Since there were five plaintiffs to one named defendant, we had the right to exercise many more exclusions. We used them all since the jury pool—in excess of forty—contained a large number of people who were employed by law enforcement agencies and security firms.
At the end of the first day, a jury of eight men and four women, six of them black and six white, was chosen. The trial would start at 10:00 a.m. the next morning, and after opening arguments, we would begin the plaintiffs’ case with Coretta Scott King as our first witness. On behalf of the plaintiffs, I had drawn together an intelligent, enthusiastic volunteer team.
The trial began on November 16. Opening arguments were finished by lunch, and that afternoon we called Mrs. King as our first witness. Court TV was there to cover her testimony and provide the pool camera. They would pull out for most of the trial, returning for celebrity witnesses but missing most of the material evidence as did the rest of the media. In copycat fashion, local regional and national media were absent for most of the trial.
The plaintiffs’ case was divided into nine areas of evidence:
• The background to the assassination
• The local conspiracy
• The crime scene
• The murder weapon
• Raul
• The broader conspiracy
• The cover-up—its scope and activities
• The defendant’s prior admissions
• Damages
Though many of the witnesses testified to facts with which the reader is already familiar since they emerged in the investigation and were discussed earlier, I will summarize the details of the testimony because, of course, they achieve a new status as evidence given under oath in a court of law.
The Background
Mrs. King led off the group of witnesses whose testimony provided evidence about the historical background and events leading up to the assassination. She set the background stating:
• He felt that it was important that he give this support to them because they were a part of what he was really struggling to get the nation to understand, that people work full-time jobs but in a sense for part-time pay. Even people who were poor who worked could not make a decent living. So they would then be invited to join the mobilization for the campaign which was to be held in Washington.
(Transcript of trial proceedings, November 16, 1999, 54–55)
She continued:
• I must say that my husband had wanted to speak out against the war in Vietnam for many years before he actually did do so. He always—he understood the conflict that existed in Vietnam from its inception. And he realized that it was an unjust war in the first place. Then it was being fought against, you know, people of color who were poor. And wars, of course, for him didn’t solve any social problems but created more problems than they solved.
He felt that this particular war was not—we could not win. Of course, history proved him right within a very short period of time after he spoke out. As a matter of fact, one year after he spoke out against the war, he was vindicated in that the nation had reversed itself and its policy toward that war.
That was April 4th, 1968, when he actually spoke out against the war in his first public statement. But he said he had to do it because his conscience—he could no longer live with his conscience without taking a position. He felt that doing so, perhaps he could help to mobilize other public opinion in support of his position, which was, again, against the war.
(Ibid., 58–59)
Concerning the family’s efforts to obtain a trial for James she said:
• Well as a matter of fact, it was because of new information that we had received and largely because of the efforts that you had put forth to investigate a number of these leads that had come out and found that they were reliable enough.
When we looked at it and investigated it, we felt then that we had to take a position. For years we hoped that someday someone else would find out, find the answers. We wanted to know the truth. But the truth was elusive.
We wanted to go on with our lives. We felt the only way we could do it was to really take the position that we did take, because the evidence pointed away from Mr. Ray, not that he might have not had some involvement but he was not the person we felt that really actually killed him.
(Ibid., 64–65)
They offered various perspectives and facts and described the official hostility to Dr. King’s vigorous opposition to the war in Vietnam and his commitment to lead a massive contingent of poor and alienated people to Washington, where they would take up a tent city residence in the Capitol and lobby the Congress for long-overdue social legislation. Dr. King’s support of the sanitation workers’ strike was described by Reverend James Lawson, as was the eruption of violence in the march of March 28, which, Dr. Coby Smith of the Invaders testified, appeared to be the work of out-of-state provocateurs.
Dexter King stressed the importance of his father’s opposition to the war in Vietnam and the media reaction:
Now, the truth of the matter is if my father had not—if he had stopped and not spoken out, if he had just somehow compromised, he would probably still be here with us today.
(Ibid., 1486)
The role of the Invaders and their sudden departure from the Lorraine Motel were testified to in detail by former Invaders members Dr. Smith and Charles Cabbage. Smith said that the Invaders decided to work with Dr. King in the planning of the April march because they had been wrongly blamed for the violence which had broken up the previous march. He insisted that they had conducted their own investigation and become convinced that the disruption was caused by out-of-state provocateurs. He said they had reached a basic agreement with SCLC and Dr. King, and in order to facilitate their participation in the planning process, the group had moved into two rooms in the Lorraine Motel. Their rooms were also on the balcony level some doors south of Dr. King’s room, and he said that they had participated in various planning sessions and meetings with Dr. King following his arrival on April 3.
