Monthly Archives: May 2026

by | 5 May 2026 · 1:11 am

Finding Eric Galt’s Real Name

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 319-323:

THE FBI REMAINED confident that the warrant they’d issued the previous day was correct, that Eric S. Galt was indeed their man. What they weren’t sure about was whether Eric Galt was really Eric Galt. The suspect clearly had a penchant for using multiple aliases, and Galt could very well be just another one. As Cartha DeLoach well knew, isolating a suspect was one thing; positively identifying him was something else again.

To that end, the fingerprint expert George Bonebrake and his men at the crime lab had been methodically poring over the fingerprints found on various objects in the bundle, in the Mustang, and in the Atlanta rooming house and comparing them with select batches of prints on file at FBI headquarters. Bonebrake had considerably narrowed the search by concentrating on men under fifty and over twenty-one, but that still left some three million sets of prints to examine—an aneurysm-inducing chore that could take many months and still turn up nothing.

Hoover and DeLoach realized they had to figure out some other way to narrow the search. DeLoach hunkered down with other high-ranking officials and sifted through all the evidence gathered thus far. As they did, a clear pattern began to emerge: Galt, even before the assassination, seemed to be acting like a man on the run. “All the signs were there,” DeLoach said. “The aliases, the movement from one place to another, the reluctance to make friends, the caution, the restraint. Galt was behaving like an escaped convict trying to avoid detection.”

Thus an idea was born. DeLoach picked up the phone and called Bonebrake’s boss, Les Trotter, director of the FBI’s Identification Division for fingerprints. DeLoach later recalled the conversation in his memoirs. “Les, we have pretty good evidence that Galt is an escapee,” DeLoach said. “How many ‘Wanted’ notices do we currently have in our files?”

“About 53,000,” Trotter said.

DeLoach grimaced. “Well,” he said, “at least that’s better than three million.”

The task before them was clear: DeLoach wanted Bonebrake’s men to compare the “Galt” prints with the prints of all fifty-three thousand wanted fugitives. “You’ve got to put all your people on this,” DeLoach said.

“When do you want us to begin?” Trotter asked.

“How about today?”

The examiners began working in the late afternoon of April 18, exactly two weeks after the assassination. Additional experts from Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, and Richmond hastened to Washington to assist in the round-the-clock effort. DeLoach said he didn’t need to remind them that “we’re under tremendous pressure, and that our cities are powder kegs.”

Bonebrake zeroed in on Galt’s left thumbprint found on both the rifle and the binoculars. It was their highest-quality print, the one that manifested a clear loop pattern with twelve ridge counts. To his pleasant surprise, Bonebrake learned that the FBI files of known fugitives held only nineteen hundred thumbprints with loops of between ten and fourteen ridge counts. This was encouraging: suddenly the monumentality of Bonebrake’s project had shrunk by several orders of magnitude. The teams of experts ranged around a table, facing a blowup poster of Galt’s thumbprint. They got out their magnifying glasses and went to work.

At 9:15 the next morning, April 19, Les Trotter called DeLoach. “We’re getting there,” Trotter said, noting that Bonebrake and his team hadn’t slept a wink and that they’d already plowed through more than five hundred sets of cards. “Give us just a little more time.”

“OK,” DeLoach said, and then ducked into a weekly meeting of FBI muckety-mucks led by Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s right-hand man. DeLoach was reluctant to tell Tolson the truth—that although countless specialists were hard at work and making progress, the investigation seemed to be momentarily stymied.

Several hours later, as the meeting was adjourning and DeLoach was gathering up his papers, the phone rang. It was Les Trotter on the line. “Deke,” he said, and already DeLoach thought he could detect a “note of triumph” in Trotter’s voice. There was a long pause, and then Trotter gloatingly said: “Tell the Director. We’ve got your man!”

“Are you sure?”

“No doubt about it. Bonebrake’s experts found an exact match just a few minutes ago, on the 702nd card.”

“I take it he’s not really Eric Galt. Or Lowmeyer. Or Willard.”

“Nope,” Trotter said. “His card number is 405,942G. The guy’s a habitual offender. Escaped last year from the state pen at Jeff City, Missouri. His name is James Earl Ray.”

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by | 4 May 2026 · 4:38 am

Getting a Canadian Passport, 1968

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 281-282, 293-294, 308-309:

Then Galt did something truly brazen, something that illustrated the extent of his desperation: he called Bridgman and Sneyd on the telephone, probably from the same phone booth Mrs. Szpakowski saw him talking on. One night, Paul Bridgman, who worked as the director of the Toronto Board of Education’s Language Study Centre, picked up his home telephone, shortly after finishing his supper.

“Yes, hello,” Bridgman later recalled hearing the caller say. “I’m a registrar with the Passport Office in Ottawa. We’re checking on some irregularities in our files here and we need to know if you’ve recently applied for a passport.”

Bridgman was naturally a little suspicious. He didn’t understand why some bureaucrat in Ottawa would call on official business during the evening. “Are you sure you have the right person?”

“Bridgman,” Galt assured him, spelling out the surname. “Paul Edward Bridgman. Born 10 November, 1932. Mother’s maiden name—Evelyn Godden.”

“Well yes, that’s correct,” Bridgman replied, deciding the caller must be on the level after all. Soon Bridgman freely told Galt the information he needed to know: Yes, he once had a passport, about ten years ago, but it had expired, and he had not bothered renewing it. “Thank you very much,” Galt said, and hung up.

Galt was concerned that Bridgman might pose a problem—his old passport might still be on file in Ottawa and might set off alarm bells if Galt applied for a new one. So he got back on the phone and reached Ramon Sneyd. Going through the same routine, Galt was relieved to learn from Sneyd that the man had never applied for a passport in his life.

That settled it in Galt’s mind: while he might develop the Bridgman alias for sideline purposes, he would become Ramon George Sneyd.

…

IN TORONTO THAT same morning, Eric Galt was walking down Yonge Street, intent on an errand of disguise. He turned in to Brown’s Theatrical Supply Company and bought a makeup kit. Playing with the cosmetics later that day, he applied a little foundation and powder and eyebrow liner. He parted his hair in a different way and was a bit more conservative with his hair cream. Then he donned a dark suit, a narrow tie with a discreet waffle weave, and his best white dress shirt. As a final touch, he put on a recently purchased pair of dark horn-rimmed glasses, which, sitting on his surgery-sharpened nose, gave him a vaguely professorial cast.

Looking in a mirror, Galt was happy with the transformation: Ramon Sneyd was now ready for his close-up.

Sometime in the afternoon of April 11, he walked into the Arcade Photo Studio, also on Yonge Street, and met the manager, Mrs. Mabel Agnew. He told her he needed some passport photos.

Mrs. Agnew was happy to oblige. She led him to the rear of the studio, which was decorated with a vanity mirror and travel poster of Holland, and sat him on a revolving piano stool before a gray-white screen. Galt doubtless hated the whole ritual, as always, but this time he peered just off camera and kept his eyes wide open, throwing everything he had into playacting his new role. Mrs. Agnew couldn’t get her subject to smile, but she finally managed to snap off a decent shot. He left while the pictures developed and returned a few hours later. For two dollars, he retrieved three passport-sized prints.

The image turned out well. His countenance bore a discerning quality, a certain cosmopolitan panache. He could pass for a lawyer, or an engineer, or an international businessman. He almost looked handsome.

…

Sneyd first inquired about tickets to Johannesburg, South Africa, but recoiled at the price—$820 Canadian round-trip. Instead, he asked Spencer to look into the cheapest available fares to London. She soon found a flight on British Overseas Airways that departed Toronto on May 6. It was a twenty-one-day economy excursion, the cheapest flight available, and came with a fare of only $345 Canadian. Sneyd liked the sound of it and asked her to go ahead and make a reservation.

Do you have your passport with you? she asked.

He didn’t have one yet, he said, but he was working on it. Here Spencer must have sensed his hesitation, his awkward uncertainty over how to proceed. Sneyd was under the mistaken impression that to secure a passport, he would have to provide a “guarantor”—a Canadian citizen in good standing who could vouchsafe that he’d known the applicant for more than two years. Meeting this requirement was the main reason he’d been developing two identities and two addresses; according to his rather convoluted and risky plan, the bespectacled Sneyd would be the traveler, and Bridgman (wearing an altogether different getup and possibly a toupee) would be the guarantor.

Sneyd wasn’t going to explain any of this to her, of course, but Spencer graciously intervened before he had to conjure up a story. “I can get you a passport,” she said. “Do you have a birth certificate?”

“Well, no,” he said. She told him that was okay, he didn’t need a birth certificate.

What about the guarantor? he asked. “I don’t know anyone who could serve as my guarantor.”

“Not necessary, either,” Spencer replied. There was a loophole in the passport rules, she said. From her files, she fished out a government form called “Statutory Declaration in Lieu of Guarantor.” Sneyd was simply required to sign the form in the presence of a notary. “As it happens,” she said sunnily, “we have a notary right here in the office.”

Sneyd couldn’t believe his good fortune. He’d had no idea how easy it was in wholesome, trusting Canada to acquire travel papers and inhabit another person’s identity: no birth certificate required, no proof of residence, no character witnesses. He’d wasted his time fabricating a web of interlocking aliases, disguises, and residences, when all he had to do was swear before a notary that he was who he said he was. Welcome to Canada, the expression went, we believe you.

