The Assassination of Robert Kennedy

Pruszynski recording - time to rewrite history?
In 2004, thirty six years after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, an American journalist obtained a copy of the only known audio recording of the shooting from the California State Archives. The recording was made by Stanislaw Pruszynski, a reporter present in the Ambassador hotel that night. Unaware that he was recording on his audio cassette recorder as he tried to catch up to the Kennedy entourage, Pruszynski captured the shooting incident and the many sounds recorded have now shed light on the shocking events of that night. It seemed that there was more than 8 shots fired implying more than one gun involved since Sirhan's gun could only hold 8 bullets!

In 2008 at an annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in Washington D.C. the audience and the world were presented with startling evidence from audio expert Philip Van Praag that Sirhan did not act alone and a second gunman was involved. His analysis using the most up-to-date technology could discern details that could not possibly be detected 40 years previous when that same recording was analysed by the FBI.

According to Van Praag up to thirteen shot sounds can be detected on the recording, (and that's up to the point where the commotion and screams totally overwrote all the other audio - maybe there was more than thirteen but couldn't be recovered on audio). Also there were two double shot incidences. This is where two shots were fired so closely together it precluded that they could come from one weapon.

Van Praag also detected a frequency anomoly that occured with five of the shot sounds which suggested that these five shots originated from a different direction to the other shots (180 degrees of a difference). If he is correct this is clear evidence of a second gun and second gunman.

Van Praag's analysis was somewhat corroborated by Wes Dooley, an audio expert at Audio Engineering Associates in Pasedena, California. However, Mel Ayton (see his book The Forgotton Terrorist) strongly contests the validity of Van Praag's results claiming his test methods to be unscientific. He had the recordings analysed independently by two teams of forensic and acoustic expert, Philip Harison and Professor Peter French in the UK, and Steve Barber, Dr. Chad Zimmerman and Michael O'Dell in the US. They could not detect more than eight shots.

So there are audio and accoustic experts on either side of the debate. The eight shot versus more than eight shot debate. Both sides of the debate agree that there are more than eight impulse sounds on the recording. An impulse sound occurs when a gun is fired, but also when a baloon is popped, or a door bangs or in some case when a machine (remember ice machines were in the pantry) starts up or..... It seems it comes down to a matter of interpretation of the results rather than pure science, at least for now, until maybe more detailed analysis can be carried out on the recordings.

And forensic expert Robert Joling (see his book with Van Praag, An Open & Shut Case) was able to establish that Siran could not have fired the fatal shot as the fatal shot came from behind Kennedy and Sirhan was 4-6 feet in front of Kennedy according to all witnesses. The L.A. county coroner Thomas Noguchi had already confirmed this in his autopsy. So it seemed a second gunman was firing as Sirhan was firing. And possibly was firing the same caliber weapon (.22). He had a clear shot at Kennedy as he was directly behind him. He was unseen by most witnesses due to the panic created by Sirhan firing and the commotion in tackling and disarming Sirhan. But three witnesses did see the second gunman.