Robert F Kennedy’s assassin sent death threats to FBI, Secret Service, Kennedy clan members

Declassified FBI files have revealed how close the madman who assassinated Robert F Kennedy in 1968 came to realising his threat to kill members of the Secret Service and Kennedy clan.

A madman who threatened to kill the rest of the Kennedy family after the assassination of Robert F Kennedy in 1968 almost snuck on to the plane housing the assassinated politician’s body, the FBI’s newly released files reveal.

An initial report, from files declassified on Friday (local US time) said the suspect, who Los Angeles police later identified as William Frederick Crosson, was just 100 yards from the aeroplane, although it later emerged he was arrested at a bar near the airport, according to the FBI report.

“He had been making death threats against the FBI, the Secret Service and the Kennedy family at the airport and at the bar in which he was arrested,” said the June 6, 1968, FBI report, which noted he was taken in by the Los Angeles Police Department.

Robert F. Kennedy at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles moments before he was shot. Picture: Dick Strobel / AP

At the same time, police issued a bulletin for the arrest of a “female caucasian” between the ages of 23 and 27 who was seen with Kennedy’s assassin, Sirhan Sirhan, just before the shooting, which took place in the first minutes after midnight on June 5, inside the Ambassador Hotel.

The documents, released by Tulsi Gabbard, director of national intelligence, following a campaign promise from Donald Trump, show the panic of FBI field office across the country as agents processed myriad tips and reports of suspicious individuals in the hours after Kennedy was shot.

He died of his injuries in the early morning of June 6, two days after winning the California Democratic primary.

Sirhan Sirhan was 24 when he assassinated Senator Robert Kennedy in June 1968. Picture: AP

The Birmingham FBI office reported that an Alabama man named Frank Guthrie stated “they” should “have got Ted also,” referring to RFK’s brother Ted Kennedy, US Senator from Massachusetts.

In New York City, the FBI reported a man named Michael Cornelius “telephonically advised” how a man came up to him on the corner of 9th Avenue and 17 Street to let him know the train tracks near Washington’s Union Station were mined and would explode when Kennedy’s funeral train was scheduled to arrive on June 8 for his burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

Kennedy family members at Robert F Kennedy’s grave in 1968.

A search of Sirhan’s bedroom in Pasadena where he lived with his mother and three siblings revealed numerous menacing handwritten notes, including one written on May 18, 1968.

“My determination to remove RFK is becoming more the more of an unshakeable obsession. RFK must be disposed of like his brother was,” one note included in the file reads.

Sirhan was born in Jerusalem and grew up in Jordan. He came to the US with his father, mother and four brothers and a sister on January 12, 1957, according to the documents. He had also become a militant supporter of Palestinian rights.

In addition, authorities found notes saying “Ambassador Goldberg must die die die. Goldberg will be illiminated (sic.)”

Sirhan Sirhan, pictured in 2016, has been in jail since his conviction. Picture: Gregory Bull

Arthur Goldberg had been United Nations Ambassador for the US since 1965. He resigned his position on June 24, just weeks after Kennedy was killed.

Goldberg had played a key role in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242, which was aimed at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict. He went on to work as an lawyer at a New York law firm, and died in 1990.

Alongside Sirhan’s notes on Goldberg, FBI agents found other scribbles, including “Sirhan is an ARAB.”

The newly declassified documents also include a memo from the FBI noting how Sirhan worked as a racehorse “exercise boy” and suffered a serious head injury when he was thrown from a horse he was riding in 1966.

“Interviews with his family indicate his behaviour has changed considerably since this injury,” the June 6, 1968, Department of Justice memo reads.

President John F Kennedy (right), pictured with brother Robert, was assassinated in 1963. Picture: Rolls Press / Getty

One of the oddest bits of information in the newly released files includes testimony from members of a tour group that had been visiting Israel in May, a month before the assassination.

A few members of the group alerted the FBI, after news broke of the assassination, that they had heard Kennedy had been shot in Milwaukee while they were in the Middle East.

Acting on all tips and information, FBI agents fanned out across the country to interview all of the members of the group in the hours after Kennedy was shot, the documents reveal.

This story was originally published in The New York Post

Originally published as Robert F Kennedy’s assassin sent death threats to FBI, Secret Service, Kennedy clan members