February 21, 2022 • 40 mins
Texas woman Glenda Grabow tells Bill Pepper she knew a gun runner in Houston named Raul, who she thinks was involved in the murder of Martin Luther King. Could this be the same Raul known by James Earl Ray?
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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. After several hours of questioning and cross examining,
(00:26):
Ray told him that there was no such person as Raoul,
and he knew there was no such person as Raoul.
He admitted that and told me that he had to
invent in vent Rayoul, because that's fuck Hughie wanted. He
suggested something that implied that I had more acuity than Bradford,
(00:50):
Huey and Hayes. I asked him how you happened to
pick the name Raoul, and he said that was the
name of a operator of a party house that he
had held up, and he admitted there was no Raoul.
He laughed at Haines and Hewish, having accepted Rayoul's story.
(01:12):
That was Percy Foreman, former attorney for James Arl Ray,
telling the House Select Committee in ninety eight that Ray
had told him that the whole story about Raoul, giving
him money and moving him about the country was made up,
and that Ray had done this because the writer Bradford Huey,
who Ray had never met, had wanted him to do it.
According to Foreman, the reason that Ray told him this
(01:35):
but had never told anyone else, was that he respected
Foreman's intelligence, that he knew that Foreman would see through
his lie about Raoul, and according to Foreman, they had
a good laugh about it. Of course, it may have
been Foreman making up the story here, but if it
were rely on his part, it was a safe one
to tell, because at that time no one had found
(01:56):
the mysterious Raoul or even claimed to know of him.
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 found a gun that James ol Ray bought in
Birmingham that killed Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun
(02:19):
that killed Dr King. James Lvey 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 it handled in Memphis for dead in them could
hand it. And I've lived with it so long. My Sirion,
(02:41):
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 d
MLK tapes. As we heard in previous episodes, James Earl
(03:02):
Ray escaped from prison in nineteen sixty seven and a
year later found himself in Memphis on the day King
was killed. After he had been captured, he told his
attorneys and anyone else who would listen that he had
met a man in Canada named Raoul who had moved
him about the country and gave him money in exchange
for odd chores. But while most details in race story
proved to be true, for example, the restaurant where he worked,
(03:25):
or the woman with whom he had a brief affair,
no one was able to find Raoul, not a big
surprise because Ray never knew Raoul's last name, where he lived,
or even for Raoul was his real first name, and
Raoul most likely didn't want to be found. The official
explanation for how Ray financed his travels, and the one
embraced by the House Committee, was that instead of getting
(03:47):
money from the fictional Raoul, Ray robbed a bank or two,
and that if he had any help, it came from
his brothers John and Jerry. So for twenty five years,
no one had come up with a good lead as
to who them his serious Raoul might be, if he
had existed at all. But then after seeing the trial
on television, Roy and Glenna Grabo contacted John Billings and
(04:11):
Ken Herman, who were investigators working with Bill Pepper and
producer Jack Saltman on the HBO trial. We met with
a blended Grabow and rom. She first said, I mean
they they're almost Their openly statement was we know the ray,
but we don't know it's the Rays. And we listened
(04:33):
to her story about her early life in Houston, Texas
and the stories and her meeting and this mysterious Rayoul,
and and after it was over, when they left, I
was convinced that she was a government plan. That's my
disposity is that this is incredible story and it's just government.
(04:54):
They've sent somebody here to discredit us with the story.
And if we're gonna go chasing this Roman in depart
because we're telling over kids saslation sounds very scared. After
hearing Glenda's story, Herman and Billings brought it to Jack Saltman,
with whom they had begun work on a proposed movie
that would be about the murder of Dr. King. Saltman
(05:16):
also found Glenda's story hard to believe, as he explained
at the civil trial. She claimed that her friendship would Raoul,
had all taken place at you still, and his story
was so extraordinary that when I first heard it, I
had to say that I was profoundly scared. But yes,
(05:39):
we did go to Houston. Um. There was only parts
of the story that I could get corroberational. As a
parts of the story that I could corroborate. We're all
corroborated bits of the story. You turned out to the address,
and he leads you to then more credibility to the
rest of the story. So she gained an increduence. Can
I ask if they say one of this lady, a
(06:02):
very uneducated lady. She left to watch she was very young.
She had a reminous life of abuse when she was young.
By the time Bill Pepper had sat down with Glenda,
thirty five years had passed since she was first abused
by members of her family, but it was still a
hard story for her to tell. According to her husband Roy,
(06:23):
the abuse of Glenda, much of its sexual began when
she was eleven or twelve. When things became intolerable at home,
Glenda went to live with her aunt and uncle, but
things there became even worse. Late at night, Glenda's uncle
would come into her room. What's that is not? My
aunt knew that, but she didn't neventhing about it. And
(06:44):
I would babysit for kids, never night that never want
unique food, I'd say, the kids and and everything cleaned
the table off and made me throw at the trash.
I meant nothing to It's hard to understand the withholding
of food from a niece who was living with them.
Perhaps the aunt allowed herself to believe that Glenda was
somehow responsible for her husband's criminal conduct, and withholding food
(07:08):
was revenge or an attempt to drive the girl away.
Whatever it was, Glenda at age fourteen was in a
horrific situation. But after school she would walk past a
particular gas station and there would usually be this man
just hanging around every day, and he would be easy
to be sitting out over here drinking a coach or something.
(07:31):
Instead giving the tighter chips since step keep me going anyway.
Conversation and potato chips were a big draw for Glenda,
and she got to know this fellow who was called Dago.
She thought he was about thirty. He had dark hair
and spoke with something like a Spanish accent, and he
could never pronounce her name. He called her, oh, Linda.
(07:53):
Glenda never saw Dago pump gas at the station, but
he always seemed to be there. Someone else who encountered
Dago was Glenn, his little brother Royce. Here is what
Royce remembers about Daego, as portrayed by a voice actor.
There was a small gas station by a store my
sister and I would walk to, and he would see
us go by, and he would get in his car
(08:14):
and follow us. He used to follow my sister and
I around, you know, in his car. He was kind
of a dark complexed guy. I guess he talked Spanish
or some other you know. That's why he kind of
stood out to me, and and I was kind of
scared of him. But Glenda never had an unkind thing
to say about Daego during this time. At least, she
(08:36):
regarded him as a friend and saw him frequently that
first year, But the next year, when Glenda was fifteen,
she escaped her home life by marrying Roy Grabo. It
wasn't a great trade. Roy was in prison a lot
of the time, and when he was out he often
didn't come home at night. Here going forward are Roy
and Glenda Grabo, as portrayed by voice actors. I just
(08:59):
got to drinking. I wasn't holding the job too long,
but she pretty well went where she wanted to go.
I mean, I was doing what I wanted to do.
I guess I did. Anyway, I stayed drunk pretty good.
Glenda and Roy moved around a bit, but since Roy
was hardly there and not bringing money home, Glenda, as
Roy just said, went where she wanted to go. She
(09:21):
found some men who would pay for her attentions, and
that's how she kept her boat afloat. There was one
older man, maybe fifty five or sixty, who was particularly
fond of Glenda. This name was Tomorrow, though Glenda and
others called him Armando. He would look out for her
in small ways, and in return, she became his driver.
