by Lisa Pease
DOMINIC GEZZI
Sometime around 11 P.M., Dominic Gezzi noticed two men who appeared to be foreign talking to a girl in a polka dot dress that he thought was Jewish. He said she had a “large nose.” The three looked very serious. One of the men was between 5’2” and 5’4” tall. The other male was about 5’10,” but Gezzi could not describe him further. When Sirhan was being removed from the hotel, someone grabbed his hair and pulled his head up. When Gezzi saw his face, he was certain this was the short man in the group he had seen earlier.532
PAMELA RUSSO
Another witness also saw a woman in a polka dot dress with a nose that drew her attention. Pamela Russo, a Rafferty campaign worker, remembered seeing a girl in a polka dot dress—white with black or dark purple dots—and suggested the girl might have been wearing a wig. She remembered the girl as being about 5’5” or 5’6” with “kind of a bouffant hairdo. It was jet black. It had almost like—you’ve seen wigs of this sort that are very, very bouffant, they all look the same—they are kind of tucked under, they come a little bit toward the face.”
But what Russo really remembered was the girl’s nose, as she described to Fernando Faura, the only journalist who seriously pursued the conspiracy angle in the days immediately following the assassination:
The girl had a long thin nose. It was—it was almost when you looked at it—it looked a little bit crooked. It was thin between the eyes. It came down—it broadened at the nose, and then narrowed again toward the base of the nose, but the nostrils were a little bit wider. This is what I remember. I remember that nose.533
At the time Russo saw her, the girl was alone. That may or may not have been the case when Eve Hansen saw her.
EVE HANSEN
Eve Hansen clearly saw the same girl that DiPierro and Serrano saw at the downstairs bar outside the Ambassador Room, called by many the “victory room” that night, as that was the place of the public victory party open to the public. The Embassy Room party was private, intended for campaign workers, the media and donors. The public celebration was held downstairs, with bands and bars aplenty. One such bar was in the foyer just outside the Ambassador Room. And there, Eve Hansen, who was attending the party with her sister Nina Ballantyne, saw something interesting. There was a long bar in the hallway that led into the Ambassador Room, and a shorter bar “around the corner … on the right.” Around 10:30 P.M. or 11 P.M., Hansen and Ballantyne had a conversation with a girl in a polka dot dress:
I was standing at the end of the bar, waiting to be served, and had been standing for a few minutes, and this gal just suddenly popped up alongside of me and my sister and said “You’ll never get served there.” And I said “Why not?” And she said, “Well I’ve been standing at the other end of the bar for over a half hour and I couldn’t get served, they just won’t serve you at this end of the bar.” And I said, “You wanna make a bet? Give me your money and tell me what you want” and she gave me a dollar and said she’d like a scotch highball.
This was primarily how come I noticed her, because I’m a scotch drinker, but I like scotch on the rocks when I’m at a public bar, and I said to her, “Why don’t you try a scotch on the rocks? You’ll get more for your money.” So she said, “Okay,” and she gave me a dollar for her drink …. And about then, I did get served. …
She was real nice—she was real lively and fun and everything.534
After Hansen passed out the drinks and a little chit-chat about the scotch, the girl lifted her glass and said, “Here’s to our next president” and Hansen said “I’ll drink to that.”
And that was it. There was nothing suspicious. She was a charming kid, girl, I’d say around 25 or so. But the reason we went to the District Attorney’s office was because as of Friday noon, nobody—and it was on the radio that the D.A.’s office was looking for a girl in a polka dot dress—nobody had admitted it. And that’s when Nina said … that’s awfully odd, and maybe we ought to tell the D.A.’s office about it.535
Hansen described the girl as Caucasian, with dark brown hair that hit about at her shoulders with “big poofs” in it, suggesting a bouffant style. She had “a sort of turned-up nose—that’s why I described her as being sort of pert, cute, and very vivacious, very talkative.” She thought she was 25 or 26, about 5’6” tall. “She had a nice figure,” Hansen emphasized. “She wasn’t fat and yet she wasn’t skinny. She had a nice figure,” she repeated. She thought the dress with white with black or navy blue polka dots, and was leaning toward navy blue because she “distinctly remember[ed]” a navy blue belt on the dress. She thought the dots were about the size of a quarter coin. “I think I noticed her hemline because I’m very conscious of that.” She hated miniskirts and this dress had a respectable length. “I have no recollection of her having a bag.” She probably had brown eyes, Hansen said, “Because I usually notice blue eyes. I have a thing about blue eyes.”
