Sirhan’s Researcher
Welcome to the Sirhan’s Researcher website.
I dedicate my research to the memory of Count Folke Bernadotte, a great humanitarian and United Nations peace negotiator, who was murdered in cold blood by the Israeli Stern Gang and I want to honor one of Israel's finest citizens - Yeshayahu Leibowitz, 1903-1994.
Latest!:
The
Art of Blocking
Someone
from asking forbidden questions continues
- and any efforts to look further is met with suspicion, distrust and a
sort of erasure. You become invisible.
Rose
Lynn Mangan November 9, 2016
The Bagget Memo: October 13, 2016
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Addendum: August 28, 2016
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Corruption, Silence, and Politics: August 21, 2016
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Goodbye Justice 3: July 3, 2016
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Goodbye Justice 2: June 23, 2016
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Goodbye Justice: June 11, 2016
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Mea Culpa: April 20, 2016
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What If?: April 17, 2016
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The Coup de Grace for History: April 6, 2016
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The Real Gun Number: April 3, 2016
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Addition to Paul Schrade 2: March 26, 2016
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Paul Schrade 2: March 23, 2016
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Paul Schrade: March 20, 2016
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P.S.: January 6, 2016
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The Get Lost Letter: January 3, 2016
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A Different Gun Number: August 23, 2015
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Door Frame Bullets: August 2, 2015
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The Last Bullet (not standing): July 26, 2015
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The Official Records: June 17, 2015
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Correction: May 10, 2015
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The Parthian Shots: April 26, 2015
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The Gun in the California State Archives Visit: June 22, 2014
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California State Archives Visit: April 2014
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Follow The Gun: February 2014
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Inauthentic Shell Casings: January 6,2014
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Evidence From Hell: December 29,2013
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Dirty Tricks: October 31 , 2013
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Justice Interrupted: June 2 , 2013
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The Grand Hoax: August 20 , 2012
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Latest Court Filings: July 18 , 2012
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Plain Talk 14: June 17 , 2012
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Plain Talk 12(addendum): June 3 , 2012
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Plain Talk 12: May 31 , 2012
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Plain Talk 11: May 10 , 2012
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Plain Talk 10: March 18, 2012
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Plain Talk 9: February 5, 2012
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Plain Talk 8: January 22, 2012
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Plain Talk 7(addendum): January 25, 2012
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Plain Talk 7: December 22, 2011
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Plain Talk 6: November 27, 2011
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Plain Talk 5: November 20, 2011
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Plain Talk 4: November 13, 2011
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Plain Talk 3: September 11, 2011
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Plain Talk 2: June 27 , 2011
Click here to see the latest Pepper/Dusek court filing
Plain Talk: March 30, 2011
FBI Interview with William F. Gardner, Director of Security, Ambassador Hotel
Click here to see key points of the FBI interview with William F. Gardner, Director of Security, Ambassador Hotel. It shows that Gardner was directed away from the action with misinformation. The attached PDF also includes my plain talk about my experiences in filing the Special Exhibit 10 Report and the tangled story of the neck bullet.
July 17, 2010 UPDATE: Part 7
This update includes the detective interviews with Don Shulman and Thane Eugene Cesar, plus information on the manipulation of the RFK jacket.
These are image scans of the pages, so the file size is over 100 Megabytes. To make it easier to download from the Web, I have broken it into 10 pieces, which can be accessed by clicking on the lines below:
November 1st 2009 Update: This update includes:
A) My personal recollections of conversations with Adel Sirhan
B) Key pages from the Sirha trial transcript
C) Criminalist Charles V. Morton’s declarations to the court (Oct. 3, 1975)
D) Court Order #1 and #2 with my corrections in red ink, plus documents which I believe bear upon the evidence
E) Additional Ambassador Hotel floor plans
F) Portions of the Serrano transcript showing coached testimony
G) Several pages from Sirhan’s notebook that I find extremely disturbing
H) Several pages of Sirhan’s written response to questions put to him by Dr. Diamond while Sirhan was under hypnosis
I) Documents which raise questions about the different Munir siblings and Munir’s correct age
J) Sharing my own personal experiences with Mary Sirhan and observations of DeWayne Wolfer, and Judge Walker’s determinations about the bullets, the defense divided, the sting operation, and a meeting with Rafer Johnson
August 1st 2009 Update: This update includes a major addendum that includes the ATF files on the Sirhan case. It is in three parts: Part one (Click here) Part two (Click here) and Part three (Click here).
It also includes short documents related to the Montoya starter pistol (Click here) (And here), and the request by Congressman Utt to LAPD police chief Reddin about the matter (Click here).
July 4th, 2009 Update (Part 5)
This entry documents some of the more subtle errors and the proof of evidence rigging by the LAPD’s Special Unit Senator division. Click here.
