History's Greatest Mysteries (2020) s05e14 Episode Script

We want Kennedy!
We want Kennedy!
We want Kennedy!
Tonight, an assassin's bullet
changes the course of history.
This was an exciting moment.
It was filled with joy
and everyone is excited
about what's next.
Kennedy has been shot.
Is that possible?
And then for America, it's
a nightmare repeating itself.
Oh God! God!
Oh why?
Five years after John F. Kennedy
is killed by gunshot,
his brother Robert
meets the same fate.
It really left
the nation reeling.
One of the leading candidates
to be president was gone.
Now we'll uncover
the top theories
behind the second
Kennedy assassination.
It even sounds like a setup.
Bobby has enemies,
powerful enemies.
The LAPD appeared to
be engaging in a coverup.
And we'll explore
the latest clues
in a case still riddled
with inconsistency.
So the question is, does
the official theory add up?
Who was really behind the
killing of Robert Kennedy,
and why?
June 5th, 1968, the Ambassador
Hotel in Los Angeles.
It's after midnight and
Robert Kennedy has just won
the California Democratic
presidential primary.
He comes down to the ballroom
to greet his supporters,
and it's packed, overflowing
with people just so excited,
and he makes his
way to the platform.
This night is a big moment
in Bobby Kennedy's career.
He is 42 years old.
His star is on the rise
in the Democratic Party.
This night is bringing
him one step closer
to the Democratic nomination.
Robert Kennedy came
from a political family.
His father was
involved in politics
and had been a U.S. ambassador,
and then his brother
was a U.S. senator
and then became president,
and his brother Ted became a
U.S. senator from Massachusetts.
Bobby Kennedy got his law degree
and soon began making his name
as a hard-charging attorney.
He picks a job on
a senate committee
and begins his long career
of making life
uncomfortable for the mob.
When JFK becomes
president in 1961,
Bobby Kennedy becomes
the attorney general
of the United States, which is
the nation's top prosecutor,
and his office is investigating
and prosecuting the mob
and corrupt union
leaders as well.
He's working with his brother,
and then it all ends in horror.
The sound of the muffled drums
sweeps in melancholy waves
over the hushed throngs.
In 1963, John F. Kennedy
is assassinated in Dallas,
and Vice President Lyndon
Johnson becomes president.
Robert Kennedy
remained in his position
as attorney general for
approximately nine months
after the assassination.
But Bobby resigns
in September 1964
in order to run for state
senator of New York,
and he wins the election
in November 1964.
As senator from New York,
he begins taking
up liberal causes
like the betterment of
life for minorities,
like protecting farm workers.
He became opposed
to the war in Vietnam,
which was a pivotal
issue in 1968.
Bobby Kennedy is considering
a run for president in 1968,
but he's still kind of reluctant
because he doesn't wanna go
up against Lyndon Johnson.
And so he waited, but
then the Vietnam War
just became such
an intense issue.
Johnson was not
taking strong steps
to get America out of Vietnam,
and Bobby Kennedy
saw an opening.
I am announcing
today my candidacy
for the presidency
of the United States.
Robert Kennedy announced
that he's running
for the presidency
on March 16th.
On March 31st, he
arrives back in New York
after this really
barnstorming tour
and he finds out that
Johnson is not going to run,
and that changes everything.
But at first,
Bobby is a long shot
for the presidency.
Bobby Kennedy has
two possible rivals
for the Democratic nomination.
He's got Vice President
Hubert Humphrey
and he's got the popularity
of Senator Eugene McCarthy
to contend with.
But as Robert Kennedy
starts making speeches
around the country,
there is this rockstar
type reaction to him
and people just
wanting to grab him.
I spoke to somebody
once who talked to me
about just trying to keep him
upright while going in cars
and people just grabbing
at him and pulling at him.
And these crowds were mammoth.
We want
Kennedy! We want Kennedy!
Clinching the California primary
is getting him one step closer
to winning the
nomination that summer.
We want Kennedy!
- Thank you very-
- We want Kennedy!
Thank you very much.
We want Kennedy!
We can start to work together.
We are a great country
and a selfless country
and a compassionate country.
As Robert Kennedy is
looking out over the crowd,
he's talking to them
in their language.
They're seeing what he
calls a better America.
If only he can
make it to Chicago
and win the
Democratic nomination.
