Paul Schrade soaked up the excitement as the crowd roared and Robert Kennedy smiled and leaned into the microphone: “So my thanks to all of you, and on to Chicago we go.”
Kennedy had just won the 1968 Democratic presidential primary in California, and there was a palpable sense inside the old Ambassador Hotel that the young Massachusetts senator had seized enough momentum to carry his suddenly super-charged campaign through to the convention in Chicago.
And then everything went to hell.