Where would they go down to the Houston Docks? What
(09:45):
would they get there? Stolen guns? And Roy Grabo apparently
knew and approved of Armando. He get her a run
down to the waterfront and carry boxes. They'd have boxes
coming off the ship or going on the ship, some
of the trunk and some of the back. There'll be
certain ones of them, you know, a certain guard on
the game. I have a picture of the guard, a
(10:05):
good one. You can see that. Make sure that certain
guard was there, and they could drive right through. Producer
Jack Saltman, who was investigating Glenda's story, described the arrangement
this way. Well, this is Grever told me that she
had actually as a driver for a morrow, and that
she had driven down to the dark Side in Eastern
(10:27):
and she did profriended us of the garden James and
only certain guards wrong duty. Did she then drive in
the bottom of the game of a certain busy David ship.
There were wooden boxes which she certainly be discovered contained
the several cousins. According to Glinda, the boxes of guns
(10:47):
would be brought to a rundown house in South Houston,
where they would be assembled. The house belonged to a
man named Felix Torino. They take the over to Felix's
and I'd go sit in the living room or else
I'll go in the kitchen Felix. Felix was always cooking.
A bunch of them would sit around and put them together.
They would snap them this and that. This was around
nineteen seventy five, and it was during this time that
(11:10):
Glenda arrived at the house with Armando to find Dago,
who she had only seen now and then in the
intervening years. He was sitting there with the rest of
the crew and acting like he was in charge. A
bigger surprise was that Armando turned out to be Dago's uncle,
and Daego's real name was Raoul. Glenda's connection with the
(11:30):
group continued to be Armando. He told Glenda that he
and Raoul had come from Portugal, which explained the accent
that sounded Spanish. Then, while driving around with her one day,
Armando told Glenda that Raoul had been involved in the
killing of Martin Luther King. This is Bill Pepper talking
to Glenda in Was it Armando that first told you
(11:56):
that he was involved, that Raoul was involved in the
in the King case? A minded tell me that I
couldn't believe it, You know, hadly what did Armando actually
say to you? Do you recall the Fando tell me
in a business of daylis with ye together sure bits
(12:18):
and pieces that you were starting to put together with
leading you to believe what that he had involvement or
that he was the actual killer. He was. He admitted
it later that he was killing. He was trying to
keep it from me what it was. He got a
man the mind of visit any mind of tewl made.
Glenda kept her car keys on a ring that also
(12:38):
had a miniature viewfinder which displayed three portraits John Kennedy,
Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. One day, Armando and
Glenda arrived at to Reno's house and the usual suspects
were sitting around the table playing cards. This is Glenda's
and Roy's account of what happened next, as portrayed by
voice actors. Well, just me and Armando came in, and
(13:01):
I had the viewfinder with me, had the car keys
hooked into it, and threw him a purse and the
keys on the table, and one of them looked at it,
and he threw it over to him. Yeah, and then
he looked through it and jumped backwards and the chair
hit the floor and he started stomping on the ground. Uh,
just keep going they're gonna be okay. Tell him, oh,
I don't cuss or nothing. Well, don't worry about it,
(13:24):
just say s O P or whatever. He just said,
I killed that s O B once, Do I have
to do it again? I never understood him saying it
that way, but that's the way they talked. The boy
(13:55):
that he had a fight with was a karate expert
and they got in a fight inside a bar over
a topless dancer. My brother kind of had a girlfriend
that was a topless dancer. At shy In Social Club
in night, Roy Grabow's younger brother got into a scrape.
It involved alcohol, guns and a girl. They had a
(14:15):
fight inside and the boy knew karate and all that stuff. Well,
a friend of my brothers had a gun. He gave
my brother a gun and my brother ran him out.
They broke the fight up inside. The owner of the
club he broke it up and run that boy off.
That boy stayed outside. About an hour later, my brother
went out and he had something in his hand. They
didn't know if it was a gun or what, but
(14:37):
they said he had a gun. Anyway, this other boy
gave my brother back the gun and my brother shot
him dead and they got him for murder and they
gave him eighty years. Roy and Glenda both felt that
Royce brother had gotten a raw deal and they decided
to do what they could. This was still in seventy
eight and they were living in Houston and had heard
that when it came to fighting a murder charge, Percy Foreman,
(15:00):
who was also in Houston, was the best there was.
So they called Foreman and asked if he would handle
the appeal. Here is Roy and Glenda. I called Percy
Foreman and he said he would handle it for five
thousand dollars, and he wants that five thousand dollars right
there before I leave, a look at you. Roy and
Glenda didn't have five thousand dollars, so they put a
(15:21):
mortgage on their house, and when they gave him the money,
Percy Foreman did look at Roy and Glenda, but mostly
at Glenda. Had a subsequent meeting, Foreman started to pester her,
asking Glenda if she would like to work for him.
I went up there, but he got mad, sort of
because I wanted to paint houses, or he wanted me
to stay right there. He was going to move his
(15:42):
office or something. He wanted me to get past the
secretary and out of the office or something while they
made their move when I don't understand what he was
talking about them. By the time producer Jack Saltman got
down to Texas and was looking in the Glendas story,
Percy Foreman had died, but Michael Degaron, Foreman's partner the
law firm, was still there. So Saltman took a shot
(16:03):
and asked to Garon if he had any recollection at
all of Glenda Grebo. Turns out he did. As Jack
Saltman describes, Mrs Grebo had said that she had told
me as part of her statement that her husband Roy
his brother, was on a birdy charge and that she
had been termed with Percy Thornan was the topman in
(16:26):
the business that had gone along to see it. She
said that he had said he would charge her five
thousand dollars, but that she would give her three thousand
dollars back if she went to work for them. She said,
I paid houses. What is that going to be? What
us is that going to be? Fro an attorney, He said,
what I want you to be? Some fire um. I
(16:48):
gathered the fighting was of the more sexual nature, and
this was Acknoledge fires instead Garren and that that's really
what she was asked to do. She ever got the money. So,
according to Foreman's partner Michael Degaron, Glenda did work of
some kind for Foreman, but she never got the money
she was promised. As we have seen before, not honoring
(17:11):
his promises was Foreman's standard way of doing business. But
he did give Glenda one thing. Mrs Grebo gave me.
It was a Cartrooto bestI Foreman, and he had inscribed
to her in his own handwriting. Saltman called it a cartoon,
but what he meant to say was that it was
a reproduction of a somewhat flattering line drawing a Foreman
(17:33):
on which he had written to Glenda, best wishes, Percy Foreman,
You're invited to check it out on our website. Michael
Garrett Hardy confirmed that that was posie of handwriting, and
then he was exactly the sort of thing that he did.
So Glenda Grebo ended up spending time around Foreman's office,
(17:54):
mostly cleaning and doing make work filing jobs. Bill Pepper
would ask Glenda if Foreman ever mentioned ray or the
King case, But we didn't even know it was his lawyer.
We had no idea. We'd seen things in his office,
you know, little things that were about Ray, and we
didn't pay much attention to it, and I didn't know
he was raised lawyer. But at some point when they
(18:15):
were alone, Foreman felt a need to tell Glenda what
an important man he was. He told her that he
was the lawyer and the king case, the lawyer for
the infamous James Earl Ray. Then he said something else,
something about that all white people is going to thank
Ray someday for being sacrificed, for being the sacrifice for us.
(18:37):
Pepper then asked Glenda what Foreman said about Ray, something
about his brother sold him up the river, or something like,
I don't understand we're talking about, but I remember that part.
Until this point, Glenda is the Foreman a plaything of
no consequence because he doesn't know what she knows about
Raoul and what Raoul said he did and what his
(18:58):
uncle Morrow said he did. But then Glenda makes a mistake.
