Dan Moldea, author of the book, "The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy", participated in a recent television special on the RFK assassination. Using, laser sights, stand-ins, and a re-creation of the Ambassador Hotel pantry in which the assassination occurred, Moldea purported to account for the six assassination victim's wounds using no more bullets than Sirhan's gun could hold. Moldea's television explanation, the same offered in his book, has several fatal shortcomings. One particularly critical conclusion by Moldea ensures that, under his scenario, no less than 9 shots were necessary to account for the victims' wounds. Problematically for Moldea, Sirhan fired an 8-shot revolver, which he unquestionably did not reload. Ironically, in a book which concluded that Sirhan B. Sirhan acted alone, Moldea actually offered a shooting scenario that demands two shooters!

And what was Moldea's fatal mistake? He concluded that one of the victims (Paul Schrade) was struck in the forehead by a bullet that struck nothing else first. (The import of this claim is outlined below.) I made Moldea aware of his error in 2003 during a lengthy phone conversation. He sidestepped the issue, saying, "I wrote the book almost ten years ago. Honestly, I've forgotten the details [of the trajectory scenario] and put the RFK assassination behind me." Moldea ended the pleasant conversation by giving me some genuinely friendly advice: spend more time with your family and let the RFK assassination go.

Now, two years after that conversation we find Moldea pushing the same impossible shooting scenario on national television. The key to understanding how Moldea's single-assassin shooting scenario, if correct, actually proves conspiracy, begins with an understanding of the number of victims and wounds they suffered. The following accounting of those wounds is arraigned from the closest victim to Sirhan (RFK) outward to the most distant (Weisel).? These wounds are undisputed:

1. RFK - Shot in the head, no exit.

2.RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit, with the bullet coming to rest in the flesh beneath the skin at the base of the back of the neck. The bullet was recovered at autopsy.

3.RFK - Shot in the right rear armpit one inch above shot No. 2. The bullet exited through right front chest below the clavicle.

4.RFK - Entry and exit of a bullet which passed through the rear right shoulder of RFK's suit jacket. The entry and exit were both behind the yolk seam at the top of the shoulder, and penetrated only the outermost layer of fabric.

5.Paul Schrade - Shot in the forehead above hairline near the apex of the head. Bullet fragments remained in the head, with a majority exiting through an exit defect several centimeters behind the entry point.

6.Ira Goldstein - Shot in the left buttock/thigh. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

7.Ira Goldstein - Entry and exit of a bullet that passed cleanly through his left pant leg without striking him.

8. Irwin Stroll - Shot in the left shin. The bullet was recovered during surgery.

9.Elizabeth Evans - Shot in the center of the forehead one inch below the hairline. Fragments of a bullet recovered during surgery were too light to comprise a full .22 round. There was no exit point in the scalp.

10. William Weisel - Shot in the left abdomen. The bullet was recovered near the spine during surgery.

 

In order to sort out his scenario, we need to be aware of additional points of damage that Dan Moldea ignored; three bullet holes in the pantry's ceiling tiles:

11. Ceiling Tile Hole #1 - A bullet penetrated an acoustic ceiling tile (A), proceeding into the drop-ceiling interspace.

12. Ceiling Tile Hole #2 - That bullet (No. 11) struck the concrete ceiling above the tiles, and ricocheted back down into the pantry through a second ceiling tile (B).

13. Ceiling Tile Hole #3 - A bullet entered the same tile as No. 11 above (A), but, we are told, did not exit back down into pantry. That bullet was "lost in the ceiling interspace," and apparently never recovered.

The Trajectory Accounting

Recall that Sirhan could have fired eight bullets at most. As a result, any scenario that comes up with a 9th bullet implicitly sanctions a second shooter. According to Moldea, the first shot hit Paul Schrade (6' 4") in the forehead above the hairline. The following shooting scenario is not meant to represent how the assassination actually occurred. Rather, it starts with Moldea's "Schrade shot" and moves outward to account for the rest of the officially accepted damage.(The victim/wound/bullet damage listed below is represented by corresponding panels in the attached scale illustrations.)

Bullet # 1, Paul Schrade (Forehead, transiting upward).

 

Bullet # 2, RFK (Through and through bullet hole in jacket).

 

Bullet # 3 , RFK (Headshot, non-transiting).

 

Bullet # 4 , RFK (Armpit, non-transiting).

 

Bullet # 5 , RFK (Armpit, transiting upward).

 

Bullet # 6 , Goldstein (Thigh, non-transiting).

 

Bullet # 7 , Goldstein pants, transiting, ricocheting, and striking Stroll in the shin (non-transiting).

 

Bullet # 8 , Evans struck in the head by a bullet reentering thorough the ceiling tiles (non-transiting).

 

Bullet # 9 , Weisel (Abdomen (non-transiting).

 

No matter which way the "officially accepted" damage and victims' wounds are commingled, the crime cannot be accounted for with eight shots if Paul Schrade was hit by a shot unto itself. Had Dan Moldea been more thorough, he would have understood this.

[To John Hunt:]

     Nobody I  know can say with absolute certainty what happened to the four stray bullets  at the crime scene of Senator Kennedy's murder: 1) the bullet that passed  through Kennedy's jacket without striking him, 2) the through-and-through  bullet that exited from his chest, 3) the bullet that struck the ceiling and  exited through one of the ceiling tiles, and 4) the bullet that was supposedly  lost in the ceiling interspace.

     In its  official inventory of the bullets fired by Sirhan, the LAPD claimed that Paul  Schrade was wounded by the bullet that went harmlessly through the shoulder  pad of Senator Kennedy's suit coat. Some people clearly [believe] the LAPD's  flawed and widely-discredited bullet count. I do  not.

     Instead, I believe that the  shoulder-pad bullet probably struck one of the other four shooting victims -  someone other than Schrade. So, regardless of how much some critics try to  twist and torture the crime-scene evidence, my explanation does not add a  single bullet to the final bullet  count.

     In short, I stand by what I have  written, especially my conclusion that Paul Schrade was hit by the first  shot--which is completely consistent with the fact that Sirhan's eight-shot  revolver could not fire more than eight bullets. Once again, the simple truth  is that Sirhan murdered Senator Kennedy, and he acted alone.

--Dan E.  Moldea