Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (70 page)

Mostly, though, Lane was focused on finding Ray and the others. He vowed that the search would venture into "every hollow and back road where a man could hide."

Governor Ray Blanton, meanwhile, tried to reassure the nation that, whatever else happened, his National Guardsmen and corrections department officers would not shoot James Earl Ray. They were, he said, "under orders to use all possible restraint." He conceded that the breakout might have been avoided, that there was possibly "a failure and a laxity" on the part of the Brushy Mountain guards. But, he added, this James Earl Ray character was something else, a fish too big and slippery for any state pen to keep.

"It's not a matter of we can't handle him," the governor said. "It's a matter of we can't
contain
him. The breakout was concocted, designed, and planned in such a manner that he could be in Guatemala now."

BY SUNDAY MORNING, officials were fairly boiling with frustration. Although three of the prisoners had been caught, Ray remained at large. The full might of the state and the nation could not bring the prime fugitive to bay--not the planes and helicopters with their heat-sensing machines, not the National Guardsmen with their night-vision goggles, not the FBI with its topo maps and roving surveillance cameras. So the search would have to come down to the man hunter's oldest technology, the surest technology of all. It would have to come down to the dogs.

Sammy Joe Chapman
⁷⁵¹
was the captain of the bloodhound team at Brushy Mountain. He was a big, pale guy with a miner's lamp blazing from his forehead and an impressive Civil War mustache that crimped and tweezed when he smiled. People around the prison called him a "sniffer" and a "dog boy." He'd spent his life tracking coons and hunting for ginseng root in the Cumberland woods, learning what he called "the tricks of the mountains." He knew all the landmarks around the New River valley--Flag Pole, Chimney Top, Twin Forks, Frozen Head. He knew where the burned-out cabins were, and the abandoned mine shafts, and the naked faces of the mountains where the strip miners had done their crude scrapings.

Chapman had grown impatient with the feds and all their instruments and all their worrying. He knew that his bloodhounds would find Ray in due course. All they needed was a good drenching rainstorm. That was the funny thing about bloodhounds: their extraordinary snouts didn't work well in dry weather. When the forest was in want of moisture, all the wild odors mingled into olfactory confusion, and the dogs couldn't pick out a man's clear scent.

Then, on Sunday afternoon, the weather turned. For hours and hours it rained strong and steady, flushing out the forest, driving the stale airborne smells to the ground. Chapman looked at the gray skies and smiled.

Around nightfall he put a harness to his two best hounds, a pair of fourteen-month-old bitches named Sandy and Little Red. He'd personally trained them, teaching them to hunt in perfect silence--none of the usual yelping and singing normally associated with hounds. Late that night, along the New River about eight miles north of the prison, the dogs picked up something strong. The wet ground quickened their senses, just as Chapman knew it would. Tugged by Sandy and Little Red, Chapman followed the river toward the Cumberland strip mine. After a few miles, they crossed over to the other side, then started up the steep flanks of Usher Top Mountain. An hour into the chase, the hounds remained keen.

Now Chapman radioed back to the prison: "We've got a hot trail!" He crossed a set of railroad tracks and a logging road and a clearing strewn with coal. In his headlamp, Chapman could see a rusty conveyor belt and other industrial machinery of the West Coal Company. It was nearly midnight, but the dogs kept leading him uphill, toward Usher Top. For two hours, he strained and struggled up the face of the ridge, his dogs never letting up. At one point he halted them and heard thrashing in the blackberry bushes, not more than fifty yards up the mountain.

In another ten minutes, Chapman and the dogs had nearly reached the mountain's summit. Halting his dogs again, he heard silence--nothing but the crickets and a slight breeze whispering through the oaks and the rush of the river down in the moonlit valley, hundreds of feet below. It was ten minutes past two on Monday morning. Sandy and Little Red yanked Chapman a few feet farther. They snuffled and sniffed in the wet leaves. Their bodies went rigid, but still they didn't bark or bay--they only wagged their tails.

Chapman shined his lamp at a bulge in the forest floor. From his shoulder holster, he produced a Smith & Wesson .38 Chiefs Special. "Don't move or I'll shoot!"

