Hampton Sides - Hellhound on His Trail - The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. And the International Hunt for His Assassin

Jackson, standing beside the Cadillac, introduced King to Ben Branch, a saxophonist and bandleader originally from Memphis, who had come down from Chicago to play music in support of the sanitation workers; he and his band had a gig that night over at Mason Temple, where King and his entourage were headed after the Kyles dinner.

"Oh yes," King said. "He's my man. How are ya, Ben?"

"Glad to see you, Doc," Branch called up.

"Ben, I want you to sing for me tonight at the meeting. I want you to do that song, 'Take My Hand, Precious Lord.'" King had loved the great gospel standard for years. It was a tragic, sweet song written in the depths of the Depression by a black composer named Thomas Dorsey after his wife and baby died in childbirth:

When the darkness appears and the night draws near

And the day is past and gone

At the river I stand

Guide my feet, hold my hand .

"I want you to sing it like you've never sung it before," King told Branch. "Sing it reeeeeeal pretty."

"I sure will, Doc."

Solomon Jones hopped out of the Caddie and yelled up to King. "It's getting chilly," said Jones. "I think you'll need a topcoat."

"Okay, Jonesy," King answered. "You really know how to take good care of me." He fished for a pack of Salem menthols from his pocket and grasped a cigarette in his hand. He straightened up and stepped back from the railing. He was just turning, perhaps to retrieve his cashmere topcoat inside the room, when a ragged belch rang out over the parapets.

THE MEMPHIS POLICEMAN Willie Richmond, watching the Lorraine 357from inside the firehouse, heard the noise. It did not register with him as the report of a rifle--it was just a loud noise, perhaps a backfiring truck, and it seemed to come from somewhere off to the northwest. But fireman George Loenneke saw everything. Through Richmond's field glasses, through the little peephole in the newspapered window, the scene reeled out in slow motion before Loenneke's eyes: King falling backward from the handrail. King tumbling to the balcony floor. King staying there and not getting up. Loenneke gave Richmond the binoculars for a look. No one else inside the station had heard anything or had an inkling of what had happened.

Richmond turned and ran through the firehouse, yelling: "He's been shot! 358The Reverend King has been shot!"

CHARLIE STEPHENS, STILL trying to repair the old radio in his room just a few feet away from the bathroom, heard the concussion through the thin plywood wall. Even in his alcoholic stupor, he instantly knew what it was. Having fought in Europe, he was well acquainted with the sound of weapon fire. "I know a shot when I hear one," 359he later said. "When that explosion went off, it sounded like a German 88."

Inside the bathroom, Eric Galt withdrew the rifle from the cracked window. He knew he'd made a serious hit to King's head. The aerosol mist of blood would have been visible through the scope. King had been knocked back and had largely disappeared from view on the balcony's concrete floor.

Galt scrambled out of the bathtub and threw the still-warm Gamemaster and his other belongings into the bedspread. He wrapped it all up in a bundle, unlocked the bathroom door, and took off down the hall, heading for the stairs.

Charlie Stephens opened the door 360and saw a man in a dark suit leaving the bathroom hallway with a long package under one arm. He assumed it was the stranger in 5B, but he saw him only from the back.

Willie Anschutz, who like Stephens had heard the alarming noise from the bathroom, was standing farther down the corridor. The roomer in 5B brushed past him, carrying a bundle under one arm. "He had something about three and a half foot long," Anschutz recalled, "wrapped up in something, it might have been an old piece of blanket." He was walking at a businesslike clip, but not quite running. A smirky smile curled across his face.

"Hey, that sounded like a shot!" 361Anschutz said to the man.

Covering his face with his free hand, the tenant who called himself John Willard calmly replied, "It was."

24 LIKE A MAN ON A CROSS

THE BULLET STRUCK the right side of King's face at a velocity of 2,670 feet per second. The soft-nosed projectile shattered his mandible and, following the downward angle of its path, exited from the underside of his jaw only to reenter, burrowing into the flesh of his neck. As it did so, it sliced through his shirt collar and coat lapel and cleanly sheared away the taut cinch of his brown necktie just back from the knot.

The bullet worked its violence precisely as it was designed to do: soft-pointed rounds, forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, hotly expand upon striking their target. Considered a humane agent of dispatch for hunted animals, the bullets are designed to rupture tissue and wreak maximum trauma, so a victim has little chance of survival even when no major organ or artery has been hit.

The bullet's impact knocked King backward, spraying a fantail of blood on the balcony floor and the ceiling above him. Shards of jawbone skittered across the cement floor. Instinctively, he grasped at his throat with his right hand and fumbled for the railing with his left. Within a second, King was splayed on his back, his legs crimped at awkward angles, his wing-tip shoes caught in the bottom rungs of the metal railing. His right pants leg was hitched up to mid-calf, exposing his ribbed black socks. His eyes rolled. His head moved slightly, from left to right.

The wound gushed with his pulse, the blood forming an expanding pool around his head and shoulders. A Salem menthol was crushed in one hand. His arms spread out wide on the cold concrete; he had come to rest in a posture that some at the Lorraine would later compare to crucifixion. One witness said, "His arms went out 362to the sides like he was a man on a cross."

Abernathy, applying Aramis aftershave on his face inside 306, heard what sounded like a firecracker or a backfiring car outside, but he thought little of it. The astringent lotion tingled on his hands and cheeks. Firecracker? he thought again, and glanced out the door, which was slightly ajar. He saw King's wing-tip shoes on the floor of the balcony, tucked under the railing. His first thought, alarmed but optimistic, was that King had taken cover in reaction to the popping noise outside. Then, when Abernathy got to the door, he saw the blood and knew.

"Oh my God, Martin's been shot!" 363he screamed. He headed for the balcony, but feared the sniper might still be out there somewhere. He glanced down into the Lorraine courtyard and saw the others stooped behind vehicles, hugging tires, taking cover. Abernathy could hear screams and shouts from down below: My God, my God, my God! Duck! Get down! Hit the ground! ... Don't get up--he's still out there!

A few seconds passed before Abernathy emerged onto the balcony, and he stayed in a crouch. King lay diagonally on the cement floor, to the left of the door. Carefully stepping over him, Abernathy saw that his friend looked afraid and tried to comfort him by patting his left cheek. The wound on his right jaw was worse than Abernathy had feared. Ragged and torn, it was, he thought, as large as a fist. A slash of bone shone through. The blood "glistened," Abernathy later said, and it steadily pooled around King's head, soaking his shirt and suit coat.

King breathed with a raspy difficulty. His quivering lips appeared to be forming the word "Oh," but produced no sound. He seemed to be trying to say something. His eyes wobbled in their sockets, then steadied and sharpened. His gaze fell on his friend. Abernathy thought King was trying to communicate something through his eyes.