She thinks, because Foreman is a lawyer and already involved
in the case, an educated man up presumed the good
character that he is someone she can talk to. I figured, well,
I found somebody that knows something about this. I'm going
to tell him about it, you know. But I went
(19:19):
to the wrong person. I think. Glenda then told Percy
Foreman about how she knew Raoul and how she thought
he had been involved. I thought I was talking to somebody,
you know, somebody with authority, just talk about it. I
had no idea he was this liar. I didn't know
what was going on or nothing. I just just didn't
(19:40):
know where to turn. So Glinda tells Foreman about Raoul.
Foreman is surprised and deeply disturbed. Just a few months before,
he testified before the House Select Committee and been caught
in a number of outright lies about how he entered
the case and what he did and didn't do for Ray,
about hiring loss students to do investigative work and lying
(20:02):
under oath to a congressional committee could have cost him
his license, but since Foreman was on the Ray did
It Alone team, he got off with only a scolding,
and nobody challenged him about his dubious story about Ray
telling him and only him that Raoul was a made
up guy. But now suddenly Foreman had working in his
very office a woman who might blow his whole world apart,
(20:26):
and this is where the story gets really weird, because
Percy Foreman, former attorney for James ol Ray, appears to
know the elusive Raoul. As Jack Saltman describes the situation
when she told Raoul cooking to his story, when she
told Raoul that she was working to Percy Foreman, he
apparently lost his temper and there was curious word between
(20:49):
him and pressing forward. Foreman then allegedly ranging up and
so your life is in danger. There are no witnesses
to this conversation, but apparently the two men exchanged heated
words on the phone. Raoul, we might guess, is furious
that Foreman has for his own pleasure taking Glenda on
as part time office help, and Foreman most likely is
(21:12):
angry that Raoul and his friends have told Glenda thinks
that she should not know. The danger for each man
is real and it can be measured in words, because
the next time Foreman sees Glenda, he tells her that
she must leave town or be killed because of what
she knows. Maybe by telling her this he was just
trying to save her life. More likely, he has his
(21:33):
own interests in mind. Perhaps he fears a violent encounter
between Roy and Raoul, or a botched murder attempt that
drives Glenda to the police, better to just have her
leave if he can get her to go. You got
to get out of town or something. And then he said,
he talked to Raoul, but I don't know if he
came up there, talked to him on the phone or what.
He kind of sort of threatened me. He sort of
(21:56):
put it like, he gotta get out of town or
you ain't even gonna here. From what Glenda could understand,
Percy Foreman and Raoul seemed to know each other. Foreman
was a criminal defense attorney. He might have represented Raoul
or some of his cohorts when they got into trouble,
because defending criminals is what Foreman did for a living.
(22:20):
Knowing his way around and being on friendly speaking turns
with local hoodlums was good business. Did Foreman know of
Raoul before the King murder? That would be utterly outrageous,
but he may have. He certainly seemed to know him
or know of him after the murder. In any case,
Glenda and Roy took the thread at face value and
(22:40):
moved as fast as they could. But there was a
house to sell. So it didn't happen right away. One day,
Glenda was alone in her car. I just come back
from Cols and I hit the freeway. The wheel come off,
and the semi truck was right on my tail. I've
looked in my rearview mirror. I said, oh God, here
I go. I knew I was dead rat. Then it
(23:00):
just served out of the way, just in time. Pepper
then asked if they thought that someone had loosened the
lux and there was no doubt at all in Roy
Grabo's mind. It had to be. It had to be.
Roy and Glenda Grabo moved from Texas to Mississippi sometime
in nineteen nine, and they never heard from Percy Foreman again.
(23:21):
But then they saw something on TV. It was called
the Trial of James Earl. Ray King met with Glenda
(23:47):
and Loriy Bravo and listened to with Glenda and say, uh,
Paul hearing her safe when he got into wonder, I founded.
I didn't necessarily believe. I thought this was to do
too incredible. We were back with John Billings, as he
describes meeting Glenda and Roy Graybow because we were going
(24:08):
to follow this story down another road. Billings fellow investigator
Ken Herman and TV producer Jack Saltman, all Harvard big
doubts about Glenda's story, but they decided to look into it.
But where is start? We didn't know quite you to
talk to. So what we did was, I have handsome
contacts in Miami, New York. I've met a number of
(24:32):
people who quiney influential what I'm saying in underworld or
call and I had called back, call them the real help.
And they contacted a a bind coming called Las Vegas
Bond Comty in Houston. It was ran a large black
female was about six ft two and captain machine gun
(24:53):
art as interesting. Herman and Saltman flew to Houston and
paid a visit to the Las Vegas Bond comp and
the black woman with the machine gun. They told her
who they were looking for, but she said that she
had never heard of this guy, Raoul, but she offered
the names of two people who might have One was
a retired state judge and the other owned a string
(25:13):
of movie theaters. So Herman and Saltman found the judge
and sat down with him. He said he never met Raoul,
but he had heard of a guy by that name
who had a gun running operation on the Houston Docks.
Not a lot to go on, but it was something.
Then there was the theater guy. They found him and
he said right away that he knew Glenda. Here's billings.
(25:35):
They asked him if he had any pictures a ring laugh,
he said, I've got lots of pictures of Blen. He said,
I keeping under my band, and he went produced some
young pictures, not sque to pictures from very young pictures
for a plum, very trashic girl and talked about he's
in canters. Whether ye know she didn't, yes. He verified
what she was saying about running in this group of
(25:57):
gun runners and serious people and using the theaters, and
then and again story ending up, but no one they
talked to new Raoul's last name Tomorrow. Raoul's uncle spent
much more time with Glenda and Roy, and no one
knew his last name either, But he had led on
(26:17):
that he was a former seaman and he had some
sort of maritime card and occasionally received payments of some kind.
So Herman and Saltman paid a visit to the offices
of the Maritime Union. They presented an unusual first name
and wondered if someone will look through the files to
see if there was a person in the Union with
that name. Usually the answer would have been no, they
(26:38):
don't give out this kind of information. But Saltman said
that it was a matter of utmost importance. They were
making a movie. Jack kind of bossed them into wod
out as BBC predictions and we're making a movie, and
they gave him the informations that we had. We had
(26:58):
the name with the real last name, and the help
of a Memphis police sergeant, the team came to possess
a copy of Raoul Quelo's naturalization record. It said that
Kuelo was born in July of nineteen thirty four and
that he had first come to the United States in
nineteen sixty one. He was naturalized in nineteen sixty seven.
(27:18):
Saltman was elated what we had also discovered that the
same Rowl that we had met, and we see his
naturalization papers. Among his papers of his application, we knew
that he had been working in alongment factory Importugal Invisibeth, Capital, Portugal,
prior to see in the American naturalization and I believe
(27:41):
there was an EMBI note on the papers that suggested
he was known that he had been seting assembled guns
out of Portugal at this time. But then the big prize, Well,
we obtend a photograph that I believe was one on
his naturalization papers, so that would have been uto um
(28:05):
having O taking the immigration photograph. What we then did
was we've got five of the similar type graphs. We
made a spread of six phetographs, which was a sort
of thing to recent situation. So once they had the
official photo of Raoul Kaelo, Saltman thought to construct a
(28:27):
six photo lineup or display using photos of men of
similar age, and to use that display to see who
else might recognize this man and what person more important
to show it to than James Earl Ray. And as
John Buildings explains, he was visiting Ray quite often at
that time. We discussed shot and UH excided when he
(28:51):
had let see So we went to a r head
in prison and never James and said tame on in
granto James, and I told her he had a picture
photo and he seems so surprised, and I asked him
he would I attempt to pick out whole in his
photo spread. He said that he would, so we put
(29:15):
this before you know, James put on his glasses and
Benner two. She studied the picture very careful, and as
he studied and he looked down at him and he
just kind of dropped his finger down said that's bottle
And he said you possibly just He said, yes, I am.
And then Ray said something unexpected. He said, I've seen
(29:38):
this picture before, and I have seen this, so we
mean you've seen this picture before, you know, I think
Hoppy can see this because and he said that during
the Blue Quote House assassinations to me that someone had
mailed him in no return addressed picture and it was
this picture and it had a name on the backup
(29:59):
and he could remember the Lane. And I asked him,
We asked him he did anyone ever about this? He
said no, no one could have Benifiest, that can anybody else?
Or see said all my attorney, uh say Lee label
first and we also are working in his behalf and
seen it. After Billings reported what Ray had said, Saltman
set up a meeting with April Ferguson, who, along with
(30:21):
Mark Lane, had represented James ol Ray during the House
Committee hearings. He left the photo out on a table
with other material, but when Ferguson passed by she stopped
and picked it up. She picked the photo draft out
and said, I saw the photograph. I was absolutely a
fault because he was a direct actor to get the
(30:44):
photograph intress. Because it wasn't just anywhere, this was very specificity.
And I said what happened and she said, well, there
wasn't name grit of the back of the checked that
out and he turned out to be a placement to
the Phone group. And I said, when did you intersue
pedograph at all? She'd be cham pangra Hi. I think
(31:06):
the house investigators who were looking into the house as
susinations committee. The investigation was going on at that time,
and she said she was shown the pedograph him one
of the investigators. They haven't talk you to the office.
And I said did you pursue it? And she said
that top. We have no money in packing us at all.
Everybody offulys notices to pay and we just did not
(31:27):
have the money to hire five investigators to go checking.
So now, with all the information now discovered about Raoul Kawelo,
it was easy enough to trace the man or someone
using that identity to a home in Yonkers, New York.
But was the man living there with his wife and
daughter the same raoul who came over from Portugal in
(31:50):
nineteen sixty one. Was he the Dago that Glenda had known?
Was he the raoul that Percy Foreman seemed to know?
And most of all, was he the raoul who led
James ol Ray into Memphis. There were a few attempts
to answer these questions. One was simply to knock on
his door and talk to the man. This is Jack Saltman.
(32:11):
Some months later I went around to his house in
New York City, and not on the door. M the door,
if I can explain, was there was a gos iron
grill type door, and then there was a sort of
mesh class doors mention oject. They can obviously see how
(32:32):
we liked to see the sort of dark interior of
the house with shapes that It was apparently the wife
who first came to the door, but she didn't open it. Instead,
she threw at Saltman what he was pretty sure were
curses in Portuguese. She was then replaced by someone he
assumed was the daughter. She's spoken perfect English and asked
(32:53):
him what he wanted and what he please go away.
Saltman said that he was an English journalist, and that
he had heard certain allegations made about her father and
he wanted to sit down with him and talk. She
replied her father was indisposed. Then I said, would you
help look at this photograph? In confirms to all worstless
effect that the photographs her father. And she said something
(33:16):
to the effect that anybody could get nationalization photograph, and
if I could get that, then I could get all
the other answers to what I was chasing anywhere and
not something to that change. She'd been no noble for
that she had positively identified. I didn't show the spread.
I showed an enloyement of that favor. Actually, you just
showed her single vote. Yes, there's no want to ask
(33:39):
for it because of father, because I never believe that
was her father. So Saltman left Raoul's house believing he
had gotten a positive idea from Raoul's daughter by way
of the photo he had shown her through the door.
Not exactly conclusive, but Saltman had another idea. He gave
Glenda Grabow Raoul's phone number and asked her to call him.
(34:01):
She did, and, according to phone records, she had a
conversation of several minutes with Raoul. According to Glenda, Raoul
seemed happy enough to hear from her, as though nothing
bad had ever happened between them. Roy Grabow was present
during this phone call, and he testified at the civil
trial that from what he heard, Glenda was speaking to
(34:22):
someone she knew and who knew her. But when Glenda
described the conversation to Bill Pepper, he wanted to know
one thing. How did Raoul on the telephone pronounce her name?
Glenda replied, Golenda, Olenda down down, Tolenda Linda rather than
Glendas name. As you may recall, oh Linda was how
(34:50):
Dago pronounced Glenda's name in Houston. At this point, it
would appear that Pepper was well on his way to
establishing that the Yonkers Raoul was the Houston Raoul that
both Glenda and Percy Foreman new, and the Raoul who
Ray had identified by way of his photo, But how
to prove it, how to put it all on record?
At that time, Pepper was putting together the civil suit
(35:12):
on behalf of credit Scott King and her family, So
we decided to subpoena Raoul Kuolo to see if he
could get him to testify under oath. But Quelo declined
to appear, and he didn't have to because he lived
in New York and this was a civil matter in Tennessee.
The defenders of the Yonkers Raoul say the whole thing
was a case of mistaken identity, and according to his lawyers,
(35:34):
Raoul Kuelo had documents which said he was working at
a General Motors plant in Tarrytown, New York from nineteen
sixty two till nine two. In contrast, Glenda gray Bows
story seems moth eaten, filled with holes and sketchy people.
But however, sketchy Glenda's story does have a trail, and
(35:56):
by following the clues on that trail, Herman and Saltman
discover Raoul's last name, his naturalization papers, and then the
photo that came with those papers, a photo that Roy
and Glenda say is of the Raoul that they knew,
And according to John Billings, it's the same photo that
James Earl Ray picked out and then said that both
he and his lawyer had seen it in and the
(36:20):
Kailo family and Yonkers, to my knowledge, has never denied
that the photo was genuine. So if the Yonkers Raoul
has nothing at all to do with any of this.
If it really is a case of mistaken identity, how
is this photo floating around at the time of the
house hearings in So is the Yonkers raoul the same
(36:40):
person as the Houston raoul. Well, there's a good body
of evidence that says that he is. But whether he
is or not, there is something more important here, something
that goes to the very heart of this case. It's
the assertion that Percy Foreman knew the Houston raoul and
that he told Glenda Grebo that James Earl Ray was
(37:00):
just a guy who had to be sacrificed. And more
than that, Foreman told her that if she didn't want
to be sacrificed herself, she needed to leave town because
this raoul had been in on the murder of Martin
Luther King and he was dangerous. And Foreman knew all
this because he knew the guy. With Percy Foreman, the
(37:21):
hits keep coming. Why did he force himself into this case?
Who was he really working for? And those questions do
have answers. Stay with us and find out what really
went down when Martin Luther King was murdered. Next time
(37:42):
on the MLK tapes, it really kind of opened my
eyes that there was more of a conspiracy than I
thought there was. Paul reached inside his jacket and pulled
out what looked like a wallet. He flipped it open,
and all I could see where the letters FBI. Paul
smiled at me and said, don't worry. I'm your friend,
not your enemy. He said. Everybody had to make a
(38:05):
little money, even cops. I knew we had worked with
local cops before, but I had never known of the
FEDS being crooked. I got the feeling that there were
some investigators who were involved in either the timing, the surveillance,
(38:25):
maybe the planning we're talking about, I'm surfacing at the
time when the trial was about to take place. They
didn't want that civil trial. I have a client who
had imparted some information to be that, quite frankly, could
prove that James were already did not shoot. Dr King.
(38:55):
Thanks for listening to The MLK Tapes, a production of
I Heart Radio and tended with 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 are
(39:16):
executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producers Jamie
Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Cover art by Mr Soul to six with photography by
Artemis Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and Grace Rowyer
at U t A, The Nord Group, back Median Marketing,
(39:36):
Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If you have questions,
you can visit our website, the email k tapes dot com.
We posted photos and videos related to 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 I Heart 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. After several hours of questioning and cross examining,
(00:26):
Ray told him that there was no such person as Raoul,
and he knew there was no such person as Raoul.
He admitted that and told me that he had to
invent in vent Rayoul, because that's fuck Hughie wanted. He
suggested something that implied that I had more acuity than Bradford,
(00:50):
Huey and Hayes. I asked him how you happened to
pick the name Raoul, and he said that was the
name of a operator of a party house that he
had held up, and he admitted there was no Raoul.
He laughed at Haines and Hewish, having accepted Rayoul's story.
(01:12):
That was Percy Foreman, former attorney for James Arl Ray,
telling the House Select Committee in ninety eight that Ray
had told him that the whole story about Raoul, giving
him money and moving him about the country was made up,
and that Ray had done this because the writer Bradford Huey,
who Ray had never met, had wanted him to do it.
According to Foreman, the reason that Ray told him this
(01:35):
but had never told anyone else, was that he respected
Foreman's intelligence, that he knew that Foreman would see through
his lie about Raoul, and according to Foreman, they had
a good laugh about it. Of course, it may have
been Foreman making up the story here, but if it
were rely on his part, it was a safe one
to tell, because at that time no one had found
(01:56):
the mysterious Raoul or even claimed to know of him.
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 found a gun that James ol Ray bought in
Birmingham that killed Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun
(02:19):
that killed Dr King. James Lvey 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 it handled in Memphis for dead in them could
hand it. And I've lived with it so long. My Sirion,
(02:41):
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 d
MLK tapes. As we heard in previous episodes, James Earl
(03:02):
Ray escaped from prison in nineteen sixty seven and a
year later found himself in Memphis on the day King
was killed. After he had been captured, he told his
attorneys and anyone else who would listen that he had
met a man in Canada named Raoul who had moved
him about the country and gave him money in exchange
for odd chores. But while most details in race story
proved to be true, for example, the restaurant where he worked,
(03:25):
or the woman with whom he had a brief affair,
no one was able to find Raoul, not a big
surprise because Ray never knew Raoul's last name, where he lived,
or even for Raoul was his real first name, and
Raoul most likely didn't want to be found. The official
explanation for how Ray financed his travels, and the one
embraced by the House Committee, was that instead of getting
(03:47):
money from the fictional Raoul, Ray robbed a bank or two,
and that if he had any help, it came from
his brothers John and Jerry. So for twenty five years,
no one had come up with a good lead as
to who them his serious Raoul might be, if he
had existed at all. But then after seeing the trial
on television, Roy and Glenna Grabo contacted John Billings and
(04:11):
Ken Herman, who were investigators working with Bill Pepper and
producer Jack Saltman on the HBO trial. We met with
a blended Grabow and rom. She first said, I mean
they they're almost Their openly statement was we know the ray,
but we don't know it's the Rays. And we listened
(04:33):
to her story about her early life in Houston, Texas
and the stories and her meeting and this mysterious Rayoul,
and and after it was over, when they left, I
was convinced that she was a government plan. That's my
disposity is that this is incredible story and it's just government.
(04:54):
They've sent somebody here to discredit us with the story.
And if we're gonna go chasing this Roman in depart
because we're telling over kids saslation sounds very scared. After
hearing Glenda's story, Herman and Billings brought it to Jack Saltman,
with whom they had begun work on a proposed movie
that would be about the murder of Dr. King. Saltman
(05:16):
also found Glenda's story hard to believe, as he explained
at the civil trial. She claimed that her friendship would Raoul,
had all taken place at you still, and his story
was so extraordinary that when I first heard it, I
had to say that I was profoundly scared. But yes,
(05:39):
we did go to Houston. Um. There was only parts
of the story that I could get corroberational. As a
parts of the story that I could corroborate. We're all
corroborated bits of the story. You turned out to the address,
and he leads you to then more credibility to the
rest of the story. So she gained an increduence. Can
I ask if they say one of this lady, a
(06:02):
very uneducated lady. She left to watch she was very young.
She had a reminous life of abuse when she was young.
By the time Bill Pepper had sat down with Glenda,
thirty five years had passed since she was first abused
by members of her family, but it was still a
hard story for her to tell. According to her husband Roy,
(06:23):
the abuse of Glenda, much of its sexual began when
she was eleven or twelve. When things became intolerable at home,
Glenda went to live with her aunt and uncle, but
things there became even worse. Late at night, Glenda's uncle
would come into her room. What's that is not? My
aunt knew that, but she didn't neventhing about it. And
(06:44):
I would babysit for kids, never night that never want
unique food, I'd say, the kids and and everything cleaned
the table off and made me throw at the trash.
I meant nothing to It's hard to understand the withholding
of food from a niece who was living with them.
Perhaps the aunt allowed herself to believe that Glenda was
somehow responsible for her husband's criminal conduct, and withholding food
(07:08):
was revenge or an attempt to drive the girl away.
Whatever it was, Glenda at age fourteen was in a
horrific situation. But after school she would walk past a
particular gas station and there would usually be this man
just hanging around every day, and he would be easy
to be sitting out over here drinking a coach or something.
(07:31):
Instead giving the tighter chips since step keep me going anyway.
Conversation and potato chips were a big draw for Glenda,
and she got to know this fellow who was called Dago.
She thought he was about thirty. He had dark hair
and spoke with something like a Spanish accent, and he
could never pronounce her name. He called her, oh, Linda.
(07:53):
Glenda never saw Dago pump gas at the station, but
he always seemed to be there. Someone else who encountered
Dago was Glenn, his little brother Royce. Here is what
Royce remembers about Daego, as portrayed by a voice actor.
There was a small gas station by a store my
sister and I would walk to, and he would see
us go by, and he would get in his car
(08:14):
and follow us. He used to follow my sister and
I around, you know, in his car. He was kind
of a dark complexed guy. I guess he talked Spanish
or some other you know. That's why he kind of
stood out to me, and and I was kind of
scared of him. But Glenda never had an unkind thing
to say about Daego during this time. At least, she
(08:36):
regarded him as a friend and saw him frequently that
first year, But the next year, when Glenda was fifteen,
she escaped her home life by marrying Roy Grabo. It
wasn't a great trade. Roy was in prison a lot
of the time, and when he was out he often
didn't come home at night. Here going forward are Roy
and Glenda Grabo, as portrayed by voice actors. I just
(08:59):
got to drinking. I wasn't holding the job too long,
but she pretty well went where she wanted to go.
I mean, I was doing what I wanted to do.
I guess I did. Anyway, I stayed drunk pretty good.
Glenda and Roy moved around a bit, but since Roy
was hardly there and not bringing money home, Glenda, as
Roy just said, went where she wanted to go. She
(09:21):
found some men who would pay for her attentions, and
that's how she kept her boat afloat. There was one
older man, maybe fifty five or sixty, who was particularly
fond of Glenda. This name was Tomorrow, though Glenda and
others called him Armando. He would look out for her
in small ways, and in return, she became his driver.
Where would they go down to the Houston Docks? What
(09:45):
would they get there? Stolen guns? And Roy Grabo apparently
knew and approved of Armando. He get her a run
down to the waterfront and carry boxes. They'd have boxes
coming off the ship or going on the ship, some
of the trunk and some of the back. There'll be
certain ones of them, you know, a certain guard on
the game. I have a picture of the guard, a
(10:05):
good one. You can see that. Make sure that certain
guard was there, and they could drive right through. Producer
Jack Saltman, who was investigating Glenda's story, described the arrangement
this way. Well, this is Grever told me that she
had actually as a driver for a morrow, and that
she had driven down to the dark Side in Eastern
(10:27):
and she did profriended us of the garden James and
only certain guards wrong duty. Did she then drive in
the bottom of the game of a certain busy David ship.