My thanks to all of you,
and now it's on to Chicago
and let's win there.
At 12:15 AM,
Kennedy ends his speech
and heads for the
press conference room.
We want Kennedy!
Instead of wading
through the raucous crowd
in the ballroom, Kennedy
takes a shortcut.
He stepped off the
back of the stage
and then walked down a hallway
and into a narrow room
which has been become
called the pantry.
And he starts greeting
employees, talking to busboys.
Out of nowhere in the crowd,
a short, dark-haired
man steps forward.
Witnesses say they
saw him raise his arm.
In his hand is a gun.
People aren't quite
sure what's going on.
Perhaps it's fireworks.
But eventually people
realize someone's shooting.
People are collapsing
from gunshot wounds.
And finally two bystanders
pinned the man to the table
and they wrestled the
gun from his hand.
That's when it becomes clear
Robert Kennedy has been shot.
Oh god! God!
The ambulance
arrives at 12:23.
Emergency workers
rush into the room,
put Kennedy on a stretcher,
and rush him back out.
They realize that he's
been shot several times,
including at least
once in the head.
Kennedy is soon
undergoing emergency surgery.
Kennedy has been
shot three times.
One bullet goes into his brain,
another bullet
goes into his back.
Third bullet goes
into his shoulder
and exits and goes
up into the ceiling.
A fourth bullet passes
through his suit jacket
on a steep upward angle.
The bullet that hits
him in the head shatters,
and so surgeons spend hours
trying to get the bullet debris
out of his skull.
Unfortunately, even
after hours of work,
Robert Kennedy
slips into a coma.
On June 6th, 1968,
a little over 25 hours
after the shooting,
Robert Kennedy is
pronounced dead.
Five other people wounded.
Paul Schrade, a top official
in the United Auto Workers,
was hit with a bullet
that knocked him down,
gave him a concussion.
Other people sustained
minor bullet wounds.
At the police station,
officers have brought the man
that has been tackled and held
by the workers
inside the kitchen.
It's the same small,
dark-haired man
that people saw holding the gun.
They couldn't get
this crazy guy to speak,
they couldn't get him
to tell him his name,
and they flashed a
light in his eyes
to see if there was any problem.
And his eyes were real big
and they didn't
react to the light,
and officers said he was under
the influence of something.
The police release
his photo to the press,
and his brother recognizes him.
His brother calls in and
identifies him as Sirhan Sirhan,
a immigrant from Palestine.
From this point forward,
the LAPD builds a case
on Sirhan and no one else.
More than 20 witnesses
identify Sirhan
Sirhan as the shooter.
The gun was
recovered at the scene
and then brought back
to the police station.
Sirhan had an
eight-shot revolver.
He had eight bullets and
made good on all eight shots,
according to the LAPD.
When police go down
to Sirhan's home,
they search his room
and they find a
bunch of notebooks
that have the strangest
writing in the world in them.
There are some passages
that say, "RFK must die."
It's crazy writing
from someone who is in
some sort of trance.
Police find in Sirhan's
pocket that night
a newspaper clipping
about the Six-Day War
and Kennedy's
support for Israel.
Sirhan's brother
explains to police
that they are
Christian Palestinians
and they've gotten
caught in the battle
between Israel and
Israel's Arab neighbors.
Sirhan is distraught
about his homeland
and he has fixated
his anger on Kennedy.
Sirhan blames Kennedy
for support of Israel
and his commitment if
he's elected president
to send fighter jets to Israel.
With all of the evidence
that police have found,
they are confident that
they have their man.
Sirhan had motive. He had means.
He was in the room.
People have identified
him as having a gun.
And the case, according
to them, is closed.
On February 12th, 1969,
eight months after the shooting,
the trial of Sirhan Sirhan
begins in L.A. Superior Court.
The prosecutors lay out what
they see as a slam dunk case.
They have the witnesses
who place him at the scene.
They have his journal entries.
An acquaintance of
Sirhan even places him
in the Ambassador Hotel days
before the fatal shooting.
Was he scouting locations?
There are also witnesses who
saw him at a shooting range.
So he was somebody who
knew his way around a gun.
So the crime scene analyst,
Dewayne Wolfer of the LAPD,
testifies that all
eight of the bullets
fired by Sirhan
are accounted for.
Sirhan Sirhan pleads not guilty
by reason of insanity.
