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Sirhan Sirhan’s Lawyers Moving to Reopen the Case

 

COMMENT: Attor­neys for Sirhan Sirhan have moved to reopen his case, con­tend­ing (among oth­er things) that a bul­let was switched at his tri­al, inval­i­dat­ing his con­vic­tion.

Ear­li­er this year, Sirhan’s defense team rein­forced the “girl in the pol­ka-dot dress” anec­do­tal infor­ma­tion fol­low­ing a hyp­no­sis ses­sion with their client.

Any­one famil­iar with the facts of Robert F. Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion knows that the offi­cial ver­sion of Sirhan Sirhan as a “lone nut” assas­sin is unten­able. (Lis­ten­ers are invit­ed to exam­ine AFA #9, detail­ing RFK’s mur­der, as well as FTR #582, sup­ple­ment­ing that analy­sis.)

Inves­ti­ga­tors have long believed that Sirhan was a vic­tim of mind con­trol, and that a mys­te­ri­ous woman in a pol­ka-dot dress was involved in the killing, pos­si­bly as a “han­dler” of Sirhan. (The woman was seen and heard run­ning from the Ambas­sador Hotel claim­ing that “we” had shot Kennedy. The mind con­trol aspects of the RFK assas­si­na­tion are dis­cussed in AFA #6.)

In papers recent­ly filed by his lawyers, Sirhan relates the sto­ry of the “girl in the pol­ka-dot dress” and also (under hyp­no­sis) recalled see­ing the flash of a sec­ond gun.

“Sirhan Sirhan, Assas­sin of Robert F. Kennedy, Launch­es New Cam­paign for Free­dom 42 Years Lat­er” by Jacqui God­dard; The Tele­graph [UK]; 12/03/2011.

EXCERPT: Lawyers for Robert F Kennedy’s killer Sirhan Sirhan claim to have new evi­dence that will free him from prison, 42 years after he was jailed for assas­si­nat­ing the US sen­a­tor.

They say the new mate­r­i­al hands them “game, set and match” in their cam­paign to release him from the life sen­tence he was giv­en on being con­vict­ed for gun­ning down the sen­a­tor at a Cal­i­for­nia hotel.
They have launched a fresh appeal on behalf of Sirhan, 67, claim­ing in court for the first time that pros­e­cu­tors fab­ri­cat­ed bal­lis­tics evi­dence against him at tri­al, switch­ing a bul­let that was tak­en from the dead sen­a­tor’s neck for one that they claimed matched the defen­dan­t’s gun.
Lawyers also seek a re-exam­i­na­tion of claims that Sirhan was framed by shad­owy agents — indi­rect­ly sug­gest­ed as being the CIA — who they say “hyp­no-pro­grammed” him into tak­ing part in the shoot­ing to divert atten­tion from their own fatal gun­fire.
Court doc­u­ments filed in fed­er­al court in Los Ange­les now pull togeth­er years of research, evi­den­tiary doc­u­ments and psy­cho­log­i­cal analy­ses of Sirhan for a case that his lawyer says proves him as a vic­tim of “an egre­gious mis­car­riage of jus­tice” and “hor­ren­dous vio­la­tions” of his legal rights.
“On the law, and on the evi­dence, it’s game set and match to us. It’s all over,” Dr William Pep­per told The Sun­day Tele­graph.
“But we are deal­ing with a high pro­file polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tion that involves the gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment agen­cies and a cov­er-up for 43 years, So I’m not con­fi­dent that we are going to over­come the pol­i­tics, but I’m con­fi­dent that they have got to give us an evi­den­tiary hear­ing and put all this under oath in a court of law, which has nev­er hap­pened.”
Sen­a­tor Kennedy died on June 6, 1968, one day after the shoot­ing at the Ambas­sador Hotel in Los Ange­les, where he had been cel­e­brat­ing vic­to­ry in the Cal­i­for­nia pri­ma­ry of the race for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion. He had just deliv­ered his vic­to­ry address in the ball­room and was tak­ing a short cut out of the hotel through the crowd­ed kitchen when Sirhan stepped for­ward and opened fire.
The sen­a­tor’s loss altered the course of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics and sent shock waves through a coun­try still com­ing to terms with the assas­si­na­tion four and a half years ear­li­er of his broth­er, Pres­i­dent John F Kennedy, by polit­i­cal mal­con­tent Lee Har­vey Oswald. . . .

Discussion

5 comments for “Sirhan Sirhan’s Lawyers Moving to Reopen the Case”

  1. I recent­ly lis­tened to AFA #9. Wow! The more I learn the more I feel like a babe in the woods. As some­one who is new to most of this mate­r­i­al, I would solic­it the opin­ion of any­one who can com­ment on the Waldren/Hartmann books (Ulti­mate Sac­ri­fice & Lega­cy of Ser­cre­cy) where pri­ma­ry empha­sis is placed on Mar­cel­lo and the mob. In Ulti­mate Sac­ri­fice, for instance, peo­ple like Thane Cesar and Jer­ry Owen are bare­ly men­tioned. What accounts for this absence? Is it just a mat­ter of empha­sis? Is the mod­i­fied-lim­it­ed-hang­out dynam­ic at play, con­scious­ly, or uncon­scious­ly? (It’s polit­i­cal­ly safe to blame The Mob, and if it comes down to it, maybe just as safe to blame ‘rogue’ CIA.) Is it sim­ply that the his­tor­i­cal mod­els that Dave is using are too obscured to break through to main­stream reportage? I prob­a­bly just answered my own ques­tion.

    Nev­er­the­less, I’d like to hear oth­ers com­ment on this sub­ject. Thanks.

    Posted by grumpusrex | December 5, 2011, 9:39 am
  2. Wow. The impli­ca­tions are huge.
    If a seri­ous buzz starts about this, the media won’t be able to ignore it....
    A gap­ing hole in the armor.

    Posted by greg harris | December 6, 2011, 11:49 am
  3. It sounds like it was was quite an event­ful day in the court­room:

    Attor­neys for RFK con­vict­ed killer Sirhan push ‘sec­ond gun­man’ argu­ment
    By Michael Mar­tinez and Brad John­son

    updat­ed 2:22 PM EST, Mon March 5, 2012
    Sirhan Sirhan is tak­en into cus­tody after the fatal shoot­ing of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.

    Los Ange­les (CNN) — 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.

    Pep­per and Dusek made the claim in papers sub­mit­ted to a U.S. Dis­trict Court in Los Ange­les late last month.

    Attempts by CNN to con­tact Cesar, a rel­a­tive of his and a for­mer attor­ney of his were unsuc­cess­ful.

    Cesar was walk­ing behind Kennedy and drew his ser­vice revolver as Sirhan fired his own hand­gun in a Los Ange­les hotel on June 5, 1968, only moments after the can­di­date claimed vic­to­ry in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry elec­tion. The gun­fire in the Ambas­sador Hotel left the sen­a­tor the most seri­ous­ly wound­ed of six shoot­ing vic­tims. Kennedy died the fol­low­ing day while the oth­er five sur­vived.

    Sirhan was the only per­son arrest­ed, tried and con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing the can­di­date and wound­ing the oth­ers. Now 67, he is serv­ing a life sen­tence at Pleas­ant Val­ley State Prison in Coalin­ga, Cal­i­for­nia.

    Pep­per and Dusek are try­ing to win Sirhan imme­di­ate free­dom or a new tri­al based on what they call “for­mi­da­ble evi­dence” of his inno­cence and “hor­ren­dous vio­la­tions” of his rights. The New York attor­neys argue that two guns were fired in the assas­si­na­tion, that Sirhan’s revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy and that Sirhan was not respon­si­ble for his actions at the Ambas­sador.

    Instead, the defense lawyers insist con­spir­a­tors pro­grammed Sirhan through hyp­no­sis to fire shots as a diver­sion for the real assas­sin in Kennedy’s mur­der.

    ...

    At the heart of the sec­ond-gun the­o­ry

    The Pruszyn­s­ki record­ing — uncov­ered by a CNN Inter­na­tion­al senior writer in 2004 and high­light­ed on CNN’s “Back­Sto­ry” in 2009 — is now at the heart of the sec­ond-gun evi­dence in Sirhan’s court effort.

