Legacy of Secrecy (118 page)

the shot had come from the direction of the rooming house.” The thick

bushes were just below the rooming house, and because of a retaining

wall, both the bushes and the rooming house windows were higher than

the Lorraine’s second-floor balcony.6

Across Mulberry Street, tenants on the second floor of the rooming

house heard the gunshot. The HSCA found that “Charles Anschutz

heard a shot, opened his door, and saw a man fleeing down the hallway

from the direction of the bathroom.” But he didn’t get a good look at

him, and “was unable to give a good description” to police. In about the

past hour, Anschutz had “made two attempts to use the bathroom and

found it occupied on each occasion.” He was told by another second-

floor tenant, Charles Stephens, “that the bathroom was being used by

the new tenant in 5-B,” which Ray had rented earlier.7

Charles Stephens shared a small apartment with his common-law

wife, Grace Walden. On the day of the shooting, Stephens “heard a loud

explosion that he recognized as a shot. After looking out the window

toward the Lorraine Motel, he heard footsteps running in the hallway.

He went to the door, opened it, looked out, and observed a man with

something under his arm turning the corner at the end of the hallway.

Stephens was sure the individual had come from the bathroom adjoin-

ing his apartment because of the loudness of the shot.” While the man

Stephens saw “fit the general description of James Earl Ray,” he didn’t

get a good look at his face.8

Stephens’ wife, Grace Walden, was bedridden; when police inter-

viewed her “shortly after the shooting,” she told them that the new

“tenant of 5-B had been running back and forth between 5-B and the

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bathroom, and about 2 minutes before the shot was fired, he had returned

to the bathroom. After the shot, the person in the bathroom ran down

the hall toward the front of the building. She said she was sick, did not

get out of bed that day, and did not see the man.”9

James Earl Ray fled down outside stairs into a four-foot-wide alley that

separated his small wing of the rooming house from the main build-

ing. That structure housed two other businesses, including the Canipe

Amusement Company, two doors south of the rooming house entrance.

Canipe Amusements’ recessed entrance was slightly more than one car

length north of Ray’s white Mustang, which was parked on the same

side of the street. Based on a reenactment, the Justice Department Task

Force estimated it would have taken Ray forty-five seconds to clear the

rooming house.10

Some experts think Ray stopped by his room to get his zipper bag

after he ran out of the bathroom—otherwise, he would have had to lug

it with him each time he went into the bathroom. But Ray’s room was

only two doors down from the bathroom, so stopping there to grab the

bag would have added only a few seconds to his escape time. His bag

probably hadn’t been unpacked, since Ray later wrote in a letter that

he brought his own blanket “in case he had to spend the night” in the

flophouse. Since Ray had already checked out of the New Rebel Inn, he

must not have intended to sleep in the flophouse room he’d rented three

hours earlier—if things went according to plan.

Once on the sidewalk, Ray would have walked quickly down South

Main Street toward his Mustang. The Justice Department estimates it

would have taken him only fifteen seconds to get to his Mustang, which

was just over forty feet away, south of Canipe Amusements. But before

he reached his car, Ray apparently did something that has caused con-

troversy for forty years—and that ensured his eventual capture. As the

Justice Department described the situation, based on early interviews

with three witnesses:11

Guy Warren Canipe, Jr., in his place of business, Canipe Amusement

Co. . . . heard a thud near the front door of his store, looked up to see

a white male walk rapidly past his store going south . . . and, with

the two customers in his store, went to the front door, where they

observed a small white car, a Mustang according to the two custom-

ers, pull away going north from a curbside parking place just south

of Canipe’s store.

The thud Canipe had heard was the sound of a bundle being dropped;

the man who apparently dropped it was described as “dressed in a dark

suit . . . white, approximately 30 years of age with a medium build,” and

with a height and weight consistent with that of James Earl Ray, who

said he was wearing a suit that day. The bundle contained “valuable

pieces of evidence,” including the rifle Ray had bought in Birmingham

and “a blue zipper bag [containing] various toilet articles along with a

pair of men’s underwear with laundry tags, a pair of binoculars, two

cans of beer, [and] a York Arms Company case sales receipt dated April

4, 1968.”12 Within several minutes, policemen swarmed the area and

found the bag.

The large bundle of rifle, blanket, and zipper bag was a treasure trove

of incriminating evidence. Ray’s fingerprints, in addition to appearing

on the Memphis newspaper mentioned earlier, were on the rifle (which

had one spent shell in its chamber), its scope, the binoculars, and a beer

can. In those pre–high-speed computer days, it could take weeks to

match prints by hand, if they were on file, but it could be done eventu-

ally. Authorities were fortunate to get so many prints from the bundle,

since they found no prints of Ray’s in the rooming house—Ray had once

bragged that he knew how to avoid leaving fingerprints. Ray’s bag also

contained his prison radio, which had his prison ID number scratched

on it, though that would be overlooked until Ray had been identified

through his fingerprints.13

The entrance to Canipe’s was only a few feet deep, and the bundle

was easily visible to anyone on the sidewalk. Assistant District Attorney

John Campbell, who investigated the case in the 1990s, told an author

that if Ray “had not dropped the bundle there, he might well have gotten

away with the crime. It was that close to being a perfect assassination.”14

But the bundle was dropped, and just over three hours after Dr. King

was shot, it was delivered to the FBI, “who immediately had it flown

by agent courier to Washington for [the] laboratory examination” that

would eventually help identify the fingerprints as James Earl Ray’s.15

Debates have raged for years about why Ray dropped the bundle;

Ray himself repeatedly claimed that someone else had dropped it to

incriminate him. Then again, Ray claimed he hadn’t known that Dr.

