Glenda became increasingly close to this group between 1970 and 1978, knowing that they were involved in different illegal activities including gunrunning, forging passports, and making pornographic films. She assisted in passport forging and gunrunning. When a shipment of guns was arriving from New Orleans, she would drive down to the Houston ship’s channel, go onto the docks, and allow the boxes to be loaded into the trunk of her car. Though she never asked questions, she heard the men comment it was safer to ship the weapons around the coast than to deliver them by road.
This story chimed with British merchant seaman Sid Carthew’s account of being approached in the Neptune Tavern in Montreal. Sid Carthew now lives in West Yorkshire, England, but in 1967 and 1968 he was a merchant seaman. He frequently traveled to North America. In Montreal, he would frequent the Neptune Tavern, a hangout for merchant seamen near the docks. It was in that bar on two occasions that he met a man named Raul. Carthew tried to contact me after seeing the television trial in England, getting nowhere until he contacted the General Council of the Bar in London, which gave him my address. He said that Raul approached him at the Neptune sometime in early 1967 and struck up a conversation about guns for sale. Carthew had a passing interest, and Raul said he would sell him some Browning 9mm handguns. He quickly turned off, however, when it became clear that Carthew wanted four weapons, not four boxes. Sid Carthew described Raul as being about five feet eight inches tall and weighing approximately 145 pounds. He had a dark, Mediterranean-like complexion, and dark brown hair. Carthew remembered him saying that the guns were stolen from a military base and that the price included the fee for the master sergeant who organized the supply and who, according to Raul, would deliver them himself to his ship in exchange for cash. I couldn’t believe my good fortune.
Glenda said that during this period Raul lived—or at least spent a good deal of time—in a second-floor apartment in a house on Navigation near Seventy-Fifth Street close to the docks. Though Raul did drive, she frequently drove him and Armando wherever they wanted to go. She recalled dropping Raul off at the Alabama movie house, where he would often go to meet with Houston associates of Carlos Marcello. Roy and Marcello owned a number of movie theaters in Houston, and Glenda thought some pornographic film making was going on at the Alabama. Glenda actually saw Marcello in Houston on a couple of occasions with Armando, Raul, and their friends at a fruit stand on Navigation and in a bar next door. She said that on another occasion, it was arranged for her to spend time with Marcello at a house in the area.
One day in the early 1970s, around 1:00 p.m., she drove Armando over to Torrino’s house, where the usual group had gathered. Her car keys were on a ring, which had a plastic viewfinder containing miniature photos of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. She put the keys on the table and someone picked them up, looked into the viewfinder, and then tossed them to Raul. Glenda said when Raul saw it, he became angrier than she had ever seen him.
She remembered him shouting, “I killed that black son of a bitch once, and it looks like I’ll have to do it again.” He dropped the keys on the floor and stamped on the plastic viewfinder. Then, he grabbed her, put a gun to her head, forced her into a bedroom, and raped her. She left Torrino’s house that afternoon shattered by the experience. Her husband pressed her to tell him what was wrong, but fearful he might do something they would regret, she didn’t.
From then on, although she still associated with the group, she tried to keep her distance from Raul, who behaved as though nothing had happened. She recalled that in 1978 and 1979, two of Roy’s brothers got into trouble and were prosecuted. Glenda and Roy asked Houston attorney Percy Foreman to defend them. Foreman became attracted to Glenda and offered her a job in his office. He was trying to impress her and even gave her an original sketch of himself, which he personally signed on June 22, 1979 (see Appendix D).
After a while, she learned that Foreman had been James Earl Ray’s lawyer. He told her that one day white Americans would learn that Ray was a “sacrifice” or had to be “sacrificed” for their welfare. He even told her that he knew Ray was innocent, but that it didn’t matter. Glenda, who had been harboring the terrible secret about who she believed killed Dr. King for some time, decided finally to unburden herself. Shortly afterwards, Foreman told her he had spoken with Raul. To her horror, he appeared to have known him for some time. Thereafter, Foreman called her at home several times a week to talk to her about Raul and tell her to be careful. She had the impression that he spoke regularly with Raul and was trying to take advantage of her plight to get her into bed. She was afraid of alienating him but wasn’t interested and tried to keep her distance.
