Killing Ray [9]

Bill Pepper gets a phone call from attorney Rusty Larson who says that his client, Jim Green, was involved in the murder of King. Then Green calls and says his assignment was to kill Ray.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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 or
individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
discretion is advised. Mr Larson, Yes, Sir William Pepper, I'm

(00:26):
calling you from good morning to you. Good morning. How
are you? You're about twenty minutes We're going to Corrida again?
Sorry I am, yes, sir. I got a couple of
hearings over there this morning. Uh. I have a client
who has imparted some information to me and he assures
me that he can back up everything. He has told

(00:49):
me that quite frankly, could prove that James are already
did not shoot Dr King, and I think could probably
prove who actually did it. Yeah. I called the Union Hall.
I said it's a matter of life and death. I said,

(01:09):
I think these people are planning to kill Dr King.
The authorities were parade. Oh, we found a gun that
James ol Ray bought in Birmingham that killed Dr King.
Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. James
Lvey was upon for the official story from My Heart

(01:30):
Radio intended for TV. The plan was to get King
to the city because they wanted it handled in memphisfore
Dead and in cat Hamon. And I've lived with it
so long, my sion, and 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

(01:52):
this is d MLK Tapes. I'm sitting with Bill Pepper
in his cluttered study, listening to a phone conversation that
Bill had recorded in I found the unlabeled cassette in
a box with others that Bill had stashed at the

(02:13):
King Center in Atlanta, a hundred tapes, ninety minutes each.
I was doing triage. I was about to set this
tape aside because it was just ordinary phone calls. But
then some lawyer comes on and tells Bill that he
is a client who, thirty years after the fact, can
prove that James Earl Ray did not shoot Martin Luther King,

(02:34):
the very thing that Pepper had been trying to prove
for twenty years. That, of course, it's very exciting. Uh,
it's not in the best of hell. And he had
quite frankly believed that the King family deserves to know
what actually happened. Right. Ah, he has known that great
for many years. Apparently they at one time we're imprisoned

(02:56):
together in Southeast Missouri when they were both young. Uh.
And I'll be quite honest with you, and you could
care less about James all right. You know he thanks
the Kings deserved to know what happened, and that's why
he has come forward. If you're Bill Pepper, you get
phone calls like this every once in a while. People

(03:18):
who know things reach out often as they approached the
end of their lives. I was fascinated by what I
heard on this tape, and Bill had agreed to sit
and listen to it with me. So that's what we're
doing in a study. And at times you can hear
the Harlem Street noise from below. So Bill, you're living
in England and you get a call from this guy,

(03:40):
attorney Larson, and you call him back and he spins
you this tale. Um, what do you think about that?
What was your initial reaction? Well, my initial reaction was
of interest. I had an open mind with respect to
witnesses potential with as is coming forward, and here was

(04:02):
a guy who was represented and represented himself as to
be a lawyer. Seemed to be a lawyer. So I
was interested in, uh opening that door and having a conversation.
Why would Bill Pepper say that this man on the
phone represented himself to be a lawyer. It's an odd
way to put it. The answer is because over the

(04:23):
years Pepper has been approached by a few people who
are not who they said they were, or otherwise offered
false information. Bill did agree that this Mr. Larson seemed
on the up and up, but there was still the
matter of the client. Was he for real? Mr? Larson
said he was. He worked for the federal government for

(04:43):
many years. He did considerable undercover work, a lot of
it through my understanding the U. S. Attorney's office in
County Ryan. And have you known this client, Mr Larson
for quite a period of time. I have known him
for probably seven or eight years. He has several business

(05:06):
operations in Tennessee and I have done work for them.
And quite honestly, it was stunned when he called and
said I need a visit with you. I had no
idea that he had the involvement that he did. I
see and have you found it to be a reliable person.
If he were to tell me that it was going

(05:26):
to snow on the fourth day, I would probably laugh
that I'd get a cop just in case. I'm Lustralian,
for instance. Now, because he said that he has ever
met me at any time, Telser, he did testify several
years ago an executive session of the Subcommittee on as

(05:48):
the Congressional Committee. Yes, yesterday he testified in executive session.
Apparently he and Mr Stokes did not hit it off immediately.
And I'm sure that will come as no great shot you.
Attorney Larson has just dropped a bomb. He said his
client had been called to testify before the House Up
Committee on Assassinations a full twenty years earlier. Not just

(06:13):
anybody gets called before the h s c A. An
executive session was reserved for people who had things to
say that would be kept secret for fifty years. So
who was this guy? Bill Pepper didn't know at this point.
He didn't know the guy's name. Back to the phone call.
He's a he's a white with the Southerner, Yes, sir,

(06:35):
he is from southeast Missouri. Now live isn't another state
that I am in contact? With him. How do you
suggest we've received as Larson. I mean, I certainly would
like in your presence to um to meet with your client.
Does he have any any concern about his own situation
in terms of prosecution or anything of that sort, But

(06:58):
not not a whole bun, because basically his knowledge came
after the fact. I mean, he is not extraordinarily concerned
about it, although he is well aware that it's possible
because of all the other things that had transpired in
this case. Uh, what he had suggested to me, and

(07:22):
I'll throw this out in you, he had suggested, perhaps
if there were some injuries in talking with him, everyone
meeting in Atlanta, perhaps at the Key Museum, and he
could then basically explained to the sign is what Dexter gets. Okay,
that's that's a that's the good starting point suggestion. I

(07:42):
think the center is probably too my profile, and I
think but I think the idea of having Dexter there
is a very good one. I'd very much like to
have you president, if that's if that's if you don't
object to it, and if that's uh, you know, I
think I think my client would prefer that also, is
it is we we meet internally outside of Tennessee. I mean,
would would Nashville be a possibility for UM? I think

(08:06):
Nashville would be a possibility. Yeah. Would he mind on
recording this session? I don't believe. So I'll clarify that
with him that I certainly would expect you to do that.
Quite frankly, we would like to do that. We'll give
you a company his information as arson such that it
could be um it could be produced in court if

(08:28):
he were willing to do that, or is it a
portion of it would be admissible? There would be some
that I think would be perhaps hearsay, you know. But
the circumstances I found to be somewhat chilling. Ye, And
what what troubled me, especially as I grew up down

(08:49):
in Memphis, right and I was in high school where
the murder occurred. Right now, I remember the cast of
characters and all of a sudden names were coming back, right.
So I based on that, I think that there's there's
something there. Listen. I do thank you very much, UM,
and please tell your client I'm I'm very grateful to

(09:12):
him at his late point in his life. We're coming
forward because he wish that his name not be known
to me or Dexter prior to any meeting that we uh, yes,
or he would prefer not to have that done just yet.
That's one that's fairly fine. And how your telephone lines secure? Yes, sir,

(09:34):
far as I know I have, well, I have your number.
You don't even need to lose that. You could just
say it's Rusty calling, okay, And but I will come
back to you fairly quickly, and I look forward to
meeting you and your client, and I'm sure Dexter will
as well. All right, sir, I thank you very much,
my pleasure, very forward to meeting you, and thank you, yes, sir.

(09:58):
When we were listening to this tape, neither Bill Pepper
nor I knew if the lawyer or his client were
still alive. And when Bill hung up the phone on
the original call, he didn't even know the name of
the guy, the one with this new information. But we
know it now. His name was Green, Jim Green. According
to his story, Green had led a life of crime

(10:21):
when he was young and spent time in prison more
than once. Then he served some years with law enforcement,
after which he opened a couple of topless bars. But
he was just twenty one when He says he was
picked or more or less told to kill James L. Ray.
According to Green, whose voice we will hear right now,
he didn't know that doctor King was to be murdered

(10:44):
the people and took the money. That may have been
difficult to hear, as the recording of this phone conversation
between Jim Green and Bill Pepper is of poor quality.
Jim Green said, I've been told that he, referring to
James Earl Ray, double cross some people and took their money.
Now here's the rest of that statement from the Coalst

(11:06):
transcript as read by a voice actor. They knew that
Ray was going to perform a robbery in Memphis. We
were going to kill him after the robbery. We don't
even know King is in town as far as we're concerned.
We're told that when he turns the corner that if
the policeman don't get him, I get him. I was
the backup shooter and the cop was late, and then

(11:28):
Ray turned and walked the other way where I couldn't
get him. Jim Green died about ten years ago, but
as you just heard, we have a tape of him
talking to Bill Pepper, and we will play that tape
in a bit. But Green's lawyer, Rusty Larson, the man
you heard on the phone with Bill, is very much
alive and still practicing law in Jackson, Tennessee. We contacted

(11:51):
Larson and asked if he would tell us what he
knew of Jim Green and the plan to murder Ray.
We'll hear from Larson after the break. Attorney Larson, Yes, sir,

(12:20):
Bill Claibor here, Yes, sir. How are you Bill? Good? Good?
How you doing? I'm doing good? Did did our engineer arrive?
He has gotten here and he has more equipment than
you say, Grace over. I'm at home in upstate New York.
An attorney Russell Larson, better known as Rusty Larson, is

(12:40):
sitting in his law office in Jackson, Tennessee, where he
has practiced law for forty years. Larson grew up in
South Memphis in an area called fittingly white Haven, and
he was a junior in high school when King was shot.
I asked him if he was aware of the desperate,
deepening divide in his city. Of course, I was aware
of the sanitation strike because that had gone on for

(13:04):
quite a while. My dad, being in the restaurant business,
was adversely affected by that. But you know, it was
just business as usual basically in my world. But business
as usual was about to change in Memphis when Dr
King was shot. The National Guard troops came in and

(13:26):
downtown Memphis got shut down, and he got a little
scary at that point, the first time I had ever
been around or have much exposure to armed military people
with real life guns. Kind of a coming of age time.
Larson went to college and got his law degree at

(13:47):
Memphis State. Upon graduation, he landed a job with an
appellate judge in Jackson, just an hour and a half
of the road from Memphis. A few years later, he
went out on his own as a criminal defense attorney,
which is the work he has done it for since.
I asked Larson how this led to Jim Green. Mr
Green opened a adult entertainment establishment here called the Doll House,

(14:15):
and needless to say, when the topless bar came to
town with scantily clad women dancing, it upset a lot
of folks and the police department tried to shut them down.
I was hired by Jim Green two represent them, and

(14:38):
we danced off to Federal Court and all of a
sudden we had a federal judge who understood that dancing
was really speech and it was protected by the Constitution.
And so that's how I got involved with Jim and
some of his operations. He often would come to town
and would dropped in the office and we would talk

(15:02):
for hours of a time, because Jim had plenty of
stories to tell, what kind of stories, scary ones about
his life of crime and then his life in law enforcement,
things that Green had seen or done, and enough that
Green himself began to write them down for a book
he hoped to publish. The unfinished manuscript was titled Blood

(15:22):
and Dishonor, and it was his account of his life
on both sides of the law and his role in
the murder of Martin Luther King. The book had been
kept in a safe by Attorney Larson, who was kind
enough to copy its pages and send them to me
with an associate reading for us. The book begins this way.
I was raised in Carruthersville, Missouri, on the west bank

(15:44):
of the Mississippi. The town had bars, whorehouses, drugs, gambling,
and about one killing a week. If you wanted anything,
all you had to do was ask. But even in
a town like that. People live normal lives. I played
baseball and football. You might ask, how could I be
that normal and end up doing all the things I did.
It was easy look at what was around me. As

(16:08):
he tells it, Jim Green was fourteen the first time
he was put in jail. He had driven someone's truck
from Tennessee to Florida to see a girl. When the
cops pulled him over, they found a kid without a license.
While they were still in high school, Jim and his
friend Butch started running moonshine from Missouri into Tennessee and Alabama.
They made good money. They also got busted a bunch

(16:30):
of times. According to Attorney Larson, Jim was very young
when when all this was taking place. I know that
his career started when he was was pretty young, maybe
even as a juvenile, and then he graduated to adult facilities.
He had spent some time behind bars, and he knew

(16:52):
the routines, and his personality was such that he had
a great way of asking questions and getting people to
talk to him. Inside the walls, you had punks, snitches,
the ones who ran the drugs, the money, and finally

(17:13):
the guards that thought they were cons This is where
my education really began, or should I say where I
found out what the world was really made of. Prison
is a world with rules of its own. You either
abide by the con rules or die. That's how simple
it is. One of the people Green met in prison
was a fellow named James Earle Ray. Green remembers him

(17:36):
as a quiet guy who worked in the kitchen. That
was about it. They weren't friends or anything, but Green
thinks that is Knowing Ray, however, casually, was a reason
he was picked for the job of killing him, because
Green knew what Ray looked like. I asked Lawson how
we found out about Green's involvement in the killing of King.
I got the impression that Jim just needed to talk

(17:57):
to somebody who didn't know a lot of the people
that Jim knew. You know, sometimes you just need to
talk to somebody and and if it's somebody that has
a confidentiality situation, that your semi safe and talking and
getting things off your chest. And I got the impression

(18:20):
that there were a lot of ghosts that Jim was
dealing with. When you reached out to Larson, Green was
out of place in his life where he no longer
wanted to carry his and everybody else's secrets about the
murder of Dr. King, and both he and Attorney Larson
thought that Bill Pepper was the person to talk to,
so they each talked to Pepper on the phone and

(18:41):
then made plans to meet with him and Dexter King
in Memphis. Can you remember anything of what was said
when Jim met Dexter King. Nothing as far as great substance.
Mainly it was Dexter King trying to ascertain who was involved,

(19:04):
what was it all about. Although Larson was representing Green
and had grown up in Memphis, he really wasn't up
on the complexities of the murder of Martin Luther King.
So Larson was hearing a lot of stuff he hadn't
heard before. It really kind of opened my eyes that
there was more of a conspiracy than I thought there was.

(19:26):
I think my idea probably developed fairly late in the game.
The more I was involved in criminal defense work and
got to know some of the cast of characters in
Memphis and the Memphis Police Department, I got the feeling
that there were some what we call them suits, the

(19:50):
investigators who were involved in either the timing, the surveillance,
maybe the planning. I had prepped for my interview with
Rusty Larson by reading Jim Green's manuscript Blood and Dishonor,
And since Green was no longer alive, I thought Larson

(20:12):
and I might enter his story by way of the
book and talk about the intrigue or the characters like
Buster or j Bird, for whom crime was simply a
way of life. I had some paragraphs that I intended
to read to Larsen as springboards into Jim Green's story.
There was one character in particular who had a powerful
position in the Missouri crime mosaic. Yet to Jim Green,

(20:34):
he seemed different from the others. His name was Paul,
and one evening, Jim and Paul were alone together at
the back of the pool hall. This is how Green
describes the situation in his book. Paul reached inside his
jacket and pulled out what looked like a wallet. He
flipped it open, and all I could see were the
letters FBI. Paul smiled at me and said, don't worry.

(20:58):
I'm your friend, not your enemy. He said. Everybody had
to make a little money, even cops. I knew we
had worked with the local cops before, but I had
never known of the FEDS being crooked. When I left,
I drove straight back to Carruthersville. I told j Bird
what had happened, and he started laughing and said, I
bet you shape your pants. I asked him what he

(21:19):
would do if he saw that kind of badge. Jay
Bird said not to worry, because he needed us and
we needed him, and that I was never to say
anything about his badge where we would all end up
being dead. I was eager to talk to Attorney Larson
about this guy Paul and Paul's boss, who he called Rochi.
I thought the book would be our springboard, but I

(21:40):
would be disappointed because although Larson had read the manuscript,
it had been over twenty years ago and little of
it was still in his head. But there remains something
important that I wanted from Larson, because if Jim Green's
story is true, it points straight back to those who
planned the murder of Dr. King. And in our phone conversation,

(22:00):
I had found Rusty Larson to be smart, funny, and perceptive,
and I wanted to apply those qualities to the question
at hand. What did he think of Jim Green? Was
Green the sort of man who would have gone to
enormous trouble to invent an elaborate, self incriminating story. Why
would he want to for attention? Larson didn't think so.

(22:23):
He was not the type that needed the attention. He
made a good bit of money in his various topless
operations and kind of enjoyed that type of life. So
I never had the impression that he would have to

(22:43):
make up some story just too elevate himself and appear
to be something that he wasn't. If anything, Jim just
really didn't give a flip. He was who he was
and if you like him, great, and if you don't
like him, go screw yourself. Yeah, it was real simple

(23:05):
with him. How simple. We'll let Jim Green tell you himself.

(23:27):
I would run we come. This is Jim Green talking
on the phone in late to Bill Pepper in London. Again,
because of the tape's quality, this statement will be read
by a voice actor. I was running moonshine and stolen
cars with the mob out of St. Louis. I was
working for Buster Workman Jim Michaels and then boys out

(23:49):
of Gaslight. We ran money from the vending machine companies
back and forth. Because my cousin was an owner of
one of the companies, and I got tied in through them,
and that's how I met the agent. I was told
to go to this place in St. Louis with Butch
and meet this guy. He told me we work hand
in hand. They help us, we help them. Back in

(24:10):
the sixties, that was the way of life. The agent
Jim Green speaks about is a guy named Paul, who
had FBI identification. But we're closely with organized crime in
the southern US. They help us, we help them, is
what he was told. From this point forward, we're going
to forego the voice actor and play the original tape.

(24:32):
We highly recommend wearing headphones. While some of it may
be difficult to hear, we feel it's important that you
hear Jim Green make the statements himself. According to Green,
Paul was the one who recruited him for the upcoming
job in Memphis. Our crowd they robbery as members. We

(25:02):
were looking. He had to the robbery. This is what
we're doing. That's what you were trying. And I'm told
that the mender of polices go back and up. We
only no key and then right as far as we're concerned, right,
we're told that when Ray turned this corner, then it's
the police, and don't get him when he turns upoint

(25:25):
when he draw his driving. So when he's walking, I
was a bag of pater in case and the cop
was k and then Ray turned and walked the other
way where I couldn't get what I would have done
it or night, I don't know. I say the end.
As a kid, I would have been to see. There's
one other thing my lower my son told me. I

(25:47):
was like, right, he didn't he didn't mention that that.
I don't know when Ray will remember me, because I
was a very young kid in his army. I was
turned his army and I wasn't order taken and Ray
had a free to run in the bread and you
know it adventicated stuff. And then when they had burned
me back through them, I made him again. It made me.

(26:10):
We're making before okay now when they and that's one thing,
and I think God would pick ncud when they held
me in figure and then you remember him. I didn't
remember me. And then when they told me he ran
with the club board. Then I've been all in because
that love and found these very cosys from ringing beginning.

(26:33):
Attorney Rusty Larson had said in his call to Pepper
that Green had testified before the House Select Committee. So
Pepper asked Green about that. I can divide under exective
in that, but my catrimonial nobody would allowed that room
when I did everybody, but I only came home, you know,

(26:59):
I don't they can play to him. And I was
already gray, and I knew the Ray didn't do the
killing because I was looking at him with the D
and uh so my dad's funny was never known and
never will be known until two thousand and twenty nine. Okay, so,
but did still your name appear anywhere in the well?
I was repeating, You're spinning till your name appear anywhere

(27:23):
in any of the volumes the report. I don't know
they'd let me to warri it, you know, because they
had a man and a woman inventityator come to me
and men. Right. I was working on an undercover time
at the time, right, and uh, they asked me would
not come out to night. Ain't no way I'll do.
I don't be fay no way, I thought the Brontu right,

(27:46):
and uh, he said, well, we've got a way to
put me in. What they called me because they could
have said head that way and only uh, the propagator
and the committee will be the only people. They again,
and and then I drink. Then I got a visit
from the federal ward before I win, and they told

(28:09):
me that I think you can talk about They didn't
they want round God. I think it was more warning
than anything. The way we worked. Well, I've been involved
several other cases that I didn't think was right when
you worked for the government. You're John, you do you
forget about? It? Was Walter Fauntroy President at your testimony.

(28:32):
The only one I remember Walter is who will yes,
well Stokes is we think Stokes was pretty much involved.
He would invoud a, y don't me? And I looked
at anotherment though not only had to me, you know.

(28:53):
Pepper then questioned Green about the day the king was killed.
Where the one that meant when the eight and out
on Lamar that night before and took the dry runs
down and we're related with me. We left them up
down to enter send up together about three o'clock. Were
you and Jim's grilled all that day? Me and Budge

(29:13):
was at one time? Yeah, did you did you? We
introduced to Lloyd Jowers at any point and back then
the first time, I hadn't been down or in that area. No,
I didn't know. I didn't know he would be in
the group. I was there anyway. But your specific role
in this whole operation was pe gave little Rudel, Right,

(29:37):
that's what your role was, trying my own him from
three thirty three fifteen, you know, you know, holding up
where I was there, I could see everything. I couldn't
see all right, but I could see in the bar,
I could see you drink down the drink. Okay, you
can remember when you can describe where you were in

(29:58):
your location. Oh yeah. Green said he would do that
when they met. But we'll do it here by reading
from Blood and Dishonor Green's unpublished account of his life
and his role in the murder of Martin Luther King.
We arrived in Memphis at two pm on the third
of April and got a room. Then we went out

(30:20):
and visited a massage parlor. South Haven was full of parlors,
and we knew a few of the owners, most of
them women. Butch and I got up the next morning
and left the motel around noon. Then we went downtown
and stopped in a bar by the old King Cotton
Hotel while we sat there, but punched me and said,
look at this. There was James Earl Ray coming in

(30:40):
the door. I asked what if we should do him now?
And he said no. We were told he couldn't die
until after six pm. And James Earl Ray's account of
his coming into Memphis, given to Attorney Louis Garrison, he
speaks of entering a bar a few blocks south of
Jim's Grill, ordering a beer and asking for directions. But

(31:02):
he noticed this two guys who keep looking at him.
This is what he said. I got a south Main
strate and I went in the bar on the right side,
and I think about this an rest and he said
those rooms she was standing mark, and she said that
it was narrow street and left the block. Or so well.
I was in indes in are. I thought maybe it

(31:25):
were one apparently watched mate. Now, returning to Green's written
account of that afternoon, at about three, Boots dropped me
off and I climbed the ladder to the roof and
posted myself with a clear view of four to two Mate.
I had been told to climb the Loomis building, but
I changed that to a building about four doors down

(31:47):
because the loomis was right in front of the fire
station and I thought it was too wide open. At
about three thirty, Ray came out and walked up made
in half a block. I lost sight of him. This
would carst on would Ray's verified trip to the sporting
goods store to buy as he was told to do,
a pair of binoculars. From his perch on the roof,

(32:07):
Green saw Ray come and go a couple of times
as six o'clock approached. Then at five, I saw Ray
emerge from the rooming house and get into the Mustang.
Ray started his car and pulled away, and I waited
for him to turn his car south, but he didn't.
I thought he would circle the block and park and walk.
This is what I was told, so I waited. Then

(32:29):
some minutes later I hear a sound like a backfire.
Then I heard hollering and sirens starting to go off.
As this was going on, I saw a butch come
from the side of the building, and then Paul emerged
from the rooming house and I saw Paul lay down
what looked like a coat on the sidewalk. Then they
got into the car, made a U turn and came
toward me. I hurried down, and as soon as I

(32:50):
reached the car, pushed asked if I got Ray. I
said no. His eyes lit up and he said, damn,
we're in trouble. As Green explains in his book, the
trouble they were in had to do with the fact
that Ray was not intending to rob anybody, as they
were told, but he was there to take the blame

(33:11):
for the murder of King, and that's why he needed
to be dead. The whole idea they had they had
to rent room and he would prof sent it me
or that police officer head guilty, No, wefriend me you
got again and Black that the old man the police

(33:35):
and they Bill Pepper ended his conversation with Jim Green
by asking him why he had decided to come forward.
Maybe I want to clear my card. I didn't have
nothing to do with you. Again, I didn't know even
but I was on the under side and I put
it together. Then when I started real line and everybody,
you know, I would not getting body here and not

(33:57):
get my mond went on with my life. H So
that was it. And sometime after this phone call, Bill
Pepper arranged for a meeting in a room at the
Memphis Airport with Jim Green, Rusty Larson, and Dexter King.
But I could not find a tape of that meeting,
either in Bill Pepper's collections or down at the King Center.

(34:17):
So as far as the voice of Jim Green telling
a story, we only have this short phone conversation with
Pepper in London. I felt proud of myself for finding
this tape, but when we had finished listening to it,
I was surprised to learn that after his meeting with
Jim Green and Extra King in Memphis, Bill Pepper concluded
that Jim Green's story was fabricated, that Green had been

(34:39):
sent forward with a phony story for some reason. I
believe Green was largely a disinformation agent, and I think
we saw him that way, and I thought it didn't
make sense of the total picture that eventually I've covered.
The only thing that gave Mr Larson any credible ability

(35:01):
was the fact that he had a client he was
willing to put before us, who was going to tell
us a story about how his job was a designation
that killed James or Ray, and that seemed to be
par for the course. I mean, Patsy's are routinely disposed
of because they may inadvertently or or or actually learn

(35:27):
facts that could be embarrassing to the people involved with
the conspiracy. But that was about the only thing that
Pepper found in Green's favor. This guy is creating a
scenario that is supposed to give credibility to a story
that he has, but he falls short in so many areas.

(35:49):
And he, for example, could not have been watching Ray.
He says at one point that he he saw Ray
at the time of the shooting. It impossible. He couldn't
have couldn't have done that. Uh Ray was up at
the gas station with the time the shooting took place,
not anywhere else. Pepper also questioned whether Green had met
Ray in prison and whether he had really testified before

(36:12):
the House collect Committee in both of those stories had
run true to me. I then asked what kind of
damage you could have done if Green had been let
in the door? Pepper rolled his eyes. Do you remember
what time we're talking about here? Do you you know
what here we're talking about? We're talking about him surfacing
at the time when the trial was about to take place,

(36:35):
the civil trial. They didn't want that civil trial. The
government didn't want it at all because of all the
evidence that was laid out. So this was all a
hated time when it would be very important to undercutt undermine,
or distract us from where we were going and what
we were learning. So Jim Green appeared out of the

(36:56):
mist when Bill Pepper was beginning to put together the
civil trial that would feature all the evidence that had
surfaced in the thirty years following King's murder. This was
the very thing that the authorities that fought so hard against,
a trial with witness testimony preserved in court records, but
putting on the trial was no small thing. Seventy witnesses

(37:16):
flying in and out of Memphis and put up in hotels,
all to be scheduled, arranged, and somehow paid for. It
was a tremendous undertaking. And because he had been fed
disinformation in the past, Pepper was on the lookout for
someone who might try to push their way onto the
witness stand and then make a mockery of the whole
proceeding and to build Pepper, Jim Green looked like that

(37:38):
guy that said, I believe that Jim Green's story is true,
at least most of it. In arriving at this conclusion.
I had the advantage of twenty additional years to watch
the story play out. I had talked to Rusty Larson,
who was not only Jim Green's lawyer but also his friend,

(37:58):
and I had the extraordinary benefit fit of reading Jim
Green's unpublished, an unvarnished manuscript. So Bill Pepper and I,
widely separated in time, came to different conclusions about Jim Green.
We've talked about it, and I think it speaks to
the health of our relationship that we can see pieces
of this thing differently. Bill has spent over forty years

(38:19):
of his life successfully investigating this murder. I would not
be here today except for the work he has done.
As to my take, was Jim Green looking at Ray
at the moment of the shooting as he said to
Bill Pepper, No, I think he was giving the abbreviated
form of the story. He intended to sit down with
Pepper and Dexter King and lay it all out, as

(38:41):
he did in his book where he explains how James
ol Ray emerged from the roomy house before six pm,
got into his car and drove away just as Ray
said he did, and the same said by witnesses Hendricks
and read in their sworn statements to the FBI. Was
Green telling the truth when he said he didn't know
that King was to be killed? Maybe not, but it's

