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

CHAPTER 16

THE GAMEMASTER

²⁴¹ He made his way over to a salesman: My account of Galt's visit to the Long-Lewis hardware store is based on the initial FBI interview with the salesclerk Mike Kopp, April 8, 1968, FBI, MURKIN Files, 2323, sec. 21, pp. 143-44.

²⁴² "Mr. Sullivan requested": Halter, quoted in Garrow, The FBI and Martin Luther King Jr., p. 196.

²⁴³ "Did Martin Luther King do anything": Sullivan to Halter, memorandum, March 28, 1968, FBI files on the Memphis sanitation strike, doc. 167.

²⁴⁴ "The fine Hotel Lorraine": G. C. Moore to Sullivan, blind memorandum, March 29, 1968, quoted in Friedly and Gallen, Martin Luther King Jr., pp. 575-76.

²⁴⁵ "could end in great violence": Sullivan to DeLoach, memorandum, March 20, 1968, quoted in ibid., p. 570.

²⁴⁶ "Chicken a la King": Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 31, 1968.

²⁴⁷ "The headline-hunting high priest": Dallas Morning News article reprinted in the Memphis Commercial Appeal, April 2, 1968, p. 6.

²⁴⁸ "A Judas goat": St. Louis Globe-Democrat article cited in Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 364.

²⁴⁹ "a man who gets other people into trouble": Senator Robert Byrd news footage reproduced in the Insignia Films documentary Roads to Memphis, produced for the PBS program American Experience, WGBH, Boston.

²⁵⁰ "a powerful embarrassment": New York Times, March 31, 1968, p. 46.

²⁵¹ "like striking a match": Memphis Commercial Appeal, March 30, 1968, p. 1.

²⁵² took a shower and pulled on some clothes ... just buttoning his shirt: In Beifuss, At the River I Stand, p. 253, the Invader Calvin Taylor is quoted as saying, "Dr. King came in. He had gotten out of the shower." In At Canaan's Edge, p. 737, Branch says, "King emerged just then buttoning his shirt."

²⁵³ warned him of a plot: Honey, Going Down Jericho Road, p. 373.

²⁵⁴ "What can I do to have a peaceful march?": My description of the conversation in the Rivermont suite between King and the young Invaders is primarily drawn from oral histories recorded in Beifuss, At the River I Stand, p. 254.

²⁵⁵ "He wasn't raising his voice": Ibid.

²⁵⁶ large sporting goods store: My depiction of Galt's visit to the Aeromarine sporting goods store is primarily drawn from the initial FBI interviews conducted on April 5, 1968, by Special Agent Neil Shanahan and other agents working out of the Birmingham field office. Among those interviewed were the salesclerks U. L. Baker and Don Wood, as well as the Aeromarine customer John DeShazo.

²⁵⁷ "I did not run away": King's quotation from the Rivermont press conference are taken from newsreels housed in the Sanitation Strike Collection, Memphis Multi-Media Archival Project, March 29, 1968, reels 35-37.

²⁵⁸ "It was perhaps his finest performance": Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, p. 422.

²⁵⁹ "must be called": Lee, quoted in Coretta Scott King, My Life with Martin Luther King Jr., p. 311.

²⁶⁰ "Can you get me out of Memphis?": Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, p. 422.

²⁶¹ dropped King off at the Butler Street YMCA: Ibid.

²⁶² somber dinner at the Abernathy house: The dinner is described in detail in Abernathy, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down, pp. 423-24. Also in Raines's interview with Abernathy in My Soul Is Rested, pp. 466-67. See also Garrow, Bearing the Cross, p. 615, and Branch, At Canaan's Edge, p. 741.

²⁶³ Galt returned to Aeromarine: My description of Galt's second trip to Aeromarine is adapted from the aforementioned FBI interviews, conducted in Birmingham on April 5, 1968, with store employees.

²⁶⁴ "The pump-action aids": Remington company literature describing the Gamemaster 760's attributes is quoted in Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, p. 138.

²⁶⁵ "wide enough field of view": Specifications and special features of the Redfield scope come from company literature reproduced in McMillan, Making of an Assassin, pp. 292-93.