Assassinations

May 8, 2005

Sirhan Sirhan

A majority of U.S. citizens continue to believe that Robert Kennedy's assassination was part of a larger conspiracy. The fact is that Sirhan Sirhan acted alone.

by Mel Ayton

For most Americans over 45 the images are still vivid – Robert Kennedy shaking hands with kitchen staff of the Los Angeles Ambassador Hotel; Kennedy lying in a pool of his own blood; Kennedy's unofficial bodyguards and friends grabbing the young Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, as he rapidly fired off his pistol shots before he could be subdued; the prostrate bodies of the other victims, wounded by Sirhan's obsessive intent in hitting Kennedy; the nation once again mourning the loss of another American hero dead before his time.

What Robert Kennedy might have done as president is one of history's great-unanswered questions. His death also prompted many to ask – why was he murdered?

Although the grief over Robert Kennedy's death has subsided over the years, the suspicious circumstances about the assassination have grown. Opinion polls over the past 35 years have shown that a majority of Americans believe his murder was part of a larger conspiracy. The list of culprits has grown as the years have passed, including organized crime, who wanted Kennedy dead because of his crack-down on the mob, the military-industrial complex, who feared he would put an end to the war in Vietnam, rogue elements of the CIA bent on revenge for the Kennedy brothers' abandonment of the Bay of Pigs exiles during their 1961 invasion of Cuba, Western ranchers upset with his support for migrant farm workers, the KKK and the American Nazi party, upset with his support for civil rights, and a Greek shipping magnet who wanted to rid himself of his 'nemesis'.

December 14, 2002 Updated Nov. 28, 2012

President Gerald Ford greeting Alice Olson in the Oval Office in 1975.

When CIA Scientist Frank Olson plunged to his death from the 10th floor of a New York hotel in 1953, his death was ruled a suicide. Twenty-two years later a special Presidential Commission investigating the CIA's development of potent drugs for use in biological warfare and assassinations revealed shocking new details about Olson's death. In 1996 Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau opened a new investigation into Olson's death based on startling discoveries uncovered by forensic sleuth James Starrs that put to lie the CIA's version of how Olson died.

by H. P. Albarelli Jr.

Editor’s Note:  On November 28, 2012, the sons of Frank Olson filed a lawsuit in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., accusing the CIA of covering up the truth about their father’s death in 1953. The sons, Eric and Nils Olson, said their long efforts to get the CIA to open its files and provide them with more information about their father’s death had failed and that the court filing is their only means to find out the truth.

“The evidence points to a murder, and not a drug-induced suicide,” Eric Olson told reporters.

Frank Olson, a bioweapons expert working at the special operations division of the Army’s Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland, plunged to his death from his room in the Statler Hotel in Manhattan on November 28, 1953. The CIA claimed his death was a suicide.

“The CIA’s wrongful conduct in this case continues under the present administration,” said Scott Gilbert, an attorney representing the Olson brothers. “I have met personally with senior agency officials who still refuse to acknowledge the truth and to provide us with all the documents relevant to this matter.”

May 19, 2003

Olson family press conference, August 8, 2002, Frederick, Maryland.
Eric Olson and his son, Stephan Kimbel Olson.

In 1996, Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau opened a new investigation into CIA Scientist Frank Olson's 1953 "suicide," assigning the case to a special Cold Case Unit staffed by two veteran prosecutors. Details about the activities and findings of that ongoing inquiry have never before been revealed. Investigative journalist and writer H.P. Albarelli Jr. conducted his own seven-year examination into Olson's death. In Part Two, he reports his findings about one of the U.S. government's greatest conspiracies and unsolved mysteries.

by H. P. Albarelli Jr.

 H.P. Albarelli's book on Frank Olson's death, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments published in October 2009. Advance orders can be placed at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and from the book's publisher Trine Day Books.  Additional information on the book may be obtained at: www.albarelli.net and from www.trineday.com.

James Earl Ray

From the viewpoint of a man who served time with Ray in prison, then went on to become a journalist, and continued to follow the case, with some emphasis on Ray's mentality, how he escaped from prison, and why there is reason to believe white supremacists may have been behind King's murder.

by J. J. Maloney

The first time I saw James Earl Ray, he had just arrived at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. Charley McCracken, a friend from the St. Louis City Jail, pointed him out to me in H-Hall, where the newly arriving convicts at the maximum-security penitentiary were oriented.

The first year and a half I paid little or no attention to Ray. He was a loner. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. Although Ray had been sentenced from St. Louis, he was not part of the St. Louis "crowd."

In September 1961, I tried to escape and pulled six months in E-Hall, a 100-year-old building whose third floor was for solitary confinement.

About two months later, Ray tried to escape, and he came to E-Hall. We had no contact, however, since he was on the other side of the building.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Examining some of the more recent theories of the crime, including allegations that there was a St. Louis conspiracy.

by J. J. Maloney

As 69-year-old James Earl Ray wasted away in a Tennessee prison - suffering from terminal liver disease - even the family of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. argued that he should be allowed a trial on whether he killed the Nobel Prize winning civil-rights leader.

Shelby County, Tennessee, Judge Joe Brown had ruled that 12 of 18 test bullets fired recently through the rifle long thought to be the murder weapon had markings different from the markings on the bullet that killed Dr. King. The rifle tested was the rifle that was found near the murder scene, within minutes of the shooting, with Ray's fingerprint on it. It has long been alleged, by Ray and many others, that the rifle was planted and that Ray was just a "patsy" in the conspiracy to kill Dr. King. These test results support that contention.

June 12, 2005

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Obfuscation, manipulation, lies, greed, and distortion of the facts have characterized this case, allowing James Earl Ray to escape full blame. The truth of the matter is that Ray murdered King and he acted alone when he shot him. One or both of Ray's brothers -- before and/or after the fact -- may have aided him.

by Mel Ayton

More than 35 years after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. polls continue to indicate that the truth about the murder is still unclear for the majority of Americans. Despite government investigations and extensive research by writers who have concluded that no evidence is available to support the claims made by the conspiracy advocates, the case remains one of America's great whodunits.

Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. King's lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968. From the start, during King's funeral, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader's death.

The political culture of America in the late 1960s and 1970s was very favorable to any theory that gave credence to government- oriented murder plots against public figures who challenged the authority of the establishment. The U.S. public, confronted with a litany of stories about the Kennedy assassinations, CIA plots against foreign leaders, and the scandalous reports about J. Edgar Hoover's FBI domestic spying activities, were ready to believe that a pathetic individual like James Earl Ray must have received some kind of assistance from sophisticated plotters -- most likely in the pay of the government.