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

by James L. Swanson

  The next day, on the afternoon of Saturday, April 6, King’s body was driven from the Hanley’s Bell Street Funeral Home, where it had lain in repose overnight, to Sisters Chapel at Spelman College, one of the prominent, historically black colleges in the South. Because the morticians had repaired and concealed the major damage to his face, Coretta agreed to allow a public viewing.

  Over the next two days, sixty thousand people came to say their good-byes. Long lines formed on the campus, at one point extending over a mile. News photographers captured the grief as mourners filed past their dead hero. One heartbreaking image depicted Coretta and the children gazing upon the slain husband and father.

  Dr. King had warned in his last speech that he might not get to the Promised Land, and now his prophecy had come true. On Sunday, April 7, in churches all across America, ministers led their congregations in prayers, seeking comfort for a grieving nation. That day was even proclaimed a national day of mourning by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

  Even though he was gone, Dr. King’s dreams were not. On April 8, Coretta Scott King flew back to Memphis to carry on her husband’s legacy. Before his death, Martin Luther King, Jr., had pledged to lead a march of the striking sanitation workers and their supporters. Now, in his absence, she and others, such as Ralph Abernathy, entertainer Harry Belafonte, and her three eldest children, led the procession of twenty thousand people. After this stirring tribute, Coretta and the group flew back to Atlanta that same day.

  On the evening of April 8, King’s body was moved from Spelman College to Ebenezer Baptist Church in preparation for the funeral the next day and the final farewell to the great leader. Massive crowds lined the streets and surrounded the church. From all over the nation, civil rights leaders, movie stars, and political leaders had converged on Atlanta to attend the funeral on April 9. There was not enough room for all of them in the church, which could seat only 750 people. Still, 1,000 people managed to somehow squeeze inside.

  Another widow made a surprise appearance. It had been just five years since President John F. Kennedy was gunned down during a campaign trip to Dallas, Texas, but Jacqueline Kennedy flew to Atlanta to pay her respects. The sighting of the former First Lady—by then a beloved American icon—sent waves of excitement through the crowd and lent a somber dignity to the proceedings.

  But one dignitary did not come to Atlanta. It was President Johnson, who had proclaimed a national day of mourning only two days earlier. Why did LBJ skip his old friend’s funeral? Perhaps it was because their friendship and political partnership had ended more than a year earlier in January 1967, when King spoke out against the Vietnam War. It might have been because LBJ believed King had betrayed him again in 1968, when he opposed Johnson’s nomination and reelection. Perhaps LBJ believed that his attendance—just one week after his stunning announcement that he would not run for another term as president—would cause a media sensation that would detract from the solemnity of the day.

  Some critics speculated that LBJ was afraid to come, worrying that someone might attempt to assassinate him. That was not true. Five years earlier LBJ had insisted on walking in President Kennedy’s funeral procession, even though the Secret Service argued it was too dangerous. Now LBJ wrestled with this decision. And, at the last minute, he decided not to attend King’s funeral. He watched it on television instead, as did an estimated 120 million people, more than half the population of the United States.

  One of those watching was James Earl Ray, holed up in a hotel room in Toronto, Canada. He witnessed the inconsolable sorrow that had caused millions of people to weep, but he did not shed a tear.

  The night before his assassination, Martin Luther King, Jr., had called Ralph Abernathy “the best friend I have in the world.” Now, in that role, Ralph stepped forward to officiate at his friend’s funeral on April 9.

  In an eerie touch, King also spoke at his own funeral. Two months earlier, on February 4, 1968, he had given a sermon in which he spoke about his mortality. After so many threats on his life, perhaps it was not odd that King contemplated death and how he wanted to be remembered. His words had been tape-recorded, and Coretta asked that excerpts be played.

  Now King’s own voice echoed once more through the church where he had in life given so many sermons: “And every now and then I think about my own death, and I think about my own funeral … And every now and then I ask myself, ‘What I would want said?’ ”

  What, indeed? Did he want to be remembered as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize or any of his other hundreds of awards? Did he want to be remembered as a bestselling author, or the leader of a cultural movement that changed American history? No, he’d said.

  What would this remarkable man want people to think of him?

  As King stated in his own words, he wanted to be remembered in a simpler way: “I don’t want a long funeral … tell them not to talk too long.” His disciples ignored that request—the day’s memorial events would go on for several hours and last even longer than the funeral ceremonies for President Kennedy.

  Martin Luther King said he wanted to be remembered for helping others.

  “Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness.” That was all. “And all the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.”

  After the ceremonies at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s body was taken to Morehouse College, another black -college, for a memorial service that could accommodate a larger audience. But he was not driven there in a hearse. Instead, his coffin was drawn through the streets of Atlanta on a farm wagon pulled by two mules, to symbolize the simplicity of the man he was. Thousands of people marched in the procession. “Martin had spent so much of his life marching for justice and freedom, and marching for human dignity,” Coretta said in tribute. “This was his last great march.”

