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

At various points in his life, Ray had tried to go straight. He'd been, among other things, a color matcher at a shoe company, a laborer at a tannery, an assembly line worker at a company that manufactured compressors, and a dishwasher at a diner. But he kept slipping deeper into a life of recidivism--it was the only world he knew. "He was a dirty little neck," 645recalled William Peterson, police chief in the blue-collar town of Alton, Illinois, where Ray was born in 1928 and where he lived off and on between his jail terms. "He was a thief who slept all day and stole all night."

FBI agents arrived at Jefferson City, Missouri, and began to piece together a thumbnail sketch 646of James Earl Ray's years in prison there and the story of his escape from the bakery a year earlier. Ray, investigators learned, was widely thought to have been using and selling amphetamines inside Jeff City--his role as a narcotics "merchant" was a likely source of funds that had sustained him during his year on the run. (By one close accounting made much later, Ray over the years may have sent out as much as seven thousand dollars he'd made in the narcotics trade--most likely salting it away with members of his family.) But mainly Ray was known as someone obsessed with the notion of escape. Nicknamed the Mole, Ray had tried to break out of Jeff City on several earlier occasions and, as punishment, was forced to serve many hard months in solitary. Though his several escape attempts should have permanently caught the attention of the prison staff, something about his style made him oddly forgettable, innocuous, generic. Most guards just called him by his prison number: 416-J.

To the investigating agents, the vandalized numerals found on the Channel Master radio suddenly made sense. Specialists at the crime lab had successfully used an ultraviolet scanner to "raise" the numerals 647that Ray had so diligently scratched out. The number: 00416. Jeff City records showed that James Earl Ray had bought the radio from the prison canteen two days before his escape and that, as required by prison regulations, the number had been etched on the radio's housing.

OTHER FBI MEN branched out across Missouri and Illinois, tracking down members of Ray's family. Both of Ray's parents were said to be dead, but agents soon found a brother, John Ray, 648at the bar he ran on Arsenal Street in a rough neighborhood of South St. Louis. The Grapevine Tavern was just a block away from the George Wallace for President headquarters, and was a frequent gathering place for campaign organizers. John Ray, it turned out, was a die-hard Wallace fan himself and freely used his bar to distribute American Independent Party literature. Because of its proximity to the Wallace office, the Grapevine had become known around town as a watering hole for John Birchers, White Citizens Council members, and other ardent segregationists. Much like his brother James Earl in Los Angeles, John Ray had a habit of personally escorting prospective AIP registrants to the local campaign headquarters to enlist them in the Wallace cause.

John Ray seemed a beefier, ruddier version of the fugitive, with a fast-receding hairline that exposed the bony facades of his forehead. He had a criminal record of his own, having served seven years in an Illinois penitentiary for robbery. His tavern's name, in fact, was an allusion to the "prison grapevine," the mill of intrigue and scuttlebutt that had enlivened his days behind bars. It was a small irony that, as a felon, he couldn't vote at all, much less for Wallace.

At first, John Ray seemed drunk and was not cooperative, especially when FBI agents reminded him that he had visited his brother Jimmy in Jeff City the day before he escaped in a bread box. John claimed he'd had no contact with his brother since the breakout and had no idea of his whereabouts.

The skeptical FBI agents asked John why he smiled when he gave his answers--he constantly flashed a curling smirk that was nearly identical to that of his brother Jimmy. John said it was just "a nervous reaction" that didn't mean anything, but he did concede that this unfortunate tic had sometimes gotten him in trouble with the law.

"Jimmy was never the same after he got out of the Army," John said. "He went crazy, and got mixed up with drugs." If he did kill Martin Luther King, Jimmy was probably dead now--his conspirators would have tried to "seal his lips forever." 649But if Jimmy was still alive, he was certainly out of the country by now.

Which country would he flee to? the agents wanted to know.

John declined to speculate, but he did recall visiting Jimmy in prison once and getting an earful about Ian Smith and the good job he was doing down in Rhodesia. John Ray characterized himself as "a mild segregationist" and soon confided his frustration to the FBI agents. "What's all the excitement about?" 650he wondered aloud. "He only killed a nigger. If he'd killed a white man, you wouldn't be here."

Reporters who ended up on John Ray's doorstep similarly found that he was not bashful about sharing his views on King. "He was not a saint as they try to picture him," John would later write the author George McMillan. "King was not only a rat but with his beaded eyes and pin ears, he looked like one, too."

Initially considering John Ray a possible suspect in a conspiracy, FBI agents interrogated him about his whereabouts on April 4 but were unable, either then or in subsequent interviews, to pin anything definitive on him. (Years later, however, John Ray would boast 651in a co-authored book that he drove from St. Louis and visited his brother Jimmy at a tavern in West Memphis, Arkansas--just across the Mississippi River from the city--on the afternoon before the assassination.)

Meanwhile, a second team of agents soon found Ray's younger brother Jerry Ray at a country club in the Chicago suburbs, where he was a golf course greenskeeper. A clownish man who seemed to take the FBI's manhunt as a thrilling game, Jerry was determined to tell the agents only enough to keep them off his back. His brother Jimmy was now the "hottest man in the country," 652Jerry reckoned, "the most wanted man there ever was."

Jerry, who was also a felon, said he had no idea where Jimmy went to, or even if he was still alive. He doubted his brother had it in him to kill anyone, though. If Jimmy murdered King, it had to be for money. "He sure didn't have any love 653for colored people," Jerry conceded. "But he wouldn't have put himself in a spot like this unless there was something in it for him."

Whatever Jimmy Ray did or did not do, Jerry said, he would never tell a soul about it. "Jimmy would never snitch on anyone, I know that. He'll go to his grave with his secrets."

FEELING THE STARE of the world boring at his back, Ramon Sneyd skulked through Toronto's darkened streets the night the bulletin ran on The FBI , and slipped into Mrs. Loo's place. He locked himself in his room for twenty-four hours and tried to figure out what to do next.

The following morning, April 23, he paid a visit to Loblaws, a grocery store only a few blocks away. Probably packing his .38 Liberty Chief revolver, Sneyd gave serious thought to robbing the joint. "A supermarket 654--that's really a corporation's money and they're probably gougin' it out of somebody else, anyway," he later rationalized. "Better to rob them than an individual." Samuel Marshall, the assistant manager, found him in the rear of the store 655in an area off-limits to customers, snooping around near the office safe. Marshall demanded to know what he was doing there.

"Oh I, um, I'm looking for a job," the intruder stammered, boasting that he had some experience working in a grocery down in Mexico. When the store manager, Emerson Benns, approached, Sneyd edged toward the door, sprinted down the sidewalk, and hopped on a streetcar. The following day Marshall saw James Earl Ray's photograph in Newsweek and alerted police, saying, "That's the man."