Finally, at one point in 1979, Foreman told her that if she and Roy did not leave Houston, they would be dead within a year. They prepared to leave and put their house up for sale. In a matter of weeks, she was driving on the expressway, and a wheel simply fell off her car, nearly causing her to be annihilated by an eighteen-wheel tractor-trailer. Every lug nut came off—they must have been deliberately loosened. The Grabows left town, returning only to sell their house. They had no further contact with Armando or Raul. Glenda executed an affidavit that set out her story in detail and also said that she knew James Earl Ray was innocent and she was prepared to testify in court on his behalf.
When I returned to England, a Houston-area lawyer confirmed in a lengthy telephone conversation that in the 1960s and 1970s Percy Foreman had become the foremost lawyer for organized crime figures. Former mob lawyer Frank Ragano, who had represented Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, had previously told me about Foreman’s role as a lawyer for prominent mob figures.
I heard a rumor that Raul lived in the northeast. I began a computerized state-by-state name and residence check and cross-reference search. It was a long shot that the man might be using his real name but there was always a chance. A number of people with that name surfaced. I arranged for credit and other checks on them. By a process of elimination the list gradually reduced. The search was completed in early June and one person remained who satisfied the basic criteria.
He appeared to be a relatively successful businessman, nearly sixty-one years old. He jointly owned his home, which was in a middle- to-upper-middle-class neighborhood in a city in the northeast, with his wife. He had a twenty-five-year-old daughter and a son of thirty-three.
Raul, I learned, owned another property on the same street where his import/export business was located in one of the city’s poorest areas. He was reportedly a member of the local Portuguese American society and had no criminal record. From immigration records I learned that he had entered the United States from Portugal through New York City. His social security number had been issued in New York between 1961 and 1963 and he first appeared in his city telephone directory in 1965. If this was James’s Raul, then for at least twenty years he had clearly led a double life.
James wrote to say he had received a letter from Saltman advising him that he and Herman had confronted Raul. It was obvious that Herman and Saltman wanted to develop a commercial production based on Glenda’s story. Raul had been hostile, taken photographs of the pair and gotten his Portuguese-speaking wife to ask them to leave. I arranged for a surveillance team to photograph this Raul. I needed to show the photograph to Glenda in order to determine whether the Raul she had known was the same man Herman and Saltman were chasing, and whose photograph I had seen at Jowers’s deposition. On seeing the photographs, I was virtually certain it was.
I decided to call Herman. He put Saltman on and they confirmed the visit and the hostile reception. Raul would not come to the door. His daughter spoke to them, lying in response to even the most simple and apparently non-threatening questions. Giving no indication of where the man was or the man’s identity, they both assured me that the man that they had found was Glenda’s Raul. When I expressed skepticism designed to draw out information, they jointly confirmed to me that the birth date and social security number of the man in the older photograph were
identical to those of the man they had recently visited who was in the more recent photographs.
I spoke immediately with Glenda. She told me that prior to Herman and Saltman’s visit to Raul, they arranged a telephone conversation and she spoke to Raul at his home with family members participating on extensions. When Raul spoke, she knew it was the Raul she had known in Houston because he pronounced her name distinctively. Despite what became hysterical denials of knowing her and ever being in Houston, she said she had no doubt this was the man. (She did not, at that time, tell me that she had herself spoken to Raul in a private conversation on April 20, 1995, and that the conversation had been revealing.) (See Appendix D.)
It was obvious that Raul Coelho had by then been well and truly alerted, and I was concerned that he might flee. This, of course, would allow the state to continue to contend that he was not the right man and that James’s Raul never existed. In addition, since Herman and Saltman said they did not have enough to satisfy their television producers, I was apprehensive about what further action they might take that could induce him to flee.
