Assasination investigations

DEFINITION: Intentional killing of a human being for political, moral, or ideological reasons.

SIGNIFICANCE: The consequences of assassinations can often be greater than the consequences related to other murders because of the kinds of positions held by many of the targets of assassination; in cases of political assassination, for instance, wars or civil unrest may result. It is, therefore, critical that forensic investigations into such deaths determine the objective facts of these events.

Even a brief look at the history of assassination suggests the important role forensic science could have played in providing objective information as to in various assassinations. In ancient times, many assassinations were committed at very short range, as were many other murders. Victims were stabbed, strangled, or clubbed to death, and often the assassins, like other murderers, were quickly identified and apprehended. Philip II of Macedonia (382-336 BCE) and Julius Caesar (100-44 BCE) are only two of a long list of political leaders assassinated in ancient times.

Given the likely apprehension of assassins who used such short-range killing techniques as stabbing or strangling, poisoning became a widely used alternative. Although it required that the assassin gain immediate access to the target, poisoning constituted a much less obvious attack, and proving that someone had been poisoned was difficult after the fact. In the cases of such assassinations, better would have been helpful in the apprehension of the perpetrators. In modern times, the facts revealed through forensic science in the poisoning deaths of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov (poisoned with ricin) in 1978 and Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko (poisoned with polonium 210) in 2006 pointed to the killers, implicating, in both cases, the secret forces in Russia (under communist rule in 1978 and under the more “democratic” regime of Vladimir Putin in 2006). The motivation for both killings was presumably a desire to silence the victims’ criticisms of the regimes under which they lived.

American Assassinations

The importance and the limitations of forensic science in the investigation of assassinations are clear in the modern era and in the United States, where law-enforcement resources make exhaustive investigations possible. In the cases of the assassinations of US presidents James A. Garfield and William McKinley, in 1881 and 1901, respectively, the role of forensic science was small, as both were shot at close range by individuals who were captured immediately. The fact that the assassins of both presidents were obviously deranged obscured the political aspects of these events, but the questions raised by these assassinations later motivated attempts to use to construct profiles of persons who become assassins.

In the case of President Abraham Lincoln, dozens of spectators saw John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor, leap from the president’s box at Ford’s Theatre after Booth fired the fatal shot. Better forensic science than was available in 1865 could have been helpful in resolving another aspect of the case, however. Booth escaped from the theater and from Washington, DC, despite having injured his leg when he jumped from the president’s box. Law-enforcement officials pursued Booth and eventually cornered him—or at least a person they believed to be him—in a barn in Virginia. Before they could take Booth into custody, the barn burned down, presumably with Booth inside. Although a corpse with an injured leg was recovered from the ashes, the body was too badly burned to be readily identified, and ever since that time, some commentators have raised the possibility that Booth may have escaped. If the techniques used by modern forensic scientists had been available then, the question of the burned man’s identity would have been resolved.

Modern forensic science has sometimes been used in novel ways with regard to deaths of the past, including possible assassinations. For example, US president Zachary Taylor was hated by certain political opponents, and his death in 1850, reputedly from food poisoning, was a boon to them. Although some suspicions were raised at the time, the primitive nature of forensic science precluded an effective analysis. In 1991, given the advances that had been made in forensic science, some researchers thought it might be possible to determine whether Taylor was in fact poisoned. His body was exhumed and examined by a team of experts, who concluded that he had died of natural causes, most likely food poisoning.

Uses and Limitations of Forensic Science

Three major assassinations in recent American history provide ample examples of the uses of a wide variety of forensic scientific techniques in attempts to find objective about these crimes. In the 1968 assassinations of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy , the purported assassins (James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan, respectively) were apprehended, convicted of the crimes, and sentenced to imprisonment for life. A preponderance of the forensic evidence in each case clearly supports the conclusion that the accused man was involved in the assassination—probably by actually pulling the trigger. However, the forensic evidence available so far cannot reveal whether anyone else might have been involved in either case. Both Ray and Sirhan denied their guilt and sought new trials. Ray died in 1998 without achieving his goal of a new trial, and Sirhan has had no success in gaining a retrial.

In the case of James Earl Ray, the heart of the issue turned on Ray’s contention that he was set up as a fall guy by other conspirators who have never been found. Ray was the principal to the existence of any conspirators. Sirhan’s case is more complicated, as he clearly fired a gun in the direction of Senator Kennedy and was seized at the scene. Some conspiracy theorists, however, question whether any of the shots Sirhan fired at Kennedy actually struck him. They argue that there was a second gunman who fired two shots—one of which was the fatal shot to the head.

The conspiracy theorists gained a major piece of supporting forensic evidence for their theory when a tape recording of the shooting was found. Three acoustical experts have concluded that the tape reveals that at least ten shots were fired at the scene. Given that Sirhan was apprehended with a single gun with only eight shells in it and that he had no time to reload, this points to the existence of a second gunman. The recording further reveals that some of the shots came too close together to have been fired by Sirhan’s weapon. Whatever one makes of this evidence, the basic problem is that forensic science often cannot eliminate the possibility that persons other than the person who pulls the trigger may have been involved in an assassination.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The first major report on the assassination by the government investigative panel known as the Warren Commission claimed to provide a thorough review of the available forensic evidence, but subsequent research has shown a great deal of sloppiness in the commission’s work—inadequacies that have fueled a plethora of conspiracy theories. The proponents of these theories advance different forensic evidence or arrive at strikingly different conclusions based on the same evidence. The greatest problem with the use of forensic science in the case of the Kennedy assassination has been the failure of various government agencies to maintain control of the evidence on which the forensic science relies. For example, if—as some contend—Kennedy’s body was altered to make it appear that he was shot from the back when he was, in fact, shot from the front, then any subsequent would obviously be faulty.

Despite the advances that have been made in forensic science, forensic evidence often cannot answer every question related to a case of political assassination, including whether someone other than the direct assassin was involved.

Bibliography

Ayton, Mel. The Forgotten Terrorist: Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Potomac Books, 2007.

"Behind the Scenes: Investigating a Presidential Assassination Attempt." TAL Global, 16 July 2024, talglobal.com/knowledge-center/investigating-assassination-attempt/. Accessed 13 Aug. 2024.

Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. W. W. Norton, 2007.

James, Stuart H., and Jon J. Nordby, editors. Forensic Science: An Introduction to Scientific and Forensic Techniques. 2nd ed., CRC Press, 2005.

Kurtz, Michael L. The JFK Assassination Debates: Lone Gunman Versus Conspiracy. UP of Kansas, 2006.

Lifton, David S. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Signet, 1992.

Posner, Gerald. Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK. Random House, 1993.

Posner, Gerald. Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Harcourt Brace, 1999.

Sturdivan, Larry M. The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination. Paragon House, 2005.