>> its name is the "ss united states," and she's been here for 17 years because she is not done yet. >> reporter: sarah hoye, cnn, philadelphia. >> beautiful boat still. i'm don lemon at the cnn world headquarters in atlanta. have a great night and a great week. i'm not fearing any man! >> and the shot rang out, kapow! >> martin luther king has been shot at the lorraine. >> report of a shooting. >> we have information that the shot came from a brick building directly west. >> the subject ran south on main street. >> the young white male, well dressed, possibly in a late model white mustang, went north on main street, 610.

i'm soledad o'brien at the lorraine motel in memphis, tennessee. 40 years ago, dr. martin luther king jr. was shot down and murdered right here on this balcony where i'm standing. the greatest civil rights leader in our nation's history, killed before his dreams could be realized. the alleged assassin, a small-time criminal on the run. yet to this day questions still linger and fester, and even some of dr. king's closest aides believe the full story has yet to be told. we will try. ♪ he was an american martyr. a man who broke through the barriers of segregation with the philosophy of nonviolence. only to be shot down by a hidden gunman before his time.

>> we had to change the world. >> 40 years later i walked to the tomb of dr. martin luther king jr. with his longtime friend and aide, andrew young. >> free at last. free at last. thank god almighty, i'm free at last. do you think that's the appropriate thing to put there? >> for him, yeah. >> yeah? from his first days in the civil rights movement, dr. king lived under the shadow of death. his house bombed in the montgomery bus boycott, followers killed in birmingham and selma. he was stabbed once in harlem at a book signing. >> when they removed the knife blades, they left a scar in his chest shaped like a cross. >> a cross he saw in the mirror each day when he got up. >> he said, every morning when i brush my teeth i know this day might be my last, so i'm ready for whatever comes any day of my life. >> he joked about death with his inner circle. >> he'd always say, they are going to be shooting at me, but one of you will be jumping in front of the camera to take the

bullet for me. and he said, i'll appreciate it, and then i'll preach the best funeral you've ever heard or anybody ever heard. then he'd start preaching. preaching your funeral. he would never let us get nervous about it. and i don't think he was nervous about it. >> but it was there? it was very real? >> it was there particularly from the moment john kennedy was killed. he just assumed that inevitably, if they could not protect the president, there's no way we could be protected. >> this photo was taken in 1966 on an earlier visit to memphis. at king's side, that's officer edward redditt. on that visit, king stayed in his usual room off the balcony at the lorraine motel. redditt remembers. >> we put our bodies around him coming out of that room at the lorraine, and we walked him down the steps to make sure he was covered, because it is dangerous. if you look at that balcony, so

many areas you can see that's visible if i want to get you. re democratic ditt approached king at breakfast at the lorraine to tell him it was dangerous. >> why you want to stay up here? he said, i like the room. he'd laugh. i'd say, okay. >> that was two years before dr. king's death. by then most of his civil rights victories were already behind him. his nonviolent protests brought out the worst in white america. police dogs and fire hoses in birmingham in 1963. alabama state troopers beating back protestors on the bridge in selma in 1965. and their violence would strike a flint on the nation's conscience. >> and we shall overcome. >> president lyndon johnson pushed through landmark civil rights bills to open up public accommodations to ensure access to voting rights. and signed the laws as dr. king stood over his shoulder.

by the late 1960s, andrew young says king had become exhausted. >> we were pretty well worn out. i mean, he had been going from '55 to '67 without a let-up. >> there was a rumor dr. king was planning a sabbatical, maybe in india or in africa. was that true? >> he was thinking about it. that was his -- that was his dream. it wasn't india or africa, it was really riverside church. >> the prestigious riverside church in new york was looking for a pastor. >> he said, that was my ideal. that's what i wanted to be when i grew up. >> i speak out against this war. >> but that never happened. instead, this speech at riverside will become king's moral watershed over vietnam. by 1966 the u.s. was mired in a war it could not win, and blacks

were the losers, measured as a percentage of adult males, blacks were dying in vietnam at a rate twice as high as whites. >> in order to atone for our sins and errors in vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. >> everybody attacked him. >> what was president johnson's reaction after the riverside speech? >> well, after the riverside speech, i don't think we talked to him anymore. >> he was angry? >> yeah. >> on that day, april the 4th, 1967, as king spoke at riverside, he would have exactly one year left to live. three weeks later, while king was leading an anti-war protest in massachusetts, 1,000 miles away in missouri, a small-time criminal named james earl ray would escape from prison and start on the course that would bring both men to memphis on april 4th, 1968.

