Death of a King [1]

Who killed Martin Luther King, and why? While some answers have emerged over the past 50 years, others have been hiding in plain sight.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of I Heart
Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in
this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or
individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
discretion is advised. In August of nine sixty three, Dr

(00:28):
Martin Luther King spoke from the steps of the Lincoln
Memorial to a crowd of more than two hundred and
fifty thousand in Washington, d C. So even though we
faced the difficulties up today and tomorrow, I still have
a dream. His iconic I have a Dream speech is

(00:51):
one of the most famous speeches in history, and one
you're probably familiar with. Nearly six decades later, a few
hand pick sentences from that speech have come to define
him in the popular mind. But King was not afraid
to travel more dangerous roads. Four years later, at Riverside
Church in New York, Martin Luther King would give a

(01:11):
speech that wasn't about the fight for civil rights in America.
It was about the horrific war in Vietnam, and it
may have cost him his life. This business of burning
human beings with napalm. Sending men home from dark and
bloody battle fields, physically handicapped and psychologically derain cannot be

(01:32):
reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. King's speech that night
shook the country. Many thought he had crossed a line
by speaking against the war he was supposed to stick
to civil rights. Life magazine called a speech demogogic slander
that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi, referring to

(01:52):
the radio station in communist North Vietnam, and for some,
King's speech was an act of treason. A year later,
to the day, Martin Luther King, just thirty nine years old,
would be dead. My name is Bill claybour On, an

(02:13):
author and researcher, and most recently co creator of the
RFK Tapes, a podcast about the assassination of Robert Kennedy.
I was in law school when doctor King was shot.
My first thought was that hidden forces, perhaps in our
own government, were likely behind the murder. But then a
man named James Earl Ray was arrested. He pled guilty

(02:36):
to the crime and spent the rest of his life
in prison. He was a lone gunman, we were told,
brought to murder by racial hatred, and that spent the
official narrative for over fifty years. It would be decades
before I discovered the real story behind the murder of
doctor King. It came to me in boxes, cardboard boxes

(02:57):
with dozens of audio tapes. Just as he got to
the door, shot rang up, and somebody came out of
the bushes and handed him a smoking rifle, and he
broke it down and wrapped it in a table ball
and put it back in the door room. When I

(03:20):
heard the shot, when I saw him get hit, and
when I saw him go down. Now I'm no doctor,
but there was no question to me that the man
was hit hard. I mean he was hit hard. So
I immediately turned around and go that direction. It was
like once the shot went off, it was every dog
for his own, every dog for his own. The voices

(03:41):
on these tapes are from people who were there, people who,
in the passing years have overcome their fear to speak
about what they saw, what they heard, and in some cases,
what they did when Martin Luther King was killed. Welcome
to the MLK tapes. Doctor King's assassination is a critical

(04:05):
moment in American history. Let's go back to March nine
in his campaign to fight not only for civil rights
but for economic justice. King had come to Memphis to
support the sanitation workers in their request to form a union.
Striking workers peacefully carrying signs that said I Am a
Man was an image they hoped would penetrate the conscience

(04:27):
of the nation. But this hope was shattered when the
peaceful march King had wanted to lead was disrupted by
rioting writing that may have been set off by people
sent in to start trouble, and because of the awful
images coming out of Memphis, King's critics were now saying
that he had lost control of his movement, that he
could no longer lead a peaceful protest. So we returned

(04:51):
to Memphis to support the sanitation workers and prove his
doubters wrong. Dr King, You're a march here on Monday
has apparently been enjoyed the federal injunction. If that holds up,
what are your plans? Will you march or not? We
do feel that it would be a basic denial of
First Amendment privileges to have an injunction take effect that

(05:12):
would prevent us from marching. We stand on the First
Amendment and in the past, we've on the basis of
conscience had to break injunctions, and that may very well
happen in this situation. But breaking an injunction was not
King's only worry. By returning to Memphis, he was also
putting his life on the line, and he knew it.

(05:36):
It's the evening of April three, as thunderstorms rage outside Martin,
Luther King speaks on behalf of the sanitation workers to
several thousand followers in downtown Memphis. That's the question before
you tonight. Not if I stopped to help the sanitation workers,
what will happen to my job? The question is if

(05:59):
I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what
will happen to them? That's the question. But there was
something else that needed to be put into words. King's
playing into Memphis had been delayed by a bomb scare,
and threats on King himself were an increasing, almost daily occurrence.

(06:20):
And then I got into Memphis and some began to
say the threats I talk about what would happen to
me from some of a sick white brothers. His words
that night were a chilling foretelling of his own death.
Like anybody I would like to live a long life.

(06:42):
Longevity has its place, but I'm not concerned about that now.
I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed
me to go up to the mountain and I've looked
over and I've seen the promised land. King didn't look away.

(07:05):
He could feel what was coming. I may not get
there with you, but I want you to know the
night and we as a people will get to the
promised Land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything.
I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the

(07:26):
glory on the coming of the Lord. The next morning,
King's lieutenant Andrew Young went to court to challenge the
injunction prohibiting the upcoming protest march. Well. King mostly stayed
around the Lorraine Motel and met with people who came

(07:46):
and went. Late in the day, Young returned to report
that they had won. The march could go on. That
was happy news because the soul food dinner was waiting
at the Reverend Billy Kyle's house and everyone could now
rely acts and have a good time. At six pm,
Martin Luther King stepped out of Room three oh six

(08:07):
onto the motel balcony. On his way to the dinner.
As he waited for Ralph Abernathy to join him, he
watched below as the diminutive Andrew Young shadow box with
the Reverend James Orange, who was six ft four and
near three hundred pounds. Don't hurt him, Andy King shouted.
Then King spotted Ben Branch, a musician who was to

(08:29):
play at the party after dinner. He asked Branch to
be sure to play Precious Lord, take my hand, play
it real, pretty, said King. There was a sudden sound

(08:50):
like a firecracker, and Doctor King collapsed. Abernathy ran out
of the room and knelt beside the fallen King. He
cradled his wounded head and saw, as he put it,
the understanding drain from his eyes. By the time Young arrived,
blood was everywhere. Oh God, Ralph, he said, it's over.

(09:11):
They said. They shoot an all points bulletin for a
world rushed young white man scene running from the scene.
Officers also reportedly chased and fired on a radio equipped
car containing two white men. King was rushed to Saint
Joseph's Hospital, where he died within the hour. Meanwhile, out
on Main Street, the police would find a rifle in

(09:32):
a box near a mysterious bag. In the bag were binoculars,
nine bullets, a transistor radio, a pair of players, a
couple of beers, and a copy of that day's newspaper.
On this evidence, investigators would find the fingerprints of a
man named James Earl Ray, a fugitive who would escape
from prison the year before. They also discovered that a

(09:55):
man fitting raised description had rented a room at a
boarding house near the Lorraine and add access to a
small bathroom with a line of sight to doctor King's
position on the motel balcony. So the Memphis Police now
had a suspect, but where was he? An enormously wide
police hunt is now going on for an unidentified thirty

(10:17):
year old white man who has been reported to be
driving a large, fast, white sports car very recklessly. It
took two months to find him, but finally on June eighth,
Ray was arrested at London Heathrow Airport with a fake
Canadian passport. The forty year old petty criminal and escaped
convict was brought back to Memphis. At his arraignment, Ray

(10:38):
was charged with the murder of Martin Luther King. He
pleaded not guilty wishes of not guilty. Of course, criminals
commonly plead not guilty, so Ray's initial plea doesn't mean
a thing. It was rumored that Ray had Old King

(11:00):
out of a vicious hatred, but no one knew for sure,
because for the next eight months Ray was held in communicado.
The only persons allowed to see him were his attorney
and his brother. So what most people didn't know, and
as a supposedly informed law student, I didn't know, was that,
while admitting he was in Memphis that day, James Earl

(11:22):
Ray always said that he did not shoot Martin Luther King.
Ray wanted to go to trial, even though he knew
that if he could not convince the jury, the penalty
was likely to be the electric chair. He didn't care.
He said he didn't do it, and he wanted his
chance to prove it in court. Race famous criminal defense

(11:43):
attorney Percy Foreman came on saying that Race case would
be the easiest one he ever argued. But his Race
trial date approached, Foreman suddenly changed his tune and pressured
Ray to plead guilty, which he finally did. Are you
play didn't did the murder in the plash degree in
this case? Because you killed Dr Martin lived the King

(12:04):
on the such circumstances that would make you legally guilty
murder in the flash degree under the law is explained
to you by your lawyers. Ray's answer was barely audible
on the recording system used by the court. What he
said was quote, yes, legally guilty. Uh huh. Three days
after his guilty plea, James Earl Ray petition Judge Preston

(12:27):
Battle to change his plea to not guilty. Often, in
the interests of justice, such a petition is granted, and
many observers expected Judge Battle to do that. But the
day was to act, Battle was found slumped over his desk,
dead from an apparent heart attack, and James El Ray
was led off to prison no trial. Years passed and

(12:53):
the vast majority of Americans didn't give the case much
thought King had been killed and Ray was in prison
because he was the one who shot him. But if
you lived in Memphis, you might have been aware of
strange stories and odd bits of evidence that didn't fit
with the official count of the crime. People who heard things,
people who saw things, things that didn't fit with the

(13:15):
story of a loane drifter killing King. Also in nineteen
seventy six, during congressional hearings, it came to light that
the federal government had been wire tapping King's office and
home and bugging his every hotel room. Why was the
government so concerned with surveilling King? Was this in any
way connected to his death? A man named William Pepper

(13:38):
thinks it was. Pepper was a friend of Doctor King,
and he spent many years gathering evidence that tells a
very different story than the one we've all been told,
Evidence about who really killed Martin Luther King and why
he was murdered. In April nineteen seven, I traveled to

(14:12):
New York City to join a massive anti war rally.
There were more people marching than I had ever seen.
As we approached the United Nations Plaza, we were too
far away to see Dr King, but we could hear
his unmistakable voice, stop the bombing, Let us save our

(14:33):
national honor, stop the bombing, and stop the war. Sharing
the stage with Dr King was a journalist named Bill Pepper.
Pepper had been a friend of Dr King, and he
had been an important influence on King's position against the
war in Vietnam. I because of my writings on the

(14:54):
war had been asked to introduce Martin King, which I did.
It was a very significant movement because Dr King went
against the advice of most of the civil rights leaders,
who believed that he was going to cost them a
great deal of money for their movements with his anti

(15:16):
war position. But that was that was the nature of
Dr King. He was amount of conscience. He spoke courageously
on that day as well. Fifty years after that rally
in New York, I would interview Bill Pepper while working
on the RFK Tapes podcast. I wanted his take on

(15:37):
the Robert Kennedy murder, and he had a lot to
say about that, but he had even more to say
about the killing of Martin Luther King because he had
spent the last forty years of his life investigating the
murder of his friend. There was more to tell than
time would allow. So we agreed to meet again, and
one warm afternoon in May, I traveled to Bill Pepper's

(15:58):
home in South Harlem, where told me the remarkable story
of how he had come to know Martin Luther King
and the stunning things he had discovered about the assassination.
I got my credentials as a journalist, and I went
to Vietnam in nineteen sixties six. I was seeing whole
villages raised and burned. I was seeing children badly injured

(16:20):
by the napalm and the white fosphors, and I was
seeing total devastation among the civilian population. So it was
clear to me that war crimes are being committed by
the Americans in massive amounts. I had heard about things
like that, but I'd never seen anything like that in
my life. I took photographs as much as I could.

(16:42):
Pepper returned to the United States determined to tell about
what he had seen, but his photographs were rejected by
mainstream and progressive publications. He finally found a taker in
Ramparts magazine, so the Ramparts piece came out in January
of nineteen sixties. Heaven Martin King noticed as he was

(17:04):
going on a trip to photographs. I think caught his
attention that he read the article and asked to meet
with me. I showed him whatever additional material that I
had at that time, and I talked to him about
what was going on there, and he wept. He saw
all of this horror that was being done by his government.

(17:27):
He couldn't believe it. And that was how I became
involved with Doctor King, and I became close to him
during the last year, but only the last year of
his life. Pepper's article and photos helped Dr King come
to grips with the harsh connection between poverty, race, and war.
Then on April four seven, King delivered his famous speech

(17:51):
on Vietnam at Riverside Church in New York. When machines
and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more
important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism,
and militarism are incapable of being conquered. A year later,

(18:13):
Doctor King was dead and Bill Pepper was devastated. But
in the midst of the pain and heartbreak, his skills
as a campaigner were still being courted, notably by Robert Kennedy,
who had just recently announced he was running for president.
We went from Memphis to Atlanta, where we buried Martin,

(18:34):
and Bobby asked me and others to come up to
his hotel to discuss his presidential campaign, and I said, no,
I'm through his politics. After King was laid to rest,
Bill Pepper went to work in education and at the
same time earned a law degree. Ten years after King's murder.
Pepper was pursuing a legal career in New York City.

(18:57):
One afternoon, the phone rang. It was Ralph Abernathi, King's
former number two. Abernati asked me in sev to go
up to the prison Brushing Mountain Penitentiary and interrogate James
Earl Ray, and I told Ralph I didn't know anything

(19:18):
about the case. I thought James el Ray had been guilty,
and I had not done any intensive investigation, so I
would need some time in order to do that. In
August of v I interrogated James for five torturous hours
to put him under enormous stress, and James remained as

(19:41):
calm as he could be, and he answered the questions
as best as he could. For ten years, Bill Pepper
had thought that James Earl Ray had murdered his friend
Martin King, and he entered his interview with Ray still
believing that. But the quiet understated Wray he met wasn't
the man he expected to meet. Ray admitted that he

(20:03):
had been in Memphis that day, had rented a room
in Bessy Brewer's boarding house, and had bought the rifle
in Birmingham. But he also calmly insisted that he did
not shoot doctor King and didn't know the King was
going to be shot. The men spent hours going over
and over how it was he came to Memphis and
what he was doing when King was killed. Each one

(20:25):
of us, in our everyday lives has our own ways
of deciding whether a person is telling the truth or not.
It may be how they meet our eyes or the
sound of their voice. But after five hours of questions
and answers, both Bill Pepper and Ralph Abernathy came away
with the same judgment. We left the room believing that

(20:48):
he was not the shooter, but we didn't know what
role he might have played. But he raised enough questions
so that from that time on in night I began
to go into Memphis and examine specific issues related to
the case. As he went deeper into the evidence, Pepper

(21:11):
came to believe that James Earl Ray was not only
not the shooter, but was himself a victim of manipulation. Eventually,
in an incredible twist of fate, Bill Pepper would become
the attorney representing James Earl Ray, the man convicted of
murdering his friend Martin King. Pepper was determined to get

(21:34):
ready the trial he never had, and in so doing
revealed to the world the evidence he was uncovering. I
came to represent James in nine. He had been denied
relief in the state courts, so we followed the abeous
proceeding in the federal district court. We were denied in

(21:54):
the Federal District Court. Then we went to the six
Circuit Court of Appeal. We were denied there. Then we
filed for a rit of sircir I with the Supreme Court.
When we lost our appeal to the final appeal to
the Supreme Court, we thought that was pretty much going

(22:17):
to be the end of it. Though the legal avenues
were seemingly close to them, there was one last recourse
open to Bill Pepper and James Earl Ray, the court
of public opinion. I talked to a producer whom I new,
and HBO agreed, and so we worked on a plan

(22:38):
to do an HBO special tonight in an effort to
probe the mystery of Dr King's death. James Earl Ray
will finally have his day in court. The defense team
will be led by William Pepper, an American lawyer who
practices in London. Pepper has been raised unpaid counsel for
the past five years. It would be a formal trial

(23:03):
with a randomly selected jury from all of the country,
a and impartial judge. They asked Hickman Ewing, who was
a former U S attorney for the Memphis area, and
asked Hickman if he would be lead prosecutor. Hickman agreed,
and so we tried the case three. The trial was

(23:27):
a full knockdown, drag out trial. Prosecution maintains that the
truck came from a bathroom, the bathroom in the rooming house,
the defense suggests, and the proof and the evidence indicates
the shot came from the brush from the bushes down below,
from the backyard. Totally unscripted. We got James to testify

(23:52):
by camera and he was subject to cross examination. I
want to show you the chart of the ins out
of the rooming house. You went up the south stairs.
You went and saw Mrs Brewer said you wanted a room.
It's a fact, is it not. She showed you room
eight first, did she not? She showed me one room first.
She said it was a lighthouse keeper room. And you

(24:14):
looked at that room and then y'all walked down over here.
She showed you that room, and you said you'd take
five beat? Is that correct? Yes? I told her I
wanted to sleeping room. That's great. This room right here,
you can't see anything out of ken ken you, Mr Ray,
you could have had room eight or you could have
had room five B, and you chose room five beat.

(24:34):
Is that right? Yes? There was two rooms there and
I picked out that one. Is The HBO trial gave
Bill Pepper an opportunity to call into question every aspect
of the official story. If there is no significance of
the brush in the back of the rooming house, why
was it cut? Was this the police to find evidence? No,

(24:57):
The defense suggests the brush was cut so that it
could never be suggested that there was enough brush there
to conceal a sniper. Could James Earl Ray cause the
scene of a crime to be tampered with in this way?
Reverend Jose Williams, who was one of Dr King's closest aids,
testified for the defense that Martin's hotel room and the
hotel itself, the reservations itself, were changed. Could James el

(25:21):
Rey arranged this? Could James el Ray do this. We
didn't know the verdict. They kept the verdict as secret
as they could. The jury took seven hours plus and
eventually it aired on April four. I guess, and we've
sat up at the at the prison. James was there.

(25:42):
Hickman and his team were on the left, and Jeanie
and I were on the on the right, and the
whole trial played on HBO and verdict came out. We
the jury find the defendant not guilty. When the verdict
came out, Hickman was startled. I was gonna have a

(26:03):
heart attack. Even though it wasn't a real court proceeding,
this mock trial demonstrated that the case against James Earl
Ray didn't pass the test of reasonable doubt. A jury,
when presented with the evidence that Pepper and others had uncovered,
decided that Ray was not guilty. This should have been

(26:24):
big news, but it got almost no mention in the
American press. But it did shake the tree a little,
and a few new people came forward with what they knew.
At the same time, Bill Pepper published his book Orders
to Kill, where he laid out the case for Ray's
innocence and alleged that elements of the government may have
been involved in Dr King's assassination, but most outlets in

(26:47):
the mainstream media didn't review it, considering the importance of
the man who was murdered and the evidence laid out
for the reader. The question is why wasn't it reviewed
the York Times reviewer and was told to pull it.
This was the first time in twenty five years that
he was told to pull book preview, and so it

(27:08):
was pretty clear the story was going to be buried.
But the book did reach the hands of an important
person who would come forward and change the trajectory of
the case. In his years searching for the truth, Bill

(27:37):
Pepper had carefully stayed away from the King family, feeling
that they had suffered enough. But once his book Orders
to Kill was published, his work was out there for
anyone to see, and one person who bought and read
the book was Martin King's nephew, Isaac Farris, who recently
sat down with us in Atlanta. I knew that uncle

(27:59):
and may all maybe was a little different because one
thing I would notice that the Thanksgiving dinners is that
he would always be the last to get there, and
most times he would, you know, start out by taking
a nap, you know. I took an old of that,
but I really didn't get a sense of of who
he was till after he died. And that started the

(28:23):
night he was assassinated. We were at home and the
announcement came across the TV. Just based on my mother's reaction,
I could tell something was up. Faris was just a
boy when his uncle m l as he was called,
was murdered. He saw the pain and the devastation it wrought,

(28:44):
but he also saw strength in the family. The older generation,
including his mother and his aunt Caretta, dealt with their
pain by immersing themselves in the creation of the King
Center and working towards a national holiday honoring Dr. King.
What doubts they had they kept to themselves, but the
younger generation felt less constrained. I would constantly have conversations,

(29:07):
theoretical conversations with my other cousins, particularly his kids, about
what might have happened, who might have been involved. To
be told that an escape criminal followed my uncle across
the country never sounded right to us. I mean, generally,
an escape criminal is trying to keep a low profile,

(29:29):
and escape criminal is not following a high profile individual around.
So high profiled that law enforcement is probably in the area.
So Isaac Farris brought a book on the murder of
his uncle, and he was stunned by what it contained.
But who's Bill Pepper? I personally did a little investigating

(29:51):
about Bill Pepper the man, because at that point I
did not realize that there was even a relationship between
Bill Pepper and my uncle. And the more and more
I looked into the man, and the more and more
I read his story, things checked out. In January of nine,

(30:11):
Farrest decided to call a meeting and put the story
in front of the family. I said, look, we've all
known that, you know this is not right. You know,
we've all said that, we've all admitted that, but we've
just kind of stopped there. Here's an opportunity, I think
for us, at least if we don't find out every
little detail, we can at least kind of put it together.

(30:35):
The next step was to bring Bill Pepper to Atlanta
to meet everyone and answer questions. According to Faris, it
was a tense first hour. First, I guess we were
challenging him on his personal integrity. Why are you, you know,
doing this? What's your angle here? What what's your purpose,
I mean that you're just trying to sell a best seller.

(30:57):
And in a nutshell, we determined that Bill was since
here that that he felt a sense of responsibility for
what happened to my uncle, because Bill, uh doing my
uncle's lifetime, was one of the people around my uncle
who was actually trying to really push him to run
for president. You know, I think Bill felt like, you know,

(31:18):
whoever assassinated him knew of his plans, and so he
felt a responsibility and we accepted that. So once we've
got comfortable with him the man personally, and then it
was like, Okay, well let's really look at your case
and what you're talking about, and how did you come
to this and and what's all it is based on.

(31:40):
Bill Pepper didn't mind the questions. His friendship with Dr
King had been real, and so was the work he's
done on the case a great personal cost to himself,
and he understood that just by being there, he was
picking out a scab that covered a deep wound. I
think it was very traumatic and devastating for the um

(32:00):
to come to grips with the fact that this this
good and peaceful man who had the values of not
only his faith, but of a representative democracy was actually
taken away from them and from all of us by
governmental action. It's a very traumatic piece of information to digest.

(32:23):
But we decided that night, Okay, now you know, we
need to take this to the world, and how do
we do that. We agreed to kind of get involved
and help him and do whatever we could, and as
a result of that, we found out further information. The
family's first effort was to aid Bill Pepper's attempt to
get ready the trial he never had. There was an

(32:45):
urgency now because just a few months earlier Ray had
almost died in the hospital from complications arising from cirosis
of the liver. He had recovered from that crisis, but
the clock was clearly ticking. So in March, in an
effort to get a trial for Ray, Dexter King sat
down with James el Ray with media present. The meeting

(33:08):
lasted about half an hour, and at one point King
asked Ray the question, did you kill my father? No? No,
I didn't know. I want you to know that I
believe you, and my family believes you, and we are
going to do everything in our power to try and

