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The sounding of the alarm helped to knock out the phone system in the area when the escape began. So many nearby residents called in to find out what was the matter that the lines simply overloaded.
Fearful that Tennessee would become notorious as the state that let King's killer get away, Governor Ray Blanton called in state troopers. In addition, U.S. Attorney General Griffin Bell, after consulting with President Jimmy Carter, dispatched the FBI to the scene. Some 50 agents—many of them strangers to Tennessee, let alone the Tennessee mountains—took up the chase. Five helicopters began circling over the area, while technicians used infra-red equipment to try to detect tiny changes in the temperature on the floor of the woods that might indicate the presence of a man.
The Tennessee mountain men—the same breed that produced Sergeant Alvin York, who came from 40 miles up the road—treated the outsiders as if they were so many Inspectors Clouseau in pursuit of the Pink Panther. Said Guard
Don Daugherty: "You don't go flashing your lights around and telling him where you're at. I was sitting humped up real quiet when they [the FBI] came roaring through and flashed a spotlight on me." The FBI insists that it was circumspect, but Guard Bill Garrison declared, "We would have had them all back in twelve, 15 hours if everyone woulda left us alone. The hell with all those damn machines the FBI brung."
Once over the wall, the six escapees had split up quickly. The three planners —Ray, his cellmate Earl Hill Jr. (a lifer for murder and rape) and Douglas Shelton (serving 63 to 65 years for murder and assault) headed north. Moving mainly at night, holing up by day, the three traveled unpaved back roads past slag heaps and thick forests. The trio carelessly left behind a trail of gum wrappers—telltale pieces of confetti that stood out against the greens and browns of the mountain roads. The men had a 4sq.-in. map of the area that had been cut from a road map, and they had money enough: Ray had $290 when he was picked up, a sum he could easily have saved from his $35-a-month salary as a shirt presser in the laundry. The three kept close to Route 116, where they could hear passing cars.
As the guards and the bloodhounds followed the trail, they had to cope with an unfamiliar hazard: the press. Using "scanners" to monitor police radio channels, reporters were often at the spot of a reported sighting before the guards and dogs. Journalists tramping around the woods so mixed and mingled the scent that the hounds were thrown off. The cops put out some false leads on the radio; eavesdropping reporters pell-melled off to another hill miles away, and the trackers were able to get back to work.
About noon on Sunday, Guard Garrison found a footprint near a road used for carrying coal, just off Route 116. Armed with a shotgun and a revolver, he set out on the trail. For eight hours he stayed on the search, finding an occasional footprint or a broken vine or a gum wrapper. At one point, he was called back to headquarters by radio to follow another lead, but disobeyed orders and stayed on the hot track.