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

25 THE WEAPON IS NOT TO BE TOUCHED

GUY CANIPE, the owner of Canipe's Amusement Company, was sitting at his desk³⁷⁴ near the front of his shop, facing south, and listening to a selection of scratchy old 45s he'd punched into one of his jukeboxes for the two black customers in his store. An appraising man in his late fifties who wore a checked flannel shirt and spoke in a slow Texas drawl, Canipe liked any kind of music, his friends said, "so long as it made him money."

Surrounded by the carcasses of broken-down nickelodeons and pinball machines, he was sucking on a wad of tobacco and sifting through paperwork when he heard a thud in the enclave at the front of his store. Ordinarily, the noise wouldn't have registered with him. This was the sort of neighborhood where derelicts were always tossing trash--and where all manner of flotsam ended up on doorsteps; a year earlier, in fact, someone had left a perfectly good television on his doormat. But this time Canipe sensed something. He stood up, stepped over to the threshold, and beheld a curious bulge in his entryway, wrapped in a cloth that looked to him like a curtain.

Canipe looked up and spied a man heading south down Main Street. The stranger walked swiftly but did not break into a full run. Canipe could only see his back, but could tell he was a white man of medium build, neat in appearance, bareheaded, around thirty years old, and wearing a dark suit. He was, as Canipe put it, "not like the kind of people you see down here." By this time, the two black customers in Canipe's store, Julius Graham and Bernell Finley, had come forward, and they, too, got a look at the mysterious man.

He slipped behind the wheel of a white late-model Mustang about four or five spaces south of the shop, parked next to a large liquor billboard that said, VERY OLD BARTON, a popular brand of bourbon. The man cranked the motor and peeled off into the street heading north, passing right in front of the shop. Finley thought the Mustang made a "screeching" sound and then sped off, "like it was going to a fire--laying rubber down the street." As far as Canipe, Graham, and Finley could tell, the driver was the only person in the vehicle, but the Mustang was going too fast for any of them to take down a license plate number.

Now Canipe inspected the bundle at his doorstep. At one end, a black pasteboard box peeked from the fabric. Canipe, who was an avid hunter, could see the word "Browning" printed on the box and imagined for a second that someone had presented him with a generous lagniappe--a brand-new shotgun. The barrel glinted steel blue from the box. It was pointing at him.

Finley and Graham, curious, moved toward the door, but Canipe blocked their exit. He could see a policeman racing down South Main, his pistol drawn as he approached the bundle. "Get back," Canipe told his two customers. "There's some kind of trouble out here and I don't want no part of it."

The officer, Lieutenant Judson Ghormley of the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, had missed Galt and the squealing Mustang by no more than a minute. The forty-year-old Ghormley, who wore a khaki shirt and green uniform trousers, thought the little amusement shop was closed for the night and seemed surprised when Canipe cracked the door and poked his head out.

"You see who put this down?" Ghormley asked Canipe.

The shop owner told Ghormley he'd just missed the guy, and offered his description, with Finley and Graham chiming in. Finley could only say he was "medium height, medium weight, medium complexion" and that he wore a "dark suit--what color, I couldn't say." Graham was sure of one thing: the man had driven off in a Mustang, a white late-model Mustang.

Soon Ghormley got on his walkie-talkie and conveyed the information to police headquarters. "I have the weapon in front of 424 Main, and the subject ran south on Main Street!" he squawked excitedly.

The dispatcher shot back over the scratchy airwaves: "You are not to touch the weapon!³⁷⁵ Repeat--the weapon is not to be touched! You are advised to seal the area off completely. Any physical description on the subject?"

Ghormley radioed back over his walkie-talkie: "All we know is, he's a young white male, well dressed, dark colored suit."

Within minutes, the police dispatcher broadcast the very first description of the shooter and the probable getaway car: "Suspect described as young white male,³⁷⁶ well dressed, believed in late-model white Mustang, going north on Main from scene of shooting."

It was 6:10.

INSIDE THE ROOMING house, Charlie Stephens dashed back to his room³⁷⁷ and peered out the window. Across the way, the courtyard of the Lorraine Motel was pure chaos. On Mulberry Street, policemen scurried this way and that, and a line of officers advanced on the rooming house and formed a cordon.

From down below, in the brambled rear lot of the rooming house, a helmeted policeman gave Stephens a start. "Hey!" the cop yelled. "Get back from that window!"

Although Stephens had heard the gun go off in the bathroom, he had no idea what was really going on--he didn't even know Martin Luther King had been staying at the Lorraine.

The policeman eyed Stephens suspiciously. "Stay in your room," he commanded. "No one is allowed to leave the building!"

"But what is it?" Stephens yelled back. "What's happening?"

