Dan E. Moldea
W.W. Norton, London and New York 1995
I didn’t notice this when it was first published and came across a remaindered copy. Unlike the JFK murder, this case is absolutely straightforward. The forensic evidence is quite clear and inarguable: Robert Kennedy was shot three times at point-blank range – i.e. a range of less than three inches. The fatal shot was fired into his head behind his ear, at an inch or less. The ‘story’ told by the forensic evidence is of someone firing two point-blank, possibly contact shots into Kennedy’s body and a final one into his head. The alleged gunman, Sirhan Sirhan, was, by all eye-witness testimony, in front of Kennedy and didn’t get closer than a couple of feet; and, after firing his first couple of shots, his arm was grabbed by one of the crowd. If Sirhan did not do it, Thane Cesar, a part-time security guard standing behind Kennedy, is the only other possible gunman. (When he was shot Kennedy whirled round and ripped-off Cesar’s bow-tie before he fell to the ground.)
In this very odd book author Moldea spends 80% of it putting forward a really good case for Sirhan’s innocence. He interviews dozens of witnesses, police, forensics people etc who were at the scene; digs through all the evidence; shows pretty conclusively that there were more shots fired than there were cartridges in Sirhan’s gun; interviews again all the eye-witnesses who placed Sirhan in front of Kennedy; recounts all the previous attempts to get the case reopened – in short makes the case for conspiracy at least as well as it has been made before. Finally, he goes to see Thane Cesar, the obvious culprit. Cesar, of course, denies doing the dirty deed. Cesar takes a polygraph test – and passes. For Moldea that polygraph test wipes out all the other evidence and he plumps for Sirhan as the gunman. Moldea does not discuss the reliability of polygraph tests.
For Sirhan to be guilty Moldea accepts a scenario in which, after the first shot, the crowd pushed Kennedy and Sirhan together and it was then that Sirhan fired the three contact or near contact shots into Kennedy’s body – an event seen by none of the dozens of eye-witnesses – a profoundly implausible event.