The Death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Decades after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a vast swathe of the American public still doesn't buy the government's official conclusion. Why? In today's show, the guys sit down with Bill Klaber, the creator and host of The MLK Tapes, to get a deeper understanding of the allegations of conspiracy that continue to surround the life and death of Dr. King.

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

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer,
all mission controlled decades. Most importantly, you are you. You
are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. This is a very special interview, folks.
It's one we've been looking forward to for quite a while.
If you are hearing today's show on the day it publishes,

(00:49):
it is January sevente, the day that the US and
the world commemorates the life and work of Dr Martin
Luther King, Jr. Based in Georgia, Dr King's work left
a fundamental mark on the fabric of American society and
also inspired an ongoing fight for justice across the planet.
As you know, his life met a tragic early end

(01:10):
on April fourth, nineteen sixty eight, when he was assassinated.
The ensuing investigation left Dr King's supporters, friends, family, and
a great deal of the American public skeptical. So now,
more than fifty years after his death, people are still
working to understand what actually happened, and that's we're diving
into today. But we're not diving in alone. We are

(01:34):
joined with the journalist, author podcaster Bill Klaibourg, co creator
of the RFK Tapes, and also we're joined to speak
with him about his newest project, The MLK Tapes, in
which Bill applies his investigative acumen to the controversy and
the ongoing questions surrounding the assassination of the legendary civil

(01:54):
rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Bill, thanks so much
for joining us on air today. It's a pleasure to
be here. Ben. Thank you. Like now, one of the
first questions that comes up in any of our research
and preparation for these interviews is the question of inspiration
and motivation on your part as the creator of this project.

(02:19):
Folks may not be aware that you have also been
the co creator of the RFK Tapes podcast, and one
of our first questions is what inspired you to reinvestigate
the story of that assassination and in what ways did
this project inspire you to begin unraveling the story of Dr. King, well,
we go back aways if if, if we're going in

(02:40):
that direction. And it was thirty years ago that I
joined a group of people who were looking into the
murder of Robert Kennedy, and specifically looking at the police
files that had just been released after twenty years of secrecy.
I mean, Robert Kennedy was murdered. Uh, they said this
guy did it, and yet their police files were off
limits to everyone, and they finally were forced open night

(03:04):
and I was with a group of people who started
going through them, and we were shocked by what we
were finding. And we understood right away why these files
were secret, because it was a record of the police misconduct,
their fabrication of evidence, destruction of evidence, and coercion of witnesses.
And I went in and visited, uh, interviewed Sir Hann
in prison. It was a difficult thing to do. Came

(03:25):
out and I wrote an article on what I had found,
and I wasn't the only one, but what we had
found in the police files and it was a terrific article.
And no one, no one was interested. They just didn't
want it. So I I went back to Upstate New
York UH and thought, you know, I've got these tapes
of the police threatening these witnesses, and and I just

(03:49):
got this idea. I went to a little public radio
station upstate New York and we put together this one
hour documentary called the RFK Tapes, and we just put
it out there and was picked up by a hundred
and sixty public radio stations across the country. I didn't
even know there were a hundred and sixty public radio stations,
and it was picked up, picked up by that, And

(04:10):
then the week after the Time magazine came out with
a full page review of the documentary, and St. Martin's
Press called me up and asked me to write a book.
Now that was all on a story that nobody wanted,
And what's the takeaway from that? The takeaway from that
is that if you can there is a great power
if you can hear the actual witnesses voices as opposed

(04:34):
to someone talking about the case. And that's what we
had in the RFK Tapes. So a few years ago,
when I ran into a man who had spent decades
investigating the murder of Martin Luther King and had dozens
and dozens of audio tapes, it wasn't a great leap
for me to think of doing a podcast, and that's
how the MLK tapes got started. Yeah, let let's really

(04:56):
dive into that. I want to talk about the taste themselves. U.
The person that you're you're referring to there is William
Bill Pepper, And uh, he's somebody that you've been speaking
with for quite a while now, and he is the
person from from whom you've got all these tapes that
we're gonna be hearing in the show. What was his
involvement with Martin Luther King and with James Earl Ray,

(05:19):
Just tell us a little bit about that. That's an
incredible story, um, and Bill Pepper was friends with Martin
Luther King. During the last year of his life, he
had gone to Vietnam. He had sent himself to Vietnam
to see what was going on there, and he came
back with photographs and stories of what he had seen.
And it was shocking what he had seen, because what

(05:42):
we were doing over there with napalm and white phosphorus
was not what we said we were doing. And he
came back and nobody wanted his story, nobody wanted his photographs,
and finally he shopped around and ramparts magazine stepped up
and and took his story and took his photographs, and
Martin Luther King saw the article and saw the photographs

(06:03):
and called him up and said, I want to I
want to I want to see you. I want to
talk to you. And the two of them met and
Pepper showed King what he had, and Pepper said, the
King actually wept when he saw the photographs of the
children that were burned, horribly, horribly burned. So they started
a relationship, and Pepper was one of the influences why

(06:26):
King had come out in the spring of nine sixty
seven at Riverside Church and came out against the war
in Vietnam. And uh, he and Pepper worked together the
next year. Um and then King was assassinated, and Pepper
believed at first the same thing that everybody else did,
that James el Ray was a guy who killed King,

(06:47):
and there wasn't really that much more to it. And
uh it was only a few years later when Ralph Abernathy,
King's number two, called Pepper on the phone and said,
I don't like what I'm here and I'm not believe
in one I'm here and I'd like to go talk
to this guy Ray myself, would you come with me?
And Pepper said, yeah, Okay, I don't really know that

(07:08):
much about the case. I need to I need to
look into it a little. But they agreed to go,
and that summer they went up to Brushing Mountain State Prison,
sat down with James O. Ray, talked to him for
five hours, and they each came away with the almost
certain knowledge in their own minds that Ray had not
shot King. So that started Bill's investigation into the murder

(07:29):
of his friend. And he started going to Memphis and
asking questions and talking to people, and once it became
known that there was somebody interested, people started coming out
of the woodwork. People started coming forward. This is what
I saw, this is what I heard. And gradually the
case built up. But you know, I mean a lot

(07:51):
of things happened between. His investigation was forty years long. Um,
but uh, it's amazing how many people stepped forward, especially
as they approached death. People all of a sudden had
pangs of conscience. People didn't want to die with the
information they were holding, and they would come forward. And
every time somebody came forward, he would sit them down,

(08:12):
put them under oath, and record what they had to say,
and that's the material that we have to work with
on the MLK tapes. One of the questions that leads
me to naturally, and I think it's something a lot
of people in the audience today will be wondering, is
built before you began working on this project, on this
deep dive into the assassination, what would you say was

(08:35):
your your typical understanding going in, like did you accept
the official conclusions of the U. S. Government or did
you have your own questions that you brought to the story.
I was in law school when Martin Luther King was shot,
and uh, I first thought that, I mean, there was
a lot of crap going on in the nineties sixties,

(08:57):
a lot of people getting shot, a lot of people
getting killed, and it didn't matter how powerful they were,
They're getting killed anyway. And so it wasn't a great
leap to think that or something really underhanded happened with Kings.
So that was my first thought. But then this guy,
James el Ray was arrested. Uh. He eventually pled guilty
to the crime, and like a lot of other people,

(09:17):
I thought, well that was that, um, But the basic
story was this guy was so had so much hatred
for black people and so much hatred for Martin Luther
King that he escaped prison and then went out and
searched for King and found him and killed him because
he hated him so much. And that was that was
a very bogus story, but I, like a lot of

(09:38):
people believed it because it really wasn't anything else to
do to believe. But I had suspicions. But I just
want to say that, you know, for a lot of
people listening to this podcast, Dr King is it's sort
of a is an historical figure. He's like Abraham Lincoln. Well,
he wasn't like Abraham Lincoln to me. I remember when

(09:59):
he came to my college and he spoke, Uh, and
he stood up and he spoke. There were no notes,
He just spoke from the heart, and he he talked
about how difficult the road was going to be going forward. Uh,
it wasn't It wasn't gonna be as easy as just
getting a seat on the bus. It wasn't gonna be
as easy getting a seat on a lunch counter. And

(10:20):
and he was talking about how he wanted to fight
for economic justice, not just civil rights. He was moving
away from civil rights and he hadn't yet come out
against the war, but that was just coming just in
a few months from them. And I was also in
New York City when he spoke, uh just a couple
of weeks after he gave the speech at um Uh

(10:43):
Riverside Church, and he spoke at the steps of the
United Nations. And the man who introduced him at that rally,
and it was more people than I had ever seen
in one place. It just as far as you could see,
there were people. And the man who introduced him was
Bill Pepper. Uh into do something at that rally in
New York City. And I don't remember what Pepper said

(11:05):
that didn't register, But I do remember what Martin Luther
King said, and you could hear his voice booming out,
stop the bombing, stop the bombing, save our national honor,
and stop the bombing. So he was a real person
to me. He wasn't just some some historical somebody. I've
had a lot of feelings because I came of age
in the nineteen sixties and there's a lot of anchor

(11:26):
inside me because of what I saw happened, and looking
into the murder Robert Kennedy and to a certain extent,
John Kennedy has just made me mistrust a lot of
things that were said to us back then. You know,
I think it's easy to take for granted, like how
today we have access to so much information, like literally
at our fingertips the whole of history of music, of culture. Um.

(11:48):
And so it's maybe a little easier to be distrustful
and question these kind of narratives that you know, get
put forth because you know, now with the you know,
the benefit of hindsight, the story around James l Rage
stinks to high heaven and just even just common sense
kind of makes one feel, with even a little bit
of research that there's just something weird going on there.
But why at the time do you think it was

(12:10):
easier to swallow that story. Was it something that people
just needed to put this to bed because it was
so painful? Um? Or was it just kind of like
something that made sense? Uh, you know, given that lack
of you know, what we have to work with today,
I would say neither. Um, I think what it was. Uh. Well,
first of all, James Elry was arrested in Great Britain.

(12:30):
He was brought to the United States. Uh. He was
then put in a cage um for eight months that
where the lights were not turned off at all any
time during the day. Uh, he was only allowed to
see his brother and his lawyer. So he's kept in
communicado the whole time. And uh when he you know,
when they finally let him come out, it was to

(12:52):
make a play of guilty to the charges. So when
whenever I have a conversation with someone and I said, oh,
I'm working on the Martin Luther King case, the common
reaction is, well, the guy said he did it. What
what's the big deal? And that's what they were going for,
because if they could get a plea of guilty out
of him, they would never have to explain any of
the rest of it. And so what we're trying to

(13:15):
do in this podcast, we have a whole episode, I
think it's number four where we go into how that
plea actually came about and how he was forced into it,
and it's it's a nasty, nasty story, but you know
that's that's what people will come back at you with, Well,
he said he did it, and you know the answer
is no. He always denied it. He always said he

(13:37):
did not kill Martin Luther King. From the first moment
he said it to his last breath. There is no
reason to question it for for for you, for someone
that was even as close and to to him as
a as a person to king, or at least in
terms of like you know, a person you respected and saw,
um you know speak in real life. There was no
nothing in the back of your mind that made you
at the time question it because of those reasons. Um,

(14:00):
I wouldn't say nothing. I questioned a lot of stuff,
but uh, you know, there wasn't anything to hang your
hat on. There wasn't anything too that you could use
to know, um, and so I was suspicious. It was
I'm sorry, Yeah, So I'm want to get into this
the concept of the trial and uh, you know, we

(14:21):
we don't have to go too deep into it. But
James Earl Ray was never given a proper trial by
jury because he pled guilty. He attempted to appeal that
plea I think a few days later, right, maybe three
days later, and he was unable to to get that
to happen. And there's some weird circumstance there too. I'll

(14:42):
let you listen to the podcast to get some of that.
But uh, some evidence did come forward in some um
let's say some ways that you may not expect. And
this was mind blowing to me, and I learned it
through the creation of this this podcast. Was that there
was a n mock trial of James Earl Ray that

