CLPEX Chat Board

Dear all,

I am looking for an information regarding the identification of the mark left by James Earl Ray on the rifle used to kill Marin Luther King. I understood that the NCIC system allowed limiting the search to 1200 ten-print cards. My question is how many man-hours were required to find the match. I am finalising a small intro on AFIS systems and wanted to stress on the time required (before AFIS) for single print searches (even assisted by NCIC).

Thanks a lot of any information

Kind regards

Christophe

Christophe,

Your best contact for this is Bob Hazen, a current IAI member. He was present as a new examiner in the lab at the time, and I think his supervisor worked the case.

-Kasey

Christophe,

From what was related to me, the preparations had been made for a cold search of the entire file. There were two usable latent prints that provided information for a reasonable determination of the fingers involved. Whille the approach may have involved using NCIC encoding, the main file was Henry and had to include all combinations of Henry classifications that contained the two fingers patterns. However, someone suggested an initial search of just the wanted persons file before the horrendous task of the main file might be a good idea, and this was done before the main file search began. The identification of James Earl Ray was made in the wanted persons file in a matter of hours.

The tale I heard was that they had all of those jackets broken down and piled on 30 desks. They walked 30 LPE's into the room and each one had a photograph of that latent print. One examiner sat down at the desk and it was the 2nd one he looked at.

Probably an Urban Legend. A great story to tell people about once in awhile.

Could be an urban legend, although I've heard pretty much the same thing - files sorted, overtime approved, lots of examiners ready to go, then bingo. But there is an interesting follow-up. Back when I was working for the Patrol in the Evergreen State, we hired George Bonebrake to do a review of our operations. George had not yet gone over to the dark side and he did a great job in making suggestions on how we could improve operations. George and I had dinner nearly every night that week, and the subject of Jame Earl Ray came up. George told that story, urban legend or not, but then told me his personal involvement afterwards.

Ray would not waive extradiction when picked up in England, so an extradiction hearing was conducted in Old Bailey. George was assigned the task of testifying in that hearing, but faced a large problem. England was still on the 16 point standard then, and neither of the two latents identified to Ray had enough to make the standard. So George worked with some people from FBI legal in developing an approach if the issue was raised by defense. George said they devised several strategies and on the flight over, he kept running those through his head. He told me he was worried his explanations would not be good enough for a British court, and George was worried.

He got permission to see the court room the night before, just to get the lay of the land. But George said he was instantly overwhelmed by the sense of history in those hallowed halls, and the butterflies started. When he was finally called to the stand, he presented evidence to the court of the two identifications, one on the stock of the gun and one on a folded road map in the car. Cross examination began, and George braced himself for the barrage. But instead of any questions about the number of points, the defense began asking about race relations in the US. George said he was stunned and stammered out some ridiculous answer. The defense kept saying that someone who worked for the FBI should know crime statistics related to racially motivated activity and kept asking. George could only reply he didn't know. The defense quit in disgust, but never asked about the two latent prints.

Over the years, I have always found it strange that the FBI would even attempt the search. Hoover's feelings toward Dr. King were well known, and he certainly assigned enough agents to keep tabs on King's activities. Yet to authorize what could have been a very costly overtime venture seemed odd. Maybe deep down inside Hoover's layers of prejudice and misdirected priorities was a real law enforcement officer after all. He had the crime, he had the evidence, he had the files, and just maybe he was cop enough to want it solved.

I met Mr. Bonebrake a few times over the years. When I was a Fingerprint Clerk they had me go pick him up at the airport and drive him to his house.

Saw him again in the mid 1990's on the appeal of a triple murder case. Said some things in his affidavit that I do not agree with, but hey that is what makes life interesting.

The time I drove him from the airport to his house he told a couple of stories. One dealing with the Yabalonski murders and Charlie Groenthal. I probably did not spell any one of thos names correct.

All of this does not help Christophe with his question, so I better close this one out.