'Sirhan DID shoot Bobby Kennedy. He held an imaginary gun to my head': Reporter's chilling encounter with killer in his cell
Get politics updates directly to your inbox + Subscribe Thank you for subscribing! Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
The small, intense man coiled his fingers around an ­imaginary .22 calibre revolver – and aimed it at my head. It was terrifying.
This was Sirhan Sirhan recreating those seconds just past midnight on June 5, 1968, when he emptied his newly purchased ­I­ver Johnson Cadet revolver in the ­direction of Robert Kennedy.
The younger brother of slain President John F Kennedy was the golden ­presidential hope of the Democrat Party.
After speaking at a rousing rally at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles he wove his way out through a kitchen – into the history books of assassinations.
The shooting, 50 years ago next month, has been the subject of many theories.
(Image: Hulton Archive)
The latest comes from Robert Kennedy Junior who doubts whether Sirhan Sirhan was his father’s assassin.
A new book, The Assassination of Robert Kennedy by Tim Tate and Brad Johnson, casts similar doubts. They all question whether there could have been a second shooter, and whether they were the one who fired the fatal shot.
But 40 years ago I spent hours in a cell with Sirhan Sirhan ­interviewing him.
It took gentle handling for this then 35-year-old Palestinian Christian to open up about his central part in one of the great crimes of the last century.
And I have never doubted that he was the man who took the senator’s life.
(Image: Reuters)
We met in California’s ­Maximum Security Wing at Soledad Prison 120 miles south of San Francisco.
The sun blazed in through barred windows and a warder, armed with a truncheon, stood feet away.
“I have a hazy memory of that day,” claimed Sirhan, his dark brown eyes softening.
“I am deeply remorseful at having killed another human being. I have a deep hatred, in ­principle, of killing anyone.”
But suddenly his mouth ­tightened into a line of anger.
(Image: Daily Mirror)
“I was not regretful about killing a man who was threatening me, my life, my country, my Palestine, my beloved homeland,” he said.
“What I did was a political act. I was the instrument.”
It summed up the tortured loyalties of this seemingly gentle man who saw his Palestinian ­homeland threatened by Israel.
Everything came to boiling point when he read that Kennedy had urged his fellow ­Americans “to keep our commitment to Israel – and with arms if necessary”. The shock of those words is still reflected on his face.
That usually soft face was rigid with fury as he remembered the days that erupted into the death of Robert Kennedy.
“Some of that time was hazy. But I remember I was greatly agitated and in a highly nervous condition,” he said.
Then I read in the Los Angeles Times that a Zionist organisation (he spat out the word “Zionist”) was ­planning to hold a victory march in the vicinity of the hotel where Kennedy was speaking.”
(Image: CBS)
It was the first anniversary of Israel’s victorious Six Day War – an event ­intensely sensitive to an angry ­Palestinian like Sirhan.
“It was that march that compelled me to go down – my lovely Palestine was emotionally in my heart,” he said.
But from the moment he arrived at the hotel things around him became a blur, something which he blamed on having downed five Tom Collins gin-based cocktails in a nearby bar.
“Like most Arabs, I do not drink alcohol, so my body was not used to it,” he said, allowing himself a rare smile. By now, details of that day were drifting back to him.
“I remember returning unsteadily to my car to rest. I had to get my mind straight. I also had to go and get the gun because I was afraid the Jews would steal it.”
(Image: Popperfoto)
In the hotel Sirhan remembers standing by a tele-type machine that was giving share prices.
“It was Western Union or something and I was fascinated by the way keys were working by themselves,” he said.
A woman testified she had seen him staring at the machine “as if he was half asleep”.
But there his memory dried up. “It was a complete blank, still is,” he told me.
He cannot recall that moment when he pushed his way through and pointed the small gun at Kennedy’s head. He was so close, he could hardly have missed.
Nor can he recall shouting, “Kennedy, you son of a bitch” nor pulling the trigger twice. Although he actually emptied the gun, wounding others.
There is no memory of the 44-year-old ­politician shouting, “Oh my God…Oh no” and trying to hide himself.
Sirhan learned later two of Kennedy’s guards, US football star Rosey Grier and Olympic gold medallist Rafer Johnson hurled their bodies on him.
The diminutive Arab lay helpless beneath their weight.
“The first thing I remember was when these guys were sitting on me and choking the hell out of me,” he said, with a faint, painful smile.
“After that, it was just a long, black nightmare – like something out of a book by Kafka. Have you read Kafka? That whole period of time was strange and disjointed for me,” he said. “But I remember being questioned by these detectives who were very jokey.
“I thought it was all very strange, weird even. I guessed – or I later surmised – they were using some form of primitive psychology. To keep me calm, I guess.”
(Image: Hulton Archive)
But the moment of truth would come when Sirhan appeared in court in Los Angeles that ­following morning.
“For the first time I heard the word ‘murder’ and I thought, ‘My God… what have I done?’ It was a terrible moment.”
He still looked shocked at the memory. And there was worse to come – the death penalty was still used in California.
“I knew I would have to come to terms with dying in the gas chamber but I had no actual fear,” he said.
Then, much to his relief, California abolished the death penalty and his sentence become life imprisonment.
“Some of the others on Death Row had been listening to the radio at night.
“They came in and woke me with the news. It took a day for it to sink in,” he recalled.
(Image: Time & Life Pictures/Getty Image)
Now he believes it was God who saved him – “and not a couple of judges in ­California’s Supreme Court”.
In 2016, Sirhan, now 74, was denied the right to appeal for a new trial.
All that matters to him now is being forgiven by God for what he did that day.
But whatever other claims, conspiracy theories and mad beliefs have emerged, there can be little doubt that Sirhan fired two of his six bullets from that tin revolver into Robert Kennedy, snuffing out the life of a presidential hopeful.
Sirhan liked to show off his learning from the books he devoured in the sixteen hours a day he is alone in his cell.
As we parted, he showed no real contrition and quoted Nietzsche: “One should guard against being spiritually disturbed after ­committing a great act.”
A great act? The brutal murder of Robert Kennedy?