The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  • The failure to interview everyone present in St. Joseph’s Hospital when Dr. King was brought in, which might have revealed the extraordinary presence of military intelligence officers well prior to the shooting, and the fact that they knew everyone’s name and responsibility.

  It will be now useful to examine the range of media reports beginning shortly after the killing.

  William Bradford Huie

  First off the mark, in terms of any detailed writings of the story, was William Bradford Huie. He entered into deals, first with Arthur Hanes—James’s first lawyer—and then with Percy Foreman, who took over after James was convinced to dismiss Hanes.

  Huie sold his articles to Look magazine. By then, of course, Bill Atwood was gone, and the first two were published on November 12, 1968, and November 26, 1968. Huie, initially, was inclined to find a conspiracy but reversed this idea in his third article, both of which were published after the guilty plea hearing in 1969, which another writer, Gerold Frank, calls a “trial.”

  I know that James came to distrust Huie fairly early on because he told me that witnesses whose names he gave to the writer began to be visited by the FBI. It became clear to him that Huie was working with the FBI and not for him. Huie realized on which side his bread was buttered. Huie concluded: Ray did it and he did it alone.

  Gerold Frank

  The first major book published on the case was Gerold Frank’s An American Death. Frank was given complete access to the FBI-controlled investigative reports and, thus, became the first writer to establish the official mainstream history and to credit the FBI for conducting the “greatest manhunt of our time.”

  On pages 80–83 he describes in seemingly meticulous detail the actions and observations of New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell, who was in Lorraine Motel ground floor room 215. In his narrative, however, he conveniently omits the most significant observation of Caldwell. It was his sighting of a man in the bushes behind Jim’s Grill. This terribly important observation has been publicly recounted again and again by Caldwell, but left out of Frank’s narrative. For him to have included it would, of course, provide potentially hard evidence that the shooter might not have been in the second-floor bathroom window (which the prosecution contended was James’s lair) but in the bushes. He notes, on page 83, the departure of the Invaders at 5:51 p.m. Even a cursory conversation with any of them would have raised serious questions as to why they were quickly ordered to leave on the instructions of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was not involved in working with them in planning the march. He describes police-intelligence officer Willie B. Richmond’s binocular surveillance of the balcony and Dr. King’s room with his eyes glued to his glasses, but somehow neglects Richmond’s written report that has the Reverend Billy Kyles knocking on Martin’s 306 room door, having a brief word, and then moving down the balcony as the door is closed. Instead, he confirms the lie of Kyles that he was in the room with Dr. King before Martin came out on the balcony. On page 84 he states factually that Kyles came out of room 306. In a later section of his book Frank compounds the lie. Recounting the guilty plea hearing, he sets out Kyles’s testimony in which he states that on April 4, 1968, at six o’clock in the evening—“I was at the Lorraine Motel in room 306.” This obviously enhances Kyles’s statement but is an untrue account.

  It has been well established that rooming house tenant Charlie Stephens was dead drunk that afternoon. One of those confirming his condition was James McCraw, the taxi driver who, minutes before 6:00 p.m., refused to carry him as a passenger because he was passed out drunk. McCraw also noticed the bathroom door open, the light on, and the bathroom empty during the few minutes he was there, contrary to Frank’s narrative on page 100. Subsequently, on pages 282–283, when considering attorney Arthur Hanes case, he has to note in passing McCraw’s statement about Stephens, but it pales into insignificance in light of his main statement of facts in the early sections and the huge credibility he gives to Stephens. Frank describes him (pp. 100–101) as sober as a judge, alert, and a reliable eyewitness to, allegedly, James Earl Ray’s departure from the rooming house. In so doing, the author ignores two statements by eyewitnesses who observed James driving away in his white Mustang around 5:45 p.m., some twenty minutes before the shooting.

  Frank’s narrative is most disingenuous when he deals with John McFerrin’s account of overhearing Frank Liberto’s telephone conversation late in the afternoon of April 4. I have covered this in detail elsewhere, so suffice it to say here that John overheard Liberto telling someone to shoot the SOB when he was on the balcony, to stay away from the market (where Liberto had his warehouse) and finally, to go to New Orleans and collect his money ($5,000) from his brother.

