Evan Freed | |
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Born | Evan Phillip Freed September 11, 1946 Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Occupation(s) | attorney, photographer |
Known for | association with Robert F. Kennedy |
Evan Phillip Freed (born September 11, 1946) is an attorney and freelance photographer who traveled with and photographed the presidential campaign of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Freed was present when Sirhan Sirhan shot Kennedy.
Evan Freed was born in Los Angeles, California. He graduated from California State University, Los Angeles and University of West Los Angeles School of Law. [1]
Freed photographed Kennedy's presidential campaign. At the time of the assassination, Freed had stepped into the pantry area behind the Embassy Ballroom of the Ambassador Hotel (Los Angeles) to repair his damaged camera. He heard shots and immediately saw Sirhan Sirhan firing a revolver toward Senator Kennedy. Freed was then pressed against the wall by a crush of bodies. He watched the struggle to subdue Sirhan, and saw two men and a woman running for the exit at the east end of the pantry. [2] [3] Kennedy campaign worker Sandy Serrano reported seeing a girl in a polka dot dress running from the scene with a man accompanying her, and claimed that the girl exclaimed, "We shot him! We shot him!" When asked to whom the girl was referring, Serrano reported that the girl said, "We shot Senator Kennedy!" Evan Freed also saw the girl in the polka dot dress, who is linked to Robert F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Freed appeared in Shane O'Sullivan's 2007 documentary RFK Must Die . [4]
Freed's testimony has been cited in support of Robert F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. [5]
In 1979 Freed was admitted to practice law by the State Bar of California. From 1982 to 1987 Freed was employed by the Los Angeles County Public Defender as a criminal defense attorney. In 1987 he joined the Law Offices of the Alternate Defense Counsel in Los Angeles where he worked until 1995.
In 1995 Freed was hired by the Los Angeles City Attorney as a criminal prosecutor. While employed there Freed provided information to the United States Attorney used in a police corruption case, in which an indictment was handed down while authorities continued to probe allegations of misconduct, criminality and civil rights violations in the Los Angeles Police Department. [6]
Freed left the Los Angeles City Attorney's office in 1997 and is now a criminal defense lawyer in Redondo Beach, California. A notable case was Freed's defense of a young driver involved in a fatal accident. Freed contended that glare and not a dirty windshield was the cause of the accident. [7] The case was settled with a plea bargain. [8] In another case, Freed obtained a reduced federal court sentence for a man convicted of rhino horn trafficking. [9] Freed represented one defendant in the 2015 Rowland Heights, California bullying incident, who received a 13-year sentence in a plea bargain. [10]
Vincent T. Bugliosi Jr. was an American prosecutor and author who served as Deputy District Attorney for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office between 1964 and 1972. He became best known for successfully prosecuting Charles Manson and other defendants accused of the Tate–LaBianca murders that took place between August 9 and August 10, 1969.
Ethel Kennedy is an American human rights advocate. She is the widow of U.S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, a sister-in-law of President John F. Kennedy, and the sixth child of George and Ann (Brannack) Skakel. Shortly after her husband's assassination in 1968, Kennedy founded the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, a non-profit charity working to reach his goal of a just and peaceful world. In 2014, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. She is the oldest living member of the Kennedy Family.
Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician, environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and conspiracy theorist. He is the chairman and founder of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group that is a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, and an independent candidate in the 2024 presidential election. A member of the Kennedy family, he is a son of U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, and nephew of U.S. president John F. Kennedy and senator Ted Kennedy.
California State Prison, Corcoran (COR) is a male-only state prison located in the city of Corcoran, in Kings County, California. It is also known as Corcoran State Prison, CSP-C, CSP-COR, CSP-Corcoran, and Corcoran I. The facility is just north of the newer California Substance Abuse Treatment Facility and State Prison, Corcoran.
William Francis Pepper was an American lawyer who was based in New York City and noted for his efforts to prove government culpability and the innocence of James Earl Ray in the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Pepper also tried to prove the innocence of Sirhan Sirhan in the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. He was the author of several books, and had been active in other government conspiracy cases, including the 9/11 Truth movement, and had advocated that George W. Bush be charged with war crimes.
Bobby is a 2006 American drama film written and directed by Emilio Estevez, and starring an ensemble cast featuring Harry Belafonte, Joy Bryant, Nick Cannon, Laurence Fishburne, Spencer Garrett, Helen Hunt, Joshua Jackson, Anthony Hopkins, Ashton Kutcher, Shia LaBeouf, Lindsay Lohan, William H. Macy, Demi Moore, Martin Sheen, Christian Slater, Sharon Stone, Freddy Rodriguez, Heather Graham, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Elijah Wood, and Estevez. The screenplay is a fictionalized account of the hours leading up to the June 5, 1968, shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles following his win of the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California.
