While driving home last night around 1 am, I had NBC’s coverage of the RFK assassination (6.5.68) on the headphones. Excerpts, I mean. It lasts 102 minutes.
At exactly the 45-minute mark, RFK’s crowded-together supporters, having just celebrated the New York Senator decisively winning the California Democratic primary inside L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel, start to realize that something terrible has apparently happened in an area behind the ballroom stage.
Shock, alarm and panic begins to ripple through the crowd…an eerie cacophonus shrieking starts to fill the room, getting louder and louder.
This ghastly symphony reminded me of an observation shared 25 years ago by former NBC correspondent Robert MacNeil during a Television Academy Foundation interview. The 18-minute segment is all about how MacNeil reported the tragic events of 11.22.63 in Dallas.
Seconds after the Dealey Plaza shooting, MacNeil jumped off the press bus, he says. At the 8:55 mark he recalls the following: “The air was filled with the most incredible screams I’ve ever heard…it was as though there were a bunch of choirs, all deliberately shrieking out of tune, cacophonously…an hysterical, unbelievable sound echoing off all these [Dealey Plaza] buildings.”