NEW RFK ASSASSINATION RECORDING

4/16/2008Show more

A previously unknown audio tape, recently uncovered, reveals that Sirhan Sirhan did not act alone in the June 1968 assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

In this video, you will hear the sounds of the actual RFK assassination during a two-minute excerpt from the Pruszynski recording, the only known tape of the Bobby Kennedy shooting. The audio recording was made by freelance newspaper reporter Stanislaw Pruszynski, a Polish journalist covering the RFK presidential campaign for Canadian newspapers.

In this video, CNN International anchor Adrian Finighan in London interviews forensic experts Robert J. Joling and Philip Van Praag in Tucson, Arizona about the Pruszynski recording, which was uncovered by an American journalist in 2004 and examined extensively by Van Praag beginning in 2005.

Van Praag and Joling say the tape shows that in addition to convicted gunman Sirhan, there was a second, hidden gunman in the Ambassador Hotel kitchen pantry who also was firing at RFK. In fact, they say the recording along with other forensic evidence proves that none of Sirhan's bullets hit Kennedy. They say the Democratic presidential candidate was shot by the second unknown gunman and not by Sirhan, who is the only person ever to have been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for the assassination.

Joling and Van Praag say all eight bullets fired by Sirhan missed Bobby Kennedy and instead hit bystanders and woodwork inside the kitchen pantry and inside another area near the pantry. They say that RFK was struck four times (with three bullets entering his body and one passing through his clothing) and that all four Kennedy bullets were fired from extremely close range immediately behind the Senator by someone else other than Sirhan, who was several feet to Kennedy's front and never got behind RFK.

According to Van Praag and Joling, the Pruszynski recording reveals that at the moment of the RFK shooting in the hotel kitchen pantry, at least 13 shots were fired: five more bullets fired than Sirhan alone could have fired with his single eight-shot revolver and which he had no opportunity to reload in the pantry. In addition, the experts say the recording also reveals two sets of "double shots": shots fired too closely together to have come from the same gun.

Finally, they say, the Pruszynski recording reveals that the second gunman (RFK's real killer, they believe) likely was firing a .22 caliber 9-shot H&R 922 handgun at the same time that Sirhan was firing his .22 caliber 8-shot Iver Johnson Cadet 55 handgun. They say the hidden H&R weapon fired at least five shots from the rear while Sirhan fired all eight of his Iver Johnson's bullets from in front. They say Sirhan only had a free hand during his first two shots: that the first two shots Sirhan fired missed Senator Kennedy and Sirhan's last six shots were fired wildly while he was being grabbed by several people in the pantry. They say only the second gunman had a clear shot at RFK and was able to quickly fire his bullets into Kennedy from behind, unseen by most witnesses because all attention in the pantry had shifted to Sirhan and his gun.

Robert Kennedy and five other people were shot at the Ambassador in Los Angeles at 12:16 AM on June 5, 1968 only moments after the New York Senator had claimed victory in the June 4th California Democratic Presidential Primary. It was the third major American assassination of the 1960s, occurring 4 1/2 years after the assassination of RFK's brother, U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Phil Van Praag and Bob Joling presented their RFK assassination findings before the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Washington D.C. on February 21, 2008. On March 25, 2008, they likewise presented their findings in Ledyard, Connecticut before hundreds of forensic experts attending the annual Markle Symposium, sponsored by the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. They've done a number of TV, radio, internet and print interviews since. Earlier, on June 6, 2007, the Discovery Times Channel premiered the television documentary, "Conspiracy Test: The RFK Assassination" which featured Van Praag, Joling, Stanislaw Pruszynski of Warsaw, Poland and other notables as the program focused in detail on Van Praag's Pruszynski recording findings. Also featured in "Conspiracy Test" was shooting victim Paul Schrade of Los Angeles who is currently spearheading efforts to reopen the RFK assassination case at the local, state or federal level, based in large part on the late-breaking revelations from the Pruszynski recording.

The original CNN International segment was aired on television on April 16, 2008.