Robert Kennedy killer Sirhan denied parole as RFK confidant claims Sirhan didn't do it

At a three hour hearing in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Sirhan Sirhan was denied parole again for killing Sen. Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, just after Kennedy won the pivotal California Democratic presidential primary. Sirhan, 71, maintained that he did not remember the shooting, though he clearly recalled going to a shooting range, getting drunk, and drinking coffee at a hotel in the hours before the assassination. The commissioners, in denying his parole request, said that Sirhan neither showed sufficient remorse nor seemed to understand the gravity of his crime.

Most of the drama at the hearing, Sirhan's 15th bid for parole, was provided by Paul Schrade, a 91-year-old former labor leader and RFK confidante who was shot in the head during Robert Kennedy's assassination. Schrade said that he believes Sirhan was the gunman who shot him but that Kennedy was slain by a second gunman, a theory he has espoused before. "I should have been here long ago and that's why I feel guilty for not being here to help you and to help me," Schrade told Sirhan, whom he was facing for the first time since Sirhan's 1969 trial. "Sirhan, I'm so sorry this is happening to you," he called out as Sirhan was leaving the room. "It's my fault."

The commissioners were not swayed by Schrade's theories, nor by Sirhan's protestation that he didn't remember the shooting. "This crime impacted the nation, and I daresay it impacted the world," said commissioner Brian Roberts. "It was a political assassination of a viable Democratic presidential candidate." Sirhan can petition for parole again in five years.

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