James Earl Ray and the Brushy Mountain breakout
PETROS, Tenn. — Anyone else might have walked right by in the dark.
The bloodhounds knew better. Sandy, the lead dog, and partner Little Red led their handlers straight up the craggy hillside to the man who lay burrowed under the half-rotten leaves, only his head and hands protruding. “Are you hurt?” one guard called out. “No,” said James Earl Ray, soaked with sweat and covered in mud after 54 hours on the run. “I’m OK.”
Those words spelled the end of the biggest manhunt in Tennessee history. Guards marched the convicted killer of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. past rows of news cameras to the stone walls of Brushy Mountain State Prison.
Men and women nationwide still remember the moment they learned of King’s assassination 50 years ago in Memphis. And old-timers here still talk about the 21⁄2 days that turned the world’s eyes on East Tennessee when Ray and six others escaped in June 1977.
Johnny Newberry held Little Red’s leash as the dogs sniffed out the wanted man. Now 85, he laughs when he remembers the hounds that did what the men with badges couldn’t.
“If they’d left it to us and the dogs, we could have had him the first night.”
The celebrity inmate
James Earl Ray walked through the gates of Brushy Mountain for the first time March 21, 1970, one year into a 99year sentence and not quite two years since the death of King.
The prison, established in 1896, boasted a 12-foot-high wall that rivaled a medieval castle’s, built in the 1930s of stone from the surrounding mountains. Any convict lucky enough to escape faced a choice between overgrown, snake-infested woods and sheer cliffs.
To the outside world, Ray spun stories of conspiracies and international intrigue. Inside the prison walls, he mostly kept his mouth shut.
He threw away his model prisoner status that May when he used a stolen hacksaw, chisel and crowbar to jimmy his way into a steam tunnel. Temperatures that topped 400 degrees forced him back.
Ten months later, Ray tried boring through the ceiling, with no success.
By spring 1977, the national spotlight turned on Ray again.
Investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, created to take a fresh look at the deaths of King and President John F. Kennedy, visited Petros four times to question Ray about what he claimed to know. But other witnesses contradicted him or failed to materialize.
‘Over the wall’
On Friday, June 9, 1977, inmates milled in the exercise yard, killing time before lockdown for the night.
One tower near the northeast corner of the wall stood empty except during riots or other emergencies. Where mountain and wall met, the electrified razor wire at the top tilted to leave an 18-inch gap. On the opposite side, decades of erosion had built up a mound of dirt, enough to cushion a drop.
Just before 7:30 p.m., five men clustered in the shadow of the empty tower.
Someone near the basketball court threw a punch. A fight broke out.
Sweaty, shaking hands yanked pieces of pipe from hiding places and whirled them together into a ladder that swung into the air and hooked over the outside edge of the wall.
James Earl Ray scrambled up and over first. The rest followed.
David Lee Powell, serving a 99-year sentence for murder, looked out the window of the dining room as he helped clean up from supper and saw the five climbing over the top. He ran downstairs and out the door. On his heels came Jerry Ward, a bank robber.
The glint from Powell’s white kitchen uniform caught the eye of a guard on the far wall. He opened fire. Cheers arose from the other inmates: “Over the wall! Over the wall!”
The nearest guard never got off a shot. Prison officials said he’d been reading a newspaper.
One gunshot caught Ward, the last man up the ladder. He tumbled to the ground, shouting: “James Earl Ray got out! James Earl Ray got out!”
On the scent
Powell surrendered 42 hours into the search when a helicopter spotted him in an open field Saturday afternoon. Sunday morning brought another capture — Larry Hacker, a serial robber found inside a church 4 miles from the prison.
Around 10:30 p.m., a team caught up with Earl Hill, a lifer on murder and rape convictions, on a hillside not far from the church. A resident had reported three strangers traveling in the dark.
Stonney Lane, Brushy’s warden, called for Sandy and Little Red.
The dogs sniffed. The men at their leashes watched and waited.
“We hadn’t gone 40-50 yards when Little Red turned,” Newberry said.
Across the railroad track, through the river, up the mountain, into the briars and brush, the dogs led on. Around 2 a.m., Sandy came to a stop, Little Red behind her.
James Earl Ray crawled to his feet. He had a little more than $100 cash in his pockets and a piece of a map.
Searchers rounded up the rest of the fugitives soon after. A jury that fall convicted all seven men in the escape.