The Mafia Did It! Mark Shaw Connects the Dots!

[Benjamin Cole]

https://www.laweekly.com/new-revelations-on-the-robert-f-kennedy-assasination-from-author-mark-shaw-in-abuse-of-power/

New Revelations On The Robert F. Kennedy Assasination From Author Mark Shaw In Abuse of Power

Michele Stueven
December 10, 2025

In his explosive new book,  Abuse of Power,  former criminal defense attorney and TV network legal analyst Mark Shaw has unearthed new information he says confirms that Sirhan Sirhan was not accountable for the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

The bestselling author refutes Robert Kennedy Jr.’s theory that his father’s murder was linked to the CIA, but based on new evidence he’s uncovered,  says the real mastermind and the one with the strongest motive to want RFK dead was New Orleans mafia don Carlos Marcello. Furthermore, the author suggests that Sirhan was recruited as a patsy to divert suspicions of Marcello’s involvement.

The result: for nearly 60 years, Sirhan has languished in a prison cell because, Shaw believes, he was denied justice from the moment he was arrested. While a parole board granted him parole in 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom reversed the decision in January 2022, citing that he still poses a threat to public safety.

Robert F. Kennedy

“There are three true crime murder mysteries here that weren’t really mysteries at all,” Shaw tells LA Weekly in a phone call.  “President John F. Kennedy, journalist Dorothy Kilgallen, and Robert Kennedy.  It’s the first time anybody has put those in context. You’ve got JFK in ’63, Dorothy dying in ’65, and Bobby Kennedy in ’68. By doing so, you gain a different perspective on what happened, as they are all interconnected. Dorothy’s death was kind of the lynchpin between the two Kennedys.”

Based on Shaw’s nearly 15 years of extensive research, the book exposes, for the first time, the connection between the assassinations of the Kennedy brothers and the mysterious death of the famous journalist and close Kennedy friend Dorothy Kilgallen, with Marcello as the culprit for each.

Shaw goes on to say that the Louisiana mafia don used patsies to cover his complicity, a pattern that had never been revealed before. For Shaw, the key to this conclusion is an FBI file transcript of an audiotaped confession Marcello made to a fellow inmate at a Texas federal prison on December 15, 1985. While expressing his intense dislike of the former president, Marcello confided, “Yeah, I had the son of a bitch killed. I’m glad I did it. I’m sorry I couldn’t have done it myself.”

The book takes a detailed dive into the 24-year-old Sirhan’s life leading up to the assassination.   

“I began by looking at Sirhan more than anything,” Shaw says.  “I was able to find information about him, what he was doing at the time, and a year before the assassination.  My aha moment was finding this videotaped interview with John Shear,   a paddock captain at Santa Anita racetrack,  who hired Sirhan Sirhan when he came in looking for a job.  This small man came in looking for work, and the only thing he had was for a hot walker, somebody who walks the horses after the race and pays $200 a month.  He said he’d take it.  Shear said he got to know Sirhan Sirhan, who was easily manipulated.  He was a hard worker and a very meek individual.  He had some gambling debts.  He wanted to be a jockey, but he was too big.

“Just before Bobby Kennedy was killed in  1968, Sirhan Sirhan happened to be across town at the Hollywood Park race track wearing a brand new suit and looking like he had come into money,” Shaw continues. “ He had two, what were described by Shear as hombres or underworld characters,  on each side of him, guiding him along. That bothered him, because it didn’t seem like he was under his own power.”

On the day RFK was killed, Shear saw Sirhan’s mugshot on TV, asking if anyone knew him; they were still trying to figure out who he was. At the urging of his wife, he called the authorities at Hollywood Park and told them the whole story about Sirhan, and gave him the impression that they would pass it along to the LAPD and the FBI and get back in touch with him. While John Shear has passed, his brother Michael has been a direct source to the author.

And that’s where Shaw says the abuse of power started.

