How My Father Helped Crack the Martin Luther King, Jr. Case: The Pliers and the Undershorts.

Gary North

April 4, 2008

Almost forty years ago, my father was one of four FBI agents who discovered the connection between James Earl Ray, "Eric Starvo Galt," and the rifle found in Memphis. The keys to the connection were a pair of pliers and a pair of shorts. I include this as footnote 153 on page 213 of my book, Boundaries and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Leviticus (1999). I have seen no other reference to these events.

My father, Sam W. North, then a Los Angeles-based FBI agent, had a part in solving this case. The authorities had discovered a pair of pliers dropped near the assassination site in Memphis, Tennessee. A pair of undershorts had also been dropped. The pliers had a sticker: Rompage Hardware. The FBI put out a bulletin to its offices to trace this company. Los Angeles agents Gil Benjamin and George Moorehead investigated a hardware store with this name; they found pairs of identical pliers in a bargain bin. The store was located a few blocks from the St. Francis Hotel, where the convicted murderer James Earl Ray acknowledges in his book that he lived. Ray, Who Killed Martin Luther King? The True Story by the Alleged Assassin (Washington, D.C.: National Press Books, 1992), p. 84. Another agent, Ted Ahern, went down the block to a dry cleaners. There the tag number on the shorts was identified as having been assigned to "Eric S. Galt." Moorehead and my father later investigated "Galt's" previous residences. They located a paper that had been signed by "Galt." They sent the paper to the FBI laboratory in Washington. On it was an impression: "James Earl Ray." Moorehead provided the details of this in a letter to me dated March 3, 1995; they confirm my father's recollections.