Chasing King's Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassin

by James L. Swanson

  Across town at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King, like James Earl Ray, did not want to leave the comfort of his hotel room and venture out into the storm. King was tired. He did not feel well. And he was at a low point in his life. He was worn out from the struggle, and he questioned whether he was still a worthy or effective leader of the movement. Many black leaders argued that his opposition to the Vietnam War had distracted him from his main purpose and hurt the civil rights movement. Younger rivals, impatient with his tactics of nonviolence, advocated more radical methods. And many in his own inner circle doubted the wisdom of the Poor People’s Campaign that he wanted to lead in Washington that summer. They judged it too ambitious, too unfocused, and doomed to fail.

  King told Ralph Abernathy that the last thing he wanted to do tonight was leave the motel and make a public appearance: “Ralph, I want you to go and speak for me tonight.” Abernathy knew he was not as charismatic a personality or as electrifying a speaker as his longtime friend, and he did not want to stand in the spotlight for King. Abernathy suggested that they send Jesse Jackson, one of Martin’s energetic young aides from Chicago who craved public attention. King said no: “Nobody else can speak for me. I want you to go.”

  Abernathy agreed to do it. Arriving at the Mason Temple at 8:30 p.m., he was shocked to find three thousand people clamoring to see Dr. King. The crowd included the two undercover policemen from the firehouse. Before King arrived, the policemen were warned that they had been spotted and that, for their own safety, they should leave the temple. Ralph called the Lorraine Motel and implored King to change his mind: “Martin, all the television networks are lined up, waiting for you. This speech will be broadcast nationwide. You need to deliver it. Besides, the people who are here want you, not me.”

  “Okay,” he said, “I’ll come.”

  King arrived at the Mason Temple at 9:00 p.m. The storm, the anticipation of the crowd, and King’s late arrival all combined to create a dramatic atmosphere. As Ralph Abernathy had done on countless prior occasions, he rose to introduce his friend and recounted their friendship and highlights of their work. King then got up and told the crowd, “Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world.”

  King said the reason he had come was bigger than a labor dispute between the city and its garbage collectors. The strike symbolized the civil rights movement. “Something is happening in Memphis. Something is happening in our world…. The nation is sick, trouble is in the land.” This, King said, was a struggle for freedom. “The masses of people are rising up … the cry is always the same: We want to be free!”

  King remembered how lucky he was to be here tonight, and how lucky he was to be alive at all. His mind went back ten years.

  “You know, several years ago, I was in New York autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there … a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was ‘Are you Martin Luther King?’ And I was looking down writing, and I said, ‘Yes!’ The next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed … I was rushed to Harlem Hospital … and that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood—that’s the end of you. It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had merely sneezed, I would have died.”

  While recovering from his injuries, King had received letters at the hospital from the president of the United States, the vice president, and other important leaders. But now he recalled another letter, one that

  “came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School … and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, ‘Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School. She said while it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.’”

  A decade later her words still touched him.

  Once again, King thought back to that terrible night on September 20, 1958, when he had been so close to dying.

  “And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I, too, am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters.” If he had sneezed, he continued, he wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when blacks in Albany, Georgia, decided to “straighten their backs up”; he wouldn’t have been alive in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, “aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill”; he would not have spoken in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial to tell Americans about his dream; he would not have been in Selma, Alabama, to lead the movement there. And if he had sneezed, he would not be in Memphis tonight.

  Then he looked to the future. “Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop.”

  King confided that he relished life: “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land.”

  King was invoking the Old Testament saga of Moses, who led his people through the wilderness on a difficult and historic journey from slavery to freedom. From a mountaintop, Moses had sighted a new home for his followers. But at the end of this journey, God chose not to allow Moses to enter the Promised Land himself, only to let him see it from a distance.

  So King cautioned his audience, “I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

  King brought the speech to a rousing conclusion in which he seemed to unburden himself from earthly cares:

  “So I’m happy tonight.

  “I’m not worried about anything.

  “I’m not fearing any man.”

  But Martin Luther King should have feared one man.

  He had no idea the shadow of death that had stalked him for ten years was again drawing near. Soon, King would be in more danger than he had been since the day Izola Curry almost killed him. James Earl Ray lurked with his rifle just a few miles away, sitting out the ferocious storm, taking shelter in a room at the New Rebel Motel. Ray might have been watching King right then, sprawled on his bed while viewing the speech live on a black-and-white television set. If he was, King’s words fell on deaf ears. King’s celebration of life did not deter Ray’s mission of death. It did not soften Ray’s heart or dissuade him from doing what he had come to Memphis to do.

