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

PROLOGUE:

#416-J

¹ "bloodiest forty-seven acres in America": This and other details relating to Jeff City prison are adapted from Patrick J. Buchanan, "Jefferson City: The Pen That Just Grew," Nation, Nov. 6, 1964.

² "He was just a nothing here": McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 173, from his personal interview with Missouri corrections commissioner Fred Wilkinson.

³ "an interesting and rather complicated individual": Dr. Henry V. Guhleman (prison psychiatrist) to the Missouri Board of Promotion and Parole, Dec. 20, 1966, Hughes Collection.

⁴ Librium for his nerves: Ibid.

⁵ "in need of psychiatric help": Ibid.

⁶ applying a walnut dye: See the FBI's MURKIN Files, 4441, sec. 56, pp. 4-6.

⁷ considerable quantities of mineral oil: McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 181.

⁸ "When he was using": George McMillan, interview with the inmate Raymond Curtis, box 1, interview notes, McMillan Papers.

⁹ visitor was his brother: Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 40. See also Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, p. 72, in which John Ray acknowledges he visited his brother at Jeff City the day before the escape and agreed to assist in his brother's flight (facts that he had denied for years, including while under oath before the House Select Committee on Assassinations).

¹⁰ rather astonishing quantity of eggs: This and other descriptions of the escape come from James Earl Ray's own account in Tennessee Waltz, p. 42.

¹¹ two wads of cash: Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King?, p. 57.

¹² he could strut while sitting: James J. Kilpatrick, "What Makes Wallace Run?" National Review, April 18, 1967.

¹³ "backlash against anybody of color": Wallace on Meet the Press, April 23, 1967, quoted in Lesher, George Wallace, p. 389.

¹⁴ "This is a movement of the people": Ibid., p. 390.

¹⁵ "If the politicians get in the way": Ibid.

¹⁶ gave it all to the chickens: FBI, MURKIN Files, 3503, sec. 39, p. 9.

¹⁷ "I looked at the stars a lot": This quotation and other first-person depictions of Ray's flight from prison are drawn from James Earl Ray's "20,000 Words," House Select Committee on Assassinations, Appendix Reports, vol. 12.

¹⁸ called his brother: Ray and Barsten, Truth at Last, p. 73. John Ray admits that his brother called him and that he picked up the fugitive at a tavern in central Missouri and then drove him back to St. Louis.

¹⁹ hopped an eastbound freight train: Ray, Tennessee Waltz, p. 45.