(15:03):
aired on HBO. I was ten years old at the time.
I had no idea this occurred. I've never seen footage
of it until I was like forced to because I was,
you know, making the show with you. And it blew
my mind two to know that some evidence was actually
put on trial in a mock way. Uh and and

(15:23):
people got to watch HBO and learn about it. Can
you tell us a little bit about that mock trial
and what happened? It was a great idea. It goes
to the creativity of Bill pepper and and the energy
he brought to this case, and he tried to get
Ray a real trial. He appealed the case. He went
to the state, and they went to federal court, and
they went to a federal appeals court, and he finally

(15:44):
went went to the Supreme Court saying, this man never
got a trial. He was denied the trial he was
entitled to, and he failed. He just couldn't get a
trial for James el Ray. And then the idea came
to he knew this produced are in Great Britain, who said,
why don't we put one on? You know, an HBO

(16:05):
signed on for it, and it was a big undertaking.
They had UM, a real federal judge, retired federal judge
UM overseeing the case and in using the laws of
u UM the state of Tennessee, and they had a
real jury that was selected impartial jury, and they had

(16:25):
a US prosecutor from Memphis, hickman Ewing, on the other side.
And they conducted the trial and put on the evidence
and introduced the witnesses pretty much just as you would
at a trial. James L. Ray also testified and he
was cross examined by hickman Ewing, who gave him a
rough time, but uh, he just stuck with his his story.

(16:48):
But this was as close to a real trial as
you could get. And uh, you know, the the jury
decided that they didn't meet meet the requirement of reasonable
doubt and they acquitted him, which, by the way, is
what his original attorneys, we might get to later, thought
they were going to do in the first place. After
they took the case on, they thought the evidence against

(17:09):
Ray was really thin and what there was of it
appeared to have been planted. So I mean, anyway that
this trial, this HBO trial, um, they got their first win,
their first big win. Of course nobody covered it, so
you know, it wasn't it wasn't very well known. And
this is, uh, this is one of the things. There

(17:30):
are so many questions I want to return to, but
let's let's stay on this for a moment, because this
is one of the things that I think much of
history conveniently forgot. Is Uh, the narrative that a lot
of children in the US are taught in school is
inarguably sanitized in some ways, right, or at least focuses

(17:53):
on some things and kind of glosses over others. And
if you if you count the mock trial as at
the very least the closest to a trial that Ray got.
It may surprise other people to know that the King
family successfully won a civil suit in nineteen ninety nine.

(18:14):
This suit, I believe also at least temporarily inspired the
Department of Justice to reopen their investigation. Could you tell
us a little bit about the civil suit, a little
bit about how like the order of operations which broke
down in which it broke down and what that means
to the investigation as people perceive it today, and looking

(18:39):
specifically for the finding where they agreed it was a conspiracy.
The civil trial in nine gosh, how to exactly explain it.
It was a terrific, terrific idea because it was a
way to use a civil suit to sue a person
who they knew was involved in the murder and then
various unnamed government agency in the murder of Martin Luther King.

(19:02):
And you know, they were only asking for a hundred
dollars worth of damages. Uh. But what the whole purpose
of it was that they could get in the in
the context of this trial, they could get all the
witnesses that that were still alive and that could testify,
get them up and have them testify under oath in
a court of law, and have that testimony be part

(19:24):
of that trial and so where it would be accessible
to history. And so that was that was the big
takeaway there. And the fact that they won the case
I don't think means a whole lot because there wasn't
a lot of opposition on the other side. Um, they
were only looking for a hundred bucks uh to a
certain extent, It wasn't as important event as you might

(19:47):
think it was in terms of the verdict, but in
terms of the process, in terms of all the people
who went and testified, in terms of the participation of
the King family, and what Kreta Scott King said after
the trial, that's the importance of it. So sometimes people say, oh, well,
there really wasn't anybody fighting on the other side, and
that's the truth. And they could have made a bigger

(20:07):
mess of things if there had been. But what it
was was a way to get the evidence out in front,
and they did that. And we there. We're going to
take a quick moment to hear a word from our sponsor,
but we'll be right back. And we've returned with Bill
clam So I want to talk about the Department of

(20:30):
Justice's reaction to that trial and to its conclusion. I'm
gonna read you a tiny little excerpt here from their
website Justice dot gov. Uh. They say, we recommend no
further federal investigation of the Jowers allegations. The man's name
is Lloyd Jowers, by the way, who was sued, or
any other allegations related to the assassination unless and until

(20:51):
reliable substantiating facts are presented. At this time, we are
aware of no information to warrant any further investigation of
the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. So they
say that in response to everything that came forward during
that civil trial, stuff that had occurred before, which you know,
became a part of the civil trial, why do you

(21:13):
Bill think there's more to this case than the Justice
Department does. Well, they came to the same conclusion that
the FBI came to the day after Martin Luther King
was shot. They came to the same conclusion that the
House Select Committee on Assassinations came to, even though there
were numerous examples of the House Select Committee stumbling on

(21:37):
some piece of the truth and then all of a
sudden realized they're in that situation, and they make up
another cockamami story instead of saying, oh, oh, I see
James ol Ray actually didn't have a racial motive and
he didn't wasn't driven by hate. Uh Do they then say, oh,
maybe he didn't shoot King. No, they say, well, he

(21:58):
probably did to get a reward for the bounty of
which there's no evidence at all. And several different times
they would come upon uh something like that. That Percy
Foreman was the big liar was another one of their conclusions,
because he went and testified and he just revealed himself
as a total crap head. Uh, And they said nothing

(22:22):
nothing he said it can be relied upon. Do they
then think, oh, maybe this guy who pushed his way
into the case, who's such a liar, maybe he was
working for somebody else. No, they don't do that. They
just shrug it off. Um. When they when they when
they they finally come to the conclusion that James el

(22:43):
Ray going back and exchanging the rifle he bought for
another rifle, they finally realized, oh my goodness, this is
ten years later. That probably means there was somebody else involved.
Of course, that's what it means. So um, and they
come to that conclusion. But oh my goodness, that can't
be because that's what Ray said. That can't be true.

(23:03):
So the next best thing is, you know, it was
probably his brother, and that keeps it all in the family.
So they keep stumbling over these things that should be
clues as to there's something else going on here, and
they just make up another phony story. And so the
same thing with the Justice department. Their job was, you know,

(23:24):
it gets handed down and handed down and then and
then they go and they find every little reason to
disbelieve every single witness. Oh, this guy lied to his
seventh grade teacher about something or other, and so you know,
that was their job. Their job was to find there
was you know, come out and say, there's nothing to
worry about, folks. We've been we've been back in there,

(23:44):
We've looked at the evidence. Don't worry, there's nothing to see.
That's what they're paid to do. And this, uh, this
I think could use a little context for our audience
today because at times can currently concurrent with these investigations
and with the shutdowns of investigations, the public was slowly

(24:06):
learning about a government program called co in Tell Pro,
and it wasn't i believe, confirmed for some time, at
least officially until after King's death, that co Intel Pro,
which was a surveillance and monitoring program on the part
of Uncle Sam, was actively monitoring and even harassing King

(24:29):
and members of his family. Was the d o J
or the FBI were they motivated to perhaps go with
their convenient narrative despite the contradictory facts because of knowledge
of co Intel Pro or do you believe that played

(24:50):
any role in their calculus there. I don't think that
played a role in the calculus so much. I mean,
when co Intel Pro came out, they were hard. Everybody
was horribly embarrassed. Church Committee had hearings and they were
particularly outraged at how uh this program was used on
Dr King and um, so there was a lot of
outrage about that and and uh but um, if you

(25:15):
follow it back, it's really hard to understand why Hoover
went after King in such a way. Um, here you
had a black leader who had a lot of moral
authority and who was standing up and telling people, Yes,
we want our rights, we want what is due to us,
and we want to be we want to be nonviolent,

(25:39):
we want to obey the law. We want you know,
he was not preaching violence, and yet they were going
after him like he was a great danger to the society.
And it's it's and Hoover um was pretending all the
time that somehow King was falling under the control of
communists and that was the big reason that he had

(26:00):
to have the right to wire tap King. And it's
a pretty sad story. And in the States, Bobby Kennedy
briefly gave him the right to wire tap for one month,
and that was supposed to be uh, you know, if
you see if you can come up with any you know, information,
communist information for one month, and then Mark John Kennedy

(26:21):
was then murdered right after that, and any control that
Bobby Kennedy had over Hoover he instantly evaporated, and Hoover
within a month held a big meeting in Washington that
Kennedy didn't know about where that all they did was
discussed different ways they could bring down Martin Luther King.

(26:41):
And that's a matter of record. I listened. Every once
in a while, I'll just to refresh my soul on
this thing. I'll listen to a speech that King gave
one place or another um And the other day I
just listened to the entire Riverside Church speech on Vietnam.
And I would recommend to anybody, if you want to

(27:04):
know about Martin Luther King, you want to know about
his character, you want to know about his courage, you
listen to that speech. Because he's standing up. He's the
first major public figure to stand up and say this
is wrong. And he knows when he does it. He
knows when he does it, it's gonna mean the money
is gonna dry up on his end, and he's gonna
make big enemies. And he's still he stands up and said,

(27:25):
this is wrong to be doing what we're doing there,
And you know, you listen to a tape like that
and then hear these people bringing forward little stuff to
assassinate his character. It makes me sick. And just to
remind everybody, that speech was given exactly one year to
the day before he was assassinated, exactly one year to

(27:46):
the day. And following that speech, that's when he was
called a communist by newspapers and you know, prominent media figures.
So just to keep that in context. Well, I mean,
I think it's like most of us can tell the difference,
but Queen rhetoric and political posturing and what Dr King did,
I mean when you hear him speak, it has a

(28:08):
magic to it. There's there's an absolute, you know, level
of charisma that is outside of the charisma of a politician,
you know, or someone who is trying to kind of
twist the screw and make people behave as they want to.
This is a man that put himself in harm's way
that put himself his reputation, you know, uh, out there
in a way where people could besmirch him at every turn. Uh,

(28:31):
and he didn't care. And so when you hear him
make these speeches, they are absolutely the real deal. I mean,
whatever you may think, I think that comes through. And
I think it's interesting when you were we're getting towards
kind of the intent, like what why assassinate Martin Luther King? Yes,
he represented a movement, of course, and he was the
fifth face of this movement. But the problems that that

(28:51):
that led to the movement being necessary pre exist, you know,
the movement and and and you can't really get rid
of that problem or the people's discontentment by killing a man.
You know, if anything, it's going to make them angrier.
And I heard someone uh in in commenting on on
this tragic event of of his passing, that he they

(29:13):
didn't realize that that he was the white man's biggest
advocate in terms of, you know, keeping these riots from
destroying you know, society, and and from being out there
and and and preaching non violence and things like that.
Can you kind of speak to that side of Dr
King and how maybe the people that were trying to
assassinate his character, let alone him physically. Maybe missed the point,

(29:35):
missed that that whole idea that he really was kind
of there to help them. It's a little hard to understand. Uh.
You know, Hoover is a big part of this equation.
He's not the only piece, um, but Hoover had some
sort of hatred towards King that is a little bit unexplainable.
I think he was a little jealous. I think he

(29:57):
was jealous of King and didn't like the attention he
was getting um, and he liked being the guy that
was pushing all the pieces around, and he was used
to getting his way because he had secret files on everybody,
and he had a lot of files on John F. Kennedy.
Uh And one of the reasons that Bobby Kennedy ended
up agreeing to the limited wire tapping thing that Hoover

(30:21):
so badly wanted was that Hoover had just gotten Kennedy
out of another one as his sexual escapade scrapes with
Ellen Romesh, who was thought to maybe be connected to
East German intelligence. And uh So, after Hoover rescued Kennedy
and his presidency, that might have gone down because they

(30:43):
were gonna have professional hearings on this thing. And Hoover
then met with the heads of Congress in the Senate
and saying, oh, this is gonna, you know, blow up
in everybody's face, and we can't do this, and a
lot of that, and he got Kennedy out of it,
and then he went back to Bobby and said, well,
you know, do I get my wire taps? And at
that point, um, you know, Bobby said yeah, okay, you know,

(31:03):
for a month or whatever if you really think you
can dig up stuff. And they often said, oh, Bobby
Kennedy was the one who who decided to wire tap King.
It's not true he consented because it basically their hand
was forced and they owed it to Hoover, who not
only got him out of that trouble, but got him
other out of other sexual trouble that he had gotten

(31:23):
himself into a quid pro quo. It appears, uh this
might surprise many people to learn that those kind of deals,
unofficial but impactful, can occur, and they often occur outside
of the public sphere. There are things that the public
will learn about in retrospect. And when we're talking about murkiness,

(31:44):
Bill um one thing that really stands out to me
in episode three, specifically, we were fortunate enough to get
a sneak peak. Is just the sheer, the sheer profundity
of murkiness that is involved in this story of James
Earl Ray. And I think this gave I think this

(32:05):
um gave a lot of red meat to people who
were initially claiming there was a cover up or corruption involved.
And I'd love to hear you talk about some things
that really stood out to me in your conversations in
episode three, wherein we we already talked about how Ray

(32:26):
never actually went to a jury trial. He very early
on recanted is guilty plea, but he also managed to
escape from incarceration, never spoke about who may have assisted him,
And despite the fact that he was known to be
a petty criminal, our understanding is that he was also

(32:47):
found with some pretty good fake identification at one point.
How also, you know, let's just throw this out here
and emphasize this again, the guy was arrested in Great Britain.
How does a petty criminal who actually doesn't sound like
they're that great at petty crime? How does a petty

(33:07):
criminal manage to achieve all of these things to escape
from incarceration, to have actionable like I'll say, it may
be pro level fake I D S. And then how
does he get across the pond? Are there any answers
to these questions? Well, you know, we're gonna be called
conspiracy theorists anyway, so um uh, you know, and I

(33:32):
don't think of myself as conspiracy theorist. You know, I'm
not a conspiracy guy. I'm an evidence guy. But uh,
but there are some places where you need to just
sort of apply theory to it, and um, I think
his escape from prison is one of them. There is evidence.
Ronnie Lee Atkins claims that he and his father drove

(33:52):
out to Missouri with twenty dollars and gave it to
the prison warden uh and changed for the release of
James ol Ray. And the idea was that they were
looking for some you know, and it maybe they may
have had other ideas of other people they wanted to use,
but they were looking for someone they could use to

(34:13):
be a fall guy. And they thought this guy Ray
was perfect for them, and so they allowed him to escape,
arranged for him to escape in his bread truck, and
then they just kept taps tabs on him as he
traveled around in Canada and other places, and then kind
of directed him here there. You know, it may be
that at one point they he was sent down to

(34:35):
Birmingham and then nothing happened. There might have been some
plot to kill King in Birmingham. He was out in
Los Angeles for a long time. They say he stalked King.
He didn't stalk King. He was out in Los Angeles.
King came to Los Angeles. But the thing with Ray
is that he would never rat on anybody who helped him.

(34:55):
So whether it was whoever helped him escape from prison,
this was his culture. He had spent almost his entire
adult life in prison, and one of the things he
learned is if you just don't rat out anybody, and uh,
and he wouldn't. Yes, he had uh fake identities of
people uh that he could never have gotten on his own.

(35:19):
He had to have had help. He had to have
help escaping from prison. He could not have made that
escape on his own. He had to have help and
probably permission. Um. So you know, there are places where
he just will not tell, even to Bill Pepper, various
things he met with people in New Orleans. He says
he met with Raoul in New Orleans. It might have

(35:41):
been more people than that, maybe Carlos Marcello was in
the room. But what good does it do him to
say that, because that will only assure he gets killed
in prison. So it may be that it's a more
complicated story than he's been willing to uh to let
on um. But he knows that, you know, if he

(36:02):
starts saying, well, there are these mob guys in New
Orleans that I met, it will be the end for him.
So I don't know. That's just an idea I have
in my head. But he's he's a strange character. And
I don't believe he shot Martin Luther King. I don't
believe he knew Martin Luther King was going to be shot.
I don't think that everything he told Bill Pepper is
necessarily the truth. Yes, and you've had similar conversations in

(36:27):
the course of the MLK tapes, And in some of
these conversations you mentioned something that I want to go
back to. It's a character that may not be familiar
to people with a cursory knowledge of the assassination. Ensuing investigations,
a guy named Raoul who apparently appears and as kind

(36:47):
of a cameo and then somehow vanishes from history. So
can you introduce our audience to Raoul or at least
the story of this person. Raoul was the person that
Ray said he met in Canada and who he started
to go to work for smuggling, doing small smuggling jobs

(37:07):
across the border, and then then going south, and Raoul
gave him enough money to buy a Mustang and then
they did some small smuggling jobs in Mexico. And Raoul
was the one who um according to Ray, who who
told him to go buy a rifle in Birmingham, and
then when he came back with the rifle, said it
was the wrong rifle and he had to go back

(37:28):
and exchange it for another gun. So Raoul is that
character when Ray tells his story when he's arrested, he
tells his story to Bradford Huie and um, where he
went in Canada and who he met, and where he
worked and and all these things, and Hughie was able
to substantiate almost all of it. Um, you know, where

(37:50):
he worked at the Indian Trail restaurant. And Hughie goes
up and talks to those people and said he was
he was really a gentleman. He was. He was the
sweetest guy. He did his work. Um, you know, we
saw no evidence of this burning hatred inside this man.
But the one person, the only person they can't locate,
is Raoul. But that's not surprising because they didn't know

(38:12):
his last name, they didn't know where he lived, they
didn't know if Raoul was even his correct first name,
and Raoul certainly didn't want to be located. So it's
it's a little difficult to to find this role except
we think we we may have in the podcast and
and uh, you know, stick with us, because you know,

(38:33):
there's a certain point where a woman shows up and
said I knew a Raoul back in the day, and
he kind of acted like he had done something with
Martin Luther King, and uh so that's one whole episode
we have, and it's it's a crazy story. There's connections
that you wouldn't expect, like it's it I I just

(38:54):
so you know, And so you guys know, I thought
Rewel was made up. I was like convinced that Raoul
was made up until I heard some of the stuff
that we're going to hear in this this episode. But
I mean the James ro Ray was a notoriously like
bad liar and not particularly bright, right, I mean, I'm
not not to character assassinate this guy, but like I mean,

(39:16):
it's pretty clear like he didn't really know much about guns.
He went in and kind of like bought whatever gun
the gun owner gun store guy told him too, and
then came back and returned it. And that was suspicious
all at the behest of this guy raul Um. But
then you know, your Raoul kind of ends up being
an inconvenient lead if you can't really trace him down,
it's easier to wrap it all up in Ray, who's
like your bird in the hand, rather than like go

(39:37):
chase this mythical you know, bird in the bush. But
I still don't understand the intent. If Raoul represented some
sort of shadowy group that was trying to assassinate uh MLK,
is it some kind of anarchist bent like this, like
to cause a race war or like like what what what?
In your opinion, based on everything that you know, would

(39:57):
the intent be behind such an assassination. I think there
was a mistrust and hatred towards King that was shared
by a number of powerful groups, including the National Police Force,
under j Edgar Hoover, including organized crime under Carlos Marcello
and UH police organizations. UH particularly we're not fond of this,

(40:20):
this guy who was shaking, especially in the South where
you know, the garbagemen were on strike, and and King
was a guy that was, you know, doing all this
rattle rousing. There was a very large collection of people
who felt a burning hatred towards King. And not only that,
and I think this is the clincher, is that there

(40:40):
was a great deal of money being made in the
war in Vietnam, and there were a lot of people
invested in that, and then King was the one who
was coming out and saying this was wrong. And it
was starting to work its way down into the troops,
and their black troops were starting not to obey their officers.
There were cases of fragging um and there were people who,

(41:01):
very much to their inner soul, believe that Martin Luther
King was a trader to this nation. They believe that.
And when you believe that someone is a traitor to
the nation and you have the power to kill them,
you just might do it. And I think that's where
I think that's where all this leads the greater good argument,
right tail as old as time. Unfortunately, Uh, there is

(41:23):
just just a how is keeping note for anyone unfamiliar
with the term, uh fragging, it would could you tell
us just a little bit about what fragging was During
the Vietnam War. It was a way that common soldiers
could get back at officers who they didn't like or
who had done things to them, uh in one way

(41:44):
or another. And you're in a firefight, uh somewhere and
your officers up there, and you've got a gun, and
you're shooting a gun, and you just happen to shoot
the officer you don't like. Uh. And there were I
don't know how many documented cases of that there were,
but it was enough. I mean it did happen, so

(42:04):
and and there were you know, when the racial thing
got in, you know, introduced, and when Martin Luther King
was saying, what are you doing there? And all of
a sudden, these young black men sort of woke up
and realizing, I'm fighting the white man's war. Why am
I here? Why am I fighting for the rights of
Vietnamese when I don't even have rights back in Georgia,

(42:25):
When I don't have rights in Chicago, you know, And
so there was that whole line, and I personally think
that that was probably the strongest reason behind the murder
of King. But it involved a lot of different people
who were happy to look the other way. Whoever pulled
it off knew that they could do so without any

(42:46):
trouble from the FBI. You know, the group effort. Yeah,
the group effort. Just so, even if even if the
FBI or factions thereof were not directly involved, the picture
that is painted an inaccurate picture, I would argue, is
one of a large number or a small number of

(43:06):
large powerful interests who wouldn't be heartbroken if this threat
to the status quo was to be taken off the board.
Would you agree with that estimation? If not conspiracy of
multiple players, would you agree that there were many institutions
in the mix who were just happy to have him gone. Well, yes,

(43:32):
I think that's that's true. And the same could be
said for uh John Kennedy and the same could be
said for Bobby Kennedy. That there were enough people that
were happy to have them gone that they could put
a phony warrent commission together and uh, you know, to
cover up what I mean, the evidence of conspiracy and

(43:53):
the John Kennedy and I know we're going a little
off you know, topic here, but uh, the evidence of
conspiracy there is like you know, you you go into
an apartment that's been burglarized and you walk in and
you know, it's underwear all over the room, The whole
place is a mess. You know that you've been burglarized. Well,
that's what the murder of John Kennedy was like. The

(44:13):
evidence of it is all over the place. It got
a little neater when it came to Martin, Luther King
and Bobby, but uh, the uh, yes, there were a
lot of people who could be relied upon not to
make trouble. They weren't necessarily involved, but you knew that
they weren't going to make up trouble for you. That
meant a lot of different things could happen, and a

(44:35):
lot of different things did happen. Okay, we're gonna take
a quick pause to hear a word from our sponsor
and then we'll be back with more from Bill. And
we've returned, Bill, I want to just talk a little
bit about some of the people you created new interviews

(44:56):
with for this show. So this isn't you know, just
archive tapes that are being presented. You you spoke to
people who were there, You spoke to people who are
still living who have stories to tell. And in episode two,
you speak with Reverend James Lawson, and I just want
to hear in your words, Uh, what are some of
the strange things that occurred right before Martin Luther King

(45:18):
was assassinated. I talked to Reverend Lawson. He is one
of the giants in the civil rights movement. He would
you know John Lewis we lost this year. Uh. Reverend
Lawson was the mentor for John Lewis. Uh. And he
organized the lunch counter sit ins in Nashville. And he
was one of the founders of snick uh. And I
mean he's and he was a good friend of Martin

(45:40):
Luther King. Uh. And he was the one who brought
King to Memphis to help with the sanitation strike. And
he was there. And when after King was killed, he
went around the city trying to calm the black populations
just because he just didn't want to see more riots.
And also he got three days after King was killed, Uh,

(46:00):
he got a package in the mail that had a
bullet taped to a card that said, we have one
of these for you too, n word preacher. I assumed
that James ol Ray, on his flight to Canada or something,
didn't have time to uh send a bullet to James Lawson.
But yeah, when when I talked to Lawson, uh, he

(46:22):
spoke of a number of things that that uh really
bothered him, that he noticed either before the murder or
after the murder. And uh you know, one of them
was that there were two firemen in the firehouse across
the street from the Lorraine Motel. Those two firemen were
told the day before the murder to report to uh
different uh fire stations. Um, and so they were gone. Um.

(46:47):
There was there was Ed Redditt, who was a police
detective who was surveiling King at the Lorraine. It wasn't
a nice job. It wasn't that he protecting King. He
was just keeping a list of who was coming and going.
And it was his job because he was black and
he knew who those people were, so that's why he

(47:09):
was doing it. Two hours before the murder, he is
told uh to go home, ordered to go home on
on a trumped up charge. The thing I think Lawson
was most angry about was uh that when King came
to the city and other times he had an all
black police security unit assigned to him, eight or nine

(47:31):
man unit who guarded him day and night. And for
some reason, on his last visit, that unit was not
called the form. And we have uh Captain Jerry Williams
on tape telling us that you know that that last
time he came in. I don't know why, but we
weren't told to form. And so King was stripped of

(47:51):
his black security guard. There was briefly a four man white,
all white security guard sent to the Lorraine, but they
went home at five o'clock, weren't replaced, and they didn't
come back the next day, which was that day King
was killed. Now, all that stuff doesn't prove that that
King was killed by a conspiracy, but it don't look good. Um.

(48:12):
And uh, you know, and if it was table setting
for a murder, uh, then the finker of field has
to point back to the people with the power to
make those things happen. I mean, it's just as simple
as that. So um. And there were a bunch of things. Um.

(48:32):
There was Carthel Whedon who was ahead of the firehouse,
who testified later on that that day a pair of
guys with fancy I d s and flashing army. I
das has to have access to the roof of the
firehouse and weed and brought them up to the roof
of the firehouse and let them go there. And he
was pretty sure they didn't have rifles, but what they

(48:53):
did have with them was photographic equipment. And they were
there photographing the Loreen Hotel, motel and the environs around
there on what just happened to be the day that
Martin Luther King was shot, you know. And Bill Pepper's
theory is that they were photographing that so and looking

(49:15):
at the photographs if they saw anybody who saw something
that they didn't want seen, um, they would know, um,
you know who it was, and they would have a record.
So but anyway, those people have never come forward. They
never came forward and said, oh yeah, we were the
photographers that day, um, which you know is highly suspicious.

(49:36):
So there was a lot of stuff, um. And it
certainly couldn't be James l. Ray arranging these things because
he just he just drifts into town in the middle
of the afternoon and somehow at six o'clock he's able
to pull off this elaborate murder. These are just exercises
and scratching the surface of the problems with the official story,

(49:57):
and there is exclusivity in the MLK tapes. We're learning
in this journey that you're taking us on, Build, We're
learning not just the existing discrepancies that people have been
aware of in some cases for decades, but we're learning
new information along the way. And this is something you know, Matt,

(50:20):
you said just as much when you said, you know,
I thought Raoul was made up and candidly um for
a long time, I thought the same because there is
a you know, we don't want to spoil too much,
but there there are moments where it seems that because
James Earl Ray is an unreliable narrator at times, a

(50:40):
lot of what he says has to necessarily be scrutinized. Um.
And with this idea of scrutiny, I have I have
one big question that I'd love to hear the answer
for in your own words, Built, What does the MLK tapes?
What does this investigation and the events that it covers,
what do they teach us in the modern day? What

(51:03):
are lessons people can take away from this? I would
this assassination that you know honestly, many many people in
the US consider unsolved today. Well, you know there's a
song in Porgian best by Gershwin it's uh it ain't
necessarily so. And the things that you're liable to reading

(51:23):
the Bible, it ain't necessarily so. And I would say
that's the takeaway, Um, that is important to look behind,
to pay attention to the details when things happen. And
you know, if if you're going to be fooled by
the things that they just sort of throw out there
for you, uh, you know you're going to be fooled

(51:46):
a lot of time. So um, you know, just beyond garden.
You know, especially with the Internet these days, Uh, there's
a lot of stuff out there that isn't true, and
it's you know, it can be hard to to you know,
pick through it and know what's what isn't I was
gonna ask if you do you have any advice on
that realm, because that's really what we try and try
and do on the show, sift through the stuff, you know,

(52:09):
the actual small truths that exist within the noise. But
you've been doing this for a long time, Bill, is
there any trick to it? No, there's no trick to
it um there's In fact, I'm not very good at
it because this whole internet thing is you know, brand
new to me. When I was growing up. And you
want to make a telephone call, you didn't dial, you
didn't punch any numbers, You just told the operator of

(52:30):
the number you wanted to call. But but but I
think what Matt that's to do is like beyond the technology.
I mean, it's about sort of like a frame of mind,
like when you're approaching these types of stories, like is
there anything that you have learned over the years as
to how to kind of clear your mind so that
you cannot be influenced by all the noise or is
it just something that kind of you learned just through experience.