  Tomorrow, Ray decided, he would begin hunting Martin Luther King.

  More than Abraham Lincoln, more than John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., had spent years under the continuous threat of violence. But he persevered and exhibited great personal courage as he went about his work. King was one of the bravest, most fearless figures in American history.

  Menace and danger had become constant companions. It was as though, in the last dying gasp of the racist Old South, a century’s worth of hatred and vitriol was now aimed at him. If even President Kennedy could not be protected from an assassin, how, King wondered, could he be spared that fate? The only surprise was that no one had succeeded in killing him already.

  At the Mason Temple, Martin Luther King, Jr., had spoken for an hour and a half. To conclude the speech, King uttered a prophetic exclamation: “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Lord!” Drained, he appeared to stagger away from the microphone, almost collapsing into the arms of Ralph Abernathy. On a night when he was ill, tired, did not want to speak at all, and had no prewritten remarks or notes, he had risen to the occasion. It was as though he poured all he ever was, all he had eve
r seen and done, into this one speech. Ralph Abernathy, who had seen King give hundreds of speeches, knew it better than anyone: “He was at the height of his powers. I never saw him better.” It was the most wondrous, luminous speech he ever gave, surpassing even the August 1963 speech at the Lincoln Memorial.

  And it was to be his last.

  On the morning of April 4, James Earl Ray put on a suit and tie. Dressed like a respectable businessman, he went out for breakfast. He bought a copy of the Memphis Commercial Appeal newspaper, which included coverage of Martin Luther King’s speech from the previous night. The paper reported that King would remain in town for several more days because he planned to lead another march in Memphis on April 8. The newspaper also published photographs of King taken at the Lorraine Motel. One picture showed the entrance to his room—with the number 306 plainly visible on the door. Now, from either the morning newspaper or from TV coverage the previous night, Ray knew not only where King was staying in Memphis, but the exact room.

  Martin Luther King awoke early on the morning of April 4. He had an 8:00 a.m. meeting with his aides and advisors before the court hearing that would decide whether he would be allowed to lead his next march. King spent part of the afternoon in meetings, including a failed negotiation with the so-called Invaders, the group of local young militants who had disrupted, with vandalism and violence, King’s most recent attempt to lead a march through Memphis. That disaster was the reason King was back in Memphis now. The conversation went nowhere, and King found them disrespectful and threatening. He threw the Invaders out of his room.

  That afternoon, Ray decided to drive over to King’s motel. The big, colorful sign outside the Lorraine made the place impossible to miss. He wanted to scout the neighborhood for possible vantage points from which he could place King under surveillance, and then take a shot at him from a safe distance. After a while he found himself on South Main Street, a block away from the Lorraine. He spotted a rooming house at 422-1/2 South Main. It did not even have a name, just a sign above the entrance that advertised rooms for rent. The Lorraine Motel looked to be less than one hundred yards behind this rooming house, and its windows might offer a good view of King’s room.

  Ray parked his Mustang in front of the rooming house and went inside. He asked the manager if she had any vacancies. He would be staying a week, Ray told her, and she led him to room 8, which included a kitchen. But he did not care about amenities. Only the view. And this room was on the wrong side of the building. Facing west, it looked out onto Main Street and offered no view of the Lorraine. Ray rejected the room, giving the excuse that he wasn’t going to be doing any cooking.

  The manager took him to 5B, on the second floor of the east side of the building. It was a cramped little room, lit only by a bare lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. It didn’t even have a bathroom, meaning he would have to use the filthy shared one down the hall.

  But this room had what he wanted. A window that faced the Lorraine Motel. “This’ll do just fine,” Ray said. He signed his name as John Willard and paid her $8.50 for a week’s rent.

  After Ray checked into the no-name rooming house and stood alone in his sad little room, he took in his surroundings. He approached the window. He could see it all now—the big, open, paved parking lot, the long balcony and railings that ran along the length of the building, the numbered room doors. Then he saw it. The door to room 306.

  It didn’t take Ray long to see that something was wrong. The angle was bad. In order to shoot Dr. King, Ray would have to lean out the window, point his rifle at a sharp angle, and expose himself to possible witnesses. Ray was dismayed to discover that the room he had selected was not the perfect sniper’s nest after all. It would not be easy to assassinate King from here.

  He could ask for a different room, one with a better view of King’s. But that might make the manager suspicious. Ray’s trademark behavior throughout his criminal life was never to call too much attention to himself. Still, he wondered if the view from the shared bathroom at the east end of the hallway might be better.

  It was a short walk from room 5B to the bathroom. Ray stepped inside and closed the door. It had a lock. That was a good sign. No one could disturb him in there. Ray approached the window. It was partly open, and an aluminum-framed window screen kept out the flies.

