RFK Assassination: Second Shooter & Manchurian Candidate

Overview

Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy walked through the kitchen pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, moments after winning the California Democratic presidential primary. He was surrounded by supporters, campaign staff, and hotel employees. Somewhere in that crowd, a 24-year-old Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Bishara Sirhan raised a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver and started shooting.

Kennedy was hit four times. He fell to the floor. Twenty-six hours later, he was dead.

The LAPD concluded that Sirhan acted alone. Case closed.

Except the coroner said the fatal bullet hit Kennedy from behind, at a distance of approximately one inch. Every eyewitness placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy, several feet away. Sirhan’s gun held eight rounds. The LAPD’s own crime scene analysis found at least thirteen bullet holes in the pantry. A security guard standing directly behind Kennedy was armed with the same caliber weapon and drew his gun during the shooting.

And Sirhan himself says he doesn’t remember any of it.

The RFK assassination conspiracy theory isn’t built on speculation or paranoia. It’s built on a coroner’s report that contradicts the physical positioning of the accused shooter, a bullet count that exceeds the capacity of the accused’s weapon, and a suspect whose amnesia has been examined by psychologists who believe it may be genuine. Something happened in that kitchen pantry that the official investigation doesn’t explain.

The Official Account

The Shooting

Robert Kennedy had just given his victory speech in the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel. Rather than exit through the crowd, he was directed through the kitchen pantry — a narrow corridor used for food service. He was walking through this space, shaking hands with kitchen workers, when Sirhan emerged from behind a tray rack and opened fire.

Sirhan was tackled by several people, including former Olympic decathlete Rafer Johnson, NFL lineman Rosey Grier, and Kennedy aide Bill Barry. Even after being restrained, Sirhan continued pulling the trigger. His gun was pried from his hand.

Five other people were wounded: Paul Schrade (a United Auto Workers official), William Weisel (an ABC News producer), Ira Goldstein (a Continental News Service reporter), Elizabeth Evans (a bystander), and Irwin Stroll (a 17-year-old campaign volunteer).

Kennedy was transported to Good Samaritan Hospital and underwent surgery. He died at 1:44 a.m. on June 6, 1968.

The Investigation

The LAPD’s Special Unit Senator (SUS) investigated the assassination and concluded that Sirhan acted alone. The investigation was closed, evidence was destroyed (including the door frames from the pantry that contained bullet holes), and the files were sealed.

This handling of evidence would later become one of the investigation’s most criticized aspects.

The Autopsy Problem

Thomas Noguchi’s Findings

The autopsy was performed by Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi — one of the most respected forensic pathologists in American history. Noguchi’s findings created the central contradiction of the case:

The fatal wound: The bullet that killed Kennedy entered behind his right ear, traveling upward at approximately a 15-degree angle, from a distance of no more than one inch. Powder burns and soot patterns on Kennedy’s skin confirmed the contact-distance range.

The other wounds: Two additional bullets entered Kennedy’s right armpit area, also from behind, at close range. A fourth bullet passed through his suit jacket without entering his body.

The direction: All bullets that struck Kennedy came from behind and to the right.

The problem: Every eyewitness — and there were dozens of people in the pantry — placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy, at a distance of at least two to three feet. Many witnesses said the distance was greater. No witness described Sirhan being behind Kennedy or close enough for contact-range firing.

If Sirhan was in front of Kennedy and several feet away, he could not have fired the fatal shot that entered behind Kennedy’s ear from one inch.

The Bullet Count

Sirhan’s Iver Johnson Cadet revolver was an 8-shot .22 caliber pistol. He fired all eight rounds — this is undisputed. Five people (including Kennedy) were hit. But crime scene investigators found bullet holes in the pantry that suggested more than eight shots were fired.

William Harper, a forensic criminalist, examined the evidence and identified at least thirteen bullet holes in the pantry — five in victims and at least eight in walls, ceiling tiles, and door frames. If this count is accurate, at least five shots were fired by someone other than Sirhan.

The LAPD contested this count, arguing that some holes were not bullet holes. But their case was undermined by their own decision to destroy the door frames and ceiling tiles rather than preserve them for independent analysis — an action that has never been adequately explained.

The Cesar Question

The Security Guard Behind Kennedy

Thane Eugene Cesar was a part-time security guard hired by Ace Guard Service for the event. He was walking immediately behind and to the right of Kennedy — exactly the position from which the fatal shots were fired — when the shooting began.

Key facts about Cesar:

• He was armed with a .22 caliber revolver — the same caliber that killed Kennedy
• He admitted drawing his weapon during the shooting
• He was never tested for gunshot residue
• He was briefly interviewed by the LAPD but was never seriously investigated
• He later sold his .22 revolver, claiming it was not the same weapon he carried that night (the claim was never verified because the LAPD didn’t examine the weapon before it was sold)
• He was a vocal opponent of the Kennedy family, telling journalist Don Schulman that he was “no fan” of the Kennedys

Cesar’s position — directly behind Kennedy’s right side, at contact distance — is consistent with the autopsy findings. The LAPD’s failure to thoroughly investigate the person standing in exactly the position from which the fatal shots were fired remains one of the most perplexing aspects of the case.

