A. After Frank’s—after Liberto’s conversation, Holloman’s conversation was after that.
Q. Holloman’s conversation was after Liberto. Liberto was three days before?
A. And I’m pretty close on that.
Q. All right.
A. Probably three days.
Q. Let me back you up a bit. Your mother and Junior, what did they exactly say about the awareness of Jones, Jackson, and Kyles? What did they specifically say that you recall?
A. In separate conversations and with all three of us sitting outside on the swing together—well, Junior was sitting on a Number 10 washtub that was turned over, and mama was in the glider, and we talked about it. And mama said, well, that went just like it was planned to be done. It was done just like it was planned to be done. It went the way it was supposed to go. Mama said, “Well, thank God for O. Z.”
(Ibid., 106–108)
A. If it just wounded him, it was already arranged that before Dr. King left here, that he was to go to St. Joseph’s Hospital down the street. He never was going to make it out of that emergency room alive if he was wounded.
Q. Why?
A. Well, they was going to put him to sleep.
Q. Who was going to do that?
A. I figured Dr. Bland was going to do it. You are going to want to know the particulars about that, aren’t you?
Q. Was he on duty?
A. Breen was close. He was right across the driveway at his office.
Q. How do you know this? Did Junior tell you this? Is this something you learned later on?
A. No. I know that because—because he was right here when I was right here, and I knew what his job was to be because Junior and Mother had already told me if he made it through—they was not going to let him go to John Gaston, because John Gaston was the hospital they preferred taking him to. They were the ones that saw most of the gunshots and stabbings, which is now the Elvis Presley Trauma Center. Back then it was John Gaston. They was not going I let him go that route. They were going to take him to St. Joe’s. So Bland’s office is right here. St. Joe is sitting right here right across the parking lot. He wasn’t going to leave out of there. They already had it planned.
Q. So if he was wounded, you said they would have it set up that he would be hit in the—killed in the—
A. The doctor would, right.
(Ibid., 133–135)
In separate conversations with his mother and Junior, Ron recalled his mother saying that it happened just as it was planned to have happened, his mother adding, “… thank God for O. Z.”
Ron said that they kept a rifle in a closet, which was one of five or six that Tolson had ordered from Oregon in 1964, and which he and his father picked up.
Ron said that on April 4, he carried a rifle into town wrapped on the back of his Honda bike and gave it to Junior, who was standing behind the billboard in the lot next to the Jim’s Grill lot (behind Canipe’s). Jowers was also there. Junior told him to ride around and stop on Mulberry near the fire station. The Adkins’ family hit man, Chess Butler, who was supposed to be present as backup, did not show up.
As Ron rode around, at one point he noticed MPD Lieutenant Tommy Smith parked on Main Street a couple of blocks away, just waiting.
He was sitting on his Honda on Mulberry Street when the shot was fired, and from there he saw a man jump down over the wall. He said he clearly recognized him as Earl Clark. He said Clark ran north up Mulberry Street and got into a green 1965 four-door Chevrolet Impala. He followed Clark, who in turn followed a Memphis police car. On his way, Ron also noticed a cab driver in the driveway of the motel and a black guy with a “shitload of bags” trying to leave in the cab.
He saw Marrell McCullough (whom he saw Junior and Frank Holloman talking to the day before) run up to the balcony to check for signs of life.
Ron believed that his brother was the shooter, but only because he later told him in boast that he was. His brother, though, might well have told him that to protect him and that really he didn’t know who fired the fatal shots. Ron knew that Jowers was there with Clark and the shooter.
He speculated that following the shooting of Dr. King, his brother gave the gun to Clark, who gave it to Jowers, who took it inside. He also speculated that his brother ran back through the vacant lot between the rooming house and fire station, out to Main Street, turned right, and got into the Mustang, which was parked south of Jim’s Grill and Canipe’s store, before driving away.