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as an armed robber, james earl ray was fearless. >> i moved here in may. >> his younger brother, jerry, says another crook told him this. >> they said, i've never been with nobody as bold as he is. he just walked in and put a gun on somebody just like it's an everyday thing. they say he didn't have no fear or nothing. >> ray was born in alton,

illinois, and grew up dirt poor along the mississippi river in mark twain country. >> everybody just called him jimmy. nobody called him james. that came out when king got killed, they started calling him james earl ray. we just all called him jimmy. >> by his mid-20s ray was a two-bit gunman. this is ray on a hospital table shot by a chicago cop after the botched robbery of a taxi driver in 1952. ray went to prison for two years. then three more years in federal prison at leavenworth for stealing post office money orders. ray turned down a transfer to an honor farm. prison records say he did so because he didn't want to live in an integrated honor dorm. in 1959, caught after a grocery holdup in st. louis, ray was declared a habitual criminal and sent to the missouri state prison for 20 years. you have a guy who wasn't very bright, wasn't a good criminal,

wasn't the sharpest tack. >> he's smart, he's plenty smart, intelligent. >> smart enough, jerry said, not to get caught most of the time. >> they don't catch him on the other crimes, you know. so he had done a lot of things he got away with. >> almost eight years later in 1967, james earl ray escaped from prison by smuggling himself out in a bread truck. he headed for chicago taking a job as a dishwasher at the indian trail restaurant. then on a summer afternoon, downstate in alton, illinois, a bank robbery. john light was the chief of detectives. >> the witnesses said two people came in, masks like ladies' stockings pulled over their head. one was at the front door with a shotgun. the other, leaner individual went over the counters. this individual went from cage to cage and scooped up about 30 grand, total.

>> most of the money was in $20 bills, an important fact as we'll soon hear. the gunmen got away, but near the cemetery where ray's mother was buried -- >> we found the shotgun partially burned, and the bib overalls with a stocking mask partially burned here. >> so who robbed the bank? >> i think james earl ray did. >> the very next day ray bought a used car and headed for canada. suddenly, he had enough money to buy a tailor-made suit and take a week's vacation at a resort. but he returned to his cheap room along the montreal waterfront trying to find a way to ship out to white-ruled areas of africa. ray's own words from 40 years ago. >> my reason for frequenting the waterfront was to see if i could get some drunken seaman's papers or get a job on the ship. >> ray put his account of his travels down in writing for the late author william bradford huey who would provide the money for his legal fees.

>> i thought the way to find out what ray knew was to make a deal with him. >> in august of 1967 at the neptune tavern in montreal, ray said he met a mysterious man he knew only as raoul. the man ray would blame for everything that followed. >> i think the first time i contacted raoul was the second time i frequented the bar with the pilot wheels in the window. he started the conversation. altogether, i would say i talked to him seven or eight times. >> as ray told it, raoul paid him to smuggle something, he never knew what, across the border in detroit. >> 100 square blocks are now under siege. >> he came back into the country only a few weeks after detroit erupted in a firestorm of rioting. at least 40 killed after a black confrontation with white police. america's second deadly urban riot in the summer of '67. ray drove on to chicago for a reunion with his brother, jerry.

