# Robert F. Kennedy was killed by a second gunman, not by Sirhan Sirhan alone

**No verdict.** Sirhan Sirhan was seized at the scene with the gun in his hand, was convicted, and remains in prison. But the case carries one genuinely unresolved anomaly: the autopsy found the fatal shot was fired from behind at close range, while every witness placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy. Disputes over the number of shots and the Pruszynski audio recording are real and contested. No second shooter has ever been identified or proven, and the conviction stands.

Category: Government & Intelligence · Era: 1960s · First circulated: 1968
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/rfk-assassination

## Summary
Senator Robert F. Kennedy was shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles just after winning the California Democratic primary, and died the next day. Sirhan Sirhan was caught firing a revolver in the pantry, was convicted of first-degree murder, and is still imprisoned. Yet the forensic record contains an anomaly that has never gone away: the coroner found the fatal wound was inflicted from behind at point-blank range, and no witness ever put Sirhan behind Kennedy or that close. This case file separates what is documented (Sirhan fired, was convicted, and remains in custody) from the second-gun claim (that more shots were fired than his eight-round revolver could hold and that a second weapon was involved), which is genuine, contested, and unproven.

## The claim
That Senator Robert F. Kennedy was not killed by Sirhan Sirhan acting alone, but that a second gunman fired the fatal shot: that more bullets were discharged in the pantry than Sirhan's revolver could hold, that the autopsy and acoustic evidence point to a shot from behind and below that Sirhan was not positioned to fire, and that Sirhan may have acted as a programmed or manipulated patsy who has no memory of the shooting.

## Origin and timeline
- 1968-06-05: Shortly after midnight, having just won the California primary, Kennedy is walking through the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel when Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian-born man, opens fire with a .22 caliber Iver Johnson revolver. Kennedy and five bystanders are wounded. Sirhan is wrestled to the ground still holding the gun.
- 1968-06-06: Kennedy dies of his wounds at Good Samaritan Hospital, about 26 hours after the shooting.
- 1968-06: Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner Thomas Noguchi conducts the autopsy. He finds the fatal bullet entered behind Kennedy's right ear and that the muzzle was roughly one inch away, based on powder residue on the skin. Witnesses who were beside Kennedy describe Sirhan firing from in front of him.
- 1969-04-17: Sirhan is convicted of first-degree murder in a Los Angeles court. He is sentenced to death six days later.
- 1972: After the California Supreme Court strikes down the state's death penalty, Sirhan's sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
- 1975: Amid persistent doubts, a court orders a panel of seven firearms examiners to re-test Sirhan's revolver and the recovered bullets. The panel finds no conclusive ballistic proof of a second gun, but also cannot cleanly match the fatal bullets to Sirhan's weapon, and the original criminalist's work is criticized as careless.
- 1977: A special counsel report commissioned by the Los Angeles District Attorney concludes there is no persuasive evidence of a second gunman, while conceding gaps in the original investigation.
- 2008: At the American Academy of Forensic Sciences meeting, audio analyst Philip Van Praag presents his study of the Pruszynski recording, an audio tape made by a reporter in the pantry, arguing it captures 13 shots including closely spaced pairs that a single revolver could not fire. Other acoustics experts dispute the reading.
- 2011: Sirhan's attorneys cite the Pruszynski analysis in federal court filings seeking to overturn the conviction. The courts decline to grant relief, and the conviction stands.
- 2021-08-27: A two-member California parole panel recommends Sirhan for parole at his sixteenth suitability hearing, finding he no longer poses a threat to public safety. Two of Kennedy's sons support release; others in the family object.
- 2022-01-13: Governor Gavin Newsom reverses the parole recommendation, stating that Sirhan still poses a current threat to public safety.
- 2024-08-16: The parole board again denies Sirhan parole, as it did in 2023. He remains imprisoned in San Diego, eligible to seek parole again in the future.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: More bullets were fired than Sirhan's revolver could hold. His gun took eight rounds, but investigators counted more impacts, which means a second gun.
  Evidence: This is a real and long-running dispute, not a settled fact in either direction. Sirhan's Iver Johnson revolver held eight rounds; three struck Kennedy and five other people were wounded, which can account for all eight. The controversy is over apparent extra bullet holes that police officers and FBI agents said they saw in the pantry's door frames and ceiling panels, which some counts push past eight and toward ten or more. Officials countered that those marks were not confirmed bullet holes and that no recovered bullets exceeded the eight the gun could fire. The question can no longer be resolved cleanly because the LAPD destroyed the door frames and ceiling tiles after the trial, citing a lack of storage. A destroyed piece of evidence is an anomaly and an embarrassment; it is not, by itself, a second gun.
- Claim: The autopsy proves the fatal shot came from behind at point-blank range, but every witness placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy.
  Evidence: This is the strongest anomaly in the case. Dr. Thomas Noguchi, a widely respected coroner, testified that the fatal bullet entered behind Kennedy's right ear and that powder residue indicated the muzzle was about one inch from the skin, a rear, near-contact wound. Yet witnesses in the pantry, including Karl Uecker, who was gripping Kennedy's arm, consistently described Sirhan firing from in front and said the gun never got within that distance of Kennedy's head. Defenders of the lone-gunman finding argue that Kennedy was turning to his left to shake hands, which could have exposed the back-right of his head to a shooter in front, and that the chaotic scene makes precise positioning hard to reconstruct. The mismatch between the wound and the witnesses is genuine and has never been fully reconciled, but it does not by itself identify a second shooter.
- Claim: An acoustic recording made in the pantry captured more than eight shots, including double-shots too fast for one revolver, proving a second gun.
  Evidence: The Pruszynski recording, made by a reporter present during the shooting, is the basis for this claim. In 2008 audio analyst Philip Van Praag reported that his examination found 13 shots, some spaced too closely together to have come from a single-action revolver like Sirhan's, and that some sounds carried an acoustic signature suggesting a second weapon. His interpretation is contested. Other qualified acousticians have argued the tape is too degraded and noisy to yield a reliable shot count, that echoes and other sounds can be mistaken for gunfire, and that the analysis is not conclusive. When Sirhan's lawyers put the recording before federal courts, the courts did not find it sufficient to overturn the conviction. The recording is a live scientific dispute, not an accepted proof.
- Claim: Sirhan was a programmed or hypnotized patsy, a Manchurian candidate who genuinely does not remember firing the shots.
  Evidence: This is the most speculative part of the theory. Sirhan has long said he has no memory of the shooting, and his defense has at times argued he was in a dissociated or hypnotically induced state, an idea that draws on Cold War fears of mind-control programs. There is, however, no evidence that anyone conditioned or directed him, and no controller has ever been identified. Related lore about a woman in a polka-dot dress said to have been seen near the scene rests on witness accounts that investigators examined and found unreliable, with the central account discredited at the time. Amnesia and a haunting cultural narrative are not evidence of programming; on the record, the hypno-patsy claim remains unsubstantiated.

