Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin (43 page)

Third, the spent cartridge that Special Agent Jensen had removed from the chamber had been fired in the same Gamemaster rifle, as evidenced by a tiny "extractor mark" Frazier found imprinted on the metal casing. At the base of this spent cartridge case, Frazier discovered a head stamp that said, "R-P .30-06 SPRG," indicating that it was a Remington-Peters round of the same caliber as the ammunition found in the ammo box.

Frazier concluded, based on the "physical characteristics of the rifling impressions" as well as other factors, that the bullet removed from King's body
could
have been fired from the Remington Gamemaster. However, he could not say with scientific certainty that the bullet came from this rifle, "to the exclusion of all other rifles." This was because the bullet, as he described it in his report, "had been distorted due to mutilation" as it struck hard bone while passing through King's body.

Frazier knew that the mechanical components of individual firearms (such as the firing pin and breech face) have distinctive microscopic traits that can engrave telltale markings on bullets. The tiny striations often found on fired bullets are known as individual identifying characteristics and are, in effect, the ballistics equivalent of a fingerprint. Frazier had hoped the bullet that killed King would exhibit these telltale markings, but it didn't: the round, having been chipped, dented, warped, and broken into several discrete parts, was missing the critical information.

Though a dismaying discovery, it was not uncommon; bullets often came to Frazier's lab in sorry condition. Such was the secondary effect of firearms violence: projectiles, in doing their damage, themselves became damaged.

Frazier also studied the windowsill that had been removed from the communal bathroom at Bessie Brewer's rooming house. Making microscopic comparisons between the half-moon indentation in the windowsill and various markings on the rifle barrel, he determined to his satisfaction that the dent could have been caused by the Gamemaster's recoil upon firing--it was "consistent" with the barrel's contours and appeared to have been created recently--but again, he stopped short of an absolute confirmation.

Finally, Frazier examined King's bloody clothes, subjecting them to chemical tests. He found "no partially burned or unburned gunpowder" on King's dress shirt, suit coat, and necktie, which conclusively confirmed what everybody who'd been at the Lorraine already knew--that King had
not
been shot at close range. But when Frazier tested the clothing with sodium rhodizonate, he found lead particles on King's coat lapel, the right collar of the shirt, and the severed tie. This lead residue was compositionally consistent with the lead in the bullet extracted from King's body--and consistent with what Frazier would expect a high-velocity .30-06 round to deposit around the site of a wound.

WHILE THE FBI pored over King's mangled clothes, Eric Galt was in Atlanta, only a few miles from King's church and birthplace; he, too, had clothes on his mind. Around 9:30 a.m. eastern time, Galt dropped by the Piedmont Laundry on Peachtree Street to pick up the clothes he had left before he went to Memphis. The laundry's counter clerk, Mrs. Annie Estelle Peters,
⁴⁹⁵
had waited on Galt when he dropped off the clothes on April 1, and she immediately recognized the returning customer when he walked through the door. As before, he was neatly dressed and clean shaven; this time, though, he seemed to be in a hurry. He was abrupt in his speech and impatient when she left the counter to locate his clothes.

She returned with his items--three pieces of dry cleaning and an assortment of regular laundry totaling $2.71, which he paid for in cash. There was a black-checked coat, a pair of gray trousers, a striped brown tie, four undershirts, three underdrawers, a pair of socks, and a washcloth. All his laundry items were affixed with tiny identifying tags that said, "EGC-83"--which was Galt's permanent "laundry mark" for all his dealings with Piedmont. Hastily, Galt picked up the folded laundry, neatly stacked in a rectangular package of stapled paper, and slung the hangered dry-cleaning items over his shoulder. He walked out of the shop and headed up Peachtree, in the direction of his rooming house on Fourteenth Street.

Galt didn't barge into the rooming house--he watched and waited from a distance until he was "satisfied there was no unusual activity
⁴⁹⁶
around the place." Then he moved quickly. Neither the tenants nor the owner, Jimmie Garner, saw him. He tidied up his room a bit, throwing some trash in a plastic bag and dropping it into a garbage can out back. He also threw out the manual typewriter he'd had since his time in Puerto Vallarta--it would be too cumbersome, he realized, for his fugitive travels to Canada. He packed a suitcase with his clean laundry and his self-help books and his Polaroid camera. He retrieved his .38 Liberty Chief revolver from its hiding place in the basement and stuck it in his belt. He assembled a wad of bills
⁴⁹⁷
that he later estimated to be slightly more than a thousand dollars--money saved, he later claimed, from various smuggling and fencing schemes over the past year. He stamped and addressed an envelope to the Locksmithing Institute in Little Falls, New Jersey, containing the final lesson in his locksmithing correspondence course, an envelope he would mail later that morning. Then he dashed off a short note
⁴⁹⁸
for Mr. Garner on a piece of cardboard--a note clearly designed to throw authorities off his scent. He said he unexpectedly had to go to Birmingham but would come back for his remaining belongings--he specifically mentioned the portable Zenith television--in a few days. He placed the note on his bed and left his key in the lock. Then Galt grabbed his suitcase and never returned to 113 Fourteenth Street Northeast.