  After being grilled for hours, John refused to be tripped up or alter the story. The FBI finally formally announced that if the call was really overheard, it had nothing to do with the assassination.

  Frank simply accepts this finding as the truth, despite the readily available information that Liberto was a lieutenant working under the Mafia godfather Gene Luchese who ran the city for Carlos Marcello.

  Aside from ignoring exculpatory evidence available but not introduced by James’s counsel, Gerold Frank’s book focused mainly on the “Hunt” and the “Trial,” which was not at all a trial.

  The reader is left with no doubt that Mr. Frank, as was the case with Mr. Huie before him, was convinced that James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King Jr. and that he acted alone.

  These two writers created the template for others who followed to put forward “nonfiction” works that would confirm the official story.

  If some facts, events, or individuals did not support the official story, then they were to be ignored, distorted, or discredited.

  George McMillan

  This effort continued in the 1970s and 1980s through the disinformational use of the work by author George McMillan, whose wife, it should be remembered, was cleared by the relevant intelligence decision makers to befriend and write about Marina Oswold after the assassination of John Kennedy. Her husband, George, came on the scene in the early 1970s and produced a work entitled The Making of an Assassin.

  George McMillan set out to write a biography of James Earl Ray assuming that he was the assassin of Dr. King. In his book he goes to great lengths to show that James’s family was dysfunctional He paints a picture of James as a petty—though lifelong—criminal, in and out of prison. As an inmate, he notes that he was basically quiet and withdrawn, although involved in dealing in contraband including amphetamines.

  In depicting some hostility by Ray against Dr. King, he relies on a notorious snitch/informant named Ray Curtis. Curtis—largely discredited as a reliable informant—went on to tell McMillan that Ray was, in fact, interested in killing Dr. King and was committed to do the deed.

  Over twenty-five years ago, being aware that Ray Curtis—a notorious informant—would say anything if he thought he could get some alleviation from the various charges against him, I disregarded his stories. While McMillan tries to paint a picture of Ray being a man on a mission, determined—for some reason—to kill Dr. King, he provides no plausible motive. In fact, in a footnote, he is compelled to report that the FBI investigation, revealing no racist motivation, dismisses the absence of a motive by blaming Ray’s unconscious, a motive hidden deep within the recesses of his psyche. He goes on to incredibly psychoanalyze James, contrasting Dr. King’s offering of love and warmth to thousands with his own emotional deprivation.

  McMillan describes Ray’s escape as involving his brother John. He was, obviously, totally unaware of the actual escape scenario, discussed in detail previously, which included Warden Swenson’s profiling and facilitation at the request of J. Edgar Hoover, who (as we have learned) also provided the funds.

  McMillan, presumably quoting Jerry Ray, states that James, after his escape, articulated a desire to kill Dr. King. I have spent hours with Jerry, who vehemently denies that he ever heard such a commitment from James. J
ames, he said, had only one thought—how to get out of the United States.

  Jerry, actually to his shame, told me that he was playing McMillan for money from the beginning, telling him what he thought he wanted to hear. Starting with page 238, McMillan just unleashes a narration of conclusions, beginning with the statement that “Jimmy” knew what he was going to do. It was only a question of “… working out the details.” He pretends to know what he is thinking and how he was going to be somebody. The fact that James went to Canada to seek a way out of North America, not as a part of a grand scheme which would take him back to the United States, is ignored even as a possibility.

  In order to get money from McMillan, Jerry played along and continued to feed him disinformation. Jerry denies making any statements that would have incriminated James. He said such an act was the furthest thing from his mind. He said McMillan had a political agenda and used him.

  McMillan disregards the Raul meeting in Montréal and summarizes James’s movements back in the United States and Mexico. He follows James to Los Angeles and admits that move made no sense—since McMillan had earlier said that James was determined to kill Dr. King in the South. Never mind—he then says one could not assume that Ray was operating on rational lines.