Bernard Lee Diamond was a Professor of law and psychiatry at the University of California, Berkeley. He is primarily known for his contribution to what is known as forensic psychiatry. He was an expert witness for the defense in many well known trials, most notably the trial of Sirhan Sirhan, who was convicted of killing Robert F. Kennedy. The defense based much of their case on Diamond's testimony that Sirhan was suffering from diminished capacity at the time that he fired the deadly shots. In the 1980's, Jonathon Marks, who was representing Mark David Chapman for his alleged act of murdering John Lennon, brought Dr. Diamond in to perform medical legal evaluations on Chapman, but because Chapman later decided to plead guilty Diamond did not give testimony.
Lawrence George Teeter was an American lawyer best known for representing Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of assassinating Robert F. Kennedy, from 1994–2005.
RFK is a 2002 American historical drama television film directed by Robert Dornhelm and written by Hank Steinberg. The film stars Linus Roache as Robert F. Kennedy. David Paymer, Martin Donovan, Jacob Vargas, Marnie McPhail, Sergio Di Zio, Sean Sullivan, Ving Rhames and James Cromwell also star. It premiered on the FX Network on August 25, 2002.
The Robert F. Kennedy presidential campaign began on March 16, 1968, when Robert Francis Kennedy, a United States Senator from New York, mounted an unlikely challenge to incumbent Democratic United States President Lyndon B. Johnson. Following an upset in the New Hampshire primary, Johnson announced on March 31 that he would not seek re-election. Kennedy still faced two rival candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination: the leading challenger United States Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Humphrey had entered the race after Johnson's withdrawal, but Kennedy and McCarthy remained the main challengers to the policies of the Johnson administration. During the spring of 1968, Kennedy led a leading campaign in presidential primary elections throughout the United States. Kennedy's campaign was especially active in Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, South Dakota, California, and Washington, D.C. After declaring victory in the California primary on June 4, 1968, Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. He died on June 6, 1968 at Good Samaritan Hospital. Had Kennedy been elected president, he would have been the first brother of a former U.S. president to win the presidency himself.
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is a 2007 investigative documentary by Irish writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. The film expands on O'Sullivan's earlier reports for BBC Newsnight and The Guardian and explores conspiracy theories related to the assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy on 5 June 1968. The title comes from a page of "free writing" found in assassin Sirhan Sirhan's notebook after the shooting upon which Sirhan had written "R.F.K. must die - RFK must be killed Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated... before June 5 '68."
MohammedTaki Mehdi, commonly M. T. Mehdi was an Arab-American based in New York, was one of the earliest pro-Palestinian activists in the United States, and firm in his defense of the Palestinian cause. He held debates on television and radio with many supporters of Israel, including the rabbi Meir Kahane. He said Sirhan acted justifiably in his assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. He died of cardiac arrest at Bellevue Hospital in 1998.
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and pronounced dead the following day.
Sirhan Bishara Sirhan is a Palestinian-Jordanian convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy Sr., a younger brother of American president John F. Kennedy and a candidate for the Democratic nomination in the 1968 United States presidential election. On June 5, 1968, Sirhan shot and mortally wounded Robert Kennedy shortly after midnight at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; Kennedy died the next day at Good Samaritan Hospital. The circumstances surrounding the attack, which took place five years after his brother's assassination, have led to numerous conspiracy theories.
Robert Francis Kennedy, also known by his initials RFK, was an American politician and lawyer. He served as the 64th United States attorney general from January 1961 to September 1964, and as a U.S. senator from New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968, when he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Like his brothers John F. Kennedy and Ted Kennedy, he was a prominent member of the Democratic Party and is an icon of modern American liberalism.
Matthew Maxwell Taylor Kennedy is an American lawyer and author. He is the ninth child of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Skakel Kennedy.
There are several non-standard accounts of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination, which took place shortly after midnight on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, California. Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel, during celebrations following his successful campaign in California's primary elections as a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate; he died the following day at Good Samaritan Hospital.
The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress is the last novel by writer Beryl Bainbridge published in 2011 following her death. As explained in the postscript:
Beryl Bainbridge was in the process of finishing The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress when she died on 2 July 2010. Her long-time friend and editor, Brendan King prepared the text for publication from her working manuscript, taking into account suggestions Beryl made at the end of her life. No additional material has been included.
Paul Schrade was an American trade union activist. While vice president of the United Auto Workers, he was shot in the head during the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Schrade believed that while he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan, Kennedy was shot by a second gunman.
Robert F. Kennedy Medical Center is a vacant former 274-bed hospital located in Hawthorne, California. Upon opening in 1926 as Hawthorne Community Hospital, the hospital was opened in tandem with Centinela Hospital Medical Center to serve the communities of Hawthorne, El Segundo, Lennox, and Southern Inglewood. The Hospital was renamed in honor of former US senator and then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy who was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles on June 6, 1968. The Hospital was purchased by Catholic Healthcare West in 1989, and underwent numerous expansions before numerous lawsuits and budgetary issues with the hospital's parent company forced its closure in 2004.