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

Mrs. Agnew was happy to oblige. She led him to the rear of the studio, which was decorated with a vanity mirror and travel poster of Holland, and sat him on a revolving piano stool before a gray-white screen. Galt doubtless hated the whole ritual, as always, but this time he peered just off camera and kept his eyes wide open, throwing everything he had into playacting his new role. Mrs. Agnew couldn't get her subject to smile, but she finally managed to snap off a decent shot. He left while the pictures developed and returned a few hours later. For two dollars, he retrieved three passport-sized prints.

The image turned out well. His countenance bore a discerning quality, a certain cosmopolitan panache. He could pass for a lawyer, or an engineer, or an international businessman. He almost looked handsome.

AT EXACTLY THE same hour that Galt's passport photos were ripening in a darkroom vat, FBI agents in Atlanta were about to enjoy the week's greatest breakthrough. At four minutes past four o'clock that afternoon, a convoy of bureau sedans 599converged on the Capitol Homes project. In a ruckus of slamming doors and squawking radios, a dozen FBI agents crawled from the cars and swarmed around the abandoned vehicle.

It was no mistake--this was without a doubt Eric S. Galt's car: a white two-door V-8 1966 Mustang hardtop with whitewall tires and a red interior, VIN 6TO7C190647, bearing Alabama license plate number 1-38993.

While some agents inspected the vehicle, taking measurements, notes, and photographs, others soon fanned out and began interviewing Capitol Homes tenants. Did you see the individual who parked this car? Can you give a physical description? Had you ever seen the man before? Kids teetered on bicycles, spellbound by all the commotion, but it was more excitement than most of the tenants had bargained for. "There must have been a billion of 'em 600out here," one lady said. Complained another: "I had to go to bed. It made me sick, so many of them asking me the same thing over and over and over."

Soon a tow truck appeared in the parking lot. Guarded by a police escort, the wrecker hauled the Mustang off to a federal building at the corner of Peachtree and Baker streets. There, deep inside a large locked garage, a detail of agents in latex gloves worked the car over, systematically emptying all its contents and dusting its surfaces for fingerprints.

Every inch of the impounded car 601was examined. Agents took soil samples from the tire wells, fluid samples from the engine, sweepings from the carpets, seats, and trunk. Fibers, hairs, and several high-quality latent palm prints were teased from the Mustang's recesses and contours. From the glove compartment, inspectors found a pair of sunglasses and a case. From the trunk, they retrieved, among other objects, a pair of men's shorts, a pillow, a fitted sheet, various tools, a container for a Polaroid camera, and a small contraption that appeared to be an air-release cable for a camera shutter. On the right window, a prominent sticker said, "Direccion General de Registro Federal de Automoviles, 1967 Octubre Turista, Aduana de Nuevo Laredo, Tam."

All these contents and samplings were inventoried, wrapped in plastic, and boxed up to be personally sent by air courier to the crime lab in Washington. But one item found on the Mustang urgently spoke for itself and required not a second of lab analysis. Affixed to the inside of its left door, a small sticker showed that Eric Galt had had the oil changed in his Mustang at 34,289 miles. The sticker said, "Cort Fox Ford, 4531 Hollywood Boulevard."

WITHIN AN HOUR of the Mustang's discovery in Atlanta, Special Agent Theodore A'Hearn 602of the FBI's Los Angeles field office arrived at the service desk of the Cort Fox Ford dealership in Hollywood, California, and met a man named Budd Cook Jr. One of the garage's service specialists, Cook dug into his records and soon found the work order, which he himself had taken down only a month and a half earlier. The paperwork was made out to Eric S. Galt and dated February 22, 1968.

He brought the car in at 8:00 that morning, Cook noted. It was a 1966 Mustang.

Do you remember what Galt looked like? A'Hearn asked.

Cook searched his memory and came up short. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of customers had passed through this garage over the previous months. Regrettably, he could not furnish a description of any sort.

"But," Cook said, "Galt's address is right here on the work order."

THE NEXT MORNING, April 12, Agent Thomas Mansfield 603made his way to the large and slightly down-at-the-heels St. Francis Hotel at 5533 Hollywood Boulevard. He asked to speak with the proprietor, and presently a man named Allan Thompson appeared at the front desk. As the resident manager, Thompson had lived at the St. Francis for nearly two years and knew the history of the place, all its various denizens and comings and goings.

Yes, Thompson said. He recalled a man named Eric Galt. Thompson found a registration card that showed Galt had lived at the St. Francis for about two months, checking out on March 17. He resided in room 403 and paid eighty-five dollars a month in rent. "He had dark hair, combed back," Thompson remembered. "Slender to medium build. Quiet, wore conservative business suits. Kept irregular hours. Far as I could tell, he was not employed." Thompson said another tenant now occupied 403, and that Galt had not left any belongings in the room.

"Did he give any indication where he was going next?" Agent Mansfield asked.

"Well, yes," Thompson said, producing a change-of-address card that said, "General Delivery, Main Post Office, Atlanta, Georgia." The card was dated March 17, 1968, and signed "Eric S. Galt."

THAT SAME DAY, April 12, two other FBI agents, Lloyd Johnson and Francis Kahl, 604were only a few blocks away, speaking to a woman named Lucy Pinela. Ms. Pinela was the manager of the Home Service Laundry and Dry Cleaning. Over the past week, the FBI had searched all over the country for laundries that used the Thermo-Seal marking machine--the same identification machine that had produced the tiny laundry tag found on the pair of undershorts left with the bundle now in FBI possession in Washington. The FBI's exhaustive search had led them, most promisingly, to Southern California, where numerous laundries were using the Thermo-Seal system. One of those laundries was Home Service.

Yes, Ms. Pinela told the agents, her shop had been using the Thermo-Seal machine for a while now. At their request, she stepped back into the workroom and showed them the apparatus and even stamped out a few samples on articles of clothing to demonstrate how the machine worked and what the resulting tags looked like.

Agents Johnson and Kahl then showed her a photograph of the undershorts found in Memphis, with the tag plainly visible: 02B-6. Ms. Pinela recognized the sequence immediately. On closer inspection, another employee who regularly used the marker said she was positive the tag in question had been stamped at Home Service because the 0 was partially cut off--a defect peculiar to their Thermo-Seal machine.

The owner of Home Service, a man named Louis Puterman, then produced some documents from his office files. After a little rummaging, he came up with something that fairly screamed off the page: laundry ticket number 3065, bearing Thermo-Seal tag number 02B-6. The ticket was made out to "E. Galt."

Once she saw the name, Lucy Pinela recalled the customer. Galt never left an address or a phone number, but he was a regular, she said; he'd been bringing his clothes to Home Service for months. He was about thirty-five years old, brown haired, and had a narrow nose. "He usually brought in button-down dress shirts," she said. "Never work clothes."