Legacy of Secrecy (121 page)

fied that our source had known Spake for a long time, witnessed some

of Spake’s activities with Milteer, and was in a position to have heard a

portion of Ray’s call to Spake that morning.7

James Earl Ray phoned Hugh R. Spake on the morning of April 5 for

assistance with his escape. However, it was a Friday, a regular workday

for Spake at the Atlanta General Motors factory in the Lakewood neigh-

borhood. Because of the workers’ high hourly wages, plant management

closely monitored and documented attendance, so if Spake’s name ever

surfaced in the investigation, it would certainly look suspicious if he had

not been at work the day after King’s murder. Friday was also payday,

when Spake—often joined by Joseph Milteer—networked with his con-

tributors. Milteer would later admit that he was in Atlanta that morning.

However, because he and Spake were behind Dr. King’s murder, they

deliberately refrained from publicly celebrating his death. A knowing

look and a calm demeanor would have been all that was needed by their

most trusted, and now satisfied, longtime contributors. Those people

knew the type of Klan associates Spake and Milteer were involved with,

the kind of men who for decades had gotten away with murder in the

South. That knowledge helped to ensure that even Milteer and Spake’s

most ardent contributors wouldn’t boast publicly that their money had

helped to kill Dr. King—in addition to the fact that any such confession

would have made them accessories to murder.8

Witnesses document that at the Atlanta Housing project known as

Capitol Homes, Ray’s “Mustang was parked shortly before 9 AM [on]

April 5, 1968, by a lone man matching [Ray’s] description.” The hous-

ing project was just south of Georgia’s gold-domed State Capitol—and

halfway between Ray’s rooming house and the General Motors fac-

tory where Spake worked. According to witnesses, the man leaving the

Mustang simply walked away and wasn’t seen again. The late-model

car, driven by someone not seen in the neighborhood before, attracted

some notice at the time. But it would be days before the residents real-

ized it had been abandoned, and almost a week before anyone called

the police about the car.9

The housing project was an unusual place for James Earl Ray to ditch

his car. At the time, Atlanta’s housing projects were in the process of

being integrated, and photos show that many, if not most, of the resi-

dents at that time were white. But Capitol Homes was three miles away

from Ray’s rooming house, too far for him to safely walk in broad day-

light, since he couldn’t be sure when a police drawing or photo of him

might be issued. Yet Ray left his car only nine short blocks from Martin

Luther King’s church and SCLC office on Auburn Avenue, both in the

heart of Atlanta’s black business district, which Ray would have to pass

on his way north to his rooming house.

Even after his face became well known, Ray was not reported as hav-

ing been seen on any of the Atlanta buses running that day. Atlanta is

not the type of city where taxis simply cruise in most areas. Although

cabs would have been available several blocks from the housing project,

at the State Capitol building, its grounds were always well covered by

law enforcement. The governor’s office at the Capitol was then occupied

by ardent segregationist Lester Maddox, and, given the reports of riots

in other cities, security was likely even higher than usual around the

State Capitol. Atlanta police and the FBI later carefully canvassed all

Atlanta taxi drivers. The only two who thought Ray might have been a

passenger remembered taking him on short trips (one only two blocks)

606

LEGACY OF SECRECY

in the Midtown area near Ray’s rooming house, three miles away—and

those trips were at night, not during the day. No cab driver ever reported

taking Ray to his rooming house or anywhere near Capitol Homes. So

how did Ray get to his rooming house?10

Joseph Milteer, Hugh Spake’s partner in the assassination plot, was

in the area at that time, according to one of his close friends. After

Milteer’s death by explosion several years after Dr. King’s murder, Miami

reporter Dan Christensen found much of Milteer’s correspondence still

in his deserted house. He thought it odd that in all of Milteer’s letters,

there were only two lines about Dr. King’s assassination. Christensen

wrote that “more might have been expected because Milteer hated King.

But no gloating . . . nothing,” except for two lines in a letter written to

Milteer by a racist friend from West Virginia. The letter was written just

two weeks after Ray abandoned his car at Capitol Homes in Atlanta.

Responding to what Milteer had told him earlier, the friend wrote that it

“looks as though you [Milteer] and the hunted suspect [Ray] were in the

Capitol area about the same time. They found a car there—they say.”11

Milteer’s friend was appropriately suspicious, and he wrote the letter

the day James Earl Ray’s name was first announced as a suspect. Given

Ray’s earlier call to Milteer’s partner Spake, and the lack of any other

known way for Ray to have safely traveled the three miles north to his

rooming house, Milteer probably either drove Ray himself or observed

from a safe distance while an associate did it. The actions and where-

abouts that day of Milteer’s two other Atlanta partners—the dentist and

the attorney—are not known.12

Spake had to be at work that day until 3:30 PM, and Ray had report-

edly left the city before that, after picking up his laundry (shortly after

leaving Capitol Homes) and then stopping by his rooming house.

However, Spake could have telephoned Milteer after Ray’s morning

call to him, relaying Ray’s request for help; alternately, Spake could

have given Ray a number where Milteer could be reached. Because of

urban renewal, which had cleared out local residents for two recently

completed construction projects (the Atlanta Braves’ baseball stadium

and a major interstate interchange), next to Capital Homes were several

isolated side streets where Milteer could have picked up Ray without

being seen by witnesses.

Ray himself was vague about how he got to his rooming house; he

later testified that he “walked in the general direction of where I thought

was the rooming house. I’m not certain how I found the rooming house.”

