William J. Bryan Jr.

William J. Bryan Jr. was a hypnotist who claimed to have worked for the CIA and who served as a technical consultant for the film The Manchurian Candidate. Bryan allegedly bragged about hypnotizing Sirhan Sirhan prior to the assassination of Robert Kennedy, as well as hypnotizing Albert DeSalvo, the serial killer known as the Boston Strangler.¹

Sirhan Sirhan, Hypnotic Programming, and the Girl in the Polka-Dot Dress

Bryan's alleged involvement with Sirhan was one of several pieces of circumstantial evidence suggesting that Sirhan Sirhan may have been a programmed subject. Sirhan was portrayed as the "lone nut" in the assassination of Robert Kennedy, but there was strong evidence of CIA presence in the case. The LAPD, which may have been under CIA direction, figured prominently in the cover-up following the shooting.¹

Sirhan Sirhan claimed to have no memory of the killing. Phrases from his private notebooks showed the characteristics of "automatic writing" of a hypnotically programmed subject, including references to mind control, money, and drugs. Witness Sandra Serrano reported seeing Sirhan with a "Latin" man and a girl in a polka-dot dress ascending an emergency stairway in the hotel just prior to the shooting. Other witnesses saw Sirhan near a coffee machine with a girl in a polka-dot dress who was whispering to him. Sirhan said the last thing he remembered prior to the shooting was having a cup of coffee with a girl, suggesting the possibility of drugs being placed in his coffee combined with further hypnotic suggestion. Immediately after the shooting, witnesses saw the same woman and male companion leaving the hotel and gleefully exclaiming, "We shot him! We shot Senator Kennedy!"¹

Prosecution psychiatrist Seymour Pollack, who was convinced that Sirhan had been programmed by someone, asked Sirhan while under hypnosis if anyone was with him when he shot Kennedy, to which he replied in a hushed tone, "the girl, the girl."¹