Sirhan Sirhan Biography Quotes 1 Report mistakes

Early Life
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was born on March 19, 1944, in Jerusalem, then part of Mandatory Palestine, into a Palestinian Christian family. His childhood was shaped by the upheavals surrounding the end of the British Mandate and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, events that displaced many families in the region. In the mid-1950s his family emigrated, eventually settling in the United States. As a teenager and young adult he lived in California, where he attended local schools and worked a series of jobs. He was known to be intensely private, with interests that included horses and, for a time, work connected to stables and racing. He never became a U.S. citizen, remaining a Jordanian national while living in America as a permanent resident.

Life in the United States
In Southern California, Sirhan sought to make a life amid the cultural crosscurrents of the 1960s. Friends and acquaintances later described him as quiet and sometimes brooding, with periods of deep introspection. He drifted among vocational paths and took community college courses. Family, including his brother Munir Sirhan, remained an important part of his support network. Like many immigrants coping with dislocation and identity, he read widely in politics and history. Around this time, he also experienced head injuries and emotional volatility noted in later assessments, details that would be cited by defense experts and parole evaluators when examining his state of mind.

Political Context and Personal Writings
The Arab-Israeli conflict loomed large in Sirhans understanding of world affairs. In 1967 and 1968, amid the aftermath of the Six-Day War, he grew increasingly angry at U.S. political support for Israel. Investigators later recovered notebooks in which he wrote about Robert F. Kennedy and his positions on the Middle East. These writings included expressions of rage and references that prosecutors framed as premeditation. Sirhan would later say he had been drinking heavily and that his memory of the period around the crime was fragmented, a claim that persisted for decades and shaped debates about his culpability and insight.

Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Senator Robert F. Kennedy exited a ballroom through a kitchen pantry after addressing supporters following the California Democratic presidential primary. In the crowded passageway, Sirhan confronted him and fired a .22 caliber revolver. Kennedy was struck and mortally wounded; he died in the early hours of June 6, 1968. Five other people were wounded: labor leader Paul Schrade, ABC-TV director William Weisel, Ira Goldstein, Elizabeth Evans, and Irwin Stroll.

Bystanders quickly subdued the gunman. Among those who wrestled him to the ground and disarmed him were Olympic champion Rafer Johnson, writer George Plimpton, and former NFL star Rosey Grier. Sirhan was arrested at the scene. The assassination stunned the nation, already reeling from political division and the recent killing of Martin Luther King Jr. The loss of Robert F. Kennedy reverberated through his family, including his wife Ethel Kennedy and their children, and altered the trajectory of the 1968 presidential race.

Trial, Conviction, and Sentencing
Sirhan was tried in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 1969. The defense, led by attorney Grant Cooper, did not contest that he fired the shots but argued diminished capacity, pointing to his mental state, intoxication, and prior head trauma. The prosecution emphasized his notebooks and the events in the pantry as evidence of deliberate intent. A jury convicted Sirhan of first-degree murder and other charges related to the wounded victims, and the court sentenced him to death.

In 1972, the California Supreme Court invalidated the states death penalty in People v. Anderson. As a result, Sirhans sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. He would go on to spend decades in the California prison system, during which time he participated in educational and counseling programs and was repeatedly evaluated by psychologists and parole officials.

Incarceration and Parole Proceedings
Over the years, Sirhan appeared before the parole board many times. He often expressed remorse for the death of Robert F. Kennedy and voiced sorrow for those wounded, while also stating that he had limited or no memory of the shooting itself. This combination, alongside questions about his insight into the causative factors of the crime, became a central issue in parole decisions.

In 2016, Paul Schrade, who had been wounded in the pantry, publicly argued that Sirhan should be paroled, adding his voice to a small group that favored release. In 2021, a California parole panel recommended parole for Sirhan, citing his age and prison record, and noting that two of Robert F. Kennedys sons, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, spoke or wrote in support. Many other family members, led by Ethel Kennedy, strongly opposed release. In 2022, Governor Gavin Newsom rejected the parole recommendation, concluding that Sirhan remained a public-safety risk and had not fully demonstrated insight into his actions. Subsequent parole hearings again resulted in denials.

Controversies and Continuing Debate
The case has drawn enduring public debate. Autopsy findings, bullet trajectories, eyewitness accounts, and Sirhans own memory gaps have fed speculation and conspiracy theories, though the courts have repeatedly upheld the original verdict and rejected petitions for a new trial. Forensic reexaminations and investigative documentaries periodically reignite discussion, while official reviews have not displaced the legal conclusion that Sirhan was the gunman responsible for the assassination and the other shootings.

Personal Reflections and Public Perception
In prison, Sirhan has aged into later life largely outside public view, emerging periodically through parole filings, legal motions, and occasional interviews. He has alternated between apologies for the harm caused and statements of limited recollection, positions that have drawn both sympathy and skepticism. To supporters of his parole, his decades in custody, advanced age, prison conduct, and expressions of remorse argue for release. To opponents, the gravity of the crime, the shattering of a major American political figure, and unresolved questions about his motivations weigh decisively against it.

Legacy
Sirhan Sirhans life is inseparable from the national trauma of June 1968. The people around him in those moments and afterward became part of the historical record: Robert F. Kennedy and his family, the bystanders Rafer Johnson, George Plimpton, and Rosey Grier who intervened, the wounded including Paul Schrade, and the legal figures who steered the case through trial and decades of review. His biography traces a journey from a childhood shaped by conflict in Jerusalem to a fateful act in Los Angeles that reshaped American politics, followed by a long, contested incarceration marked by repeated evaluations of accountability, memory, and the possibility of redemption.

Our collection contains 1 quotes who is written by Sirhan, under the main topics: Legacy & Remembrance.

Other people realated to Sirhan: Robert Kennedy (Politician), Robert F. Kennedy (Politician)