January 31, 2022 • 55 mins
The back door of Jim's Grill in Memphis opens onto a yard just opposite the Lorraine Motel. Waitress Betty Spates hears a sharp noise and then sees her boss, Loyd Jowers, come through the door carrying a smoking rifle.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 for
individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
discretion is advised. He looked like he had stuck his
(00:25):
friend in his socket. Lord however, standing up and even
like somebody had drained all the good his body. He
was so white. Oh, he was so Whitey. He ain't
been on his knee. How do you know he's been
on I know he had been on his knee and
coast the ground with that, because one the ground was
down and he's in his knees was dirty. And when
(00:46):
he came in there and went behind the counting and
uh put the gun on account it was a brand
new trick. Black. The para was black, but it was
shy lack. It been wax the hamlet of the dal brown. Yeah,
he's black, ditap was? This is Betty Spates telling Attorney
(01:08):
William Pepper that just moments after Martin Luther King was shot,
she saw a man she knew come running in the
back door with a smoking rifle. Betty was working as
a waitress at Jim's Grill on South Main Street, the
back door to which opened onto a brush covered yard
directly opposite the room at the Lorraine Motel where Dr
King was staying. The grille was owned by Lloyd Jowers,
(01:31):
and he and Betty had an ongoing sexual relationship. Lloyd
was white, Betty was black and she was seventeen. I
call the Union Hall, says matter of life and death.
I said, I thank these people are planning to kill
(01:51):
Dr King. The authorities were parade all we found a
gun the James al Ray board in Birmingham that killed
Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr Key.
James Lvey was upon or the official story from My
Heart Radio in Tender for TV. The plan was to
(02:15):
get King to the city because they wanted it handled
in Memphis. Were dead in incl Hamlet, and I've lived
with it along my sire, and they they scared for me.
The Lord told me to not the word. I've been
wanting to tell it all my life. I'm Bill Claiburg
and this is the MLK tapes. At the time of
(02:47):
his conversation with Betty SPADs. Bill Pepper had been working
on the King murder for over a decade, but he
had been representing James Earl Ray as his attorney for
just a few years, and that only after he's satisfied
himself that Raisin folvement was not voluntary. Although the official
version of the crime had the fatal shot coming from
the bathroom window above Jim's grill, there were people who
(03:11):
thought the shot had come from the yard below the bathroom.
The best access to this yard was by way of
the back door of the grill, and of course nothing
could have happened through that door without the cooperation of
the grill's owner, Lloyd Jowers, so he was always on
Bill Pepper's suspect list. Showers was in the frame right
from the beginning because he was the one who ran
(03:32):
Jim's grill. He owned it, and he ran it, and
he clearly had some role to play, which which eventually
started to become defined by Betty's spades. When I eventually
was able to get her to talk. What brought you
(03:53):
to Betty space, I guess it's local People said that
Showers girlfriend was was Betty's face, since she worked part
time for him and her sister worked also in the grill,
and so I started talking to them. Betty was not
willing to disclose anything, uh that was going to incriminate
(04:16):
Lloyd for quite a long period of time because she
actually thought Lloyd was the shooter who did the shooting,
because she saw him carrying the rifle smoking rifle into
into the kitchen. Lloyd kept her under wraps to the
extent that he could. Lloyd Jowers had grown up in
(04:36):
rural Dyersboro, Tennessee, and after his discharge from the Navy,
he came to Memphis in newly married to his first wife, Dorothy.
With no training at all, he got a job as
a Memphis police officer. This was back in the day
when Edwin Hull Crump, better known as Boss Crump, ran
most everything in and around Memphis. Here's what Jowers said
(04:59):
at nine civil trial. The audio quality is so poor
we've taken the liberty of using a voice actor. Crump
is the one who got me the job. I went
in to see him on a Monday, and on Thursday,
(05:20):
I was riding a squad car with the thirty eight
hanging on my side. That is the way things operated
back then. Now Johnny Barger was my partner. He's the
one who introduced me to Frank Liberto. They were real
good friends. Of course, I gotta be pretty good friends
with Frank myself, because he could do you a lot
of good in Memphis, especially if you're with police. Policemen
(05:44):
were often seen stopping by Frank Liberto's produce market, but
they were rarely seen coming out with lettuce or tomatoes.
Word was the cops would do favors for Frank and
his friends, and he would make sure there was something
in it for them. In those days, getting a job
as a cop was easy enough if you were white,
but the pay was bad, so after a few years,
(06:04):
Jowers quit the police and began working for a local
cab company. Around the same time, Jowers also quit his
marriage with Dorothy and soon married another woman. That marriage
also ended in divorce. In a short while after that,
he married his first wife, Dorothy for a second time.
In nineteen sixty seven, Jowers bought Jim's grill, and he
(06:25):
hired two sisters, Bobby and Betty, to cook and service
waitresses for decades. Jowers had said that the afternoon King
was shot, he was working the tables by himself, and
that Betty Space was not there when actually knowed when
off I was gone a bellers all headed about head
(06:48):
gone and went off and quit. I went back to
the kitchen door like I was in the kitchen. I
looked inside of the kitchen when I was there, ill
going back to finished all there. Jowers told this his
standard story to Bill Pepper as part of an extensive
(07:09):
legal deposition he was required to give. In in the
nineteen nineties, things regarding the murder of Martin Luther King
were playing out in different venues on TV, in the
Office of the Attorney General, with a Shelby County grand jury,
and eventually in the States court system. The trigger for
all this was the mock trial, televised on HBO, which
(07:34):
brought together lawyers, a real judge, and an impartial jury, which,
after hearing evidence from both sides, found James Earl Ray
not guilty of murdering Martin Luther King. Lloyd Jowers testified
at this trial, but he didn't say much beyond what
you just heard. Pepper started to ask Jowers if he
had played any role in the murder of King, but
(07:55):
the judge scolded him and disallowed the question. I had
a number of altercations with Judge Frankel, who was was
known as a fairly conservative United States District Court judge
when he was on the court. He started off with
a degree of skepticism that waned as we went on
(08:18):
with the trial. I think he began to accept that
there was an actual case being made before him that
he didn't have any idea about. Pepper had good reason
to ask Jowers about his involvement because Betty Spates had
recently confessed to him that she had seen Jours with
a smoking gun. After trying for two or three years,
(08:42):
eventually got her to tell me what had happened that
afternoon with respect to Lloyd Jowers looking for him. Think
he was playing around with some women out in the bushes,
and she going into the grille, seeing the kitchen door closed,
which was unusual, but then seeing the back door open,
(09:03):
which also was unusual. So she went to the back door,
and on our way there she heard the shot. And
as she got to the back door, already here comes
Lloyd running in with the rifle still smoking, and him
as white as a sheet, and he brushes past her,
(09:24):
starts to break down the rifle and said to her.
He would never do anything to hurt me, Betty, would you?
She said, no, of course not. Then he wrapped it
the rifle put it on a shelf, where eventually he
showed it to McGraw, his friend, and a local taxi driver.
Betty's Spates was scheduled to testify the mock trial, but
(09:47):
she became frightened and didn't show. But Jowers may have
heard that she had been called, and perhaps this unnerved him,
for when he was under oath at his deposition, he
lied the simplest things. Was he aware Bill Pepper asked
that doctor King was coming to town? No, he hadn't
heard a thing about that. Did he have any contact
(10:09):
with a guy named Frank Liberto, No, none at all.
Had Betty Space worked at the grill that day? No,
not that day. Had he had a romantic relationship with
Betty Spaces, No, he hadn't. Pepper patiently plotted through his
questions without challenging jowers most obvious lies. None of it
(10:29):
made any sense. Why would you Owers, under oath revert
to his former see no evil here, no evil approach
to the killing of King, when just months before he
had been on national TV on ABC Prime Time with
Sam Donaldson, where he had confessed to having played a
role in this very murder. Did James Earl Ray killed
(10:50):
Dr Martin Luther King? No, he did not. Do you
know who killed Dr King? I know who was paid
to do it. From the outside, it is difficult to
understand jowers motivation for going on national TV and confessing
to some part in the murder of doctor King, but
knowing that Betty's space testimony was loose in the world
(11:13):
may have made Jowers worry about being prosecuted for his
part in the crime, or perhaps something else did. Looking
for relief, jowers attorney Lewis Garrison approached the Attorney General
John Parotti. He asked for immunity from prosecution for Jowers
in exchange for coming forward with what he knew about
(11:33):
the crime. That kind of deal is common in criminal cases.
What Jowers and Garrison had perhaps overlooked was that in
this case, the authorities, the police in the AGES Office,
were heavily invested in the lone assassined version of the
King murder. At the time of Race conviction, the a g.
(11:54):
S Office loudly proclaimed that if any information surface that
indicated others were involved, they would take vigorous action and
chase those guilty parties to the ends of the earth.
But now that that information had arrived, they didn't want
to act on it. Rather, the investigators tried to get
witnesses to change their stories or discredit them altogether. So
(12:15):
Garrison's attempts to negotiate immunity hit a wall, and Jowers
consent to come out on ABC Prime Time might be
seen as an attempt to force the AG's hand. Indeed,
when Donaldson asked ours on Live TV to name the
actual shooter, Garrison jumped in and said that Jowers would
do that as soon as he was granted immunity. But
(12:37):
why would Garrison allow us client to go public with
such a confession. I asked Bill Pepper if he knew
whether Garrison had recommended that Jowers go on TV. I
don't think he opposed it. I think Lewis knew that
his client was guilty, and he believed this was a
horrendous crime and that the truth should be out. And
(12:59):
while he was trying to protect the interests of his
client to the extent that he could, he nevertheless, I
did not want to get in the way of the
unfolding truth and what did Garrison have to say about it.
This audio comes from a twelve interview of Garrison by
court reporter Brian Dominski. Well, they had contact me at
(13:23):
bath and I don't know where mister Jarns want to
do it, and I it didn't matter to me because
he won't pay anything, but a right, uh. He told
me one day, you know, he said, well for second history,
if it will help out, you know, I'll do it.