Cesar consistently denied involvement. He died in 2019 in the Philippines. He was never charged.

The Manchurian Candidate Theory

Sirhan’s Amnesia

Sirhan Sirhan has maintained since his arrest that he has no memory of the shooting. His last clear memory, he has consistently stated, is of being in the pantry drinking coffee given to him by an attractive woman in a polka-dot dress. After that — nothing until he found himself being choked on the ground with people holding his arm.

Sirhan’s notebook, discovered by police at his home, contained repetitive writings — “RFK must die” written over and over, along with other phrases in a pattern that psychologists have described as consistent with automatic writing under hypnosis.

The MKUltra Connection

The Manchurian Candidate theory connects Sirhan’s apparent amnesia to the CIA’s documented MKUltra program, which ran from 1953 to 1973 and included extensive research into hypnotic programming, drug-induced suggestibility, and the creation of unwitting agents.

The theory proposes that Sirhan was hypnotically programmed to fire his gun in the pantry — creating a diversion and providing a patsy — while the real killer (possibly Cesar, possibly someone else) fired the fatal shots from behind Kennedy. Sirhan’s amnesia would be a feature of the programming, not a pretense.

Several experts have examined Sirhan and found evidence consistent with this theory:

Daniel Brown, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, spent over 60 hours with Sirhan and concluded that Sirhan had been “hypno-programmed” — conditioned to fire his weapon in response to a trigger stimulus (possibly the woman in the polka-dot dress). Brown found that under hypnosis, Sirhan could recall details of the shooting consistent with a dissociative state.

Herbert Spiegel, a Columbia University psychiatrist and hypnosis expert, examined Sirhan and found him to be “one of the most hypnotizable subjects I have ever encountered” — placing him in the top 1-2% of the population for hypnotic suggestibility.

The Scientific Dispute

Whether the CIA ever actually achieved reliable hypnotic programming capable of compelling someone to commit murder is scientifically disputed. MKUltra documents (most of which were destroyed before the Church Committee investigation) show that the CIA researched the concept extensively. Some documents suggest they achieved partial results under controlled conditions. Whether these results could be applied operationally — turning a civilian into a programmed assassin who would fire on command and then forget the experience — remains unproven.

The absence of proof is not proof of absence, particularly given that the CIA destroyed the vast majority of MKUltra records.

The Woman in the Polka-Dot Dress

Multiple witnesses reported a woman in a polka-dot dress in the pantry before the shooting. After the shooting, witnesses Sandra Serrano and Bernardo Carbajal reported a woman in a polka-dot dress running from the hotel shouting, “We shot him! We shot him!”

The LAPD identified the woman as Valerie Schulte, a Kennedy campaign volunteer. Serrano was subjected to a polygraph and pressured to recant her testimony. The LAPD’s handling of the polka-dot dress witnesses has been criticized as an effort to eliminate evidence that contradicted the lone-gunman conclusion.

The Evidence Problem

Destroyed Evidence

The LAPD’s investigation was marked by an unusual pattern of evidence destruction:

• Door frames from the pantry (containing bullet holes) were destroyed
• Ceiling tiles were destroyed
• The LAPD’s internal files (SUS files) were sealed and portions were reportedly destroyed
• The gun was test-fired but the original test bullets were not preserved in a manner allowing definitive comparison

This pattern of evidence destruction — combined with the LAPD’s pressure on witnesses who reported observations inconsistent with the lone-gunman theory — has led even measured critics to conclude that the investigation was, at minimum, grossly inadequate.

Audio Analysis

In 2005, forensic audio expert Philip Van Praag analyzed a recording made by freelance journalist Stanislaw Pruszynski in the pantry during the shooting. Van Praag identified what he believed were at least 13 shots — five more than Sirhan’s gun could hold — with at least two shots fired simultaneously, proving two guns were firing.

The analysis has been disputed by other acoustic experts, and audio forensics remains a contested field. But the analysis adds another layer of evidence suggesting more shots were fired than a single gun could produce.

Timeline

Sources & Further Reading

• Melanson, Philip H. The Robert F. Kennedy Assassination: New Revelations on the Conspiracy and Cover-Up. S.P.I. Books, 1991.
• Talbot, David. Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years. Free Press, 2007.
• Noguchi, Thomas T., with Joseph DiMona. Coroner. Simon & Schuster, 1983.
• Brown, Daniel P. “Sirhan and the RFK Assassination.” Court declaration, 2011.
• Turner, William, and Jonn Christian. The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2006.

Related Theories

• RFK Assassination — The broader assassination conspiracy landscape
• MKUltra Mind Control — The CIA program that may connect to Sirhan’s programming
• JFK Assassination — The earlier Kennedy assassination
• CIA Kennedy Plot — CIA involvement theories in Kennedy assassinations