“They never contacted him, but the kicker there was that for about the next year, every time Shear or his wife picked up the telephone, they’d hear a click.  They knew their phones had been tapped.  I found a verifiable local article that stated that LA mobster Mickey Cohen would host gambling poker parties at the Ambassador Hotel and knew the workings and the layout of the hotel. So he would know exactly what Robert Kennedy was going to do that day he won the California primary and where he would be. Sirhan had four $100 bills in his pocket when he was arrested.  The man was destitute.  Where did that come from?   Then they got him a mafia lawyer. He never got adequate representation.”

One of Shaw’s goals in the book is to get Sirhan out of prison.  He delivered a letter this week to RFK Jr. and has been in touch with Sirhan’s representative.

“There’s a verified account that he went to the prison and hugged Sirhan and said, ‘I know you didn’t kill my father,” says Shaw, who has written numerous books on the JFK assassination. “ He’s gone out on a limb and said I don’t want the wrong man convicted.  I’m going to test him by sending this letter and see if he can steer the president of the United States into providing Sirhan Sirhan with a pardon. And this is a pardon that makes sense. We have new ballistics tests in the book. The bullets go into the shoulder and back of Robert Kennedy.  There are a lot of discrepancies. “

---30---

Well, maybe Marcello was behind the JFKA. There are some links to LHO and Marcello, and maybe LHO just wanted a pile of cash to get to Cuba. There was plenty of bad blood between the Kennedys and Marcello.

RFK?

Sirhan was a Middle East lunatic, witnessed by many firing upon RFK. There is no doubt Sirhan intended to murder RFK and did (Lisa Pease's book is polemic ridiculous crud). But there may have been a second gunsel that night at the Ambassador. Author John Hunt wrote a pretty good book about the shooting.

Interestingly, JFKA researcher Larry Hancock suspects there may be connections between SAVAK and Sirhan family, who were Middle East extremists (especially Sirhan's look-alike brother, who bought the gun for Sirhan).

Hancock suspects SAVAK wanted to make sure RFK did not become president, as Kennedy was doing the liberal thing, that is opposing the Shah. Sirhan was duped into the act. But he perped it. (BTW, the Shah was 100 times better than what followed).

Wrap-up: The key element of the JFKA and the RFKA is that investigations into assassin-links were curtailed, whether domestic or foreign.

Many have posited that investigations were curtailed to protect the CIA...but it may have been to avoid linking LHO to G2 or the KGB, or to assets within the CIA who were in fact G2 and KGB assets.

On Sirhan, it appears the LA District Attorney just wanted a prosecutable case. The LAPD had jurisdiction on the investigation, and they made some efforts, but the everybody went all in on getting Sirhan.

Caveat emptor, and draw your conclusions.

[Tom Graves]

[...]

Is this the RFK Assassination Forum?

[Benjamin Cole]

TG--

Author Mark Shaw (whose work I am reviewing) suggests the RFKA was linked to the JFKA, and Marcello was responsible for both.

I disagree with Shaw's work, but I put it up for others to read.

If thyne eyes offend thee...

Caveat emptor, and draw your won conclusions....

[Michael T. Griffith]

I have great respect for Mark Shaw. He is good people. He and I have corresponded extensively. I don't agree with all of his arguments, but I agree with many of them.

One thing is crystal clear: Sirhan did not shoot RFK. Rosey Grier pinned Sirhan before he had a chance to fire all of his shots toward RFK, and Sirhan was never behind RFK at any point, nor did RFK spin around so his back was facing Sirhan. Again, Grier pinned Sirhan after he fired only two or three shots, and Grier confirmed that Sirhan was several feet in front of RFK when he opened fire (virtually every other witness in the pantry confirmed this).

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy: Conspiracy and Cover-Up
https://sites.google.com/view/the-rfk-assassination/home

Two world-renowned experts on psychology and hypnosis, Dr. Daniel Brown of Harvard University and Dr. Herbert Spiegel of Columbia University, have concluded that Sirhan was hypno-programmed to fire at RFK. Dr. Brown interviewed Sirhan for over 60 hours, BTW.