Hansen said she had been sitting on the stairs “the girl was supposed to have run down,” but she was sitting on the stairs between the backstage area and the Ambassador Room, which were on the northern, Wilshire side of the building, not the stairs were Sandra Serrano was sitting, which was on the southern, 8th Street side of the building. They saw a security guard on those stairs.
When Officer Risen asked Hansen if she saw any men with the girl in the polka dot dress, she said no, but added something interesting that she noticed at the far north end of the short bar around the corner from the main downstairs hallway:
At the upper end of the bar … where she said she was waiting to be served and they wouldn’t serve her, there was just a wall—about six feet beyond the bar, … there were three or four young man of different nationalities just sitting on the floor. And I thought that was very odd, just sitting on the floor. But I didn’t notice enough to notice who they were or if she was with them. This was before she popped up.536
There was, in fact, something very important here that we will examine in the next chapter. But Officer Risen could not have known that at that early point, so he moved on to ask about the toast the girl had made “to our next president” that the girl had made. “Did she say who?” Risen asked.
“That struck me as odd too,” Hansen replied. “She did not say ‘Here’s to Bobby’ … she just said, ‘Well, here’s a toast to our next president,’ and I said, ‘I’ll drink to that,’ thinking of Bobby. And she said, ‘Well, I gotta go now,’ and just took off.”537
“Did you see which way she went?” Risen asked.
“She just melted into the crowd,” Hansen said.538
DARNELL JOHNSON’S GROUP
Darnell Johnson described a group of five people that included Sirhan in the pantry just before Kennedy returned from giving his speech. He had the feeling the people were “together.” The group contained:
A white female wearing a white dress, with 25¢ size black polka dots; the dress was fitted, was not a miniskirt but was above the knee; was not a loose shift but was fashionable for the time. She was 23–25 years of age, tall, 5’8,” medium build, well built, 145 pounds, long light brown hair, carrying an all-white sweater or jacket, pretty full face, stubby heel shoes in the fashion of the time.
A person whom Johnson identified as Sirhan from photographs shown at the time of this interview and further as the person he saw who was seized immediately following the shooting by persons in the area.
A white male, wearing a light blue washable sport coat, white shirt and tie, 6’1” tall, slim, 30–35 years, blond hair parted far over the left side with the right side long and hanging towards his face like a surfer haircut outdoor type.
A white male, 5’10” tall, 165 pounds, trim, 24–25 years of age, brown, long hair but not hippie, dark coat, darker trousers, white shirt and tie.
A white male, 6’1”, tall, slim, darkish brown hair, shiny brown sport coat made of hopsacking, white shirt and tie.539
The tall blond man in the light blue sport coat sounds like the man who Nina Rhodes-Hughes
saw shooting from the table, and the man Ernesto Ruiz and Gilman Kraft saw run across the lobby at the same time Michael Wayne ran out. These people “were standing in a group between Darnell and the door through which Kennedy came.” As Kennedy entered, Darnell, like many other witnesses, thought firecrackers had been set off and was not aware that a gun had been fired, even when he saw a woman “slump against the wall and say ‘Oh my God, oh my God.’ Johnson saw a photographer “put the lights up to take a picture of the persons standing, and when the lights showed on Sirhan, the photographer said, ‘Grab him, that dude has a gun.’ This was the first time that Johnson realized there had been a shooting.”540
At this point, Johnson saw the woman in the polka dot dress and the three other men leave and walk “toward the ballroom from where the Kennedy party had just come.” As people seized Sirhan, Johnson said the woman in the polka dot dress and the man in the “light blue washable sport coat” came back and looked, then left again.
