The Death Slug [6]

Bill Pepper's petition to reopen the case against Ray lands in the courtroom of Judge Joe Brown, a firearms expert, who has his doubts that the rifle found on the street was murder weapon.

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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 to understand the context of this killing.

(00:25):
You should understand that Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, for civil
rights workers who were buried in the levee, We're all
slain within about fifty or sixty miles of Memphis. Memphis
as an interesting reputation of being the first degree murder
capital of America. And in that context we're not talking

(00:47):
about street crime but organized land hits. So that explains
why this. If you were gonna kill somebody, Memphis was
the place to do it, and you pull off the killing,
and meanwhile, some other folks have done the skull duggery
and got some SAPs set up to take the dive

(01:07):
and fifty years later argue about who did what I
called the Union Hall. I said, a matter of life
and death. I said, I think these people are planning
to kill Dr King. The authorities were parade. Oh, we

(01:27):
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 Lay was upon for the official
story from My Heart Radio intended for TV. The plan
was to get King to the city because they wanted

(01:50):
it handled. In Memphis were dead and in cat Hamon
and I have lived with it so long, my sion,
and they scared for me. The Lord told me to
not the word. I've been want to tell it all
my life on Bill Claybourn and this is the MLK tapes.

(02:14):
At the top of this episode, we heard Judge Joe
Brown speaking at AEEN symposium at Duquesne University marking the
fiftieth anniversary of the assassinations of Martin King and Robert Kennedy.
Judge Brown had just completed a fifteen year run as
a judge on a TV reality show, but before that

(02:35):
he had been a real judge in Tennessee and had
presided over the last attempt to get James Earl Ray
a trial. That case had been brought by Bill Pepper,
Ray's attorney at the time, and from the stage of
the same symposium, Pepper spoke about Judge Brown and those
events of some twenty years before. We were very pleased
to have Judge Brown on the bench because finally there

(02:58):
was an impartial object of and I might say courageous
man up there who was prepared to do what he
believed was right. No better expert on ballistics did we
find anywhere than Judge Brown. Judge Brown was indeed an
expert when it came to guns, and when he spoke

(03:19):
that day on the shooting of King, he focused on
race rifle. Was it really the murder weapon? But before
we get to forensics, the race of twist lands and
grooves and all that, let's hear what Brown had to
say about what it was like to be black in
Memphis in the bad old days. Joe Brown had a
unique perspective because he had not grown up in Tennessee.

(03:42):
He had come of age in sunny California, and after
law school at U c. L A. He accepted a
challenging legal fellowship in the nation's heartland. Joe Brown arrived
in Memphis in nineteen seventy three. He noticed the difference
right away. Appeared for one of the poverty law centers

(04:03):
I was working at with five clients at the local
juvenile court. The judge, who had a sixth grade education,
he dropped out of the sixth grade, thought I was
on his docket and he called me the inn words.
So we had at it. But that was the attitude.
And I've actually been in court rooms in front of

(04:27):
a jury and the judge used the in word to
the jury in describing um some of the defendants on trial.
So it's not unusual now. I also happened to be
the first black prosecutor for the city in Memphis, and
one of the interesting, rather disgusting charges that I would

(04:49):
see on records when I would be asked to make
an offer on something was something like this reckless eyeballing
by a colored person. That's a quote on what the
charge was, colored person refusing to remove from sidewalk for
passage of white person. This was the interesting one, acting

(05:11):
too colored in public. So I would see these kind
of charges on people's rap sheets, and that was the atmosphere.
In the early nineteen seventies, you still had that thing
going on. And describing his shock at Landing and what
for him was the wild West, Judge Brown recalled a

(05:33):
particular evening in a Memphis courtroom. Well, we had this
old guy late eighties maybe early nineties, and he was
on the dockets. So I asked the judge if I
could advance the case since the arresting officer was coming
in that evening on a traffic matter. So the judge

(05:53):
gave me permission. I got the file jacket brought to
the courtroom and I'm standing around waiting for this case
to come up. When the back door the courtroom is
kicked in, and he was an old man. He had
his Model nineteen three fifty seven Smith up in the air,
and the many officers in the courtroom, instead of doing