## Why people believe it
- The central anomaly is forensic, not political. A respected coroner found a rear, near-contact fatal wound, and the witnesses put the accused in front. That is a concrete, technical contradiction, and technical contradictions are far harder for the public to dismiss than a vague feeling that something is off.
- Evidence really was mishandled and destroyed. The LAPD burned the door frames and ceiling panels that might have settled the bullet count, and the original ballistics work was criticized by a later expert panel. When physical evidence disappears, the destruction itself looks like a cover-up, whatever the stated reason.
- There is credentialed dissent, not just internet speculation. Noguchi's own findings, the 1975 firearms panel's inability to cleanly match the bullets, and later acoustic analyses all came from people with real qualifications, which lends the doubts an authority that fringe theories lack.
- The moment made a lone-gunman story feel unbearable. Robert Kennedy was killed in 1968, months after Martin Luther King Jr. and less than five years after his own brother. A second Kennedy cut down by another lone young man with a cheap gun offends the instinct that enormous events should have proportionate causes.
- The era supplied a ready template. Real intelligence-agency abuses and mind-control research, later exposed, made the idea of a manipulated assassin feel plausible rather than fantastical, and gave the hypno-patsy story a place to attach.

## Open questions
- The rear, near-contact fatal wound and the witness accounts placing Sirhan in front have never been fully reconciled. The turning-head explanation is plausible but has not closed the gap to everyone's satisfaction, and it remains the case's most durable puzzle.
- Because the LAPD destroyed the pantry door frames and ceiling panels, the physical question of how many shots were fired can no longer be answered definitively. The evidence that might have settled the bullet count is simply gone.
- The 1975 firearms panel could neither prove a second gun nor cleanly match the recovered bullets to Sirhan's revolver, leaving the ballistics record less conclusive than a straightforward lone-gunman account would imply.
- The Pruszynski recording has never been adjudicated by a neutral scientific body. Van Praag's shot count and the rebuttals from other acousticians sit unresolved in the literature, so the audio evidence neither confirms nor rules out a second weapon.

## Sources
- Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Investigation Records, California State Archives, California Secretary of State: https://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/collections/rfk
- Robert F. Kennedy (Assassination) file, FBI Records: The Vault: https://vault.fbi.gov/Robert%20F%20Kennedy%20(Assassination)%20
- Robert Kennedy Assassination research archive, Mary Ferrell Foundation: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Robert_Kennedy_Assassination.html
- RFK assassination witness tells CNN: There was a second shooter, CNN (2012): https://www.cnn.com/2012/04/28/justice/california-rfk-second-gun
- Prosecutors, attorneys argue: Was there a second gunman in RFK assassination?, CNN (2012): https://www.cnn.com/2012/02/11/justice/california-rfk-second-gun
- The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: an analysis of the senator's injuries and neurosurgical care, Journal of Neurosurgery (2018): https://thejns.org/view/journals/j-neurosurg/130/5/article-p1649.xml
- Sirhan Sirhan, RFK's assassin, denied parole by board whose members had recommended it in 2021, CNN (2023): https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/us/sirhan-sirhan-parole-decision
- Sirhan Sirhan, in Prison in San Diego, Again Denied Parole in Assassination of Sen. Kennedy, Times of San Diego (2024): https://timesofsandiego.com/crime/2024/08/17/sirhan-sirhan-in-prison-in-san-diego-again-denied-parole-in-assassination-of-sen-kennedy/

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