ription he described it as a"white dress with black polka dots." In another description he said the girl had been wearing a"dark dress, which may have had some type of white dots."
A similar confused description of the girl's dress was provided by Booker Griffin. Griffin said he saw Sirhan standing eight to ten feet away in the Embassy Ballroom next to a woman. He said the woman had been wearing a dress"described by the media as polka dot. I can't say for sure but it had some color in it other than white." Griffin said the two"seemed out of place."
Judith Groves, an employee of a political consulting firm who was in the lobby when the shooting occurred, heard three shots, saw a woman splattered with blood run out, and a wounded man being carried through the lobby. She described going into the Embassy Ballroom through the Lautrec Room with the help of a"strange" man. She said the man spoke to two women in a foreign language, and that one of the women was wearing a polka dot dress.
There were other witnesses who reported seeing a woman in a polka dot dress, of varying descriptions, on the night RFK was killed. John Ludlow, Eve Hansen, Nina Ballantyne, and Jeannette Prudhomme reported seeing the woman with a Sirhan look-alike or was "acting in suspicious circumstances." The Los Angeles Police Department murder investigation team"Special Unit Senator" (SUS), spent some considerable time trying to track the girl down and searched the news film archives in their attempts to find photographic evidence. None was forthcoming. Although a number of women wearing polka dot dresses were in the Embassy Ballroom and the kitchen pantry that night the LAPD did not believe they had any connection to the shooting nor could they find any photographic evidence which put Sirhan together with the girl.
The story of the"polka-dot girl" was also supported by pantry shooting eyewitness Vincent DiPierro and Kennedy supporter Sandra Serrano. Furthermore, LAPD Police Sergeant Sharaga said a couple,"the Bernsteins," observed a girl shouting "We shot him." DiPierro, the son of the Ambassador's maitre d'hotel, said he saw a"pretty girl" standing next to Sirhan seconds before the shooting. She was"wearing a polka dot dress." After police officers showed Serrano and DiPierro a dozen dresses with varying polka dots, sleeves and colours the two witnesses gave widely varying descriptions of what kind of dress they had seen.
Pantry eyewitness Vincent DiPierro said he saw, “…one girl [during the night] ... that was in there [the pantry] that night with a 'pug-nose'….. and dark hair.” DiPierro said she had been standing in the area near Kennedy when the shooting occurred and that she had also been standing near the tray stacker where Sirhan crouched beforehe began shooting. “There was so much confusion that night,” DiPierro said.
At Sirhan's trial DiPierro testified as to what he observed. Defense lawyer Grant Cooper asked him what caused him to notice Sirhan. DiPierro replied, “There was a girl standing in the area [of the pantry]” and this caused him to notice Sirhan. He said the girl was pretty and when shown a photograph of Kennedy campaign worker Valerie Schulte confirmed this was the girl in question. It became obvious that in the chaos that followed the shooting - with the added distractions of camera flashes and television lighting that filled the pantry - that DiPierro had been led to mistake the color of Schulte's hair (blonde) and clothes; Schulte's dress was actually green with yellow polka dots. The same mischaracterization of the dress was probably made by Darnell Johnson who claimed to see the woman in the pantry with a man and also in the Embassy Room both before and after RFK was shot. Johnson's description of the girl is not in contradiction to the positioning of Valerie Schulte who had been standing in the pantry with a man when the shots were fired.
There were further compelling reasons to explain why purported"accomplices" ran out of the pantry uttering words to the effect that"they" had"shot Kennedy" - but the explanations do not rest on 