ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Sunday, January 7, 1996                TAG: 9601050017
SECTION: BOOK                     PAGE: F-4  EDITION: METRO 
                                             TYPE: BOOK REVIEW 
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY RANES CHAKRAVORTY 

RFK RESEARCH

THE KILLING OF ROBERT F. KENNEDY: An Investigation of Motive, Means and Opportunity. By Dan E. Moldea. W.W. Norton & Company Inc.

Murders are always fascinating - murders of, by and related to the famous even more so. Robert Kennedy's murder in 1968 held the attention of the world. He was struck down in a small crowded pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles immediately after winning a crucial primary in a crucial state. The murderer was caught red-handed, prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. Or was the apparent criminal indeed the murderer? Did he act on his own or were there more sinister forces behind him?

In the days following the conviction of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, several questions arose about the conduct of the investigation and the conclusions of the jury and the judge. Subsequent publications and repeat investigations of the murder showed many discrepancies in the evidence and the findings. A congressional inquiry was proposed, but it was later abandoned because of budgetary constraints.

Dan Moldea has been investigating the assassination for quite a few years and in this book he details his research. He starts with the events of the evening when Kennedy was shot and goes on to recount in extraordinary detail the associated investigations, findings and eyewitness accounts. Moldea has an excellent reputation as an investigative reporter which he lives up to here.

Moldea concludes that "... the case ... had been badly mishandled by the Los Angeles Police Department, particularly with regard to physical evidence. Evidence that had not been tampered with made it seem unlikely that Sirhan was the only person to fire a gun that night." In the last chapter Moldea gives his own answer to this problem.

Photographs of places and people add much to the narrative. Moldea invested much of his own time and money in this research. The result makes interesting reading.

Ranes Chakravorty is a surgeon at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Salem.

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