There were wooden boxes which she certainly be discovered contained
the several cousins. According to Glinda, the boxes of guns
(10:47):
would be brought to a rundown house in South Houston,
where they would be assembled. The house belonged to a
man named Felix Torino. They take the over to Felix's
and I'd go sit in the living room or else
I'll go in the kitchen Felix. Felix was always cooking.
A bunch of them would sit around and put them together.
They would snap them this and that. This was around
nineteen seventy five, and it was during this time that
(11:10):
Glenda arrived at the house with Armando to find Dago,
who she had only seen now and then in the
intervening years. He was sitting there with the rest of
the crew and acting like he was in charge. A
bigger surprise was that Armando turned out to be Dago's uncle,
and Daego's real name was Raoul. Glenda's connection with the
(11:30):
group continued to be Armando. He told Glenda that he
and Raoul had come from Portugal, which explained the accent
that sounded Spanish. Then, while driving around with her one day,
Armando told Glenda that Raoul had been involved in the
killing of Martin Luther King. This is Bill Pepper talking
to Glenda in Was it Armando that first told you
(11:56):
that he was involved, that Raoul was involved in the
in the King case? A minded tell me that I
couldn't believe it, You know, hadly what did Armando actually
say to you? Do you recall the Fando tell me
in a business of daylis with ye together sure bits
(12:18):
and pieces that you were starting to put together with
leading you to believe what that he had involvement or
that he was the actual killer. He was. He admitted
it later that he was killing. He was trying to
keep it from me what it was. He got a
man the mind of visit any mind of tewl made.
Glenda kept her car keys on a ring that also
(12:38):
had a miniature viewfinder which displayed three portraits John Kennedy,
Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King. One day, Armando and
Glenda arrived at to Reno's house and the usual suspects
were sitting around the table playing cards. This is Glenda's
and Roy's account of what happened next, as portrayed by
voice actors. Well, just me and Armando came in, and
(13:01):
I had the viewfinder with me, had the car keys
hooked into it, and threw him a purse and the
keys on the table, and one of them looked at it,
and he threw it over to him. Yeah, and then
he looked through it and jumped backwards and the chair
hit the floor and he started stomping on the ground. Uh,
just keep going they're gonna be okay. Tell him, oh,
I don't cuss or nothing. Well, don't worry about it,
(13:24):
just say s O P or whatever. He just said,
I killed that s O B once, Do I have
to do it again? I never understood him saying it
that way, but that's the way they talked. The boy
(13:55):
that he had a fight with was a karate expert
and they got in a fight inside a bar over
a topless dancer. My brother kind of had a girlfriend
that was a topless dancer. At shy In Social Club
in night, Roy Grabow's younger brother got into a scrape.
It involved alcohol, guns and a girl. They had a
(14:15):
fight inside and the boy knew karate and all that stuff. Well,
a friend of my brothers had a gun. He gave
my brother a gun and my brother ran him out.
They broke the fight up inside. The owner of the
club he broke it up and run that boy off.
That boy stayed outside. About an hour later, my brother
went out and he had something in his hand. They
didn't know if it was a gun or what, but
(14:37):
they said he had a gun. Anyway, this other boy
gave my brother back the gun and my brother shot
him dead and they got him for murder and they
gave him eighty years. Roy and Glenda both felt that
Royce brother had gotten a raw deal and they decided
to do what they could. This was still in seventy
eight and they were living in Houston and had heard
that when it came to fighting a murder charge, Percy Foreman,
(15:00):
who was also in Houston, was the best there was.
So they called Foreman and asked if he would handle
the appeal. Here is Roy and Glenda. I called Percy
Foreman and he said he would handle it for five
thousand dollars, and he wants that five thousand dollars right
there before I leave, a look at you. Roy and
Glenda didn't have five thousand dollars, so they put a
(15:21):
mortgage on their house, and when they gave him the money,
Percy Foreman did look at Roy and Glenda, but mostly
at Glenda. Had a subsequent meeting, Foreman started to pester her,
asking Glenda if she would like to work for him.
I went up there, but he got mad, sort of
because I wanted to paint houses, or he wanted me
to stay right there. He was going to move his
(15:42):
office or something. He wanted me to get past the
secretary and out of the office or something while they
made their move when I don't understand what he was
talking about them. By the time producer Jack Saltman got
down to Texas and was looking in the Glendas story,
Percy Foreman had died, but Michael Degaron, Foreman's partner the
law firm, was still there. So Saltman took a shot
(16:03):
and asked to Garon if he had any recollection at
all of Glenda Grebo. Turns out he did. As Jack
Saltman describes, Mrs Grebo had said that she had told
me as part of her statement that her husband Roy
his brother, was on a birdy charge and that she
had been termed with Percy Thornan was the topman in
(16:26):
the business that had gone along to see it. She
said that he had said he would charge her five
thousand dollars, but that she would give her three thousand
dollars back if she went to work for them. She said,
I paid houses. What is that going to be? What
us is that going to be? Fro an attorney, He said,
what I want you to be? Some fire um. I
(16:48):
gathered the fighting was of the more sexual nature, and
this was Acknoledge fires instead Garren and that that's really
what she was asked to do. She ever got the money. So,
according to Foreman's partner Michael Degaron, Glenda did work of
some kind for Foreman, but she never got the money
she was promised. As we have seen before, not honoring
(17:11):
his promises was Foreman's standard way of doing business. But
he did give Glenda one thing. Mrs Grebo gave me.
It was a Cartrooto bestI Foreman, and he had inscribed
to her in his own handwriting. Saltman called it a cartoon,
but what he meant to say was that it was
a reproduction of a somewhat flattering line drawing a Foreman
(17:33):
on which he had written to Glenda, best wishes, Percy Foreman,
You're invited to check it out on our website. Michael
Garrett Hardy confirmed that that was posie of handwriting, and
then he was exactly the sort of thing that he did.
So Glenda Grebo ended up spending time around Foreman's office,
(17:54):
mostly cleaning and doing make work filing jobs. Bill Pepper
would ask Glenda if Foreman ever mentioned ray or the
King case, But we didn't even know it was his lawyer.
We had no idea. We'd seen things in his office,
you know, little things that were about Ray, and we
didn't pay much attention to it, and I didn't know
he was raised lawyer. But at some point when they
(18:15):
were alone, Foreman felt a need to tell Glenda what
an important man he was. He told her that he
was the lawyer and the king case, the lawyer for
the infamous James Earl Ray. Then he said something else,
something about that all white people is going to thank
Ray someday for being sacrificed, for being the sacrifice for us.
(18:37):
Pepper then asked Glenda what Foreman said about Ray, something
about his brother sold him up the river, or something like,
I don't understand we're talking about, but I remember that part.
Until this point, Glenda is the Foreman a plaything of
no consequence because he doesn't know what she knows about
Raoul and what Raoul said he did and what his
(18:58):
uncle Morrow said he did. But then Glenda makes a mistake.
She thinks, because Foreman is a lawyer and already involved
in the case, an educated man up presumed the good
character that he is someone she can talk to. I figured, well,
I found somebody that knows something about this. I'm going
to tell him about it, you know. But I went
(19:19):
to the wrong person. I think. Glenda then told Percy
Foreman about how she knew Raoul and how she thought
he had been involved. I thought I was talking to somebody,
you know, somebody with authority, just talk about it. I
had no idea he was this liar. I didn't know
what was going on or nothing. I just just didn't
(19:40):
know where to turn. So Glinda tells Foreman about Raoul.