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by | 3 May 2026 · 6:34 am

Finding the Assassin’s Car, 1968

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 294-296:

AT EXACTLY THE same hour that Galt’s passport photos were ripening in a darkroom vat [in Canada], FBI agents in Atlanta were about to enjoy the week’s greatest breakthrough. At four minutes past four o’clock that afternoon, a convoy of bureau sedans converged on the Capitol Homes project. In a ruckus of slamming doors and squawking radios, a dozen FBI agents crawled from the cars and swarmed around the abandoned vehicle.

It was no mistake—this was without a doubt Eric S. Galt’s car: a white two-door V-8 1966 Mustang hardtop with whitewall tires and a red interior, VIN 6TO7C190647, bearing Alabama license plate number 1-38993.

While some agents inspected the vehicle, taking measurements, notes, and photographs, others soon fanned out and began interviewing Capitol Homes tenants. Did you see the individual who parked this car? Can you give a physical description? Had you ever seen the man before? Kids teetered on bicycles, spellbound by all the commotion, but it was more excitement than most of the tenants had bargained for. “There must have been a billion of ’em out here,” one lady said. Complained another: “I had to go to bed. It made me sick, so many of them asking me the same thing over and over and over.”

Soon a tow truck appeared in the parking lot. Guarded by a police escort, the wrecker hauled the Mustang off to a federal building at the corner of Peachtree and Baker streets. There, deep inside a large locked garage, a detail of agents in latex gloves worked the car over, systematically emptying all its contents and dusting its surfaces for fingerprints.

Every inch of the impounded car was examined. Agents took soil samples from the tire wells, fluid samples from the engine, sweepings from the carpets, seats, and trunk. Fibers, hairs, and several high-quality latent palm prints were teased from the Mustang’s recesses and contours. From the glove compartment, inspectors found a pair of sunglasses and a case. From the trunk, they retrieved, among other objects, a pair of men’s shorts, a pillow, a fitted sheet, various tools, a container for a Polaroid camera, and a small contraption that appeared to be an air-release cable for a camera shutter. On the right window, a prominent sticker said, “Dirección General de Registro Federal de Automóviles, 1967 Octubre Turista, Aduana de Nuevo Laredo, Tam.”

All these contents and samplings were inventoried, wrapped in plastic, and boxed up to be personally sent by air courier to the crime lab in Washington. But one item found on the Mustang urgently spoke for itself and required not a second of lab analysis. Affixed to the inside of its left door, a small sticker showed that Eric Galt had had the oil changed in his Mustang at 34,289 miles. The sticker said, “Cort Fox Ford, 4531 Hollywood Boulevard.”

WITHIN AN HOUR of the Mustang’s discovery in Atlanta, Special Agent Theodore A’Hearn of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office arrived at the service desk of the Cort Fox Ford dealership in Hollywood, California, and met a man named Budd Cook Jr. One of the garage’s service specialists, Cook dug into his records and soon found the work order, which he himself had taken down only a month and a half earlier. The paperwork was made out to Eric S. Galt and dated February 22, 1968.

He brought the car in at 8:00 that morning, Cook noted. It was a 1966 Mustang.

Do you remember what Galt looked like? A’Hearn asked.

Cook searched his memory and came up short. Hundreds, possibly thousands, of customers had passed through this garage over the previous months. Regrettably, he could not furnish a description of any sort.

“But,” Cook said, “Galt’s address is right here on the work order.”

THE NEXT MORNING, April 12, Agent Thomas Mansfield made his way to the large and slightly down-at-the-heels St. Francis Hotel at 5533 Hollywood Boulevard. He asked to speak with the proprietor, and presently a man named Allan Thompson appeared at the front desk. As the resident manager, Thompson had lived at the St. Francis for nearly two years and knew the history of the place, all its various denizens and comings and goings.

Yes, Thompson said. He recalled a man named Eric Galt. Thompson found a registration card that showed Galt had lived at the St. Francis for about two months, checking out on March 17. He resided in room 403 and paid eighty-five dollars a month in rent. “He had dark hair, combed back,” Thompson remembered. “Slender to medium build. Quiet, wore conservative business suits. Kept irregular hours. Far as I could tell, he was not employed.” Thompson said another tenant now occupied 403, and that Galt had not left any belongings in the room.

“Did he give any indication where he was going next?” Agent Mansfield asked.

“Well, yes,” Thompson said, producing a change-of-address card that said, “General Delivery, Main Post Office, Atlanta, Georgia.” The card was dated March 17, 1968, and signed “Eric S. Galt.”