Perhaps realizing how far that would have been, he changed his story

immediately and said that maybe he “got a cab. I think I got a cab, yeah,

I believe I did get a cab.” But as noted earlier, despite law enforcement’s

exhaustive investigation of Atlanta cab drivers and companies, none

were found who had driven Ray anywhere near Capitol Homes.13

Apparently, leaving his car and rerouting his escape to Canada were

not part of Ray’s original instructions. According to the HSCA volumes,

one of his brothers said, “It wasn’t [Ray’s] plan to abandon his car and

everything. His actual plan after Memphis was to go to Atlanta, pick

up his stuff, and go to Mexico.” But Mexico was a 1,100-mile drive

away, and going anywhere in the wanted white Mustang was out of the

question.14

At the rooming house, Ray quickly packed important items, like his

pistol, and threw away others, such as his typewriter. He left behind

several things, including two maps of Atlanta (one with marks near

Dr. King’s office and Capitol Homes) and two maps of Los Angeles

(one unmarked, and one with Rosselli’s apartment building marked),

since he apparently had no plans to return to either city. Other aban-

doned items ranged from his portable television to a John Birch Society

brochure.15

James Earl Ray’s account of his movements for the next twenty-four

hours is vague and contradictory, and they can’t be definitively docu-

mented. Ray said he thought he recalled taking a cab to the bus station,

checking a bag, visiting a tavern, then going back to the bus station. In

one account, he said he left Atlanta at around 1:00 PM, while in another,

he says it was between 3:00 PM and 5:00 PM. No actual documentation

of his bus trips exists, and the only cab drivers who might remember Ray

said they drove him at night, and nowhere near the bus station in down-

town Atlanta. The fact that the bus station was almost two miles from

Ray’s rooming house makes it unlikely that he walked there. More likely

it was Milteer (or his associate) who drove Ray from Capitol Homes to

his rooming house also took him to the bus station.

In less than two weeks, Ray’s face would be on television and the

front page of almost every newspaper in the country. Yet even after

weeks of such exposure—and, later, televised footage of Ray—no bus

passengers or drivers came forward to say that they remembered seeing

him. That lack of witnesses was in marked contrast to some of Lee Har-

vey Oswald’s bus trips, where even two months later, some passengers

remembered the relatively average-looking young man.

Before leaving Atlanta, Ray was probably given a small amount of

money, with the promise of more later—if he went where he was told

608

LEGACY OF SECRECY

and did what he was ordered. That was the best way to maintain control

over Ray. In Atlanta, Ray got nowhere near the $5,000 he was supposed

to receive in New Orleans. The large amount of money that Milteer and

his Atlanta partners had put up for King’s murder would have gone

to the contract’s broker, Carlos Marcello, and to Marcello’s designated

Mafia lieutenant. Marcello’s organization was responsible for paying

Ray, though Milteer and his partners would have been able to come up

with expense money of several hundred dollars, perhaps even $1,000

($6,000 today), on short notice and without arousing suspicion or obtain-

ing it in a traceable way. Ray later told his brother that “he would never

have been caught if he had enough money—he expected [to] make [a]

big score in [the] U.S. before he left but too much heat, he couldn’t.”16

Not giving someone like Ray all, or even most of, the money promised

is consistent with how Carlos Marcello treated the juror he bribed in

November 1963, after the JFK hit. Depriving Ray of most of the money

would prevent him from having so much cash that he attracted attention,

being tempted to not follow orders, or becoming the victim of a robbery.

Also, if Ray were caught with a large amount of money, it would indicate

that he had backers and co-conspirators. A smaller sum wouldn’t arouse

suspicion and couldn’t be traced if Ray were captured.

Milteer helped James Earl Ray get as far away from Atlanta as pos-

sible. The following description of Ray’s travels, based on his statements,

could be accurate, but he also may have omitted important information.

Ray said that he went by bus, train, and cab from Atlanta all the way to

Toronto, Canada. He claims he first took the “bus from Atlanta to Cincin-

nati, Ohio, on the 5th of April . . . arrived in Cincinnati about 1:30 AM

on the 6th of April,” and went to another tavern. Ray then took a bus to

Detroit, arriving at 8:00 AM, still on April 6. He took a cab to the Detroit

train station, then another cab across the border to Windsor, Ontario,

getting “there about 10 or 11 AM.” There appears to be no official record

of Ray’s crossing the border, and he apparently used his “Eric S. Galt”

identity. No public alert had yet been issued for that name, though Ray

couldn’t have known what confidential alerts might have been sent to

border crossings. Ray says that once he was in Canada, he took a train

and arrived “in Toronto about 5 PM on the 6th of April.” He says he

then rented a room without giving his name, from a woman who had

trouble speaking English. She later confirmed renting the Toronto room

to Ray for $10 a week.17

Ray was now in a city he had only passed through before, part of

the Montreal–Toronto drug pipeline of the French Connection heroin

network he had worked for the previous summer. That part of the net-

work also specialized in providing fake identities, and Ray soon began

using two new aliases, Paul Edward Bridgeman and Ramon George

Sneyd. Like Eric Galt and John Willard, both were real names belonging

to businessmen with no criminal past. Ray claimed to have gotten them

from birth announcements in newspapers, but the HSCA noted Ray had

“contradicted himself” regarding parts of his story. Ray’s version also

doesn’t explain why he would just happen to pick, from decades-old

birth announcements, two men who in 1968 lived within the same two-

mile radius as his previous aliases, Galt and Willard. More likely is that

Ray obtained all four names from the same source in the drug network

that he’d worked for.18

James Earl Ray would soon undertake a trek that was even more

unprecedented for him than the previous year’s journey from Illinois to