The look of pure befuddlement on Stephens's booze-reddened face must have convinced the cop that this man could not be judged a serious suspect. "It's Martin Luther King," the policeman said. "He's been shot."

AT THAT MOMENT, the sound of an approaching siren punctured the night. Fire department ambulance 401--a long-finned modified red Cadillac that looked rather like a hearse--screeched around the corner and pulled into the Lorraine courtyard. Emergency technicians hopped out and removed a stretcher from the rear doors of the ambulance. They hauled it up to the balcony and, with Abernathy and the others helping, managed to slide King onto the soft white bedding. The gurney stays were cinched in place, and firemen administered oxygen to King from a portable tank. Then a group of about six men, including Andy Young and the sheriff's deputy William DuFour, guided King's stretcher down the steps, negotiating the sharp turn of the staircase.

Young, for one, believed there was no hope for King, that this frantic press of medical attention was probably a useless formality. He thought King was already dead, or at least irretrievably on his way.

In the parking lot, concerned onlookers parted for the stretcher as it jounced over the asphalt. Georgia Davis, her eyes brimming with tears, threaded her way through the small crowd. She stood transfixed as the medics threw open the twin doors and eased King into the ambulance. Abernathy climbed in the back and crouched at King's side. On instinct, Davis followed Abernathy's lead and started to get into the ambulance, eager to be with her lover. But Andy Young touched her shoulder and said softly, "Georgia, I don't think³⁷⁸ you want to do that."

She seemed puzzled for a moment, her face caught in the flashing red dome light, but she realized Young was right: this was not her place. Any photographer could capture her there at King's side, and the awkward truth of a mistress would become part of history forever. She backed away from the ambulance and melted into the crowd.

The rear doors slammed shut, and at 6:09 the ambulance roared off for St. Joseph's Hospital, the nearest emergency room to the Lorraine. The driver, J. W. Walton, got on the radio and yelled to a dispatcher, "Give me the loop lights!"³⁷⁹ At Memphis Fire Headquarters, a city engineer threw a master switch that held the traffic lights at green on all north and south streets, while all the cross streets remained red. Now Walton could race to the hospital without having to slow down at even the busiest intersections.

The ambulance, escorted by several policemen on motorcycles, sped through downtown Memphis. One of the medics hovered over King, taking his pulse and blood pressure. A different oxygen mask was placed over his mouth, and the resuscitator pump soughed away. As the siren wailed in the twilight, Abernathy wondered if his friend could hear it, and if he was frightened.

"Is he alive?"³⁸⁰ Abernathy asked.

The medic gave a perfunctory nod. "Barely," he said. "Just barely."

After four breakneck minutes the ambulance pulled up to the St. Joseph's emergency room--the same emergency room that had treated James Meredith two years earlier after he'd been shot on his ill-fated march from Memphis. Catholic-run St. Joseph's Hospital was one of the largest and most prominent institutions in Memphis, but it had been chosen for one simple reason: it was closest to the Lorraine.

At 6:15 p.m., Martin Luther King, unconscious but with his heart still beating, was wheeled through the swinging double doors and down a long corridor toward the emergency room. Abernathy walked briskly at his side.

IN FRONT OF Canipe's Amusement Company on South Main, Lieutenant Judson Ghormley stood sentinel over the curious bundle the stranger had dropped on the ground. Faithful to the dispatcher's command, Ghormley had not laid a finger on it, but had simply parked himself in front of the door with his pistol drawn and awaited instructions from farther up the chain of command.

Captain Jewell Ray³⁸¹ of the police department's Intelligence Division raced down Main Street and halted in front of Canipe's. Thirty-six years old, a native of Memphis with a slow, custardy drawl, the craggy-faced Ray wore plain clothes--a sport coat and a tie. "Captain," Ghormley told Ray. "The guy dropped this."

Captain Ray crouched on a knee and studied the bundle. A dingy green bedspread was loosely twirled around a black cardboard box. He could also see a blue zippered satchel. Not wanting to taint the evidence with fingerprints, he removed a pencil from his breast pocket and used it to pull back the edge of the box cover. On the box he could plainly see the word "Browning." Next to the rifle, he saw a box of ammunition.

Impressed but also puzzled by the trove, Captain Ray ordered two other policemen, armed with shotguns, to guard it until homicide detectives arrived. As more police flooded the area, he had them block the doors to Canipe's and all the adjoining businesses along South Main, including Jim's Grill.

"No one leaves the area," he barked. "This entire block is to remain secure until Homicide gets here."

