Sirhan splits Kennedys
Ethel and kids bitterly divided over parole for RFK assassin
THE stakes were high at last month’s California parole board hearing for Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin. But it wasn’t just 77-year-old Sirhan Sirhan who was on tenterhooks before learning he would finally be recommended for release after 53 years in prison.
Behind the scenes, RFK’s widow and kids were at war against each other.
The fight over the impending release of the presidential candidate’s killer led to one side “double-crossing” the other, insider sources told The Post.
Matriarch Ethel, 93, and six of her and RFK’s children — Joe, Courtney, Kerry, Chris, Max and Rory — oppose Sirhan’s parole. Sons Robert Jr., aka Bobby, and Douglas are in favor. Daughter Kathleen has not recently made her opinion public. (Sons Michael and David are deceased.)
The Kennedys against Sirhan’s release promised they would not make a statement to the parole board on Aug. 27, sources told The Post.
Knowing that, Bobby — who announced in 2018 that he believes Sirhan did not act alone — had decided not to give a statement about parole.
Then all hell broke loose, according to Sirhan’s lawyer, Angela Berry.
“The night before the hearing I got a letter from the parole board,” Berry told The Post. “It read, ‘On behalf of the Kennedy family, we oppose the release of Sirhan.’ [Bobby] had been staying out of it . . . on the assumption that his family was going to stay out of it . . . I got ahold of him right away.”
“Bobby got backstabbed,” a source close to the hearing told The Post.
In response, Bobby wrote an 11thhour letter in favor of Sirhan’s release.
“The hearing started at 8:30 a.m. and Robert’s letter streamed in at 10:30 a.m.,” Berry said.
While Bobby and Douglas support Sirhan’s release, Sirhan’s team had never been contacted by Douglas until he asked, two days beforehand, to speak at the hearing, Berry said.
“[We] didn’t know at all what Douglas was going to say,” Berry said. In fact, he said he was “moved to tears” by Sirhan’s remorse, the AP reported.
“I’m overwhelmed just by being able to view Mr. Sirhan face to face,” he said. “I think 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.
“I do have some love for you,” he told Sirhan, who nodded in response.
The parole board staff has 90 days to review the decision, after which it’s handed over to California Gov. Gavin Newsom to block or allow parole.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend told The Washington Post in 2018 that brother “Bobby makes a compelling case” about Sirhan not acting alone. She had no comment on Friday. Last week, Ethel, who was pregnant with daughter Rory when her husband was shot on June 5, 1968, made a rare statement saying she opposes Sirhan’s release, adding he “should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”
“The family is really on a campaign if
they got Ethel to weigh in,” said an insider familiar with the feud. “That never happens.”
A longtime family friend said she understood why Ethel weighed in.
“It’s a disgrace,” the friend said. “What is wrong with those two children who want that lying son of a bitch freed from prison? Where is the family unity?”
The six siblings on the other side issued a joint statement saying they “adamantly oppose” Sirhan’s release. Rory wrote an essay for The New York Times, saying, “As my father was taken forever, so too should Mr. Sirhan be.” (Sirhan was sentenced to death in 1969 before California invalidated all death sentences in 1972.)
In an interview with WGN America, Kerry dismissed Bobby as a conspiracy theorist so addled that “why anyone . . . would take him seriously is beyond comprehension.”
Bobby and Douglas did not respond, while other family members declined to comment.
“They’ve gone to ground now because of Ethel,” the longtime friend said of the family.
THE battle also involves allegations by former RFK aide Paul Schrade, who insists that Sirhan did not act alone.
Schrade was standing next to RFK in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles when Schrade caught the first shot, in the head, from the gun Sirhan fired.
“It was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Schrade, now 96, told The Post. “They told me in the hospital that Bob had died.”
He has campaigned to bring to light what he says is evidence that another gunman killed Kennedy.
Schrade had no doubt Sirhan was the only gunman until former US Rep. Allard K. Lowenstein of New York told him in 1972 that there was more information that indicated Sirhan did not act alone.
Now Schrade and others argue that the ballistics and audio evidence from the Los Angeles Police Department and the LA District Attorney’s Office show that Sirhan fired eight shots from a gun that had eight chambers and that Sirhan was in front of RFK.
But four of the shots fired at RFK, including the one that killed him, came from behind and were fired from a different gun.
One of the most far-out theories — that Sirhan was “brainwashed” — is backed up by a number of people, including the respected Harvard Medical School Professor Daniel P. Brown, an expert on forensic psychiatry and hypnosis.
At Sirhan’s 2011 parole board hearing, Brown filed an affidavit claiming that “Mr. Sirhan did not act under his own volition and knowledge.” He added that Sirhan was a real-life “Manchurian candidate,” programmed by hypnosis into carrying out the shooting without knowing it.
But Schrade does not traffic in conspiracies. “I don’t know who else was part of it or why,” he said. “I can only rely on the evidence from the LAPD and DA’s Office.”
Schrade added that he has been in touch with RFK’s children on and off for years.
“Some of them listened to what I had to say and got it,” Schrade said. “But some of them, like Joe, refused . . . The last time I saw [Kerry] and brought all this up, she started laughing. It’s the attitude they all have, and it’s stupid. They ought to learn what really happened.”
He has remained friendly with Ethel but never spoken to her directly about a second gunman.
“There’s a lot of protection around Ethel,” Schrade said. “I don’t know if Ethel knows what we have.”
Jennifer Abreu, who runs Redemption Row, a prison-reform group, helped Sirhan prepare for his parole board hearing. She’s sympathetic to Ethel and others who oppose Sirhan’s release, but disagrees with their stance.
“I would ask that they look at this man’s exemplary record,” Abreu said. “Sirhan has been a model prisoner. [RFK] had a rich history in prison reform. [As US attorney general] he was the one who closed Alcatraz. Releasing him is something that Sen. Kennedy would have wanted.”
Abreu organized a high-profile group of inmates to “mentor” Sirhan ahead of his hearing — including ex-Aryan Nation leader Joel Baptiste, Mexican Mafia leaders Arturo Guzman and Roque Martinez and former Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight.
Abreu said Sirhan was better able to understand “what it was like to walk in another person’s shoes” as part of the men’s work.
Whatever happens next, Schrade is pushing forward with his fight to get police to re-investigate the case — whether or not the Kennedys oppose him. If Sirhan’s release is upheld, Abreu’s work may become easier, he said.
“The truth is hard to hide,” he said. “But as for the Kennedys, I doubt they’ll be having their annual summer reunions anymore.”