It was the largest manhunt Tennessee had ever seen, and possibly the largest gathering of reporters in the state as 200 reporters converged on the prison in east Tennessee.  The six prisoners, three of them convicted for murder, had escaped the prison using a homemade ladder made out of plumbing materials to scale a 14 foot wall and avoid a 2,300-volt ‘hot wire’ on top after two of them had staged a fight to distract the guards. Once over the wall they split up, three of them heading north and moving mostly at night using unpaved back roads.

The law, meanwhile, put five Huey helicopter into the air, their blades chopping the air while guards quite literally beat the bushes. State troopers were called in, as was the FBI. Technicians used infra-red equipment to detect tiny changes in the ground temperature of the surrounding woods that might indicate the presence of a man, and road blocks stopped every vehicle to check identification.

It would take three days to find the men back in June of 1977.  Earl Hill Jr. was captured first,  and the others would be collared soon after, but the real “prize” was the man caught 54 hours after his escape. Ultimately, it was “Sandy” and “Little Red,” a pair of 14 month old Bloodhound sisters who successfully tracked the man who killed Dr. Martin Luther King. Sandy had led her handler straight to a pile of wet leaves under which James Earl Ray was lying on his back, his arms straight out in a figure “T.”

After returning to the prison with their capture, prison guard, Sammy Joe Chapman, Sandy’s handler, and the first officer on the scene, petted Sandy and said: “She’s the prettiest dog in the world.”

Image: Photo of “Sandy” and “Little Red” that appeared in the New York Times back on June 14, 1977