>> that's when he told me, he said, from now on i'll be known as eric s. galt. >> eric galt. ray never told him why or how he got the name. instead, the fugitive who had fled the country only a month earlier rode the train south to a still largely segregated alabama. in birmingham ray answered a newspaper ad and bought a car much like this. >> the car i finally bought, a 1966 mustang, had about 18,000 miles on it and was in good condition. it cost $1995. the only thing i didn't like was the color. it was white. >> in this fbi interview, the seller said ray paid him in cash, mostly 20s. >> he paid that guy $2,000 in 20s, that would be a lot of money. >> there's another dot connected to the bank of alton. detective john light thinks that money came from the robbery.

if so, enough to keep ray on the run for another year. >> $30,000 back in 1967 was a lot of money. >> but james earl ray claims the money came from the mysterious raoul. never a last name. >> he just called that name raoul. that's the only name he ever called him. >> ray got an alabama driver's license under his alias, eric starvo galt. he registered the mustang under the same name. with this new license plate and his new identity, ray left for mexico. by mid november, ray, on the right, had move on to los angeles and settled into a low-rent hotel on hollywood boulevard. he took dancing lessons and bar tending lessons, but perhaps more significantly, he did this. >> i had plastic surgery on my nose. it had been mashed to the left. after i got to the hotel, i moved the bandage to the right to change my appearance more. >> ray underwent that plastic surgery on march 5th, only 30

days before martin luther king jr. would die. >> i have been retained by this man. >> arthur haines jr. on the left and his father would become ray's first lawyers. >> when he left the plastic surgeon, he took his hand and undid the surgery, pushing it to the right thinking, if he ever got arrested, he would use the plastic surgeon's photographs to show it was not he who had been arrested. >> two weeks later dr. king traveled to los angeles, first speaking to the state democratic convention, then delivering a sunday church sermon. ray would later write this. >> i wouldn't say i hated king. i do think most preachers are a little phony, but i wouldn't consider shooting them. >> the sermon was march 17th. king flew east to memphis to speak the next day to striking garbage workers. that same day james earl ray filled out this change of

address card, and he, too, left los angeles, driving east. the new address he listed was king's home city of atlanta. ahead, for both men, a date with murder. coming up, the fbi. dirty minds and dirty tricks. >> someone was left in the room and was recorded in the act of sexual intercourse, and they assumed it was dr. king. license and registration please. what's this? uhh, it's my geico insurance id card, sir. it's digital, uh, pretty cool right? maybe. you know why i pulled you over today? because i'm a pig driving a convertible? tail light's out.. fix it. digital insurance id cards.

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good luck here. bye-bye. >> bye. >> someone was stalking dr. king, but this time they had white house approval to do it. >> i have a dream today. >> dr. king's electrifying speech at the march of washington in august of 1963 had made him the movement's hero. it also made him the fbi's nightmare, according to the official paper trail. >> thank god almighty, we are free at last. >> we regard martin luther king to be the most dangerous negro leader in the country. >> they called him, in one of the fbi memos, the most dangerous negro. >> i think that's probably a compliment. >> andrew young, one of king's closest advisors, says the inner

circle was very much aware that the government was spying on them. >> we saw the fbi. they were not very subtle. i mean, they all dressed alike with little skinny ties and crew cuts, for the most part. >> pulitzer pride winner, david garrow, who teaches at cambridge university in england, discovered thousands of memos while writing his book "the fbi and martin luther king." >> martin luther king jr. is knowingly, willingly and regularly cooperating with and taking guidance from communists. >> the memos show an fbi obsessed with a red menace. >> police attend meetings to discuss neutralization of king. to develop evidence of king's dependence on communists. >> they leaked the details to the press to discredit dr. king, and j. edgar hoover sent robert kennedy a warning, communists were pulling dr. king's puppet strings. two top advisors, including

lawyer stanley levison, had been party members, they cut ties working with king. >> the bureau never came up with one iota of indication that levison or anyone else was actively working some communist line or communist influence. >> congressman john lewis, a longtime democratic power in the house, was an important young leader in king's inner circle. >> j. edgar hoover never understood, and others around him, that when you've been discriminated against, you don't need someone from moscow or someone from any other part of the world to tell you that you are being discriminated against. >> but in october of 1963, robert kennedy signed off on wiretaps. atlanta agents broke into dr. king's home and office to install them. did you know the fbi was tapping

your phones? >> oh, yeah. >> you assumed it or knew it? >> no, we knew it. >> nothing was sacred. young remembers how fellow minister ralph abernathy discovered an fbi bug while speaking at an alabama church. >> he said, look here. he took the microphone out and put it up on top of the pulpit. he said, little doohickey, i want you to tell president johnson, i want you to tell j. edgar hoover, i want you to tell george wallace, i want you to tell everybody. that no matter what they think, we are going to be free. and the whole church just cheered. >> but there were no cheers when fbi surveillance caught dr. king in an embarrassing moment. it was 1964 at the willard hotel in washington, d.c. >> a bunch of guys were in the room clowning, and they were having a very good time. and then it quieted down, and

someone was left in the room and was recorded in the act of sexual intercourse. and they assumed it was dr. king. >> the same year at another hotel in los angeles, the fbi recorded dr. king telling a dirty joke about the recently assassinated president john kennedy. hoover sent the tape and transcript to bobby kennedy. the fbi tapes did not endear king to the attorney general or the white house. >> the price that was paid was that there was never as much close trust between president kennedy, president johnson, and king. >> hoover's contempt for king was clear in his scrawl left on several fbi memos. >> king is a tomcat with obsessive degenerate sexual urges. king could well qualify for the top alley cat prize, disgusting. >> they are listening in on dr.

king, writing memos, sharing those memos with presidents. those two guys -- >> yes. >> -- have sex on the brain a lot. >> yes. it's the hatred of a hypocrite. they think they have this special knowledge, thanks to the electronic surveillance, that king is so personally, sexually, a hypocrite and not a minister of the gospel. >> hoover's fbi leaked these sex stories to the press, but no newspaper took the bait. they couldn't ignore hoover when he called reverend king the most notorious liar in the country in a rare 1964 press conference. >> the bureau very much, very explicitly wanted martin luther king out of the civil rights movement. >> so the fbi took it one more nasty step. when dr. king won the nobel prize, the fbi mailed an anonymous package to dr. king's office.

on it, highlights from the sex tapes with an ominous note. >> you are a colossal fraud and an evil, vicious one at that. the american public will know you for what you are. an evil abnormal beast. king, you are done. there is only one thing left for you to do. you know what it is. you better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation. >> the implication was that this was supposed to provoke him to suicide. >> dr. king's wife, coretta, opened the package. horrified, she showed it to her husband and his advisors. >> it was blackmail, basically. >> it was blackmail. >> i think j. edgar hoover had a dislike for martin luther king jr. >> personally? >> it was a personal dislike. >> lewis believes hoover's hatred blinded him to dr. king's dream.

>> i think j. edgar hoover was convinced that martin luther king jr. was a threat to the order of the american society. >> yet, king was unmoved by the fbi's truly dirty tricks. >> he saw this as part of his life, just the way he would have to live for the rest of his life. still ahead, military spies on the rooftop. >> they said they wanted to take pictures. >> and the fatal moment. >> he probably never even heard the shot. [ male announcer ] at his current pace, bob will retire when he's 153, which would be fine if bob were a vampire. but he's not. ♪ he's an architect with two kids and a mortgage. luckily, he found someone

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early in 1968 black garbage collectors in memphis, tennessee, went on strike over low wages. garbage man taylor rogers. >> we made about 99 cents an hour. you could work a 40-hour week and be eligible for welfare. >> civil rights leader reverend billy kyles. >> if it rained, they didn't work. the white drivers got paid, but they didn't get paid. >> garbage piled up in the streets and backyards. talks broke down.

police clash with strikers marching down main street. >> that's when they would use tear gas and night sticks. >> strike leader joe warren. >> you'd wipe your eyes, man, you couldn't see nothing then. >> reverend kyles was in miami with king that weekend. >> when you really get a movement going, it's time to call for warren. >> congressman john lewis. >> he got sidetracked. he didn't have any intention of going to memphis. that was not part of his plan. it was not on the map. >> dr. king was planning a poor people's march in washington, d.c., that spring to lay siege to congress to demand an end to the poverty rooted in racism. a lot of people didn't want king in memphis. they felt it was a distraction. >> well, i was one of those that felt that we needed to stick with the poor people's campaign. >> king overruled his staff and flew to memphis to speak to an overflow crowd on the night of

march 18th. >> if one black person is down, we are all down. >> he was talking, man, he would set you on fire. >> then we got greedy. what about coming back and leading a march? >> a snowstorm postponed the march planned for the end of the week. king headed for middle alabama instead. that friday night, march 22nd, driving east from los angeles, james earl ray stopped here at this motel in selma, alabama. he registered as eric galt. the motel was just past the edmund pettus bridge, where three years earlier state troopers had attacked civil rights protesters on what would become known as bloody sunday. ray could not explain that stopover, even to his lawyer, arthur haines jr. >> typical ray, evasion, i was

just passing through and i stayed there. nothing. >> from selma ray went on to atlanta, staying at a cheap boardinghouse near downtown. later the fbi would find in his room a city map with circles drawn around the ebenezer baptist church where martin luther king preached and around the neighborhood where he lived. on thursday, march 28th, reverend king returned to memphis for a massive protest in support of the garbage workers. violence erupted among angry black youths at the rear of the march. >> somebody threw a rock, a brick, or something. in a store. >> everything went haywire. police would come again throwing mace, dragging people out of the line, doing everything. >> windows were smashed, stores looted. police shot this teenager to death.

king's aide, andrew young. >> nobody anticipated that this one would get out of hand. >> what was his reaction when it did? >> his reaction was the deepest depression i've ever seen him in. >> reverend king was rushed away from the march to take refuge at a nearby white-owned hotel, not the black-owned lorraine motel. the fbi smear campaign went into action. this memo proposes a leak to reporters to tell them -- >> when violence broke out, king disappeared. king chose to hide out in a white owned and operated holiday inn. >> reverend kyles found king there. was reverend king determined to come back and do it right? >> oh, yes. he was absolutely determined to come back and do it. he said, if we don't have a peaceful march in memphis, we cannot go to washington. >> that very next day, friday, march 29th, james earl ray drove from atlanta back to birmingham.

he found this ad in the local newspaper. ray's own words, again. >> we got the address of the aeromarine supply out of the wanted ads section. i called there and they had a large supply of rifles. >> the store owner did not want to be interviewed, but pointed out where ray stood at the counter that day. >> i asked the salesman for a deer rifle, he showed me one, which i bought. >> but after ray left, he insisted the mystery man, raoul, told him to get a different rifle. >> i then called aeromarine and told them it was the wrong kind of rifle. i think i told them my brother-in-law told me that. >> ray wrote "brother-in-law" in this account. but the salesman told the fbi that ray said, his brother. did he mean you? were you in birmingham that day? >> no, that was just a figure of speech, i guess. because at that time i had never been in the state of birmingham. >> this is the rifle james earl ray would buy.

a powerful .30-06 remington bushmaster hunting rifle with a magnifying scope. a gun found just five days later left at the murder scene in memphis. ray bought that rifle using another alias. harvey lowmeyer. ray also bought a box of high-velocity soft-nosed bullets. the total cost for the gun and ammunition came to just under $250. ray paid in cash. once again, he used $20 bills. back in atlanta, reeling from the failed protest march, king was in a bleak mood. >> it was the only three or four days or week that he never smiled, he never laughed, he didn't say anything. when he said something, it was in real anger and bitterness. >> on sunday, march 31st, reverend king would deliver his last sermon at washington's national cathedral. that night, president lyndon

johnson, besieged by the vietnam war, stunned the nation. >> i shall not seek and i will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president. >> the next day, monday, april fool's day, king announced he would return to memphis for a second march, trying to escape from the shadow of violence. >> he might have thought that this was the end, but he never said that. he was only determined to go back and go on. ahead, the last speech. >> he always said, i will never live to be 40. he was 39. welcnew york state, where cutting taxes for families and businesses is our business. we've reduced taxes and lowered costs to save businesses more than two billion dollars to grow jobs, cut middle class income taxes to the lowest rate in sixty years,

and we're creating tax free zones for business startups. the new new york is working creating tens of thousands of new businesses, and we're just getting started. to grow or start your business visit thenewny.com even the inside of your dishwasher sparkles. okay. so i'm the bad guy for being clean. you said it. ladies, let's not fight dirty. cascade kitchen counselor. see, over time, finish gel can leave hard-water film on your dishes and dishwasher. new cascade platinum's triple-action formula not only cleans your dishes, it helps keep your dishwasher sparkling. so we're good? don't do that. okay. [ female announcer ] cascade's best is new cascade platinum. to prove to you that aleve is the better choice for him, he's agreed to give it up. that's today? [ male announcer ] we'll be with him all day as he goes back to taking tylenol. i was okay, but after lunch my knee started to hurt again.

