INVESTIGATIONS: The King Assassination

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McMillan maintains that Ray was sending large sums of money out of prison and that this was sufficient to cover his expenses and travel for the year in between his escape and his arrest. Although a failure as a crook, Ray was a sharp operator in prison, a moneymaking "merchant" who dealt in drugs, prison food supplies and other contraband.

Illicit Earnings. McMillan reports that Ray's brothers Jack and Jerry gave Ray $4,700 in cash in a Chicago hotel right after Ray's escape, while Jerry retained another $1,500 for Ray to use later. In all, according to McMillan, Ray had sent out from prison illicit earnings of about $6,500, then netted about $500 in laborer's jobs while a fugitive and probably spent about $6,800 in his year of freedom. Ray committed a holdup in England before his arrest, indicating that his funds probably had run out—and that no conspirators seemed to be financing him, at least then.

The McMillan book also tackles some peripheral questions that have bothered other investigators. Why did Ray order expensive photo equipment from a Chicago supplier? Possibly to see if he could make money selling pornographic pictures: McMillan quotes two of Ray's brothers as saying they discussed this venture with Ray. Why did he drop a bundle of evidence, including a rifle and binoculars, on the sidewalk near the rooming house from which King was shot? Because a police car was near by and Ray feared he would be caught with the goods.

But how could Ray obtain false ID and passports and thus elude police for so long? McMillan's book, which drops the narrative after the shooting of King, suggests that Ray had picked up some of his aliases from the novels he had read. Since four of the names Ray used in his flight, including Eric Starve Gait, were living residents of the Toronto area, the explanation of other investigators sounds more reasonable. They claim that Ray went to a Toronto library, looked at old newspapers for birth announcements that gave names of men roughly his own age and picked up his aliases from them. He might well have learned of this tactic while in prison. At least two of the men whose names were used by Ray received calls from someone posing as a government official and inquiring if they had ever applied for passports; Ray presumably did not want to get caught by applying for a passport that had already been issued. He did, in fact, get a passport merely by swearing that he was "Ramon George Sneyd," a Canadian citizen. Ray's false identity had been cleverly established; he even underwent plastic surgery in Los Angeles to alter the shape of his nose—but in the end he left a telltale series of fingerprints at the scene of the King crime.