Hellhound on His Trail

by Hampton Sides

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  In order to trace the final days of Martin Luther King, and to follow in James Earl Ray's fugitive footsteps, I had to go on a round-the-world odyssey, one that required many road trips and many flights over many years--and one that now taxes my memory of all the good folks I need to thank.

  But let me try: In Puerto Vallarta, Lori Delgado was most generous in guiding me to Ray's haunts. In the early going, the prizewinning King scholar David Garrow proved extremely helpful during a visit to Cambridge University. Pedro and Isabel Branco were nice enough to show me Lisbon and introduce me to the melancholy joys of fado--Portugal's answer to the Delta blues. In Austin, Doug and Anne Brinkley nursed me back to health after a hard fluish stint at the LBJ Presidential Library. My researches in London were a success thanks in no small part to Ben and Sarah Fortna, to Robert McCrum, and to Sarah Lyall of the New York Times. In Toronto, I must thank Mike Fuhr and the CBC's John Nicol for their expert help. In North Carolina, a big thanks to Sir Newton Stevens for his hospitality during my research junket to the UNC archives. In Birmingham, Arthur Hanes Jr., one of Ray's first lawyers, graciously shared his view of the case over a sumptuous pile of Jim 'n Nick's BBQ. In Boston, I thank Jon Haber and Carolyn Goldstein for their hospitality, as well as Tony Decaneas at the Panopticon Gallery and the archivist Alex Rankin at BU's Gotlieb Center.

  I'm enormously grateful to the Hoover Institution's Edwards Media Fellows Program at Stanford University, which provided a generous research grant. Also at Stanford, a hearty thanks to Clayborne Carson and Clarence Jones at the King Papers Project. I also thank the MacDowell Colony for recharging my fizzled batteries in the mountains of New Hampshire, and the Bunburys in Ireland.

  Several researchers proved indispensable in helping me track down key sources and exhume old newspaper and magazine accounts. I must especially thank Scott Reid in Atlanta, Jean Hannah Edelstein in London, Ciara Neill in Memphis, and Shay Brown in Santa Fe.

  I logged a lot of quality time in my old hometown of Memphis, and my list of people to thank there is long and wide-ranging. First, my appreciation to Beverly Robertson and the staff of the National Civil Rights Museum, which organized a fascinating symposium in April 2008 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the MLK assassination. I thank also John Campbell with the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, the retired pathologist Jerry Francisco, and the attorneys Mike Cody and Charlie Newman at Burch, Porter & Johnson.

  Others who generously gave their time include Martha Huie, Louis Donelson, Charles Crump, John T. Fisher, and Marc Perrusquia. A special thanks to the whole crew at Memphis magazine, especially Ken Neill, Mary Helen Randall, and Michael Finger. Hope Brooks, at Cargill Cotton, helped me understand the world of "white gold," as did the fine folks at the Cotton Museum downtown.

  I doff my hat to Edwin Frank, curator of the amazing Mississippi Valley Collection at the University of Memphis, and to Wayne Dowdy, over at the Memphis Room. I sincerely appreciate the forbearing souls at Quetzal on Union, my well-caffeinated research bunker during all my Memphis stays. Thanks also to Robin and Ann Smithwick, Billy Withers, John Harris, Jim McCarter, and everyone at the Drake and Zeke show. My gratitude to John Ruskey--a.k.a. River Jesus--for showing me the real Mississippi during a fabulous spring canoe trip, and to Mary Turner, at Outside, for making it possible.

  Profound thanks (!) to my family in Memphis for all their love and support--Dot and Walker Wilkerson, Link Sides, Mona Smith, and Lynn and Jack Gayden. Thanks also to Mike Deaderick, my high-school history teacher: you inspired me more than you'll ever know.

  I inflicted early versions of my manuscript on a number of friends who generously lent their sharp eyes and sound judgment. Special thanks to Kevin Fedarko, Laura Hohnhold, Tom Carroll, Ken Neill, James Conaway, and Ken DeCell. Thanks also to Mark Bowden for his early encouragement, to Ron Bernstein at ICM in Los Angeles, and to Jay Stowe and Hal Espen for their candid insights. To ReBecca and everyone at the Tart's Treats, my home away from home: you saved my hide.

  I enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the folks at Insignia Films in New York as they put together their provocative documentary Roads to Memphis for the PBS series American Experience. I thank everyone on the Insignia crew, especially Steve Ives, Amanda Pollak, Lindsey Megrue, and Dan Amigone. Likewise, Susan Bellows and Mark Samels at Boston's WGBH were a delight to work with.

  In a category all by himself is the estimable Vince Hughes, whose first-class digital archive on the King assassination is perhaps the planet's greatest compendium on the subject. As both a colleague and a friend--and as a former police officer who was on duty that fateful April night--Vince has consistently been my ace in the hole. I can't thank him enough. Likewise, my friend Pallas Pidgeon, a fellow traveler in the mysteries of Memphis, helped me keep this project on track.

  I'm blessed to have the finest editor, Bill Thomas, and the finest agent, Sloan Harris, in the business. Fancy praise would do no justice: they're simply the best. At Doubleday, I thank Melissa Ann Danaczko, who has stayed unwaveringly on the case, as well as the wizardly Todd Doughty. Thanks also to Kristyn Keene at ICM, always a source of good cheer.

  And finally, a massive, blubbery thanks to Anne and the boys, who time and time again rescued me from the shadows of this book: I love you with all my heart and soul.

  A NOTE ON SOURCES

  The literature of the King murder, much like that of the Kennedy assassinations, is vast and dizzying, characterized by tendentious works that are often filled with bizarre assertions, anonymous sources, and grainy photographs purporting to prove that every organization this side of the Boy Scouts of America was involved in King's death. However, there are many excellent works on the King assassination, and three of them proved especially valuable in my research. The late William Bradford Huie, the first journalist to investigate Ray's claims, did an enormous amount of legwork and imaginative sleuthing; I relied not only on Huie's book He Slew the Dreamer (1970) but also on his personal papers archived at Ohio State--as well as documents provided by his widow, Martha Huie. The late George McMillan, author of The Making of an Assassin (1976), was the only journalist who spent serious time digging into Ray's early biography, family, and psychological profile. I made considerable use of McMillan's mountainous Ray archives housed at the University of North Carolina. Finally, when it comes to isolating and then ferociously dismantling conspiracy theories arising from the case, no one has come close to the formidable Gerald Posner and his first-rate Killing the Dream (1998).

  My rendering of the ever-potent (and ever-bizarre) figure of J. Edgar Hoover was particularly enriched by three fine biographies: Curt Gentry's highly readable J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets; Richard Gid Powers's exhaustively researched Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover; and Burton Hersh's provocative dual biography, Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America. In helping me understand Hoover's intense antipathy toward King, I am greatly indebted to the Johnson administration's attorney general Ramsey Clark, who sat for an interview, as well as to David Garrow for his groundbreaking work The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From "Solo" to Memphis. Also of great utility was the revealing compendium Martin Luther King Jr.: The FBI File, painstakingly assembled by Michael Friedly and David Gallen.

  My account of the international manhunt for James Earl Ray is drawn from multiple sources--including personal interviews, memoirs, and official documents. Chief among these are the FBI's MURKIN files, including a wealth of largely unpublished FD-302 reports assembled by FBI agents in field offices across the nation. I also relied heavily on the thirteen-volume King assassination Appendix Reports compiled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Three books, by three official participants in various aspects of the manhunt, were extremely useful to my research: Cartha DeLoach's revealing memoir, Hoover's FBI; the Justice Department official Roger Wilkins's searching autobiography, A Man's Life; and Ramsey Cl
ark's Crime in America.

  Anyone interested in knowing more about the George Wallace movement has three excellent biographies to choose from--authoritative works on which I relied in my several passages concerning the 1968 Wallace campaign. Foremost among these is Dan Carter's absorbing work, The Politics of Rage. Also of great interest are Stephan Lesher's George Wallace: American Populist and Marshall Frady's engagingly well-written Wallace: The Classic Portrait of Alabama Governor George Wallace.

  In describing the tragic swirl of events in Memphis that led up to the King assassination, I found two books especially helpful. Joan Turner Beifuss's engrossing and highly readable At the River I Stand was the first work to make use of a treasure trove of oral histories taken by the Memphis Search for Meaning Committee. Michael Honey's definitive Going Down Jericho Road elucidates the sanitation strike and shows how events in Memphis fit into larger movements of U.S. labor history. The best work on the riots that consumed the nation after King's assassination is undoubtedly A Nation on Fire by Clay Risen.

  I drew from a wealth of memoirs written by the King family and the SCLC inner circle. Among the most helpful were works by King's widow (Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr.); by his father (Martin Luther King Sr., Daddy King); by his son (Dexter Scott King, Growing Up King); by his second-in-command (Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down); by his legal adviser (Clarence Jones, What Would Martin Say?); and by his most loyal lieutenant (Andrew Young, An Easy Burden). I must also convey my admiration for the two preeminent, broad-canvas works on King and the movement--David Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross and Taylor Branch's remarkable three-volume achievement, America in the King Years.

  My account of James Earl Ray's travels is drawn principally from his own words found in a rich and sometimes bewildering range of documents. These include Ray's "20,000 Words" (a handwritten account of his movements while on the lam); Ray's testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, including eight official interviews conducted while he was incarcerated at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary; lengthy interviews Ray gave to such media outlets as Playboy, CBS News, and the Nashville Tennessean; handwritten letters he sent to his brothers while serving at Brushy Mountain; and his own two books, Tennessee Waltz and Who Killed Martin Luther King? Ray's ever-changing accounts over the years, like his ever-changing aliases, make for a record that's sometimes maddening and sometimes mystifying but also, at times, quite revealing. As they say, a busted watch tells the truth twice a day.

  NOTES

  PROLOGUE:

  #416-J

  1 "bloodiest forty-seven acres in America": This and other details relating to Jeff City prison are adapted from Patrick J. Buchanan, "Jefferson City: The Pen That Just Grew," Nation, Nov. 6, 1964.

  2 "He was just a nothing here": McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 173, from his personal interview with Missouri corrections commissioner Fred Wilkinson.

  3 "an interesting and rather complicated individual": Dr. Henry V. Guhleman (prison psychiatrist) to the Missouri Board of Promotion and Parole, Dec. 20, 1966, Hughes Collection.

  4 Librium for his nerves: Ibid.

  5 "in need of psychiatric help": Ibid.

  6 applying a walnut dye: See the FBI's MURKIN Files, 4441, sec. 56, pp. 4-6.

  7 considerable quantities of mineral oil: McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 181.

  8 "When he was using": George McMillan, interview with the inmate Raymond Curtis, box 1, interview notes, McMillan Papers.

  9 visitor was his brother: Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 40. See also Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, p. 72, in which John Ray acknowledges he visited his brother at Jeff City the day before the escape and agreed to assist in his brother's flight (facts that he had denied for years, including while under oath before the House Select Committee on Assassinations).

  10 rather astonishing quantity of eggs: This and other descriptions of the escape come from James Earl Ray's own account in Tennessee Waltz, p. 42.

  11 two wads of cash: Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, p. 57.

  12 he could strut while sitting: James J. Kilpatrick, "What Makes Wallace Run?" National Review, April 18, 1967.

  13 "backlash against anybody of color": Wallace on Meet the Press, April 23, 1967, quoted in Lesher, George Wallace, p. 389.

  14 "This is a movement of the people": Ibid., p. 390.

  15 "If the politicians get in the way": Ibid.

  16 gave it all to the chickens: FBI, MURKIN Files, 3503, sec. 39, p. 9.

  17 "I looked at the stars a lot": This quotation and other first-person depictions of Ray's flight from prison are drawn from James Earl Ray's "20,000 Words," House Select Committee on Assassinations, Appendix Reports, vol. 12.

  18 called his brother: Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, p. 73. John Ray admits that his brother called him and that he picked up the fugitive at a tavern in central Missouri and then drove him back to St. Louis.

  19 hopped an eastbound freight train: Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 45.

  CHAPTER 1

  CITY OF WHITE GOLD

  20 all the secret krewes: The 1967 Cotton Carnival details here are drawn from Magness, Party with a Purpose, p. 242. The description of the 1967 Royal Barge and other carnival atmospherics is drawn from newspaper coverage in the Memphis Commercial Appeal and Memphis Press-Scimitar, April and May 1967.

  21 Memphis was built on the spot: For details on the early history of Memphis, see Capers, Biography of a River Town; Roper, Founding of Memphis; Magness, Past Times; and Harkins, Metropolis of the American Nile.

  22 Front Street, cotton's main drag: Details here on the business of cotton are drawn from Bearden, Cotton, and Yafa, Big Cotton. I also relied on collections displayed at the Cotton Museum in Memphis.

  23 a yellow fever epidemic: For a vivid account of the 1878 yellow fever epidemic, see Crosby, American Plague.

  24 "was built on a bluff": Wills, "Martin Luther King Is Still on the Case."

  25 Marcus Brutus Winchester: Weeks, Memphis, pp. 25-34.

  26 Ida B. Wells: For anyone curious about the courageous life of this civil rights matriarch, I recommend her excellent memoir, Crusade for Justice.

  27 renouncing the Klan: Jack Hurst's fine biography, Nathan Bedford Forrest, deftly traces Forrest's evolution, in his later years, toward racial moderation. See esp. pp. 359-67.

  28 masked green jesters: See Magness, Party with a Purpose, pp. 205-10.

  CHAPTER 2

  GOING FOR BROKE

  29 "For years, I labored with reforming": King interview with David Halberstam, quoted in Dyson, I May Not Get There with You, p. 39.

  30 "My own government": Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., p. 338.

  31 "The good and just society": Washington, Testament of Hope, p. 630.

  32 "It didn't cost the nation": Kotz, Judgment Days, p. 382.

  33 "I'm on fire": Branch, At Canaan's Edge, p. 652.

  34 go on a brief sabbatical: Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 602.

  35 "I'm tired of all this traveling": Ibid., p. 572.

  36 "I feel discouraged": Ibid., p. 592.

  37 "The Southern Christian Leadership Conference": Branch, At Canaan's Edge, p. 656.

  38 "represents moral irresponsibility": Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 583.

  39 "This is a kind of last, desperate demand": Ibid.

  CHAPTER 3

  THE MONTH OF THE IGUANA

  40 On an empty beach: This scene is primarily drawn from interviews with Manuela Medrano, in House Select Committee on Assassinations (hereafter HSCA), Appendix Reports, vol. 4, pp. 157-58.

  41 bought a Kodak Super 8: McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 263.

  42 Visibly upset: HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 4, pp. 157-58.

  43 modest but respectable enough place: On a research trip to Puerto Vallarta, I visited the Rio, still a popular downtown hotel, and viewed archival photographs from the 1960s.

  44 "publisher's assistant": Se
e Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 94, and McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 266.

  45 "idyllic": Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King? p. 78.

  46 "everybody there wanted": Ray, "20,000 Words," HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 12, p. 69.

  47 erotic feedback loop: William Bradford Huie visited this whorehouse in 1968 and describes it in some detail in his book He Slew the Dreamer, pp. 95-96.

  48 Galt began frequenting: My description of Ray's favorite bordello is drawn from the summary of the time he spent in Mexico in HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 4, as well as in Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, pp. 94-95.

  49 He complained of headaches: McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 270.

  50 He rarely tipped: Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 97.

  51 which he called his "equalizer": Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 66.

  52 trips into the hills: HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 4, p. 159.

  53 keen on learning ... local Mexican dances: Ibid.

  54 "I seriously considered the trade": Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 61.

  55 "He said many insulting things": A good overview of the incident at Casa Susana is in HSCA, Final Assassinations Report, pp. 328-29.

  56 "I'm going to kill them": This and other details of the confrontation with the black sailors are in an official interview with Medrano, HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 4, p. 158. Also p. 174.

  57 he straddled Elisa: McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 269.

  58 He had a mirror: Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 97.

  59 "I couldn't accomplish anything": Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 61.

  60 "I don't believe you can live in Mexico": Ray interview, HSCA, Appendix Reports, vol. 9, p. 488.

  61 in the direction of Tijuana: Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 62.