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...and we inspected his brakes for free. -free is good. -free is very good. [ male announcer ] now get 50% off brake pads and shoes at meineke. martin luther king's flight from atlanta to memphis on wednesday, april 3rd, was delayed by a bomb scare. his staff shrugged. >> we had been living with

threats, and we always said that when it's real, nobody's going to tell you. >> dr. king checked in again at the black-owned lorraine motel, this time without police protection. a local civil rights worker turned that down, because of the clash with police the week before. edward redditt who guarded king two years earlier was part of a police intelligence unit. >> i saw no security at the airport with him. that always bothered me. why was we told to do it one way, then he comes back next time, it's not done that way. >> this aerial photo showing the lorraine motel hangs on the wall of arthur hanes' law office. >> according to the prosecutors, the shot was fired from the bathroom and killed dr. king over here on the second floor of the lorraine. >> just south of the rooming

house, across the street from the lorraine, is this firehouse. in the back of the fire station, officer redditt set up a surveillance post. >> i call it surveillance. because he couldn't be security. you've got to be surveillance. >> this is the back window now painted over. fire lieutenant george lonakey was on duty that day. >> they had a newspaper across the window. it had peepholes, three peepholes. >> the memphis police were not the only spies interested in the firehouse location. when national guard troops rolled into memphis after the looting and violence, with them came an army intelligence unit from ft. mcpherson in atlanta. fire captain carthell wheaton said two agents entered the fire station that week. >> they came in and came to the watch desk and wanted to go up on top of the fire station. they said they wanted to take some pictures. of course, when you get on top of that there, you are looking right straight over at dr. king.

>> but on that roof, there was no place to hide. >> if you are up there, anybody can see you from across the street. they walked around just a minute and came back down. >> the agents left. he never saw them again. that wednesday, april 3rd, in the coffee shop at the lorraine hotel, dr. king was handed court papers forbidding a second march. this local newspaper story mentioned king was staying at lorraine. that evening, on the outskirts of town, james earl ray drove his mustang up to the new rebel inn. he registered again as eric galt. >> i checked in the new rebel upon arrival in memphis. raoul showed up that night about 8:00 or 9:00. he had a rain coat on, as it was raining out. >> as ray told it, raoul wanted to show the rifle ray bought in birmingham to foreign buyers in an apparent gun-running deal.

>> he told me to rent a room because we could be in memphis for three or four days. then i gave him the name i had used indirectly before, willard, and one that i wouldn't forget. >> there were tornado warnings that night, it was thundering and lightning and raining. >> while james earl ray sat in his motel, king was preparing to speak to the striking sanitation workers. >> there was some shutters in the back of the church, and they were banging because of the storm. and every time they would bang, he would do that. they would bang, and he would do that. >> he was nervous. >> yes, very much so. >> he thought he was going to die soon. >> he knew he was. always said, "i'll never live to be 40." he was 39. >> i don't know what will happen now. we've got some difficult days ahead. but it really doesn't matter with me now, because i've been to the mountaintop.

i don't mind. >> andrew young took the mountaintop speech in stride. >> the reason we weren't upset about it was that was about the third or fourth time i had heard him give that speech, and they were all times when it was dangerous. and whenever the situation was pretty tense, one of the ways he relieved himself was talking about it. and he did that in private, too. he said, well, i might not ever see it, but this movement will succeed. >> i'm happy tonight. i'm not worried about anything! i'm not fearing any man! mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord! >> we had to help him to his seat. >> when he finished speaking, he

was empty, drained. he gave it all he had. >> we had no way of knowing that would be the last speech of his life. when we continue, the final moment. >> bam! and he come up off that green about a foot. if there was a pill to help protect your eye health as you age... would you take it? well, there is. [ male announcer ] it's called ocuvite. a vitamin totally dedicated to your eyes, from the eye care experts at bausch + lomb. as you age, eyes can lose vital nutrients. ocuvite helps replenish key eye nutrients. ocuvite has a unique formula not found in your multivitamin to help protect your eye health. now that's a pill worth taking. [ male announcer ] ocuvite. help protect your eye health.

