Hellhound on His Trail

  No one could have been more pleased by all this bad news than J. Edgar Hoover. Ever since the first caravans had pulled in to Washington a few weeks earlier, he'd been keeping close tabs on Project POCAM. Hoover had dozens of agents, paid informers, and undercover spies milling about the camp. One of his many sources of intelligence came from the Pentagon, which had assigned a unit of signal corpsmen to observe and photograph the encampment, night and day, from the top of the Washington Monument. Once it became obvious to Hoover that the SCLC's internal problems prevented it from becoming the organized subversive force he had feared, he pressed his agents and informers to take a slightly different tack. In a memo, he told them to "document such things as immorality,692 indecency, dishonesty, and hypocrisy" among the campaign's leadership.

  But by this time, the Poor People's Army was running out of steam, out of creativity, out of cash. People were referring to the campaign as the Little Bighorn of the civil rights movement. Now Abernathy was desperately trying to pull out of Washington with his dignity intact.

  At some moment during that long, wet, turbulent month, an era had reached its denouement. The battle-fatigued nation had just about had its fill of protest politics, of marching and rioting, of scattershot airings of grievance. As Gerald McKnight put it in his classic study, The Last Crusade, most of Washington had come to regard Resurrection City as "some grotesque soap opera693 whose run could not end soon enough."

  The civil rights movement was feeling the final impact of King's assassination, the final measure of his loss. By carrying out their slain leader's wishes in Washington, the SCLC staff had shown the world just how indispensable he was. Though the event still had several weeks to play itself out, Resurrection City had become, in McKnight's words, "almost a perfect failure."694

  Yet there was also something fiercely apt about Resurrection City and its inability to move the nation. Ramsey Clark, perhaps alone among high-ranking Johnson administration officials, responded to the pathos embedded in King's final flawed experiment on the Mall. "Lincoln smiled kindly,695 but the American people saw too much of the truth," Clark wrote a few years later. "For poverty is miserable. It is ugly, disorganized, rowdy, sick, uneducated, violent, afflicted with crime. Poverty demeans human dignity. The demanding tone, the inarticulateness, the implied violence deeply offended us. We didn't want to see it on our sacred monumental grounds. We wanted it out of sight and out of mind."

  45 A BANK WITHDRAWAL

  DURING THE MIDDLE of May, the focal point in the hunt for James Earl Ray shifted north to Canada. The FBI learned that Ray had spent time in Toronto and Montreal shortly after his escape from the Missouri penitentiary--that, in fact, he had developed his Eric Galt alias in Canada, stealing identification details from a real Eric S. Galt, who lived in a Toronto suburb. On the theory that he might have returned to Canada after the assassination, the FBI asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to pursue a variety of labor-intensive leads. Foremost among these, the bureau wanted Canadian authorities to examine all passport applications dating back to April 1967, the month of Ray's escape from Jeff City, and then single out any photos that bore a resemblance to Ray.

  It was an immense undertaking: during that time, Canada had issued some 218,000 passports and had renewed 46,000 more. Reviewing this mountain of paperwork would require staggering man-hours--all the document and photo comparisons would have to be done by hand and by eyeball. But the Mounties took up the task with urgency and zest.

  Superintendent Charles J. Sweeney,696 commander of the RCMP criminal investigating squad in eastern Ontario, assumed command of the task force in Ottawa. Sweeney selected twelve uniformed constables and equipped them with magnifying glasses. Night after night, working high up in a government building one block from Parliament, the Mounties painstakingly went through the applications, one by one.

  THAT SAME WEEK, Ramon Sneyd was staying in a cheap hotel called the Heathfield House, on Cromwell Road, a major thoroughfare that cuts through West London. The Heathfield House was in Earls Court, a low-rent neighborhood then known as Kangaroo Valley because it was especially popular among Australian workers. Sneyd had been here for ten days, holed up in his room, reading newspapers and magazines--and desperately trying to hatch a new plan. He still had Psycho-Cybernetics and other self-help books to help him while away the hours, as well as a book on Rhodesia and a detective novel, The Ninth Directive. Lying low from dawn until late at night, reading in his small wallpapered room, he could hear the frequent roar of the big Heathrow jumbo jets as they banked over the Thames, offering the promise of freedom in the extremities of the faded empire.

