Does she pass the 'looks' test?

To a large degree, the identification of Ainsworth with the girl in the polka dot dress depends upon her appearance. As we saw, the book Political Assassination and Political Violence provided the useful information that Ainsworth was 'a popular and attractive fifth-grade teacher.' Reading through the nativist hagiographies, it became apparent that Ainsworth was regarded not only as pretty, but also as having a good figure. (One website refers to her 'shapely legs.') (NOTE 1)

The crucial task was locating a photograph of Ainsworth. The photo below, subtitled "Kathy Ainsworth entering her classroom," was rapidly located on the Internet. A second photo is published in Jack Nelson's Terror In The Night. These two photos are sufficient to answer the questions we would have about Ainsworth's appearance. First, as we had been led to expect, Kathy was pretty. Although she was certainly no Jane Fonda, there can be no doubt that she possessed the sort of looks that were highly regarded in the 1960s. Two questions remain to be answered. Did she have a 'strange,' 'pudgy' or 'turned up' nose? In my opinion, the answer is yes. However, the photo that appears in Terror In The Night shows an almost perfect nose. It is rather the photo of her entering her classroom, which I assume to be the later of the two photos, that shows a somewhat strange nose. My guess is that at some stage Ainsworth's face was damaged (perhaps in an incident arising from her terrorist activities) and the shape of her nose was altered as a result of subsequent nasal reconstruction. Second, did Ainsworth wear her hair in 'bouffant' style? The answer, as the classroom photo makes clear, is yes.

A final consideration is the matter of her hair colour and her height. According to eyewitnesses, the polka dot girl was between 5'3" and 5'8" tall and the colour most commonly cited for her hair was brunette. These matters cannot be resolved by means of black and white photos of her face, but fortunately, Jack Nelson provides the information on the very first page of his book that Ainsworth was 5'4" and a brunette. An overwhelming number of coincidences, together with the peculiar circumstances of her demise in an FBI ambush (see the next webpage, "Murder in Meridian," suggest that Mississippi schoolteacher and Klan activist Kathy Ainsworth was the girl in the polka dot dress.

Allow me, by way of concluding this webpage, to quote Jack Nelson's description of Ainsworth on the eve of the FBI ambush that ended with her death. Nelson, it should be appreciated, wrote his book in the early 1990s, and does not consider the possibility that Ainsworth was the polka dot girl. (Indeed, he only mentions the RFK assassination in passing.) His description, therefore, cannot be influenced by this author's theory, which was only developed this year (2004). Nelson writes of Ainsworth as follows:

She was twenty-six years old, five feet four and buxom, with a pretty oval face and brown eyes that matched her thick brunet hair. If any of her friends had seen her, especially any of the teachers she worked with at the Lorena Duling Elementary School or the parents of her fifth-grade pupils there, they might have been surprised at the way she was dressed. Tight-fitting, high-cut shorts and a low-cut jersey top were unusual attire for a quiet young schoolteacher going out for a dinner on a Saturday night. But then, as her friends were soon to learn, there had been a good deal about Kathryn Madlyn Ainsworth they did not know. (NOTE 2)

In short, Ainsworth was a perfect match for the polka dot girl: she was pretty, buxom, and the right age; she had the right height, the right hair colour, and the right (a 'funny') nose. She is even described by Nelson as possessing an 'oval' face (recall Karen Ross, the witness who said that she had a 'round' face). What's more, Ainsworth was a sex bomb, to use a good 60s phrase - precisely the sort of girl who we can believe would have used her looks to entice Sirhan Sirhan into the web of intrigue that ended in the death of Senator Robert F. Kennedy. All that's missing from Nelson's description, in fact, is a polka dot dress. We shall see on a succeeding webpage that she even had the 'right' boyfriend.

BELOW: Two photos of Kathy Ainsworth.

This website has shown that Kathy Ainsworth was a perfect match for the polka dot girl. In the next webpage, "Murder in Meridian," we show that Ainsworth's death came about as the result of an FBI death trap whose true function is revealed in this website for the very 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: