Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (37 page)

PRESIDENT JOHNSON SAT at his mahogany desk
⁴²¹
in the Oval Office, staring in disbelief at a one-page typed memo that had just been handed to him by an aide. "Mr. President," it succinctly said, "Justice has just advised
⁴²²
that Dr. King is dead." It was 8:20 eastern time.

For the next few minutes Johnson turned toward his bank of three television screens built into the wall, his eyes shifting restlessly from NBC to ABC to CBS. In a corner, the wire-service Teletype machines nattered away. Drinking a Fresca, the president paced the green carpet and digested the reports steadily seeping into the Oval Office. He had brief phone conversations with Clark and then DeLoach. A familiar dread settled over him: having been ushered into office by an assassination, he now confronted another momentous rip in the national fabric. "A jumble of anxious thoughts
⁴²³
ran through my mind," Johnson later recalled. "What does it mean? Was it the act of one man or a group? Was the assassin black or white? Would the shooting bring violence, more catastrophe, and more extremism?"

Johnson instantly knew that his ambitious plans for the evening, for the week, possibly for the month, were wrecked. At 8:00 p.m., he was supposed to attend a $250-a-plate Democratic fund-raising dinner at the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue, then fly all night to Honolulu aboard Air Force One to confer with General Westmoreland about possible Vietnam peace negotiations. Since withdrawing from the presidential race four days earlier, Johnson had been on a high, basking in wide praise for his statesmanlike decision, full of new optimism about the chances for ending the war and energetically turning attention back to his beloved Great Society programs for his final months in office. Just as he'd hoped, abdicating the throne had seemed to ease all his problems. Staffers noticed a new spring in his step as he dove back into the fray, blessed with what seemed to be fresh political capital.

Yet now, with the King assassination, LBJ understood his brief reprieve was over. "Everything we've gained
⁴²⁴
in the last few days we're going to lose tonight," Johnson said morosely.

Johnson met with his staff and frantically began to make plans. He would postpone, if not cancel altogether, his trip to Hawaii. First thing the next morning, Friday, he would dispatch Attorney General Clark to Memphis to spearhead the FBI investigation. Later in the morning, he would meet at the White House with the nation's most prominent black leaders to discuss the future of civil rights. Then he would attend a King memorial service that was now being planned at the National Cathedral, where King had spoken on Sunday. A White House telegram of condolence would go out to Martin Luther King Sr. and his wife. That Sunday--Palm Sunday--would be declared a day of national mourning. All federal flags in the land would fly at half-staff--the first time in American history that a private citizen would be so honored in death.

But right now, Johnson realized he had to go on live television and talk to the nation. While speechwriters crafted a statement, he slipped down to the White House barbershop for a quick trim and then a dab of makeup. From the barbershop, he called Coretta King at home in Atlanta--she'd just returned from the airport--and offered her his condolences. At just before 9:00 eastern time, he strode out to the West Lobby and stood at the podium before a nest of microphones. The night air was heavy with moisture--rainstorms were in the forecast. Framed by a set of French doors, President Johnson wore a dark suit, the crisp fold of his handkerchief peeking from his pocket.

"America is shocked
⁴²⁵
and saddened by the brutal slaying tonight of Dr. Martin Luther King," he told the cameras. "I ask every citizen to reject the blind violence that has struck Dr. King. I pray that his family can find comfort in the memory of all he tried to do for the land he loved so well. I have just conveyed the sympathy of Mrs. Johnson and myself to his widow, Mrs. King."

Johnson paused and gathered strength for the larger message he wanted to convey. "I know that every American of goodwill joins me in mourning the death of this outstanding leader and in praying for peace throughout this land. We can achieve
nothing
by lawlessness. It is only by joining together that we can continue to move toward equality and fulfillment for all of our people."

The president returned to the Oval Office and made calls to governors and mayors across the land. He wanted to impress upon them the importance of police restraint and worried that too large a show of force out in the city streets would only escalate the violence.
We're not at war with our own people
, he kept saying. "Don't send your skinny little rookies
⁴²⁶
out with great big guns all by themselves--if the shooting starts it may never stop." Johnson feared his message wasn't sinking in. "I'm not getting through to them," he told a staffer. "They're holed up like generals
⁴²⁷
in a dugout, getting ready to watch a war."

Even as he said this, fires were beginning to break out, within a few miles of the White House. Until that point, conventional wisdom had it that Washington, D.C., was more or less riot-proof, that larger, northern cities like Chicago, Cleveland, and Boston would be the first to "go." Yet smoke now rose over the District, and alarming reports flooded into the Oval Office--
"The D.C. Civil Defense
⁴²⁸
says crowds forming at 16th and Newton Streets NW and at 14th and T Streets NW ... A gunman has taken up a position on the roof of the Hawk and Dove bar ...
"

Black militants around the city were sounding the clarion call. "King was the last prince of nonviolence
⁴²⁹
[and] nonviolence is now a dead philosophy," the Congress of Racial Equality's Floyd McKissick told journalists covering a disturbance on U Street. "The next Negro to advocate nonviolence
⁴³⁰
should be torn to bits by the black people!" In the Columbia Heights neighborhood, black youths shattered store windows, reportedly yelling, "Let's kill the honkies--burn this town down!"