Other evidence (including from Jowers himself) confirms that Jowers took the gun inside his kitchen and broke it down in front of Betty Spates. However, there is no support for the position that someone coming from behind the building drove off in the Mustang. To the contrary, it appears clear that the person who carried and dropped a bundle of evidence in Canipe’s doorway, including the rifle James bought in Birmingham, was the same man who drove off in the Mustang.
Ron was told by one of the family crew, Jim Ryan, that the rifle was taken from Jowers, brought to the crematory, and there it was destroyed. Ron said his mother photographed the destruction (see Appendix M) and sent the photos to Mayor Loeb.
He recalls seeing a car with a white top heading north on Mulberry Street, stopping briefly around the driveway when Dr. King was hit and then driving on. That would appear to have been Ernestine Campbell.
Ron contended that “Buddy,” the taxi driver, parked in the motel parking lot, and was killed that evening by Chess Butler, either on Highway 51 or 55. Ron said he heard Chess say that he killed him. Ron said he was in the Butler home in Linda’s room with Chess’s son Danny on the floor between the two of them. In the next room he saw Chess’s wife Mildred and Chess standing near a table drinking whiskey.
Q. All right. Now, what happened to that taxi driver? Because we have taken statements from—
A. The taxi driver I was told was killed either on Highway 51 or Highway 55 by Chess Butler.
Q. How do you know Chess Butler did that?
A. I heard Chess say he killed him. But that was in Chess’s house when he was telling Mildred and my mother that he took him.
Q. Where you in the house at the time that—
A. I was in the bedroom sitting on the end of the bed. Linda Butler was sitting on the left side of the bed. I was sitting in the middle. Danny Butler was sitting on the right side of the bed. The door was close as from here to here from where I’m sitting because Linda was sitting here. The door opened out that way, and I could see Mildred, the back of Mildred, Mama was sitting right there and Chess was standing up at the end of the table taking a drink of whiskey.
Q. Was that the same evening?
A. It was the day he killed him. It was that night.
Q. That night?
A. Yeah. Yeah, it was after the shooting.
Q. When you went to Chess’s house and were at that house and heard him speaking, what did you actually hear him say?
A. I heard him say that he took care of the cab driver.
Q. Who told him to do that? Do you know?
A. I’m going to say it is either going to be Holloman or Russell Jr. or Clark, one or the other.
(Ibid., 152–154)
Ron said the cab driver was a problem, and he heard Chess say that he took care of him. His instructions came from Holloman, Junior, or possibly Clark; he did not know for certain. He said that afterward, Clark was concerned because he thought the driver saw him after he came down from the wall and turned to him face him, and therefore could have identified him.
Ron did not know the details of the killing of the cab driver. He said that Chess said he dumped the body off on the side of the road south of Brooks. According to Ron, Chess was good with a knife.
After the shooting, they met in a building that used to be the police gas station. He said when he got there; Earl was present, as was Sam. In fact, they were all in attendance except for Jim, who came later, as did Holly.
Ron asserted that the Mustang that James drove was park
ed further south on Main Street, and that the one his brother drove was parked closer to the Grill. From what we can piece together, it appears that the reverse was true. James’s Mustang was parked close to the door by the Grill and was well observed by witnesses (Hendrix and Reed). The second Mustang seen by the Hurleys was parked further south just below Canipe’s. Ron said he saw it after it was driven to the Quonset Hut where they met, and then later at the county penal farm.
He was told that the officer who sat with Lieutenant Tommy Smith was the man who dropped the bundle in front Canipe’s. The report, however, would appear to be refuted by the fact that the bundle contained the various bits and pieces, including the throw-down gun, which James had left on the bed in his rented room in the rooming house. There is little doubt someone in the group was working out of that room (and observed by another roomer)—possibly Raul or, more likely, Junior. Based on what Ron later observed, that man took the planted evidence downstairs, dropped it in Canipe’s doorway, and then quickly drove away in the second Mustang parked just south of the building. At one point, Canipe indicated to James’s lawyer, Art Hanes, that the bundle was dropped even before the shot.
Since James was in the first Mustang, and Ron saw a Mustang at the Quonset Hut meeting and later at the penal farm, it is very possible that it was Junior, and not Raul, who dropped the bundle and took off in the second Mustang.
Ron states that he believes that Maynard Stiles was ordered to send the clean-up team to the site the next morning in order for any incriminating evidence to be collected. The evidence included a shell casing that supposedly came from the rifle, a 742 Remington, which he was told they lost. This makes no sense since Betty Spates said Jowers broke down the murder rifle in front of her and tried to flush the shell down the toilet in the kitchen.
Ron also said that the rifle he delivered had no scope, whereas it was clear from other testimony about the practice/testing of the murder gun that it had a scope. This can only mean that the rifle Ron delivered to his brother was a backup gun and in the event was not used.
The next morning, he said, they all met at Henry’s (Mayor Loeb’s) brother’s house. In attendance at that meeting was Henry Loeb, Junior, Holloman, Chess, Mildred (Chess’s wife), Linda (Chess’s daughter), MPD Captain Ansarra, Sam Chambers, and Jim Ryan.
He recalls taking a letter from an MPD officer the following morning addressed to his mother from Henry Loeb, which thanked her for her message. According to Junior, she had called him to tell him that the gun was buried, and then sent on the photographs.
Tolson came back to Memphis a “few days” after the assassination. He went to see Holloman, Russell Jr. and his military friends, two good old country boys. He went to the meeting with Henry and Holloman. He said Marcello also came to town to meet over at the South Street Market with “Frank” Liberto.
Q. If we can move towards the end. Did you attend any meetings, be present at any meetings, when Toleson came in after the assassination?
A. No.
Q No? How long was it before he came back in again?
A. Let’s see. Probably about three times after that.
Q. A month?
A. Ten times at the max.
Q. How much later, the first time he came back in? A month later, two months later?
A. After daddy died?
Q. No, after the assassination.
A. After Martin was killed?
Q. Yeah.
A. A few days.
Q. He came back in a few days?
A. Yeah. It wasn’t long, because he came in and he went to—he went and met with Holloman. I’m going to say this was probably a week after that. The reason why I know that is because that’s what Junior and them was waiting around for. They didn’t leave out until after he come back to Memphis.
(Ibid., 180–181)
At one point in our deposition, Ron said, “… there is a lot of shit I don’t know!”
Immediately following the shooting of Dr. King, Olivia Catling stated that she saw a man wearing a hat running out of the alley and getting into the green Chevrolet and that it traveled down Huling and turned left to go north on Mulberry. She said she saw a man come out of that alley, run around the back of that car and get in. The man made a left turn on Mulberry and crossed Talbot to Vance.
Somehow, and there is much speculation on this point, the rifle went from the shooter to Jowers and eventually to Holly, who buried it. Jowers showed it to McCraw the next day, so it was not as immediate as Ron believed. When I reminded Ron about Olivia Catling’s observations, he linked up the statement that there was a green 1965 Chevrolet parked just below the alley on Huling. He confirmed that it was there as part of the escape, but states that it was running when Clark got into it.
Ron said that Clark got in the front passenger side of a car on the west side of Mulberry and followed a Memphis Police Department call down Huling to Second Street. This had to be a different car from the one observed by Olivia. Ron also testified that he remembered that, while in the bushes, Clark had a pillowcase covering his head.
When asked if he had ever heard the name of Frank Strausser, he said he had heard that name mentioned several times. He said the name came from Holloman and Junior but he did not know, or was not allowed to know, any details. He said he could not remember anything that was said about him.
He had said that Clyde Tolson went out to Oregon to arrange for some weapons to be sent to Memphis. It would appear that one of them was the one used by Strausser as he prepared for the job on April 3 and 4, 1968.
Chapter 21
THE ULTIMATE ASSASSIN
St. Joseph’s Hospital—“Stop Working on that Nigger and Let Him Die”
Treatment and death
Why does this place exist?
For treatment, mercy and caring
Here, wrongdoing should desist
And love prevail however daring
Defiled the oath and honor too,
The evil stalker was afoot,
With death the object of his woo,
And hell the source of his root.
