The story of Sandra Serrano, a twenty-year old Kennedy campaign worker, illustrates the LAPD approach to the question of conspiracy or accomplices to Sirhan. About thirty minutes before the shooting, Serrano went outside and sat on the steps leading up to the hotel. She said that three people, two men and one woman (wearing a polka-dot dress), went up the steps and into the hotel. She would later identify one of the men as Sirhan.
Some time later, one of the men and the woman returned. Running down the stair past Serrano, they said, “We shot him.” When Serrano asked whom they had shot, the couple replied, “Kennedy” and ran away. An elderly couple corroborated Serrano’s story to a police officer, Sergeant Paul Schraga, who, in turn, put out an all-points-bulletin (APB) with the description given to him about the man and the woman in the polka-dot dress.
With no apparent notice or reason, Schraga’s supervisors told him to cancel the APB. When he refused to do so, they canceled it for him. This action shut off the possibility of answers to a myriad of questions, such as “If the two people were harmless, why were they running away from a crime scene?” and “Who were the two people?”
