by Britain in the late nineteenth century. The system recognizes three primary friction-ridge patterns--arches, loops, and whorls. Loops, the most common pattern, are assigned a numerical value according to the number of ridges contained within each pattern found on each digit. Loop patterns can be further described as 'radial' or 'ulnar,' depending on which direction their microscopic tails point.
Bonebrake got started with his meticulous work shortly after dawn. Most of the prints that he found were fragments or smudges that contained little or no information of value. The twenty-dollar bills that Mrs. Bessie Brewer had provided yielded no usable prints whatsoever. Eventually, however, Bonebrake was able to lift six high- quality specimens from the Remington rifle, the Redfield scope, the Bushnell binoculars, the front section of the
Most of these prints appeared to come from different fingers, but already Bonebrake could tell that two of the prints--those taken from the rifle and the binoculars--were from the same digit of the same individual. Both seemed to have been deposited by a left thumb, and, upon further study, the print pattern would turn out to be unmistakable: an ulnar loop of twelve ridge counts.
This was an important find. The FBI had the fingerprints of more than eighty-two million individuals on file--a number obviously too large to work with, as fingerprint examiners had to do all matching the old-fashioned way, by hand, eyeball, and magnifying glass. This tiny little detail, however, narrowed the search considerably: an ulnar loop of twelve ridge counts on the left thumb. Bonebrake's task was still formidable, but now he had something definite on which to draw comparisons. He made large black-and-white blowups of all six of the latent prints, and then he and his team got started.
ON ANOTHER FLOOR of the FBI Crime Lab, Robert A. Frazier spent the morning494 examining and test-firing the Remington Gamemaster after it had been dusted for fingerprints. A ferociously methodical man with nearly three decades' experience, Frazier was the chief of the FBI's Firearms Identification Unit, where a team of ballistics experts worked around the clock in what was widely considered the world's preeminent weapons- testing facility. Here technicians fired rifles into water recovery tanks, examined bullet fragments and firearms components under high-powered microscopes, and subjected objects to arcane tests to detect such things as the presence of gunpowder and lead.
Within a few hours, Frazier and his team had made a long list of important preliminary findings.
First, the projectile which Dr. Francisco had extracted from Martin Luther King's body only a few hours earlier was a .30-caliber metal-jacketed, soft-nosed bullet made by the Remington-Peters Company--identical in manufacture to the unused Remington-Peters .30-06 rounds found in the ammo box that was part of the bundle.
Second, Frazier was able to ascertain the kind of barrel from which the bullet was fired. The barrels of modern firearms are 'rifled' with spiral grooves that are designed to give bullets a rapid spinning motion for stability during flight. The raised portions between the grooves are known as lands. The number, width, and direction of twist of the lands and grooves are called the class characteristics of a barrel, and are common to all firearms of a given model and manufacture. Frazier determined that the bullet that killed King had been fired from a barrel 'rifled with six lands and grooves, right twist,' and that the Gamemaster, analyzed under a microscope in his laboratory, exhibited the same land-and-groove pattern.
Third, the spent cartridge that Special Agent Jensen had removed from the chamber had been fired in the same Gamemaster rifle, as evidenced by a tiny 'extractor mark' Frazier found imprinted on the metal casing. At the base of this spent cartridge case, Frazier discovered a head stamp that said, 'R-P .30-06 SPRG,' indicating that it was a Remington-Peters round of the same caliber as the ammunition found in the ammo box.
Frazier concluded, based on the 'physical characteristics of the rifling impressions' as well as other factors, that the bullet removed from King's body
Frazier knew that the mechanical components of individual firearms (such as the firing pin and breech face) have distinctive microscopic traits that can engrave telltale markings on bullets. The tiny striations often found on fired bullets are known as individual identifying characteristics and are, in effect, the ballistics equivalent of a fingerprint. Frazier had hoped the bullet that killed King would exhibit these telltale markings, but it didn't: the round, having been chipped, dented, warped, and broken into several discrete parts, was missing the critical information.
Though a dismaying discovery, it was not uncommon; bullets often came to Frazier's lab in sorry condition. Such was the secondary effect of firearms violence: projectiles, in doing their damage, themselves became damaged.
Frazier also studied the windowsill that had been removed from the communal bathroom at Bessie Brewer's rooming house. Making microscopic comparisons between the half-moon indentation in the windowsill and various markings on the rifle barrel, he determined to his satisfaction that the dent could have been caused by the Gamemaster's recoil upon firing--it was 'consistent' with the barrel's contours and appeared to have been created recently--but again, he stopped short of an absolute confirmation.
Finally, Frazier examined King's bloody clothes, subjecting them to chemical tests. He found 'no partially burned or unburned gunpowder' on King's dress shirt, suit coat, and necktie, which conclusively confirmed what everybody who'd been at the Lorraine already knew--that King had
WHILE THE FBI pored over King's mangled clothes, Eric Galt was in Atlanta, only a few miles from King's church and birthplace; he, too, had clothes on his mind. Around 9:30 a.m. eastern time, Galt dropped by the Piedmont Laundry on Peachtree Street to pick up the clothes he had left before he went to Memphis. The laundry's counter clerk, Mrs. Annie Estelle Peters,495 had waited on Galt when he dropped off the clothes on April 1, and she immediately recognized the returning customer when he walked through the door. As before, he was neatly dressed and clean shaven; this time, though, he seemed to be in a hurry. He was abrupt in his speech and impatient when she left the counter to locate his clothes.
She returned with his items--three pieces of dry cleaning and an assortment of regular laundry totaling $2.71, which he paid for in cash. There was a black-checked coat, a pair of gray trousers, a striped brown tie, four undershirts, three underdrawers, a pair of socks, and a washcloth. All his laundry items were affixed with tiny identifying tags that said, 'EGC-83'--which was Galt's permanent 'laundry mark' for all his dealings with Piedmont. Hastily, Galt picked up the folded laundry, neatly stacked in a rectangular package of stapled paper, and slung the hangered dry-cleaning items over his shoulder. He walked out of the shop and headed up Peachtree, in the direction of his rooming house on Fourteenth Street.
Galt didn't barge into the rooming house--he watched and waited from a distance until he was 'satisfied there was no unusual activity496 around the place.' Then he moved quickly. Neither the tenants nor the owner, Jimmie Garner, saw him. He tidied up his room a bit, throwing some trash in a plastic bag and dropping it into a garbage can out back. He also threw out the manual typewriter he'd had since his time in Puerto Vallarta--it would be too cumbersome, he realized, for his fugitive travels to Canada. He packed a suitcase with his clean laundry and his self-help books and his Polaroid camera. He retrieved his .38 Liberty Chief revolver from its hiding place in the basement and stuck it in his belt. He assembled a wad of bills497 that he later estimated to be slightly more than a thousand dollars--money saved, he later claimed, from various smuggling and fencing schemes over the past year. He stamped and addressed an envelope to the Locksmithing Institute in Little Falls, New Jersey, containing the final lesson in his locksmithing correspondence course, an envelope he would mail later that morning. Then he dashed off a short note498 for Mr. Garner on a piece of cardboard--a note clearly designed to throw authorities off his scent. He said he unexpectedly had to go to Birmingham but would come back for his remaining belongings--he specifically mentioned the portable Zenith television--in a few days. He placed the note on his bed and left his key in the lock. Then Galt grabbed his suitcase and never returned to 113