Sirhan denies remembering
anything about the shooting,
but then when he's asked by
the prosecutor on the stand,
"Did you shoot Robert F.
Kennedy?" he says, "Yes, sir."
Sirhan's own attorney
even stands up in court
and says there is no doubt that
Sirhan shot Robert Kennedy.
Sirhan's attorney is
trying to keep Sirhan
out of the gas chamber
because at the time California
has the death penalty
and he's trying to make sure
that Sirhan only gets life.
But on April 17, 1969,
Sirhan Sirhan is convicted
of killing Robert Kennedy
and sentenced to death.
As far as the LAPD is
concerned, the case is over.
The case
may be officially closed,
the verdict delivered,
but many say the trial
left unanswered questions.
Even as the trial is happening,
members of the media and
local concerned citizens
are wondering if
this all adds up.
People are troubled
that Sirhan's defense
didn't challenge any of
the physical evidence.
Part of the problem is
that the LAPD has promised
that they're going to have
a transparent investigation,
but they don't actually release
any of the investigation
to members of the media.
That's really concerning.
The Kennedy Assassination
Truth Committee
was a group of well-meaning
critics of the case
who put together some evidence.
They go back to the crime scene,
and one of the things they
focus on is bullet holes.
A few days
after the guilty verdict,
this group publishes
its findings
in an alternative newspaper
called the "Los
Angeles Free Press."
They present
photographic evidence
that 10 bullets were
fired, which doesn't add up
with the official investigation
that there were
only eight shots.
In April of 1969,
Sirhan Sirhan is
sentenced to death
for the murder of
Robert F. Kennedy.
But journalists and
independent investigators
challenge the lone
gunman theory.
Just days after the trial,
a newspaper,
the "Los Angeles Free Press,"
shows a photograph
of a door jamb.
In that door jamb is what
looks to be two bullet holes.
Another photograph is
published of an LAPD officer
pointing to a bullet hole
in another section of the
kitchen a few feet away.
Sirhan's gun held eight rounds,
seven bullets were recovered
from the victim's bodies
and one bullet went
into the ceiling.
But now there appear to be
three additional bullets
buried in the walls.
With more than
eight shots fired,
that means that
there's a second person
who could have fired
the fatal shots
that killed Bobby Kennedy.
All of a sudden you have
to question who Sirhan is
and what is he doing there,
and who might the second gun
be and what is he doing there,
and who are the
people behind this?
A few months after the trial,
a documentary filmmaker
named Ted Charach
begins his own investigation
into the death of
Robert Kennedy.
He discovers that the medical
examiner, Thomas Noguchi,
who performed the
autopsy on Robert Kennedy
filed a 62-page report that
was never entered into evidence
during the trial.
For the first time,
Noguchi introduces evidence
that has never
been talked about.
One gunshot wound was
found behind right ear.
And after test firing,
we came to conclusion
that the muzzle distance
would be one inch
from the right ear edge and
no more than three inches.
Sirhan, who's approaching
Kennedy from the front,
never gets within a
couple of feet of Kennedy
because all these
other guys tackled him
after the first two shots.
Sirhan's never close
enough to put a shot
into the back of Kennedy's head.
This new evidence
from Ted Charach's film
is really explosive,
its own news story,
and it provokes this
really big media reaction.
After Sirhan's trial,
his appellate lawyers hire an
independent ballistics expert
to reanalyze the
three intact bullets
recovered from Kennedy
and two other victims.
What he finds is that the bullet
that enters Kennedy's neck
and a bullet that hit a
bystander don't match.
If those two
bullets don't match,
that means there had
to be another gun
and another gunman in the room.
But the district attorney
just falls back on the fact
that a jury convicted Sirhan
while the police stood
by their analysis
that the bullet in Kennedy
came from Sirhan's gun.
With the files locked
away from the public,
no one can actually
fact-check their work,
so there are now calls for
release of these LAPD files.
Almost two
decades later, in 1986,
Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley
announces that the files
will be released to
the public at last.
50,000 police documents.
There's 1,000
photographs to go through
and there's hundreds of hours
of audio and video materials.
In 2004, an audio file is
found in this treasure trove.
That audio file was made
by a Polish journalist
the night of the shooting.
On this audio file,
popping sounds are heard.
