The schoolteacher from Jackson

When I first pondered the mystery of the polka dot girl, I assumed that somewhere in the United States today there would still be living, unsuspected by anyone, a 60-year old woman with fond memories of the role she played in changing the course of history back in the tempestuous year of 1968. I imagined, in my reverie, that pride of place in her wardrobe was occupied by a flowing white dress with black polka dots. And, after all these years, a triumphant voice would still be reverberating inside her head, 'We killed him! We killed him!' Yet a chance discovery led me to draw the conclusion that the polka dot girl has been dead for a very long time - indeed, if my suspicions are correct, she died only a few weeks after Kennedy himself. The aim of this website is to reveal her identity, and to solicit further information that may corroborate my findings.

Recently, after reading Klaber's and Melanson's Shadow Play (1997) for the third time, I took down a volume from my bookshelf entitled Political Assassination and Political Violence. Published in 1970, this was a work that was obviously intended to explain, if not also reconcile, Americans to the disturbing role assassination and violence seemed increasingly to be playing in American history. Browsing for something related to the RFK assassination, I chanced upon a page in which it was stated that, in January 1966, the Minutemen Bulletin advised killers to use a .22 semi-automatic pistol. 'It's true that the .22 lacks the "shock" effect of a more powerful cartridge,' the Bulletin explained, 'but this is largely compensated for by the ease of putting a well-placed shot into heart or brain. When needed for a second well-aimed shot can be fired quicker from a .22 than from a more powerful weapon.' (NOTE 1)

As the author of the chapter did not fail to note, .22 pistols were used in the RFK assassination. Not only was Sirhan's gun a .22, so was Thane Eugene Cesare's. This passage from the Bulletin was a clue to the origins of the RFK conspiracy among the extreme right wing, the milieu of the aforementioned Keith Duane Gilbert. Surprised to find something that possibly shed light on the RFK conspiracy, I read on in the hope of finding further insights. Then, on pages 355-56, mention is briefly made of a young woman - a member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan - who, on June 30, 1968, died in a police shootout in Meridian, Mississippi. Early on the morning of June 30, the female Kluxer was helping Thomas Albert Tarrants III dynamite the house of Meyer Davidson, a local Jewish businessman. According to the brief account given in this book, the woman died when police officers surprised the pair in the act. Ainsworth was killed and Tarrants was seriously wounded. Afterwards, a search of her home afterwards yielded literature from many major rightwing groups, including the Minutemen and the National States Rights Party. The woman's name was Kathy (sometimes spelt 'Kathie') Ainsworth, and she was a fifth-grade schoolteacher from Jackson. In June 1968, she was aged 26, which is roughly the middle of the age range specified by eyewitnesses for the polka dot girl (estimates varied, as I showed in Table 1, from 20 to 30.)

Immediately, something made me wonder whether 26-year old Kathy Madlyn Ainsworth could have been the polka dot girl. What intrigued me about the Meridian episode was that it occurred only a few weeks after Robert Kennedy was killed. The possibility struck me that, with so much unwelcome publicity being given to the polka dot girl, plot leaders may have decided that the wisest course was to get rid of her. By the end of June 1968, therefore, the polka dot girl may have been removed from the scene, bringing an abrupt end to the danger of her being identified - perhaps with the assistance of Sirhan himself - and the true nature of the assassination plot exposed.

The possibility that Ainsworth had been the polka dot girl was based on a suggestive coincidence of five facts: Ainsworth 1) was the right age; 2) was described as attractive; 3) possessed far right wing views; 4) had been a willing participant in acts of political violence; and 5) was murdered only a few weeks after the RFK assassination, when the matter of the polka dot girl riveted the attention of the nation. In other words, Ainsworth not only fulfilled the basic requirements of the polka dot girl, she was also killed at a time when her removal from the scene was clearly advantageous to those struggling to keep the lid on the existence of a conspiracy. But to corroborate my identification of the polka dot girl and substantiate my theory as to the timeliness of her elimination, I had to resolve two matters. First, I had to find a photograph of Ainsworth and establish whether she bore a convincing resemblance to the description of the polka dot girl. If Ainsworth did not resemble her at all, the likelihood - short of an impressive makeover - is that she was not Sirhan's handler. Second, I needed to establish whether Ainsworth could have been set up, that is to say, whether her and Tarrants' plan to dynamite the Davidson home could have been a pretext to bring about her elimination. After reading the bried account in Political Assassination and Political Violence, I had to find a fuller account that would have confirmed my gut instinct that she had died in a set up operation.

To my considerable surprise, it proved extremely easy to find out more about Kathy Ainsworth and the circumstances that led to her death. First of all, Ainsworth is, as it happens, is a hero of the American extreme right. Several racial pride websites contain eulogies of her; it would not be going too far to say that today she has the status of a martyr in nativist circles. (NOTE 1) What did she do to merit her enduring reputation among racial extremists? Quite simply, Ainsworth, who joined the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as soon as she graduated from college, was both an elementary school teacher and a KKK terrorist. She was so committed to the cause of segregation that she left Florida, where she was raised, and moved to Mississippi because it was the most segregated state in the country. There, in 1966, she met Tom Tarrants, an angry young racist from Mobile, Alabama, and together they joined White Knights leader Sam Bowers in his quest to hold back the forces of racial progress in Mississippi. On a number of occasions, Ainsworth apparently joined Tarrants in the long series of terrorist acts he committed against Jews and persons affiliated with the civil rights movement, black or white in 1967-68. Their first action together was one of their most daring. On September 18, 1967, they bombed the newly-built Beth Israel synagogue in Jackson - totally destroying it in the process. Finally, as we have already learned, on June 30, 1968, Ainsworth died while on a mission with Tarrants to dynamite the house of a leading Meridian Jew, Meyer Davidson.

Although there is no evidence that Ainsworth actually killed anybody, it is obvious that a woman of such extreme rightwing views - one, moreover, with a track record of extreme violence - would have had no qualms about involving herself in a plot to assassinate Robert Kennedy. For Bobby was, like his brother killed in 1963, fiercely loathed by extreme rightwingers of the sort that furnished the momentum of the Wallace campaign in 1968. After Martin Luther King was gunned down in April 1968, he would have been the top figure on any American rightwinger's hate list.

Yet for my theory to be correct, Ainsworth would have to have died in a set up. She and Tarrants would have to have been encouraged to make this bombing attempt in Meridian precisely to create the opportunity for the elimination of the girl who, unknown to the general public, had been instrumental in setting Sirhan up as the patsy in the RFK assassination. Fortunately, the facts about Ainsworth's death in Meridian are among the subjects covered in Jack Nelson's important book Terror in the Night (1993). In this detailed narrative of the events that led to her death, I found the answer to that burning question.

BELOW: .

This website shows that the girl known to history as the 'girl in the polka dot dress' was Kathy Ainsworth, a 26-year old Mississippi schoolteacher. In the next webpage, I show that she passes the 'looks test' with flying colours. In the succeeding webpage, "Murdered in Meridian," I show that she died in an FBI death trap whose underlying motivation is revealed in this website for the first time.

NOTES

(1) Cited in James F. Kirkham, Sheldon Levy and William J. Crotty (eds.), Assassination and Political Violence, New York, Praeger, 1970, p. 354.

For information about the RFK assassination: