The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  After traveling in Mexico for some time, Ray headed for the California border. Before crossing over, however, he went through the car to see if there was anything that might make customs agents suspicious. Down the left side of the front passenger seat he found a cigarette packet with a business card slipped into it. On the front of the card was printed a name that had been inked out, the name of a city (a two-word name that appeared to be New Orleans), and “L.E.A.A.” Written on the back was the name Randy Rosen. There were some additional letters after Rosen that James couldn’t identify (he later came to believe that the name was Rosenson) and an address, 1189 Northwest River Drive, Miami.

  Ray wasn’t certain how the card got in the car but believed that somehow it was connected to Raul—perhaps the cigarette packet had slipped out of Raul’s pocket. Ray only threw it away in Los Angeles after copying the information. Subsequently, Ray’s brother Jerry and others spent a fair amount of time and energy trying to find Rosenson.

  Ray arrived in Los Angeles on or about November 19, believing he was through with Raul. He had given up hope that Raul would get him the travel documents, and he was determined to try to get merchant seaman’s papers on his own. He lived for a while in an apartment on North Serrano Street. He began looking for papers and a job, and he even placed a classified ad in the Los Angeles Times advertising himself as available for “culinary help.” He didn’t have a Social Security card, and because seaman’s papers required fingerprints he was worried that his efforts could result in his exposure as a fugitive. He enrolled in a bartending course, took dancing lessons, and had psychological and hypnotic counseling for a period of time, spending about $800 on these activities.

  He also contacted a number of organizations he thought might help him to emigrate. He sent out photographs that weren’t good likenesses (his face appeared fatter than it was), which later would be used by the media to accuse him of being on amphetamines. He also had plastic surgery on his nose to alter his appearance.

  Ray said he became frustrated and uneasy about being kept in Los Angeles for all this time. He said that he did not have a clue about this delay but was just waiting for instructions from Raul through the contact he was given.

  By early December, Ray was short of cash. He called the New Orleans number and the contact suggested he go to New Orleans. Marie Martin, a barmaid at the Sultan Club in the St. Francis Hotel, hooked him up with her cousin, Charles Stein, who wanted a ride to New Orleans and back. Before leaving Los Angeles, Ray dropped Marie Martin and Charles and Rita Stein off at the local George Wallace independent presidential campaign headquarters so they could register to vote. Soon after, Ray and the Steins set off. Ray described Stein as a sort of “hippie” type.

  In New Orleans, Ray checked into the Provincial Motel in the Latin Quarter at Stein’s suggestion. He met Raul at Le Bunny Lounge. Raul told him that they would be running guns into Mexico and that Ray could end up in Cuba. There he could book himself passage to anywhere in the world. Raul gave him $500 and said that he would contact him in Los Angeles in a few months.

  After returning to Los Angeles with Charles Stein around the middle of January, Ray moved into the St. Francis Hotel. On March 17, following instructions from Raul, he left for New Orleans, arriving a day later. He found that Raul had gone to Birmingham, leaving word that he would meet him at the Starlight Lounge the next day. Somehow Ray got lost on the way to Birmingham and wound up in Selma. Since it was dark by that time, he spent the night there.

  Ray arrived in Birmingham on the following day, March 23, once again running somewhat behind schedule, and went straight to the Starlight, where he met Raul. Raul seemed to be in a hurry to get to Atlanta, though he didn’t say why. They set out immdediately.

  Upon arriving in Atlanta they drove to the Peachtree Avenue and Fourteenth Street area, where Ray rented a room from the very drunk landlord, James Garner. After a meal at a local diner, Raul left, saying he’d be back in the morning.

  The next morning Ray took the room for a week. He was able to get his room free because he convinced Garner that he had paid him in advance the night before. Later, on the telephone, Raul told Ray not to go too far away in case he needed him quickly; he might be required to drive to Miami in a few days. Raul wanted to be able to come and go freely from his confederate’s room without being seen by the landlord or anyone else. Ray was unable to duplicate a door key for him (though he had taken a locksmithing course), so he agreed to leave the side door open. This didn’t work too well, however, because the landlord’s sister kept locking it.

  Raul apparently left town, telling Ray he’d be back in a couple of days. Six days later he returned, saying he was now ready to put the gunrunning operation into full gear. He instructed Ray to get a large-bore deer rifle fitted with a scope, plus ammunition, and to check on the price of cheap foreign rifles. Raul originally wanted the gun to be bought in Atlanta, but Ray suggested that he could buy a rifle in Alabama more easily, since he had an Alabama ID. Raul agreed.

  With that part of the operation set, Ray packed up some of his belongings. He left some things behind at the rooming house: his pistol, some clothes, a television set, and a typewriter. He fully expected to return. Raul and Ray drove together to Birmingham, where Ray rented a room in a Travelodge motel. There Raul briefed him further on the gun purchase and gave him money. They went to a tavern, probably the Starlight Lounge, where Raul told him to go to Aeromarine Supply to buy the rifle.

  At Aeromarine Supply, Ray told the clerk he was going hunting with his brother-in-law, looked at a number of rifles, and finally selected one and asked to have a scope mounted on it. He asked the salesman to “throw in” some ammunition. Ray purchased the gun under the alias Harvey Lowmeyer, the name of a former criminal associate in Quincy, Illinois. At the last minute he believed it would be safer to buy the gun under another alias. If the clerk requested identification, he would go elsewhere to purchase the rifle under his verifiable alias, Eric S. Galt.

  He purchased the rifle and took it back to the motel and showed it to Raul. To Ray’s surprise Raul said it wouldn’t do. Ray had picked up some brochures in the store, so Raul marked the rifle he wanted and told Ray to try to make an exchange. Ray called Aeromarine Supply, said that his brother-in-law didn’t like the rifle, and asked if he might exchange it for another; the store said the rifle could be exchanged but he would have to wait until the next day.

  The next morning, March 30, Ray picked up the new rifle (which we know was a Remington 760 Gamemaster). The salesman threw in some ammunition free of charge. Raul approved. (At the time of our interview, Ray appeared to be genuinely ignorant about the brand, type, and make of the gun bought on the twenty-ninth, as well as the one obtained in exchange on the thirtieth—even now, long after the details have been publicly revealed, Ray seems not to recall these details.) Before leaving the motel, Raul instructed him to check into the New Rebel Motel on Lamar Avenue in Memphis on April 3 and to bring the gun with him.

  Ray’s significant ignorance about the rifles led me to seriously question his guilt concerning the shooting. Purchasing the wrong gun and having to return and exchange it clearly established for me the involvement of another who was giving instructions. In deposition, Ray described the scene.

  A. I can’t remember all the details. He probably showed me something about it. He probably figured I had sense enough to load the rifle.

  Q. Tell us about the rifle, what kind—did it have a lever under it?

  A. I don’t have no idea what it was. I just—he showed it to me and it looked like a rifle so I said, you know, wrap it up.

  Q. When you first saw it, did it have a scope on it?

  A. I don’t know if it did or not.

  Q. You didn’t look through the scope to see what kind of sighting or bearing it had?

  A. No.

  Q. And did the scope have some little rubber tips on the ends—on each end to keep from getting scratched up, do you remember that?

 
; A. No, I don’t remember any of that.

  Q. Was it in a box or did he just have it back behind the counter or was it on the glass counter or where did he have the rifle?

  A. I can’t recall. He just brought it out and showed me. He said how is this? And I said, okay, wrap it up.

  Q. So you walked in and didn’t tell him what kind of rifle you wanted. What brand, what caliber, what anything, you just said I want a deer rifle?

  A. Yes. I told him I was going to hunt deer with my brother-in-law and I would like to look at some rifles, and he said, this is what you want. This is probably the best thing out. He said words to that effect. I said, okay, that’s what I want.

  Q. And he never showed you how it had to be loaded or what you do to load it or anything.

  A. He may have, but I don’t recall it if he did.

  Q. Did you specify you wanted one with a scope on it?

  A. Yes.

  Q. You did?

  A. Uh-huh.

  Q. All right. And why did you do that? What was the reason for wanting one with a scope on it?

  A. Well, he—Raul had asked me to get one with a scope on it.

  Q. He had told you that?

  A. Yes.

  Q. How many guns did Raul tell you to get?

  A. He asked me to get one as a display to some buyers and he asked me to check on the prices and the quantity of some foreign-made rifles.

  Q. Okay. Well. Mr. Ray, did you ever ask Raul why he wanted you to purchase these in Atlanta or Birmingham, why you didn’t purchase them in New Orleans?

  A. No. I didn’t make no inquiries like that.

  (Ibid., 1917–1919)

  Q. Okay. You got back to the motel. Was he waiting for you?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Anyone with him?

  A. No.

  Q. Okay, did you take the gun in?

  A. Yes.

  Q. What did he say about it?

  A. Well, he just said it was—he looked at it briefly and he said it was the wrong kind then.

  Q. What did he mean by that?

  A. Well. I don’t know what he meant. He just said it was the wrong kind of rifle.

  Q. The wrong caliber, wrong brand, wrong what?

  A. I think he just said it was—just the wrong type.

  Q. Okay. That was his words?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Okay. Did you ask him what he meant by that or what he really wanted?

  A. No. I didn’t. I had a brochure, the salesman give me a brochure. So I just handed him the brochure and told him to pick out what he wanted and I would go back and—

  Q. You mean a brochure of several rifles?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Okay. Had you asked him for that?

  A. The salesman?

  Q. Yes.

  A. I think he just give it to me.

  Q. Okay. Well, had he given you this brochure before you bought this rifle?

  A. No. I think he give it to me after, when I got ready to leave. He probably just handed it to me.

  Q. All right. Did—I gather Raul took the gun out of the box when you got back to the motel?

  A. Yes.

  Q. Did he look down the scope on it?

  A. If he did, I didn’t notice it. He seemed just to look at it and checked it out briefly and said it was wrong type. I think it was the wrong caliber.

  Q. Did he put any guns in the—did he put any guns in the clip to see if they fit?

  A. No. He didn’t anything with it, no.

  Q. He didn’t pull the trigger to see if anything would work on it?

  A. No.

  Q. Okay. What did he want you to do then?

  A. Well. He wanted me to exchange it and I told him, you know, to pick out what he wanted. So I—he picked out one and went down and made a phone call to Arrow Marine and told them that I had purchased the wrong type of rifle and they told me, well, bring it back and they would exchange it. So—

  Q. What did you tell them was wrong with it?

  A. I don’t think I said anything right then. I just told him I think it was the wrong caliber or something.

  Q. And they told you to bring it back?

  A. Yes.

  Q. And you had this brochure and Raul had picked out another type rifle he wanted you to exchange for it?

  A. Yes.

  Q. All right. Did he give you any more money?

  A. No.

  Q. Okay. Did you go on back then to exchange it?

  A. Yes.

  Q. That same day?

  A. I went back to exchange it the same day and the salesman, he may have told me on the phone, he said that he couldn’t do it that day but he could get to me—he could fix it—he didn’t have time the next day, next morning and—

  (Ibid., 1925–1928)

  Ray set out from Birmingham and proceeded as instructed toward Memphis at a leisurely pace, spending the night at a motel in Decatur. On the thirty-first he stayed at another motel in the Tuscumbia-Florence area. On April 1, he spent the night in a motel in Corinth, Mississippi (which he subsequently identified as the Southern Motel). He spent the night of April 2 in the DeSoto Motel in Mississippi, just south of Memphis. (Harold Weisberg told me some years later that in 1974, while working for attorneys Bud Fensterwald and James Lesar in preparation for an evidentiary hearing for Ray, he spoke to the manager and some cleaning staff, who confirmed that Ray was at the DeSoto Motel as he claimed. The manager claimed that the records had been turned over to FBI agents when they visited shortly after the assassination.)