Cabbage described the Invaders’ sudden departure within eleven minutes of the shooting. He said that a member or the Lorraine staff knocked on their door. It must have been after 5:30 p.m. They were told that they had to leave because SCLC was no longer going to pay their bill. This appeared strange because the bill for that evening’s lodging would have clearly been paid, or obligated to be paid, much earlier in the day. Though it made no sense from any standpoint, he said they accepted the order, which he said they were told came from Reverend Jesse Jackson. They quickly packed up their things and left around ten minutes before 6:00 p.m. The timing of their departure was later confirmed by the testimony of MPD Captain Willie B. Richmond (retired), who noted the event in his surveillance report developed from his observation post inside and at the rear of the fire station. Captain Richmond also testified that around the same time, he observed Reverend Kyles knock on Dr. King’s door. Richmond said Dr. King opened the door, spoke with him briefly, and then closed the door. Kyles then walked some distance north on the balcony and stood at the railing. This account, of course, contradicted the story Kyles has told for over three decades, in which he said he was in Dr. King’s room for about thirty to forty-five minutes before the shooting.
At one point when they were being asked to leave, Cabbage said, he observed the Reverend Jesse Jackson standing on the ground near the swimming pool, which was opposite the balcony rooms occupied by Dr. King and the Invaders. He said that Reverend Jackson kept glancing impatiently at his watch (if he indeed did so) so near the time of the killing. Reverend Jackson has reportedly stated subsequently that he didn’t even remember that the Invaders were staying at the Lorraine.
Cabbage never understood it. In his testimony, he also confirmed that the Invaders occupying the Lorraine rooms were quite heavily armed, as was their usual custom, because of the hostility of the MPD.
The Local Conspiracy
The involvement of produce dealer Frank Liberto in se
tting up the local conspiracy was conclusively established by a string of witnesses. For the first time in the twenty-two years that I have known him, John McFerren took the stand and testified under oath about hearing (within an hour and a quarter of the killing) Liberto screaming into the telephone to “shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony,” subsequently telling the caller to go to New Orleans to collect money from his brother. John, courageous and forthright, began his testimony by telling the jury about the long history of his family’s ascent from slavery and his civil rights activity and harassment in Fayette County, one of Tennessee’s most racist areas. As he described the events that took place, he repeated the same story under oath that he first put before the FBI/MPD team who interviewed him for hours at the Peabody Hotel on the Sunday evening following the crime. The federal and local officials dismissed his account in 1968, as did the congressional committee ten years later. This time it would be different.
Under oath, John described his visit to Frank Liberto’s produce market on the afternoon of his assassination.
Q. So Liberto’s warehouse was your last pickup?
A. Was the last pick up.
Q. You would get there around five-fifteen?
A. I got there that day at five-fifteen exactly.
Q. We’re coming to that day. April 4th was a Thursday, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated was a Thursday.
A. That’s correct
Q. Did you go to Frank Liberto’s place that day?
A. I went there that day.
Q. You arrived there at what time?
A. Around five-fifteen. Now—
Q. Would you describe what the layout of the place was and what you did when you arrived at that warehouse?
A. That warehouse faced east and west, but you enter in the gate on the south side, and when I drove around to the north side and come up about fifteen feet of the door, I stopped my truck. At that time I had a three-quarter ton pickup truck with a canvas on it, a cloth canvas over it.
Q. Okay.
A. When I drove up to the—when I stopped the pickup truck out in front of the door, this door is on the north side, and there is a big door that you could roll back and back a truck up in.
Coming in from the north side on the right side there is a little small office, and when I got within ten to fifteen feet of this office, why, Latch was standing up.
Q. Who was Mr. Latch?
A. Mr. Latch had a scar around his neck like this.
Q. What was his relationship with Mr. Liberto?
A. He was a handyman. I never did know, because I was always scared of Mr. Latch. You see, if you looked at him, he had a scar from right here to right there, and he would always be mean, but Mr. Liberto was always friendly. I wouldn’t fool with Mr. Latch. I would stay away from him if I could.
Q. So you walked in that afternoon, into the entrance and the office. You said you were how far from the office?
A. Ten to fifteen feet
Q. Ten to fifteen feet from the office?
A. That’s correct.
Q. Then what happened next?
A. The phone rang. When the phone rang, Latch picked it up. When Latch picked it up Latch said, that’s him again. He give it to Mr. Liberto. Mr. Liberto said, shoot the—
Q. You can just say what he said.
A. Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony. Well, at that time they didn’t have noticed me. I was just standing up a little closer to them just looking.
I was a cash paying customer. He would always tell me, you go get what you want and come by the office and pay for it. If the warehouse hadn’t been changed, the doors, you have a line formed going in there.
Q. Let’s go back over what you saw. You heard Mr. Liberto talking on the telephone?
A. Telephone.
Q. Around what time of the day was this?
A. I‘d say that was around five—ten minutes after, five fifteen, around five twenty five, not quite five thirty.
Q. Five twenty-five to five-thirty you heard him talking on the telephone?
A. Telephone.
Q. He received a phone call. What did you hear him say once again?
A. Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony.