Then, like a ghoul, a pale white man rose lurchingly from the leaves. He was wet and haggard and smeared in mud. His scratched arms were crusted with poison ivy. He wore a navy blue sweatshirt and dungarees and black track shoes. James Earl Ray's fifty-four hours of freedom had come to an end.

Chapman slapped some cuffs over the fugitive's wrists and frisked him. Ray had a map of East Tennessee and $290--a stash he'd apparently saved up from his $35-per-month job in the prison laundry. Aside from the map, he had nothing on his person that appeared to have come from outside the prison, nothing that indicated he'd had any help.

"Ray, how do you feel?"

"Good," he mumbled, averting his eyes in the lamp glare.

"Had anything to eat?"

"Naw," Ray said. "Only a little wheat germ, is all."

Chapman got on the radio to share the good news--and in the process learned that other bloodhounds had found another fugitive down on the New River several hours earlier (the sixth and final runaway wouldn't be caught until Tuesday). Chapman congratulated Sandy and Little Red, tugging at their slobbery dewlaps. But he had to hand it to Ray, too. "For a 49-year-old man
⁷⁵²
who didn't know the mountains," he said later, "Ray really didn't do bad."

Inmate #65477 headed down the mountain, back to a prison term that would last, unbroken by any more escapes, until his death in 1998 from hepatitis C (probably contracted through a tainted blood transfusion he would receive after several black inmates repeatedly stabbed him). Now, tromping in manacles through the soggy Cumberland woods, Ray didn't say a word. He only thought about his mistakes and what he'd do differently next time, if he ever got another chance.

"It's disappointing being caught,"
⁷⁵³
he told an interviewer back at the prison. "I wasn't happy being run down. I'd rather be ...
out there
. But it's not the end of the world. There's tomorrow."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In order to trace the final days of Martin Luther King, and to follow in James Earl Ray's fugitive footsteps, I had to go on a round-the-world odyssey, one that required many road trips and many flights over many years--and one that now taxes my memory of all the good folks I need to thank.

But let me try: In Puerto Vallarta, Lori Delgado was most generous in guiding me to Ray's haunts. In the early going, the prizewinning King scholar David Garrow proved extremely helpful during a visit to Cambridge University. Pedro and Isabel Branco were nice enough to show me Lisbon and introduce me to the melancholy joys of fado--Portugal's answer to the Delta blues. In Austin, Doug and Anne Brinkley nursed me back to health after a hard fluish stint at the LBJ Presidential Library. My researches in London were a success thanks in no small part to Ben and Sarah Fortna, to Robert McCrum, and to Sarah Lyall of the
New York Times
. In Toronto, I must thank Mike Fuhr and the CBC's John Nicol for their expert help. In North Carolina, a big thanks to Sir Newton Stevens for his hospitality during my research junket to the UNC archives. In Birmingham, Arthur Hanes Jr., one of Ray's first lawyers, graciously shared his view of the case over a sumptuous pile of Jim 'n Nick's BBQ. In Boston, I thank Jon Haber and Carolyn Goldstein for their hospitality, as well as Tony Decaneas at the Panopticon Gallery and the archivist Alex Rankin at BU's Gotlieb Center.

I'm enormously grateful to the Hoover Institution's Edwards Media Fellows Program at Stanford University, which provided a generous research grant. Also at Stanford, a hearty thanks to Clayborne Carson and Clarence Jones at the King Papers Project. I also thank the MacDowell Colony for recharging my fizzled batteries in the mountains of New Hampshire, and the Bunburys in Ireland.

Several researchers proved indispensable in helping me track down key sources and exhume old newspaper and magazine accounts. I must especially thank Scott Reid in Atlanta, Jean Hannah Edelstein in London, Ciara Neill in Memphis, and Shay Brown in Santa Fe.

I logged a lot of quality time in my old hometown of Memphis, and my list of people to thank there is long and wide-ranging. First, my appreciation to Beverly Robertson and the staff of the National Civil Rights Museum, which organized a fascinating symposium in April 2008 to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the MLK assassination. I thank also John Campbell with the Shelby County District Attorney's Office, the retired pathologist Jerry Francisco, and the attorneys Mike Cody and Charlie Newman at Burch, Porter & Johnson.

