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

Then a woman in Memphis called Holloman's office 592with a tip that raised an eerie possibility: The night after the assassination she had watched a local TV special on Dr. King that, for the first time, aired extensive footage of his final "Mountaintop" speech. When the camera panned the audience at Mason Temple, the woman spotted a mysterious white male who looked a good bit like the artist rendering. To her, the man briefly caught in the bright lights looked uncomfortable and out of place. Police detectives went to the local NBC affiliate and reviewed the footage. Soon they found the frames the caller was referring to, and sure enough an unknown and awkward-looking white male momentarily flashed on the screen--an odd man out "whose actions did not coincide with the male coloreds and female coloreds at the rally." The grainy image was too blurred and brief to make out very much, but the question inevitably arose: Was King's killer present at his final talk? Was the assassin watching as King looked out over the audience and talked about threats from "some of our sick white brothers"?

Another call came from the Mexican consulate 593in Memphis. Rolando Veloz, the acting consul, told local police that on April 3, he issued a visitor's permit to a suspicious-looking young man who bore a "striking resemblance" to the broadcast description of King's assassin. Veloz said the man gave the name John Scott Candrian with what proved to be a phony address and telephone number in Chicago. "He came here the day before the slaying," said Veloz. "I asked him what was the purpose of his trip. He hesitated for a moment, then answered, 'I'm just going to Mexico.'" On the application, the man said he would enter Mexico on or about April 13 and that he planned to visit the Pacific seaport of Mazatlan.

This tip was considered strong enough that the FBI immediately expanded the MURKIN investigation to Mexico and enlisted the support of the federales while keeping a close eye on all crossing points along the border. Mexican authorities soon made a potentially astonishing discovery: the bullet-riddled body of what appeared to be a white male American tourist 594washed up on the beach in Puerto Vallarta. The unidentified corpse vaguely resembled the man in 5B, but the hands were so shrunken and decomposed that experts, hoping to compare the dead man's fingerprints with the prints on file at the crime lab in Washington, couldn't get an accurate impression, even after injecting the fingers with fluid to puff them up. This investigatory cul-de-sac raised a possibility that was voiced with increasing dread throughout the ranks of the FBI: that the object of their massive search may already be dead--an assassinated assassin, killed off by the very conspirators who had hired him.

THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, Mrs. John Riley had been thinking 595about the Mustang parked outside her window at the Capitol Homes housing project in Atlanta. What was it doing there, untouched for five long days? Why hadn't anyone come to retrieve it? She worried and stewed over what to do. She talked with her neighbors about it. She even consulted with the preacher at her church. But it was her thirteen-year-old son, Johnny, who convinced her to pick up the phone.

On the afternoon of April 10, the day after the King funeral, Johnny heard a report on the television. A newscaster said the authorities were monitoring the border with Mexico, looking for the man who had applied for a tourist permit in Memphis a day before the assassination. Though that report was based on information that would soon prove to be specious, it sparked his adolescent imagination.

"Mom," Johnny said. "That car has stickers on the window. They say, 'Turista.' Whoever drove it has been to Mexico."

Mrs. Riley was sufficiently convinced that she found the number for the local FBI office and put in a call. Whoever picked up the phone wasn't particularly impressed by what this demure housewife had to say. Over the past five days, the overworked and under-rested agents in the Atlanta field office had ventured on every kind of snipe hunt and fool's errand. This sounded like another one.

"I suggest you call the Atlanta police," the man told her, and furnished a number for the stolen-auto division.

She dialed the number and again met with a tepid response. Roy Lee Davis, with the auto theft division, ploddingly took down the information and hung up. He checked with the stolen-auto files and found nothing reported for a 1966 white Mustang with Alabama plates, and nearly filed the information away as extraneous and unremarkable. Then something told Davis to share this piece of information with some Atlanta detectives down the hall who'd been following the King assassination case--and their curiosity was piqued.

Later that night, a cruiser from the Atlanta Police Department slipped into the Capitol Homes parking lot and drove up to the Mustang. Many of the apartment windows were bathed in the blue murk of television sets--the postponed Academy Awards were on. (In the Heat of the Night edged out Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate for Best Picture, and Katharine Hepburn claimed her second Best Actress Oscar, this time for her role in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner , a controversial movie, also starring Poitier, about an interracial marriage.)

Mrs. Riley peeked out her window and spotted the cruiser. She naturally assumed that the police had come in response to her call, but was surprised and a little deflated that after only a cursory inspection, they quickly pulled away from the Mustang and drove off the lot, seemingly uninterested. Figuring the Mustang must have "checked out" after all, Mrs. Riley went back to watching the Academy Awards--and didn't give it another thought.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, while parts of Washington were digging out from the ashen ruins of the riots, Lyndon Johnson presided over a ceremony in the East Room of the White House. On this day, Thursday, April 11, the president was signing into law 596the Civil Rights Act of 1968, perhaps the last great bill of the movement. The act--whose brisk passage in the House the previous day had largely been in response to the King assassination--made it a federal crime to discriminate in the sale, rental, and financing of some 80 percent of the nation's dwellings. It also gave federal prosecutors increased powers to go after murderers of civil rights figures.

With a mixed throng of white and black leaders looking on, the president now sat at a desk and took up his fountain pen. Calling the act's passage "a victory for all Americans," Johnson declared: "With this bill, the voice of justice speaks again."

It was, some pundits said, the dying gasp of the civil rights era.

IN TORONTO THAT same morning, Eric Galt was walking down Yonge Street, intent on an errand of disguise. He turned in to Brown's Theatrical Supply Company 597and bought a makeup kit. Playing with the cosmetics later that day, he applied a little foundation and powder and eyebrow liner. He parted his hair in a different way and was a bit more conservative with his hair cream. Then he donned a dark suit, a narrow tie with a discreet waffle weave, and his best white dress shirt. As a final touch, he put on a recently purchased pair of dark horn-rimmed glasses, which, sitting on his surgery-sharpened nose, gave him a vaguely professorial cast.

Looking in a mirror, Galt was happy with the transformation: Ramon Sneyd was now ready for his close-up.

Sometime in the afternoon of April 11, he walked into the Arcade Photo Studio, 598also on Yonge Street, and met the manager, Mrs. Mabel Agnew. He told her he needed some passport photos.