Foreman is surprised and deeply disturbed. Just a few months before,
he testified before the House Select Committee and been caught
in a number of outright lies about how he entered
the case and what he did and didn't do for Ray,
about hiring loss students to do investigative work and lying
(20:02):
under oath to a congressional committee could have cost him
his license, but since Foreman was on the Ray did
It Alone team, he got off with only a scolding,
and nobody challenged him about his dubious story about Ray
telling him and only him that Raoul was a made
up guy. But now suddenly Foreman had working in his
very office a woman who might blow his whole world apart,
(20:26):
and this is where the story gets really weird, because
Percy Foreman, former attorney for James ol Ray, appears to
know the elusive Raoul. As Jack Saltman describes the situation
when she told Raoul cooking to his story, when she
told Raoul that she was working to Percy Foreman, he
apparently lost his temper and there was curious word between
(20:49):
him and pressing forward. Foreman then allegedly ranging up and
so your life is in danger. There are no witnesses
to this conversation, but apparently the two men exchanged heated
words on the phone. Raoul, we might guess, is furious
that Foreman has for his own pleasure taking Glenda on
as part time office help, and Foreman most likely is
(21:12):
angry that Raoul and his friends have told Glenda thinks
that she should not know. The danger for each man
is real and it can be measured in words, because
the next time Foreman sees Glenda, he tells her that
she must leave town or be killed because of what
she knows. Maybe by telling her this he was just
trying to save her life. More likely, he has his
(21:33):
own interests in mind. Perhaps he fears a violent encounter
between Roy and Raoul, or a botched murder attempt that
drives Glenda to the police, better to just have her
leave if he can get her to go. You got
to get out of town or something. And then he said,
he talked to Raoul, but I don't know if he
came up there, talked to him on the phone or what.
He kind of sort of threatened me. He sort of
(21:56):
put it like, he gotta get out of town or
you ain't even gonna here. From what Glenda could understand,
Percy Foreman and Raoul seemed to know each other. Foreman
was a criminal defense attorney. He might have represented Raoul
or some of his cohorts when they got into trouble,
because defending criminals is what Foreman did for a living.
(22:20):
Knowing his way around and being on friendly speaking turns
with local hoodlums was good business. Did Foreman know of
Raoul before the King murder? That would be utterly outrageous,
but he may have. He certainly seemed to know him
or know of him after the murder. In any case,
Glenda and Roy took the thread at face value and
(22:40):
moved as fast as they could. But there was a
house to sell. So it didn't happen right away. One day,
Glenda was alone in her car. I just come back
from Cols and I hit the freeway. The wheel come off,
and the semi truck was right on my tail. I've
looked in my rearview mirror. I said, oh God, here
I go. I knew I was dead rat. Then it
(23:00):
just served out of the way, just in time. Pepper
then asked if they thought that someone had loosened the
lux and there was no doubt at all in Roy
Grabo's mind. It had to be. It had to be.
Roy and Glenda Grabo moved from Texas to Mississippi sometime
in nineteen nine, and they never heard from Percy Foreman again.
(23:21):
But then they saw something on TV. It was called
the Trial of James Earl. Ray King met with Glenda
(23:47):
and Loriy Bravo and listened to with Glenda and say, uh,
Paul hearing her safe when he got into wonder, I founded.
I didn't necessarily believe. I thought this was to do
too incredible. We were back with John Billings, as he
describes meeting Glenda and Roy Graybow because we were going
(24:08):
to follow this story down another road. Billings fellow investigator
Ken Herman and TV producer Jack Saltman, all Harvard big
doubts about Glenda's story, but they decided to look into it.
But where is start? We didn't know quite you to
talk to. So what we did was, I have handsome
contacts in Miami, New York. I've met a number of
(24:32):
people who quiney influential what I'm saying in underworld or
call and I had called back, call them the real help.
And they contacted a a bind coming called Las Vegas
Bond Comty in Houston. It was ran a large black
female was about six ft two and captain machine gun
(24:53):
art as interesting. Herman and Saltman flew to Houston and
paid a visit to the Las Vegas Bond comp and
the black woman with the machine gun. They told her
who they were looking for, but she said that she
had never heard of this guy, Raoul, but she offered
the names of two people who might have One was
a retired state judge and the other owned a string
(25:13):
of movie theaters. So Herman and Saltman found the judge
and sat down with him. He said he never met Raoul,
but he had heard of a guy by that name
who had a gun running operation on the Houston Docks.
Not a lot to go on, but it was something.
Then there was the theater guy. They found him and
he said right away that he knew Glenda. Here's billings.
(25:35):
They asked him if he had any pictures a ring laugh,
he said, I've got lots of pictures of Blen. He said,
I keeping under my band, and he went produced some
young pictures, not sque to pictures from very young pictures
for a plum, very trashic girl and talked about he's
in canters. Whether ye know she didn't, yes. He verified
what she was saying about running in this group of
(25:57):
gun runners and serious people and using the theaters, and
then and again story ending up, but no one they
talked to new Raoul's last name Tomorrow. Raoul's uncle spent
much more time with Glenda and Roy, and no one
knew his last name either, But he had led on
(26:17):
that he was a former seaman and he had some
sort of maritime card and occasionally received payments of some kind.
So Herman and Saltman paid a visit to the offices
of the Maritime Union. They presented an unusual first name
and wondered if someone will look through the files to
see if there was a person in the Union with
that name. Usually the answer would have been no, they
(26:38):
don't give out this kind of information. But Saltman said
that it was a matter of utmost importance. They were
making a movie. Jack kind of bossed them into wod
out as BBC predictions and we're making a movie, and
they gave him the informations that we had. We had
(26:58):
the name with the real last name, and the help
of a Memphis police sergeant, the team came to possess
a copy of Raoul Quelo's naturalization record. It said that
Kuelo was born in July of nineteen thirty four and
that he had first come to the United States in
nineteen sixty one. He was naturalized in nineteen sixty seven.
(27:18):
Saltman was elated what we had also discovered that the
same Rowl that we had met, and we see his
naturalization papers. Among his papers of his application, we knew
that he had been working in alongment factory Importugal Invisibeth, Capital, Portugal,
prior to see in the American naturalization and I believe
(27:41):
there was an EMBI note on the papers that suggested
he was known that he had been seting assembled guns
out of Portugal at this time. But then the big prize, Well,
we obtend a photograph that I believe was one on
his naturalization papers, so that would have been uto um
(28:05):
having O taking the immigration photograph. What we then did
was we've got five of the similar type graphs. We
made a spread of six phetographs, which was a sort
of thing to recent situation. So once they had the
official photo of Raoul Kaelo, Saltman thought to construct a
(28:27):
six photo lineup or display using photos of men of
similar age, and to use that display to see who
else might recognize this man and what person more important
to show it to than James Earl Ray. And as
John Buildings explains, he was visiting Ray quite often at
that time. We discussed shot and UH excided when he
(28:51):
had let see So we went to a r head
in prison and never James and said tame on in
granto James, and I told her he had a picture
photo and he seems so surprised, and I asked him
he would I attempt to pick out whole in his
photo spread. He said that he would, so we put
(29:15):
this before you know, James put on his glasses and
Benner two. She studied the picture very careful, and as
he studied and he looked down at him and he
just kind of dropped his finger down said that's bottle
And he said you possibly just He said, yes, I am.
