The Man in Room 5

He was not a very methodical murderer. U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who descended on Memphis with 75 federal lawmen 14 hours after Martin Luther King was shot, said that the assassin had shed an "unsually large" amount of physical and psychological evidence.

In the frowzy--and unlocked--communal bathroom where the killer waited for more than an hour before he could fire the fatal shot, investigators found a handprint, a thumbprint and an expended casing from his rifle. On the street outside the rooming house, where he occupied Room 5 with a clear view of King's motel across the way, he dropped his rifle and a blue overnight bag containing some clothes. All of these items and imprints gave the FBI and Memphis police a microscopic field day whose yield should provide invaluable courtroom evidence.

Though few occupants of the rooming house who saw "John Willard" might prove credible witnesses, there were several solid citizens who distinctly recall his appearance and mannerisms. One was Bessie Brewer, the rooming-house manager, who recalls quite clearly the killer's looks, height (about 6 ft.), age (30-32), build (roughly 165 Ibs. and slender) and accent ("He spoke just like any other Memphian," i.e., with a drawl). Other witnesses recounted in detail how a man of that description ran from the rooming house at the time of the shooting (6:01 p.m.), leaped into a white Mustang with no front license plate (all Tennessee cars have two), and then "laid rubber" up the road. Those clues--plus a total reward offer of $100,000--seemed more than enough to turn up the killer.

The fact remains that the Memphis police--there were 35 in the immediate neighborhood--muffed their best chance to capture the killer during the minutes immediately after the shot. He escaped in exactly the right direction: the entrance to the rooming house fronted on a street just one block west of Mulberry, across which the shooting occurred. Thus the gunman had eluded the main concentration of police even before he hit the street. Just why he dropped his weapon and overnight bag is a mystery. Though the search spread to a six-state area (Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee), Attorney General Clark refused to predict an early arrest.

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