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

Frazier concluded, based on the "physical characteristics of the rifling impressions" as well as other factors, that the bullet removed from King's body could have been fired from the Remington Gamemaster. However, he could not say with scientific certainty that the bullet came from this rifle, "to the exclusion of all other rifles." This was because the bullet, as he described it in his report, "had been distorted due to mutilation" as it struck hard bone while passing through King's body.

Frazier knew that the mechanical components of individual firearms (such as the firing pin and breech face) have distinctive microscopic traits that can engrave telltale markings on bullets. The tiny striations often found on fired bullets are known as individual identifying characteristics and are, in effect, the ballistics equivalent of a fingerprint. Frazier had hoped the bullet that killed King would exhibit these telltale markings, but it didn't: the round, having been chipped, dented, warped, and broken into several discrete parts, was missing the critical information.

Though a dismaying discovery, it was not uncommon; bullets often came to Frazier's lab in sorry condition. Such was the secondary effect of firearms violence: projectiles, in doing their damage, themselves became damaged.

Frazier also studied the windowsill that had been removed from the communal bathroom at Bessie Brewer's rooming house. Making microscopic comparisons between the half-moon indentation in the windowsill and various markings on the rifle barrel, he determined to his satisfaction that the dent could have been caused by the Gamemaster's recoil upon firing--it was "consistent" with the barrel's contours and appeared to have been created recently--but again, he stopped short of an absolute confirmation.

Finally, Frazier examined King's bloody clothes, subjecting them to chemical tests. He found "no partially burned or unburned gunpowder" on King's dress shirt, suit coat, and necktie, which conclusively confirmed what everybody who'd been at the Lorraine already knew--that King had not been shot at close range. But when Frazier tested the clothing with sodium rhodizonate, he found lead particles on King's coat lapel, the right collar of the shirt, and the severed tie. This lead residue was compositionally consistent with the lead in the bullet extracted from King's body--and consistent with what Frazier would expect a high-velocity .30-06 round to deposit around the site of a wound.

WHILE THE FBI pored over King's mangled clothes, Eric Galt was in Atlanta, only a few miles from King's church and birthplace; he, too, had clothes on his mind. Around 9:30 a.m. eastern time, Galt dropped by the Piedmont Laundry on Peachtree Street to pick up the clothes he had left before he went to Memphis. The laundry's counter clerk, Mrs. Annie Estelle Peters, 495had waited on Galt when he dropped off the clothes on April 1, and she immediately recognized the returning customer when he walked through the door. As before, he was neatly dressed and clean shaven; this time, though, he seemed to be in a hurry. He was abrupt in his speech and impatient when she left the counter to locate his clothes.

She returned with his items--three pieces of dry cleaning and an assortment of regular laundry totaling $2.71, which he paid for in cash. There was a black-checked coat, a pair of gray trousers, a striped brown tie, four undershirts, three underdrawers, a pair of socks, and a washcloth. All his laundry items were affixed with tiny identifying tags that said, "EGC-83"--which was Galt's permanent "laundry mark" for all his dealings with Piedmont. Hastily, Galt picked up the folded laundry, neatly stacked in a rectangular package of stapled paper, and slung the hangered dry-cleaning items over his shoulder. He walked out of the shop and headed up Peachtree, in the direction of his rooming house on Fourteenth Street.

Galt didn't barge into the rooming house--he watched and waited from a distance until he was "satisfied there was no unusual activity 496around the place." Then he moved quickly. Neither the tenants nor the owner, Jimmie Garner, saw him. He tidied up his room a bit, throwing some trash in a plastic bag and dropping it into a garbage can out back. He also threw out the manual typewriter he'd had since his time in Puerto Vallarta--it would be too cumbersome, he realized, for his fugitive travels to Canada. He packed a suitcase with his clean laundry and his self-help books and his Polaroid camera. He retrieved his .38 Liberty Chief revolver from its hiding place in the basement and stuck it in his belt. He assembled a wad of bills 497that he later estimated to be slightly more than a thousand dollars--money saved, he later claimed, from various smuggling and fencing schemes over the past year. He stamped and addressed an envelope to the Locksmithing Institute in Little Falls, New Jersey, containing the final lesson in his locksmithing correspondence course, an envelope he would mail later that morning. Then he dashed off a short note 498for Mr. Garner on a piece of cardboard--a note clearly designed to throw authorities off his scent. He said he unexpectedly had to go to Birmingham but would come back for his remaining belongings--he specifically mentioned the portable Zenith television--in a few days. He placed the note on his bed and left his key in the lock. Then Galt grabbed his suitcase and never returned to 113 Fourteenth Street Northeast.

Probably hailing another cab, he headed for the bus station.

AT THE R. S. LEWIS Funeral Home just a few blocks from Beale Street, Martin Luther King's corpse lay in a temporary bronze casket in a viewing room of purple drapes and lurid stained glass. He was clothed in a fresh dark suit.

No public viewing had been announced, yet hundreds of people had been lining up since dawn outside the funeral home, hoping to view the body. The Lewis specialists, listening to crackling recordings of King's speeches, had labored through the night--embalming, grooming, dressing, and beautifying the body. "There was so much to do," 499the mortuary's co-proprietor Clarence Lewis told a reporter. "The jawbone was just dangling. They had to reset it and then build all that up with plaster." They'd had to work in such a rush that Ralph Abernathy, having been in Dr. Francisco's autopsy suite the night before, worried that his friend might not be presentable. "I didn't know whether the funeral home would attempt to repair the indignity of the autopsy," he said. But when he arrived from the Lorraine, Abernathy was amazed at what the Lewis cosmetologists had done with their tinting powders and restorative waxes. "The body appeared unblemished," 500Abernathy said. "The morticians had done their job well."

Before the crowds were admitted, Abernathy and others from the SCLC inner circle lingered a few minutes with their leader. "We all wanted to be there," 501Andrew Young wrote. "Even though we all knew that we, the living, must move on with our lives, with our movement, we wanted to be near Martin for as long as we possibly could."

Then the doors opened, and the long, solemn line of visitors shuffled through. They were an eclectic mix of humanity--"from company presidents to field hands," one newspaper reporter put it. Photographers from around the world snapped pictures. When a woman kissed King's right cheek, Clarence Lewis grew concerned. "It will spoil the makeup job," 502he said. Many of the mourners were garbage workers and their families, who, as they peered into the still face of the martyr, were touched both by sadness and guilt, a feeling that he had died for them. They leaned over, they spoke to King, they touched his face, and they wept.