(06:17):
what you think they do, they all dived under the
cover of the pews. So he walked in and he said,
who the devil? Et cetera, et ceter was cussing and
put his hands on my nigro. So nobody touched my
nigga's and my hunting animals but me. So he walks
up to the cop in question, grabs him by the collar,

(06:37):
puts the pistol to his head and said, I'll blow
your brains out. I kill you, your granty looking wife,
all your children, your livestock, and your hunting animals, if
you ever do this again? Who he walks over and
shut up. Robert, that was the judge's name. I used

(06:58):
to do your mama. You you maybe wanna mind it.
I don't know about it. O. Judge said, Mr Brown,
whatnover is? He had the dock and I said, yeah,
I th show those this this. So he walked out
of here. I said, why didn't nobody do what he thin?
He said, that's Jimmie Thompson. That's death in Carnie Brown

(07:23):
didn't know who Jimmy Thompson was, but during a recess
he was pulled aside by some old timer who tried
to fill him in. Turns out, Jimmie Thompson had at
one time been sheriff in Memphis for some sixteen years.
Here's old guys, let me tell you store about when
I was a young deputy with the sheriff departing. Before

(07:43):
I got on, the police departing said we was out
and you know we busted two good old of a
couple of good old boys and they were drunk. Jimmy
Thompson pulled up in his V twelve packet automobile and
he stopped. He came on, say I know this man.
He's saying, none but scumb He said, who you? So

(08:05):
the guy told him, he said, you take care of
your wife and children. He said, well, yes, sir, I tried,
so you that's wrong to that right, Get on up
out of here. He says, I'm wondering what the Sheriff's
gonna do. He pulls his revolver, I shoots the other
man in the head. Tways said, I told this scarm
he ain't on dirty up my jail. No more call
to meet wagon. So that was my first time meeting

(08:28):
to share a face to face. He said, Jimmy's gonna
kill forty five fifty people in his career. So when
Jimmy pull out a gun, everybody diving for couple because
somebody likely to that. But you see, this is the
background in Memphis, Tennessee at this point in time. Joe
Brown would go on to be the first black prosecutor

(08:50):
in the city of Memphis, and after that he began
his own law practice. In he became a criminal court
judge in Shelby County, which includes Memphis, US In Bill
Pepper brought a lawsuit seeking to reopen the case against
James Earl Ray with that time had been imprisoned for
twenty five years. The case landed in Judge Brown's courtroom,

(09:14):
a lucky break for Pepper and Ray, because Brown took
an active interest in the cases that came before him,
and I did a lot of trial work. And one
of the things that I did was I helped train
the Capitol defense team for the Public Defender's Office. So
that wound up getting me involved in forty forty two

(09:36):
first degree murder cases. They're fascinating. One of the things
I learned from trying that kind of case is when
you get it, go to the scene, take a look
around and see if what you see on the ground
matches the theory. Well, one of the problems that came

(09:56):
out when I got the Ray case is that some
of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did
not match the circumstances. First off, let's get a clarification
in here. The news media likes to put it out
James Earl Ray, the self confess killer of Dr Martin
Luther King. Well, that's an error. He never confessed. He

(10:19):
always denied it. This might seem like a strange thing
for Judge Brown to say, because in nineteen sixty nine,
James L. Ray did plead guilty to the explicit charge
of murdering Dr Martin Luther King. If you were with
us in episode four, you heard about the strange circumstances

(10:40):
under which that plea was made. And as we heard
from his first attorney, Art Haynes Jr. Ray always said
that he did not shoot King or anyone else that day.
So that is what Judge Brown is referring to the
little known fact that James Earl Ray always said he
did not shoot Martin Luther King. Of course, the authorities

(11:02):
said that he did, and their best evidence was not
the drunk who said he saw Ray running from the scene,
but the rifle found on the street, the one Ray
had bought just two days before. But Judge Brown was
far from convinced that this rifle raised rifle was the
actual murder weapon. The state claimed that its reasonable factual

(11:23):
basis was raised rifle a thirty odd six caliber Remingtons
seven sixty game Master, a pump rifle. The interesting thing
is is that that really went astray at that point
because the FBI claimed that they could not make a
ballistics match between Ray's rifle and the bullet they pulled

(11:46):
out of King's body. They said it was too distorted
to test that is the death's lug. However, examining the
evidence and the evidence room, it most certainly was not there.
It was a big bruga about me ordering the rifle reachsted.
In most cases, when you test fire a gun to

(12:08):
see if it's the weapon used in a particular murder,
you're creating a bullet that can be compared to the
death slug. If the markings on the two bullets are
a perfect match, you have determined that this gun fired
the fatal shot to the exclusion of all other guns
in the universe. Very often the match is less than perfect.

(12:28):
In this case, if the class characteristics are the same,
like the caliber bullet, you have determined that the weapon
tested could have fired the bullet, and that's the best
the FBI could do. In essence, King was killed with
a thirty caliber bullet, and raised rifle could fire a
thirty caliber bullet. So what did Judge Brown discover about

(12:50):
the rifle and the bullet when this case landed in
his courtroom? Recognize thats the seven sixty game master and

(13:11):
evidence in this case? Did you have a cadianum to
consider this weapon as a murder weapon in this case,
some degree of debt and careful consideration. I did so.
And when was that? That was during the course of
proceedings brought by the lady James or A Ray and

(13:31):
what is known as the post conviction relief proceedings to
challenge his inviction. You're listening to Judge Joe Brown testify
at the civil trial. Brown a few years earlier had
presided over the lawsuits seeking to reopen the case against
James Earl Ray. The man asking the questions is Bill Pepper,

(13:53):
who at the civil trial is representing the King family. Now,
Judge Brown, how long did you pres over those sin
I'd like to say about three years. It all sort
of shifts into a blur that got in my courtroom.
There was at that time a set of laws and

(14:15):
cases that have been decided that basically caused me to
deny the petition of James or a Raid. So what
I've ordered was that the petition would be denied, but
I will allow the petitioner to put on what is
known as a proper of proof. In other words, if
he will allowed to present this evidence, this is what

(14:37):
it would show. So on appellate court could determine whether
or not the law need to be needed to be refused. Well,
in any event, I ordered that the rifle will be retested.
It went to the Port of Criminal Appeals who went
along to the prosecutorial side of things and declined to
allow that rifle to be retested. And issue of state

(14:59):
the blue that Judge Brown just mentioned has to do
with the fact that the rate case in his court
dragged on for the better part of three years to nine.
It was a legal battle over whether Ray would have
the right to present evidence that might overturn his conviction,
even though the statute of limitations for doing such a

(15:19):
thing had long ago run out. There were orders, stays, appeals,
changes in state law, more stays. Most of the time
was spent waiting around for a ruling on some appeal
of a ruling made in Judge Brown's court. It was
a frustrating, messy affair that defies any simple description, but
we will touch on some of the important points. As

(15:43):
Judge Brown said, the Court of Appeals initially prevented him
from ordering a test firing of the rifle, but it
didn't prevent him from going through the case files. Sometime
in ninety six, he had the death slug fragments put
under a high powered electron microscope. When he did this,
sure enough, the rifling had a right hand twist, just

(16:04):
as the FBI said. But as he told the court
that day, there was something else, something that required a
little high school trigonometry. It appears that the death slugged
it was taken out of King's body, was fired from
a rifle that had a rate of rifling twist of
one turn in every eleven and a quarter inches. Raised rifle,

(16:26):
for those who are interested, had a rate of rifling
twist of one turn in ten inches. If you've got
an eleven and a quarter inch rate of rifling twist,
you're talking custom barrel and James Drew Ray I assure
you had no access to anybody making custom barrels at
that time. If Judge Brown's calculations are correct, and you

(16:51):
could get the case back in court, it would go
a long way to proving that raised rifle was not
the murder weapon. More certain still, Judge Brown's poking around
like that was beginning to make people uncomfortable. Most judges
don't use microscopes to look at bullets. Most judges don't
think in terms of metallurgy or rates of twist, but
Judge Brown did, and the pressure to relieve him of

(17:14):
his duties increased, and strange things were starting to happen.
Judge Brown told me of several incidents. In one ninety seven,
his house was invaded by men wearing ski masks. He
had gotten home late, fallen asleep at the kitchen table,
and then woke up. I heard some noise and I

(17:35):
was sitting in my kitchen and I became aware of
some shadows out back and some out front. And to
make a long story short, two people tried to break
in the front, three in the back at the same time.
They jammie the screens out of the windows and took
wild glass cutters to cut the pain out so they

(17:57):
could open the windows. Were dressed in pretty much the
same thing, dark clothing, balaklavs with just the eyes out,
and apparently they had on some heavy kevlar armor and
they had side arms on the side. I was thinking,
why the police raiding me? And then I said, these
aren't police. I'm a sitting judge. This is three thirty

(18:21):
am in the morning. And they came in and there
was a shootout. I wound up having to patch the walls.
I called my friend Winfrey, who was the director of
the police at that time. He came out. We looked around.
We found some blood trails out front, out back, and
there was no report of anyone being treated in an

(18:42):
emergency room and no reports of this incident. So that's
a little wild. But actually my disposition I found it intriguing.
Intriguing or not. According to Judge Brown, nothing ever came
of that into in but one afternoon, not long after that,

(19:03):
Brown said he got a phone call while he was
in court. What's going on, Judge, is to Detective Song.
So and Song so we're out in the parking lot.
Somebody's trying to break in your lexus. Okay. Five minutes later,
Judge the Song so they were trying to plant two
key loads of coke in your car. Oh wow, all right,

(19:24):
we got them. What's going on? They stayed there, were
with a federal agency and uh, they made a mistake
during this sting. But your name's on your parking place,
you know. Stuff like that. It's hard to know just
what to make of such stories, but Judge Brown feels
they were related to his handling of the race case,

(19:46):
and things were starting to heat up because, although he
had initially been prevented from having the rifle test fired,
Judge Brown finally won permission to do that very thing.
The rifle was tested by ballistics expert Robert Hathaway at
the University of Rhode Island Crime Lab, and two weeks
later the results were revealed in court. After hearing testimony

(20:09):
from ballistics experts, Memphis, Judge Joe Brown decided further examination
of test fire bullets from James R. Ray's rifle maybe needed.
This was one headline the day after the test results
of the rifle were announced. Hathaway testified that he fired
and recovered eighteen bullets like the one that killed Dr. King.

(20:30):
Twelve of those eighteen emerged with unique markings matching them
to each other and to the rifle itself, but they
didn't match the fatal slug recovered from Dr. King. But
six bullets did not have those particular markings, even though
they were fired from the same weapon. Hathaway's tests strongly
suggested that the death slug was not fired from Ray's rifle,

(20:53):
but it was short of proving that if six bullets
could have been fired by the rifle but not be
with certainty trace back to it. Then the same could
be true for the death slog. There was immediate talk
of retest. 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

(21:15):
a build up of material and the rifle barrel could
be to blame. But today experts told that Joe Brown
James L. Ray's rifle had not been thoroughly cleaned since
the last test firing, and that build up within the
barrel may have jeopardized the accuracy of this testing. As
soon as the results of the rifle test were announced,

(21:37):
Bill Pepper asked for the rifle to be tested again.
Judge Brown then asked the Appeals Court for permission to
retest the gun after it had been cleaned. What we
wanted was to get everything out so we could get
a pristine bore and get the best sample possible. There's
a company called Outers and they made cleaning supply is

(22:00):
for weapons. They had a reverse plating device known as
a foul out, and what you do is when you
hook the weapons rifle up to this, you get an
electric current going which causes any fouling in the bore
to come out without having to scrub it. But the

(22:22):
authorities were not keen on this proposal. State witness Tommy
Heflin of the Tennessee Bureau of an Investigation testified, cleaning
the rifle may damage it and could alter the markings
on the bullets win fire. So you're gonna change and
either take away or you're gonna add things to them.
They had the idea of what you're gonna do is
take a wire brush and run it up and down

(22:44):
the boar, and they were worried about that damaging the rifle.
They had a very peculiar thing that they put in
their documentation to state said if the rifle is tested
at this point, it may become damaged, which would quote

(23:05):
prevented from being retested in the future unquote. Now that
one eludes me. If you don't want it tested now,
why do you want it tested in the future. As
it turned out, Judge Brown never got permission to test
the rifle again, and what finally happened to raise appeal.
Here is Judge Brown's response to that very question asked

(23:29):
by Bill Pepper at the civil trial. Well, they're removed
from the case. He said, I'll be biased for James
row a rate which I found rather astonishing. Anybody knows
me to be being a biased in favor of itself
about racist and bigot is just absolutely disgusting in the
concept what I've always tried to do to be fair

(23:50):
and Parson wotfully detached, straight down the middle and sometimes
with another that upsets people when things don't go as
they expect them to go, or you were ruined by
the from a case by Whome Tennessee Cord from Peas
So Judge Brown was removed and another judge was brought
in and raised petition for post conviction relief was dismissed.

(24:14):
But the mystery surrounding Raise Rifle have only deepened. Anyone
today who looks into the case can learn soon enough
that the FBI could not match the death slug to
Raise rifle. But at the time of the murder and
raise subsequent plea hearing a year later, the common wisdom
in the country was that a match had been made.
How had this come about? It is incumbent upon the

(24:53):
state in a plea of guilty to murder in the
first degree to put on certain proof for your consideration.
We have to put on proof of what we lawyers
call the proof of corpus delicti, which is the body
of the crime. This is a reading of the words
of Assistant Attorney General James Beasley, spoken at Ray's plea

(25:14):
hearing in March nineteen sixty eight in Tennessee. At the time,
after a person had pleaded guilty to murder, the state
was obligated to present some of the evidence they would
have offered had there been a trial. So the state
put on an abbreviated and uncontested version of their case.
They called witnesses who saw doctor King brought down by

(25:36):
a bullet. They introduced a doctor who said that doctor
King died because of that bullet, and a police officer
who found a thirty caliber rifle on the street. Beasley
then spoke of an expert who would testify that he
discovered the fingerprints of James Earl Ray on that rifle,
and then the clincher assistant A. G. Beasley spoke of

(25:58):
an FBI man who testify at the trial had there
been one, as to his examination of the death slug
and its relationship to the found rifle. He examined the
cartridges the whole from the chamber of this rifle the
slug removed from the body of doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.
And would testify to his conclusions as follows. The death

(26:20):
slug was identical in all physical characteristics with the five
loaded thirty at six Springfield cartridges found in the bag
in front of cannipes. The cartridge case had in fact
been fired in this thirty at six rifle, that the
death slug removed from the body contained land and groove
impressions and direction of twist consistent with those that were

(26:42):
in the barrel of this rifle. To the jurors and
the newsmen in the room, it seemed that nothing more
needed to be said. But Mark Lane, who would be
raised attorney eight years later, said the following about what
had happened in his book Murder in Memphis. Quote. The
veteran lawyers in the courtroom smiled to themselves in much

(27:05):
the same way as professional magicians might do when they
observed an audience puzzled by a simple but well performed trick.
So what was the trick? All the fancy talk of
direction of twists and landing grooves impressions being consistent with
the barrel of Ray's rifle didn't mean that the bullet
had been matched to the rifle. It only meant that

(27:26):
Ray's rifle could have fired that bullet, along with thousands
of other thirty caliber rifles. But to the newsmen present
and the American people who would read their stories, the
case was a slam dunk. Not only had Ray entered
a guilty plea the police that found his rifle and
determined that it was the gun that killed King, but
just below the surface, practically in plain sight, was a

(27:50):
much more troubling problem about the attempt to match the
death slug to the gun purchased by James Earl Ray.
But as simple as it was, it took any five
years for it to raise its ugly head. Captain, do
you recognize this photograph? I recognize the body directs a

(28:11):
bullet that was there as being a photograph that I
took at the morgue of Dr Martin Luther King. This
audio comes from the HBO trial. Bill Pepper is cross
examining Captain Tommy Smith, who was a Memphis Police lieutenant
at the time of the murder. Off to the side
next to where Pepper is standing. Dr King's lifeless back

(28:35):
is displayed on a screen. Attorney Pepper gestures towards the image.
When you're pointing to the bullet. Are you indicating this
lump here? Dr King's back by his shoulder blade area?
Did you attempt to determine the from outside the skin
the structure of that bullet under the skin? Yes? Or

(28:57):
I did, and you could take your finger and pinch
and fea and roll that bullet under the skin. But
did you do that? I did? And what did you
feel as you pinched? And I felt a very good
bullet and was very thankful that we had a bullet
to compare, And was it in one piece? And intact
what I could fea was in one piece? In preparing

(29:20):
for the televised mock trial, Pepper had discovered the photograph
of King's back in the police files. When he found
out who had taken it, he contacted Captain Smith, who
agreed to testify as to what he had seen that
night and if Smith were correct, if the lump under
the skin was indeed the death slog, and if it
were in such good condition that it could roll around

(29:42):
under the skin at one point in time did it
become the three grossly misshaped pieces of lead, which is
what we have of the fatal bullet today. It's a
valid question and one without a good answer. The problem
for Pepper was that although Smith had touched the object
under the skin and rolled it around with his finger,

(30:02):
he had not actually seen the bullet removed. But then
Pepper discovered a man who was said to have seen
the bullet taken from King's body. It was retired homicide
detective Barry Lynnville, who lived some distance outside of Memphis.
Pepper called detective Lynnville and asked if he could come
by with a few questions about the King murder. When

(30:23):
Pepper arrived, Lynnville asserted that he had indeed been in
the autopsy room and that he had seen the death
slug removed from doctor King's shoulder. Pepper then showed Lynnville
the FBI photo of the three bullet fragments said to
be what remained of the death slug. Lynville was stunned
because the fragments in the photo in no way resembled

(30:46):
what he saw in the morgue. Detective Lynnville could not
be compelled to appear at the HBO trial. He could
have stayed out of it, but he was so disturbed
by what he saw he agreed to testify, where he
was questioned by Bill Pepper. And were you present when
the body was received at the Morgan in Dr Francisco's presence, Yes,

(31:10):
and would you describe? But what happened at that point?
We're examined the wound and then when we turned the
body over we could see the bullet underneath the skin
on the left shoulder. Were you present when that bullet
was removed? Yes? And how was that done? With a
scap and who did that, Doctor Francisco? You observed Dr

(31:35):
Francisco removed the bullet the death slug. Would you describe
this bullet appeared to be a thirty all six caliber
UH copper. The entire copper jacket was intact in the
end of the bullet was flattened out. The lead at
the end of the thirty dollar six it's got about

(31:57):
all appropment quarter of an ancient lead and would flattened out.
But the copper was all intact and showed excellent land
and bruise. And how many bullets would you say you
have seen in your homicide career? Foutums And in terms
of the physical condition of this bullet, how would you
rate it? I'd rated on our scale of one to day,

(32:20):
and i'd rated man intact intact. Pepper then displayed the
official FBI photo of the disclog in three fragments. Do
you see these three fragments on the screen? These have
been introduced as the death slug in this case? Is
this the bullet you saw? No? Does it resemble the

(32:41):
bullets you saw in any way? No? I have no
further questions for Prosecutor Hickman. Ewing rose and began his
cross examination. Lynnville's story of seeing a near perfect bullet
removed from King's back presented serious problems, problems that had
never been exp floored before, because for twenty five years,

(33:02):
the death slug had been represented by three very distorted
pieces of lead. How could that be if the actual
bullet had emerged intact? Eing questioned Linnville, but his story
remained the same. Ewing then had Linnville come down from
the witness stand and draw on an easel a rough
picture of the bullet he had seen removed from King's body.

(33:26):
The bullet he drew was in one piece and perfectly
shaped except for some flattening on the tip. Ewing was stumped.
You're saying what you all saw taken out of doctor
King looked like that. It was. It was perfect in
every manner. We felt like we'd found a piece of
gold when we found a bullet. Have you been asked

(33:48):
about this over the last twenty five years? Is this
the first time a week ago? Just first time a
week the first time I've been asked about the bullet? Ever,
Lynnville said to Ewing that when they discovered the fatal
bullet in near pristine condition, they felt like they had
found a piece of gold. He meant that a death

(34:11):
slug in such good condition carries a lot of information
that can be very useful in solving a crime. In
this case, such a bullet might well have proved without
a doubt, that hadn't been fired by Ray's rifle, as
the district attorney said it was, or it might have
proved that race gun had not fired this bullet. This
is a strange conflict to discover twenty five years after

(34:34):
an important murder. Regarding the most critical piece of physical evidence.
Prosecutor Ewing couldn't really argue with Lynnville about what he
said he saw he wasn't there. Lynnville was, but he
could challenge his testimony in another way. When ballistics expert
Charles Morton took the stand, Ewing pointed to the images

(34:55):
of the three pieces of lead shown in the FBI photograph,
and then you got these little pieces here, how how
much would you say that would weigh? Well, I'm in
an advantage. I read the report that says at sixty
four grains, which a little bit less than half of
the weight. You're saying a perfect bullet, it's hundred and
fifty grains, and this weighed sixty four point four grains right.

(35:19):
Ewing then wrote the numbers one, fifty and sixty four
side by side on an easel with Lynnville's drawing of
the bullet to make his point the bullet fragments weighed
less than half of what Lynnville said he saw. Ewing
may have felt as though he had damaged Lynnville's assertion
of an intact bullet, but to the jurors who would
ultimately find Ray not guilty, the large difference in appearance

(35:43):
and wait may well have made them feel that something
was very wrong. Assuming that Officer Smith and Detective Lynnville
are telling the truth and I can think of no
reason for them to lie. We are presented with two possibilities.
The first is that something happened to the evidence bullet,
some handling or mishandling to make it look like it

(36:05):
does today. But how are there no records of this?
And how does a found bullet lose more than half
its weight. The other possibility is that the bullet seen
by Lynnville was discarded and the mangled lead we see
today was put in its place. I don't know the
answer here, and this may be a bigger leap than
some of you are willing to make, But for context,

(36:27):
I can say that I studied the Robert Kennedy murder
for years, I wrote a book about it, and what
I can tell you to a certainty is that the
police lied about the bullet evidence they recovered, and when
that lie was about to be exposed, they destroyed the
evidence itself. Again, I don't know what happened to the
bullet in the kin case, but when you were looking

(36:47):
at evidence presented by the authorities, you might do well
to remember the song. It ain't necessarily so. Also, I
invite you to go to our website and look at
the photograph of the death slug fry mints posted alongside
the drawing of the evidence bullet made by the detective Lynnville.
The explanation for the difference may be innocent, or it

(37:08):
may be nefarious, but whatever it is, this is one
hell of an alteration of a prime piece of evidence.
A problem with a bullet might also be a reason
why there was such pressure en Ray to plead guilty.
For if he had a trial and an attorney serving
his interests, that attorney may well have discovered the conflict.

(37:31):
He would have been able to put others on the
witness stand who had been at the morgue and had
seen what detective Lynnville and Smith testified too. He could
have demanded to see documents and photos in the police
and FBI files. He could have asked the jury, how
was it that a bullet that might well approve his
client's innocence could end up as three pieces of tortured
lad Looking back from a distance of fifty years, it

(37:55):
is hard for us to sort it out with certainty.
But it might have been a very different story at
ray trial if he'd had one Next time on the
email k tapes, next thing that taken a lot of

(38:16):
pride in itself. It was paternalist. They had made some games,
but it was raised to the court. They had a
list that this clue club plan and citizen Council passed
a run and the list contained name they called the
trouble makers with exs behind The plan was get King

(38:42):
to the city because they wanted it handled in Memphis
for dead in them could handle it. He told me, he
he said I had killed it what I had done,
And I said, what about the other son of a bitch?
I'll they're taking credit for He says he wasn't known
about a trouble maker from a suri. He was a
front man. Last Wednesday morning, the FBI told me they

(39:02):
didn't believe the story related in any way to the
King's assassin and they were through with it. He said
they wouldn't be there. They won't be there that night.
Did he say there would be a decoy there? Yeah,
be set up or look black somewhere else done the killings.

(39:25):
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. D 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

(39:45):
are executive producers on half of Tenderfoot TV with producers
Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original music by Makeup and
Vanity Said. 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
Media and Marketing, Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If

(40:09):
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. From more
podcasts from I Heart Radio and tender Foot TV, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,