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

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, 433as 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 434deeply 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 435in a second-floor window, sighted through the trees, and fired the shot that killed Dr. King. He got a straight shot."

MAYOR HENRY LOEB had been on his way to Oxford, Mississippi, to give a talk at Ole Miss Law School, when he received the news of King's shooting over a portable telephone. He immediately canceled his appearance and had his driver wheel the car around and speed back to Memphis. Within twenty minutes he arrived at city hall, a shining new edifice of white marble surrounded by beds of nodding tulips one block from the river. Once inside his office, Loeb turned on the police intercom and learned that King was dead.

He decided that he should give his own live television statement, and soon the cameras were set up in his office; its walls were decorated with the city's official seal--featuring a tufted cotton boll and a steamboat. "We of Memphis are deeply saddened by the tragic event that has just occurred in our city," he began. "And we extend our deepest sympathies to Dr. King's family." In the harsh lights, Loeb looked shaken and wan, but tried to project an air of steely calm. He wore a white oxford cloth shirt that fairly crinkled with starch--one that had been pressed, no doubt, by a steady black hand in one of his family's many commercial laundries. On the wall behind him, television viewers could see a framed picture of the PT boat he'd served on in World War II.

"Every conceivable effort is being made to apprehend his assassin," Loeb continued. "We call upon all citizens of our community, as Dr. King would have wished, to maintain peace and honor." Loeb called for three days of mourning and ordered flags at all municipal buildings flown at half-staff. The next day, all Memphis schools would be closed. While urging his city to refrain from violence, the mayor neglected to mention that on the carpeted floor by his shoes, concealed in the foot well of his desk, was a loaded shotgun.

Shortly after giving his statement, Loeb sat in a near-catatonic state in his office huddled with several city leaders, white and black. The city councilman Jerred Blanchard, a blustery Republican attorney who had played football at Yale, thought Memphis was now "damned to hell 436all over the world--the man who was recognized as the Negro leader of all the leaders, slain, assassinated. Just a modern form of lynching."

Loeb called in a chaplain to pray for the city, for the country, and for the soul of Martin Luther King. Then Mayor Loeb did something no one had ever seen him do in public life, something that seemed almost inimical to his bull-moose demeanor: he broke down and cried.