And then Ray said something unexpected. He said, I've seen
(29:38):
this picture before, and I have seen this, so we
mean you've seen this picture before, you know, I think
Hoppy can see this because and he said that during
the Blue Quote House assassinations to me that someone had
mailed him in no return addressed picture and it was
this picture and it had a name on the backup
(29:59):
and he could remember the Lane. And I asked him,
We asked him he did anyone ever about this? He
said no, no one could have Benifiest, that can anybody else?
Or see said all my attorney, uh say Lee label
first and we also are working in his behalf and
seen it. After Billings reported what Ray had said, Saltman
set up a meeting with April Ferguson, who, along with
(30:21):
Mark Lane, had represented James ol Ray during the House
Committee hearings. He left the photo out on a table
with other material, but when Ferguson passed by she stopped
and picked it up. She picked the photo draft out
and said, I saw the photograph. I was absolutely a
fault because he was a direct actor to get the
(30:44):
photograph intress. Because it wasn't just anywhere, this was very specificity.
And I said what happened and she said, well, there
wasn't name grit of the back of the checked that
out and he turned out to be a placement to
the Phone group. And I said, when did you intersue
pedograph at all? She'd be cham pangra Hi. I think
(31:06):
the house investigators who were looking into the house as
susinations committee. The investigation was going on at that time,
and she said she was shown the pedograph him one
of the investigators. They haven't talk you to the office.
And I said did you pursue it? And she said
that top. We have no money in packing us at all.
Everybody offulys notices to pay and we just did not
(31:27):
have the money to hire five investigators to go checking.
So now, with all the information now discovered about Raoul Kawelo,
it was easy enough to trace the man or someone
using that identity to a home in Yonkers, New York.
But was the man living there with his wife and
daughter the same raoul who came over from Portugal in
(31:50):
nineteen sixty one. Was he the Dago that Glenda had known?
Was he the raoul that Percy Foreman seemed to know?
And most of all, was he the raoul who led
James ol Ray into Memphis. There were a few attempts
to answer these questions. One was simply to knock on
his door and talk to the man. This is Jack Saltman.
(32:11):
Some months later I went around to his house in
New York City, and not on the door. M the door,
if I can explain, was there was a gos iron
grill type door, and then there was a sort of
mesh class doors mention oject. They can obviously see how
(32:32):
we liked to see the sort of dark interior of
the house with shapes that It was apparently the wife
who first came to the door, but she didn't open it. Instead,
she threw at Saltman what he was pretty sure were
curses in Portuguese. She was then replaced by someone he
assumed was the daughter. She's spoken perfect English and asked
(32:53):
him what he wanted and what he please go away.
Saltman said that he was an English journalist, and that
he had heard certain allegations made about her father and
he wanted to sit down with him and talk. She
replied her father was indisposed. Then I said, would you
help look at this photograph? In confirms to all worstless
effect that the photographs her father. And she said something
(33:16):
to the effect that anybody could get nationalization photograph, and
if I could get that, then I could get all
the other answers to what I was chasing anywhere and
not something to that change. She'd been no noble for
that she had positively identified. I didn't show the spread.
I showed an enloyement of that favor. Actually, you just
showed her single vote. Yes, there's no want to ask
(33:39):
for it because of father, because I never believe that
was her father. So Saltman left Raoul's house believing he
had gotten a positive idea from Raoul's daughter by way
of the photo he had shown her through the door.
Not exactly conclusive, but Saltman had another idea. He gave
Glenda Grabow Raoul's phone number and asked her to call him.
(34:01):
She did, and, according to phone records, she had a
conversation of several minutes with Raoul. According to Glenda, Raoul
seemed happy enough to hear from her, as though nothing
bad had ever happened between them. Roy Grabow was present
during this phone call, and he testified at the civil
trial that from what he heard, Glenda was speaking to
(34:22):
someone she knew and who knew her. But when Glenda
described the conversation to Bill Pepper, he wanted to know
one thing. How did Raoul on the telephone pronounce her name?
Glenda replied, Golenda, Olenda down down, Tolenda Linda rather than
Glendas name. As you may recall, oh Linda was how
(34:50):
Dago pronounced Glenda's name in Houston. At this point, it
would appear that Pepper was well on his way to
establishing that the Yonkers Raoul was the Houston Raoul that
both Glenda and Percy Foreman new, and the Raoul who
Ray had identified by way of his photo, But how
to prove it, how to put it all on record?
At that time, Pepper was putting together the civil suit
(35:12):
on behalf of credit Scott King and her family, So
we decided to subpoena Raoul Kuolo to see if he
could get him to testify under oath. But Quelo declined
to appear, and he didn't have to because he lived
in New York and this was a civil matter in Tennessee.
The defenders of the Yonkers Raoul say the whole thing
was a case of mistaken identity, and according to his lawyers,
(35:34):
Raoul Kuelo had documents which said he was working at
a General Motors plant in Tarrytown, New York from nineteen
sixty two till nine two. In contrast, Glenda gray Bows
story seems moth eaten, filled with holes and sketchy people.
But however, sketchy Glenda's story does have a trail, and
(35:56):
by following the clues on that trail, Herman and Saltman
discover Raoul's last name, his naturalization papers, and then the
photo that came with those papers, a photo that Roy
and Glenda say is of the Raoul that they knew,
And according to John Billings, it's the same photo that
James Earl Ray picked out and then said that both
he and his lawyer had seen it in and the
(36:20):
Kailo family and Yonkers, to my knowledge, has never denied
that the photo was genuine. So if the Yonkers Raoul
has nothing at all to do with any of this.
If it really is a case of mistaken identity, how
is this photo floating around at the time of the
house hearings in So is the Yonkers raoul the same
(36:40):
person as the Houston raoul. Well, there's a good body
of evidence that says that he is. But whether he
is or not, there is something more important here, something
that goes to the very heart of this case. It's
the assertion that Percy Foreman knew the Houston raoul and
that he told Glenda Grebo that James Earl Ray was
(37:00):
just a guy who had to be sacrificed. And more
than that, Foreman told her that if she didn't want
to be sacrificed herself, she needed to leave town because
this raoul had been in on the murder of Martin
Luther King and he was dangerous. And Foreman knew all
this because he knew the guy. With Percy Foreman, the
(37:21):
hits keep coming. Why did he force himself into this case?
Who was he really working for? And those questions do
have answers. Stay with us and find out what really
went down when Martin Luther King was murdered. Next time
(37:42):
on the MLK tapes, it really kind of opened my
eyes that there was more of a conspiracy than I
thought there was. Paul reached inside his jacket and pulled
out what looked like a wallet. He flipped it open,
and all I could see where the letters FBI. Paul
smiled at me and said, don't worry. I'm your friend,
not your enemy. He said. Everybody had to make a
(38:05):
little money, even cops. I knew we had worked with
local cops before, but I had never known of the
FEDS being crooked. I got the feeling that there were
some investigators who were involved in either the timing, the surveillance,
(38:25):
maybe the planning we're talking about, I'm surfacing at the
time when the trial was about to take place. They
didn't want that civil trial. I have a client who
had imparted some information to be that, quite frankly, could
prove that James were already did not shoot. Dr King.
(38:55):
Thanks for listening to The MLK Tapes, a production of
I Heart Radio and tended with 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 are
(39:16):
executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producers Jamie
Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Cover art by Mr Soul to six with photography by
Artemis Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and Grace Rowyer
at U t A, The Nord Group, back Median Marketing,
(39:36):
Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If you have questions,
you can visit our website, the email k tapes dot com.
We posted photos and videos related to 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 I Heart Radio app,
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