At that, Captain Ray, accompanied by Lieutenant Jim Papia, clambered up the narrow steps of Bessie Brewer's rooming house. On the second floor, they found tenants circulating in the dim halls, animatedly discussing what had happened. They first met a wild-eyed middle-aged man named Harold Carter who said he heard something "that sounded a mighty lot like a shot, but I'm crazy--don't pay any attention to what I say." Captain Ray then moved on to the deaf-mute, Mrs. Ledbetter, who gestured and made guttural mumbling sounds that made no sense, but she pointed down the hall. Willie Anschutz stepped into the conversation and told Captain Ray the shot had come from the bathroom. There was a guy in the bathroom who wouldn't come out, Anschutz said. "Then I heard what sounded like a shot in there. He took off down the hall with something in his arms. I told the guy, 'That sounded like a shot.' And he said, 'It was.'"

Then Captain Ray met Charlie Stephens, who appeared to be drunk and agitated by all the commotion. "Yeah, the shot come from the bathroom," Stephens said. "It was the new tenant, the guy in 5B. This afternoon, when he moved in, I heard a noise in there--sounded like he was moving furniture."

Ray and Papia raced down the hall and turned the coat-hanger "doorknob" of 5B. The door screaked open, revealing a cheerless room devoid of personal belongings or luggage. The two officers had a sinking feeling, an eerie sense that they'd missed their man by a matter of minutes. The bed was tidily made, but there was still a depression on one side of the mattress, as though someone had just been sitting there. The window overlooking the Lorraine was open. The curtains had been slid to one side and now rippled faintly in the breeze. A straight-backed chair was by the window, facing toward the Lorraine, and a large rickety dresser had been scooted across the floor, evidently to make room for the chair.

Ray and Papia walked to the window and tried to figure the sight lines. "Looks like he was settin' here watching," Lieutenant Papia said. "But it's not a good angle to shoot from."

Captain Ray tried to picture the shooter standing there and agreed. He began to think that Stephens was right--maybe the shot came from the bathroom.

As they turned to leave, however, Papia spotted something: on the floor were two short black leather straps. Papia thought they had come from a camera.

Now Captain Ray and Lieutenant Papia clomped down the linoleum hall to the bathroom. They opened the door and moved toward the window, which was cracked open about five inches. Ray tried to open the window farther, but it was jammed. He peered down into the littered yard and spotted a wire-mesh screen directly below, as though it had been jimmied from its groove.

Outside, through the gloaming, Ray and Papia could see the Lorraine dead ahead, about two hundred feet away. The motel parking lot was a confusion of swirling squad-car lights and chattering radios. Unlike in 5B, the sight line from this window to the Lorraine was a direct one. "Yeah," said Papia, "he could get a good shot from here."

Captain Ray discovered that the wooden windowsill had a curious marking, a half-moon indentation that appeared to him to have been freshly made; thinking it could have been caused by the recoil of a firing rifle barrel, he made a note of it, and later that night homicide detectives removed the sill and took it into evidence. By the look of things, the sniper would have had to stand in the bathtub to squeeze off the shot. Indeed, there appeared to be new scuff marks in the tub. Above the tub, higher along the wall, was a large palm print. It seemed likely to Captain Ray that the sniper, while climbing into the tub, had used one hand to steady himself against the wall.

Captain Ray ordered a policeman to guard the bathroom, and another to stand watch over 5B and secure the crime scene until homicide detectives and FBI agents could take over the case.

"Where's the landlord?" Captain Ray asked. Eventually comprehending him, Mrs. Ledbetter tugged at his sleeve and led him down the corridor to Bessie Brewer's room and office in the flophouse's adjoining wing. The deaf-mute gestured toward the door of room 2 and groaned.

"Open up!" Ray commanded, pounding on the door. "Police!"

A bolt slid open, and a nervous-looking Mrs. Brewer appeared at the door. In the room, an episode of Rawhide flickered on the television.

"Who rented room 5B?" Captain Ray wanted to know.

Mrs. Brewer couldn't remember the man's name. Flustered, she began to rummage around her office for the receipt book. She had heard the shot, she volunteered, or at least what sounded like a shot. She had stepped out into the hall and run into Willie Anschutz, who told her, "Your new roomer ran down the stairs with a gun!" She'd dashed down to 5B only to find it empty, just as Captain Ray and Lieutenant Papia would find it a few minutes later. Then, worried about her safety, she'd scurried back to her office and bolted the door.

The man in 5B had checked in around 3:00 or so, Mrs. Brewer said, and paid for a week's rent. He was dressed in a sharp-looking dark suit, like what a businessman would wear. She first showed him a nicer room toward the front of the building, but he turned it down.

"Here it is," Mrs. Brewer said, grasping the receipt book. She opened it up and found the stub for $8.50 made out earlier that day.

The roomer's name, she told Captain Ray, was John Willard.