Ethel Kennedy says RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan shouldn’t be freed on parole
Associated Press
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In a brief statement released on Twitter by her daughter, lawyer and activist Kerry Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy said bluntly Tuesday Sept. 7, 2021 that her husband's assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, "should not be paroled."
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President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas.
About the photo: In this Nov. 22, 1963 file photo, President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade in Dallas. Riding with Kennedy are First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, right, Nellie Connally, second from left, and her husband, Texas Gov. John Connally, far left. (AP Photo/Jim Altgens, File)
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Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was seriously injured in a plane crash while en route to Barnes Municipal Airport in Massachusetts in 1964. Four others, including Sen. Birch Bayh, Bayh's wife Mavella, aide Edward Moss and pilot Edward J. Zimny were on board. Moss and Zimny were killed. Kennedy suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs and a collapsed lung.
About the photo: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy smiles and waves a bandaged hand from the back of an ambulance in this July 9, 1964 file photo, after being transferred from Northampton, Mass. to New England Baptist Hospital, in Boston to treat injuries sustained in a private airplane crash.
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Robert F. Kennedy, former U.S. attorney general and the brother of former president John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in June 1968 in Los Angeles.
About the photo: U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy holds two fingers up in a victory sign as he talks to campaign workers at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Ca., June 5, 1968.
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U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's Oldsmobile sedan veered off a narrow bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, an extension of the resort island of Martha's Vineyard off the Massachusetts coast, and plunged into a moonlit pond on July 18, 1969. His passenger, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned.
About the photo: Sen. Ted Kennedy's car is pulled from the water at Edgartown, Mass., July 19, 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove his car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island.
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David Kennedy (pictured at bottom right), the fourth child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy, died of a drug overdose at age 28 in 1984.
About the photo: Sen. John F. Kennedy’s Democratic residential nominee, waves from plane ramp as he and members of his traveling party get set to board plane bound for Massachusetts on July 17, 1960 in Los Angeles. With the Senator are his brother, Bob, left, and Bob’s wife Ethel; his niece and nephews: middle row, left to right are Bobby Shriver, Bobby Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy; front: Joe Kennedy, left, and David Kennedy, right.
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Michael Kennedy, the sixth child of Robert F. Kennedy, was killed in a skiing accident in Colorado at age 29 in December 1997.
About the photo: Michael Kennedy, is shown on April, 23, 1981 at a memorial in Manhattan for his father, Robert Kennedy. His brother Joe is seated on the right.
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John F. Kennedy Jr., the son of the former president, was killed in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard on July 16, 1999. Kennedy's wife Carolyn and her sister, Lauren Bessette, also died in the crash. Kennedy was 38.
About the photo: In a file photo John F. Kennedy, Jr. and his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, arrive at the Minskoff Theatre Monday night, April 6, 1998. (AP Photo/Mitch Jacobson)
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Kara Kennedy, daughter of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, died of a heart attack at age 51 in 2011.
About the photo: Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., smiles as he sit with his daughter Kara Kennedy in a family room at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Tuesday afternoon, May 20, 2008. Kennedy has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. (AP Photo/Stephan Savoia)
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Saoirse Kennedy Hill, a granddaughter of Robert F. Kennedy, died Aug. 1 at age 22. The Kennedy family confirmed the death in a statement Thursday night following reports that a person had been found unresponsive that day at the storied Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, after police responded to a call about a possible drug overdose.
About the photo: In this June 6, 2000 file photo, Robert F. Kennedy's granddaughter Saoirse Kennedy Hill places a white rose at the Eternal Flame, President John F. Kennedy's gravesite, at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va. Hill, has died at the age of 22.
