Author Hampton Sides recounts the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and profiles his assassin, James Earl Ray. The author details Ray's escape from the MissouriState Penitentiary in 1967, his travelsthroughout the South, Mexico, and Los Angeles underthe assumed name EricGalt, and his assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis on April 4,1968. Following the assassination the FBI conducted a sixty-five day manhunt.