December 2008 Update (Part 4)
Here, at long last, are the bullet evidence pages and other items that bear upon the case and how it was pursued. These are the original materials that underpin my research. There are 148 pages of materials in this section overall, many of which are photos related to the evidence. These sections are intended for serious researchers.
The sub-sections are these:
1. Summary of contents of all 8 sub-sections and bullet worksheets. Click here.
2. Transcript page from Judge Robert Wenke on the custodial gap in the chain of evidence. Click here.
3. The evidence. It shows that the prosecution team transferred all of the exhibits except those of the four test bullets. Click here.
4. People’s exhibit 55 and its implications. Click here.
5. Sirhan’s written response to my questions about Cooper pressuring him to plea bargain. Click here.
6. When Sirhan learned of the ballistics evidence, and the actions of Harper and Luke. Click here.
7. Confidential interrogation of Harper about his research. Click here.
8. Additional documents and records. Click here.
January 2008 Update (Part 2):
If you have already visited this website and viewed the materials below, click here to see new materials added in January 2008. Otherwise, please read the information below first.
February 2008 Update (Part 3):
If you have already visited this website and viewed the materials below, click here to see new materials added in February 2008. Otherwise, please read the information below first.
40th Anniversary Update June 5, 2008 Update (Part 4):
Forty years after the RFK assassination, the truth is still not generally known. Click here to see a summary of my research on the ballistics processing and some 40th anniversary reflections.
On this site, you will find my original research, plus evidence, court testimony and other documents related to the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on June 5, 1968.
Sirhan’s authorized researcher
I am Rose Lynn Mangan, the person whom Sirhan Bishara Sirhan designated, along with his brother Adel, to be his authorized researcher. I have been acting in that capacity for many years, and Sirhan has confirmed this in two authorization letters, one on September 20, 1993, and one on December 26, 1993.
Click here to see the September 20, 1993 letter.
Click here to see the December 26, 1993 letter.
Click here to see a photo of Adel Sirhan and myself working on the research.
I hereby grant other researchers the right to use my original and copyrighted research published on this website, so long as I am properly cited as the source of these documents.
Statement of Conclusions and Beliefs about the RFK Assassination
After nearly four decades of research into the RFK assassination, numerous personal meetings and interactions with Sirhan and his family, interaction with criminalists and other researchers involved in the case, interaction with the Los Angeles Police Department, the California criminal court system, and the California State Archives, I have come to the following firmly-held conclusions and beliefs:
1. Sirhan was a psychologically-manipulated patsy in a much larger scheme to kill RFK. His true role, unbeknownst to him, was that of an attention-grabbing diversion. He did not fire the bullet that killed RFK.
2. Sirhan was firing blanks! His ammunition had been switched by his handlers prior to the assassination. This theory, first suggested by criminalist William Harper, corresponds with the statements of several eye witnesses who saw “bits of paper” and other residue consistent with the use of blanks coming from Sirhan’s gun. It is my firm belief that Sirhan’s handlers put blanks in Sirhan’s gun because they did not trust that Sirhan would hit his intended target.
3. There were two separate “firing positions”, according to William Harper’s measurements of ballistics evidence using a Hycom camera (see discussion below). According to Harper, one position was in line with Sirhan’s position, and one was behind RFK. There were other people besides Sirhan who were in an in-line position to shoot the bystanders. Harper’s ballistics measurements were in fact corroborated by the LAPD’s own independent tests years after the Sirhan trial, as documented in the Baggett memo mentioned below.
4. Ballistics and other evidence was intentionally mishandled, mislabeled, and misappropriated by the L.A.P.D. My report on Special Exhibit 10 documents this. It is my belief and conclusion that the L.A.P.D. did so at the behest of a higher Federal authority (see references below for more details).
What you will find on this website
On this website you will find documents, court testimony, analysis and reports on the weapons and bullets used and not used in the RFK assassination. You will see evidence of multiple guns, of the substitution of guns in the chain of evidence, of the destruction of records related to the guns, and of tampering of ballistics evidence of the bullets involved in the RFK assassination. My own research is covered in the Special Exhibit 10 Report that I presented to a meeting of the International Association of Forensic Sciences in Montpelier, France, in September, 2002. Overall, there are 424 pages of materials, which have been divided into logical pieces so that they may be more easily viewed and downloaded.
