­tance in front of him,” Pep­per told CNN.

The Van Praag audio analy­sis con­cludes that the Pruszyn­s­ki record­ing is authen­tic and that all 13 sounds are gun­shots — not a sin­gle one of them a burst­ing bal­loon or any oth­er non-shot noise, shot ric­o­chet or echo.

It also finds that some of the shots were fired too rapid­ly, at inter­vals too close togeth­er for all the shots to have come from Sirhan’s inex­pen­sive hand­gun, and that the five shots which Van Praag says were fired oppo­site the direc­tion of Sirhan’s eight shots — those five being the 3rd, 5th, 8th, 10th and 12th shots in the sequence — dis­played an acousti­cal “fre­quen­cy anom­aly” indi­cat­ing the alleged sec­ond gun’s make and mod­el were dif­fer­ent from Sirhan’s weapon. . . .

Discussion

4 comments for “Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Moves Closer to the Courtroom!”

  1. If there is evi­dence exon­er­at­ing Cesar in the direct shoot­ing then he may have been involved as a ‘reserve’ pat­sy. And that implies that what looked liked a hasti­ly planned and poor­ly act­ed exe­cu­tion was more com­plex and involved more lay­ers of mis­di­rec­tion than pre­vi­ous­ly thought. I’m very curi­ous about the evi­dence that Pep­per won’t dis­cuss pub­licly.

    Posted by Dwight | March 9, 2012, 9:39 am
  2. It’s a huge accom­plish­ment to get the state to admit the offi­cial ver­sion of what hap­pened, was wrong and RFK was not killed by a lone nut. My great­est respect is held for William Pep­pers and Dave Emory, as peo­ple who nev­er stop fight­ing for truth. I want to see the new tri­al on Cspan and the his­to­ry texts rewrit­ten.

    Posted by George Karnazes | March 9, 2012, 5:35 pm
  3. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/key-witness-rfk-assassination-says-sirhan-sirhan-didn-223905927.html This arti­cle con­tains an inter­view with one of the wit­ness­es in the case, who alleges a sec­ond shoot­er.

    Posted by Mike | May 1, 2012, 4:23 pm
  4. What hap­pened to Debra Shul­tie who was in the orig. film that nite out front yelling, “we got him, we got him.” When asked by a news jour­nal­ist she hes­i­tat­ed and stut­terd “they shot him they shot him. A lati­no gal that ran the LA Dem. group heard her say, “we got him.” Shul­tie had a blue and white poka dot mini skirt on in the broad­cast. (14) bul­lets were fired not the (8) in Sir Han’s gun. The guard had the same mod­el 22 mod­el and the fatal wound was fired 1 ” from the back ear with pow­der burns. This shows up on the FBI bal­lis­tic report ‑Sir Han was always 4 feet away from the front fir­ing wild­ly. The heads of the Ultra Pro­gram for mind con­trol for the CIA showup on the orig. broad­cast over Kenned­dy’s shoul­der. Sir Han worked for Desy Arnez and owed the mob thou­sans in gam­bling bills. There is a tie in with San­tos Trafa­cante and the Bay of Pigs deal.

    Posted by Jim Mulhern | June 23, 2012, 6:12 pm

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