And Ms Dalson came and talked to us or once
to twyfore you had to you know where we actually
filmed anybody? So I think, I mean, I didn't lead
Lord into this thing. They a great to it. And
(13:46):
the only thing I wanted, you know, I don't want
I'm getting in died anything like that. So Jowers had
been on TV saying he had been involved in the murder,
but now with Pepper asking him questions while under oath,
Jower just wanted to go back to the story that
he was just drawn a picture of beer when King
was killed. After having let the charade go on for
(14:08):
over an hour, Bill Pepper handed Jowers a transcript of
what he had said to Sam Donaldson and asked him
to look at the first page, Donaldson saying asking you
a question. Right on that first paragraph there he is
saying that James ear already killed Martin Luther King. You
see your answer to that question as it appeared from transcript.
(14:31):
What was your response to that question? Mr? Donaldson asked
you no, and then he said do you know who
killed Martin Luca King? And the answer, the answer Jowers
gave to Donaldson was I know who was paid to
do it. These were important words for Bill Pepper because
(14:53):
his client, James Earl Ray, had been in jail for
over twenty five years for a murder he said he
didn't commit. And now here was testimony from someone with
presumed inside knowledge who was saying that James Earl Ray
had not, in fact been the killer of Martin Luther King.
Pepper was trying to reopen the case in the courts,
and here was the can opener that might do the job.
(15:16):
But Lloyd Jowers didn't like this new turn in the questions.
I think I've got to take care of the man rowan.
So Jowers pled the fifth He refused to answer Pepper's
question by asserting his right to not incriminate himself. Pepper
kept on and asked you Owers if he had any
business dealings with Frank Liberto take pare Mary known if
(15:39):
they're going to read no um? Have you ever set
your eyes on a man who has comes be known
as many of us as Raoul I have to be
the fast man? Question? Have you ever had in your
(16:00):
possession any weapon that might have been associated with the
murder at Martin? LUs King built the man well that question?
And so it went a few more questions that Jowers
wouldn't answer, and Pepper said he was finished. But chowers
awkward confession and then is taking the fifth would be
(16:23):
enough for Pepper to get his motion for an evidentiary
hearing before a sympathetic judge. We will follow that story
in another episode. But what happened to Betty Spates and
her story of seeing Jowers running back into Jim's grill
rifle in hand. Betty Spates didn't work the afternoon shift
(16:54):
at Jim's Grill. She worked the morning and the evening shifts,
and in between she'd go across the street and work
her second job at Seabrook Wallpaper. Years later, she told
Bill Pepper that on the day Martin Luther King was killed.
Seabrook let out early, so she returned to the grill
around three thirty, just in time to run into Jowler's wife, Dorothy,
(17:15):
who didn't much care for Betty spaces what happened when
she came in because he slept. She came right up
to here and was calling her name. How slept about company?
And then she can learned the lower I want her
(17:37):
and then would say to get the hand here, and
he told her and now she's name you are, you'll
get adding that man he didn't help him and nothing.
Second she left, she didn't say anything. She's just left.
(17:58):
A short time after her run in with Jour's wife,
Betty Speech recalled seeing Charlie Stevens put out of the
grill so drunk he was becoming a danger to himself.
This was the same Charlie Stevens who would become the
state's star witness, saying he saw James ol Ray run
from the bathroom on the second floor of the rooming
house after the shot was fired. Betty didn't think much
(18:20):
of that story. Was nothing right? When did when was
he put out of the grill? Cappain though his wife there, Yeah,
I can put out, you know, he came before them,
but he would say about him, who would put it out? Bobby.
Bobby told him to believe that would be massive. He
(18:43):
was a bouncer. So it was a busy afternoon in
the grill for Lloyd Jowers, and the little scene between
Betty and Dorothy had played out just an hour and
a half before Dr King was to be murdered, and
there were still things that needed doing. Betty said that
Jowers disappeared on a handful of short errands that didn't
make much sense. Out the door, back in ten minutes,
(19:07):
out the door and back in five And then near
six o'clock she noticed Jowers was again not in the
dining room and she hadn't seen him leave, so she
went into the kitchen and Jowers wasn't there either, but
the back door was open. Then she heard of popping noise,
and Jowers came running through the back door, white as
a sheet and carrying a gun. And over the next
(19:29):
thirty years that image would follow her like a ghost.
And what about Lloyd Jowers, What was life like for
him in the years following King's murder. According the Jowers attorney,
Lewis Garrison, it wasn't too bad because Jowers had come
into some heavy money right after the murder of Dr King.
He purchased a cab company sometime oh here six days
(19:52):
sixty nine, but anyway is the second larger cab gun
in Memphis. Stad Sam had over a hundred card colled
ahead pocket when Dr English FASSINYI you got this money,
but I mean, I mean, I can't tell you. What
do you tell me? A personally? But I don't know
for sure? Under town very fat with other witnesses for
sad messia. According to Jowers, he closed down Jim's grill
(20:13):
in July of nineteen seventy one. The neighborhood was changing,
and for some reason, the cops and cab drivers who
had been as regulars no longer felt like sitting around
the old place. Sometime before he closed the grill, Jowers
bought what he told Bill Pepper was of Southland Cab Company.
It was as an owner of south Land that Jowers
(20:35):
would meet Attorney Lewis Garrison first on the posing sides
of an injury lawsuit. But Jowers liked Garrison's relaxed style,
so Garrison became jowers attorney for the odd things that
befall anyone in life like a divorce. Jowers divorced his wife,
Dorothy for the second time in nineteen seventy five, and
in nineteen seventy six he married Donna Turner, but Turner
(21:00):
worst Jhowers before their second anniversary, so Jowers, unfazed, turned
around the same year and married Dorothy for the third time.
All the while, Lloyd Jowers and Betty Spaces kept up
an occasional relationship that would go on for twenty years.
Betty gave birth to five children, two of which she
said were fathered by Jowers. As she told Bill Pepper,
(21:22):
all through the seventies and into the eighties, Jowers kept
tabs on her. He came right to my house back
for came okay, Loah called me like we was bud buds.
It was a week or he was calling once more.
And whenever you changed jobs, he went to see you.
(21:43):
When have I changed? Is left them up? So I
was watching me r and b Dan market. Who year
I want? She said, I wouldn't be there a month,
and suddenly he was there. Of course, Jowers knew what
Betty had seen the day King was killed, and this
may have caused him some anxiety, and at times he
(22:03):
apparently felt the need to push some of it in
her direction, and he didn't always do it himself. Jowers
had a friend named Willie Aikins who would sometimes come
by Betty's house. On one particular visit, Aikins pulled a
gun and fired three bullets into the couch on which
she was sitting. He knocked on my back door, came
(22:23):
in my house ful of the three fifty seven magnis
and shot three times in my captain, I have sitting
right there, adn't jump adenfra adam me hey work A
sixty was a sleep. Sometimes the lessons would be in
the form of a story, like the one about Aikins
(22:44):
and Jowers murdering the wife of some doctor who gave
the money to do it. And when Agins told me
there was a doctor I had a wife and paid
load to get rid of it and him and lower
feel this one on State manually embar with her. She
owned a pink CALLI and I asked me, don't you
remember reading in the paper? And that stuck in my
(23:06):
head because it's so unusual pink can I. As the
years passed, the games to frighten Betty died away, but
you ours still kept contact. I never bobbed Lloyd. I
always stayed way from Lord. I knew he knew where
I was, and if he wanted me, I knew he would. Secondly,
(23:28):
wherever he said for me, I always when where you are.
It's not that I loved it, Lotte, It's not that
I was afraid of a little I guess I was
different fool you, but I failed whenever he said for me,
if I was always there, he would hurt me. And
that's why I did it it. But I do always
do it anymore. Over the years, Attorney Lewis Garrison and
(23:50):
Lloyd Jowers kept on with their business relationship, but people
would sometimes say strange things to Garrison about you Owers,
allusions to some secret that everyone else seemed to know about,
or sometimes they might just say it. They might write
out ask if Garrison knew that Jowers was in on
the murder of Dr King. What a strange thing to say,
(24:10):
unless there was some truth to it. Finally, Garrison summoned discourage.
So one day I said, Lord, I said, you know,
they've been a lot of discussion about the fact you
may have been involved in the Martin Luther King assassination.
And he said, well that a lot of people talking
about he said, and one thing share that Blanket Black
is not coming back. I said, no, we coming back.
(24:31):
But that's that's when we first started, the very first
time we've we've probably talked about it very much. Lewis
Garrison is a Southern gentleman and blankety blank is as
close as he will come to saying the words that
Jowers actually said, but they probably weren't nice words, and
Garrison understood right away that Jowers had not denied the rumors.
(24:52):
Garrison and Jowers talked further on subsequent occasions, and soon
Garrison was not the attorney defending his Liliant and Cab
related lawsuits. He was the attorney representing a man who
had admitted to him that he was involved in the
murder of Dr Martin Luther King. The appearance with Sam
(25:16):
Donaldson a National TV may have been an attempt to
force the d a's hand as far as granting immunity
to Jours, but there may have been something else in play.
Bill Pepper had worked with an English TV producer named
Jack Saltman on the HBO Mock Trial. When the trial
ended with a surprise not guilty verdict in raised favor.
(25:37):
Saltman apparently imagined a movie about the assassination that would
reveal what really happened without telling Pepper a thing about it.
He took on Pepper's former investigators Ken Herman and John Billings,
and they began to put the pieces together. I think
I got launched very early on after the HBO trial.
(25:58):
I think they saw off ffortunity to make some serious money.
Herman had been um an investigator on the case, as
was Billings, and they got sucked into this arrangement with
with Saltman, who was a producer from England, of course,
and they thought they could put together a a script
and launch a private project and make money on it.
(26:24):
But Chowers was the key player, so he was brought in.
But further to be a movie, they needed to know
who shot King, and Jowers, now seeing dollar signs, was
happy to say that it was a guy named Frank Holt,
a big black fellow that Jowers knew way back when,
but no one had seen him for years. So jowers
(26:45):
confession on ABC Prime Time may have been not only
a play to pry an immunity deal out of a
g Paroti, but also perhaps a play to get a
major studio interested in doing a movie. But to get
a movie studio involved, they needed to flesh out the story,
and they wanted Betty Space to help. She would say
(27:07):
that she listened in on jowers phone conversation where some
produce guy named Liberto told Showers about money that was
to arrive in a box of lettuce, and Jowers now
wanted Betty to tell her story about what she saw
at the back door, except she would say that she
saw a man hand ours the gun, a large black man.
(27:28):
He told me, I want you always be noticed him
and whenever I get on the phone, n and to listen,
and I want you to eat that. And here Frank
Liberto telling me from that produce from the end today
they would be an extra order. And when the produce
came in, I was supposed to have a nose enough
(27:51):
to open a box that I thought was a box
and maze, but it was a box bear with mode.
But it's not in her. That's true. No rose treat
and not end of that is tream. I don't know
anything about a phone call. I don't know anything about
no lettuce and no money, no box, and I never
heard of front Lberto before. That's what Lord wanted me
(28:12):
to say. He wanted me to tell the truth about
seeing him with the rifle. He just wanted me change
it just a little bit by saying I saw him
standing in the back door and a black man passing
him a right and that's not true. And he said,
(28:33):
if I didn't say it, I will lose my share
of three hundred thousand dollars. Trust Roy, it is to
a book. And I told him I can't lose you nothing.
I never hate it. So Lloyd Gawers was saying that
a black man named Frank Holt, whom he had hired,
had handed him the rifle that day while he was
at the back door of his restaurant. Perhaps Saltman and
(28:56):
Hermann believed this story, but when Bill Pepper found out
about the whole movie intrigue and that the fall guy
was to be this Frank Halt, he jumped on it. Well.
I thought it was important to find him and to
interview him, and I hired a private investigator in Florida
to locate him because I understood that's where he was.
(29:17):
Where he was, we found him, Pepper flew down to
Orlando and met with a penniless Frank Holt, who had
been living in a series of homeless shelters. Holt was
surprised to hear that Jowers was now accusing him of
murdering Martin Luther King. It was apparent to Pepper, after
asking three questions that Holt didn't no thing about it.
(29:39):
Why would Jowers name you? He asked, Halt, I don't know,
The man replied, maybe he thought I was dead, And
that made sense to Pepper because to him, Frank Holt
alive did not make a very convincing killer. So with
Betty Space ready to say that the story wasn't true,
and Halt turning up alive, the movie idea died a
(30:00):
quiet death, but it had done damage. Anytime someone looks
into the murders of the Kennedy's or King, the charge
is almost always levied that they are just doing it
for a quick buck. It's an easy way to dismiss
an honest effort to look at the evidence. But now
here was someone actually trying to make money by telling
(30:21):
a story about the murder of King. It became the
easy way to dismiss Bill Pepper and Jowers and the
substantial evidence that the assassination was run out of his grill.
They were all just trying to make a movie. As
for Betty Spaces, she would endure a great deal of harassment.
(30:42):
In the beginning, Jack Saltman and a few others showed
up at her door. Then they appeared at the restaurant
where she worked. They wanted her in on the story.
So did Willie Aikins, who was angry that she was
going to cost them all a lot of money if
she didn't follow their script. And ABC host Sam Donaldson
himself showed up in the company of Aikin's who that
(31:03):
day presumably left this three fifty seven magnum at home.
When Betty told Pepper that Donaldson had come to her house,
he was surprised. Did Donaldson come over there? And at
to hear him on a point? And he was dinging
when Aidan was beena on the winning doors and he
was damaged. If this lady don't want to talk, I
(31:24):
don't want to bother her. Those were nice sentiments spoken
by Donaldson, but it didn't keep ABC Prime Time from
turning Betty's life upside down When they did their special
on Lloyd Showers and his confession, because right in the
middle of things, they showed a blurry video of Betty
leaving work and getting into her car like she was
(31:44):
part of some drug deal, and while that was playing,
they said that Betty could confirm the story told by Jowers.
Now lots of people wanted to talk to Betty, journalists,
people posing as journalists, guys in suits flashing I D.
Betty didn't want to talk to any of them. Sometimes
she had and pretended she wasn't home. As for Jowers,
(32:05):
things weren't great for him either. With a movie deal
dying and the Attorney General not offering immunity, he felt
more exposed than ever, And now the King family had questions.
They wanted to speak to him, and when the possibility
of a meeting was proposed, Jowers said he was willing.
He apparently hoped that he might find some shelter in
a meeting with a King family, So one was arranged
(32:28):
in a room at a motel out on the highway.
At the meeting was Lloyd Jowers and his attorney Lewis Garrison,
Martin King's son Dexter, and Ambassador Andrew Young. They also
brought a tape recorder. When Martin Luther King was shot
(32:57):
on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, King's lute, ennant
and confidant Andrew Young, was standing below in the parking lot.
Young heard a popping noise and then suddenly realized that
King was down. After King's death, Young stayed on for
a time with the SCLC. Then he entered politics and
served two terms in Congress. In nineteen seventy seven, he
(33:19):
was made Ambassador to the United Nations by President Carter,
and following that he won two consecutive terms as mayor
of Atlanta. Three decades after King's death, Andrew Young would
return to Memphis and take the witness stand in the
civil trial. Under the questioning of Bill Pepper, attorney for
(33:40):
credit Scott King, Young explained that his energies after King's
murder were directed towards carrying forward with King's work, rather
than answering the questions that still lingered about his death.
But eventually that changed. Did you and recent years, and said, um,
(34:00):
the events of April four from the assassination on your friends,
and you prob gain again. I did investing. As a
result of UM, the families knew awareness and concern, and
where you asked to participating in a meeting with an
individual who who was a dependent came Mr Royal Johns.
(34:22):
Yes I was. I was told that that Mr Jarros
will getting older, he wasn't very well and it was
almost like he wanted to get right with dogs before
he died. But when we met with him, that was
still impression that I had that he was a man
who had a lot on his mind and a lot
(34:44):
on his conscience and who wanted to confess it and
be free of couldn't you in the time remaining summarized
for us what Mr Jarros told you? And next you
came as I beat well. He said that he was
a Ryan Jim's grill and that he was a retired
(35:06):
Members police officer and that a lot of police officers
hung out at his place. He said he hadn't lived
such a good life. He had a lot of drinking
and gambling problems, and that he was in debt to
somebody that he identified as the head of the mafia
(35:29):
who called him up, and that he was nervous about
him and afraid that he was calling the collective money
which he didn't have. The guy said, I'll forget about that.
I just need you to do me a favor. So
what was the favor? The mafia guy to whom Jowers
owed a large debt, Frank Liberto, who we've spoken about before,
(35:53):
wanted jowers grill for use as the staging ground for
the murder of Martin Luther King. It was the thick
place if King were staying ethel Lorraine Motel. But when
Jowers met with King's son Dexter, he wasn't quite ready
to let it all hang out, so he told a
more limited but rather unbelievable story to Dexter King and
(36:14):
Andy Young. In this telling, Jowers did not know Martin
Luther King was to be murdered. All Jowers knew was
that he was supposed to receive a large amount of
money hidden in a box supposedly containing vegetables, and that
he was supposed to hand this money over to a
Spanish looking guy named Raoul, who would bring Jowers a package.
Jowers claimed the man brought the package, which was a
(36:37):
long box that presumably contained a rifle, But Jowers told
Dexter King and Andy Young that he never looked in
the box. But he did give this Raoul guy the money.
Then crazy day that this was. Jowers said he got
a phone call telling him to be at the back
door of his grill at six o'clock someone would give
him something. He didn't know what, and asad Or Young
(37:00):
tells what happened next. According to Jowers, but he said
when he went to the back door, just as he
got to the door, shot rang out and somebody came
out of the bushes and handed him a Smogan rifle.
And he broke it down and wrapped it in a
table ball and put it back in the store room.
(37:24):
He said. The guy who handed him the rifle was
the Vello who had been on his police force with him.
That was a friend of his who he used to
go hunting with. It was quite a good box. Bill
Pepper asked the court for permission to play the recording
of the meeting between Ambassador Young, Dexter King, and Lloyd Jowers.
(37:46):
The judge agreed, and the jury then heard the entire
tape of that meeting, selections from which we will play
for you. Here should be noted that this was the
second such meeting. The first included Jowers, Garrison King, and
Bill Pepper, so there is a more relaxed informality here
than one might expect for a meeting where one man
(38:06):
confesses to killing the other man's father. And while the
evidence strongly suggests that the basic underlying story here is true, many,
if not most, of the pieces of this story as
told by Jowers, are not true, and we will try
to point these out as they occur. As we heard
Attorney Garrison say before, Jowers did not speak well of
(38:27):
King and private company, But now in meeting with Dexter King,
Jowers wanted not only forgiveness from the King family, but
their support in his bid for immunity from prosecution. In
return for his coming forward. The King family, on their side,
was grateful to finally here after thirty years some version
of the truth from someone inside the conspiracy. Because of this,
(38:50):
they were not inclined to challenge Jowers or make things
difficult for him when he made absurd claims such as
he did not know it was Martin Luther King who
was to be murdered. It's an odd trade off. Also,
after the civil trial, the original tape of this meeting
appears to have been lost, so what we have now
(39:10):
is what was made when the original tape was played
and re recorded in open court with all its distortion
and background noise. So instead of playing the courtroom recording,
we're going to recreate the exchange between Dexter and Showers
(39:30):
heard on that tape with voice actors. We appreciate your
willingness to open up and come forward. As you know,
we continue to support immunity for you, but the district
attorney doesn't seem to want your story to come out,
so it appears that they are shutting everything down. Yeah,
(39:52):
I think that would be a major tragedy. Well, we
would be definitely. Dexter then brings the conversation back to
where it had been the last time they met. When
we had last met, you had pretty much taken us
I think, up to a point where you had received
the rifle from Lieutenant Clark. I couldn't swear it was
Clark that I took it from, but I believe it was.
(40:15):
Now say it happened just about that quick. I was
in the back door at six o'clock like I was
supposed to be. How many seconds did it take him
to hand me the rifle and got going? That was
just a split second. Here again, Jowers being at the
back doors six for a mysterious handoff is a ludicrous
fabrication to support the notion that he really didn't know
(40:36):
what was going down, and Jowers tries to pretend that
the handoff was so quick that he really couldn't say
for sure that it was his friend Earl Clark, dead
for some years now, who had handed him the gun.
It was just like that, he said, snapping his fingers.
But a little while later Andy Young asked again, but
are you pretty sure that it was Clark who handed
(40:57):
you the rifle? This time Jowers is more certain. I'm
sure it was Clark, he says, of course. Jowers saying
so doesn't mean that Lieutenant Earl Clark, an m b D.
Sharpshooter was out in the bushes behind Jim's grill, just
as they say so didn't mean that Frank Holt was
out there. But there is other testimony that we will
(41:18):
hear later that says that Earl Clark was out in
the yard, and the muddy knees on jowers pants says
that he was also out there, along with evidence of
a third man. But Jowers says that he got a
smoking rifle handed to him moments after doctor King was
shot Dexter King then asked you Owers if he knows
of any evidence determining what rifle killed his father. To
(41:42):
my knowledge, I don't know of anyone that has scientific
evidence of which rifle did actually kill him. I definitely
don't believe it was one of the police found. I'll
never believe that in a million years. So is it
your feeling that James Earl Ray did not know? He
didn't no more kill him and you killed your own dad? No? No, no,
(42:03):
I'd never believe that in a million Even if he
told me, I wouldn't believe it. You could be forgiven
for smiling as you listen to how certain Jowers is
that neither Ray nor Ray's rifle kill King? If Jowers
were out in the bushes when the fatal shot was fired,
as it appears he was, of course he's certain. How
(42:24):
could he not be? Dexter then has another question, So
why was he set up his own fault? They got
him out of jail, they furnished him money, they furnished
him with passports. Now they come up at that tale
about him setting up a gun deal, But that wasn't true.
They may have told him that, you know, So is
(42:44):
it possible that he was doing things that appeared to
be stalking, but maybe he didn't realize it. They probably
didn't even realize it. Yeah, I'm sure that's the way
it went down. He was doing what he was told
to do. So Jowers is certain that Ray was set up,
and he seems to know more than just a little
bit about it. He knows about the phony gun deal
(43:06):
were according to Ray, he was asked to buy a
rifle to present to a prospective customer. And Jowers also
says that they got Ray out of jail, strongly suggesting
that Ray was sprung so he would be available for
future service, perhaps Ay as a full guy. And how
Ray escaped from prison has always been a mystery because
(43:27):
he needed help and probably high level permission on the inside,
and once out, Ray had the use and protection of
several false identities. Jowers refers to them as passports identities
that he could never have come up with by himself.
And so now here's Jowers, who, on the one hand
is saying that he didn't know King was to be killed,
(43:47):
but on the other seems to know a lot of
inside details about how Ray was moved about and brought
to Memphis. So what to make of all this? With
Lloyd Jowers and Betty Spades. Over the years, Jowers has
changed his story many times, like the absurd claim that
he didn't know who was to be murdered or who
supposedly handed him the gun at the back door to
(44:08):
the grill, And of course, at one point he was
clearly chasing the prospect of making money from his story.
So after this many lies, is there any reason to
believe that some part of jowers story is true? The U.
S Department of Justice doesn't think so. In the year
two thousand report, they carefully list out all of jowers
prevarications and conclude that every facet of his story is false.
(44:33):
The totality of the evidence, the report concludes, suggests that
Jowers fabricated his allegations, hoping to promote a sensational account
of a conspiracy to murder Dr Martin Luther King while
acknowledging the many lies told. My own view is that
it's a stretch to imagine someone making up an entirely
untrue story about being part of a horrific murder in
(44:56):
the hope of making some money out of it. Seems
like a out of trouble to invite into your life
for an unlikely reward. And of course, the short lived
chase for the movie deal arrived with producer Jack Saltman
after the HBO mock trial. But Betty's Space had already
told Bill Pepper about Jowers and the rifle before Jowers
(45:16):
or Space had ever met Jack Saltman. An attorney, Louis Garrison,
spent some long hours preparing a proposed immunity deal for
Jowers for a crime that he had confessed to Garrison
again before he met Jack Saltman. Until his recent death,
Lewis Garrison maintained a respected law practice in Memphis. He
(45:37):
was horrified by the murder of King, and he would
not have abused the legal system with a phony immunity
proposal so that as client might make some money on
a movie deal. He wasn't that kind of man. The
Department of Justice also concluded that Betty Space was lying,
but the motive here is hard to find. They assert
(45:59):
that Space's name does not appear on the list of
people in Jim's grill made right after the shooting, but
her account of her spat with jowers wife, the drunk
Charlie Stevens, being escorted out of the place by her
sister Bobby and Jowers short errands before the murder, ring
true to me, and I feel the same about her
account of Jowers coming through the back door with hair
(46:20):
standing on end and the knees of his pants muddy.
The d O j would also refer to a statement
that the AGS investigators got in January with Betty's space's
signature on it, saying that she had not seen Jowers
with a rifle. But a little more than a month
after that, Betty signed a statement in the presence of
Bill Pepper where she once again affirmed in detail her
(46:42):
original account of seeing Jowers coming through the back door
with the gun, saying, in part as read by a
voice actor, I will not retract the truthful accounts of
the events which I witnessed around six pm on April
fourt which confirms Mr jowers involvement based on everything I know,
(47:02):
James Earl Ray was not the person who shot Dr. King.
Other persons have tried to get me to change my story,
saying that if I did so, I would benefit financially.
I refused to do so and continue to refuse. I
was in any attempts by the attorney general or his
investigators to imply that I am telling lives for money.
(47:24):
So the Attorney General of the State of Tennessee has
a statement signed by Betty Space saying one thing, and
Bill Pepper has one saying something entirely different. Both things
can't be true. How to make sense out of this?
In my investigation of the murder of Robert Kennedy, I
came across recordings that have been hidden for twenty years,
(47:44):
recordings of dozens of police interviews of witnesses who had
inconvenient accounts of what they saw the knight of Kennedy's murder,
accounts that didn't fit with the official version of the crime.
When the investigators made it clear that they wanted a
change of ory, they often got it. Because it is
very intimidating to be visited by men in suits who
(48:06):
suggest that if you don't change your story, they will
have to return with more questions to discover what reason
you might have to obstruct a murder investigation by putting
forward an untrue story, which would be a very serious crime.
They might need to talk to your employer. Have you
ever been in trouble with the law, How are you
doing drugs. Perhaps you told the story to cover up
(48:27):
an affair. For any normal person under this kind of pressure,
where the men asking the questions have no interest in
what you saw, but only in what they want you
to say you saw, the easiest thing to do is
sign what they want you to sign and have them leave.
And this is Bill Pepper's understanding as to what happened
(48:48):
with Betty Spaces. Well. Betty Spates obviously was a very
important witness to the events that took place at the
time of the assassination, and so they had to try
to discredit her in every way that they could and
to try to get her to collaborate with a false story.
(49:11):
So they went to visit her, and they intimidated her.
They used some pressures they had on one of her children,
one of her sons. They were determined to get her
to provide a different story. But that was not the truth,
and Betty, of course told me the truth to actually tearfully.
(49:33):
Some time later. He wanted to tell the truth, he
wanted it out there, and she held nothing back. She
taught to her relationship with Jowers and what happened on
that afternoon exactly the way that she recalled it. I
was very, very proud of her. In the process of
(49:55):
trying to discredit Spats as a witness, the Department of
Justice port reveals two other instances where Betty Spates made
allegations about the murder of Dr King, and this might
be the most telling evidence of all, because this was
back in early nineteen sixty nine, less than a year
after King was killed. The first instance is short on details,
(50:18):
but according to the report, Betty is supposed to have
told someone that her boss, presumably Jours, was in on
the murder. This person told the police, and Space was questioned.
She denied having said any such thing. In the second,
Space was arranging bail for her brother. When she remarked
the two bailed bondsmen that she knew who shot Dr
(50:39):
King and that Ray was innocent. The bondsman notified the
AG's office and two investigators were sent to question Spates again.
She denied the allegation and said she didn't know a
thing about the assassination. In reviewing alleged crimes that happened
many years before, like a sexual saul, what a victim
(51:01):
or witness said at the time to a third party
is regarded as strong evidence, but to the Department of Justice.
The fact that Spates twice denied her reported accusations when
confronted by law enforcement proved to them that her murder
stories were untrue. Of course, one might well see it
the other way. One might perceive a woman who saw
(51:22):
something so disturbing that she lets it out in an
unguarded moment, but when the lawman show up, she becomes frightened,
so she denies she ever said it. And if Jowers
came through that door with a smoking rifle, as Space
said he did, and as he said he did, and
as lawyer said he did, then you can put away
most of what you've been told about the murder of Dr. King.
(51:43):
And remember, Betty Space was never part of the movie scheme.
She didn't want to be on TV, and she never
at any time asked for a single thing for her story.
I want to play again what she said about what
Jowers and the movie bunch had wanted her to say.
They want me to tell the truth about seeing him
with the rifle. He just wanted to change it just
(52:05):
a little bit by saying I saw him standing in
the back door and a black man passing him a
right and that's not true, and he said if I
didn't say it, I will lose my share of three
hundred thousand dollars plus royalties to do it. And I
(52:28):
told him, I can't love me nothing. I never hate it.
I believe that Betty Spits saw what she said she saw.
I don't believe the men in suits. I've seen what
they do next time on the Emilk tapes. Memphis is
(52:48):
an interesting reputation of being the first degree murder capital
of America, and in that context we're not talking about
street crime, but organized hitch. I heard some noise, and
I was sitting in my kitchen, and I'm be getting
aware of some shadows out back, in some out front.
(53:09):
And to make a long story short, two people tried
to break in the front, three in the back at
the same time. More scientific tests may be conducted on
James Earl Ray's rifle to see if it was used
to kill Martin Luther King. Tests described Friday were inconclusive,
though a build up of material and the rifle barrel
could be to blame. Did you attempt to determine from
(53:33):
outside the skin the structure of that bullet under the skin? Yes?
Or I did, and you could take your finger and
pinch and feel and roll that bullet under the skin.
You're saying, what you all saw taking out of Dr
King looked like that. We felt like we found a
piece of gold when we found a bullet. Thanks for
(53:58):
listening to the MLK Tapes for auction of iHeart Radio
and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not specifically endorsed by
the King Family or the King of State. The Email
K Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Claper. 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 behalf
(54:20):
of Tenderfoot TV with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stepman.
Original music by Makeup and 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
(54:40):
Station sixteen. If you have questions, you can visit our website,
The Email K Tapes dot com. We posted photos and
videos related to the podcast on our social media accounts.
You can check them out at the email k tapes.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV,
please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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 for
individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
discretion is advised. He looked like he had stuck his
(00:25):
friend in his socket. Lord however, standing up and even
like somebody had drained all the good his body. He
was so white. Oh, he was so Whitey. He ain't
been on his knee. How do you know he's been
on I know he had been on his knee and
coast the ground with that, because one the ground was
down and he's in his knees was dirty. And when
(00:46):
he came in there and went behind the counting and
uh put the gun on account it was a brand
new trick. Black. The para was black, but it was
shy lack. It been wax the hamlet of the dal brown. Yeah,
he's black, ditap was? This is Betty Spates telling Attorney
(01:08):
William Pepper that just moments after Martin Luther King was shot,
she saw a man she knew come running in the
back door with a smoking rifle. Betty was working as
a waitress at Jim's Grill on South Main Street, the
back door to which opened onto a brush covered yard
directly opposite the room at the Lorraine Motel where Dr
King was staying. The grille was owned by Lloyd Jowers,
(01:31):
and he and Betty had an ongoing sexual relationship. Lloyd
was white, Betty was black and she was seventeen. I
call the Union Hall, says matter of life and death.
I said, I thank these people are planning to kill
(01:51):
Dr King. The authorities were parade all we found a
gun the James al Ray board in Birmingham that killed
Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr Key.
James Lvey was upon or the official story from My
Heart Radio in Tender for TV. The plan was to
(02:15):
get King to the city because they wanted it handled
in Memphis. Were dead in incl Hamlet, and I've lived
with it along my sire, and they they scared for me.
The Lord told me to not the word. I've been
wanting to tell it all my life. I'm Bill Claiburg
and this is the MLK tapes. At the time of
(02:47):
his conversation with Betty SPADs. Bill Pepper had been working
on the King murder for over a decade, but he
had been representing James Earl Ray as his attorney for
just a few years, and that only after he's satisfied
himself that Raisin folvement was not voluntary. Although the official
version of the crime had the fatal shot coming from
the bathroom window above Jim's grill, there were people who
(03:11):
thought the shot had come from the yard below the bathroom.
The best access to this yard was by way of
the back door of the grill, and of course nothing
could have happened through that door without the cooperation of
the grill's owner, Lloyd Jowers, so he was always on
Bill Pepper's suspect list. Showers was in the frame right
from the beginning because he was the one who ran
(03:32):
Jim's grill. He owned it, and he ran it, and
he clearly had some role to play, which which eventually
started to become defined by Betty's spades. When I eventually
was able to get her to talk. What brought you
(03:53):
to Betty space, I guess it's local People said that
Showers girlfriend was was Betty's face, since she worked part
time for him and her sister worked also in the grill,
and so I started talking to them. Betty was not
willing to disclose anything, uh that was going to incriminate
(04:16):
Lloyd for quite a long period of time because she
actually thought Lloyd was the shooter who did the shooting,
because she saw him carrying the rifle smoking rifle into
into the kitchen. Lloyd kept her under wraps to the
extent that he could. Lloyd Jowers had grown up in
(04:36):
rural Dyersboro, Tennessee, and after his discharge from the Navy,
he came to Memphis in newly married to his first wife, Dorothy.
With no training at all, he got a job as
a Memphis police officer. This was back in the day
when Edwin Hull Crump, better known as Boss Crump, ran
most everything in and around Memphis. Here's what Jowers said
(04:59):
at nine civil trial. The audio quality is so poor
we've taken the liberty of using a voice actor. Crump
is the one who got me the job. I went
in to see him on a Monday, and on Thursday,
(05:20):
I was riding a squad car with the thirty eight
hanging on my side. That is the way things operated
back then. Now Johnny Barger was my partner. He's the
one who introduced me to Frank Liberto. They were real
good friends. Of course, I gotta be pretty good friends
with Frank myself, because he could do you a lot
of good in Memphis, especially if you're with police. Policemen
(05:44):
were often seen stopping by Frank Liberto's produce market, but
they were rarely seen coming out with lettuce or tomatoes.
Word was the cops would do favors for Frank and
his friends, and he would make sure there was something
in it for them. In those days, getting a job
as a cop was easy enough if you were white,
but the pay was bad, so after a few years,
(06:04):
Jowers quit the police and began working for a local
cab company. Around the same time, Jowers also quit his
marriage with Dorothy and soon married another woman. That marriage
also ended in divorce. In a short while after that,
he married his first wife, Dorothy for a second time.
In nineteen sixty seven, Jowers bought Jim's grill, and he
(06:25):
hired two sisters, Bobby and Betty, to cook and service
waitresses for decades. Jowers had said that the afternoon King
was shot, he was working the tables by himself, and
that Betty Space was not there when actually knowed when
off I was gone a bellers all headed about head
(06:48):
gone and went off and quit. I went back to
the kitchen door like I was in the kitchen. I
looked inside of the kitchen when I was there, ill
going back to finished all there. Jowers told this his
standard story to Bill Pepper as part of an extensive
(07:09):
legal deposition he was required to give. In in the
nineteen nineties, things regarding the murder of Martin Luther King
were playing out in different venues on TV, in the
Office of the Attorney General, with a Shelby County grand jury,
and eventually in the States court system. The trigger for
all this was the mock trial, televised on HBO, which
(07:34):
brought together lawyers, a real judge, and an impartial jury, which,
after hearing evidence from both sides, found James Earl Ray
not guilty of murdering Martin Luther King. Lloyd Jowers testified
at this trial, but he didn't say much beyond what
you just heard. Pepper started to ask Jowers if he
had played any role in the murder of King, but
(07:55):
the judge scolded him and disallowed the question. I had
a number of altercations with Judge Frankel, who was was
known as a fairly conservative United States District Court judge
when he was on the court. He started off with
a degree of skepticism that waned as we went on
(08:18):
with the trial. I think he began to accept that
there was an actual case being made before him that
he didn't have any idea about. Pepper had good reason
to ask Jowers about his involvement because Betty Spates had
recently confessed to him that she had seen Jours with
a smoking gun. After trying for two or three years,
(08:42):
eventually got her to tell me what had happened that
afternoon with respect to Lloyd Jowers looking for him. Think
he was playing around with some women out in the bushes,
and she going into the grille, seeing the kitchen door closed,
which was unusual, but then seeing the back door open,
(09:03):
which also was unusual. So she went to the back door,
and on our way there she heard the shot. And
as she got to the back door, already here comes
Lloyd running in with the rifle still smoking, and him
as white as a sheet, and he brushes past her,
(09:24):
starts to break down the rifle and said to her.
He would never do anything to hurt me, Betty, would you?
She said, no, of course not. Then he wrapped it
the rifle put it on a shelf, where eventually he
showed it to McGraw, his friend, and a local taxi driver.
Betty's Spates was scheduled to testify the mock trial, but
(09:47):
she became frightened and didn't show. But Jowers may have
heard that she had been called, and perhaps this unnerved him,
for when he was under oath at his deposition, he
lied the simplest things. Was he aware Bill Pepper asked
that doctor King was coming to town? No, he hadn't
heard a thing about that. Did he have any contact
(10:09):
with a guy named Frank Liberto, No, none at all.
Had Betty Space worked at the grill that day? No,
not that day. Had he had a romantic relationship with
Betty Spaces, No, he hadn't. Pepper patiently plotted through his
questions without challenging jowers most obvious lies. None of it
(10:29):
made any sense. Why would you Owers, under oath revert
to his former see no evil here, no evil approach
to the killing of King, when just months before he
had been on national TV on ABC Prime Time with
Sam Donaldson, where he had confessed to having played a
role in this very murder. Did James Earl Ray killed
(10:50):
Dr Martin Luther King? No, he did not. Do you
know who killed Dr King? I know who was paid
to do it. From the outside, it is difficult to
understand jowers motivation for going on national TV and confessing
to some part in the murder of doctor King, but
knowing that Betty's space testimony was loose in the world
(11:13):
may have made Jowers worry about being prosecuted for his
part in the crime, or perhaps something else did. Looking
for relief, jowers attorney Lewis Garrison approached the Attorney General
John Parotti. He asked for immunity from prosecution for Jowers
in exchange for coming forward with what he knew about
(11:33):
the crime. That kind of deal is common in criminal cases.
What Jowers and Garrison had perhaps overlooked was that in
this case, the authorities, the police in the AGES Office,
were heavily invested in the lone assassined version of the
King murder. At the time of Race conviction, the a g.
(11:54):
S Office loudly proclaimed that if any information surface that
indicated others were involved, they would take vigorous action and
chase those guilty parties to the ends of the earth.
But now that that information had arrived, they didn't want
to act on it. Rather, the investigators tried to get
witnesses to change their stories or discredit them altogether. So
(12:15):
Garrison's attempts to negotiate immunity hit a wall, and Jowers
consent to come out on ABC Prime Time might be
seen as an attempt to force the AG's hand. Indeed,
when Donaldson asked ours on Live TV to name the
actual shooter, Garrison jumped in and said that Jowers would
do that as soon as he was granted immunity. But
(12:37):
why would Garrison allow us client to go public with
such a confession. I asked Bill Pepper if he knew
whether Garrison had recommended that Jowers go on TV. I
don't think he opposed it. I think Lewis knew that
his client was guilty, and he believed this was a
horrendous crime and that the truth should be out. And
(12:59):
while he was trying to protect the interests of his
client to the extent that he could, he nevertheless, I
did not want to get in the way of the
unfolding truth and what did Garrison have to say about it.
This audio comes from a twelve interview of Garrison by
court reporter Brian Dominski. Well, they had contact me at
(13:23):
bath and I don't know where mister Jarns want to
do it, and I it didn't matter to me because
he won't pay anything, but a right, uh. He told
me one day, you know, he said, well for second history,
if it will help out, you know, I'll do it.
And Ms Dalson came and talked to us or once
to twyfore you had to you know where we actually
filmed anybody? So I think, I mean, I didn't lead
Lord into this thing. They a great to it. And
(13:46):
the only thing I wanted, you know, I don't want
I'm getting in died anything like that. So Jowers had
been on TV saying he had been involved in the murder,
but now with Pepper asking him questions while under oath,
Jower just wanted to go back to the story that
he was just drawn a picture of beer when King
was killed. After having let the charade go on for
(14:08):
over an hour, Bill Pepper handed Jowers a transcript of
what he had said to Sam Donaldson and asked him
to look at the first page, Donaldson saying asking you
a question. Right on that first paragraph there he is
saying that James ear already killed Martin Luther King. You
see your answer to that question as it appeared from transcript.
(14:31):
What was your response to that question? Mr? Donaldson asked
you no, and then he said do you know who
killed Martin Luca King? And the answer, the answer Jowers
gave to Donaldson was I know who was paid to
do it. These were important words for Bill Pepper because
(14:53):
his client, James Earl Ray, had been in jail for
over twenty five years for a murder he said he
didn't commit. And now here was testimony from someone with
presumed inside knowledge who was saying that James Earl Ray
had not, in fact been the killer of Martin Luther King.
Pepper was trying to reopen the case in the courts,
and here was the can opener that might do the job.
(15:16):
But Lloyd Jowers didn't like this new turn in the questions.
I think I've got to take care of the man rowan.
So Jowers pled the fifth He refused to answer Pepper's
question by asserting his right to not incriminate himself. Pepper
kept on and asked you Owers if he had any
business dealings with Frank Liberto take pare Mary known if
(15:39):
they're going to read no um? Have you ever set
your eyes on a man who has comes be known
as many of us as Raoul I have to be
the fast man? Question? Have you ever had in your
(16:00):
possession any weapon that might have been associated with the
murder at Martin? LUs King built the man well that question?
And so it went a few more questions that Jowers
wouldn't answer, and Pepper said he was finished. But chowers
awkward confession and then is taking the fifth would be
(16:23):
enough for Pepper to get his motion for an evidentiary
hearing before a sympathetic judge. We will follow that story
in another episode. But what happened to Betty Spates and
her story of seeing Jowers running back into Jim's grill
rifle in hand. Betty Spates didn't work the afternoon shift
(16:54):
at Jim's Grill. She worked the morning and the evening shifts,
and in between she'd go across the street and work
her second job at Seabrook Wallpaper. Years later, she told
Bill Pepper that on the day Martin Luther King was killed.
Seabrook let out early, so she returned to the grill
around three thirty, just in time to run into Jowler's wife, Dorothy,
(17:15):
who didn't much care for Betty spaces what happened when
she came in because he slept. She came right up
to here and was calling her name. How slept about company?
And then she can learned the lower I want her
(17:37):
and then would say to get the hand here, and
he told her and now she's name you are, you'll
get adding that man he didn't help him and nothing.
Second she left, she didn't say anything. She's just left.
(17:58):
A short time after her run in with Jour's wife,
Betty Speech recalled seeing Charlie Stevens put out of the
grill so drunk he was becoming a danger to himself.
This was the same Charlie Stevens who would become the
state's star witness, saying he saw James ol Ray run
from the bathroom on the second floor of the rooming
house after the shot was fired. Betty didn't think much
(18:20):
of that story. Was nothing right? When did when was
he put out of the grill? Cappain though his wife there, Yeah,
I can put out, you know, he came before them,
but he would say about him, who would put it out? Bobby.
Bobby told him to believe that would be massive. He
(18:43):
was a bouncer. So it was a busy afternoon in
the grill for Lloyd Jowers, and the little scene between
Betty and Dorothy had played out just an hour and
a half before Dr King was to be murdered, and
there were still things that needed doing. Betty said that
Jowers disappeared on a handful of short errands that didn't
make much sense. Out the door, back in ten minutes,
(19:07):
out the door and back in five And then near
six o'clock she noticed Jowers was again not in the
dining room and she hadn't seen him leave, so she
went into the kitchen and Jowers wasn't there either, but
the back door was open. Then she heard of popping noise,
and Jowers came running through the back door, white as
a sheet and carrying a gun. And over the next
(19:29):
thirty years that image would follow her like a ghost.
And what about Lloyd Jowers, What was life like for
him in the years following King's murder. According the Jowers attorney,
Lewis Garrison, it wasn't too bad because Jowers had come
into some heavy money right after the murder of Dr King.
He purchased a cab company sometime oh here six days
(19:52):
sixty nine, but anyway is the second larger cab gun
in Memphis. Stad Sam had over a hundred card colled
ahead pocket when Dr English FASSINYI you got this money,
but I mean, I mean, I can't tell you. What
do you tell me? A personally? But I don't know
for sure? Under town very fat with other witnesses for
sad messia. According to Jowers, he closed down Jim's grill
(20:13):
in July of nineteen seventy one. The neighborhood was changing,
and for some reason, the cops and cab drivers who
had been as regulars no longer felt like sitting around
the old place. Sometime before he closed the grill, Jowers
bought what he told Bill Pepper was of Southland Cab Company.
It was as an owner of south Land that Jowers
(20:35):
would meet Attorney Lewis Garrison first on the posing sides
of an injury lawsuit. But Jowers liked Garrison's relaxed style,
so Garrison became jowers attorney for the odd things that
befall anyone in life like a divorce. Jowers divorced his wife,
Dorothy for the second time in nineteen seventy five, and
in nineteen seventy six he married Donna Turner, but Turner
(21:00):
worst Jhowers before their second anniversary, so Jowers, unfazed, turned
around the same year and married Dorothy for the third time.
All the while, Lloyd Jowers and Betty Spaces kept up
an occasional relationship that would go on for twenty years.
Betty gave birth to five children, two of which she
said were fathered by Jowers. As she told Bill Pepper,
(21:22):
all through the seventies and into the eighties, Jowers kept
tabs on her. He came right to my house back
for came okay, Loah called me like we was bud buds.
It was a week or he was calling once more.
And whenever you changed jobs, he went to see you.
(21:43):
When have I changed? Is left them up? So I
was watching me r and b Dan market. Who year
I want? She said, I wouldn't be there a month,
and suddenly he was there. Of course, Jowers knew what
Betty had seen the day King was killed, and this
may have caused him some anxiety, and at times he
(22:03):
apparently felt the need to push some of it in
her direction, and he didn't always do it himself. Jowers
had a friend named Willie Aikins who would sometimes come
by Betty's house. On one particular visit, Aikins pulled a
gun and fired three bullets into the couch on which
she was sitting. He knocked on my back door, came
(22:23):
in my house ful of the three fifty seven magnis
and shot three times in my captain, I have sitting
right there, adn't jump adenfra adam me hey work A
sixty was a sleep. Sometimes the lessons would be in
the form of a story, like the one about Aikins
(22:44):
and Jowers murdering the wife of some doctor who gave
the money to do it. And when Agins told me
there was a doctor I had a wife and paid
load to get rid of it and him and lower
feel this one on State manually embar with her. She
owned a pink CALLI and I asked me, don't you
remember reading in the paper? And that stuck in my
(23:06):
head because it's so unusual pink can I. As the
years passed, the games to frighten Betty died away, but
you ours still kept contact. I never bobbed Lloyd. I
always stayed way from Lord. I knew he knew where
I was, and if he wanted me, I knew he would. Secondly,
(23:28):
wherever he said for me, I always when where you are.
It's not that I loved it, Lotte, It's not that
I was afraid of a little I guess I was
different fool you, but I failed whenever he said for me,
if I was always there, he would hurt me. And
that's why I did it it. But I do always
do it anymore. Over the years, Attorney Lewis Garrison and
(23:50):
Lloyd Jowers kept on with their business relationship, but people
would sometimes say strange things to Garrison about you Owers,
allusions to some secret that everyone else seemed to know about,
or sometimes they might just say it. They might write
out ask if Garrison knew that Jowers was in on
the murder of Dr King. What a strange thing to say,
(24:10):
unless there was some truth to it. Finally, Garrison summoned discourage.
So one day I said, Lord, I said, you know,
they've been a lot of discussion about the fact you
may have been involved in the Martin Luther King assassination.
And he said, well that a lot of people talking
about he said, and one thing share that Blanket Black
is not coming back. I said, no, we coming back.
(24:31):
But that's that's when we first started, the very first
time we've we've probably talked about it very much. Lewis
Garrison is a Southern gentleman and blankety blank is as
close as he will come to saying the words that
Jowers actually said, but they probably weren't nice words, and
Garrison understood right away that Jowers had not denied the rumors.
(24:52):
Garrison and Jowers talked further on subsequent occasions, and soon
Garrison was not the attorney defending his Liliant and Cab
related lawsuits. He was the attorney representing a man who
had admitted to him that he was involved in the
murder of Dr Martin Luther King. The appearance with Sam
(25:16):
Donaldson a National TV may have been an attempt to
force the d a's hand as far as granting immunity
to Jours, but there may have been something else in play.
Bill Pepper had worked with an English TV producer named
Jack Saltman on the HBO Mock Trial. When the trial
ended with a surprise not guilty verdict in raised favor.
(25:37):
Saltman apparently imagined a movie about the assassination that would
reveal what really happened without telling Pepper a thing about it.
He took on Pepper's former investigators Ken Herman and John Billings,
and they began to put the pieces together. I think
I got launched very early on after the HBO trial.
(25:58):
I think they saw off ffortunity to make some serious money.
Herman had been um an investigator on the case, as
was Billings, and they got sucked into this arrangement with
with Saltman, who was a producer from England, of course,
and they thought they could put together a a script
and launch a private project and make money on it.
(26:24):
But Chowers was the key player, so he was brought in.
But further to be a movie, they needed to know
who shot King, and Jowers, now seeing dollar signs, was
happy to say that it was a guy named Frank Holt,
a big black fellow that Jowers knew way back when,
but no one had seen him for years. So jowers
(26:45):
confession on ABC Prime Time may have been not only
a play to pry an immunity deal out of a
g Paroti, but also perhaps a play to get a
major studio interested in doing a movie. But to get
a movie studio involved, they needed to flesh out the story,
and they wanted Betty Space to help. She would say
(27:07):
that she listened in on jowers phone conversation where some
produce guy named Liberto told Showers about money that was
to arrive in a box of lettuce, and Jowers now
wanted Betty to tell her story about what she saw
at the back door, except she would say that she
saw a man hand ours the gun, a large black man.