[Benjamin Cole]

MTG-

Well, again we are on different pages.

I recommend this book.

"John Hunt's book about the Robert F. Kennedy assassination is titled "Buried in Plain Site: One Man's Search for Truth in the Murder of RFK", available as an ebook and focusing on conspiracy theories and evidence suggesting a cover-up, not the lone gunman theory. Hunt presents a narrative questioning the official story, delving into alternative explanations for the events surrounding RFK's shooting, and is known for his deep dives into political mysteries, particularly concerning the Kennedy family."

Larry Hancock worked with Hunt on the book.

My own take is Sirhan in fact got close to RFK, as stated by three witnesses. RFK, naturally enough, turned his his face away from Sirhan's handgun, and took the first shot in the rear of his skull. Way back when I did a post about the RFKA for the Education (For Crackpots) Forum. I will see if I can dredge it up to post here.

There may have been a second shooter in the Ambassador, but even that is iffy. The idea that RFK was shot by a .38 is very iffy, as no one reported one shot sounded louder or distinct from the other shots. Sirhan's brother may have been the second shooter--they were something of lookalikes, and some reported seeing a Sirhan lookalike there.

Sirhan admitted to the murder of RFK many times.

As for Sirhan bring programmed, if so, the feat has never been duplicated. The Manchurian Candidate was an idea of the 1960s and 1970s, due to a popular fictional novel, but seems to have faded, along with Bigfoot.

If Sirhan was programmed, why not LHO by the G2/KGB? That is what former CIA chief James Woolsey says.

One suspected second gunman in the RFKA is Thane Eugene Cesar, an Ace Guard Service employee hired by the Ambassador Hotel for that night. He was standing immediately behind Senator Kennedy at the time of the shooting and said he was holding the Senator's arm. Cesar was literally a maintenance plumber at Hughes, moonlighting to make ends meet, and the silly Lisa Pease says that makes him CIA. He carried a .38 that night, not a .22.

Caveat emptor, and draw your own conclusions.

[Steve M. Galbraith]

Here is Sirhan (link below) calmly and soberly responding to David Frost about his assassination of RFK (February 1989):

Sirhan: "I was never part of any conspiracy. For me to enter into a plot with another person to kill a third it's totally out of the question. If you knew enough about human nature as I have experienced in prisons where if where two people had gone into a conspiracy and one of them ends up on death row and the other one ends up a state witness. In retrospect I wish that there was a conspiracy because had there been one it would have aborted as soon as it was begun and Robert Kennedy would still be alive.

And: "I had you know extinguished you know a great star [RFK]....you know a world Savior perhaps a champion of all mankind and it's hard for me to live with this experience myself and it's really it's very painful for me to live with to be honest with you. But I'm a human being and I have to adjust and carry on with my life. I never dreamed of ever offending the American system of government or frustrating the votes and the hopes of millions of Americans and having done so sir I can't say anything but that I apologize for having done that...that's all I can offer is my apologies and my remorse in given my life situation, Mr. Frost, and I sincerely....[have a ] sense of shame..regret....

Again: "I had...you know.. extinguished a great star..." and "I apologize for having done that..." and "I sincerely [have a]..sense of shame...regret."

Throughout the interview he admits to shooting RFK, that he was aware of his act, that he had agency, that he had remorse for the act he did, and that he apologizes for killing RFK.



www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujeQ9NWv7ZM&t=1s

[Benjamin Cole]

Sirhan was waaaayyyy guilty.

Author John Hunt suspects there was a second gun involved in the RFKA.

My read of his book, and other witness statements, is that if there was a second gunsels, he stood near Sirhan and fired towrds RFK, possibly just once or twice.

Sirhan's brother may have been his co-conspirator, along with a women from Iran who feared what RFK would do to the Shah regime.

(Funny, now many are anticipating the return of the Shah as a liberation, which I hope it is).