    Sirhan’s lawyers say the 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.

    “Sirhan was set up to be the dis­tract­ing actor, whilst the shoot­er bent down close behind Bob (Kennedy) and fired close and upward, with four bul­lets hit­ting the sen­a­tor’s body or pass­ing through his cloth­ing,” Pep­per told CNN.

    In her court papers filed ear­ly last month, Cal­i­for­ni­a’s attor­ney gen­er­al con­ced­ed that Sirhan’s lawyers may be able to show two guns were involved in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion.

    Har­ris wrote that Sirhan’s defense team “at most has shown that, accord­ing to Van Praag, two guns could be heard fir­ing 13 shots in an audio­tape of the shoot­ing.”

    But Har­ris called Van Praag’s analy­sis “pure spec­u­la­tion.”

    “In sum, (Sirhan) can­not pos­si­bly show that no rea­son­able juror would have con­vict­ed him if a jury had con­sid­ered his ‘new’ evi­dence and alle­ga­tions, in light of the over­whelm­ing evi­dence sup­port­ing the con­vic­tions and the avail­able evi­dence thor­ough­ly debunk­ing (Sirhan’s) sec­ond-shoot­er and automa­ton the­o­ries,” Har­ris said in court papers

    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.

    Did oth­er record­ings cap­ture gun­shots?

    Until recent years, some researchers thought that oth­er record­ings might have cap­tured the sounds of the kitchen pantry gun­shots. How­ev­er, Van Praag has con­clud­ed that audio­tapes made at the Ambas­sador by radio reporters Andrew West and Jeff Brent did not record any of the shots. He also says he found no gun­shots in sound tracks from any of the oth­er known films or video­tapes record­ed that night.

    Pep­per and Dusek insist none of Sirhan’s eight shots hit Kennedy. Instead, they argue, the sen­a­tor was struck in the body by three of at least five shots, which they believe were secret­ly fired by a sec­ond gun­man who was posi­tioned in back of the can­di­date.

    The New York attor­neys say wit­ness­es — even includ­ing some of the orig­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es — report­ed Sirhan was stand­ing sev­er­al feet in front of Kennedy and fir­ing almost hor­i­zon­tal­ly, even though the med­ical evi­dence showed Kennedy’s body and cloth­ing were struck by four bul­lets fired at upward angles point-blank from behind the sen­a­tor.

    Pep­per and Dusek say wit­ness­es report­ed bystanders grabbed Sirhan imme­di­ate­ly after he fired his first two shots and that they had his fir­ing arm pinned against a steam table, forc­ing Sirhan to fire his gun’s remain­ing six bul­lets away from Kennedy, thus strik­ing oth­er peo­ple instead.

    The defense lawyers argue that over the years, pri­vate researchers have found phys­i­cal evi­dence of more than eight bul­lets fired in the Kennedy shoot­ing but that author­i­ties did not report extra bul­lets removed from the crime scene or bul­let-rid­dled hotel wood pan­els and ceil­ing tiles — and instead secret­ly dis­posed of the alleged items.

    Sirhan and his mem­o­ry

    For decades after the 1968 assas­si­na­tion, Sirhan claimed he could not remem­ber the Kennedy shoot­ing. Pep­per and Dusek argue this was because he was “hyp­no-pro­grammed” by con­spir­a­tors to fire his gun in the pantry and to then for­get the shoot­ing, his pro­gram­ming and those who pro­grammed him. They say that for many years Sirhan him­self believed he shot Kennedy because peo­ple told him he did.

    In 2008, Pep­per and Dusek hired a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty mem­o­ry expert who says he got the impris­oned Sirhan to recall the Kennedy shoot­ing for the first time.

    That expert is Daniel Brown, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor in psy­chol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School. He is described in the defense team’s court papers as “one of the world’s fore­most experts in hyp­no pro­gram­ming.”

