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

Capitol Homes was a complex of old redbrick buildings occupied almost entirely by white tenants. Trash was heaped in one corner of the parking lot, and a playground slide lay toppled on the ground. The general drabness of the eight-hundred-unit complex was relieved by a flower garden near the entrance off Memorial Drive. Rising over the neighborhood, as if to mock its dreariness, was the elegant neoclassical Georgia state capitol, with its massive gold-ribbed dome shimmering through curtains of rain.

That morning a woman named Mary Bridges, 484who lived in apartment 550 of Capitol Homes, was in a rush to get her twelve-year-old daughter, Wanda, off to school. Through her front window, Mrs. Bridges spotted a white two-door Mustang hardtop with whitewall tires pulling in to the parking lot. The car abruptly stopped, then made a screeching sound as it jerked rearward into a vacant parking place a few yards from her door. The Mustang had Alabama plates, and the car windows were affixed with Mexican "Turista" stickers.

Mrs. Bridges opened her door and stood at the threshold with Wanda, watching the man emerge from the Mustang, lock the door, and hurriedly scuffle away. He seemed nervous, wary. She had never seen the man before, or the car. He had "soot-black hair" and wore a dark suit--the coat dramatically flared out in the morning breeze. Without a raincoat or umbrella, and carrying no luggage, he hurried along the wet sidewalk, turned left at the flower garden, and disappeared down Memorial Drive.

She thought he might be a traveling insurance salesman, but something about the mystery visitor disturbed her. Mrs. Bridges turned to Wanda and said, half-joking, "He might have a gun."

Galt was relieved to have shed his car, severing himself from the most conspicuous piece of evidence that tied him to Memphis. What he did next is not precisely known, but in all likelihood he flagged down a taxi. At 8:41 a.m., a United Cab Company driver 485named Chuck Stephens was heading west on Memorial Drive when he was hailed by a white man Stephens later described as about thirty years old, six feet tall, slender, and neat. The man was standing in the spitting rain on Memorial near Fraser Street--just a few blocks from Capitol Homes. Stephens pulled over, and the man hopped in, asking to be taken to the Greyhound bus depot. Stephens nodded and headed downtown, thinking it odd that his passenger was going to the bus station without any luggage. The man didn't say a word during the short drive. Upon reaching the Greyhound terminal, he paid the fare--ninety-three cents--and climbed out into the drizzly street.

Galt's plan was to take the first bus north to Detroit. But when he got to the station, he inquired about the times and found the next coach bound for the Motor City wasn't scheduled to leave until around 11:00 a.m.--and that bus was running late. Realizing he still had a few hours to spare, Galt decided to make a dash for his flophouse neighborhood around Peachtree Street to pick up his laundry and a few things from his room.

AT THE LORRAINE Motel, a stunned and deeply sleep-deprived Ralph Abernathy started off the morning by giving a brief press conference in the motel parking lot, just below the now-infamous balcony, where janitors had scrubbed off the last of King's blood to make way for enormous wreaths of flowers. "This is one of the darkest days 486in the history of this nation and certainly in the life of my people," Abernathy said, although in the end he had no doubt that "non-violence will triumph." He never had any desire to lead the movement, he said. "No living man can fill his shoes. I always wanted to stand with him and not ahead of him."

But as the new president of the SCLC, Abernathy wanted to assure the world that the cause would go on--starting with the Beale Street march that King had planned in support of the garbage workers. He announced that he would return on Monday to lead it. Not only would the demonstration be nonviolent, he vowed; in deference to King, it would be utterly silent . To run this memorial march, Bayard Rustin would be called in--the old pro, the bespectacled impresario of the civil rights movement, who, among other things, had stage-managed the March on Washington in 1963 where King had given his "Dream" speech.

When a reporter asked Abernathy if he was worried that returning to Memphis might provoke another assassination attempt--perhaps on his life--Abernathy replied, "We're all willing to die for what we believe in."

All the members of the inner circle rallied around Abernathy--except Jesse Jackson. He was in Chicago, where he had hired a public relations agent 487and was now giving a live interview to NBC's Today show. Reiterating his hyperbolic story from the previous night, he told the national audience that he was the last person to speak with King, and implied that he'd cradled King's bleeding head in his final moments. "He died in my arms," he said. As if to prove it, he still wore the blood-streaked turtleneck. Jackson failed to mention the odd way the blood got there. He then left for a busy itinerary of other interviews and public appearances, wearing his bloody shirt through the day. By inventing this halo-glow moment with the fallen King, Jackson apparently was trying to make the point that he , not Abernathy, had inherited King's mantle.

The Today show was blaring from several rooms at the Lorraine, and some of King's entourage who saw Jackson's interview found the spectacle repugnant. Said James Bevel: "To prostitute and lie 488about the crucifixion of a prophet within a race for the sake of one's own self-aggrandizement is the most gruesome crime a man can commit."

When he heard about it, Abernathy was much more charitable, even though he had cause for greater outrage. The only possible explanation, he said, was that Jackson "was somehow in shock, 489reliving the whole scene in his mind, and acting out what he might have wished to do during those last seconds."

SHORTLY AFTER THE Today show went off the national airwaves, FBI special agent Neil Shanahan walked through the door 490of Aeromarine Supply Company at 5701 Airport Highway in Birmingham. There he met Donald Wood, the son of the store owner and an experienced salesman of firearms. Shanahan began to question Wood about a certain Remington .30-06 rifle that had come into the FBI's possession the previous night in relation to the Martin Luther King assassination.

"Well, I sold a Gamemaster to a guy about a week ago," Wood volunteered, according to a report Shanahan filed shortly after the interview. Wood remembered the man well. In fact, he said, when he'd read in the paper this morning that the weapon left at the crime scene was a Remington .30-06, his thoughts turned immediately to this particular sale.

"Would you happen to have a record of it in your files?" Shanahan asked.

Wood said he did, and he soon retrieved from the Aeromarine office a sales invoice, dated Saturday, March 30. Shanahan felt a frisson of recognition, for there it was, in a clear and legible hand: Remington Model 760 Gamemaster .30-06, serial number 461476, with mounted Redfield variable scope--the exact weapon found outside Canipe's Amusement Company the previous night.

The man who bought the rifle had stated that he lived in Birmingham, at 1907 South Eleventh Street. The name he gave was Harvey Lowmeyer. His signature was scrawled across the bottom of the invoice. By the messy way it was chicken-scratched, Shanahan couldn't tell for sure whether the name was spelled "Lowmeyer" or "Lowmyer."

Agent Shanahan phoned this information to his superiors, and soon agents were dispatched to the address on Eleventh Street, only to discover that no one named Harvey Lowmeyer had ever lived there. Meanwhile, Shanahan asked Wood if he'd be willing to offer an official statement. Wood readily consented, and Shanahan brought him to the FBI field office, where he underwent several hours of questioning.