Thousands of newly released documents about assassin Sirhan Bishara Sirhan – the Palestinian who emigrated from Jordan to the US and killed Robert F Kennedy in 1968 – prove he acted alone, according to an expert who has studied the case for several decades.
“I predicted there wasn't going to be a smoking gun,” Mel Ayton, who is widely considered to be one of the foremost experts on Sirhan and the RFK assassination, told The National, in reference to the documents and conspiracy theorists who believe another suspect was involved.
“There have been no surprises, as I predicted, and I haven't heard from any other historian who has said there's a smoking gun either.”
Mr Ayton, author of The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F Kennedy and The Making of an Assassin, said many of the documents, released by the US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, appear to have been previously withheld because they contained the names and contact information of investigators and bureaucrats who have now died.
“It wasn't about covering anything up, it was about protecting sources, police sources and potential informants – that's what it all comes down to,” he said. Mr Ayton added that the documents do reveal several instances in which Sirhan was overt and confessed to his crimes shortly after RFK died on June 6, 1968.
“Sirhan's conversations with deputies and his words contradict this narrative that he was hypnotised,” he explained, knocking back a popular theory that has grown in the decades since RFK's murder and Sirhan's incarceration.
Some of the many previously classified documents also show a scramble by US investigators, lawyers, reporters and others to learn anything and everything about Sirhan's Palestinian background before his move to the US in 1956 at the age of 12.
Investigations by the Los Angeles Police Department and FBI indicated speeches given by Mr Kennedy on the campaign trail in support of Israel fuelled Sirhan's motivation that night in June, after RFK won the 1968 California Democratic primary in his pursuit of the White House.
“RFK must die,” Sirhan wrote repeatedly in a diary found by investigators. Friends and acquaintances of Sirhan also said at the time that he had become obsessed with RFK due to his stance on Israel, with the assassin frequently expressing anger.
“Many Arabs like Sirhan have been misled to believe that Israel is the enemy and the cause of their enslavement and poverty,” reads a letter to investigators from a lawyer based in Detroit, Michigan, included in the trove of recently released documents.
Another recently unclassified document details comments by a reporter, Salah Abd As-Samad, who allegedly met Sirhan's father in Amman, Jordan, shortly after his son was accused of shooting RFK.
“I believe that the imbalance in Senator Kennedy's speeches while electioneering for the presidency was the primary cause of what happened,” the reporter recounted Sirhan's father as saying during an interview.
“This is what pushed my son to act as he did. Had the late senator been reserved and merely called for peace in the Middle East, nothing would have happened.”
The previously classified documents also show the lengths to which investigators, out of due diligence, tried to pursue even the most fanciful of leads. One of those leads include a statement from Alice Dexter Peel, who claimed to have returned from holiday in Israel and told investigators she had heard a rumour of RFK's assassination in Tel Aviv, weeks before the assassination took place.
“Miss Peel advised she can only assume that possibly there may have been some error in reporting a news item concerning Kennedy,” read the document.
Mr Ayton said his research showed that after Sirhan was convicted, various Arab political groups sought to use his incarceration to advance the Palestinian cause.
“In 1973 Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat ordered the kidnapping of three American diplomats and offered them in exchange for Sirhan,” he wrote in his first book on Sirhan, adding that President Richard Nixon quickly refused the offer. “Terrorists, especially in the late 1970s, kept demanding his release, but it never succeeded.”
Sirhan's many attempts to be paroled have been unsuccessful. He was briefly granted parole by the California parole board in 2021, only to have the decision vetoed by California Governor Gavin Newsom, who said the assassination was one of the most notorious crimes in US history.
For the 17th time since being incarcerated in 1969, Sirhan was again denied a parole request in 2023. He will be eligible again in 2027.
The 81-year-old prisoner has periodically made contradictory comments about his role in RFK's assassination. During some interviews, he claims not to remember the events, while during others he seems to express remorse for what he did.
Sirhan's lawyer, Angela Berry, doubled down on his cloudy memory, adding that he never truly confessed. “It’s disingenuous and feeds into this false narrative that’s built up over the last 50 years,” she told The National.
One of RFK's sons, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who now serves as President Donald Trump's Health Secretary, has said he doesn't believe that Sirhan acted alone in the murder of his father. Mr Ayton, however, said that Mr Kennedy, like other conspiracy theorists, continues to misinterpret the ample evidence pointing to Sirhan's guilt.
“There's this image they keep pushing of Sirhan as a non-political patsy, that's what all the conspiracy-minded people try to say and it's completely asinine,” he said.