    Brown inter­viewed Sirhan for 60 hours over a three-year peri­od. Accord­ing to Pep­per and Dusek, Brown says Sirhan now remem­bers that when he fired his shots in the pantry he believed he was at a gun range and shoot­ing at cir­cu­lar tar­gets.

    Sirhan’s lawyers say Brown believes Sirhan was pro­grammed to do this so as to cause a dis­trac­tion in the pantry, allow­ing a sec­ond gun­man to secret­ly shoot Kennedy from behind. They say Brown believes a mys­te­ri­ous young woman in a pol­ka dot dress lured Sirhan into the pantry as part of the alleged mind con­trol plot.

    Accord­ing to the defense attor­neys, Brown says Sirhan now remem­bers hear­ing loud sounds he describes as “the thun­der­clap of oth­er bul­lets” being fired by anoth­er gun in the pantry. They say Brown says Sirhan also recalls see­ing at least one flash in front of him that he asso­ciates with gun­fire inside the pantry but not com­ing from his own weapon.

    In reply, Har­ris told the court ear­ly last month “the the­o­ry that a per­son could be hyp­no­tized into plan­ning and com­mit­ting a mur­der against his will is a con­tro­ver­sial (if not fan­tas­tic) one and has not been adopt­ed by most of Brown’s peers, includ­ing the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion.”

    Pep­per and Dusek respond­ed to Har­ris late last month by argu­ing that peo­ple actu­al­ly can be hyp­no-pro­grammed to do things against their morals yet, in the case of Sirhan, he was not pro­grammed to shoot Kennedy but only to fire at what he imag­ined were range tar­gets, so as to cre­ate a diver­sion for a sec­ond shoot­er to secret­ly kill Kennedy.

    At Sirhan’s 1969 tri­al, pros­e­cu­tors argued the defen­dant, a Chris­t­ian Pales­tin­ian, killed Kennedy because of state­ments the New York sen­a­tor had made about the Unit­ed States send­ing fight­er jets to aid Israel.

    How­ev­er, in their series of court fil­ings since Octo­ber 2010, Sirhan’s attor­neys, Pep­per and Dusek, have dis­missed that alle­ga­tion as a “most spec­u­la­tive motive” with­out any sworn state­ments for sub­stan­ti­a­tion.

    ...

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 6, 2012, 8:03 pm
  4. -Tried to put this under a “pro­grammed assas­sin” cat­e­go­ry, as in “Those voic­es in your head”-

    Two arti­cles about bone con­duc­tion and “voice to skull” tech­nol­o­gy. The first one is about the use on Ger­man trains, and the link includes a creepy video ad about the tech­nol­o­gy. The sec­ond arti­cle is one I found in 2007 about the same tech­nol­o­gy:

    Sky Deutsch­land to broad­cast adverts direct­ly into train pas­sen­gers’ heads
    Sky Deutsch­land has devel­oped tech­nol­o­gy to trans­fer adverts from train win­dows direct­ly and silent­ly into com­muters’ heads.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/10158311/Sky-Deutschland-to-broadcast-adverts-directly-into-train-passengers-heads.html

    Pas­sen­gers lean­ing their head against the win­dow will “hear” adverts “com­ing from inside the user’s head”, urg­ing them to down­load the Sky Go app.

    The pro­pos­al involves using bone con­duc­tion tech­nol­o­gy, which is used in hear­ing aids, head­phones and Google’s Glass head­set, to pass sound to the inner ear via vibra­tions through the skull.

    A video for the Talk­ing Win­dow cam­paign released by Sky Deutsch­land and ad agency BBDO Ger­many states: “Tired com­muters often rest their heads against win­dows. Sud­den­ly a voice inside their head is talk­ing to them. No one else can hear this mes­sage.”

    The voice comes from a Sky-brand­ed trans­mit­ter made by Audi­va that is attached to the train win­dow.

    BBDO spokesman Ulf Brych­cy told the BBC: “If our cus­tomer Sky Deutsch­land agrees, we will start with the new medi­um as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

    “Some peo­ple don’t like adver­tis­ing in gen­er­al. But this is real­ly a new tech­nol­o­gy. [It might] not only be used for adver­tis­ing, but also for music, enter­tain­ment, mass trans­port infor­ma­tion, weath­er reports and so on.”