(27:28):
He told me, I want you always be noticed him
and whenever I get on the phone, n and to listen,
and I want you to eat that. And here Frank
Liberto telling me from that produce from the end today
they would be an extra order. And when the produce
came in, I was supposed to have a nose enough
(27:51):
to open a box that I thought was a box
and maze, but it was a box bear with mode.
But it's not in her. That's true. No rose treat
and not end of that is tream. I don't know
anything about a phone call. I don't know anything about
no lettuce and no money, no box, and I never
heard of front Lberto before. That's what Lord wanted me
(28:12):
to say. He wanted me to tell the truth about
seeing him with the rifle. He just wanted me change
it just a little bit by saying I saw him
standing in the back door and a black man passing
him a right and that's not true. And he said,
(28:33):
if I didn't say it, I will lose my share
of three hundred thousand dollars. Trust Roy, it is to
a book. And I told him I can't lose you nothing.
I never hate it. So Lloyd Gawers was saying that
a black man named Frank Holt, whom he had hired,
had handed him the rifle that day while he was
at the back door of his restaurant. Perhaps Saltman and
(28:56):
Hermann believed this story, but when Bill Pepper found out
about the whole movie intrigue and that the fall guy
was to be this Frank Halt, he jumped on it. Well.
I thought it was important to find him and to
interview him, and I hired a private investigator in Florida
to locate him because I understood that's where he was.
(29:17):
Where he was, we found him, Pepper flew down to
Orlando and met with a penniless Frank Holt, who had
been living in a series of homeless shelters. Holt was
surprised to hear that Jowers was now accusing him of
murdering Martin Luther King. It was apparent to Pepper, after
asking three questions that Holt didn't no thing about it.
(29:39):
Why would Jowers name you? He asked, Halt, I don't know,
The man replied, maybe he thought I was dead, And
that made sense to Pepper because to him, Frank Holt
alive did not make a very convincing killer. So with
Betty Space ready to say that the story wasn't true,
and Halt turning up alive, the movie idea died a
(30:00):
quiet death, but it had done damage. Anytime someone looks
into the murders of the Kennedy's or King, the charge
is almost always levied that they are just doing it
for a quick buck. It's an easy way to dismiss
an honest effort to look at the evidence. But now
here was someone actually trying to make money by telling
(30:21):
a story about the murder of King. It became the
easy way to dismiss Bill Pepper and Jowers and the
substantial evidence that the assassination was run out of his grill.
They were all just trying to make a movie. As
for Betty Spaces, she would endure a great deal of harassment.
(30:42):
In the beginning, Jack Saltman and a few others showed
up at her door. Then they appeared at the restaurant
where she worked. They wanted her in on the story.
So did Willie Aikins, who was angry that she was
going to cost them all a lot of money if
she didn't follow their script. And ABC host Sam Donaldson
himself showed up in the company of Aikin's who that
(31:03):
day presumably left this three fifty seven magnum at home.
When Betty told Pepper that Donaldson had come to her house,
he was surprised. Did Donaldson come over there? And at
to hear him on a point? And he was dinging
when Aidan was beena on the winning doors and he
was damaged. If this lady don't want to talk, I
(31:24):
don't want to bother her. Those were nice sentiments spoken
by Donaldson, but it didn't keep ABC Prime Time from
turning Betty's life upside down When they did their special
on Lloyd Showers and his confession, because right in the
middle of things, they showed a blurry video of Betty
leaving work and getting into her car like she was
(31:44):
part of some drug deal, and while that was playing,
they said that Betty could confirm the story told by Jowers.
Now lots of people wanted to talk to Betty, journalists,
people posing as journalists, guys in suits flashing I D.
Betty didn't want to talk to any of them. Sometimes
she had and pretended she wasn't home. As for Jowers,
(32:05):
things weren't great for him either. With a movie deal
dying and the Attorney General not offering immunity, he felt
more exposed than ever, And now the King family had questions.
They wanted to speak to him, and when the possibility
of a meeting was proposed, Jowers said he was willing.
He apparently hoped that he might find some shelter in
a meeting with a King family, So one was arranged
(32:28):
in a room at a motel out on the highway.
At the meeting was Lloyd Jowers and his attorney Lewis Garrison,
Martin King's son Dexter, and Ambassador Andrew Young. They also
brought a tape recorder. When Martin Luther King was shot
(32:57):
on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, King's lute, ennant
and confidant Andrew Young, was standing below in the parking lot.
Young heard a popping noise and then suddenly realized that
King was down. After King's death, Young stayed on for
a time with the SCLC. Then he entered politics and
served two terms in Congress. In nineteen seventy seven, he
(33:19):
was made Ambassador to the United Nations by President Carter,
and following that he won two consecutive terms as mayor
of Atlanta. Three decades after King's death, Andrew Young would
return to Memphis and take the witness stand in the
civil trial. Under the questioning of Bill Pepper, attorney for
(33:40):
credit Scott King, Young explained that his energies after King's
murder were directed towards carrying forward with King's work, rather
than answering the questions that still lingered about his death.
But eventually that changed. Did you and recent years, and said, um,
(34:00):
the events of April four from the assassination on your friends,
and you prob gain again. I did investing. As a
result of UM, the families knew awareness and concern, and
where you asked to participating in a meeting with an
individual who who was a dependent came Mr Royal Johns.
(34:22):
Yes I was. I was told that that Mr Jarros
will getting older, he wasn't very well and it was
almost like he wanted to get right with dogs before
he died. But when we met with him, that was
still impression that I had that he was a man
who had a lot on his mind and a lot
(34:44):
on his conscience and who wanted to confess it and
be free of couldn't you in the time remaining summarized
for us what Mr Jarros told you? And next you
came as I beat well. He said that he was
a Ryan Jim's grill and that he was a retired
(35:06):
Members police officer and that a lot of police officers
hung out at his place. He said he hadn't lived
such a good life. He had a lot of drinking
and gambling problems, and that he was in debt to
somebody that he identified as the head of the mafia
(35:29):
who called him up, and that he was nervous about
him and afraid that he was calling the collective money
which he didn't have. The guy said, I'll forget about that.
I just need you to do me a favor. So
what was the favor? The mafia guy to whom Jowers
owed a large debt, Frank Liberto, who we've spoken about before,
(35:53):
wanted jowers grill for use as the staging ground for
the murder of Martin Luther King. It was the thick
place if King were staying ethel Lorraine Motel. But when
Jowers met with King's son Dexter, he wasn't quite ready
to let it all hang out, so he told a
more limited but rather unbelievable story to Dexter King and
(36:14):
Andy Young. In this telling, Jowers did not know Martin
Luther King was to be murdered. All Jowers knew was
that he was supposed to receive a large amount of
money hidden in a box supposedly containing vegetables, and that
he was supposed to hand this money over to a
Spanish looking guy named Raoul, who would bring Jowers a package.
Jowers claimed the man brought the package, which was a
(36:37):
long box that presumably contained a rifle, But Jowers told
Dexter King and Andy Young that he never looked in
the box. But he did give this Raoul guy the money.
Then crazy day that this was. Jowers said he got
a phone call telling him to be at the back
door of his grill at six o'clock someone would give
him something. He didn't know what, and asad Or Young
(37:00):
tells what happened next. According to Jowers, but he said
when he went to the back door, just as he
got to the door, shot rang out and somebody came
out of the bushes and handed him a Smogan rifle.
And he broke it down and wrapped it in a
table ball and put it back in the store room.
(37:24):
He said. The guy who handed him the rifle was
the Vello who had been on his police force with him.
That was a friend of his who he used to
go hunting with. It was quite a good box. Bill
Pepper asked the court for permission to play the recording
of the meeting between Ambassador Young, Dexter King, and Lloyd Jowers.
(37:46):
The judge agreed, and the jury then heard the entire
tape of that meeting, selections from which we will play
for you. Here should be noted that this was the
second such meeting. The first included Jowers, Garrison King, and
Bill Pepper, so there is a more relaxed informality here
than one might expect for a meeting where one man
(38:06):
confesses to killing the other man's father. And while the
evidence strongly suggests that the basic underlying story here is true, many,
if not most, of the pieces of this story as
told by Jowers, are not true, and we will try
to point these out as they occur. As we heard
Attorney Garrison say before, Jowers did not speak well of
(38:27):
King and private company, But now in meeting with Dexter King,
Jowers wanted not only forgiveness from the King family, but
their support in his bid for immunity from prosecution. In
return for his coming forward. The King family, on their side,
was grateful to finally here after thirty years some version
of the truth from someone inside the conspiracy. Because of this,
(38:50):
they were not inclined to challenge Jowers or make things
difficult for him when he made absurd claims such as
he did not know it was Martin Luther King who
was to be murdered. It's an odd trade off. Also,
after the civil trial, the original tape of this meeting
appears to have been lost, so what we have now
(39:10):
is what was made when the original tape was played
and re recorded in open court with all its distortion
and background noise. So instead of playing the courtroom recording,
we're going to recreate the exchange between Dexter and Showers
(39:30):
heard on that tape with voice actors. We appreciate your
willingness to open up and come forward. As you know,
we continue to support immunity for you, but the district
attorney doesn't seem to want your story to come out,
so it appears that they are shutting everything down. Yeah,
(39:52):
I think that would be a major tragedy. Well, we
would be definitely. Dexter then brings the conversation back to
where it had been the last time they met. When
we had last met, you had pretty much taken us
I think, up to a point where you had received
the rifle from Lieutenant Clark. I couldn't swear it was
Clark that I took it from, but I believe it was.
(40:15):
Now say it happened just about that quick. I was
in the back door at six o'clock like I was
supposed to be. How many seconds did it take him
to hand me the rifle and got going? That was
just a split second. Here again, Jowers being at the
back doors six for a mysterious handoff is a ludicrous
fabrication to support the notion that he really didn't know
(40:36):
what was going down, and Jowers tries to pretend that
the handoff was so quick that he really couldn't say
for sure that it was his friend Earl Clark, dead
for some years now, who had handed him the gun.
It was just like that, he said, snapping his fingers.
But a little while later Andy Young asked again, but
are you pretty sure that it was Clark who handed
(40:57):
you the rifle? This time Jowers is more certain. I'm
sure it was Clark, he says, of course. Jowers saying
so doesn't mean that Lieutenant Earl Clark, an m b D.