(33:28):
make sure that justice will prevail. Isaac Ferris also met
with Ray, but without the cameras. I have met James
el Ray. I want to be careful how to say this,
but James el Ray is not the smartest cookie on
the block. Okay. In fact, every crime did he committed,

(33:51):
he bungled. I mean, he was just a bungler as
a criminal. I mean, if you look at his history,
I mean, and he would get caught doing dumb things.
One time he robbed a place and apparently he was
bare footed or something, and and took high heeled shoes
from there, and then he tried to run in high
heeled shoes away from the cops. But I go back

(34:14):
and forth on whether or not you know, James knew
okay I'm part of a plan to kill Dr King,
or you know, whether or not he just was a
person that was taking advantage of but his level of intelligence,
it's possible that he could have been duped. It's possible
he could have been a part of this and never

(34:36):
known that this is a plan to kill Dr King.
For a while, it seemed as though the effort to
get ready of trial was going to bear fruit, as
Bill Pepper got the case in front of Judge Joe Brown,
who appeared ready to let them present their evidence. And Memphis,
Joe Brown was a criminal court judge who was on
the verge of giving us a trial, a new trial

(34:57):
for James all right. We had made a strong presentation
to Joe Brown. He was very skeptical of the official story.
He was and is an expert in ballistics. Had determined
for himself that the rifle, the throwdown rifle, could not

(35:19):
have been the murder weapon, was not the murder weapon.
He was on the verge of ruling for a new trial,
and I was shortly after that that he was simply
removed from the case by the administrative judge and a
new judge was put in who would be more compliant,

(35:44):
but on equal time ran out for James Errol Ray,
James ol Ray, as we just heard his dead, and
there are fears that the truth about Martin Luther King's
assassination may have died with him. Ray died of kidney
failure and come locations or liver disease on Thursday. With

(36:05):
Ray gone, it may have seemed like the end, but
it wasn't. Because Bill Pepper had one more idea. As
new evidence emerged after the HBO trial, it had become
clear that one man, Lloyd Jowers, had played some role
in the murder. The back door to his bar and
grille opened unto the brush covered yard just opposite King's

(36:27):
room at the Lorraine, and a few people who worked
for Jowers had come forward with what they had seen
the day of the murder, and Jowers himself had made
what seemed to be self incriminating statements. So Pepper went
back to the King family. What if they sued this
man and various unnamed government agencies for wrongful death. It

(36:48):
would be a civil suit, not a criminal trial, but
it would represent an opportunity to get the evidence as
it then existed, recorded under oath in a court of law.
The downside said it would open old wounds. Would the
family be up for such an ordeal? Once we became comfortable,
and then the family felt that they should share this

(37:10):
with the world because we knew even if it was ignored,
it's still there in history. So even if fifty years
from now people have a different look on this and
are prepared to accept the facts, is there for them.
And the family agreed that we would bring a civil action,
and since we had so much on this man, has

(37:31):
been Jowers, we would name him as a defendant and
his lawyer cooperative. His lawyer, Lewis Garrison, a very good
and solid, decent man, said his client was just a
pawn used by powerful forces. It was, you know, a
long trial. Was thirty days or so and seventy witnesses.

(37:55):
Was a very very long trial. But it did give
us an opportunity to put forwards what evidence that we
had at that point in time. For over thirty years,
Creti Scott King had borne the grief of her husband's
death with grace and dignity. She never expressed a doubt
that James ol Ray had pulled the trigger, although she

(38:15):
did sometimes wonder aloud if other hands had helped him
do it. But for three weeks in November, Mrs King
went to a courtroom in downtown Memphis, took her seat
and listened as witness after witness gave their testimony. On
the final day, Bill Pepper rose and addressed the jury.
Let me close by saying to you that long after people, yet,