Click on each of these to see:
1. My introduction to Special Exhibit 10 Report by Rose Lynn Mangan
2. Special Exhibit 10 Report by Rose Lynn Mangan
3. RFK Sirhan Evidence Report by Rose Lynn Mangan with Adel Sirhan
4. Diagram of Ambassador Hotel panty and locations of witnesses
a. I recreated this diagram entirely from the trial testimony of witnesses in the case, and at the specific request of criminalist William Harper.
b. It is to scale, and replicates the grid in a mockup used by the L.A.P.D. in court. The initials of each witness are placed in the diagram in accordance with their own testimony.
c. The initials of the victims who were shot are indicated by an associated round black dot. These include RFK, Ira Goldstein, Irwin Stroll, Elizabeth Evans, Paul Shrade, and William Weisel.
d. Several people were at the scene, but their initials are not in the diagram because they were not asked in court to place themselves on the diagram. These include:
i. Thane Eugene Cesar, the security guard who was located immediately behind and at RFK’s right elbow.
ii. Jamie Scott Enyart, the photographer, who was located several feet behind and to the left of RFK. He said that he was just behind Paul Shrade, who fell backwards onto him when he (Shrade) was shot.
iii. Donald Shulman, reporter for CBS affiliate KNXT, who originally broadcast a report that he saw the security guard fire his gun. He was behind and to the left of RFK.
iv. Rafer Johnson, the Olymic gold medalist, was not in RFK’s immediate proximity at the time of the shooting. He rushed in later and helped to subdue Sirhan.
v. Rosey Grier, the ex-football player, was not in RFK’s immediate vicinity at the time of the shooting, as he was helping Ethel Kennedy. He too rushed in after he heard the shooting.
Note: In the scanning process, this diagram was somewhat cropped on the right hand side, thus clipping off the end of one of the notations. The notation next to Michael Wayne should read “holding a rolled up poster”. Michael Wayne’s placement was not from court testimony, but was inserted into the diagram at the specific request of William Harper.
5. Court testimony, evidence and analysis of the RFK assassination
6. Guide to the Los Angeles Police Department records of the RFK assassination
7. Lowell Bradford’s Report of Evaluation of Sirhan-RFK evidence
8. Report of the Medical Investigation of RFK
a. This report concludes that the bullet the killed RFK was fired from a mere one to two inches behind his head, as indicated by the powder burns and stippling on the Senator’s scalp and right ear.
9. Discussion of an alleged quote of Sirhan about RFK turning his head
10. Additional Materials: Higher resolution photos of RFK fatal bullet fragments, Special Exhibit 10 photos, Jake Williams gun, torn gun label, evidence envelopes for test-fired slugs, photos of Item #24 RFK fatal bullet fragments.
11. Additional Materials: Annotated list of ballistics items. Rafer Johnson sees “cap gun residue”. Defense lawyer Cooper stipulates the Sirhan gun into evidence. San Gabriel Valley Gun Club interviews. Mankiewicz sees gun “lying on the table”.
12. Additional Materials: Documents from the firing range, including a translation of Thorabgt’s letter, a note by Nielsen absolving Sirhan’s brother of involvement, a typed version of the gun range roster, and the gun range signature page.
13. Additional Materials: Documents regarding the gun sale, including the resume of Albert L. Hertz, who purchased it on Aug. 10, 1965, and LAPD interviews with Hertz and gun dealer Pineda.
14. Additional Materials: Wolfer’s log of activities, layout of Ambassador Hotel.
What criminalist William Harper thought really happened in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel that night
I do not make statements of my own about what I think happened that night in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel, period. I will, however, relay what William Harper told me that he had heard about it. William Harper was a very well-respected criminalist in the Los Angeles area who had close ties with both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Pasadena Police Department. In fact, he helped to establish the Pasadena Police Department’s crime lab. He made his living for decades by giving expert testimony in court, and I asked him to review the trial transcripts with me.
Harper told me that, years later, his informants within the L.A.P.D. told him that “there were at least two firing positions within the pantry that night.” Moreover, he told me that his informants within the LAPD, also years after the trial, told him that they believed that Sirhan may have been firing blanks that night at the Ambassador Hotel.
All that I can say about this is that in all of my dealings with William Harper I found him to be a man of great integrity and credibility. I believe that this opinion of him was shared by the law enforcement communities of Los Angeles and Pasadena, and by anyone who came into contact with him.
William Harper Thesis Corraborated By L.A.P.D. Memo:
Bullets from Two Different Guns, Neither of Which Was Sirhan Gun
William Harper’s thesis was not based solely upon what he heard from his sources within the L.A.P.D., but also upon his own direct measurement of the ballistics evidence. In 1971, Harper was allowed access to both the RFK neck bullet (People’s Exhibit 47) and the bullet that was lodged in the abdomen of William Weisel (People’s Exhibit 54), who was several feet behind Kennedy when both men were shot. Harper used a brand new instrument called a Hycon Balliscan camera to measure the bullets, including the rifling patterns of the bullets, and concluded that the bullets were fired from two different guns.