(39:02):
a very understandable, almost forgivable lie to tell. If it
was a lie, Green got sucked into the plot, but
none of it was his idea. He was just twenty one.
But the biggest reason to believe that Green was not
an agent of disinformation is that his story points an
accusing finger back to the very same people that Bill

(39:22):
Pepper was pointing to, including the FBI. But it's not
a simple thumbs up or thumbs down with Jim Green,
because if you accept Green's story, you bring on stage
a cast of characters that doesn't exactly fit with the
ones already there. For example, Ray says that it was
a man named Raoul who was up in the rooming

(39:42):
house with him, sending him on errands and presumably placing
the rifle with raised finger prints out on the sidewalk,
a rifle covered by a bedspread. But according to Jim Green,
Paul was the one who appeared out of the rooming
house and placed something on the street, something that from
his instance, looked like a Coat. Is it possible that

(40:03):
Paul was Raoul, or if they were separate people at
different times in his year long journey to Memphis. Did
Ray to protect himself roll him into one, perhaps along
with others to finish this puzzle. It would have helped
if Ray had been more forthcoming with his story. But
Ray was not the only one whose secrets make it
difficult to construct a clean mosaic of this crime. M

(40:35):
Jim Green says he was called to testify before the
House Select Committee in He believes that came about because,
in a foolish moment, he told Memphis reporter Kay Black
that he knew that Ray had not killed King. Green
said that two agents accompanied him to Washington, and before
he testified, he was visited by the agent he knew
as Paul and Paul's boss, who he knew was Rocchi,

(40:59):
a visit he interpreted as a warning. What did Green
tell the committee? We don't know, because, like with a
lot of other stuff that might shed light on this crime,
it was kept secret, not to be revealed until sixty
years after the death of Martin Luther King. If King
were murdered by James Earl Ray acting alone, what was

(41:19):
the need for secrecy. If the purpose of the committee
was to use their power to investigate this murder and
reveal to the public their findings, why are their secret
files and secret testimony. I believe that Jim Green's story
is based in truth, and because of the official secrecy
surrounding this murder and the secrecy surrounding his testimony, I

(41:41):
feel obligated to present his story, even if it does
not precisely fit with other stories that I also believe
are based in truth. So that is what I have done.
I'll close with a brief paragraph from Jim Green's unpublished
account of his participation in this horrific crime. So why
did I wait so long to tell what I know?

(42:03):
Watch TV and see how they try to discredit the
people who do come forward. Then I would ask myself,
what about my family? What if they charged me even
though I didn't know King was to be killed? Why
ruined my life over something no one will believe or
jeopardize what I now have for a murder that took
place over thirty years ago. And then I think that

(42:23):
I am older now and want to clear the air
before death. The first time I tried, the subcommittee didn't
want the truth. But this time I will do it
my way, and if people don't believe me, at least
I know that I told the truth and the rest
will be up to history next time. On the email

(42:49):
K tapes is how we live. As you didn't have
a rap, how would you feel about undergoing hypnosis for
the purpose of taking you back and putting you face
to face with this man to see if you could

(43:10):
remember his name. He tells you that he was the
one who did the shooting straight up, Yeah, he told me, pop.
I mean it was three guys out there were Lionel Clark,
my brother, and had no old man and no man
didn't have guts to do it is to shake in ship.
If it was the brother that did it, and the
brother convinced the younger brother that he was the one

(43:31):
who did it, it would give him that type of insulation,
that type of protection. There was a man that was
a sign to get the king before anybody could run
up from anywhere to get the king and make sure
he was dead. It was already arranged that he was
to go to Saint Joseph's Hospital down the straight. He
never was gonna make it out of that emergency room. Alive.

(44:01):
Thanks for listening to The m l K Tapes, a
production of I Heart 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 Claiper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are
executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers
Trevor Young and Ben Keebrick. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay

(44:22):
are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producers
Jamie Albright and Meredith Stepman. Original music by Makeup and
Vanity Set. Cover art by Mr Soul two six with
photography by Artemis Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and
Grace Royer at u t A, The Nord Group, back
Median Marketing, Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If you

(44:46):
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. From our podcasts
from I Heart Radio and ten Your Foot TV, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows. H