  Doris Catherine Westwood,697 the proprietress of the Heathfield House, hardly ever saw her tenant and wasn't quite sure of his name. "Owing to his bad writing," she later told Scotland Yard, "I thought his name was 'Snezel.'"

  May 1968 was a vibrant time to be in groovy, bell-bottom London. The musical Hair was about to open at the Shaftesbury Theatre--though censors vowed to ban the show's frontal nudity. In the history of rock 'n' roll super-bands, it was a month of ferment. The same week that Sneyd arrived in London, the Beatles, having returned from a Transcendental Meditation sojourn in Rishikesh, India, buried themselves in Abbey Road Studios to begin recording what would become known as The White Album. Elsewhere the Rolling Stones were just wrapping up one of their greatest contributions to vinyl, Beggars Banquet, and The Who's Pete Townshend had begun writing the first strains of a rock opera about a deaf, dumb, and blind kid named Tommy.

  Trapped in his room, racked with stomach pains and headaches, Sneyd had neither time nor inclination to enjoy the city, and he caught little of London's vibe. Since arriving here, Sneyd had become a lizard-like creature, keeping to the cracks and shadows. He was extremely reluctant to show his face in public during the day. American newspapers and magazines on sale at London newsstands were carrying his photo with some regularity. Life magazine had come out with a long cover story on Ray's childhood and criminal career. Sneyd bought a copy of it--"The Accused Killer: Ray, Alias Galt, the Revealing Story of a Mean Kid," the cover said--and he read the story with a feeling of deepening dread that Hoover's men would soon follow his trail across the Atlantic.

  Luckily for Sneyd, Great Britain had recently passed the Criminal Justice Act, which, among other things, virtually prohibited British publications from printing anything but the most rudimentary facts about a suspect before trial. Consequently, the London papers had not yet published photographs of Ray, and scarcely anyone in London other than a few Scotland Yard officers knew of the FBI warrant for his arrest. And in truth, although King's assassination had made huge headlines in Great Britain, most English citizens referred to the slain civil rights leader as "Luther King" and had only a vague idea of what, besides winning a Nobel Peace Prize for civil rights, he had actually done. Unlike in the United States, King's death, and the manhunt for his killer, had largely receded into the background.

  For all these reasons, Sneyd remained under the radar screen, well hidden among the warrens of London's more than five thousand inns and bed-and-breakfast establishments.

  But his troubles were mounting. He'd had no luck finding a cheap passage to Africa. Since his arrival here on May 17, Sneyd's money woes had become truly acute. He now had less than fifty pounds on his person. On May 27, when Mrs. Westwood told him it would soon be time to pay the rent, Sneyd knew he would have to do something desperate, something rash. "I'll go to my bank," he promised her, "and make a withdrawal."

  A FEW HOURS later, sixty-two-year-old Maurice Isaacs and his wife,698 Billie, were getting ready to close up their small jewelry store in Paddington. The shop, which had been operating since the end of World War II, was located at 131 Praed Street, only a few blocks from Paddington Station, in a neighborhood bustling with commuters, transients, and tourists.

  The gray-haired husband and wife were showing diamond rings to a customer when Ramon Sneyd walked in. In his pocket was his loaded snub-nosed Liberty Chief
.38 revolver. He lingered by the glass cases in the front, pretending to be shopping for something. Eventually, the customer left, and Sneyd made his move. He grabbed Maurice Isaacs, brandished the revolver, and stuck it in the side of the jeweler's neck.

  "This is a stickup!" Sneyd said. "Now both of you get on back there!" He gestured manically toward the darkened rear of the store, where the couple kept their office.

