Robert F. Kennedy's widow says his assassin should remain behind bars after RFK's sons voiced support for his parole

• Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Robert F. Kennedy, says she believes her husband's killer should remain in prison.
• A California parole board recommended the killer, Sirhan Sirhan, for parole last month.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom will have final say on Sirhan's parole.

Ethel Kennedy, the widow of the late Robert F. Kennedy, says that the former attorney general, senator, and presidential hopeful's assassin Sirhan Sirhan should remain behind bars after two of her sons voiced support for his parole.

"Our family and our country suffered an unspeakable loss due to the inhumanity of one man. We believe in the gentleness that spared his life, but in taming his act of violence, he should not have the opportunity to terrorize again," she said in a statement released by the Kennedy Family for Justice organization on Tuesday. "He should not be paroled."

A California parole board last month recommended Sirhan, who shot RFK in 1968 at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, for parole after 53 years in prison, and California Governor Gavin Newsom will make the final decision in the case.

Sirhan has long maintained that he doesn't remember the killing.

While Six of RFK's nine children have sided with Ethel Kennedy, asking Newsom to keep Sirhan in prison, two of the couple's sons, Robert F Kennedy Jr. and Douglas Kennedy, voiced support for his release, the Associated Press reported.

"I've lived my life both in fear of him and his name in one way or another," Douglas Kennedy said in the parole hearing, according to AP. "And I am grateful today to see him as a human being worthy of compassion and love."

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a letter to the parole board that he met Sirhan in prison and was moved when his father's killer asked for forgiveness.