Historical Crimes

October 1, 2008 Left to Right: cover of Richard Condon's 1959 novel (1960 Signet edtion); poster from the original film (1962); poster from film remake (2004).

by Mel Ayton

To coincide with the 40th anniversary of Senator Robert F. Kennedy's assassination this year, conspiracists have once again raised the possibility that RFK's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, had been hypnotized to murder Senator Kennedy. And other writers have used the RFK assassination anniversary as a vehicle to promote their Lee Harvey Oswald "Mind Control" theories.

May 27, 2004

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated
on the first anniversary of the Six-Day War in 1968.

by Denise Noe

Sirhan Sirhan did not set out with any grand plan to change U.S. history. He simply wanted to kill Robert F. Kennedy in revenge for Kennedy's support of Israel. As it turned out, Sirhan's assassination of Robert F. Kennedy -- on June 5, 1968, the first anniversary of the Six Day War -- would do more to alter the flow of U.S. history than even the assassination of President John Kennedy accomplished four years earlier. Although both assassinations would have profound and untold impact for decades to come, Sirhan's killing of Robert Kennedy would lead in a matter of months to the election of Richard Nixon as president, the escalation of the Vietnam War and eventually to the national nightmare of Watergate.

September 6, 2005

Sirhan Sirhan in a 1998 mug shot
from the California Department of Corrections at Corcoran Prison.

by Mel Ayton

For nearly 40 years conspiracy advocates have built their arguments not only around the controversies surrounding the ballistics evidence and the scene of the crime but the oft-repeated cry that the assassin had no real motive for his act. Yet there is a mountain of evidence to prove the contrary.

May 8, 2005

by Mel Ayton

For most Americans over 45 the images are still vivid – Robert Kennedy shaking hands with kitchen staff of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel; Kennedy lying in a pool of his own blood; Kennedy's unofficial bodyguards and friends grabbing the young Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, as he rapidly fired off his pistol shots before he could be subdued; the prostrate bodies of the other victims, wounded by Sirhan's obsessive intent in hitting Kennedy; the nation once again mourning the loss of another American hero dead before his time.

What Robert Kennedy might have done as president is one of history's great-unanswered questions. His death also prompted many to ask – why was he murdered?

by J. J. Maloney

The first time I saw James Earl Ray, he had just arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Charley McCracken, a friend from the St. Louis City Jail, pointed him out to me in H-Hall, where the newly arriving convicts at the maximum-security penitentiary were oriented.

The first year and a half I paid little or no attention to Ray. He was a loner. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. Although Ray had been sentenced from St. Louis, he was not part of the St. Louis "crowd."

In September 1961, I tried to escape and pulled six months in E-Hall, a 100-year-old building whose third floor was for solitary confinement.

About two months later, Ray tried to escape, and he came to E-Hall. We had no contact, however, since he was on the other side of the building.

by J. J. Maloney

As 69-year-old James Earl Ray wasted away in a Tennessee prison - suffering from terminal liver disease - even the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued that he should be allowed a trial on whether he killed the Nobel Prize winning civil-rights leader.

Shelby County, Tennessee, Judge Joe Brown had ruled that 12 of 18 test bullets fired recently through the rifle long thought to be the murder weapon had markings different from the markings on the bullet that killed Dr. King. The rifle tested was the rifle that was found near the murder scene, within minutes of the shooting, with Ray's fingerprint on it. It has long been alleged, by Ray and many others, that the rifle was planted and that Ray was just a "patsy" in the conspiracy to kill Dr. King. These test results support that contention.

June 12, 2005

by Mel Ayton

More than 35 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. polls continue to indicate that the truth about the murder is still unclear for the majority of Americans. Despite government investigations and extensive research by writers who have concluded that no evidence is available to support the claims made by the conspiracy advocates, the case remains one of America's great whodunits.

Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. King's lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. From the start, during King's funeral, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader's death.