The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  Both Dexter King and Ambassador Young testified that the civil trial defendant Loyd Jowers had unhesitatingly identified the photograph as being that of the man who appeared in his Grill to pick up the Liberto cash and leave the murder weapon, a “package,” for the actual assassin.

  Barbara Reis was very uncomfortable on the stand. Reporters do not like to have to testify in court. She was the primary US correspondent of Publico, the largest newspaper in Portugal, and because Raul was Portuguese, her paper was interested in the story. She was covering the trial and in attendance in court almost every day for the first two weeks. Sometime earlier, however, she had gone to Raul’s home and spoken with a member of his family (whom we agreed not to identify) and that was why we believed that we had no choice but to issue a subpoena for her testimony. She was outraged, but I believed that the evidence was too valuable not to be put in front of the jury. So, under oath, she reluctantly recounted what she had been told during the course of that interview.

  She said that she was informed that though these allegations had greatly disrupted their lives and were terrible, nevertheless the family took great comfort from the fact that they were being protected and advised by US government agents who had visited their home on three occasions and who were monitoring their telephones. The government was helping them through those difficult days.

  The fact that the government was helping a retired automobile worker in such a fashion was not lost on the members of the jury. Ordinary private citizens are obviously not afforded these services. It is our contention that Raul was and will continue to be protected for services rendered and perceived to be in the national security interests of the state or the special interests which determine what is to be designated as national security interests.

  Don Wilson’s resolve hardened, and he refused to testify at the trial. Early on, Don had told Dexter King about the events and given him copies of two of the pieces of paper he took away from James’s abandoned Mustang. Dexter was, therefore, in a position to identify the materials, the originals which had been with the Justice Department going through a process of authentication for several months. In the course of his testimony, Dexter recounted how Don Wilson originally explained how when he opened the slightly ajar passenger door of James’s car, abandoned in an Atlanta housing project parking lot, an envelope fell on the ground, and he instinctively put it in his pocket. The young agent was initially afraid that he had screwed up material criminal evidence by allowing it to become separated from an automobile possibly connected with a crime. Later, when he had an opportunity to consider the materials, he decided to hold on to them, in part because he was in a difficult, if not impossible, position for not having turned them in straight away and also because he genuinely came to believe that the notes would be buried if he turned them over to his superiors at the Atlanta field office. So he retained them—for nearly thirty years—until he decided to come forward in an effort to support the King family and James Earl Ray.

  The material did, in fact, contain the name Raul as well as what appeared to be a list of payments to be made. When shown a copy of the torn page from a Dallas telephone directory with handwriting at the top, in his testimony Dexter King identified the name Raul, as he did for a second time on the payoff list.

  Glenda Grabow’s story about the connection between Raul and Jack Ruby had, in my view, been corroborated, but I eventually decided against introducing into evidence this connection and the link to the Kennedy assassination. I did not want to run the risk of taking the jury down that road. It was, after all, surplus to our main case, and there was always the possibility that the jury would refuse to accept the connection with the Kennedy assassination.

  I had Madeleine, Beverly, and Chari lined up to travel to Memphis, but then did not call them. It was a temptation, which had to be resisted. It was not easy because I believed these courageous women, Madeleine Brown for example, were very credible. Some aspects of Madeleine’s recollections of her life and genuine love for Johnson were compelling. In fact, as I have mentioned previously, she gave birth to his only son. I obtained a copy of Johnson’s commitment (through his local lawyer Jerome Ragsdale) to provide support for Steven, which continued even after the president’s death. That she was able to provide such detail about their relationship was impressive. Of particular note (though a digression) was her recollection of the Kennedy assassination. She said she attended a social gathering at Clint Murchison’s home. Ostensibly, it was an event to honor J. Edgar Hoover, who was a close friend of Murchison, H. L. Hunt, and the other Texas oil giants. The guest list included John McCloy, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank; Richard Nixon; George Brown, of the Brown and Root Construction Company; R. L. Thornton, president of the Mercantile Bank; and Dallas mayor Earle Cabell, brother of General Charles Cabell, former Deputy Director of the CIA, who was fired by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.

  Madeleine told me that near the end of the party, Johnson made an appearance and the group quickly went into Murchison’s study behind closed doors. After about twenty minutes the meeting broke up. Johnson, anxious and red-faced, came up behind her and embraced her with a quiet grating sound and whispered in her ear a message she would never forget, “After tomorrow, those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again—that’s no threat, that’s a promise.” She was stunned, but the next day she realized what he meant. While it is true that her story has been attacked, it was corroborated by employees of Murchison’s household including the man who picked up Hoover at the airport.

  I decided not to take our case in this direction. It was a tactical decision, but if I am asked whether I believe that Raul and Ruby knew each other, were associates, and that the same forces were involved with both assassinations, I could only truthfully answer in the affirmative.

  As for Raul’s existence and role in the assassination of Dr. King, the following facts, in my view, are irrefutable.

