Legacy of Secrecy (97 page)

exceptionally clever help.”20 To avoid buying into Ray’s extravagant

claim of a single, all-powerful “Raoul,” we will usually refer simply to

Ray’s criminal contact or contacts when the evidence suggests that doing

so is appropriate, and on the occasions when he obviously had help.

According to Justice Department files, Ray met his Montreal contact

as early as the day after he arrived in the city, and things moved quickly

after that. Given the expenditures he would soon make, Ray had defi-

nitely received money at that point. Since Ray would be trusted within

weeks to smuggle heroin across the Canadian border into the US, his

first Montreal job may have been a less dangerous smuggling venture.

Seamen often brought heroin and other contraband into Montreal on

ships, as in the Rose Cheramie case in Houston involving the same

heroin network.

William Bradford Huie, the author
The Execution of Private Slovik
and

other investigative works, pointed out that “Montreal is the easiest big

city in the world to bring contraband into,” but someone still had to

retrieve the heroin from the seaman and then deliver it to the trafficker,

who would then test it, repackage (and sometimes reprocess) it, and

secure it in false-bottomed luggage or in cars for its later cross-border

trip. Ray’s proximity to the Montreal docks and the amount of money he

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soon had would be consistent with his helping with the short delivery

from seaman to trafficker, all under the covert and watchful eyes of the

trafficker’s associates. Ray probably got this opportunity, as his brother

said, from a former fellow inmate who trusted Ray, perhaps aided by

the Mafia ties of John Paul Spica, his prison friend.21

The day after first meeting his Montreal contact, Ray signed a six-

month lease on an apartment in the city, apparently thinking that Mon-

treal would be a long-term base of operations for him. Ray expected his

future to be bright, and, according to his brother, Ray “spent $300 on

new clothes,” the likes of which he had never owned before, including

ordering a custom-tailored suit. Ray would continue meeting with his

Montreal contact eight or ten times between late July and mid-August,

but his first cross-border smuggling trip wouldn’t be for several more

weeks. In the meantime, Ray did something else he had never done

before: He went to a posh resort called the Gray Rocks Inn.22

Ray’s cover story was always that he went to Montreal hoping to

immediately leave the country, but it was clearly not true, since Ray

would soon return to the US with (by his own reluctant admission)

more than enough money to buy a good fake passport and false identity

that would have safely allowed him to leave North America. Ray also

claimed that he was misinformed that in Canada he needed a Canadian

citizen to vouch for him in order to get a passport. (The denizens of the

seedy Montreal waterfront bars Ray frequented would have known that

wasn’t true.) So, in Ray’s version of events, he went to the exclusive Gray

Rocks Inn to find a woman who would vouch for him so he could get a

passport. However, according to one of Ray’s brothers, Ray was really

“trying to get [a] rich girl at Gray Rocks. Not ID. It was the money he

wanted.”23

Just a few weeks earlier, James Earl Ray had been washing dishes in

the back room of a restaurant, but on July 30, 1967, he went to the luxuri-

ous Gray Rocks Inn wearing a fine new suit and apparently hoping to

bilk some unfortunate “rich girl.” Since she would know Ray only by

an easy-to-change alias and cover story, it would not have been difficult

for Ray (rather, his alias) to seemingly vanish after he found a way to

extract money from her. It’s also possible that Ray intended to dupe a

woman into helping with his upcoming cross-border smuggling, since a

couple on a brief vacation would attract less suspicion than a lone man.

(The 1963 Laredo smuggler from Montreal had his wife accompany him

on his cross-border smuggling trips.) Ray, whose sexual experience was

limited largely to receiving oral sex from men in prison or buying the

services of prostitutes outside of prison, had even ordered a sex manual

to aid him in his seduction.24

Though Ray went to one of Canada’s finest resorts to bilk a wealthy

girl, he actually met a woman of modest means who had gone to the

resort’s lounge in hopes of meeting a wealthy man. (The woman, from

Ottawa, was staying at a less expensive hotel nearby; she went to the

Gray Rocks lounge with a girlfriend.) Given the usual women Ray had

associated with, the first journalist to track the woman down was sur-

prised to find that she was “a most attractive . . . tastefully dressed and

coiffured mature woman [who] at almost any resort . . . could have had

her pick of the unattached men.” In the early stages of a divorce, the

woman said the shy Ray appealed to her.25

In the expensive surroundings, each thought the other was wealthier

than they really were, and the woman spent the night with Ray. She and

her friend were going to Expo 67 the following day, and they spent the

next night with Ray at his somewhat seedy apartment in Montreal. Ray

made excuses for the less-than-glamorous surroundings, and he saw

the woman again in Ottawa ten days later. Ray claimed it was only on

that day, August 18, 1967, that he learned she worked for the Canadian

Department of Transport, and he abandoned his plan to ask her to vouch

for him as the “guarantor” of his passport by swearing falsely that she

had known him for two years. More likely, Ray simply decided it was

too risky to try to use a government employee to help with his smug-

gling, or that she didn’t have enough easily available money to bother

stealing.26

Ray admitted that since at least early August 1967, he had been

talking with his contact in Montreal about getting money and “travel

documents” in return for assisting the contact “in crossing the border.”

Specifically, Ray agreed to “smuggle some unspecified contraband across

the border,” from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit. Ray said the contraband

would be “some packages [smuggled] in the car I had.” Ray’s eventual

payoff would be big, “ten to twelve thousand dollars” ($60,000–$72,000

in today’s dollars), though Ray was told that amount wouldn’t come

until later. If the Detroit–Windsor smuggling was successful, Ray tes-

tified that the big payoff was supposed to come after he did “some-

thing similar to that in Mexico” and his Montreal contact “went to New

Orleans.” According to the statements of Ray and one of his brothers,

New Orleans was the focal point of Ray’s drug smuggling.27

Congressional investigators wrote that from Windsor, Ray “smuggled

two sets of packages across the border” on August 21, 1967. Ray said his

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contact had an attaché case from which he “removed three packages . . .

and put them behind the back” of one of Ray’s car seats. Ray’s contact

crossed the border first, in a cab. Ray passed through the checkpoint

with no problem, then met his contact on a side street, where the man

“removed the packages” and put them in his attaché case. The contact

went into a bus station and came out without the attaché case, and told

Ray they were going to repeat the procedure.28

Congressional investigators asked Ray about his contact: “When he

gave you the narcotics the first time,” how did he know “you wouldn’t

just take off with them?” Based on later talks with investigators, Ray

replied that perhaps the first group of packages contained only flour,

as a “dry run,” a type of test, to see if he was trustworthy. While that’s

possible, it’s doubtful that Ray would have been involved in the first

place, unless he were seen as seasoned criminal with contacts who could

vouch for him. For example, the 1963 Laredo heroin courier had been

told by his trafficker they “had confidence in me because I was a [vet-

eran] thief” and because another criminal “knew me.” Ray claimed he

never told his Montreal contact his real name, or that Galt was an alias,

but Ray’s brother’s statements show that’s not true. Ray started using

the never explained Galt alias only after he got to Canada, and it was

no doubt given to him to use in the same way the same drug traffickers

had given the Laredo courier several aliases to use.29

During the smuggling run, Ray would have been under covert sur-

veillance by one of the trafficker’s associates, someone Ray had never

met. For example, the 1963 Laredo heroin courier discovered that he had

been subject to secret “surveillance for certain transactions” by the traf-

fickers. The courier’s bosses even told him later that the person secretly

watching him said he “had been driving too fast,” and that he should

drive more slowly.30

Then, too, an experienced criminal like Ray would have known the

lethal penalty for crossing a heroin trafficker. Ray had spent ten of the

last dozen years in prison, had been part of the prison speed racket,

and had inmate friends like the Mafia-linked Spica and another tied to

the Montreal heroin trade. Since Ray was an escaped convict, the traf-

fickers could be sure he wouldn’t do anything to call undue attention

to himself. Of the thousands of miles in heroin’s journey, the few hun-

dred yards at a border crossing are the most dangerous part, and Ray

fits the profile of the type of expendable courier who would have been

used. Comparatively speaking, Ray’s three-package lot was appropri-

ately small, befitting an initial cross-border attempt by a new courier. In

contrast, just two months later, Montreal authorities would find a piece of

“luggage . . . concealing 16 small plastic sacks, each containing a pound

of white powder”—heroin that had been brought in by an experienced

courier.31

During Ray’s second run from Windsor to Detroit, shortly after the

first, he had only one minor glitch at the border, when he “was stopped

for a customs inspection [and had] to declare his television set” that he

had bought in Montreal. After that, Ray met his contact on a side street

just over the US border. As Congressional investigators detailed, Ray said

he was given $1,500 “and a New Orleans telephone number which [he]

could use” to reach his contact. Ray later alleged he had been expecting

his contact to also give him a passport, but that statement is also false,

since Ray admitted in testimony that he had not given his contact any

type of photo of himself to use for a passport.32

Further confirmation for James Earl Ray’s involvement in heroin

smuggling comes from Percy Foreman, who would represent Ray after

Dr. King’s murder. Foreman had briefly represented Jack Ruby and, as

William Bradford Huie wrote, had also “defended . . . members of the

Mafia, some of whom direct the running of heroin across the Canadian

border.” Foreman told Huie that what Ray did “is standard operating

procedure for bringing heroin in from Canada.”33

In Detroit, Ray and his contact discussed their next steps, for which

Ray expected his really large payoff of $10,000–$12,000 dollars. Ray

said he was told this reward would involve smuggling “weapons into

Mexico or [helping] in some way.” Ray was ordered to “get rid of the

car I had,” since “it was old,” and to “go to Mobile, Alabama, where we

would meet.” Ray said he talked his contact into allowing him to go to

Birmingham instead, due to Ray’s allergies. His contact was agreeable

and said “he would finance a car plus living expenses” for Ray, as HSCA

records note. Once again, this scenario parallels the experience of the

1963 Laredo courier for the same heroin network, after he left Canada for

Mexico: A Trafficante associate told him that because the courier’s “car

. . . was too old,” he “could advance me the money” to buy a new one,

and he’d take it out of “the money I’d make working as a courier.”34

As for the reason Alabama was chosen, and why Ray preferred

Birmingham over Mobile, Ray’s brother said that Ray had “contacts

down there—Underworld.”35 Since the days of Phenix City, the Mafia

underworld in Alabama had been subject to the influence of Carlos

Marcello and his close associate Santo Trafficante, whose heroin routes

transversed the state of Alabama. Depending on supply and demand,

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heroin could flow from Trafficante’s Florida to Marcello’s Louisiana, or

originate in Mexico, Houston, or New Orleans and head to points east

and north.36

Ray arrived in Birmingham on August 26, 1967, staying one night

in a motel before renting a room as “Eric S. Galt.” On August 30, after

answering a want ad, Ray paid $1,995 in cash for a 1966 Ford Mustang.

Ray’s use of the money for a car in Birmingham undermines his later

claims that he wanted to leave the US for a country like Rhodesia (now