Probably hailing another cab, he headed for the bus station.

AT THE R. S. LEWIS Funeral Home just a few blocks from Beale Street, Martin Luther King's corpse lay in a temporary bronze casket in a viewing room of purple drapes and lurid stained glass. He was clothed in a fresh dark suit.

No public viewing had been announced, yet hundreds of people had been lining up since dawn outside the funeral home, hoping to view the body. The Lewis specialists, listening to crackling recordings of King's speeches, had labored through the night--embalming, grooming, dressing, and beautifying the body. "There was so much to do,"
⁴⁹⁹
the mortuary's co-proprietor Clarence Lewis told a reporter. "The jawbone was just dangling. They had to reset it and then build all that up with plaster." They'd had to work in such a rush that Ralph Abernathy, having been in Dr. Francisco's autopsy suite the night before, worried that his friend might not be presentable. "I didn't know whether the funeral home would attempt to repair the indignity of the autopsy," he said. But when he arrived from the Lorraine, Abernathy was amazed at what the Lewis cosmetologists had done with their tinting powders and restorative waxes. "The body appeared unblemished,"
⁵⁰⁰
Abernathy said. "The morticians had done their job well."

Before the crowds were admitted, Abernathy and others from the SCLC inner circle lingered a few minutes with their leader. "We all wanted to be there,"
⁵⁰¹
Andrew Young wrote. "Even though we all knew that we, the living, must move on with our lives, with our movement, we wanted to be near Martin for as long as we possibly could."

Then the doors opened, and the long, solemn line of visitors shuffled through. They were an eclectic mix of humanity--"from company presidents to field hands," one newspaper reporter put it. Photographers from around the world snapped pictures. When a woman kissed King's right cheek, Clarence Lewis grew concerned. "It will spoil the makeup job,"
⁵⁰²
he said. Many of the mourners were garbage workers and their families, who, as they peered into the still face of the martyr, were touched both by sadness and guilt, a feeling that he had died for them. They leaned over, they spoke to King, they touched his face, and they wept.

"I wish it was Henry Loeb
⁵⁰³
lying there," one woman said.

"Why'd this happen to you,
⁵⁰⁴
Dr. King?" said another, leaning into the coffin. "What are we going to do now?"

For several hours, people marched through the funeral home. They moaned and wailed and prayed and sang. Abernathy said, "The Lord is my light and my salvation." Billy Kyles said, "I am the resurrection and the life." The cameras kept flashing.

Finally the lid was lowered, and the coffin was placed in the back of the long limousine. When Abernathy shut the hearse doors, he placed his hand on the glass and said, "Long live the King."

A two-mile procession of cars followed the hearse as it crept through the city streets and then motored out to the Memphis Metropolitan Airport, escorted by National Guardsmen and police. The convoy turned toward the tarmac, where an Electra four-engine prop jet had just landed, a plane that had been provided to the King family by Senator Robert Kennedy. The aircraft's hatch door was open. Standing at the lip, hatless, wearing a black dress and black gloves and staring out over the approaching motorcade with a queenly rectitude, was Coretta Scott King.

32
ONE MAN ON THE RUN

RAMSEY CLARK AND Cartha DeLoach spent most of the morning making the rounds in Memphis. They dropped by the local FBI office to bolster the morale of Jensen's already beleaguered cadre of field agents. They paid a visit to the U.S. attorney's office, to reassure prosecutors that the FBI would work hand in glove with them to build a successful case against King's assailant, if and when he was caught. Then they met with some of the top National Guard officers. Clark told the commanders they were doing a fine job but urged them not to use excessive force. He was particularly troubled by the use of tanks. "I thought it was a provocation,"
⁵⁰⁵
Clark said, "and it was also a kind of sorry sign as to what kind of country we are. I mean, what's around here that calls for
tanks?"

Clark's entourage quickly moved on to city hall for a meeting with Mayor Henry Loeb. Outside the building, some of the garbage strikers were marching with their I AM A MAN signs. Clark was clearly moved by the succinct clarity of the slogan. "What a message that was,"
⁵⁰⁶
he later said. "It was one of the most imaginative demonstrations and one of the most powerful symbols that came out of the civil rights movement." The Justice Department official Roger Wilkins was similarly touched by the sight of the garbage workers, solemnly parading on the morning after King's assassination: "To see these men
⁵⁰⁷
walking in a very orderly fashion, asserting, 'I should be treated as a human being'--you couldn't
not
be moved by that. I stood there with tears rolling from my eyes."

Clark and Wilkins strode inside the white marble halls for their visit with Mayor Loeb, which went nowhere. Wilkins described Loeb as "gracious in a Southern kind of way,
⁵⁰⁸
but staunch as a brick wall." Clark tried to persuade Loeb to do whatever it took to resolve the strike--it was not only in the city's best interests but in the nation's as well. Loeb dug in his heels even as he lavished his Washington visitors with hospitality. "We did not move him one inch," recalled Wilkins, "and he did not have one inch of sympathy for these men who were out there pacing around the building."