  • A photograph of this Raul was instantly picked from a spread by Glenda Grabow, her brother, Loyd Jowers (having seen him in the Grill), James Earl Ray (who had previously refused to identify anyone from the hundreds of photographs shown to him, but who had identified—covered by a newspaper report, this same photo in 1978—but refused to use the name on the back, which he thought might be a set up), and Sid Carthew, the UK merchant seaman who had met him at the Neptune Bar in Montreal, around the time that Ray was there.

  • This same photograph was identified by Raul’s own daughter at their front door when she said on tape (heard on tape and part of the record of the Civil Trial in 1999), “anyone could get that picture of my father.”

  • Glenda had a telephone conversation with him that lasted—as the phone bill shows—for several minutes.

  • The conversation was obviously not between strangers. When she told him who she was he called her by the name he used for her, “Olinda.” Thus she had no doubt as to who he was.

  • Included with some papers that FBI Agent Donald Wilson obtained from James’s Mustang that was found in Atlanta was a slip of paper with the name “Raul” on it. Another piece of paper had the phone number of one of Jack Ruby’s places in Dallas.

  • Portuguese newspaper reporter Barbara Reis’s interview with Raul’s wife confirmed that this difficult situation had been made better by the assistance of the US government who had sent agents and technicians to see them to monitor their phones and advise them how to respond to queries.

  Imagine that extensive concern being taken by US federal agents over the problems caused by an alleged mistaken identity to a retired automobile plant worker. In fairness to Posner, this incongruous revelation emerged in testimony at the 1999 civil trial after his relatively short research period was over and his book was published. Nevertheless, to the best of my knowledge, he has not commented on this strange, extensive concern and involvement in the troubles of a working-class family.

  PART VI

  Chapter 17

  THE VERDICT AND THE MEDIA
SILENCE

  Who is to hear the sound

  Vibrations of the falling tree

  When no one is around

  No ears to hear, no eyes to see

  And who is to know how a jury ruled

  Pronouncing justice long delayed

  When a media establishment schooled

  By their absence the truth waylaid.

  For a period of about twelve hours, there was a window of factual coverage of the results. The verdict was reported, however irregularly, around the world. Mr. Garrison and I spoke to the media for the first time, and I participated in the family’s press conference on December 8 at the King Center. All four family members addressed the media, including Bernice, who spoke out for the first time. Her eloquence was moving. Here, at last, was a family who had finally had an enormous burden lifted from them. Each family member expressed this relief as well as their feeling of being vindicated for their struggle to bring out the truth. In response to the questions about what was next, so far as we were concerned that was up to others. The truth had emerged from the trial. A jury had effectively exonerated James Earl Ray and found that a conspiracy existed that included agents of the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the government of the United States. In fact, the judge had apportioned 70 percent of the liability on those official co-conspirators. We doubted that there would be any prosecutions—although even in the year 2000, some could be developed—and we also had little expectation that the attorney general’s report would embrace and reflect the truth that had been revealed by the trial.

  The Aftermath

  In a private, very emotional meeting, the family expressed their gratitude to me for the long-term effort I began in 1978. I commended their courage, for unlike the other prominent American families victimized by assassination, Dr. King’s family did not recede into the shadows and refuse to ask questions. Instead, they came forward, even though they were attacked and maligned and suffered financially as a result of their quest and courage.

  The Spins

  Within twenty-four hours, the mighty Wurlitzer of the powerful private and public interests involved was in full volume. Analytical pieces suddenly appeared criticizing the judge, the defense counsel, and the jury. The trial was diminished in importance, and journalists blandly asserted that nothing had changed. To counter the inevitable spins, the closing arguments and the summary of the plaintiffs’ case went up on the website of the King Center (thekingcenter.org), and arrangements were made to put the entire transcript on the site.

  A leading publicist of the government’s position and the official line, Gerald Posner, was everywhere at once. On one television show after another and with a nationally syndicated op piece, he insisted that the King family had been duped and that the trial was a farce. I was able to publish a strong rebuttal of his banal generalizations only in the Washington Post. The New York Times allowed me two hundred words to respond to a one-thousand-word piece by a former US attorney general.

  What was ludicrous about all of the criticism was that none of the critics had attended the trial or heard the evidence. Of all the media professionals commenting on the case, only Wendell Stacey, the local Memphis anchorman, at the risk of his job, attended court every day. At the end, he repeatedly said he was totally convinced that the jury was right and that he had never been so ashamed of his profession.

  Though the lockstep media conformity was expected by all of us, it was nevertheless sad to see it at work again. In the end, the predictable performance of the media had been heralded by the testimony of William Schapp as he laid out the practice of government manipulation and use of the media for propaganda purposes. The King assassination and the search for the truth were a national security matter, and as such the mass and reputable fringe media would be effectively controlled in all aspects of coverage.

  Post Trial New Evidence

  After the trial, Mrs. Clark’s alibi for her husband Earl began to fall apart. Two critical aspects of her story were more closely examined. Our post-trial research on the availability of walkie-talkies for MPD officers in 1968 confirmed that there were no walkie-talkies (as we know them) in use at that time. There was, however, a much bulkier unit, which was issued to a limited number of officers, and Lieutenant Clark could have had such a unit. It has alternatively been described as being the size of two bricks standing side by side or a lunch box. Former police officer and private investigator Jim Kellum told me that that unit might well have been referred to as “walkie-talkie.” We had to clear up the point if at all possible.

