oh whiskers!

life:

When Robert Kennedy was assassinated on June 5, 1968, LIFE’s Bill Eppridge was there — and managed to capture the one haunting image that helped define the era.

Here, on the anniversary of his murder, we present photos made just moments before, and moments after the horrific event. Many of which were never published in the magazine.

The original caption that ran in LIFE: “Rigid, semiconscious, his face an ashen mask, Senator Kennedy lies in a pool of his own blood on the concrete floor, a bullet deep in his brain and another in his neck. Juan Romero, a busboy whose hand Kennedy had shaken before the shots, tried to comfort him.”