Others who generously gave their time include Martha Huie, Louis Donelson, Charles Crump, John T. Fisher, and Marc Perrusquia. A special thanks to the whole crew at
Memphis
magazine, especially Ken Neill, Mary Helen Randall, and Michael Finger. Hope Brooks, at Cargill Cotton, helped me understand the world of "white gold," as did the fine folks at the Cotton Museum downtown.

I doff my hat to Edwin Frank, curator of the amazing Mississippi Valley Collection at the University of Memphis, and to Wayne Dowdy, over at the Memphis Room. I sincerely appreciate the forbearing souls at Quetzal on Union, my well-caffeinated research bunker during all my Memphis stays. Thanks also to Robin and Ann Smithwick, Billy Withers, John Harris, Jim McCarter, and everyone at the
Drake and Zeke
show. My gratitude to John Ruskey--a.k.a. River Jesus--for showing me the
real
Mississippi during a fabulous spring canoe trip, and to Mary Turner, at
Outside
, for making it possible.

Profound thanks (!) to my family in Memphis for all their love and support--Dot and Walker Wilkerson, Link Sides, Mona Smith, and Lynn and Jack Gayden. Thanks also to Mike Deaderick, my high-school history teacher: you inspired me more than you'll ever know.

I inflicted early versions of my manuscript on a number of friends who generously lent their sharp eyes and sound judgment. Special thanks to Kevin Fedarko, Laura Hohnhold, Tom Carroll, Ken Neill, James Conaway, and Ken DeCell. Thanks also to Mark Bowden for his early encouragement, to Ron Bernstein at ICM in Los Angeles, and to Jay Stowe and Hal Espen for their candid insights. To ReBecca and everyone at the Tart's Treats, my home away from home: you saved my hide.

I enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with the folks at Insignia Films in New York as they put together their provocative documentary
Roads to Memphis
for the PBS series
American Experience
. I thank everyone on the Insignia crew, especially Steve Ives, Amanda Pollak, Lindsey Megrue, and Dan Amigone. Likewise, Susan Bellows and Mark Samels at Boston's WGBH were a delight to work with.

In a category all by himself is the estimable Vince Hughes, whose first-class digital archive on the King assassination is perhaps the planet's greatest compendium on the subject. As both a colleague and a friend--and as a former police officer who was on duty that fateful April night--Vince has consistently been my ace in the hole. I can't thank him enough. Likewise, my friend Pallas Pidgeon, a fellow traveler in the mysteries of Memphis, helped me keep this project on track.

I'm blessed to have the finest editor, Bill Thomas, and the finest agent, Sloan Harris, in the business. Fancy praise would do no justice: they're simply the best. At Doubleday, I thank Melissa Ann Danaczko, who has stayed unwaveringly on the case, as well as the wizardly Todd Doughty. Thanks also to Kristyn Keene at ICM, always a source of good cheer.

And finally, a massive, blubbery thanks to Anne and the boys, who time and time again rescued me from the shadows of this book: I love you with all my heart and soul.

A NOTE ON SOURCES

The literature of the King murder, much like that of the Kennedy assassinations, is vast and dizzying, characterized by tendentious works that are often filled with bizarre assertions, anonymous sources, and grainy photographs purporting to prove that every organization this side of the Boy Scouts of America was involved in King's death. However, there are many excellent works on the King assassination, and three of them proved especially valuable in my research. The late William Bradford Huie, the first journalist to investigate Ray's claims, did an enormous amount of legwork and imaginative sleuthing; I relied not only on Huie's book
He Slew the Dreamer
(1970) but also on his personal papers archived at Ohio State--as well as documents provided by his widow, Martha Huie. The late George McMillan, author of
The Making of an Assassin
(1976), was the only journalist who spent serious time digging into Ray's early biography, family, and psychological profile. I made considerable use of McMillan's mountainous Ray archives housed at the University of North Carolina. Finally, when it comes to isolating and then ferociously dismantling conspiracy theories arising from the case, no one has come close to the formidable Gerald Posner and his first-rate
Killing the Dream
(1998).