LOS ANGELES — 1968 · Murder

The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy

SolvedSources: ALast updated: 14 October 2026

Shortly after midnight on 5 June 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, addressed supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California primary. Leaving the ballroom through a kitchen passageway, he was shot and gravely wounded; five other people were also hurt. Kennedy died in hospital about 25 hours later, aged 42. The 24-year-old gunman, seized at the scene, was tried in 1969 and sentenced to death; the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when California's death sentences were invalidated in 1972. The killing led the U.S. Secret Service to extend protection to presidential candidates.

Date: 1968
Place: Ambassador Hotel, California, USA, Los Angeles, US
Category: Murder
Case Status: Solved
Coordinates: 34.0597, -118.2970 ↗

Timeline of Events

4 June 1968Kennedy won the California and South Dakota primaries.
5 June 1968He was shot in the Ambassador Hotel's kitchen passage; the gunman was seized at the scene.
6 June 1968Kennedy died at Good Samaritan Hospital.

3 March 1969The gunman was sentenced to death.
1972The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after a California Supreme Court ruling.

Sources

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