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

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).

My rendering of the ever-potent (and ever-bizarre) figure of J. Edgar Hoover was particularly enriched by three fine biographies: Curt Gentry's highly readable J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets; Richard Gid Powers's exhaustively researched Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover; and Burton Hersh's provocative dual biography, Bobby and J. Edgar: The Historic Face-Off Between the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover That Transformed America. In helping me understand Hoover's intense antipathy toward King, I am greatly indebted to the Johnson administration's attorney general Ramsey Clark, who sat for an interview, as well as to David Garrow for his groundbreaking work The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr.: From "Solo" to Memphis. Also of great utility was the revealing compendium Martin Luther King Jr.: The FBI File, painstakingly assembled by Michael Friedly and David Gallen.

My account of the international manhunt for James Earl Ray is drawn from multiple sources--including personal interviews, memoirs, and official documents. Chief among these are the FBI's MURKIN files, including a wealth of largely unpublished FD-302 reports assembled by FBI agents in field offices across the nation. I also relied heavily on the thirteen-volume King assassination Appendix Reports compiled by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Three books, by three official participants in various aspects of the manhunt, were extremely useful to my research: Cartha DeLoach's revealing memoir, Hoover's FBI; the Justice Department official Roger Wilkins's searching autobiography, A Man's Life; and Ramsey Clark's Crime in America.

Anyone interested in knowing more about the George Wallace movement has three excellent biographies to choose from--authoritative works on which I relied in my several passages concerning the 1968 Wallace campaign. Foremost among these is Dan Carter's absorbing work, The Politics of Rage. Also of great interest are Stephan Lesher's George Wallace: American Populist and Marshall Frady's engagingly well-written Wallace: The Classic Portrait of Alabama Governor George Wallace.

In describing the tragic swirl of events in Memphis that led up to the King assassination, I found two books especially helpful. Joan Turner Beifuss's engrossing and highly readable At the River I Stand was the first work to make use of a treasure trove of oral histories taken by the Memphis Search for Meaning Committee. Michael Honey's definitive Going Down Jericho Road elucidates the sanitation strike and shows how events in Memphis fit into larger movements of U.S. labor history. The best work on the riots that consumed the nation after King's assassination is undoubtedly A Nation on Fire by Clay Risen.

I drew from a wealth of memoirs written by the King family and the SCLC inner circle. Among the most helpful were works by King's widow (Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr.); by his father (Martin Luther King Sr., Daddy King); by his son (Dexter Scott King, Growing Up King); by his second-in-command (Ralph Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down); by his legal adviser (Clarence Jones, What Would Martin Say?); and by his most loyal lieutenant (Andrew Young, An Easy Burden). I must also convey my admiration for the two preeminent, broad-canvas works on King and the movement--David Garrow's Pulitzer Prize-winning Bearing the Cross and Taylor Branch's remarkable three-volume achievement, America in the King Years.

My account of James Earl Ray's travels is drawn principally from his own words found in a rich and sometimes bewildering range of documents. These include Ray's "20,000 Words" (a handwritten account of his movements while on the lam); Ray's testimony before the House Select Committee on Assassinations, including eight official interviews conducted while he was incarcerated at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary; lengthy interviews Ray gave to such media outlets as Playboy, CBS News, and the Nashville Tennessean; handwritten letters he sent to his brothers while serving at Brushy Mountain; and his own two books, Tennessee Waltz and Who Killed Martin Luther King? Ray's ever-changing accounts over the years, like his ever-changing aliases, make for a record that's sometimes maddening and sometimes mystifying but also, at times, quite revealing. As they say, a busted watch tells the truth twice a day.