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US SENATOR ROBERT F Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan has been granted parole.
The decision by a California Parole Board panel came after two of RFK’s sons went against several of their siblings’ wishes and supported releasing Sirhan, and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.
The decision was a major victory for the 77-year-old Sirhan, though it does not assure his release, with the state’s governor ultimately making the decision.
RFK was assassinated in Los Angeles on June 6 1968.
Douglas Kennedy told the board he was moved to tears by Sirhan’s remorse, and Robert F Kennedy Jr submitted a letter calling for Sirhan to be freed.
However, six of Kennedy’s nine surviving children decried the parole board’s vote.
For 15 years, Robert F Kennedy’s assassin was denied parole by a California parole board that maintained Sirhan Sirhan did not show adequate remorse or understanding over the enormity of his crime.
On Friday, the two-person panel said he appeared to be a different man, even from his last hearing in 2016, and granted the 77-year-old prisoner parole.
The board found Sirhan no longer poses a threat to society, noting that he had enrolled in more than 20 programmes including anger management classes, Tai Chi and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, even during the coronavirus pandemic.
“We think that you have grown,” parole board commissioner Robert Barton said.
Douglas Kennedy was a toddler when his father was gunned down in 1968. He told the panel that he was moved to tears by Sirhan’s remorse and that the killer should be released if he is not a threat to others.
“I’m overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr Sirhan face-to-face,” he said.
“I’ve lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another. And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love.”
Six of Kennedy’s nine surviving children, however, said they were shocked by the vote. They urged state governor Gavin Newsom, who is facing a recall election in California, to reverse the parole board’s decision and keep Sirhan behind bars.
“He took our father from our family and he took him from America,” the six siblings wrote in a statement late on Friday.
“We are in disbelief that this man would be recommended for release.”
The statement was signed by Joseph P Kennedy II, Courtney Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Christopher G Kennedy, Maxwell T Kennedy and Rory Kennedy.
But another sibling, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has spoken in favour of his release in the past and wrote in favour of paroling Sirhan. He said in the letter that he met him in prison and was moved by Sirhan, “who wept, clinching my hands, and asked for forgiveness”.
Kennedy said in a letter submitted during the hearing to the board: “While nobody can speak definitively on behalf of my father, I firmly believe that based on his own consuming commitment to fairness and justice, that he would strongly encourage this board to release Sirhan because of Sirhan’s impressive record of rehabilitation.”
Sirhan smiled, thanked the board and gave a thumbs-up after the decision to grant parole was announced.
It was a major victory in his 16th attempt at parole after he had served 53 years.
The ruling will be reviewed over the next 120 days by the board’s staff. Then it will be sent to the governor, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.
If Sirhan is freed, he must live in a transitional home for six months, enrol in an alcohol abuse programme and undergo therapy.
Robert F Kennedy was a US senator from New York and the brother of US president John F Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.
RFK was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination when he was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after delivering a victory speech in the pivotal California primary in June 1968.
Five others were wounded.
Sirhan, who insists he does not remember the shooting and had been drinking alcohol just beforehand, was convicted of first-degree murder.
He was sentenced to death after his conviction, but that sentence was commuted to life when the California supreme court briefly outlawed capital punishment in 1972.
Some of Kennedy’s children and others have called for a reinvestigation of the killing, believing there was a second shooter who got away.
On Friday, Sirhan again said he did not recall the killing, but made multiple attempts to show he takes responsibility for the harm he caused.
“Senator Kennedy was the hope of the world … and I harmed all of them and it pains me to experience that, the knowledge for such a horrible deed, if I did in fact do that,” said Sirhan, appearing on camera from a San Diego County prison at the virtual proceeding.
The board found that despite the magnitude of the crime, Sirhan was not likely to reoffend and did not pose an unreasonable threat to public safety.
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What decent people they are to have the compassion and forgiveness for the man who killed their father and the additional strain on your sibling relationship for doing so.
@Pete Brady: serious strength and compassion on their part after all these years. But you just have to think what the world would be like today apart from 2 mad men taking out the Kennedys
@John kane: this killer literally changed the world, as we know it today, in a negative way. Must be a time of reflection for the kennedys. But glad he’s gone
@John kane: 11/22/63 by Stephen king gives a pretty interesting take on what would have happened if JFK survived…
@Bevin Aislinn: 11/22/63 by SK is a fantastic read, but it’s let down by that silly ending.
@Pete Brady: a lot of the family do not believe that Sirhan was the killer and they want a new investigation
@The Helpful Engineer: Stephen King endings are generally dissapointing!
@Trish O’Leary-Dunne: yeah but that’s usually because the great noon you’ve been reading is over.
@Linda Fegan: it all depends on which family members. Like all families they have a few…. Outliers
@Pete Brady: keep him in jail an eye for a eye
@Pete Brady: I’d love to know who was behind the death of Marilyn Monroe?
@Pete Brady: ‘decent’? You are unwell.
Some of bobbys children being very compassionate there. Don’t know if i could be.
Generous move by family members, they showed amazing compassion.
If he’d murdered somebody in Ireland, he’d have been in and out of jail several times in the interim.
@John Mulligan: In Ireland he would of been out within 10 yrs and a person not buying a tv licence would serve a full sentence.
@Joe Johnson: for murder 10yrs. Are you sure about that?
@Joe Johnson: TV licence sentence is shorter.. Much easier to serve a full sentence.. Come on now.. But I get the point you’re making..
@John Mulligan: is it not mandatory 40yrs for murdering a garda, soldier or member of the oireachtas ?
@Paul Clancy: Just who has ever served 40 years?
@John Mc Donagh: John Shaw
@OConnelj: fella up in howth killed his wife n served about 7 years
@John Elliott: he was convicted of man slaughter.
Sirhan reckons he was hypnotised for the shooting and that the bullets that killed rfk came from behind and not from the front of him where sirhan was.its easible knowledge the higher powers in America didn’t want rfk as president which was a shame
@James: wow
Robert Kennedy would have made a good president.
He looks like a cross between Robin Williams and Alan Sugar
My take on Bobby Kennedy is that he would be happy with the parole being granted.
Fair play to them, i couldn’t do that. I am of the view that if someone willing takes the life of another they should have there right to life forfeit and be executed.
@Dennis Farrelly: yeah, and the British should have executed The Birmingham Six and The Guilford Four and the Maguire Family.
Thane Eugene Cesar was the real assassin
As per link not all of Kennedy’s children want him released.
After reading the headline I’ve reds final parole board hearing in the shawshank redemption going around in my head
The US penal system is barbaric and corrupt. He has more than paid his debt to society.
Really, so he’s brought Bobby Kennedy back to life?
@Moss Cotter – you have no idea what you’re talking about if you actually believe that, suggest you read up on the subject before commenting.
@Pat O’Leary: oh I have read plenty on the matter and the only plausible candidate is Mr Cesar
@Moss Cotter – Moss when I say you need to read up on the subject, what I’m actually referring to is books, properly researched + referenced, not a website run by some nutjob conspiracy theorist living in his mother’s basement. Dan Moldea’s “The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy” is an excellent book on the subject – after years of parsing every conceivable theory he reaches pretty convincing conclusions. (Hint: After interviewing your guy Thane Eugene Cesar at length + having him pass a polygraph with flying colours, the author doesn’t believe he killed Kennedy).
Good for him.
He’s done the time.
For the crime.
Nows his time!
Let him live.
Sirhan Sirhan was a Christian Palestinian from Jerusalem and a Jordanian national (he was a refugee in Jordan after fleeing Jerusalem and immigrated to the US), who assassinated RFK because of Pro Israeli remarks Bobby made
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