  After the ceremony at Morehouse, his body was finally laid to rest with an entombment service at South-View Cemetery. Here his friend Ralph Abernathy spoke again: “The grave is too narrow for his soul, but we commit his body to the ground. No coffin, no crypt, no vault, no stone can hold his greatness, but we commit his body to the ground.” The tombstone was marked with a line from the speech King had delivered at the Lincoln Memorial during the August 1963 March on Washington:

  REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

  1929–1968

  “FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST,

  THANK GOD ALMIGHTY

  I’M FREE AT LAST.”

  But then something strange happened. After the graveside ceremony was over and King’s family and associates had departed, bereaved mourners did something bizarre. They wanted to possess a tangible link to their hero, and a few days later, a headline in JET magazine revealed what they had done: “Souvenir Seekers Strip Dr. King’s Grave.” The story reported the details: “A plainclothesman stood guard over the white marble tomb of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., urging visitors not to [disturb] the heaps of flowers wilting on the grave. Many of the wreaths were stripped by souvenir seekers shortly after Dr. King was interred … but police put a stop to the practice once they took up the watch. South-View Cemetery … was sealed off by four officers from midnight to dawn to prevent any tampering with the crypt.”

  Other souvenirs appeared soon. Pin-back buttons with King’s portrait materialized overnight after the assassination and were worn on jacket lapels. Cardboard hand fans bearing King’s color portrait and stapled to carrying sticks of cardboard also became popular. For years to come, black-owned businesses across the country printed their logos on the backs of fans and continued to hand them out as keepsakes.

  Many people simply cut photos of King from magazines and newspapers and taped them to doors and windows. Memorial signs—some hand-lettered and others professionally pr
inted—appeared in storefronts and the windows of homes. In Chicago, where King had once likened the sting of racism there to anything as vicious as he had ever seen in the South, one company printed attractive memorial portrait banners on black felt. They had done the same thing in 1963 after the Kennedy assassination. Five years later, the company still had boxes of leftover, unsold stock. The reverse side was blank, so they flipped the banners over and printed a tribute to King on the other side.

  Many mourners, for the rest of their lives, never took down these photos and banners.

  The funeral for Martin Luther King, Jr., was over. But the manhunt for his killer was not. Many questions remained. Who had killed Dr. King? Where was the murderer? And where might he go next?

  On Tuesday, April 16, James Earl Ray went to the Kennedy Travel Bureau in Toronto to inquire about buying a ticket to London. When he said he did not have a passport yet, the woman who helped him said she would get it for him. Ray had been under the false impression that he needed a Canadian birth certificate and a witness who had known him for two years to verify his Canadian citizenship.

  The woman in the travel bureau informed him that all he had to do was make a sworn statement that he had been born in Canada and sign a notarized document to that effect. Then the travel agency would send in his paperwork and photos and obtain the passport for him. In about two weeks, the passport would be mailed back to the agency. Ray could pick it up there by the beginning of May, along with his ticket to London. It was as easy as that.

  But, until he could fly away, Ray had to lie low and avoid the attention of the police. However, in a quirk of fate, he made a trivial mistake that could have ended the manhunt on the spot. A policeman stopped him in the street for jaywalking. He questioned Ray, and then issued him a three-dollar ticket for violating the law.

  Ray was lucky that the officer did not ask for identification. He was still carrying ID for Eric S. Galt, one of the names the FBI had released that very day as a suspect in the assassination of Dr. King.

  The FBI investigation had made great progress. Clues in California led them to the National Dance Studio in Long Beach and the bartending school in Los Angeles. At the school, agents obtained a copy of Ray’s graduation photo, the one in which he had closed his eyes just before the picture was taken. Locating the photo was a small victory, although Ray’s clever trick did make it harder to recognize him. To make identification of the suspect easier, an artist painted eyes into the picture. Although the FBI lab had still not matched the fingerprints it had collected to any known records in its database, Hoover and DeLoach decided to go public, announcing a warrant for the arrest of Eric Starvo Galt.

  So, on April 17, thirteen days after the assassination, the FBI published its first wanted poster for the assassin of Martin Luther King. The posters were mailed to and displayed nationwide in post offices, which were community meeting points that people often visited in their daily lives. This placement ensured that millions would see them.

  The poster included two versions of the photo of Ray from his bartending school graduation, one with his eyes closed as well as one in which the FBI had painted his eyes open. Flyer 442 stated that Eric Starvo Galt was wanted by the FBI. It read:

  “CAUTION: GALT IS SOUGHT IN CONNECTION WITH A MURDER WHEREIN THE VICTIM WAS SHOT. CONSIDER ARMED AND EXTREMELY DANGEROUS.”

  Strangely, the poster never stated that Galt was wanted specifically for the assassination of Dr. King. That was because murder was not a federal crime and therefore was not within the jurisdiction of the FBI. However, by linking Galt to a violation of civil rights, the FBI could properly investigate.

  Then the FBI struck gold. Its fingerprint lab finally identified the prints collected in Memphis—they belonged to James Earl Ray, prison escapee.