  Over the years, the Isaacses' shop had been burglarized, but they'd never been held up at gunpoint. The couple kept no weapons in their store, nor had they ever rehearsed a plan for how to handle such a situation. Neither of them moved an inch toward the back as Sneyd had commanded--they were determined to take their chances out in the open, where someone on the busy street might see them through the plate-glass window. They knew there was a crowded pub just down the street--the Fountains Abbey--and the sidewalks outside were thronged with rush-hour foot traffic.

  Instinct took over. Billie Isaacs, a sweet and matronly woman in her late fifties, leaped onto Sneyd's back. When she did, Maurice wrestled free from Sneyd's grip. He turned and struck the would-be robber several times, then set off the alarm.

  Realizing he'd seriously underestimated the tenacity of these shop owners, Sneyd turned and darted from the store. In the early evening light, he raced down busy Praed Street, past St. Mary's Hospital--frustrated that, after his sorry performance, he was none the richer.

  IN OTTAWA, AFTER a week of exacting work, the team of twelve constables had plowed their way through more than a hundred thousand passport applications--and had singled out eleven as "possibles." But each of these "possibles" led detectives to the valid passports of legitimate Canadian citizens. As everyone feared, this was shaping up to be a pointless fishing expedition.

  But on June 1, a twenty-one-year-old constable named Robert Wood699 lingered over a certain photograph. He eyed it with his magnifying glass, saw the dimple in the chin, the touch of gray at the temples, the slightly protruding left ear. He compared it carefully with the numerous Ray photos he had as a reference. "This could be him," Wood said out loud, "if he wore glasses." The name on the passport was Ramon George Sneya.

  Now Constable Wood's colleagues set aside their work and gathered round to examine the photo. Some saw the likeness; others weren't so sure. The horn-rimmed eyeglasses threw them off, as did the nose, which was sharper at the tip than that in the old Ray photos. This man looked considerably more dignified in his sport coat and tie, almost like an academic.

  Wood held the application in his hand for a while. Not knowing what else to do with it, he laid it in the "possibles" pile--and got back to his monotonous work.

  ON THE AFTERNOON of June 4, Ian Colvin,700 a foreign-desk journalist and editorial writer for London's Daily Telegraph, was sitting in his office when the phone rang. "Hello, this is Ramon Sneyd," the caller nervously said, in a garbled American accent Colvin couldn't quite place. "I got a brother lost somewhere down in Angola, and I've heard you've written about the mercenary situation down there."

  "Yes."

  "Well," Sneyd continued, "I think my brother's with the mercenaries. Can you put me in touch with someone who can help me find him?"

  Colvin was not particularly surprised by the call; it was true, he had written a book about the colonial wars and mercenary armies in Africa and had developed an extensive circle of contacts in that world. To his credit, this man Sneyd appeared to have done some homework. "Do you have a telephone number of Major Alastair Wicks?" he asked Colvin.

  A British-born Rhodesian mercenary with a swashbuckling reputation, Wicks had been involved with armed conflicts in Biafra and was a high-ranking officer in an outfit called the Five Commando Unit down in the Belgian Congo. Though Colvin knew Wicks well, he was reluctant to give out a phone number. "But give me your name and a phone number," Colvin offered, "and I'll forward it on to Major Wicks."

  At this point, Colvin could hear an electronic chirping on the line--Sneyd was clearly calling from a pay telephone, and the shrill beep-beep-beep indicated that he needed to shove another sixpence into the slot. "Uh, wait a minute," Sneyd said, "I got to put in more money." But he evidently couldn't dig out his coins fast enough--the phone connection cut off.

  Colvin's phone rang a few minutes later. "This is Sneyd," a voice said, sounding somewhat flustered. "I was just talking to you." Listening as Sneyd repeated his shaggy-dog story about a long-lost brother, Colvin began to think that his caller was "odd" and "almost unbalanced." Sneyd was adamant to the point of desperation about getting himself to Africa, and seemed to think that if he could only get in touch with the right person, his airfare would be paid for in exchange for his promise to serve a stint as a soldier.

  "Again," Colvin reassured him, "I will be delighted to forward your contact information on to Major Wicks."