A audio engineer
named Philip Van Praag
begins to remove some of
the ambient noise from it
so he can actually count the
number of shots that he hears.
He found 13 shots on the tape.
13 shots is about
five shots more
than Sirhan's gun
could have handled,
so that would again indicate
that a second person was
firing inside that pantry.
Based on this new evidence,
Sirhan's lawyers
file papers in 2011
requesting a new trial.
Finally, in 2013, a
magistrate judge takes the case.
He says there's no
evidentiary support
that there's a second shooter,
and he questions how a
second shooter could shoot
and then escape
completely unnoticed.
So the appeals are denied,
but it doesn't end the question
of whether or not
there was a second gun.
In evidence
never presented in court,
the medical examiner in
Robert Kennedy's assassination
concludes the senator
was killed by a gunshot
fired from an inch
away and from behind.
Yet witnesses say the man who
was convicted, Sirhan Sirhan,
was not behind Kennedy
and never got closer
than two or three feet.
But who else was close
enough to shoot Kennedy?
In 1968, the Secret Service
did not provide protection
for presidential candidates,
so there wasn't massive security
like you see at
political rallies now.
Senator! Senator!
Kennedy did have his own sort
of informal security outfit.
A retired football player
by the name of Rosey Grier
and Olympic medalist
Rafer Johnson,
they provided
security for Bobby.
As Kennedy heads
into the kitchen,
he gets separated
from Rafer Johnson.
A security guard independent
from RFK's informal outfit
ends up taking
Kennedy's right elbow
and he escorts him
through the pantry.
His name is Thane Eugene Cesar.
He had been hired by
the Ambassador Hotel
for the purpose of crowd
control that night.
This would put him in position
to be the perfect person to
shoot Robert Kennedy
from behind.
After the revelation
of additional bullets,
people start looking
into Thane Cesar
to see if he had
a possible motive.
Cesar is a 26-year-old
part-time security guard.
Cesar had clearance to
carry a weapon that night.
He had a .38.
After the shooting,
Cesar is among those
questioned by police.
Cesar said that he
saw an arm and a gun
which had started
firing at Kennedy.
According to Cesar,
Kennedy collapses
right in front of him.
Oh god!
Cesar says he reaches for
his .38 but never fires it.
In fact, he says he fell
over against an ice machine.
After giving
his statement to police,
Cesar is cleared.
From the beginning, Cesar
is treated as a witness
and not a suspect.
Well, the police never
asked for Cesar's .38
or test fired it.
There were no indications
that a .38 had been used.
But Donald Schulman
of CBS News told police
that he saw one of the
security guards return fire.
Cesar was the only security
guard in the room with a gun.
It turns out Gene Cesar
had a .22 caliber pistol
that was very similar to
Sirhan's .22 caliber pistol.
With interest
in the second gunman theory
growing, in 1971, the
district attorney's office
summons Thane Eugene Cesar
for another interview.
Here's where it gets
really interesting.
Cesar says he sold
the gun to a friend
before the assassination,
but a reporter tracks
this friend down
and finds out that
Cesar sold the gun
a few months after
the assassination.
This friend even
produces a bill of sale
that has Cesar's
signature on it.
So not only was Cesar
in the right place
at the right time to
have shot Kennedy,
but he also had the
right kind of gun.
However, the DA takes no action.
In 1973, documentary
filmmaker Ted Charach
interviews Cesar, and Cesar
reveals in this interview
something really interesting.
He finds out that Cesar
might also have a motive
for shooting Kennedy.
I definitely wouldn't
have voted for Bobby Kennedy
'cause he had the same
ideas as John did,
and I think John sold the
country down the road.
He gave it to the commies.
He literally gave
it to the minority.
I'm not a Democrat.
He has these far-right leanings,
and the guy he was supporting
in the 1968 election
was actually former Alabama
governor George Wallace,
who's a known racist.
And I say segregation
now, segregation tomorrow,
and segregation forever.
Cesar felt that Black people
were having too many
people advocating for them
and that their equal rights
were being shoved down
people's throats, and that
there was going to be a time
where people pushed
back against that.
When Ted Charach's
documentary "The Second Gun"
comes out in 1973, many
people watch this documentary
and come away with the idea
that Cesar must have had
something to do with it.
In the years that follow,
Cesar gets more tight-lipped
and eventually moves
to the Philippines
where he resides until
his death in 2019.
But while Cesar
was well-positioned
to fire the fatal shots,
there was at least one other
person in the pantry that night
who had no business being there.
In 1969, Sirhan
Sirhan is convicted
of killing Robert Kennedy
and locked behind bars,
but in the years that
follow the evidence mounts
that there may have been
holes in the investigation.
Then in 1986 the official police
files are finally released,
including details of a
forgotten eyewitness interview
from 1968, an interview
which may shed light
on the identity
of a new suspect.
Sandy Serrano is a
21-year-old volunteer
working for the Robert
Kennedy campaign.
That fateful night, she's
sitting on the back stairs
of the Ambassador Hotel
getting some fresh air.
Around 11:30 or so,
Sandy Serrano is outside
behind the Ambassador
and she says that she saw a
woman in a polka dot dress
and a man who matches
Sirhan's description
going into the pantry together.
And then this woman in a
polka dot dress comes out
after the shooting shouting,
"We shot him, we shot him.
We shot Senator Kennedy."
Even though the police
have Sirhan in custody,
they start looking
for this woman.
She could be an accomplice.
She could be a second shooter.
At least 25
witnesses recall seeing a woman
in a polka dot dress at
the hotel that night,
and several people saw her in
the company of Sirhan Sirhan.
One witness even remembers
the woman helping Sirhan Sirhan
get into his position
in the pantry
before the fatal shooting.
The woman appears
to have said something
in his ear and smiles.
Outside the Ambassador,
a police sergeant
bumps into this woman
who again says,
"We shot Kennedy,"
and he helps put out a
description of this woman.
That same night,
police put out an
all-points bulletin
for this mysterious woman.
In the APB that's put out,
the woman is described as a
white woman aged 23 to 27,
and she's wearing a white dress
with black polka dots and heels.
Shortly after
Sirhan is arrested,
police cancel the bulletin.
LAPD investigators are
convinced that Serrano
and their own officer
have misinterpreted
what this woman said.
They assume that what
they actually heard
was, "They shot
Senator Kennedy."
But Sandy Serrano goes
to the national media
and she refuses to
change her story.
This girl said, "We've
shot him. We've shot him."
And I says, "Who did you shoot?"
And she says, "We
shot Senator Kennedy."
I can remember what she
had on and everything.
She had on a white
dress with polka dots
and she has a funny nose.
Two weeks later,
with Sirhan behind bars,
police announce that Sandy
Serrano has recanted her story.
Police say that Sandy
is changing her story
and maybe didn't quite
remember what was said.
And that's how it
stands for about 20 years
until Sandy's original
account is rediscovered
when the police released
the files to the public.
And people go and interview her
and she once again renews her
claim that she saw this woman
and this woman said,
"We killed Kennedy."
Serrano also gives a
very detailed description
of how she was pressured by
the police to change her story.
When looking at the transcript
of that Sandy Serrano interview,
you can see that the
detective is accusing her
of trying to bring
down the investigation
of who killed Robert Kennedy.
Sandy Serrano says after being
browbeat by this detective,
she was willing to tell them
whatever they wanted to hear
just for it to be over.
But a lot of people criticize
the investigators' tactics here,
that they never told
her that 25 other people
actually saw the same woman
that she said she saw.
For decades, the
identity of the woman
in the polka dotted
dress remained a mystery.
Then in 2011,
the woman comes up again,
mentioned in a parole hearing
by none other than
Sirhan Sirhan.
Sirhan does recall
that he met this woman
he describes as pretty.
Sirhan does remember being
with the woman in
the polka dot dress
and saying that she led
him into the kitchen
and that then his mind
started to play tricks on him.
He says he has a flashback
to the shooting range,
but then he doesn't
have any recollection
of actually shooting Kennedy.
He also says he has no
memory of the name of the woman
in the polka dotted
dress and has no idea
why she was at the
Ambassador Hotel that night.
A year later, in 2012,
a new clue emerges
when Paul Schrade,
a union leader and
ally of Robert Kennedy
who was also shot that
night, gets a cryptic letter.
It comes with a photo
from a person claiming
that their aunt was the
woman in the polka dot dress.
Paul Schrade gives the photo
to a reporter, Brad Johnson,
and he begins taking the photo
to witnesses who were at the
Ambassador Hotel that night.