Sharpshooter was out in the bushes behind Jim's grill, just
as they say so didn't mean that Frank Holt was
out there. But there is other testimony that we will
(41:18):
hear later that says that Earl Clark was out in
the yard, and the muddy knees on jowers pants says
that he was also out there, along with evidence of
a third man. But Jowers says that he got a
smoking rifle handed to him moments after doctor King was
shot Dexter King then asked you Owers if he knows
of any evidence determining what rifle killed his father. To
(41:42):
my knowledge, I don't know of anyone that has scientific
evidence of which rifle did actually kill him. I definitely
don't believe it was one of the police found. I'll
never believe that in a million years. So is it
your feeling that James Earl Ray did not know? He
didn't no more kill him and you killed your own dad? No? No, no,
(42:03):
I'd never believe that in a million Even if he
told me, I wouldn't believe it. You could be forgiven
for smiling as you listen to how certain Jowers is
that neither Ray nor Ray's rifle kill King? If Jowers
were out in the bushes when the fatal shot was fired,
as it appears he was, of course he's certain. How
(42:24):
could he not be? Dexter then has another question, So
why was he set up his own fault? They got
him out of jail, they furnished him money, they furnished
him with passports. Now they come up at that tale
about him setting up a gun deal, But that wasn't true.
They may have told him that, you know, So is
(42:44):
it possible that he was doing things that appeared to
be stalking, but maybe he didn't realize it. They probably
didn't even realize it. Yeah, I'm sure that's the way
it went down. He was doing what he was told
to do. So Jowers is certain that Ray was set up,
and he seems to know more than just a little
bit about it. He knows about the phony gun deal
(43:06):
were according to Ray, he was asked to buy a
rifle to present to a prospective customer. And Jowers also
says that they got Ray out of jail, strongly suggesting
that Ray was sprung so he would be available for
future service, perhaps Ay as a full guy. And how
Ray escaped from prison has always been a mystery because
(43:27):
he needed help and probably high level permission on the inside,
and once out, Ray had the use and protection of
several false identities. Jowers refers to them as passports identities
that he could never have come up with by himself.
And so now here's Jowers, who, on the one hand
is saying that he didn't know King was to be killed,
(43:47):
but on the other seems to know a lot of
inside details about how Ray was moved about and brought
to Memphis. So what to make of all this? With
Lloyd Jowers and Betty Spades. Over the years, Jowers has
changed his story many times, like the absurd claim that
he didn't know who was to be murdered or who
supposedly handed him the gun at the back door to
(44:08):
the grill, And of course, at one point he was
clearly chasing the prospect of making money from his story.
So after this many lies, is there any reason to
believe that some part of jowers story is true? The U.
S Department of Justice doesn't think so. In the year
two thousand report, they carefully list out all of jowers
prevarications and conclude that every facet of his story is false.
(44:33):
The totality of the evidence, the report concludes, suggests that
Jowers fabricated his allegations, hoping to promote a sensational account
of a conspiracy to murder Dr Martin Luther King while
acknowledging the many lies told. My own view is that
it's a stretch to imagine someone making up an entirely
untrue story about being part of a horrific murder in
(44:56):
the hope of making some money out of it. Seems
like a out of trouble to invite into your life
for an unlikely reward. And of course, the short lived
chase for the movie deal arrived with producer Jack Saltman
after the HBO mock trial. But Betty's Space had already
told Bill Pepper about Jowers and the rifle before Jowers
(45:16):
or Space had ever met Jack Saltman. An attorney, Louis Garrison,
spent some long hours preparing a proposed immunity deal for
Jowers for a crime that he had confessed to Garrison
again before he met Jack Saltman. Until his recent death,
Lewis Garrison maintained a respected law practice in Memphis. He
(45:37):
was horrified by the murder of King, and he would
not have abused the legal system with a phony immunity
proposal so that as client might make some money on
a movie deal. He wasn't that kind of man. The
Department of Justice also concluded that Betty Space was lying,
but the motive here is hard to find. They assert
(45:59):
that Space's name does not appear on the list of
people in Jim's grill made right after the shooting, but
her account of her spat with jowers wife, the drunk
Charlie Stevens, being escorted out of the place by her
sister Bobby and Jowers short errands before the murder, ring
true to me, and I feel the same about her
account of Jowers coming through the back door with hair
(46:20):
standing on end and the knees of his pants muddy.
The d O j would also refer to a statement
that the AGS investigators got in January with Betty's space's
signature on it, saying that she had not seen Jowers
with a rifle. But a little more than a month
after that, Betty signed a statement in the presence of
Bill Pepper where she once again affirmed in detail her
(46:42):
original account of seeing Jowers coming through the back door
with the gun, saying, in part as read by a
voice actor, I will not retract the truthful accounts of
the events which I witnessed around six pm on April
fourt which confirms Mr jowers involvement based on everything I know,
(47:02):
James Earl Ray was not the person who shot Dr. King.
Other persons have tried to get me to change my story,
saying that if I did so, I would benefit financially.
I refused to do so and continue to refuse. I
was in any attempts by the attorney general or his
investigators to imply that I am telling lives for money.
(47:24):
So the Attorney General of the State of Tennessee has
a statement signed by Betty Space saying one thing, and
Bill Pepper has one saying something entirely different. Both things
can't be true. How to make sense out of this?
In my investigation of the murder of Robert Kennedy, I
came across recordings that have been hidden for twenty years,
(47:44):
recordings of dozens of police interviews of witnesses who had
inconvenient accounts of what they saw the knight of Kennedy's murder,
accounts that didn't fit with the official version of the crime.
When the investigators made it clear that they wanted a
change of ory, they often got it. Because it is
very intimidating to be visited by men in suits who
(48:06):
suggest that if you don't change your story, they will
have to return with more questions to discover what reason
you might have to obstruct a murder investigation by putting
forward an untrue story, which would be a very serious crime.
They might need to talk to your employer. Have you
ever been in trouble with the law, How are you
doing drugs. Perhaps you told the story to cover up
(48:27):
an affair. For any normal person under this kind of pressure,
where the men asking the questions have no interest in
what you saw, but only in what they want you
to say you saw, the easiest thing to do is
sign what they want you to sign and have them leave.
And this is Bill Pepper's understanding as to what happened
(48:48):
with Betty Spaces. Well. Betty Spates obviously was a very
important witness to the events that took place at the
time of the assassination, and so they had to try
to discredit her in every way that they could and
to try to get her to collaborate with a false story.
(49:11):
So they went to visit her, and they intimidated her.
They used some pressures they had on one of her children,
one of her sons. They were determined to get her
to provide a different story. But that was not the truth,
and Betty, of course told me the truth to actually tearfully.
(49:33):
Some time later. He wanted to tell the truth, he
wanted it out there, and she held nothing back. She
taught to her relationship with Jowers and what happened on
that afternoon exactly the way that she recalled it. I
was very, very proud of her. In the process of
(49:55):
trying to discredit Spats as a witness, the Department of
Justice port reveals two other instances where Betty Spates made
allegations about the murder of Dr King, and this might
be the most telling evidence of all, because this was
back in early nineteen sixty nine, less than a year
after King was killed. The first instance is short on details,
(50:18):
but according to the report, Betty is supposed to have
told someone that her boss, presumably Jours, was in on
the murder. This person told the police, and Space was questioned.
She denied having said any such thing. In the second,
Space was arranging bail for her brother. When she remarked
the two bailed bondsmen that she knew who shot Dr
(50:39):
King and that Ray was innocent. The bondsman notified the
AG's office and two investigators were sent to question Spates again.
She denied the allegation and said she didn't know a
thing about the assassination. In reviewing alleged crimes that happened
many years before, like a sexual saul, what a victim
(51:01):
or witness said at the time to a third party
is regarded as strong evidence, but to the Department of Justice.
The fact that Spates twice denied her reported accusations when
confronted by law enforcement proved to them that her murder
stories were untrue. Of course, one might well see it
the other way. One might perceive a woman who saw
(51:22):
something so disturbing that she lets it out in an
unguarded moment, but when the lawman show up, she becomes frightened,
so she denies she ever said it. And if Jowers
came through that door with a smoking rifle, as Space
said he did, and as he said he did, and
as lawyer said he did, then you can put away
most of what you've been told about the murder of Dr. King.
(51:43):
And remember, Betty Space was never part of the movie scheme.
She didn't want to be on TV, and she never
at any time asked for a single thing for her story.
I want to play again what she said about what
Jowers and the movie bunch had wanted her to say.
They want me to tell the truth about seeing him
with the rifle. He just wanted to change it just
(52:05):
a little bit by saying I saw him standing in
the back door and a black man passing him a
right and that's not true, and he said if I
didn't say it, I will lose my share of three
hundred thousand dollars plus royalties to do it. And I
(52:28):
told him, I can't love me nothing. I never hate it.
I believe that Betty Spits saw what she said she saw.
I don't believe the men in suits. I've seen what
they do next time on the Emilk tapes. Memphis is
(52:48):
an interesting reputation of being the first degree murder capital
of America, and in that context we're not talking about
street crime, but organized hitch. I heard some noise, and
I was sitting in my kitchen, and I'm be getting
aware of some shadows out back, in some out front.
(53:09):
And to make a long story short, two people tried
to break in the front, three in the back at
the same time. More scientific tests may be conducted on
James Earl Ray's rifle to see if it was used
to kill Martin Luther King. Tests described Friday were inconclusive,
though a build up of material and the rifle barrel
could be to blame. Did you attempt to determine from
(53:33):
outside the skin the structure of that bullet under the skin? Yes?
Or I did, and you could take your finger and
pinch and feel and roll that bullet under the skin.
You're saying, what you all saw taking out of Dr
King looked like that. We felt like we found a
piece of gold when we found a bullet. Thanks for
(53:58):
listening to the MLK Tapes for auction of iHeart Radio
and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not specifically endorsed by
the King Family or the King of State. The Email
K Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Claper. 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 behalf
(54:20):
of Tenderfoot TV with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stepman.
Original music by Makeup and 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
(54:40):
Station sixteen. If you have questions, you can visit our website,
The Email K Tapes dot com. We posted photos and
videos related to the podcast on our social media accounts.
You can check them out at the email k tapes.
For more podcasts from I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV,
please visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,
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