But the ever-quotable Stokely Carmichael, a Howard graduate who lived in Washington, would attract the most attention in the press. "When white America killed Dr. King,"
⁴³¹
he told a reporter, "she declared war on us. The rebellions that have been occurring around this country--that's just light stuff compared to what is about to happen."

Rainstorms would somewhat dampen the night's rioting in Washington, but over the next few hours eighteen fires would be set and some two hundred stores vandalized or looted--and the police would make more than two hundred arrests. Inevitably, the chaos turned lethal: a hapless white man named George Fletcher, who got lost driving through the District, was set upon by a gang of rioters; he was stabbed in the head and died later that night.

Similar disturbances were beginning to flare up elsewhere--in Chicago, Baltimore, New Jersey. Violence was all over the news; the whole nation, it seemed, was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Johnson's words to the country had seemingly produced little effect. The president glanced at the three flickering television screens and buried his head in his hands.

The black-tie fund-raiser at the Washington Hilton, Johnson learned, had broken up early--nearly three thousand $250-a-plate dinners went cold, with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, ashen faced, telling the Democratic faithful to head home. Before leaving the Hilton, Senator Frank Church said, "The nation is steeped in violence
⁴³²
--it is the curse of the land."

One place that didn't erupt in violence that night was Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy, on a campaign stop before a mostly black audience, broke the news to the stunned crowd with an off-the-cuff speech in which he invoked the memory of his own assassinated brother and then quoted Aeschylus: "Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God."

President Johnson continued reading and watching the heartbreaking reports from around the nation until Lady Bird called him to a late dinner. A few close advisers joined the Johnsons at the table, including Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford. The family beagles wandered in and out of the room. Johnson's granddaughter Lyn squirmed in the president's lap, her frivolity doing little to brighten the mood.

"It was one of those frozen moments,
⁴³³
as though the bomb had fallen on us," Mrs. Johnson later recalled. "Dinner was a strange, quiet meal. We were poised on the edge of another abyss, the bottom of which we could in no way see."

AS NEWS OF King's assassination spread, the city of Memphis began to prepare for racial apocalypse. Fire and Police Director Frank Holloman readied his riot squads for duty and dispatched helicopters into the city skies--both to search for the killer and to monitor the streets for the first signs of civil unrest. Holloman had been informed that the FBI would be taking over the investigation, but for now he had his own force on the case, working every possible angle. MPD detectives fanned out to interview the owners of every light-colored Mustang in the city and to track down every citizen unfortunate enough to have the surname Willard. Room 5B at Bessie Brewer's rooming house was swept for fingerprints, hairs, and fibers, as was the communal bathroom from which the shot had apparently been fired.

The crime scene was measured, photographed, and analyzed. Near the Lorraine, police arrested and briefly detained several potential suspects, while other officers combed the brushy area beneath the rooming house for footprints, shell casings, and other clues. Meanwhile, detectives began to call every motel in the city to learn if anyone named Willard, or anyone with a white Mustang, had registered for a room over the past few days.

Holloman appeared on local television to announce that he was placing the city on a strict 7:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. curfew and closing down all gas stations and liquor stores. There would be roadblocks, shoot-to-kill orders to halt looters, peremptory searches and arrests. All major sporting and festive events would be canceled, including Saturday night's planned coronation of the 1968 King and Queen of the Cotton Carnival at the Crown and Scepter Ball, one of the most vaunted bashes on the city's social calendar. The first of what would be weeks of threats came flooding into the carnival offices. "You've killed our King," one reportedly said. "Now we're gonna kill your queen." The carnival's planners were already preparing for the unthinkable: they were considering canceling the entire carnival, something that hadn't been done since World War II.

Memphis, for all intents and purposes, was girding for war. The National Guard, Holloman announced, had already been called back to Memphis. "I and all the citizens of Memphis
⁴³⁴
deeply regret the murder of Dr. King today," Holloman said. "Every resource of the Memphis police department, Shelby County's sheriff's office and the Tennessee Highway patrol is dedicated to identifying and apprehending the person or persons responsible."

Although he said "or
persons,"
Holloman noted that "from the evidence we have at this time, only one man was involved." He said the probable assassin was a white man, neat, well dressed, six feet tall, 165 pounds, between twenty-six and thirty-two years old--this rather bland description a composite of the descriptions offered by all the different people in and around the rooming house and Canipe's Amusement Company who'd gotten a glimpse of him. Holloman thought it was too soon to release the name John Willard to the public--for the time being, he and other law-enforcement officials were simply referring to the probable assassin as "the man in 5B."

"Certain evidence has been found which we believe will be helpful," Holloman added. In addition to the gun--a Remington .30-06--the suspect had left behind a suitcase filled with numerous items, one of which was a pair of binoculars that the man in 5B had apparently bought in Memphis that very day.

William Morris, the sheriff of Shelby County, revealed a little more information about the sniper's location when the shot was fired. "We feel," he told reporters, "that the assassin crouched
⁴³⁵
in a second-floor window, sighted through the trees, and fired the shot that killed Dr. King. He got a straight shot."