They all tell Johnson
that it looks like the woman
in the polka dot dress.
In 2018, after
a five-year investigation,
Brad Johnson and his
co-author Tim Tate
identify the woman in
the polka dot dress
for the first time.
The woman is Elayn Neal,
and she is a white
woman with a pug nose.
The journalists begin digging
into Elayn Neal's background.
They find out she was
about 19 when RFK was shot
and her first husband was
away fighting in Vietnam.
Elayn's family reports
that she always seemed
haunted by something.
She begins drinking heavily.
She ends up divorcing
her soldier husband
and she does get remarried.
Journalists
start delving into the life
of Elayn's second
husband, Jerry Capehart.
Jerry Capehart was
quite a character
and he had a couple of
songwriting hits in the 1950s.
His son revealed that shortly
before Jerry Capehart died,
he told him that in addition
to being in the music business,
he'd also been in the CIA.
She's been called the woman
in the polka dot dress,
but some say she may have
been in the wrong place
at the wrong time.
Others say she was exactly
where she was supposed to be
playing her role in
the RFK assassination.
From a family photo,
witnesses believe
that 19-year-old Elayn
Neal is the woman
in the polka dot dress.
She later marries a man
who makes a startling
deathbed confession.
The man once worked for the CIA
and his specialization was
mind control experimentation.
The claim that Jerry Capehart,
Elayn Neal's second husband,
worked in the CIA in mind
control could provide a link
between Elayn and the
RFK assassination.
It could even be a link
to something much bigger
than Elayn and Sirhan.
At the time of
the assassination,
the CIA is conducting
illegal human experimentation
called MK-Ultra.
The CIA began doing a lot of
odd and nefarious experiments
trying to see if they
could control people.
And so the CIA by the 1960s had
gotten universities involved
in helping them with research,
finding them subjects,
people to be
hypnotized or drugged.
They actually took people
off the street to do this.
Theoretically, they
would wanna use this
to infiltrate other countries,
but there's talk that
the CIA was using this
to create robot assassins.
The Manuchurian Candidate theory
from the movie by the same name
is a theory that says a
person can be programmed
to become an assassin and never
even know that they did it.
Sirhan would've been a
perfect candidate for MK-Ultra.
He's an impressionable young man
and it's possible that he's
suffering from a brain injury.
Two years earlier, he'd
fallen from a horse.
And who better to draw
him into the program
than a pretty young woman.
Elayn Neal might have
been a perfect person
to recruit into this operation.
She's home alone.
She's young and impressionable.
Elayn's family thought
that maybe this would
explain her odd behavior
after the assassination
where she would disappear
for long periods of time.
When the woman in
the polka dot dress
whispered in his ear,
that could have been
what triggered Sirhan's
assassination programming.
Sirhan had a totally
glassed-over look on his face
like he wasn't totally
in control of his mind.
That's something very
unusual that are clues
to what might or might
not be happening here.
The question is,
where's the evidence
that Sirhan was part of
this mind control program?
His defense team wants answers.
In 2008, with
the mind control theory
gaining interest, Sirhan's
lawyers arrange for him
to undergo a new
psychological evaluation.
Harvard Medical School
professor Dan Brown,
a forensic psychiatrist,
is one of the world's
leading experts on hypnosis,
and he spent more than 120
hours with Sirhan Sirhan.
Dan Brown discovered that Sirhan
is about the most easy person
in the world to hypnotize.
Brown's conclusion
was that Sirhan
had been put under hypnosis.
He thinks he's an innocent man.
But even if it is possible
that Sirhan was under
some kind of CIA control,
what could possibly
be the reason why?
Leading up to
this assassination,
there are many people in the CIA
who have it out
for Robert Kennedy.
Bobby Kennedy has made quite
a few enemies in the CIA,
starting with his time
as attorney general.
He doesn't believe that
the CIA should be doing
some of the things they're
doing around the world,
that they're
abusing their power.
Kennedy is upset that the CIA
is attempting to assassinate
Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Kennedy even wonders if
the CIA had something to do
with the assassination
of his brother.
Within the
intelligence community,
there certainly is concern
about Bobby Kennedy
and his potential rise to power.
The only thing worse than Bobby
Kennedy as attorney general
would be Bobby Kennedy as
president of the United States.
As president, Robert
Kennedy would be privy
to all of the CIA's secrets.