(Op. cit., trial proceeding transcript, 144–147)
The role of Frank Liberto was further confirmed by the testimony of Nathan Whitlock and his mother LaVada Addison who provided details about the admissions Liberto made to them separately in 1978, leaving them no doubt that he had participated in the Memphis hit on Dr. King: that there would be no security, the police were cooperating, and that a scapegoat was in place. In subsequent testimony, Dexter King and Ambassador Andrew Young testified that in their separate interviews with Loyd Jowers, he had told them that sometime in March, after Dr. King’s first speech on behalf of the sanitation workers on March 18, he was approached by Liberto, to whom he said he owed a “big favor.” He basically confirmed the story he had told on the Primetime Live program without any mention of Frank Holt being involved. Liberto told him that he would be given $100,000 in a vegetable delivery box and that he was to turn this money over to a man named Raul, who would visit him sometime afterward. He told Dexter, Andy, and me that Liberto had told him no police would be around and that they had a scapegoat. In fact, he said, it all happened in exactly that way. Planning sessions for the assassination were held in his Grill, involving Lieutenant John Barger (whom he had known from his own early days on the police force); Marrell McCollough, a black undercover officer introduced to him by Barger as his new partner; MPD sharpshooter Lieutenant Earl Clark (who was a hunting companion of Jowers); a senior MPD inspector; and finally, a fifth officer whom he did not know. He said he remembered that there were five because he had to pull up a chair to the four-seater booth. Jowers said that if James was at all involved, he was an unknowing scapegoat.
Hence, Jowers also confirmed the involvement of Frank Liberto. Along with the testimonial evidence of McFerren, Whitlock, and Addison, and the deceased Art Baldwin’s earlier disclosures, Frank Liberto’s primary role in the assassination appeared to be clear.
A steady succession of witnesses provided details of the removal of all police from the area of the crime, the failure to put the usual security unit in place as well as the removal of other individuals whose presence in the crime scene area constituted a security risk to the assassination mission.
Firemen Floyd Newsom and Norvill Wallace, the only two black firemen at Fire Station No. 2 on the periphery of the Lorraine Motel, were instructed to report to stations in other parts of the city. Newsom and Wallace said that their transfers left their base station short-handed while they were surplus to requirements at the stations where they were sent to. The transfers made no sense, and they were given no satisfactory explanation. Newsom said eventually one of his superiors told him that the police department had requested his transfer.
Detective Ed Redditt, a community-relations officer assigned to intelligence duty as Willie Richmond’s partner on the surveillance detail at the rear of the fire station, testified that he was picked up by Lieutenant Eli Arkin about an hour before the assassination and taken first to Central Police Headquarters, where he was ordered, by Director Frank Holloman, to go home because of an alleged threat on his life. His protests were ignored. As he sat, parked with Arkin in front of his house, the news of the assassination came over the car radio. He never again heard about the alleged threat, which was explained as a mistake of some sort. He never received a satisfactory explanation, but it was clear that his primary community-relations police duties had caused him to become closely involved with the community, not MPD intelligence. It was understandable that he would not be trusted to be allowed to stay in the crime scene area if dirty work were afoot.
Memphis Police Department homicide detective Captain Jerry Williams had the responsibility of organizing and coordinating a security unit of all black homicide detectives who would provide protection for Dr. King while he was in the city. T
hey would ordinarily remain with him throughout his visit, even securing the hotel—usually the Rivermont or the Admiral Benbow—where he stayed. Captain Williams testified that on Dr. King’s last, and fatal, visit to Memphis, however, he was not asked to form that security unit. At one point, he was told that Dr. King’s group did not want them around; there was no indication, of any kind, from any SCLC source that this was true. In fact, Reverend Lawson remembered being impressed with the group on a previous visit and their verbal promise to him that as long as they were in place, no harm would come to Dr. King. On April 3 and 4, 1968, they were not in place. Testifying out of order, because he had been hospitalized, Invaders member Big John Smith said that though there was a small police presence at the motel earlier on the afternoon of April 4, he noticed that it had completely disappeared within a half hour of the assassination.
University of Massachusetts Professor Phillip Melanson took the stand to testify about the removal of the emergency forces’ TACT 10 unit from the Lorraine Motel on April 4. He said that Inspector Sam Evans admitted pulling back the TACT 10 unit, which had been based at the Lorraine Motel, to the periphery of the fire station. Evans claimed that the decision was taken pursuant to a request from someone in Dr. King’s group. When pressed as to who actually made the request, he said that it was Reverend Kyles. The fact that Kyles had nothing to do with the SCLC, and no authority to request any such thing, seemed to have eluded Evans.
It would be hard to imagine, on that April 4, a more-complete stripping away of not only the available security personnel from Dr. King but also a more thorough removal of individuals who were not deemed completely trustworthy or controllable. And it was all set in motion twenty-four hours before the assassination.
To address why Dr. King’s motel room had been changed, former new York City police detective Leon Cohen testified that early in the morning on the day following the assassination, he learned from Walter Bailey, the manager of the Lorraine Motel, that Dr. King was meant to be in a secluded, more secure courtyard room, but that on the evening prior to his arrival, someone from SCLC’s office in Atlanta called to instruct that Dr. King be given a balcony room overlooking the swimming pool. Cohen, who had moved to Memphis and worked as a private investigator after retiring from the New York City Police Department, testified that Bailey maintained that he tried to talk the person, who Bailey said was a man he knew, out of this decision, but the caller was adamant. Dr. King was moved.
The Plot to Kill King Page 25