Harper died in the early 1980s, so he never saw the L.A.P.D. document that corroborated his findings. That document was released in 1988 as part of the massive Special Unit Senator (SUS) report of the L.A.P.D., which can now be found in the California State Archives at: http://www.ss.ca.gov/archives/level3_rfkguide3.html
The L.A.P.D. had run its own independent analysis of the two bullets using its own Hycon Balliscan camera. Criminalist Larry Baggett’s conclusions were cited in the memo. He concludes that:
1. The bullets that hit RFK and William Weisel were NOT fired from the same gun.
2. The bullet that entered RFK’s neck was not fired from Sirhan’s revolver.
The critical conclusions portion of the memo is shown here, and the full memo is on pages 50-53 of the Special Exhibit 10 Report cited above.
I found the document in SUS, included it in the Special Exhibit 10 Report, and also gave a copy of it to Sirhan. He became very excited about it, and tried to get it entered into the record at his parole hearing in the late 1990s. As he began reading it aloud at the parole hearing, however, the hearing was abruptly terminated and Sirhan was whisked out of the room.
What you will not find on this website
On this website, I present my own research on the RFK assassination, which focuses on the ballistics evidence of the case, and the subsequent mishandling and falsification of that evidence in the attempt to cover up a conspiracy to assassinate RFK.
What you will not find on this website:
1. The naming of the real shooters. Of course, I have my own strongly-held beliefs on this subject, but I am not going to publish them on this website. The reason is that I am old, and I simply don’t want to spend my remaining days as the target of frivolous lawsuits. Instead, I will emphasize the statement by coroner Thomas Noguchi, who said that the stippling behind RFK’s right ear indicated that the gunshot wound had been delivered from a distance of 1.5 to 3 inches, and that the bullet trajectory was from behind RFK. I will couple that with the testimony of Karl Uecker, who grappled with Sirhan while he was firing, and claimed that Sirhan’s gun never came closer than two feet away from RFK. For more than that, I will have to direct you to external websites, such as the write-up at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFK_Assassination or http://www.answers.com/topic/robert-f-kennedy-assassination
2. The rationale behind the RFK assassination, and its link to the JFK assassination. For the details on that, I recommend the book “Regicide: The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy,” by Gregory Douglas, published by Monte Sano Media (2002), ISBN #1591482976.
a. Key points:
i. JFK and RFK learned that the CIA and Joint Chiefs were planning to drag the U.S. into open hostilities with Cuba by staging false “Cuban aggressions” that would cause “collateral damage” both inside and outside the U.S.
ii. JFK opened his own channel of negotiations for a “peaceful coexistence” with the Soviets, and in the process bypassed all CIA, military, and State department channels. In so doing, JFK used RFK to pass selected secret CIA briefing papers to an official at the Soviet Embassy in Washington.
iii. These transactions were recorded by the CIA, and deemed treasonous by CIA Director John McCone, Deputy Director James Jesus Angleton, and Assistant Deputy Director Robert Trumbull Crowley. Their reaction was to initiate an operation which removed JFK from office by assassination in 1963. Before implementing the operation, they also secured the approval of key military intelligence leaders and the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover.
iv. The same group passed a death sentence on RFK, with the caveat that it would only be exercised if RFK were in position to have accessed to the same level of CIA briefing papers as he did in 1963. In other words, the death sentence would only become active if RFK himself were to become President, or if it looked like he was about to become so. When RFK announced his bid for the Presidency in 1968, the death sentence process was activated.
3. An in-depth analysis by a former FBI special agent of the events surrounding the RFK assassination. For the details on that, I recommend the book “The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,” by William Turner and John Christian, published by Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993, ISBN #1560250585.
4. Photos of the RFK assassination. Jamie Scott Enyart, who was behind and to the left of RFK during the shooting, took a series of photos of the event. His film was immediately confiscated by L.A.P.D. officers and was sealed for 20 years. When the seal was lifted in 1988, Enyart applied for the return of his film, and was only given prints of photos from the same roll that were taken before he entered the pantry. The ten photos that he took in the pantry during the assassination were reported to be lost. I testified at Enyart’s trial on his behalf (see p. 36 of Special Exhibit 10 Report), and I clearly demonstrated the flat out falsification of evidence by the L.A.P.D. The jury later awarded him a settlement of $450,000. A letter of from Scott’s attorneys expressing thanks for my help is on p.35 of the Special Exhibit 10 Report. For more details, I refer you to pp.245-246 of William Turner’s book, “Rearview Mirror,” published by Penmarin Books, 2001, ISBN #1883955211. The chapter referenced in this book also contains a conclusion by top forensics acoustics expert Dr. Michael H. L. Hecker of the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, that his analysis of three audio tapes recorded that night indicate that “no fewer than ten gunshots are ascertainable following the conclusion of the Senator’s victory speech until after the time that Sirhan was disarmed.” Sirhan’s gun was only capable of firing eight rounds.
