California governor mulls RFK assassin Sirhan Sirhan parole

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California's governor must soon decide whether to free one of America's most notorious assassins, a decision he has said evokes one of the darkest periods in the nation's history.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has until sometime next month to allow or block the parole recommendation for Robert F. Kennedy assassin Sirhan Sirhan.

The recommendation by a two-person panel of parole commissioners in August split the iconic Kennedy family more than a half-century after the 1968 slaying of the U.S. senator from New York moments after he claimed victory in California’s pivotal Democratic presidential primary.

More than that, it tore open decades-old wounds lingering from the murders of RFK and his brother, President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963.

“This is very raw and emotional for people," said Newsom, who keeps RFK photos in both his official and home offices, including one of Kennedy with his late father.

“People aren’t just giving an opinion about yes or no, they’re expressing their memories of that time ... and connecting the dots to the '60s and that stress and anxiety and the wounds,” Newsom said after the panel made its recommendation.

“And in a way that makes this decision even that much more powerful, because of the impact that has on opening up those memories, many memories that people want to suppress, understandably,” said the Democratic governor, who called RFK his ”political hero" in a victory speech after he beat back a recall election in September.

Fifteen times, parole panels rejected freeing Sirhan, now 77, before deciding that he is no longer a danger to public safety.

New laws since his last previous parole hearing in 2016 meant the panel had to consider that Sirhan committed the offense at a young age, when he was 24; is...