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

CHAPTER 21

A ROOM WITH A VIEW

³¹⁷ "Oh, I'll come back later": FBI interview with the New Rebel Motel laundress Sadie McKay, conducted on April 11, 1968, by Special Agent John Bauer, out of the FBI's Memphis field office, Hughes Collection.

³¹⁸ "beer house": James Earl Ray's testimony in House Select Committee on Assassinations (hereafter HSCA), Appendix Reports, vol. 1, p. 101.

³¹⁹ "Soon it will all be over": Interview with James Earl Ray's brother Jerry Ray, in McMillan, Making of an Assassin, p. 299.

³²⁰ tumbledown rooming house: My description of Brewer's flophouse is drawn from multiple sources, including Memphis Police Department crime scene photographs, newspaper and magazine accounts from 1968, and Memphis Police Department and FBI interviews with Brewer and her rooming house guests, as well as my own visits to the rooming house, which is now part of the National Civil Rights Museum.

³²¹ "Got any vacancies?": My account of Galt's checking in to Brewer's rooming house is primarily drawn from FBI interviews with Brewer, especially the initial bureau interview conducted on April 5, 1968, by Special Agent Robert Boyle, Hughes Collection. I also relied on a number of Memphis Police Department statements: "Statement of Mrs. Bessie Ruth Brewer," April 4, 1968; "Statement of Jewell G. Ray, Captain of the Memphis Police Department," April 17, 1968; and "Statement of James Vincent Papia, Lieutenant with the Memphis Police Dept.," April 16, 1968. Finally, I drew from my own interviews with Jewell Ray on February 13, 2009, and with James Papia on March 2, 2009.

³²² Charlie Stephens: FBI interview with Stephens, conducted on April 4, 1968, by Special Agents John Bauer and Stephen Darlington, Hughes Collection.

³²³ Grace Walden: FBI interview with Grace Stephens, conducted on April 4, 1968, by Special Agents Bauer and Darlington, Hughes Collection.