Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (71 page)
Authors: Hampton Sides
Tags: #History: American, #20th Century, #Assassination, #Criminals & Outlaws, #United States - 20th Century, #Social History, #Murder - General, #Social Science, #Murder, #King; Martin Luther;, #True Crime, #Cultural Heritage, #1929-1968, #History - General History, #Jr.;, #60s, #United States, #Biography & Autobiography, #Ray; James Earl;, #History, #1928-1998, #General, #History - U.S., #U.S. History - 1960s, #Ethnic Studies, #Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Histor
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 Chief among these are the FBI's MURKIN files, including a wealth of largely unpublished FD-302 reports assembled by FBI agents in field offices across the nation.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 Clark'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":
See 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.