15. The murder of Senator Robert F. Kennedy as he stood poised to win the Democratic nomination generated intense focus and conspiratorial murmurings
Having been declared the victor in the South Dakota and California presidential primaries earlier the same day, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy – the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy – was mortally wounded on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Shot multiple times following a televised celebration, the United States Senator from New York was declared dead twenty-six hours later. Arresting twenty-four-year-old Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian-Jordanian who later claimed he had been motivated by Kennedy’s support for Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967, Sirhan was initially sentenced to death before receiving commutation to life in prison.
Following just five years after the assassination of his brother, as well as the high-profile murders of several other leading public figures, Robert Kennedy’s death has since been exploited by several unfounded conspiracy theories. Supported by no credible evidence to date, as with similar alleged conspiracies the contents of these theories are wide-ranging, from assertions Sirhan was not the shooter, to that he did not work alone, or that he was secretly recruited by the CIA to perform the task. Despite the prevalence of these theories within the mainstream public, all attempts by Sirhan to use them as part of appeals processes have failed under more precise judicial scrutiny.