  I asked Reverend Jim Douglas, an Alabama minister who sat through the entire trial taking copious notes, if he would mind going to Memphis and having a non-threatening word with Mrs. Clark now that the trial was over. He agreed, and on a weekend in February 2000 he visited with her in her home. She confirmed that the “walkie-talkie” her husband had that had been sitting on their dining room table was a little larger than a television remote control. No such unit of that size was in use at the time by the MPD.

  In her deposition taken on April 23, 1999, over seven months prior to the date she testified at trial, Mrs. Clark repeated her trial testimony and stated that on the afternoon of April 4, 1968, she arrived home from work at about 4:15 p.m., and her husband arrived a short time later—perhaps around 4:30 p.m. She said he laid down to take a nap on the living room sofa and asked her to monitor the police “walkie-talkie,” which was on the dining room table. She said he was not asleep for very long, perhaps thirty or forty minutes, when the word came over the radio that Dr. King had been shot. She woke him instantly, and he told her to go and get his uniform from the cleaners (they used Dent Cleaners on Bond Street, which gave MPD officers a discount) while he took a bath. She said that she drove the fifteen to twenty minutes to the cleaners from her home on Barron, picked up the uniform and returned home, the whole trip taking about half an hour. Her husband then left in the MPD car in which he had driven home. She said he would not have been home for more than an hour and a half.

  Toward the end of this deposition Mrs. Clark stated that she could not be 100 percent certain that she woke up her husband as a result of hearing about the assassination or because she heard him being called back to work.

  The obvious problem posed by Mrs. Clark’s statements at the deposition is that if one sticks to her time frame, she would have had to have heard the news of the assassination being broadcast over the “walkie-talkie” sometime between 5:00 and 5:15 p.m., an hour or so before it actually occurred.

  Prior to testifying at trial, Mrs. Clark asked for and was given a copy of her deposition to review. Therefore, she could have become aware of this one-hour discrepancy. Her initial story would have had the assassination taking place around 5:15 p.m. rather than 6:01 p.m. This clearly would not do, so, in her testimony at trial, she changed the time.

  She extended her husband’s arrival to about one hour after she came in at 4:15 p.m., and she lengthened the nap to a full forty-five or fifty minutes. She could not, however, change the time when she said she awakened Lieutenant Clark because that was determined by the known time of the assassination, and when it came over the air—between 6:05 and 6:10 p.m. Thus, she could not alter the time when she left the house for the cleaners, which must have been between 6:10 and 6:20 p.m., depending upon her state of readiness.

  Given the time it would have taken her to drive to the cleaners—fifteen to twenty minutes—she would have arrived at the earliest around 6:30 p.m. to pick up Lieutenant Clark’s uniform. When speaking with Jim Douglas, she confirmed that she did arrive at the cleaners around 6:30 p.m. After the trial, I had an opportunity to speak with D. V. Manning, a long-time friend of Mr. Dent, the owner of the cleaning establishment, who eventually bought the business from his old friend. Mr. Manning said that the cleaners usually closed no later than 6:00 p.m. Then, I spoke with staff who were on duty on April 4 only to learn that, in fact, they went home at 4:00 p.m. that day.

  Next I spoke with
Mr. Dent’s daughter, Ms. Tillie Folk, who remembered her father calling right after the assassination and telling them not to go anywhere because of the riots that were certain to occur. This call was, of course, shortly after 6:00 p.m. She said that her father usually had dinner with the family at 6:30 p.m. That night was no exception. Since the shop was about fifteen to twenty minutes from his house, Mr. Dent was sitting down having dinner by 6:30 p.m. According to Mrs. Clark’s story, she would have arrived at the cleaners sometime between 6:20 and 6:30 p.m. Dent Cleaners would have been closed when she arrived, and she would not have been able to get the clean uniforms for her husband. Mrs. Clark’s story is untenable.

  Eventually I located and spoke with Tom Dent, Ms. Folk’s brother, who was also in Memphis on the day of the assassination. He said that earlier in the day his father was in and out, but that afternoon, he was in the dry cleaning section in the back of the shop. Tom Dent said that he knew Lieutenant Earl Clark, and in fact the MPD officer was in the shop during the afternoon of April 4 for about twenty minutes. Tom Dent said that Earl Clark came in sometime between 4:30 and 5:00 p.m. and went into the back to have a word with his father. He said that his father, who was a hunter, sometimes provided bullets to Clark and other officers. Apparently, the elder Mr. Dent knew a man who loaded bullets for them. The inventory included 30.06 cartridges. He said hello to Clark as the officer entered and went in the back to see his father. Clark was definitely not there to pick up his dry cleaning. He remembers him leaving sometime after 5:00 p.m. and believes he drove off in a white private car. He was wearing a gray uniform shirt and trousers.