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on the last day of his life, the reverend martin luther king jr. slept in. later he started a pillow fight with his friend, andrew young. >> there was nothing nervous about him. that last day in memphis. in fact, we thought -- i thought we were home free. >> really? >> i thought we had been through the most difficult days of the movement. >> that afternoon james earl ray rented a room in the second floor boarding house. the rear of the building looks out at the lorraine motel just across the street. ray managed to get this room, 5b, in the back.

it is incredibly small. >> it is, indeed. and a little bit tacky, too. >> the boardinghouse is now part of the national civil rights museum at the lorraine motel. museum president, beverly robertson, showed me ray's room. one of the witnesses later said that this desk with a mirror that we can see there was actually in front of the window. >> it had been. he shifted that. he moved it. they say he moved it, because people on either side of the room heard noise during the course of the day. >> furniture dragging? >> furniture dragging, chairs moving. >> ray used a $20 bill to rent the room for the week, then left to buy these binoculars at a nearby sporting goods store. he paid with two more $20 bills. an eerie echo of the unsolved bank robbery back in his hometown. next door at the fire station few black cops and firemen there were being sent away.

policeman edward redditt got a phone call. >> the voice says, i'm going to kill you. i said, what? we going to kill you. >> superiors removed redditt from his surveillance post. they said, for his safety. >> we were some proud guys then. >> floyd newsom was one of the city's first black firefighters. he was transferred away from the fire station for the day. there's never been a good explanation to this day. >> that made it smell a little bit. that made it smell a lot. >> ray had parked his mustang here below the upstairs rooming house when he moved in. he took along his own green bedspread, this one, which would tie him to the crime scene. again, ray's handwritten account. >> i got my suitcase out of the back of the car. i also put a bed spread in the case as i didn't want to sleep on the one they had there if i had to stay there. >> opposite room 5b, a dirt-streaked bathroom.

it's actually not a long walk to the bathroom at all. everybody on this floor would be using this bathroom. >> absolutely. since it was a boardinghouse, there were borders on either side of him, borders down the hall, and everybody had to share a common bathroom. >> across the way, martin luther king was getting ready to leave for supper at reverend billy kyle's house. >> i said, guys, we got to go. we have a rally tonight and we've got to go to dinner. >> kyles walked away. king leaned over the balcony railing talking to others on the ground below. in the boardinghouse, someone locked the bathroom door. >> he stood on the tub, cracked the window, and had a clear view of the people standing on the balcony in front of room 306. >> it's not a long distance at all. >> a couple hundred feet. maybe. that's it. >> next door at the police peephole, the only black left in the firehouse.

patrolman willie richmond. >> i didn't like it. >> fireman george lonake asked to take a look. and became the only living witness we found who saw king at the very moment he was shot. a sudden clap like two boards slammed together. >> i looked through the peepholes, and i was looking at him. by the time it sounded like one before, two of them, just bam, went together. then i got maybe about here, and the shot rang out. >> he came up there off the green about a foot. >> pow! >> loud. a real loud shot. >> kyles, 40 years ago. >> i heard somebody holler, oh, lord! >> i thought there was a firecracker, and i didn't see him. my first reaction was that he is

clowning again. he's fainted like he's been shot. then i saw his shoes sticking out from under the railing. >> i turned. i could see him lying on the balcony. one of his feet was sticking through the railing. there was a huge hole in his face. >> the bullet hit the tip of his chin and tore half of his neck off. >> the police were coming. and i hollered to them, "call an ambulance on your police radio, dr. king has been shot." they said, "where did the shot come from?" everybody was pointing in that direction. >> toward the back of the rooming house, upstairs, across the street. a police squad taking a break at the firehouse ran down the slope toward the motel. fireman george loneky reached the fallen king.