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Front pages of seven British national daily newspapers in London, November 22, 1963, blare the news of U.S. President John Kennedy's assassination. Each front page carried an Associated Press cable photo of the scene in the President's car as his wife Jacqueline bent over him just after he was struck by bullets in the neck and head. (AP Photo)
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Jacqueline Kennedy walks down the Capitol steps with her daughter Caroline and son John Jr. after President John. F. Kennedy's casket was placed in the rotunda in Washington Nov. 24, 1963. (AP Photo)
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Jacqueline Kennedy, her children Caroline and John Jr., and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy arrive at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 24, 1963. They rode from the White House in a procession carrying the slain president's body to the Capitol. Behind them are President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife Lady Bird Johnson. (AP Photo)
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Members of the Kennedy family kneel at the grave of former Senator Robert F. Kennedy in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Nov. 20, 1970, the 45th anniversary of his birth. From left are Sen. Edward Kennedy; Mary Courtney Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, wife of the assassinated Senator; and her children, Mary Kerry, Matthew Maxwell Taylor, Christopher George, Michael LeMoyne Kennedy and Mrs. Joan Kennedy. (AP Photo/Bob Daughety)
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Ethel Kennedy, widow of Robert F. Kennedy, and some of her children pray at the grave-site of the senator at Arlington National Cemetery on Sunday, Nov. 20, 1977 in Washington the fifty second anniversary of his birth. At right is Ethel Kennedy's youngest child Rory. The family later went to the grave of President John F. Kennedy, Robert’s brother, who was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963. (AP Photo)
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Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-Mass) manages a smile and a wave as he left hospital in Northampton, Mass., July 9, 1964 for transfer to Boston one day less than three weeks after he received a broken back in a plane crash. Two people were killed in the crash, including an aide to the senator. (AP Photo/J. Walter Green )
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Sen. Edward Kennedy's car is pulled from water as the car is screened off the bridge at Edgartown, July 19, 1969, Edgartown, Mass. The body of Mary Jo Kopechne of Washington, D.C., was found in rear seat. Her death was attributed to drowning. (AP Photo)
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Curious onlookers inspect Sen. Ted Kennedy's car in July 1969. Mary Jo Kopechne was killed after Kennedy drove the car off Dyke Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Mass. on July 18, 1969. (AP Photo)
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Senator Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., arrives back home in Hyannis, Mass., after attending the funeral of Mary Jo Kopechne in Pennsylvania, July 22, 1969. Miss Kopechne drowned when a car driven by Senator Kennedy went off a bridge on Chappaquiddick, a small island on the eastern end of Martha's Vineyard, Mass. (AP Photo/Frank C. Curtin)
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This Sunday, July 18, 1999 aerial photo shows the Gay Head area of Martha's Vineyard shrouded in haze. A vast aerial search of the sea off Martha's Vineyard resumed Sunday after Coast Guard cutters overnight found no signs of John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister. Their plane was reported missing off the shores off the resort island early Saturday. (AP Photo/Neal Hamberg)
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A woman places flowers and a religious picture on the doorstep of John F. Kennedy Jr. and his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy's apartment Sunday, July 18, 1999, in New York. Searchers looking for John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane zeroed in on a spot at the bottom of the sea after picking up an automatic emergency signal Sunday, while Americans grieved over the almost certain deaths of Kennedy, his wife and her sister.(AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)
BOSTON (AP) — Ethel Kennedy, the wife of the late Robert F. Kennedy, says assassin Sirhan Sirhan should not be released from prison, further roiling a family divide over whether the man convicted of killing her husband in California in 1968 should be freed on parole.
In a brief statement released on Twitter by her daughter, lawyer and activist Kerry Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy said bluntly Tuesday: “He should not be paroled.”
“Bobby believed we should work to ‘tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of the world,'” Kennedy, 93, wrote.
“He wanted to end the war in Vietnam and bring people together to build a better, stronger country. More than anything, he wanted to be a good father and loving husband,” she wrote, adding: “Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man. We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in taming his act of violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again.”
Ethel Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Her statement came a week after former U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, RFK’s oldest son, also denounced the possible parole of Sirhan, 77.
Two other RFK offspring, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, have said they support the release.
The California Parole Board found last month that Sirhan no longer poses a threat to society, noting that he had enrolled in more than 20 programs including anger management classes, tai chi and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Sirhan has served 53 years of a life sentence.
The ruling will be reviewed over the next four months by the board’s staff. Then it will be sent to Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will have 30 days to decide whether to grant it, reverse it or modify it.
Robert F. Kennedy was a U.S. senator from New York and the brother of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963. RFK was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination when he was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments after delivering a victory speech in the pivotal California primary. Five others were wounded.