  "OK," the caller said. "That's Ramon Sneyd. I'm staying here at the New Earls Court Hotel."

  Right, Colvin said, and Sneyd hung up.

  SNEYD HAD MOVED from the Heathfield House to the New Earls Court Hotel only a few days before. Though the little hotel was just around the corner, on Penywern Road, the weekly rent was cheaper and the accommodations a little nicer. Besides, Sneyd thought it prudent not to linger too long in any one place--especially after his aborted jewelry store stickup in Paddington.

  The hotel was a four-story walk-up, with Doric columns and a blue awning covering a cramped vestibule; it was near the Earls Court tube stop and Earls Court Stadium, where Billy Graham had recently conducted a series of wildly successful crusades. For another week, Sneyd remained faithful to his usual nocturnal schedule, keeping to his brown-wallpapered room all day, receiving no calls, and taking no visitors. "He was nervous,701 pathetically shy, and unsure of himself," the young hotel receptionist, Janet Nassau, later said. Feeling sorry for him, Nassau tried to make conversation and help him out with a few currency questions. "But he was so incoherent," she said, "that nobody seemed able to help him. I thought he was a bit thick. I tried to talk to him, but then I stopped myself, I was afraid he might think I was too forward--trying to chat him up."

  For Sneyd, a far bigger worry than the peculiarities of British money was the fact that he scarcely had any money at all; his funds had dwindled to about ten pounds. But on June 4, the same day he called the Daily Telegraph journalist Ian Colvin, Sneyd worked up his courage and resolved to finally dig himself out of his financial straits.

  That afternoon he put on a blue suit and pair of sunglasses. Then, at 2:13 p.m., he walked into the Trustee Savings Bank in Fulham702 and stood in the queue until, a few minutes later, he approached the till of a clerk named Edward Viney. Through the slot, Sneyd slid a paper bag toward the teller. At first, Viney didn't know what to do with the rumpled pink bag. Then, on closer inspection, he saw writing scrawled across it.

  "Put all PS5 notes in this bag," the message demanded. Viney caught a faint glimpse of the man's eyes through his shades and realized he was serious. Glancing down, he saw the glinting nose of a revolver, pointed at him.

  Viney quickly emptied his till of all small denominations--in total, only ninety-five pounds. Sneyd was displeased with his slim pickings, and he leaned over the counter and craned his neck toward the adjacent till. "Give me all your small notes!" he yelled, shoving his pistol toward the teller, Llewellyn Heath. In panic, Heath backpedaled and kicked a large tin box, which produced a concussive sound similar to a gunshot. The noise startled everyone, including Sneyd, who leaped away from the counter and sprinted down the street. Two tellers took off after him, but he lost them, ducking into a tailor's shop, where for five minutes he feigned interest in buying a pair of slacks.

  At Trustee Savings Bank, Edward Viney surveyed the premises and realized that the robber had left his note behind, scrawled on the pink paper bag. When the bobbies arrived, Viney handed them the bag--upon which, it was soon discovered in the crime lab of New Scotland Yard, the robber had left a high-quality latent thumbprint.

  IN TORONTO, a
n investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Detective Sergeant R. Marsh, was given a copy of the latest passport application that Constable Wood had placed in the "possibles" pile. Working off the details in the application, Detective Marsh quickly deduced that "Sneya" was merely a clerical error, and then tracked down the real Ramon George Sneyd.

  Even though Sneyd was a Toronto policeman, Detective Marsh initially had to regard him as a possible suspect in the King assassination--or at least a possible co-conspirator--and he began the interrogation in a distinctly adversarial posture. "Mr. Sneyd," Marsh said, "on April 4,703 a killing took place in Memphis, Tennessee. The American authorities are seeking a suspect. That suspect later took up residence here, in Toronto, under the name Ramon George Sneyd. What, if anything, can you tell us about this?"

  Constable Sneyd was flummoxed, to say the least. He searched his memory for any incident, any stray encounter in which someone might have filched his identity. Then he remembered.