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The Problems With The Official Story
The Problems With The Official Story
The problem with the official scenario is that the
physical evidence and eyewitness reports would seem to show that Sirhan
was incapable of inflicting the wounds attributed to him.
The autopsy carried out by Coroner Thomas Noguchi showed
that Senator Kennedy had been shot three times. One shot entered the
head behind the right ear, a second shot near the right armpit and a
third roughly one and a half inches below the second. All shots entered
the body at a sharply upward angle, moving slightly right to left. These
shots are incompatible with eyewitness reports of the shooting. Sirhan
had no access to the Senator's rear, and Kennedy never turned more than
sideways to Sirhan. In addition, Sirhan fired with his arm parallel to
the floor, i.e. straight ahead. Maitre d' Karl Uecker, who had been
leading Kennedy forward by the right hand at the time the shooting
started, grappled Sirhan after his second shot and pushed the gun away.
All these points, as well as the fact that the gun was one and a half to
six feet from Kennedy, prove that Sirhan could not have inflicted the
fatal wounds to the Senator.
Sirhan's .22 revolver contained eight bullets and he had
no chance to reload. This caused a problem for the official version of
the assassination as all bullets had been accounted for, except for one
which was lost in the ceiling space. Reports indicated that a wooden
door jamb contained two bullets. This frame and as many as five or six
ceiling tiles were removed from the crime scene for tests. Photographs
of the crime scene show at least this many tiles missing and more
besides. Los Angeles Police Department criminologist DeWayne Wolfer was
quoted as saying "it's unbelievable how many holes there are in the
kitchen ceiling." This suggests that LAPD found more bullets (or
traces of bullets) than could be accounted for by Sirhan's eight shot
revolver, at least seven and probably more.
Photograph of the crime scene, facing the
direction in which Sirhan was firing.

(California State Archives)
As well as the problems noted above, there are the
reports of suspicious people in the area at the time of the
assassination. The first policeman on the scene, Sergeant Paul Schraga,
was approached by a couple who told him that they had encountered a
young man and woman fleeing the Ambassador Hotel shouting "We shot
him! We shot him." When asked who they had shot, the young woman
joyously replied, "Senator Kennedy." Schraga sent out an All
Points Bulletin on the two suspects. This was the start of the
"Polka-dot Dress Girl" controversy. In one of the most
intuitive pieces of police deduction since the JFK assassination, LAPD
declared that Sirhan was the sole assassin within minutes of the crime.
Schraga was asked to cancel his APB, and when he refused, it was
canceled by his superiors.
The couple's story was explained by the LAPD as a case
of mishearing, stating that the young woman must have said "They
shot him!" However, a young woman sitting on a staircase outside
the Ambassador Hotel, Sandra Serrano, corroborated the couple's story.
Two witnesses in the pantry also saw armed men, aside
from Sirhan and security guard Thane Eugene Cesar. Lisa Urso noticed a
blond haired man in a grey suit putting a gun into a holster. A second,
unnamed, witness saw a tall, dark-haired man, wearing a black suit, fire
two shots and run out of the pantry.
The evening of the murder, police interviewed Vincent
DiPierro, a college kid and part-time waiter at the Ambassador Hotel,
who said he had spotted Sirhan Sirhan before the shooting, standing near
the tray table. What had drawn his attention to the would-be assassin
was the woman to whom he was whispering. DiPierro thought she was quite
attractive, despite a small pug nose. She had brown hair and blue eyes
and wore a "white dress with black or purple polka dots".
Moments before Sirhan leaped forward to shoot, he murmured in her ear
and she smiled.
That same night at the police station a 21-year-old
campaign worker named Sandra Serrano also told the investigators about a
mysterious polka dot-wearing lady. Having gone out for some fresh air,
Serrano found sanctuary on the steps that led down from the ballroom to
the street. At about 11:30 p.m., she said, a trio comprised of a young
couple and a young male who looked like Sirhan Sirhan ascended the steps
from the parking lot and entered the ballroom. The woman wore a
polka-dot dress. Not long after, claimed Serrano, the couple, minus the
third party, came bolting down the steps, exuberantly crying, "We
shot Kennedy!" When the police asked her for a more accurate
description of the dress and the woman who wore it, the witness replied,
"white dress with polka dots (and she had) a funny nose."

