Capturing the Hunt for MLK's Assassin

Bo Emerson - Atlanta Journal Constitution

The killer was a grab bag of traits in search of a personality. As he whiled away his time in his low-rent Los Angeles hotel, eating potted meat and attending strip bars, he sought direction.

He took a correspondence course on locksmithing, attended bartending school, studied dance, acquired camera equipment, volunteered for George Wallace's presidential campaign and planned a career in pornographic films.

And he watched the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s movements very carefully.

Calling himself Eric S. Galt, he would also go by the names of Paul Bridgman, Ramon George Sneyd, John Willard, and, in the Missouri penitentiary, #00416-J.

The strange year's journey is the subject of Memphis-born writer Hampton Sides' new book, "Hellhound on his Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for his Assassin (Doubleday; $28.95)." Sides, former editor of Outside magazine, follows this soft-focused assassin from a Missouri prison to the bathroom of a Memphis flophouse with a hunting rifle in his hands.

A PBS documentary based on the book will air Monday, and Sides will appear at the Carter Center on Wednesday to speak about the book.

Did this man pull the trigger? Hundreds of theorists say that he didn't or that he was a patsy for an unseen conspiracy.

Unlike many of the books written about the King assassination, Sides doesn't attempt to settle that question, but focuses on the killer's trail as he tracks the civil rights giant and on the FBI's unprecedented manhunt that extended to Canada and London.

Sides refers to the killer by whatever alias he's using at the time and doesn't introduce his real name, James Earl Ray, until 40 chapters into the book. "I went along with his lie," Sides explained. "I guess I'm playing around his identity, because his identity is incoherent."

It's a device that matches the confusing jumble that is Ray's personality.

"I describe Ray as a squid, squirting out these clouds of ink," said Sides. "He loves to keep people confused about what he is, where he is, what part of what he's saying is the truth."

The gargantuan research effort --- Sides includes 50 pages of notes on sources --- and the wealth of information about Ray's picaresque, sometimes bumbling, sometimes brilliant tactics add telling detail to the portrait. And yet Ray remains a cipher. Sides points out that even his plastic surgeon, who gave Ray a nose-job, couldn't describe his face.

During a freakish late-April snowstorm at his home in Santa Fe, N.M., Sides, 48, spoke about the "pivotal" moment in the life of his native city and his pursuit of that story.

Q. Do you think this book will put to rest any of the conspiracy theories?

A. Absolutely not. I could have a photograph of Ray in the bathroom holding the .30-06 with King in the background and no one would buy it. They'd say, 'You doctored it!' Conspiracy is part of human nature. There will always be those who believe in conspiracies and that's fine. They should write their own book.

Q. There have been many books written about the assassination. What made you decide to write one?

A. I met a cop in Memphis, a retired cop named Vince Hughes who was a dispatcher on duty that night, and this event touched him in a profound way. He spent his retirement compiling the most comprehensive digital archive [of the King assassination], including FBI documents, police documents, photos, dispatcher recordings. . . . He's been patiently, quietly, calmly collecting documents for 25 years. This is the first book able to use those documents.

Q. The King family didn't believe Ray was responsible and Dexter King was photographed shaking hands with Ray in prison. What did you think of that?

A. The whole thing with Dexter shaking the hand of Ray was strange to say the least. I don't know anyone close to the case who thinks Ray wasn't at least involved. There is no question that he was there, he admitted he was there, he bought the weapon, the scope, the binoculars. At the very least Dexter should recognize that Ray was a participant in the assassination of his father. Why he did that I had no idea.

Q. Ray is an unlikely assassin. Why would he kill King?

A. The ingredients are: Yes, he's a racist; yes, he really believes in the Wallace campaign; yes, he wants recognition and has this ambition to do something big; yes, he has some mental illness, accentuated by long-term use of amphetamines. You put that all in the blender and you try to come up with something.

I'd love to be able to tell readers I got it all figured out, this is exactly why he did it, but he lied so much, changed his story so much and all [those] around him lied so much, that we may never know. He went to his grave [in 1998] with so many secrets.

Q. One of the bits of evidence that eventually leads the FBI to Ray is a telltale tag from a dry cleaners on his boxer shorts. Who sends boxer shorts to the cleaners?

A. He lived in a flophouse that did not have any laundry facilities and he was very fastidious about his laundry. . . . He lived in these dirty places and hung out with these lowlifes, but he was keen on having clean clothes. He wore suits like he'd risen above the filth around him, but that, in a way, is what got him caught. If he had been a slob, things might have turned out differently.

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