  On April 3, Ray drove across the Mississippi-Tennessee state line and checked into the New Rebel Motel in Memphis. Late in the evening, Raul appeared at the doorway wearing a raincoat, and Ray let him in. Ray didn’t know where he came from or how he got there. Raul told him they were going to rent a room near the river. There they would work the first stage of the gunrunning deal.

  At the time, Ray figured that Raul wanted the room in a rundown part of Memphis because they’d be less conspicuous. As usual, he didn’t ask Raul any questions. Raul wanted Ray to rent the room using the Galt alias, but Ray was uncomfortable with this and suggested using an alias he had used previously—John Willard.

  Raul then wrote out the address of a tavern named Jim’s Grill and instructed Ray to meet him there at 3:00 the next afternoon.

  Earlier in the day, Ray had brought the rifle in its box into the room wrapped in a sheet or bedspread. Just before Raul left, Ray gave him the gun, and Raul left with it under his coat. He had no idea why Raul wanted to take the gun. James Earl Ray has remained adamant that after turning the gun over to Raul at the New Rebel Motel on the evening of April 3 he never saw it again.

  After checking out of the New Rebel Motel on April 4, Ray stalled for some time, did some shopping, changed a slowly leaking tire, and then drove downtown. He left the car in a parking lot and proceeded on foot to look for Jim’s Grill. He first went into a tavern on Main Street called Jim’s Club and noticed a fellow in the tavern who looked at him “kind of funny,” then eventually located Jim’s Grill down the street, at 418 South Main Street. Not seeing Raul inside, he retrieved the car and parked it at the curb just outside the Grill around 3:30 p.m. By then Raul had arrived. Ray remembers Raul asking him where the car was. Ray pointed to it.

  Ray rented a room in the rooming house above the Grill for a week, using the name John Willard. There Raul told him to get a pair of infrared binoculars; the people who were buying the guns wanted them too, he said. When Ray asked for them at the York Arms Store on South Main Street, he was told they could only be bought at an army surplus store, so instead he bought a pair of regular binoculars.

  When he returned, he noticed that the man whom he had first seen at Jim’s Club was inside the Grill. He apparently didn’t notice Ray, who didn’t go inside but went up to the room where Raul was waiting.

  Ray tried to tell Raul about the man downstairs, but Raul ignored him and told him he was going to meet a very important gunrunner and that they
were going to the outskirts of town to try out the rifle. Raul told him to bring his stuff upstairs, so Ray got his bag out of the Mustang. He also brought a bedspread up in case he had to spend the night there because he didn’t want to sleep on the one in the room. Raul gave him $200 and told him to go to the movies and come back in two or three hours. Ray was instructed to leave the Mustang where it was because Raul said he would probably use it.

  Ray went downstairs for the last time around 5:20 p.m. He had talked to Raul for about forty-five minutes. Back in the street, he looked in at Jim’s Grill and didn’t see the man he suspected had been following him. He remembered that the Mustang had a flat spare tire and decided to have it fixed so that Raul wouldn’t have any trouble if he used the car later.

  Ray said he was uneasy about the man who he thought had followed him, and concluded that he was either a federal narcotics agent or the “international gunrunner” Raul had mentioned. He drove to a gas station to have the tire repaired, arriving sometime between 5:50 and 6:00 p.m. Since there were a lot of customers, he simply waited, because he was in no hurry. Finally an attendant came over and told him that he didn’t have the time to change his tire. Ray remembered that an ambulance raced by with its siren blaring.

  Driving back, he was confronted by a policeman who had blocked off the street about a block away from the rooming house. The policeman motioned to him to turn around. The policeman’s presence told him that something was wrong, and his inclination, as always in such circumstances, was to get out, so he drove south toward Mississippi, intending at first to get to a telephone and call the New Orleans number. It wasn’t until he had almost reached Grenada, Mississippi that he heard on the radio that Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed.

  It was when he heard that the police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang that he realized he might have been involved with a man or men who had conspired to kill Dr. King. He took back roads rather than the interstate highway because he was afraid he might be the object of a search. He stopped and threw away the photography equipment and drove straight to Atlanta, where he abandoned the car.