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DANVILLE, IL – It has been over four decades since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the hands of James Earl Ray. Now a new book chronicles the investigation and subsequent arrest of Ray and the racial tension mounting throughout our country.
The Boys of Birmingham by P.L. Ryan chronicles those tumultuous times in the South leading up to and immediately following the assassination of one of America’s greatest heroes.
Her book outlines and chronicles the personal lives and stories of a highly professional team of northern-born but southern-based FBI agents – the very men undertaking Dr. King’s assassination investigation. An added dimension of depth is that Ryan’s father William Saucier was lead investigator of this disparate group of white Irish-Catholic federal agents, dubbed the “Boys of Birmingham.”
The “Boys” were the brightest and brightest agents that the Bureau boasted in the mid-Sixties, bearing some very intriguing nicknames: “Dallas Duplicator,” the agent who arrested Lee Harvey Oswald, Pres. Kennedy’s killer; “Sailor;” “Ringo Starr;” and also “Tampa Fats” – while each agent enjoyed his own success rates – but their one brief shining moment came unheralded in the summer of 1968.
Saucier and his team are the men truly credited by J. Edgar Hoover, “lifetime director” of the FBI during the Sixties, with the identification, location and legwork leading to the arrest of James Earl Ray, MLK’s convicted assassin. Hoover even paid Saucier a special bonus for his investigational insights, only a couple of hundred dollars added to his paycheck. But it was considered good money at the time.
“It was Dad’s idea – exactly how to identify the assassin. Once identified, he (Ray) was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport, two months and four days after the assassination,” Ryan has stated.
According to Ryan, the book took five years to write and was done as a joint project with her father, who told many of the stories contained within this interesting and historical volume over time at small parties and other family gatherings.
“There were some who thought the subject matter was ‘old news,’ but I felt it was important to show that not all white FBI agents working in the South were racists. My dad and his associates endured their own forms of prejudice, being called ‘Yankees’ and ‘outsiders.’ I wish my father had lived long enough to see the finished product. Unfortunately, Dad died three years into the process,” Ryan said.
This author has also written a history novel and If I Was a Willy Worm, a children’s picture book. The Boys of Birmingham is available for sale at Barnes and Noble and on Amazon through print edition and on the Kindle, and at SmashWords, MobiPockets, B&N and Sony as an eBook. Sphere: Related Content
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