    Sky Deutsch­land said it had not made a deci­sion on whether to launch the cam­paign.

    —————————

    Voice to Skull Tech­nol­o­gy in New York
    Decem­ber 12th, 2007

    Via: AdAge:

    New York­er Ali­son Wil­son was walk­ing down Prince Street in SoHo last week when she heard a woman’s voice right in her ear ask­ing, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” She looked around to find no one in her imme­di­ate sur­round­ings. Then the voice said, “It’s not your imag­i­na­tion.”
    Indeed it isn’t. It’s an ad for “Para­nor­mal State,” a ghost-themed series pre­mier­ing on A&E this week. The bill­board uses tech­nol­o­gy man­u­fac­tured by Holoson­ic that trans­mits an “audio spot­light” from a rooftop speak­er so that the sound is con­tained with­in your cra­ni­um. The tech­nol­o­gy, ide­al for muse­ums and libraries or envi­ron­ments that require a qui­et atmos­phere for iso­lat­ed audio slideshows, has rarely been used on such a scale before. For ran­dom passers­by and res­i­dents who have to walk unwit­ting­ly through the area where the voice will pen­e­trate their inner peace, it’s anoth­er sto­ry.
    Ms. Wil­son, a New York-based styl­ist, said she expect­ed the voice inside her head to be some type of cre­ative project but could see how oth­ers might per­ceive it dif­fer­ent­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly on a late-night stroll home. “I might be a lit­tle freaked out, and I wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly think it’s com­ing from that bill­board,” she said.
    Joe Pom­pei, pres­i­dent and founder of Holoson­ics, said the creepy approach is key to draw­ing atten­tion to A&E’s show. But, he not­ed, the tech­nol­o­gy was designed to avoid adding to noise pol­lu­tion. “If you real­ly want to annoy a lot of peo­ple, a loud­speak­er is the best way to do it,” he said. “If you set up a loud­speak­er on the top of a build­ing, everybody’s going to hear that noise. But if you’re only direct­ing that sound to a spe­cif­ic view­er, you’re nev­er going to hear a neigh­bor com­plaint from street ven­dors or pedes­tri­ans. The whole idea is to spare oth­er peo­ple.”
    Holoson­ics has part­nered with a cable net­work once before, when Court TV imple­ment­ed the tech­nol­o­gy to pro­mote its “Mys­tery Whis­per­er” in the mys­tery sec­tions of select book­stores. Mr. Pom­pei said the com­pa­ny also has test­ed retail deploy­ments in gro­cery stores with Proc­ter & Gam­ble and Kraft for cus­tomized audio mes­sag­ing. So a cus­tomer, for exam­ple, look­ing to buy laun­dry deter­gent could sud­den­ly hear the sound of gur­gling water and thus feel com­pelled to buy Tide as a result of the son­ic expe­ri­ence.
    Mr. Pom­pei con­tends that the tech­nol­o­gy will take time for con­sumers to get used to, much like the lights on dig­i­tal sig­nage and illu­mi­nat­ed bill­boards did when they were first used. The web­site Gawk­er post­ed an item about the bill­board last week with the head­line “Schiz­o­phre­nia is the new ad gim­mick,” and asked “How soon will it be until in addi­tion to the do-not-call list, we’ll have a ‘do not beam com­mer­cial mes­sages into my head’ list?”
    “There’s going to be a cer­tain pop­u­la­tion sen­si­tive to it. But once peo­ple see what it does and hear for them­selves, they’ll see it’s effec­tive for get­ting atten­tion,” Mr. Pom­pei said.

    http://cryptogon.com/?p=1713

    ——————–

    You can bet that if it is being used com­mer­cial­ly right now, it was used “covert­ly” in the past.

    Posted by Swamp | July 8, 2013, 9:28 am
  5. @SWAMP–

    Sweet Creep­ing Jesus, that is depress­ing, although in tem­po with applied tech­nolo­gies that can dou­ble as mind con­trol.

    I guess we might call this “Skull and Tones”!

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | July 8, 2013, 5:31 pm

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