We had little choice but to promptly join Raul as a party in the civil action against Jowers. We prepared a summons to go along with the original complaint in which he had been named a notice of deposition. It said Raul entered into a conspiracy with others to kill Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I learned from private investigator Bob Cruz that a source of his inside the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) told him Raul Coelho had come into the United States on December 11, 1961, and that his INS file had been transferred in October 1994 to Memphis, Tennessee. The source commented that there was no apparent reason for sending the file to Memphis, and it would only be transferred at the request of another federal agency.
With time of the essence, I arranged a meeting with Glenda and Roy in Memphis on the weekend of June 24, 1995.
Glenda executed an affidavit, in which she stated she recognized Raul by telephone and that she was positive this was the Raul she had known in Houston because of his inability to pronounce her name correctly (he always called her “Olinda”) and that based on her identification she understood we were preparing to bring him into the lawsuit against Loyd Jowers and others.
On Monday at 7:45 a.m., we met with Bob Cruz, who had organized surveillance of Raul’s home. He reported the wife and daughter had already gone out, apparently leaving Raul at home alone. Before approving the final arrangements for service I needed to be absolutely certain that his was the same man being looked at by Saltman and Herman. I decided to call Raul myself. I adopted a sympathetic tone, saying that I believed that he may have been harassed unjustly and I wanted him to know that though these people had once been associated with me as a lawyer in the case, they were no longer working with me. He ponderously took down Chastain’s and my details. He spoke with a fairly heavy accent and did not appear to be flustered. It was difficult to tell how much, if any, of Raul’s language problem was feigned since we were able to communicate.
He seemed puzzled that I knew about his “problem” and confirmed that he had been bothered by some people and that this was upsetting him and his family. He expressed surprise that things thirty years old were being raised now, and he denied ever being in Houston. I asked him to meet with Chastain and me privately in order to try to clear up any question of his involvement, and he asked me to call him back that evening after 7:00 when he would have had a chance to talk to his wife and kids. I agreed and we held off any attempt at service that day.
At 7:15 p.m., his daughter answered the phone and said, in effect, that her father did not have to prove anything and his word denying any knowledge of the events would be good enough. She confirmed that a man named Saltman had appeared at their front door wanting to question her father and she said that she told him that if he published or released any information about her father they would sue him.
My impression was that she was well-trained and intelligent. Mr. Coelho knew what he was doing by putting her forward. Toward the end of the conversation she said that they might ask their lawyer about talking to me, though she would not give me the lawyer’s name. At that point, I concluded that we would have to serve Raul.
Raul Coelho was served on July 5, 1995, and made a party defendant in the Ray v. Jowers lawsuit. Then I arranged to acquire all the information Ken Herman and Jack Saltman had obtained about him. This included the passport photograph and a spread of six photographs made by Ken Herman to show to witnesses. Sid Carthew traveled to London from Yorkshire. I placed the spread of six photographs on my desk. He instantly put his finger on the photograph of Raul’s face and exclaimed “That’s him; that’s the one all right.”
Affidavits were obtained from Glenda Grabow, Sid Carthew, and James, identifying Raul from the spread of photographs. Glenda then gave me her phone bill, evidence of her first call with Raul which she made on April 20, 1995. It confirmed that they had spoken for six minutes. (See Appendix D.) She also provided me with a summary of that conversation where it was clear he knew who she was.
Raul was represented by two large, prestigious law firms—unusual for a person of his purportedly modest means. He denied our allegations. Ultimately, on January 16, 1997, Circuit Judge Holder, who was presiding over the civil action against Loyd Jowers and Raul ruled that the case could not go forward until and unless the Criminal Court set aside Ray’s guilty plea.
On January 12 the Grabows called. They told me that the previous day their house had been shot at four times by people driving by. Glenda was shaken and they planned to leave for a couple of days. Glenda also decided to reach out to Jesse Leeman Wilburn, an uncle who had worked at the gas station where Raul hung out in the early 1960s.
Her relationship with her uncle, known as “Bobby,” had become strained and unpleasant. Now when they met it was clear Bobby’s wife did not want him going to court. However, when alone with Glenda, Bobby identified Raul, picking out the same photograph that had been selected by Glenda, her brother, Sid Carthew, and James.
Bobby told them that once a week, a man who appeared to be a law enforcement officer would come by and visit Dago. He was always dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, cowboy boots, and black Stetson hat. He carried a .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson pistol in a shoulder holster. The two would talk each time for around half an hour. Dago would also be visited by others who did not work at gasoline stations or come from Houston. Bobby confirmed that Dago often sold guns in and around the station.
PART IV
Chapter 12
A DARKER, DEEPER SCENE EMERGES
Who gave the orders for this kill
These forces surely share the blame,
For oh so long they had their fill
Of he who gave human rights fame.
Together they strove to end his work,
The culmination of his enemies’ goal.
Their evil cast on which to embark,
To reunite his body and soul.
Not required, they fled the scene,
So fearful, they disappeared.
Not to be heard, rarely to be seen,
Finally, through us, truthful heard.
In late July 1993, I had widened the focus of my investigation. I met with Steve Tompkins, the former Commercial Appeal investigative reporter who had spent eighteen months researching a front-page piece on the role of army intelligence in surveying and infiltrating black organizations and civil rights groups. It had been published on March 21, 1993. Army intelligence had spied on Dr. King’s family for three generations. The article noted that there was an extraordinary fear in official circles about what would happen if Dr. King was allowed to lead masses of American poor into Washington that spring. It stated that army intelligence was “… desperately searching for a way to stop him….” The article also noted in passing, and without comment, that a Special Forces Alpha 184 sniper team was in Memphis on the day of the killing.
I wanted to learn whether Tompkins knew anything a
bout the King killing, and if so, whether he could open up some doors for me. Since Dr. King had been under army surveillance, I wondered if the killing had been seen and even photographed. Tompkins had gone to work for the Governor’s Economic Development Department. He had confirmed the presence in Memphis that day of a number of army intelligence operatives. I needed to know their roles and, if possible, who they were. He would not give me their names, but he did offer an observation that surprised and chilled me. He had stumbled on certain information, which he was unable to print because of the lack of corroboration.
He had come to believe that after talking with a former Special Forces soldier now living in Latin America, in addition to surveilling Dr. King on April 4, the army in Memphis was implicated in the assassination. The nervous ex-soldier had showed up with an AK-47 rifle, which he kept near throughout the interview. This man was the only member of the army unit whom Tompkins was able to interview. He believed that another member had been shot in the back of the head in New Orleans. The ex-soldier told Tompkins that he decided to leave the country after his New Orleans comrade was killed. He said it appeared that a “clean-up” operation was under way and that he had better get out.
This important information greatly complicated the picture. It was imperative that I investigate it as far I could. Tompkins warned me that, if publicly questioned, he would deny telling me the information. As we parted, he said he was relieved to be away from the Special Forces, stating, “Most of these people are the dregs of humanity, real slime. They’d kill you, your mother, or your kids as soon as look at you. You have to be very careful.”
Tompkins said these people would want to be paid for their time and want the money in cash before the meeting. They would not volunteer information but always answered his questions truthfully.
A couple of the Special Forces “grunts” (non-commissioned officers) would likely cooperate. In addition to covert operations relating to domestic turbulence in 1967, they had been involved in gunrunning activities into New Orleans. The operations were coordinated by a master sergeant, and the sales were made to Carlos Marcello’s operation and delivered to barges in a cove bordering property owned by Marcello. A man named “Zippy” or “Zip” Chimento handled these transactions for Marcello. The soldiers were given the name and phone number of Joe Coppola, who was connected with the Louisiana Highway Patrol, in case they had any trouble transporting the guns by truck. When I checked, I learned that Zip Chimento was, in fact, a confidant and associate of Marcello, and Joe Coppola was the commissioner of the Highway Patrol.
The Plot to Kill King Page 19