JOSE CARVAJAL
What Darnell Johnson saw maps closely to what Ambassador Hotel busboy Jose Carvajal told reporter Fernando Faura. After the shooting, Carvajal saw a girl in a polka dot dress “run straight into a dead-end hallway.”541 It appears both Carvajal and Darnell Johnson saw the same woman. This makes sense if the woman ran into the employee dining area, thinking she could get through that to the main kitchen, only to find, for whatever reason, she could not. She then turned around and ran back out the south pantry door to join her tall, blue-suited companion. This maps to what Evan Freed and Jack Merritt saw as well.
EVAN FREED AND JACK MERRITT
Evan Freed saw a woman in a polka dot dress and a man wearing a “bright blue” sports coat leave the pantry through separate doors at the east end of the pantry.
There were three exits at the east end of the pantry. One door led south to the Embassy Foyer, a pair of double doors opened east to the Colonial Room across a short hallway, and one door opened to the north to the main kitchen area. A fourth pantry exit in the middle of the north wall led to an employee eating area which may or may not have connected, at least at that point, to the main kitchen. Evan Freed told the LAPD that after the shooting, he had been “pinned against the east wall of the kitchen” by the crowd and saw three people running east toward him, two men and one woman. The woman, wearing a polka dot dress, went out the door to his right (likely one of the two north exits), and a man in blue suit ran out the door to his left (likely the east exit), followed by the third man, who was yelling, “Get him! Get him!”542 Although Freed said the man he saw had dark hair, he wasn’t certain of that. Someone with “surfer” blond hair may well have had dark streaks in his hair as well. Freed also thought the girl had a long dress on, but the color of the man’s hair and the length of her polka dot dress weren’t important details. What was important is that two people seemed to be escaping just as the shots began.
Ace Security guard Jack Merritt reported something similar. He too was at the east end of the pantry at the doors that led to the Colonial Room. He had been near the main doors to the Embassy Room when he heard a woman come from the pantry and scream, “My God, we need a doctor.” He ran into the pantry and saw the group of men struggling with Sirhan. But when he first entered the pantry, “he observed two men and a woman walking away from him and out of the kitchen. They seemed to be smiling. He added that the woman was wearing a polka dot dress.”543
FRANCIS CRITCHELEY
Yet another witness saw a woman leaving the pantry. Francis Critcheley (misspelled Critchley in some records) “assisted a girl early twenties heavy set not fat in a white polka dot dress who was getting shoved in the crowd.”
Critcheley described her as having an olive complexion, “similar to Mediterranean Latin” with a “round face,” dark hair and eyes that seemed “naturally tear-dropped shape.” She seemed to be in her “early twenties” and was wearing a polka dot dress with a “hi-necked dress.”544 Serrano had described the dress as having “a stand-up collar.”545 She had an “up hairdo blk with an off-center crease in top.”546 Did Critcheley unwittingly help a conspirator escape? She looked “frightened and wide eyed,” according to Officer Norris’ notes of his conversation with Critcheley.
Earlier that night, Critcheley had spied a different woman in a polka dot dress, but she was about 18 years old and her dress was low-cut and she had a straight-chiseled nose. None of the characteristics of the second woman match the description of the woman DiPierro and Serrano saw, but the first one was a very close match.547 But the younger woman did seem to match the younger woman in a polka dot dress that other witnesses would report seeing with Sirhan, a point we’ll return to later.
BOOKER GRIFFIN
Booker Griffin was yet another witness to a man and a woman in a polka dot dress leaving the pantry right after the shooting while others seemed to be trying to get in.