(38:42):
what has been said in this courtroom? Are you going
to remember the verdict of the student because you have
heard evidence that has never before been put on in
Soivan would have been put on Mr Ray's trial if
he had ever been granted the trunk. No one has

(39:04):
heard detailed evidence that you have behalf of the family
at Martin Wood became junior. We asked you to find
that conspiracy existed once and for all. Give this plaintive
found justice, and let's plans the city and this nation

(39:24):
of the ignorance who has pervaded this case for so long.
After Bill Pepper sat down, the judge gave his instructions,
and the jury retired to consider the case. But only
a few hours later they returned with the verdict in
favor of the King family, finding that the murder of

(39:44):
Dr Martin Luther King in Memphis had been a planned
event and that multiple people have been involved. After the trial,
Mrs King returned to Atlanta. The following day, she called
a press conference. This is what she had to say.
This verdict is not only a great victory for my family,

(40:07):
but also a great victory for America and a great
victory or truth itself. The jury was clearly convinced that,
in addition to Mr Jawa's a conspiracy of the mafia, local,
state and federal government agencies were deeply involved in the

(40:28):
assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence
that identified someone else, not James L. Ray, as the
shooter in Memphis, and that Mr Ray was set up
to take the blame. So what did Coretta Scott King
here in that courtroom that made this reserved, careful woman

(40:50):
speak in such a definite fashion. That's what we'll be
looking at and talking about in the next eleven episodes.
The trial, in its verdict should have been a huge doory,
but the American press did not see fit to report
on it in any meaningful way. What came instead were
the op ed pieces by men already invested in the
official story attacking Mrs King and her family for being

(41:13):
dupes or in it for the money, as if there
were any I was disgusted by the coverage and lack
of coverage of the media. The King family was greatly abused.
In fact, there was some editorials that were related to
them as aiding and abetting treason and terrorism and all

(41:34):
of that. The anger over how the King family was
treated was still evident on Bill Pepper's face as he
showed me the photographs of Mrs King bravely standing beside
him in the courtroom, and photos of him with the
rest of the King family at a dinner they put
on as a thank you for his efforts, and there
was a lot to thank him for. Over the years,

(41:55):
each time someone stepped forward with new information, Bill would
sit them down own and record what they had to say.
In most cases, they were just common people who finally
overcame their fear and answered their conscience. In the end,
there were dozens and dozens of audio tapes in boxes
in different places and attic here, a closet there, and

(42:17):
some down at the King Center in Atlanta. Many of
the people on those tapes are dead now, but their
stories aren't, and you're going to hear them. It's not
every day that one gets the shadow a lie as
big as this one. I called the Union Hall as

(42:37):
says a matter of life and death. I said, I
think these people are planning to kill Dr King. The
authorities were parade at all. We found a gun that
James L. Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King,
Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. James L.
Ray was a pond for the official radio from My

(43:01):
Heart Radio and tender Foot TV. The plan was to
get King to the city because they wanted it handled
in Memphis for Dad and nam Cad handle it. And
I've lived with it so long, my sear and they
they scared for me. The Lord told me to not
the world. I've been wanting to tell it all my life.

(43:22):
I'm Bill Claiburg and this is d MLK Tapes. Thanks
for listening to the m l K Tapes, a production
of I Heart Radio and tended for TV. This podcast
is not specifically endorsed by the King Family or the

(43:43):
King of State. Dmail K Tapes is written and hosted
by Bill Claiper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive
producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers Trevor
Young and ben Keebrick. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are
executive producers on half of tender Foot TV with produces
Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original music by Makeup and

(44:04):
Vanity Set. Cover art by Mr soul to six with
photography by Artemus Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and
Grace Royer at u t A, The Nord Group, back
Median Marketing envisioned Business Management and Station sixteen. If you
have questions, you can visit our website, the email k
Tapes dot com. We posted photos and videos related to

(44:26):
the podcast on our social media accounts. You can check
them out at the Email k Tapes. From our podcasts
from I Heart Radio and tender Foot TV, please visit
the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows,