Coroner to the Stars
Thomas T. Noguchi (Corgi Books, London 1984)
One of the things I asked Peter Dale Scott which didn’t go into the interview in Lobster 7 was why so little work had been done on the Robert Kennedy assassination. After all, at first glance, the ‘conspiracy angle’ was quite plain: the autopsy proved – without qualification – that Sirhan Sirhan didn’t (couldn’t have) fired the shots which killed Robert Kennedy. Scott’s answer was simple: such research is dangerous: dangerous to the researcher. People are scared.
Just how dangerous this case seems to be is demonstrated by the coroner on the case, Thomas Noguchi. In this recent book, Noguchi systematically demolishes the Sirhan-as-lone-assassin thesis and then, in the final pages, cops out.
“My own professional instinct instructs me that Sirhan somehow killed Senator Kennedy alone..’ …. (although “the existence of a second gunman remains a ‘possibility’).”
This, despite “scientific evidence of soot and divergent bullet angles, and a host of witnesses who did not actually see Sirhan fire the fatal shot.” (Not to mention “the trails of 12 bullets..found at the scene and Sirhan’s gun contained only eight.”)
This is worth buying for the chapter on RFK. The rest of it is dreck.
RR