Around 10:30 P.M., Booker Griffin made “negative eye contact” with the man he’d recognize later as Sirhan. He was standing next to a 6’2” Caucasian man, with a lighter complexion than Sirhan’s, and a girl in a “predominantly white dress that may have had another color in it.” He thought they seemed “totally out of the mood” of the rest of the people in attendance.548 Griffin saw this trio repeatedly between 11 P.M. and 12 A.M. just before Kennedy was shot. He distinctly remembered Sirhan because he had sneered at him as he went by. A few days later, Booker wrote in the Los Angeles Sentinel:
The man that did the shooting was in the corridor-way as I left [the stage] in advance of the senator. He was there with a tall Caucasian male and a Caucasian female in a white dress. I noticed the man because I had seen him several times before during the evening.
I had seen him first downstairs in the Ambassador Room around 10:15 P.M. I remember distinctly because we had stared each other down. I vaguely remember the girl also with him.
Between 11 and the actual shooting, I traveled between the Embassy Room and press room (using the corridor or where the incident occurred) maybe six or eight times. The last three or four times I noticed the gunman, the girl and the other guy.
When I left the stage and went to the press room the last time before the shooting, there were a few kitchen employees and the gunman and his two friends. I distinctly remember this because the gunman had sneered at me as I went past. This affected me to the point that it stayed on my mind when I sat down in the press room.
Griffin remarked “how we just seemed to dislike each other. It puzzled me.” Booker had just started to enter the pantry from the east end when the shooting started. “I had a full view of the room,” Griffin wrote, adding,
I differ very sharply with media reports at this point. I distinctly saw the other man and the girl flee a side corridor heading out of the hotel as I raced to the feet of the fallen senator.
There is no doubt in my mind that on several trips past the trio that they were together.
Griffin tried to pursue them “down that corridor, but couldn’t get through.” He kept yelling “they’re getting away” but no one seemed to pay any attention.549 Dick Aubrey remembered Griffin saying, “Did they get the other two guys?” In his taped LAPD interview, Griffin noticed the woman because she had sort of a “bubble butt” of the type he saw more commonly on black women than on white women. Griffin said the woman had “blonde bouffant hair.” As with the other witnesses, Griffin described these two as leaving through the kitchen area, meaning through one of the northern exits from the pantry. To both the FBI and LAPD, Griffin said the dress had some sort of “colorations” on it. None of Griffin’s early interviews, nor Griffin’s own article, mention that he saw a girl in a polka dot dress. But we know this to be the case because in a short summary of LAPD witness interviews dated June 7, there is this entry:
Booker Griffen [sic] [phone numbers] Saw Girl Polka Dot Dress
So either Griffin told the police that, or the way he described the girl was enough for the LAPD to believe he had seen “the girl.”
/> The LAPD’s Final Report on the case included this outright lie:
Mr. Griffin observed the shooting from the Colonial Room doorway. He stated he saw a male and a female run from the room. Later he stated that the report of the male and female escaping was a total fabrication on his part.550
Griffin never made any such statement. The LAPD statement is the complete fabrication. I’ve listened to the last interview, on tape, of Griffin, and can verify he said no such thing. When Professor Philip Melanson showed him this statement years later, Griffin’s first response was to invoke his lawyer. He was furious the LAPD would make up such a lie about something that never happened. “Law must not perjure itself,” Griffin said. Griffin was a trained crime reporter. He knew what he saw and had reported it accurately.
In a curious twist, Griffin had offered to take a lie detector test to prove the veracity of what he was saying, but the police had declined, saying the test was unreliable.551
And George Green could have backed him up. He also saw a man he later identified as Sirhan talking to a tall, thin man and a girl in a polka dot dress who had a “good figure.” Sirhan caught his attention because he was wearing neither a suit nor a kitchen uniform.552
So six people—Darnell Johnson, Carvajal, Critcheley, Freed, Merritt and Griffin saw a girl in a polka dot dress leave the pantry after the shooting in a way that drew their attention. Three of these witnesses noted a tall man with her, and two of those three said the man was wearing a blue suit.
This tall man may well have been the source of Sergeant Sharaga’s initial broadcast that was requested cancelled by Inspector Powers.