(52:51):
There's a role for common sense to play. And you
guys were relating to it before. You're just saying Jesus guy, hey,
you know he's a bungler and all this stuff and
somehow and and that was I was, you know what
I I mentioned before that I listened to King's speech
of the Riverside Church on Vietnam and it was so

(53:14):
powerful and so intelligent. So it was such moral authority.
And then they thought and this bumbler of James ol
Ray was the one who killed him. You know, those
things just didn't go together. It's like, No, he was
killed for an important reason, and the important reason was
the power of his words. And it wasn't because some

(53:38):
guy that grew up in southern Indiana just hated black
people so much that he had to kill king. So
I guess I guess the answer to that. Your question is, uh,
some amount of common sense. Uh, it goes a long way.
But wouldn't you say that there oftentimes isn't a profound
reason that important people are killed and don't like, look

(53:59):
at John Lennon, he was killed by a crazy fan,
you know, I mean, or sometimes people just get killed
by crazy people. You know, I mean, I understand this situation.
I don't think that's what's happening. But how do you
kind of reconcile those things and not be influenced, um,
you know, or not be overly looking for profoundness where

(54:19):
maybe none exists in other types of cases. Maybe, Oh,
I'm not so sure that John Lennon wasn't murdered by
someone other than just a crazy guy. And the same
thing with ALERD. Lowenstein, who is a congressman in New
York and who was looking into the Bobby Kennedy murder.
And and some guy shows up and shoots him. Uh

(54:39):
and you know I worked enough in the Surrand case.
Uh that. Um, they were there were people at that time.
It's there were federal programs where they were looking how
to create robot assassins. It's it's known, it's it did happen,
MK Ultra And uh so you know if you can,

(55:01):
you know, work on people and mess around with their
mind enough to okay, you know you're gonna go shoot
John Lennon. Um that. And John Lennon was not a
popular guy for the official people. They were trying to
get rid of him for years. UM So, Uh, I
don't know what happened there. I have no special knowledge

(55:22):
of that. But h I when something happens like that,
I don't automatically think, oh, it's just some crazy guy,
because we have too many murders by just some crazy guy.
Um And from what I know, you know a bunch
of them. There are phony official stories. Yeah, and we've
already we've already thrown out a couple of things that

(55:44):
are going to send people down a rabbit hole today
Uh Dennis Sweeney, who was the who was the trigger man, right,
Hilo Instein, Uh, Sir Hallan Sir Han, as we've mentioned earlier,
is also tech nickle up for parole. As we record today,
history continues even after the headlines have left the newspapers

(56:09):
and the and the evening news, and that's one of
the things that is crucial to remember. And Bill again,
we want to thank you so much, not just for
your time with us and stuff they want you to
know today, but perhaps more importantly for the time and
the energy that you have put in to the MLK tapes.

(56:32):
Peep behind the curtains, folks. Uh. Matt is an EP
on this project. Nolan, I do not have secret access.
We got a little bit of a sneak peak, but
we are on the journey with you, and so as
as colleagues and and listeners and fans of the show, Bill,
we're hoping maybe you could just give us a quick

(56:53):
laundry list of some of the other characters that people
will meet in the course of the MLK tapes. Um,
you know, one of my favorites is just coming up.
And then that's Art Haynes Jr. Who was uh Uh
James el Ray's first attorney along with his father. And
a smart guy, a really, really, really smart guy. He

(57:13):
went to Princeton, graduated from law school, and he's out
of law school for two months and all of a
sudden he is representing the man accused of killing Martin
Luther King. I mean, his head must have been spinning.
But uh, he just gave us a really great interview
in Birmingham and he's still still practicing law to this day.

(57:34):
And uh, he's a he's a man of great conscience
and he he he was a judge in Alabama. He's
uh for twenty years and he was appointed by George Wallace.
He is not a flaming liberal by any means, and
not at all, but he loves the law, and he
loves the truth. He respects the truth, and he's not
afraid to speak out about what he saw as James

(57:58):
old Rays attorney and what he discuss covered, um and so.
And he's got a great sense of humor and he
tells a really good story. So there's a bunch of
funny stories that he tells that I love. Anyway, Um,
he's he's one of the people that is coming up.
We got judge Joe Brown, who had his own TV
show for fifteen or sixteen years, but before he was

(58:19):
a TV judge, he was a real judge in in UH, Tennessee.
And Pepper's attempt to open reopened the the James el
Ray case UH landed in his courtroom and it bounced
around there for a year and a half or two years.
It was a very messy thing. But Joe Brown is
a ballistics expert, a gun expert, a gun lover, and

(58:43):
he had a chance to look at the case and
examine the gun and the evidence around the gun, the
ballistics and the bullets, and he is utterly convinced that
the throwdown rep and the weapon that had raised fingerprints
on it was not the murder weapon. Um. And he's
a funny guy. I mean, he's he's got a great

(59:03):
sense of humor also and tells wonderful stories about what
it was like to be black in the legal system
in the early days in Memphis. So there's there's Joe Brown,
gosh it goes on. There's Glenda Grabo that comes along
and tells an incredible story about Raoul. And the thing
about that story that I love the most is that

(59:25):
she also ended up working for Percy Foreman raise uh
so called attorney who also apparently knew Raoul Um. I mean,
that's bizarre as can be. Uh And I think we
don't want to give it too much away, but yes,
that's what's coming. And with that we are drawing today's

(59:47):
interview to a close. The MLK tapes are available as
you listen to today's episode wherever you find your favorite
shows and for more information, please do check out MLK
tapes dot com. Once again, thank you so much for
your time, Bill Klaibur. We cannot wait to see how

(01:00:08):
this story at unfolds and we, along with the rest
of the audience except maybe Matt right now, are listening
along with you to story. Matt's always listening. Thanks guys.
It's been been a real pleasure being here. I've had
I've had fun. What do you think, fellow conspiracy realists?

(01:00:30):
Do you like a dwindle a number of people in
the US today believe the official narrative behind the m
l K assassination or do you think there are more questions?
We'd love to hear your thoughts. We try to be
easy to find online. Catch us on the internet. We
are available in the usual places of note, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube.

(01:00:52):
We exist there under the handle at Conspiracy Stuff Show.
If you'd like to find us on Instagram, you can
find us at conspiracy stuff. If you'd like to find
us on instag time, you can find us at Conspiracy
Stuff Show. Or give us a telephone call. That's right,
use your phone for its intended purpose. Call one eight
three three st d w y t K. You can

(01:01:13):
give yourself a cool nickname, leave a message. We started
saving your nicknames in our system. By the way, so
every time more broccoli calls, we know uh, add your
name to the list. That's what I'm saying. You've got
three minutes say whatever you wish. If three minutes is
not enough time, instead consider sending us a good old
fashioned email. We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com.

(01:01:55):
Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio,
visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.