King was at the Lorraine, despite the newspaper, with his fingerprint,

that had an article about it. Ray also said he didn’t know Dr. King had

been shot when he left Memphis just after 6:00 PM, and that he’d left

Memphis only because of “his instinctive fear of police and his concern

that something had gone wrong with Raoul’s gunrunning scheme.”16

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The main reason usually cited for Ray’s dropping the bundle, rather

than taking it to his car, just over a dozen feet away, is that he spotted

a police car. Some authors say that as soon as Ray came out of the alley

between the two buildings and turned left toward his Mustang, he saw

the front of a police car, much farther down Main Street. According to

this scenario, Ray walked a couple of car lengths down to the Canipe’s

entrance, dropped the gun/bundle on the sidewalk there, and contin-

ued walking one more car length to his Mustang. However, it would

have been more logical for Ray to have simply dropped the bundle

in the deep, narrow alley as soon as he saw the police car, rather than

walking with it down the sidewalk and leaving his rifle in a far more

visible place.

Attorney William Pepper says the police car in question really wasn’t

that close, or clearly visible, to Ray. The car belonged to Officer Emmett

“Gene” Douglass, who broadcast the first alert about the shooting on

his police car radio. Douglass later told the attorney he had been parked

beside the fire station, which Pepper says “was set back about sixty feet

from the sidewalk.” CNN came up with a fresh angle in 2008, when cor-

respondent Soledad O’Brien broadcast new information from Douglass,

who had been parked next to the fire station, which was approximately

170 feet south of Canipe’s Amusements. According to CNN, after hear-

ing the shot and radioing the alert, Douglass got out of his car and

started running north on Main Street, toward Canipe’s. He stopped

twenty or thirty feet away from Canipe’s when a fellow officer called

him, then Douglass turned and started heading away from Canipe’s.

While Douglass didn’t see Ray or the bundle, Soledad O’Brien indicated

that Ray could have seen Douglass running toward him, causing Ray

to drop the bundle.17

Douglass’s new statement may explain why Ray dropped so much

incriminating evidence. Scotland Yard detective Alec East testified to

the HSCA that while he was guarding James Earl Ray in England, Ray

told him “he had seen a policeman or police vehicle and thrown the gun

away.”18 However, Ray denied saying that. In addition, there are other

factors to consider—such as why Ray didn’t simply pick up the bundle

when he saw that Douglass had turned away, since Ray was only one

car length away from his Mustang and a perfect getaway.

There is also an issue of timing, based on a summary of Douglass’s

initial statement back in 1968. According to the Justice Department Task

Force, “Douglass . . . heard the shot when it was fired. He immediately

got out of the car and ran toward the rear of the fire station with the other

men.” That would have meant he was running away from Canipe’s, not

toward it. “After Patrolman Douglass realized what had happened, he

returned to the lead car along with [another patrolman] and radioed the

dispatcher that Dr. King had been shot. Douglass and [another patrol-

man] then drove the lead car south on South Main,” taking them away

from Canipe’s, and eventually to the “entrance of the Lorraine Motel.”

Douglass “later drove the car [from the Lorraine] to the front of the

buildings” that included Canipe’s. Based on original police statements,

the Justice Department report doesn’t have Douglass running on foot

toward Canipe’s, and the elapsed time in which Douglass could have

arrived near Canipe’s is far greater than the one minute Justice says it

took for Ray to get from the flophouse bathroom to his Mustang.19

One other anomalous detail about the incriminating bundle found

at Canipe Amusements was provided in a later account by owner Guy

Canipe. Arthur Hanes Jr., one of Ray’s first defense attorneys, who later

became a judge, interviewed Canipe as a possible witness for Ray. Hanes

Jr. later testified that Canipe told him “the package was dropped in his

doorway . . . about ten minutes before the shot was fired.” Hanes Jr. was

going to have Canipe appear for the defense at Ray’s first trial, until Ray

switched lawyers and pled guilty.20

Canipe’s story that the bundle was dropped ten minutes before the

shot would show that Ray was framed. However, that version of the

story is greatly at odds with Canipe’s initial statements to police and

the FBI, as well as those of his two customers—all made soon after the

shooting and prior to Ray’s capture. We believe that Hanes Jr. was accu-

rately conveying what Canipe told him, so the question is why Canipe

would have changed his story to help Ray, after he’d first helped to direct

suspicion toward him.

Canipe owned an amusement company, as did Carlos Marcello, mob-

ster Frank Joseph Caracci, Santo Trafficante, and a kingpin of the Mon-

treal heroin route that used Ray. (Sam Bowers, a likely Milteer associate,

also owned one.) The Mafia found these companies to be useful cover,

since they often provided jukeboxes in bars and supplied them with

records on a regular basis. Those regular visits, and cash transactions,

could cover for gambling, protection, money laundering, and other

criminal pursuits. Author Larry Hancock has pointed out that little is

known about Canipe himself, or any Mafia ties he might have had.

It’s important to remember that the bag was dropped, and that Ray

fled in his Mustang, just over a minute after the fatal shot was fired.

Though there were dozens of the police in the general area, their first

inclination was to head for the Lorraine Motel, not to the rooming house

area.

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In Fire Station 2, when the bullet struck Dr. King, black undercover

patrolman “Richmond, who was manning the surveillance post in the

rear of the station, yelled throughout the station that Dr. King had been

shot.” The tactical-unit patrolmen “all ran out the north side of the fire

station and then east toward the rear of the fire station and the Lorraine