COMMENT: The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy [1] 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 [2] 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.
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.
. . . . 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.