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

Before he could get there, however, Galt was determined to make this brief detour to Atlanta. It may have seemed brazenly risky to head straight for the hometown of the man he'd just killed, yet there was also a clever counter-intuition in such a course. The main thing was Galt had left a few items in his rooming house that he felt he needed--his .38 revolver, some self-help books, and probably some money he'd stashed away, as well as the pile of clothes that he'd checked at the cleaners around the corner on Peachtree Street.

As he passed through Holly Springs and New Albany and Tupelo, Galt kept trolling the radio waves for news. Somewhere along the way, he heard a bulletin that the police were looking for a white Mustang driven by a "well-dressed white man." This must have given him a shock, for until that point he was confident he'd gotten away scot-free, that no one had spotted him or his car. Hearing this bit of bad news changed everything: he knew immediately that he'd have to ditch the Mustang, and he somehow thought that without a car, Mexico would not be a plausible destination. Instead, he would head for Canada and then try to get to Rhodesia from there.

Though this newest twist ratcheted up the pressure, there was nothing Galt could do about it. Until he reached Atlanta, all he could do was keep his cool. "I had to drive slow," 448he later wrote, "and be careful so as not to attract attention and get arrested for speeding."

By nine o'clock he had passed into Alabama--"Heart of Dixie"--where at least his license plate would attract no notice. He harbored a vague hope that George Wallace's Alabama, like Ian Smith's breakaway state of Rhodesia, would protect him, that the majority of its citizens would praise him for his act and shield him from pursuers. That was one of the main reasons he had chosen to live for a time in Birmingham before his adventures in Puerto Vallarta--staying there long enough to secure an Alabama driver's license, buy a car, and get it titled, licensed, and registered there. That, too, was the reason he had bought the gun and scope in Birmingham. It was a pitifully naive train of reasoning, but Galt believed that Wallace would likely smile on his crime, viewing him as an Anglo-Saxon patriot from Dixie's finest state. If Galt were ever caught and convicted, he was confident that Governor Wallace, if not President Wallace, would grant him a full pardon after a short prison sentence.

When Galt passed through Florence, Alabama, he considered abandoning the car and taking a bus the rest of the way to Atlanta, but then he thought better of it. He paused only twice during the night. At one point, he got out beneath the crescent moon and tried to wipe the Mustang's surfaces clean of fingerprints. "I knew that the car could be hot 449for some time," he would write, "and I didn't want to leave any calling cards in or on the vehicle before abandoning it once I got to Atlanta." Then somewhere in Alabama, Galt pulled off at a secluded spot, opened his trunk, and dumped his camera equipment in a ditch, all the expensive gear he'd bought with an eye to becoming a porn director--the projector, the splicer, the movie camera, everything but the Polaroid, which was light and portable enough. Porno was one career dream he'd just have to set aside. "I just wanted to get rid 450of everything that would connect me with the Mustang--or with anything, anything that would leave any type of trail to me or help the police in any manner," Galt later said.

As soon as he reached Atlanta in the morning, he knew he'd have to park the Mustang and travel light; the camera gear would only slow him down.

29 POWER IN THE BLOOD

AT THE LORRAINE Motel, most of the members of King's entourage reconvened--the inner circle, now bereft of their leader. Slumped and spent, they sat together in 306, with King's briefcase and personal effects still scattered about the room. Andy Young was there, as well as James Bevel, Bernard Lee, Hosea Williams, James Orange, and Chauncey Eskridge. As sirens cried through the night, the men gathered around their organization's new president, Ralph Abernathy, whose election, according to SCLC bylaws already in place, was automatic. Abernathy didn't have King's charisma or organizational elan, yet his succession was beyond question. "King wouldn't make a decision without him," 451Williams said. "He trusted Ralph like he trusted Jesus."

Around them, Memphis roared and raged. Helicopters whirred in the sky, and the half-tracks of the National Guard grumbled down Main and Beale, their metallic treads leaving enormous zippers in the pavement. Downstairs, a gang of young black thugs backed two white newsmen into a corner and briefly scuffled with them, shouting, "You're going to get yours next, and it ain't going to be too long!" On the Lorraine balcony, noted one reporter, "flashbulbs still blinked 452repeatedly against the room number, like summer lightning."

In those awful hours immediately following the murder, people in the King entourage didn't quite know what to do or how to comport themselves. They made a few calls to friends of the movement. They talked about the future. They tried to catch some news on the television, but most of the broadcasts had flickered off the air. All they could really do, Andy Young said, was "sleepwalk through the night" 453--trying as best they could to process what had happened that terrible day. Seldom do organizations suffer such a profound and surreal shock: to be gathered in one place with their leader, only to see him struck down from above, as though the tragedy were a ritual enacted upon a public stage.

Thoughts of the previous night's speech turned over in their minds. Longevity has its place ... I may not get there with you ... I'm not fearing any man . Over the past year, King had often invoked similar themes in other speeches and sermons--but never quite so forcefully, never with such pathos in his voice. Had King foreseen his own death? Had he felt the sniper's presence as he tarried for so many dangerous minutes on the Lorraine balcony? Abernathy, for one, was convinced that his friend not only had a premonition but in fact had been forwarded specific information about his impending death. As Abernathy later testified before the U.S. Congress, he believed King "had received, through letter or telephone, 454some knowledge that something was going to happen ... some word from some source that he was going to be assassinated."

Andy Young thought it was clear that King wasn't the only intended victim of the murder. Others in the group may have been in danger, and in a larger sense the entire civil rights movement was in the assassin's crosshairs. King had often said that after any horrible setback--like the death of Medgar Evers or the shooting of James Meredith--others must immediately rush in to take up the fallen person's cause or else the enemy gathers the impression that by killing the leaders he can kill the movement. Therefore, that night the group at the Lorraine resolved that the work must go on: the Beale Street march, the garbage strike, the Poor People's Campaign in Washington, all of it. "We can't let Martin down 455by staying in the graveyard with him," James Bevel told the group. "He wouldn't want that. Everything he planned has to go forward. Ralph Abernathy is our leader now and we have to go to work behind him."

Everyone at the Lorraine began to mourn in his own manner. "People freaked out and did strange things that reflected their own insecurities," Young recalled. A. D. King had become seriously drunk and was now storming around the Lorraine, screaming and swearing. "They got him, 456the motherfuckers finally got my brother!" King shouted. He vowed to get a pistol and "kill all the motherfuckers who killed my brother." But then he would punctuate his tirades with moments of recognition. "My God, what am I talking about?" he'd say. "We've got to be nonviolent. That's what Martin would want." AD was so unstable that friends in the group took turns shielding him from reporters so he wouldn't embarrass himself.