From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 62-63:
TO THE CORE of his angry soul, Eric Galt identified with Wallace’s rants against big government, his championing of the workingman, his jeremiads on the spread of Communism. He even identified with the governor’s Alabama roots—Galt had lived for a brief time in Birmingham in 1967, and his Mustang still bore Alabama plates, which sported the state nickname, HEART OF DIXIE.
What Galt found most appealing about Wallace, though, was the governor’s stance as an unapologetic segregationist. Wallace’s rhetoric powerfully articulated Galt’s own smoldering prejudices. Although Galt was not politically sophisticated, he was a newspaper reader and something of a radio and television news junkie. His politics were composed of many inchoate gripes and grievances. On most topics he might best be described as a reactionary—he was, for example, drawn to the positions of the John Birch Society, to which he wrote letters, though never formally joined.
By late 1967, Galt had begun to gravitate toward stark positions on racial politics. He became intrigued by Ian Smith’s white supremacist regime in Rhodesia. In Puerto Vallarta he had bought a copy of U.S. News & World Report in which he found an advertisement soliciting immigrants for Rhodesia. The idea appealed to him so much that on December 28, 1967, he wrote to the American–Southern Africa Council in Washington, D.C., to inquire about relocating to Salisbury.
“My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia,” Galt said in his letter, noting that representatives from the John Birch Society had referred him to the council. “I would appreciate any information you could give me.” Not only did Galt hope to gain citizenship in Rhodesia; he was such an ardent believer in the cause of white rule and racial apartheid that he planned, as he later put it, to “serve two or three years in one of them mercenary armies” in southern Africa. While living in Los Angeles, he wrote to the president of the California chapter of the Friends of Rhodesia—an organization dedicated to improving relations with the United States—raising still more questions about immigration and inquiring about how he might subscribe to a pro–Ian Smith journal titled Rhodesian Commentary.
Far Outliers 