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by | 2 May 2026 · 10:11 am

Majówka: Poland’s Golden Week

The Outliers spent a beautiful spring weekend visiting Toruń and Malbork. It reminded us of Japan’s Golden Week holidays. This week’s Culture.pl explains:

Majówka – the long weekend of 1–3 May – is one of those moments when Poland seems to collectively exhale. Anchored by Labour Day (1 May) and Constitution Day (3 May), with Flag Day (2 May) stuffed in the middle, it marks the first real opening of the year: grills reappear, trains fill up, and cities quietly empty out. Even in years like 2026, when the calendar doesn’t quite align into a seamless long weekend, the impulse remains the same – a brief, almost instinctive shift towards rest, travel, and being outdoors after the long winter months.

There is also something distinctly Polish in how this time is spent. Majówka is rarely about spectacle; it is about proximity – to nature, to family, to a slower pace. People head to lakes in Masuria, hike in the Tatra Mountains, or retreat to działki – small garden plots that have long served as modest escapes from urban life. The tradition of the działka itself dates back to the late 19th century and expanded under socialism, when access to private leisure space was limited; today, it remains a quietly cherished part of everyday culture. Even something as simple as lighting a grill becomes ritualised – a shared, almost symbolic act of stepping into the warmer season.

At the same time, majówka carries a subtle historical layering. The proximity of its dates is not accidental: 1 May, once defined by state parades, now sits alongside 3 May, commemorating the Constitution of 3 May 1791 – a symbol of political aspiration and national identity. Between them, a space has opened up that is neither entirely official nor entirely private. Perhaps this is why majówka feels so particular: it is leisure, but also continuity – a few days when history, season, and everyday life briefly align, and when doing very little becomes, in its own way, meaningful.

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by | 1 May 2026 · 4:02 am

MLK Jr. Funeral Service, 1968

From Hellhound On His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, by Hampton Sides (Knopf Doubleday, 2010), Kindle pp. 284-286:

IN THE HISTORIC quadrangle at Morehouse College, the mule-drawn wagon wound its way to the steps of Harkness Hall, and the large public requiem began. Some 150,000 people crammed onto the campus green and stood for hours in the oppressive heat beneath jumbled canopies of parasols. Mahalia Jackson sang “Take My Hand, Precious Lord,” the spiritual King had asked Ben Branch to play “real pretty” moments before he was shot on the Lorraine balcony. So many old ladies fainted in the crowd that the lengthy schedule of eulogies had to be radically truncated. The final speaker, and the marquee attraction, was Dr. Benjamin Elijah Mays, the president emeritus of Morehouse, a distinguished lion of an orator and King’s most beloved mentor. The grizzled theologian, whose parents had been former slaves, spoke plainly, with a measured indignation in his voice.

“I make bold to assert,” Mays said, “that it took more courage for King to practice nonviolence than it took his assassin to fire the fatal shot. The assassin is a coward; he committed his foul act, and fled. But make no mistake, the American people are in part responsible. The assassin heard enough condemnation of King and of Negroes to feel that he had public support. He knew that millions hated King.”

Mays went on to deliver a majestic eulogy in the black Baptist tradition, leaving bitterness behind and building toward a triumphant crescendo. “He believed especially that he was sent to champion the cause of the man furthest down. He would probably say that if death had to come, there was no greater cause to die for than fighting to get a just wage for garbage collectors. He was supra-race, supra-nation, supra-class, supra-culture. He belonged to the world and to mankind. Now he belongs to posterity.”

The great funeral broke up, and a smaller crowd of family and friends followed the hearse in a slow motorcade to South View Cemetery, a grand old place that had been created in the 1860s when Atlanta’s blacks grew weary of burying their dead through the rear entrance of the city graveyard. This would not be King’s final resting place—he was to be only temporarily buried here with his maternal grandparents until a permanent memorial could be built beside Ebenezer Church. Beneath flowering dogwoods, Ralph Abernathy rose to address the winnowed crowd. Drawn and weak, Abernathy had not eaten since the assassination. Like the old days when he and King went to jail together, he was fasting, to purify himself for the trials ahead.

“The grave is too narrow for his soul,” Abernathy said, tears streaming down his face. “But we commit his body to the ground. We thank God for giving us a leader who was willing to die, but not willing to kill.” Then a retinue of attendants rolled the mahogany casket into a crypt of white Georgia marble that was inscribed:

MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
JANUARY 15, 1929–APRIL 4, 1968
“FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANK GOD ALMIGHTY I’M FREE AT LAST”

As the last of the crowds fell away, Martin Luther King Sr. laid his head on the cool stone of his son’s mausoleum and openly wept.

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