(3 of 4)
[McMillan found two convicts, Bill Miles and Raymond Curtis, who had served sentences at the same time as Ray and who described some of Ray's activities as a Merchant.] "He was a peddler at Jeff City, all right," Curtis went on. "I've seen him work on a plan as long as 30 days to get a dozen eggs halfway across the prison yard. He stole many a case of eggs in his time, sold them for $1 a dozen, $30 a case ... Sometimes we made raisin jack, sometimes homemade beer. Ray supplied the yeast because he could get it in the bakery, where he worked, and I made the stuff..."
Curtis told me that to his knowledge Ray had used pills and amphetamines since he had first known him 15 years before. "At Jeff City he was in that business," Curtis said. "Him and another boy had the connection. Ain't but one way to get it in—the guard ... I can't use no names," said Curtis, "but Ray's connection was in the culinary, doing a life sentence. There was a lot of stuff in that prison ... One thing you could do is give a guard $100 to buy a plane ticket to St. Louis and pick [the drugs] up for you, or even $500 to go to Kansas City. A fella like Ray would end up paying about $750 a pound [for speed]. You may sell a whole pound to somebody for $3,500. With pills you make more.
You buy 1,000 for 500 apiece and sell them for $1 apiece ... I could give you the names of nine guards who worked with fellas like Ray."
Sending His Money Out
The guard with whom James Earl Ray had his connection ... took his share off the top and mailed the rest to one of the Ray family members, in plain envelopes that bore no return address. He sent it in $100 bills, wrapped in a piece of plain paper. He sent some to Jerry. It was addressed to Box 22, Wheeling, Ill. When Jerry got the money, he would write "O.K." on a piece of paper and mail it back.
A Motive to Kill
His ideas had come together. The idea JERRY RAY of killing King, the idea of working for a new political structure in America, were one ... By killing King, he would become an actor in the turbulent ideological drama of his times, the drama he had heretofore only watched on the cellblock TV. He saw how King's assassination could serve a larger political power by a single act performed by him. And he saw at the end of the road a hero's sanctuary, if he turned out to need a sanctuary, in several places, one of which was Rhodesia.
For him, by this tune, killing King was not a luxury. He needed the mission, he needed the concept of killing King to hold himself together. It gave him the cohesion he was utterly dependent on. It was not just a twisted ideal that led him on. It was a compulsive obsession, and he was having trouble sustaining it over the period of time he had set to accomplish his disparate plans ... Given the chain of circumstances of his life, killing King had become Ray's destiny.
On the Day of Murder