  He punched out the screen, and it floated to the ground. He tried to raise the window to give himself more room to maneuver with the rifle. It was stuck. He pulled up hard, but it would not budge. Ray peered through the gap between the top of the sill and the bottom of the window frame.

  This small bathroom window had an unobstructed view of Martin Luther King’s front door and the balcony outside his room. King would be in range every time he left or returned to the Lorraine Motel. And that balcony was the only route to the room—King would have to walk that way. And even though Ray’s bathroom window would not open fully, there was sufficient room to poke a rifle with a telescopic sight through the gap.

  Ray eyed the stained white porcelain bathtub along the bathroom’s north wall. He got an idea. He stepped into the tub and peered through the window again. This spot offered a superior and even more direct line of sight to King’s room. So on the afternoon of April 4, James Earl Ray decided that a stained old tub in the shared bathroom of a shabby rooming house was the perfect hiding place from which to assassinate Martin Luther King, Jr.

  The plan was risky. Ray could not sit in the bathroom with his rifle for hours, day and night, waiting for Dr. King to show up. King’s schedule was unpredictable and Ray could only guess what hours he might keep. Other residents at Ray’s rooming house would eventually need to use the bathroom and would discover the armed man lurking there. No, Ray would have to watch the Lorraine Motel from the window of his own room. Then, when he spotted King and decided that it was the right moment to shoot him, he would have to leave his room, carry his rifle down the hall, enter the bathroom, lock himself inside, step into the tub, point the rifle out the window, and get King in his sights. There was no guarantee that King would stand still for the time it would take Ray to do all those things. And if someone was using the bathroom at the exact time Ray needed it, he would have to figure out a way to get that person out of there.

  It would have been much safer for Ray to shoot King from the privacy of his room. But shooting from the bathroom increased the odds of his success.

  The clock that had begun ticking a few weeks ago, the day James Earl Ray had left California, was winding down. It was counting off the final hours.

  James Earl Ray was almost ready.

  But first he had to go down to the street, unlock his car trunk, and, without being observed, bring the rifle up to his room. At the last minute, however, he decided to buy one final piece of equipment. Ray got into his car and drove to a sporting goods store. Anticipating a few days of surveillance, he wanted a pair of binoculars to keep close watch on King and his entourage until he chose the right moment to strike. Ray did not assume he could just move into the rooming house and, within a few hours, shoot King. That kind of quick success would require an incredible combination of chance and luck. No, like a policeman on a stakeout, Ray expected to be there for a while.

  Ray had moved into his room with a little, cheap suitcase and supplies for the duration. If he expected to kill King on April 4, he would have carried nothing up to his room except the rifle and ammunition. He would have left his other possessions in his car. From what Ray could learn from the newspapers and television, he expected King to be at the Lorraine for the next few days, until the morning of the march, on April 8. There would be time.

  After Ray returned from the sporting goods store at around 4:30 p.m., he parked his car on South Main Street, about sixty feet south of the entrance to his rooming house. He carried the binoculars up to his room and then went back outside, where he sat in his car for a while. He was probably waiting for pedestrian and road traffic to die down at the end of the workday. Several witnesses, inc
luding a woman who was waiting for a ride, noticed him. But there was nothing suspicious about a well-dressed man sitting alone in a car. Half an hour passed. By about 5:00 p.m., Ray popped open the trunk, retrieved the rifle, and, careful to conceal it in its cardboard box wrapped in a blanket, carried it up to his room.

  Then he got out his binoculars and began his surveillance.

  Ray was not the only one watching Dr. King. From the nearby firehouse, the two policemen who had followed him to the Mason Temple the night before had kept him under watch all day.

  A little after 5:00 p.m., Andrew Young arrived at room 201 at the Lorraine Motel with good news. A federal judge had lifted the injunction against the march and had agreed to let them have it in four days, on the morning of Monday, April 8. King and his aides became giddy. Everyone in the room—all of them grown men—began a spontaneous pillow fight! King and his colleagues laughed like children, swatting each other as they swung their pillows through the air. The fight ended. It was time to go to dinner. Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy walked up one flight of stairs to room 306 to get ready.

  Less than seventy yards away, across the parking lot and behind the retaining wall that separated the Lorraine Motel from the rear of the buildings on South Main Street, James Earl Ray was spying on them.

  A long and curious journey had brought Ray to this place. But would his plan work?

  Success was not inevitable. Ray did not possess the deadly skills of a professional killer. No, he was an amateur. Anyone could buy a rifle. But not everyone had the skill and temperament to use one to kill a man.