Death, he declared to all about
Was the goal sought that night
Death was all they ever sought,
To end the hated Prophet’s light.
So, alive but near death, he lay there,
His mortality at the mercy of the haters,
Denied all necessary, minimal care
Death’s feast had its own deadly waiters.
Martin Luther King Jr. was struck by a single shot around 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.
Ralph Abernathy, who started to walk out of room 306 with Dr. King, seemingly remembered that he had forgotten to put on aftershave lotion, turned around, and went back in to correct this omission. That was where he was when the shot rang out.
Billy Kyles, who had knocked on the door about ten minutes earlier (and contrary to his claim ever since that fateful day), was told by MPD surveillance officer Willie B. Richmond not to go into the room, walk away from the door and go down the balcony and wait some fifty to sixty feet north of room 306.
Quite curiously (at least from my perspective), he remained at that distance when Dr. King came out of the room around 6:00 p.m., making no effort to come over and join him as he chatted with friends and colleagues in the parking lot below.
Following the shot, a fire department ambulance answered the call and roared into the Lorraine parking lot only minutes later. Ernestine Campbell drove from where she had stopped in front of the Mulberry Street entrance to the motel, to be followed by Memphis Yellow Cab number 52 driven by Buddy. It was Buddy who, immediately after the shooting, told his dispatcher that he saw a man jump down from the wall, run north on Mulberry Street, and get into a car (which he thought was an MPD traffic car) on the corner of Mulberry and Huling Streets.
No one noticed a lady sitting in a Chevrolet Nova parked on the West Side of Mulberry about twenty to
thirty feet north of the entrance to the motel. Neither did anyone report seeing a small Honda motorcycle go north on Mulberry and follow the fleeing man who had come down over the wall and the car he entered.
As unnoticed was Loyd Jowers running into his kitchen, through the back door and past a startled Betty Spates, while another man ran from the bushes back toward the rooming house, entering the alleyway between the two wings of the building, leaving size 13 footprints in the mud as he entered the basement that had doorways to another alley leading to Huling Street and to the green Chevrolet parked on the south side of Huling.
Equally unnoticed was a hasty withdrawal of military sniper teams on the roof of the Illinois Central railroad station and a water tower set back from the motel, and the descent of two Psy-Ops Army photographers from the roof of Fire Station No. 2.
With all these events going on in close proximity, the ambulance carrying the wounded Dr. King, Dr. Abernathy, and Bernard Lee, set out for St. Joseph’s hospital at approximately 6:10 p.m. Some five minutes later it arrived at the hospital and Dr. King, still breathing and alive, was carried into the emergency room just after 6:15 p.m., where one would expect that work would begin in a frantic effort to save his life.
What has never been satisfactorily explained, or perhaps even revealed, until now, was the large presence of military intelligence officers who had taken up positions in the hospital well before the shot was fired. According to Dr. Causeway, who was on duty at the time, the military intelligence officers knew the names of all of the emergency room nurses and doctors on duty. He observed that no consideration was given to moving the critically injured victim to the operating room and he saw no surgical effort being made to save him. When he inquired about treatment, he was told that he was being treated.
Another person on duty in the emergency room that evening was thirty-two-year-old surgical aide Lula Mae Shelby who had worked at the hospital since 1964 or 1965.
Her son, Johnton Shelby, who at the time was nine years old—almost ten—told me, and subsequently confirmed under oath (see Appendix N for a transcript of his deposition), that she was not allowed to go home that evening or even call home. His family, consisting of his three brothers and two other brothers of his mother, lived in what was then a duplex house at Needra and Rice Streets. In 2013, Johnton called Memphis radio station WPLX hosted by Thaddeus Matthews to tell his mother’s story. My longtime Memphis street friend, Jackie Smith, called me and facilitated my contact with him. Johnton said when his mother arrived home the next morning (April 5), just before 11:00 a.m., she gathered the family in the living room to tell them what had happened. She was devastated and very hurt. He remembered clearly that she said, “I can’t believe they took his life.”
The Plot to Kill King Page 36