In fact, he could force
them to shut down operations
and perhaps even shake
up the entire agency.
If Sirhan was really
programmed to murder,
then his defense team argues
he deserves a lighter sentence.
In a 2011 hearing,
Sirhan's lawyers
take a new tack.
Sirhan's lawyers accused the CIA
of making him an unwitting foil
for their operation
to kill Kennedy.
The magistrate, however,
rejects this theory.
He says there's inference,
but there's no actual
proof of what happened.
But Robert Kennedy
still has enemies,
not enemies just in the CIA,
but enemies who are
willing to kill,
especially people
who cross them.
attorney's in no position
to override-
- Before
becoming attorney general
under his brother,
Robert Kennedy first
makes a name for himself
as general counsel
for a Senate committee
going after organized
crime in the late 1950s.
As the Senate
committee's top lawyer,
Robert Kennedy
personally questioned
the witnesses
pretty aggressively,
and these hearings
were televised.
Kennedy put himself
in the crosshairs
of some of the most merciless
men in the United States.
And some people wonder,
did these men finally
get their revenge?
One of Kennedy's targets
is Sam Momo Giancana.
He's the mob boss in Chicago.
Giancana is known for
being particularly merciless,
sometimes even hanging
his victims by meat hooks.
And Robert Kennedy on
national television
accuses him of
murder to his face.
Giancana responds
by pleading the fifth
with a sinister smile.
And this infuriates Giancana.
When Robert Kennedy
becomes attorney general
targeting those same Mafia guys
who he starts to eat for
lunch and dinner, too.
Bobby Kennedy was the
greatest crime fighter
this country has ever had.
There's a member of
the Giancana family
who has said that the
Kennedys' attacks on the mob
were such that
Giancana ordered a hit
on both John Kennedy
and Bobby Kennedy.
And the mob would
certainly have the means
and the opportunity and the
motive to kill Robert Kennedy.
Perhaps Sirhan
is just the patsy.
So a Mafia hit man can take
the fatal shot at Kennedy
and escape while Sirhan is
being ganged up by the crowd.
Kennedy also
makes an enemy of Jimmy Hoffa,
the powerful head of
the Teamsters Union.
Bobby was convinced
that Jimmy Hoffa
had connections to
organized crime,
and Bobby truly believed
that it was a conspiracy
of organized evil.
The two of them going
up against each other,
I mean, it really was intense
and they hated each other.
And Hoffa finally snaps
and he says to
Kennedy, "You're sick."
"That's what's the matter
with you, you're sick."
In September of 1962,
Jimmy Hoffa is on
trial for extortion.
Hoffa gets a hung verdict,
but he's still livid
about all of this,
and people say that he wants
to fire bomb Bobby
Kennedy's house.
After Sirhan's arrest,
the organized crime theory
is quickly dismissed.
Some say that the legal
blowback from killing Kennedy
is something that the
mob would want to avoid.
Some say that organized
crime may have been in cahoots
with the CIA, and it wouldn't
have been the first time
that they had worked together
on an assassination plot.
But still in the end,
there's no evidence showing
the Mafia was directly involved,
and Sirhan Sirhan himself
has never brought it up.
Whoever is responsible
for Robert Kennedy's death,
one thing is certain.
That his assassination
robbed America
of one of her
greatest statesmen.
I think that one of the things
that we can admire about Bobby
is that he had this awakening,
being committed to
those who were poor,
to those who are not sharing
in our democratic life,
and decided to try his
best to get to know people
who are so different than him,
and I find that to be
extremely inspirational.
And unfortunately,
that willingness to
be close to people
is part of his demise.
RFK! RFK!
Today, more
than five decades later,
only one person has been
charged and convicted
in Robert Kennedy's
assassination, Sirhan Sirhan.
Sirhan Sirhan still sits
in prison to this day.
He's exhausted all
of his legal appeals,
yet he still comes up for parole
and he still insists
that he doesn't remember
shooting Robert Kennedy.
In August of 2021,
Sirhan appears before the
parole board for the 16th time.
This time the board finds
the 77-year-old Sirhan
no longer poses a
threat to society.
They vote to release
him on parole,
but the governor of California
overrules the decision
and Sirhan returns
to his prison cell.
His next parole
hearing is in 2026.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching
"History's Greatest Mysteries."