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

Hoover intuitively understood how unusual Ray was. He was cryptic, difficult to pigeonhole; he refused to fit the assassin profile. "We are dealing with a man 725who is not an ordinary criminal, but a man capable of doing any kind of sly act," Hoover told Ramsey Clark in a meeting on June 20. "Ray is not a fanatic [like] Sirhan Sirhan. But he is a racist and detests Negroes, and Martin Luther King. He had information about King speaking in other towns and then picked out Memphis. I think he acted entirely alone, but we are not closing our minds that others might be associated with him. We have to run down every lead."

Clark had no doubts that Ray had killed King, and that any conspiracy that existed was merely a crude and poorly funded one. The case against Ray was "one of the strongest 726you're likely to see," Clark said years later. "The evidence is vast. And you can see the ways in which his environment--his history of unhappiness, his tragically sad circumstances--had forged a character who would do it." Despite the profusion of evidence against Ray, Clark predicted the case would be forever awash in conspiracy theories. "Some Americans," 727he said, "don't want to believe that one miserable person can bring such tragedy on our country and impact so powerfully on the destiny of us all."

None of the papers or newsmagazines mentioned just how close Ray had come to getting away with his crime--or that if he'd made it to Rhodesia, extraditing him would have been nearly impossible. And few accounts gave the Canadian, Mexican, Portuguese, and British authorities their due; catching Ray had been, in every sense, an international effort. Indeed, Hoover seemed a bit embarrassed that it was Scotland Yard, not the FBI, that finally caught his quarry.

For Cartha DeLoach, the hunt for James Earl Ray was the most satisfying case he ever worked on, and he could not have been prouder of his field agents who'd labored in obscurity all across the country--in Memphis, in Atlanta, in Birmingham, in St. Louis, in Los Angeles, and all points in between. "Nothing Ray did 728threw us off the path," DeLoach boasted. "From the time we found that photograph at the bartender's school, his fate was sealed."

Like Clark, DeLoach entertained no doubts that the FBI had the right man. Ray, he said, "was a loner, 729an egotist, a bigot, a man who in prison had said he was going to kill Dr. King, a man who wanted to be known, a man who stalked Dr. King: The evidence was overwhelming." For years to come, however, DeLoach would have to grapple with the public's understandable suspicion that Hoover's deep hatred of King must have influenced the case in some substantial way.

Yet paradoxically, DeLoach thought Hoover's contempt for King only intensified the manhunt. "Truth be told," 730DeLoach later wrote, "the old feud did have an impact--it drove us to prove, at every moment, that we were doing all we humanly could do to catch King's killer. That may have made our job harder--or at least more pressure-packed--but as I look back on the case, I still feel the same sense of satisfaction. The FBI had never pursued a fugitive with greater patience and imagination."

48 RING OF STEEL

ON JUNE IO, two days after his arrest, in a chamber deep inside London's Brixton prison, Ramon Sneyd met for the first time with his British solicitor, a diligent young man named Michael Eugene. Sneyd was mild mannered and pleasant at first, but he soon fell into a rant. "Look," he said, "they got me mixed up 731with some guy called James Earl Ray. My name is Sneyd--Ramon George Sneyd. Never met this Ray guy in my life. I don't know anything about this. They're just trying to pin something on me that I didn't do."

Eugene tried to calm his client and explain to him that he was not concerned with the crimes Sneyd had been accused of in the United States. His concern, properly speaking, was only with the coming extradition hearings. Eugene asked Sneyd whether, in the meantime, he could do anything to make him more comfortable. Eugene later recalled the conversation.

"Yes," Sneyd replied. "I'd like you to call my brother." 732

"Certainly," Eugene agreed. "How do I reach him? What is his name?"

"Oh, he lives in Chicago," Sneyd said. "His name is Jerry Ray."

Eugene blinked in disbelief. Was this man a blithering idiot? Did he realize what he'd just said? He took down Jerry Ray's contact information and didn't say a word. For days and weeks, the prisoner would continue to insist his name was Sneyd. Eugene happily went along with the fiction.

"And another thing," Sneyd said. "I'm going to need to hire a lawyer in the States--in case we lose the extradition trial. Could you make contact with a few lawyers for me?"

Again, Eugene cheerfully agreed. "Any ones in particular?"

Sneyd was aiming for the stars. First, he said he wanted F. Lee Bailey, the famous Boston trial attorney. If Bailey said no, then he wanted Melvin Belli, out of San Francisco.

What little Eugene knew about American lawyering told him that retaining either of these two celebrity attorneys would cost a king's ransom. "Oh," Sneyd said dismissively. "I'm not worried about their fees. Even if it takes a hundred thousand dollars, I can raise it. They'll be taken care of."

Although Eugene seriously doubted Sneyd's assertion, there was a good deal of truth to the notion that he could quickly build a war chest of funds. In fact, the United Klans of America was already in the process of raising ten thousand dollars to defend Sneyd. Another group, the Patriotic Legal Fund, 733out of Savannah, Georgia, had pledged to pay all of Sneyd's attorney fees, court expenses, the cost of any appeals--as well as his bond. The Patriotic Legal Fund was affiliated with the National States Rights Party, whose chairman and legal adviser, the bow-tie-wearing J. B. Stoner, had already written a letter offering to defend the accused free of charge. Sneyd, Stoner told the media, was a "national hero" who had done America a favor and "should be given a Congressional Medal of Honor."

Sneyd knew about Stoner through reading his neo-Nazi rag the Thunderbolt . He was intrigued and flattered by Stoner's overtures, and would soon pursue a correspondence with the racist attorney. For now, though, Sneyd thought he should try to hold out for the biggest name he could get.

WHILE SNEYD WAS waiting for his extradition hearings to begin, he had several weeks to kill inside Brixton--and later, another large London prison known as Wandsworth, to which he was eventually transferred. He knew no one and was kept completely isolated from the rest of the inmate population, living in what the authorities referred to as a "condemned cell." He was a "Category A Prisoner," to whom the highest security precautions applied. The wardens, fearing their celebrity inmate might attempt suicide, would not allow Sneyd to eat his food with utensils. Then, one morning, when he was handed a pile of slimy eggs and greasy sausage, he made a stink. How was he supposed to eat this mess with his hands?

His specially assigned guard, a veteran Scotland Yard detective sergeant named Alexander Eist, 734came to his aid and tried to get him a spoon and fork. For this small favor, Sneyd was extremely grateful, and the two men became, in a manner of speaking, friends. Eist not only guarded Sneyd in prison but also accompanied him to his appearances in court--the two men handcuffed to each other at all times. Along the way, Eist performed other small favors for Sneyd--procuring him American magazines and newspapers, and even bars of chocolate, which were forbidden by the wardens. "He began to look at me," Eist later told the FBI, "as the only friend he had in the country. With my constant contact with him, he began to look on me as somebody he could talk to."