Sandra Serrano (California State Archives)
That wasn’t all. The polka-dot lady had also been seen
by a police sergeant named Paul Sharaga. He had been cruising on-duty
near the vicinity of the Ambassador when he heard a radio report about a
shooting at the hotel. Turning his squad in that direction, he parked it
in the adjacent lot and ran inside. But as he reached the sidewalk
outside, already in clamor, he overheard a giggling couple pass by him,
mumbling, "We shot Kennedy!" The female wore polka dots. By
the time it dawned on him what was going on, they had disappeared into
the darkness. Sharaga immediately radioed their description into
headquarters.
The LAPD discounted the strange tales. Says Manny Pena,
SUS chief investigator, "I found no credence that there was a gal
in a polka-dot dress who said, ‘We shot Kennedy’. What (we believe
they all) heard was, ‘They shot Kennedy’…If we didn’t
dispel that, we could still be looking for the gal."
But, why the LAPD never saw "credence" in a
matching story related by three unrelated people – including a
policeman – was never explained. Nor was it explained why any innocent
person would laugh when they heard someone was shot.
Because Serrano was the most adamant about the existence
of the phantom lady, she was turned over to a Sgt. Enrique Hernandez for
in-depth questioning on the topic. The interview lasted more than an
hour and, badly shaken from the almost-accusatory nature of the
interview, she took and failed a polygraph (lie detector) test. Here is
a segment of the actual transcript, which is taken from Dan E.
Moldea’s The Killing of Robert F. Kennedy:
HERNANDEZ: I think you owe it to Senator Kennedy, the
late Senator Kennedy, to come forth, be a woman about this…Don’t
shame his death by keeping this thing up. I have compassion for you. I
want to know why. I want to know why you did what you did. This is a
very serious thing.
SERRANO: I seen those people!
HERNANDEZ: No, no, no, no, Sandy. Remember what I told
you about that: you can’t say you saw something when you really
didn’t see it …
SERRANO: Well, I don’t feel like I’m doing
anything wrong…I remember seeing the girl!
HERNANDEZ: No, I’m talking about what you have told
here about seeing a person tell you, ‘We have shot Kennedy.’ And
that’s wrong.
SERRANO: That’s what she said.
HERNANDEZ: No, it isn’t, Sandy…
SERRANO: No! That’s what she said.
HERNANDEZ: Look it! Look it! I love this man!
SERRANO: So do I.
HERNANDEZ: And you’re shaming (him)…!
SERRANO: Don’t shout at me.
HERNANDEZ: Well, I’m trying not to shout. but this a
very emotional thing for me, too…If you love the man, the least you
owe him is the courtesy of letting him rest in peace.
When questioned by reporters about the brutal
interrogation tactics practiced on the girl by Hernandez, the police
defended them as normal routine.
Right or wrong, the police did seem to snuff the
polka-dot controversy expediently, critics all agree. The LAPD
thereafter reported that waiter Vince DiPierro admitted he had
embellished his story, that there was no polka-dotted young lady
standing by the tray table near Sirhan. But, one item remains fact on
record: After the police questioned six women who were known to wear
that design of dress that evening, one lady named Valerie Schulte
voluntarily came forward to say that she had been standing in the area
where DiPierro claimed to have seen her, although she did not know
Sirhan. Nevertheless, she was there. Now, even though Schulte’s nose
is not "pug," why did DiPierro recant his original testimony
of seeing polka dots when, indeed, it turned out that he probably did
see them? Unless, wonder the critics, he, like Serrano, was
"questioned" in a similar fashion.
Sergeant Paul Sharaga

(LAPD)
Sergeant Sharaga’s story, in the meantime, likewise
withered."(Sharaga) believes that due to the noise and confusion at
the time what was said and what was misinterpreted was ‘they shot
him’," reads an LAPD memo. But, when author Moldea interviewed
Sharaga in research for his book, the former sergeant said that the
department had simply gone ahead and recanted his testimony for him.
Personally, he sticks to his statement to this day: He had seen the girl
in the polka-dot dress.
One very concrete lead that was never pursued, but,
according to scholars, definitely should have been, was the fact that
Senator Kennedy had made many enemies among the top-ranking Underworld.
One possible suspect with a motive was Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa, whom
Kennedy had sent to prison. As Attorney General of the United States and
head of the gangster-getting McClellan Committee, Kennedy headed a
"Get Hoffa" investigation that resulted in a the latter’s
imprisonment.
When Kennedy was still alive, the FBI questioned the
union biggie for alleged comments he had made to a fellow inmate on May
30, 1967. According to the informant, Hoffa told him, "I have a
contract out on Kennedy. And if he ever gets in the primary or gets
elected, the contract will be fulfilled within six months." Of
course, when agents asked about this, Hoffa denied ever having said
that.
Another mobster who had a bone to pick with Robert
Kennedy – in fact, with the Kennedy family itself – was Chicago
Underworld kingpin Sam "Momo" Giancana. According to the book,
Double Cross, by Giancana’s brother and grandson, Momo had
performed a number of services for the political clam. Among these was
getting patriarch Joe Kennedy out of a mob "hit," rescuing son
John from a marital scandal and swinging union votes for his election to
Presidency in 1960. But, say the authors Giancana, after John became
Chief Executive, he assigned younger brother Robert to lead a committee
to imprison known mafioso, Momo in particular. In return,
according to the book, Giancana architected both brothers’
assassinations.
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The Problems With The Official Story
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