  This had not been an easy process. In an age before digital images and computer searches, agents had to visually compare thousands of fingerprints by hand. On April 19, the FBI released a second wanted poster, the first to name James Earl Ray as the assassin:

  “Wanted flyer 442-A. For Civil Rights - Conspiracy - Interstate Flight - Robbery. Remarks: ‘Noticeably protruding left ear; reportedly is a lone wolf; allegedly attended dance instruction school; has reportedly completed a course in bartending.’” The poster printed three photos, two of them mug shots taken of Ray in 1960, and the other, the bartending school photograph with the eyes painted in.

  The next day, on April 20, the FBI published a third wanted poster that also named Ray, included three photos, and, for the first time, a full set of Ray’s fingerprints.

  The positive identification of James Earl Ray as King’s killer just fifteen days after the crime was one of the FBI’s finest triumphs. Now they knew the subject of their manhunt.

  But where was he?

  Four American presidents have been assassinated: Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy. Garfield’s and McKinley’s killers had been captured immediately at the scenes of their crimes. And Lee Harvey Oswald had been captured within two hours of killing Kennedy. Even Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth, had been hunted down and killed after a twelve-day manhunt. King’s murder was as high profile as the assassination of any American president. So why hadn’t Ray been captured? People expected quick action and decisive results.

  The next night, April 21, James Earl Ray was sitting in a bar in Toronto, Canada, watching the popular American TV show The F.B.I., starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., as Inspector Lewis Erskine. After each weekly episode, Zimbalist would appear on-screen to discuss one of the FBI’s current cases. That night, he requested the public’s help in apprehending the fugitive James Earl Ray for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Ray had always been a fan of the TV show. He had gone to four bars, looking for one that was tuned to the program, in the hopes that he would see his own face on the screen. He wanted to know if he had made it onto the Ten Most Wanted list.

  He had.

  The FBI knew it was him. Ray realized that he had to get out of Canada. Having hidden in Toronto for almost a full month, Ray decided to catch a flight to London on May 6.

  But London was not his first choice. He had wanted to fly to Africa, to a country that did not have an extradition treaty with the United States. However, the price of a round-trip ticket was about $820. At the time, you could not fly into such countries without a return ticket, and Ray didn’t have enough money. Ray had only about $800.

  There was only one way that Ray could get a lot of money fast—he could commit a robbery. But he was afraid of getting caught. “That’s where I made my mistake,” Ray said. “I should have pulled a holdup. But I didn’t. And I let myself get on that plane to London without enough money to get where I intended to go.”

  So Ray arrived in Great Britain early on May 7, but he didn’t even leave Heathrow Airport.

  “Upon my arrival in England I … used my return ticket to Canada to go to Portugal that night,” Ray said. “I didn’t want to spend any more time in London than I had to.”

  Ray arrived in Lisbon, Portugal, early on May 8. His plan was to find a ship sailing from Portugal to Angola, a former Portuguese colony, where he planned to become a mercenary—a soldier for hire—for whatever cause would pay him.

  But there was a problem. It would take seven days to get a visa to travel to Angola. By that time, the ship would be gone. Ray was so short of money that he decided to head back to London, where he might find other options.

  On May 17, Ray flew from Lisbon back to London. What to do now?

  He was not there as a tourist; he was not there to see the sights of the historic city. Instead, he holed up and hunkered down. He rented a small, inexpensive room on the outskirts of the city center, but he rarely went out during the day, afraid to leave because he worried that he might be identified. At night, he went out to buy food and newspapers, so he could read what the press was saying about the assassination. But he was running low on money, payin
g each day for room and food without any income.

  On May 27, desperate and with his landlady demanding rent money that he didn’t have, Ray tried to rob a jewelry store owned by a married couple. But they turned the tables on Ray and attacked him—the wife jumped on his back and the husband pummeled him in the face! They set off the store alarm, and Ray ran away.

  In the meantime, the FBI had learned that Ray had visited Canada after his 1967 escape from prison. The Bureau asked Canadian officials to examine all passport applications from the past year to see if Ray had applied for one. It was a daunting task; a dozen officers had to examine more than 200,000 applications by hand.

  On June 1, one passport application caught a constable’s eye. The applicant’s photograph resembled images of James Earl Ray provided by the FBI.

  Was it really him? Had they found King’s killer?

  The search for King’s killer was up until then the largest and most expensive manhunt in FBI history. Three thousand agents—almost half the strength of the FBI—had been deployed on the case. They had learned much. They had confirmed that James Earl Ray—despite his many aliases—was, in fact, Martin Luther King’s killer. They had investigated his prior arrests and imprisonments, and had worked to discover his movements since he had escaped from prison in April 1967. They had reconstructed Ray’s life by interviewing his family, friends, and people who had once known or met him. Wherever the FBI had found potential clues, they had pursued them diligently. In fact, wherever James Earl Ray had been, the FBI had followed.

  But by June, the American people had grown impatient with the FBI’s lack of progress. Weeks had passed without any fresh leads. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been murdered almost two months ago. Why was James Earl Ray still on the run? Where was he? Why hadn’t the FBI tracked him down yet?