Capture in the Cumberlands

Even in the final moments, when he had run as long and as far as he could, the fugitive still did not quit. As he heard them coming, crashing through the undergrowth, he lay on the ground and covered himself with leaves. Unerringly, a young bloodhound named Sandy sniffed him out. "James, are you all right?" asked Guard Sammy Joe Chapman. There was a pause. "I'm all right," replied James Earl Ray.

So ended last week the escape of the admitted killer of Martin Luther King Jr., 54 1/2 hours after he went over the 14ft. wall of Brushy Mountain state prison with six other convicts. All were run down and seized, the last 31 hours after Ray. And Ray's capture--out in the rugged hills, on his own, just as local officials had predicted from the start--deflated speculation that the assassin had escaped from Brushy Mountain, a maximum-security fortress set down in the wilderness, with outside help.

Ray's flight had revived rumors that the small-time criminal was part of a conspiracy that climaxed with the murder on April 4,1968, of the nation's most celebrated civil rights leader. Much of that renewed speculation came from Black Leaders Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Said Louis Stokes, chairman of the committee: "My real concern is whether Ray was lured into this escape and, if so, whether for the purpose of killing him to stop him from talking."

Traditional Break. With Ray back in a cell, Stokes admitted, "There now appears to be no evidence of outside conspiratorial help." Ray has already talked to committee investigators for 25 1/2hours. Stokes had said he wanted to put him on the stand to question him about Raoul, the mystery man in the prisoner's story (and perhaps imagination) who, Ray has claimed, drew him into the King assassination plot. But such a scene, with Ray on camera and all the conspiracy buffs waiting for remarks to support their theories, is "way down the line," said Stokes.

Initially, Brushy Mountain Warden Stonney Lane suspected that some of the prison's employees had helped Ray break out. But by last week he too had changed his mind. He felt that none of his men had aided Ray and the others, although he believed some of the prison personnel might have been careless. Last Thursday Guard Floyd Hooks, 38, was dismissed for "negligence on duty"; he had been in the manned watchtower nearest the point of the escape. Said Lane, "This was a traditional break, and they ran just like other prisoners."

As always, when the steam whistle at Brushy Mountain wailed the message that prisoners had gone over the wall, the chase was led by the men who knew the territory best, mountain men who have roamed the area since childhood. They have caught everyone who has escaped from prisons on the site since 1896 --hundreds of convicts, including those who darted away from work details outside the walls. No one could get away from the trackers, not in those mountains, where the terrain funnels newcomers down into a few paths--the only passageways to the outside world and freedom (see box).

The sounding of the alarm helped to knock out the phone system in the area when the escape began. So many nearby residents called in to find out what was the matter that the lines simply overloaded.

Fearful that Tennessee would become notorious as the state that let King's killer get away, Governor Ray Blanton called in state troopers. In addition, U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, after consulting with President Jimmy Carter, dispatched the FBI to the scene. Some 50 agents--many of them strangers to Tennessee, let alone the Tennessee mountains--took up the chase. Five helicopters began circling over the area, while technicians used infra-red equipment to try to detect tiny changes in the temperature on the floor of the woods that might indicate the presence of a man.

The Tennessee mountain men--the same breed that produced Sergeant Alvin York, who came from 40 miles up the road--treated the outsiders as if they were so many Inspectors Clouseau in pursuit of the Pink Panther. Said Guard

Don Daugherty: "You don't go flashing your lights around and telling him where you're at. I was sitting humped up real quiet when they [the FBI] came roaring through and flashed a spotlight on me." The FBI insists that it was circumspect, but Guard Bill Garrison declared, "We would have had them all back in twelve, 15 hours if everyone woulda left us alone. The hell with all those damn machines the FBI brung."

Once over the wall, the six escapees had split up quickly. The three planners --Ray, his cellmate Earl Hill Jr. (a lifer for murder and rape) and Douglas Shelton (serving 63 to 65 years for murder and assault) headed north. Moving mainly at night, holing up by day, the three traveled unpaved back roads past slag heaps and thick forests. The trio carelessly left behind a trail of gum wrappers--telltale pieces of confetti that stood out against the greens and browns of the mountain roads. The men had a 4sq.-in. map of the area that had been cut from a road map, and they had money enough: Ray had $290 when he was picked up, a sum he could easily have saved from his $35-a-month salary as a shirt presser in the laundry. The three kept close to Route 116, where they could hear passing cars.

As the guards and the bloodhounds followed the trail, they had to cope with an unfamiliar hazard: the press. Using "scanners" to monitor police radio channels, reporters were often at the spot of a reported sighting before the guards and dogs. Journalists tramping around the woods so mixed and mingled the scent that the hounds were thrown off. The cops put out some false leads on the radio; eavesdropping reporters pell-melled off to another hill miles away, and the trackers were able to get back to work.

About noon on Sunday, Guard Garrison found a footprint near a road used for carrying coal, just off Route 116. Armed with a shotgun and a revolver, he set out on the trail. For eight hours he stayed on the search, finding an occasional footprint or a broken vine or a gum wrapper. At one point, he was called back to headquarters by radio to follow another lead, but disobeyed orders and stayed on the hot track.

At 8 p.m. Garrison went back to prison to get two bloodhounds. At 11 p.m. he and some others captured Hill, Ray's baby-faced cellmate, by a burned-out cabin. The dogs then led the guards to the New River, where Ray had hoped to lose his pursuers. For a time, he succeeded, running upstream for about 600 yds. Looking for the trail, Sammy Joe Chapman and Johnny Newburg headed upriver with two fresh dogs: Sandy and Little Red, a pair of 14-month-old females. The hounds quickly picked up Ray's trail. In a fury, they took off up the river toward the Cumberland strip mine.

Tugged by his dogs, Chapman tried to dodge the blackberry bushes and oak and hickory trees revealed in the pale light of the lamp on his miner's helmet. The desperate Ray headed uphill, past a gravel road used for hauling coal. Chapman could hear him crashing through the bush. For a man who had been on the run for more than two days, Ray showed remarkable endurance. All the hours he had spent in the prison yard playing volleyball to develop his legs and lungs were paying off--for a while.

Suddenly, high up on Usher Top Mountain, hundreds of feet above the river, everything in the darkened forest turned silent. Chapman pulled his Smith & Wesson .38-cal. Chiefs Special from his shoulder holster. At 2:10 a.m. Sandy led him to a pile of wet leaves and began wagging her tail. Beneath the foliage, Ray was lying on his back with his arms straight out, as though he had been crucified.

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