  He puts his irrational behavior down due to psychological reasons and an obsession with the Wallace campaign. His stalking theory—and that of others—suffers a problem when Dr. King arrived in Los Angeles on March 16 and James left on March 17. He continues to focus on James’s thoughts, as though he were inside his head.

  He ends up in Birmingham and details James buying one rifle and then exchanging it without providing a reasonable explanation. James, of course, has always insisted that Raul scolded him for not buying a 30.06 instead of a .223.

  Next stop, Memphis

  When discussing the scene, he ignores the Charles Hurley identification of the second Mustang, accepts Billy Kyles’s fraudulent story and the myth of the bathroom not being available because James was allegedly inside, from where, McMillan asserts, confirming the official story, that he fired the fatal shot and then fled—back to Canada.

  True to form, McMillan ignores critical evidence on his way to confirm the official story. His outrageous effort to advise the reader of James’s inner thoughts is a different approach, and it is sad that my old friend Julian Bond was, at the time, taken in by this glaring work of disinformation.

  Knowing what we do today, I doubt if Julian (who recently died), if alive, would now believe that McMillan had put doubts to rest. Myth, fiction, and imagination characterized this work by the husband of Priscilla Johnson McMillan, the woman assigned to work with Marina Oswald after the Kennedy assassination. Such assignments are rarely accidental, being controlled or cleared by official intelligence. George McMillan gave his wife great credit for his book, saying it would not have been done without her assistance.

  One may draw one’s own conclusions about the origin of this frightful affront to truth and justice.

  Lamar Waldron / Legacy of Secrecy

  Lamar Waldron engages in pure speculation about how James obtained his aliases in Canada. With no evidence, the speculation leads the author to tie James to a drug trafficking ring.

  We know that the alias Eric S. Galt—which became his identity while on the run—was the name of a real person, who, by nature of his job running the Union Carbide warehouse in Canada, had national security clearance, and who was also working on clandestine operations with the 902nd Military Intelligence Group.

  This information was published many years prior to the release of Waldron’s book. If aware, he elected not to refute but to ignore it.

  The author continues to speculate about Raul, saying that he was likely a composite of more than one person, invented by James. He notes that James’s descriptions often varied.

  Once again, with the barest research the author would have learned about Sid Carthew’s identification and also that James positively identified Raul from a photograph in 1978 and then again in 1996 to 1997 when shown the same Immigration and Naturalization Service photograph. He, of course, also ignored other independent identifications. Waldron refers to Phil Melanson’s work which, as good as it was, had been conducted also before my research was completed.

  Because he completely rejects the existence of Raul, he speculates that everything James does is related to him working with a drug-smuggling operation rather than following instructions from a handler.

  Waldron speculates that James became involved with the Marcello organization, which he further speculates was aligned with one Joseph Milteer, a virulent Louisiana racist, in the King assassination. Drugs and gun smuggling were criminal activities by which James earned money and the syndicate gave him the money for the Mustang.

  The primary difficulty with his thesis from the outset is that he opines without producing any hard evidence. The narrative of his version of events is overrun with conjectural words and phrases such as, among others, “could have,” “likely,” “possible,” “might,” “should have,” “probably,” “would have,” and “apparently.” A reference to a key witness will not allow for the identification of the source.

  The curious result is that he is correct about the involvement of Carlos Marcello and Frank Liberto and is also correct that, as we now know, racist elements of the Dixie Mafia/KKK were also involved in the conspiracy. Accordingly, he gives credibility to John McFerren’s story and the accounts of LaVada Addison and her son Nathan Whitlock.

  Where he is wrong and responsible for putting out serious disinformation is with respect to naming James as the shooter and denying Raul’s existence, thus confirming the official story.

  Waldron contends that James stalked Dr. King, but neglects to explain the many instances where he was in a different city. One striking example is his statement that on March 28, 1968, James remained in Atlanta when Dr. King was in Memphis leading the sanitation workers strike. Then, when Dr. King returned to Atlanta, his “stalker” went to Birmingham.

  He blithely accepts the HSCA conclusion that Dr. King had stayed at the Lorraine many times on previous visits and that when he checked in he went to his “usual room.” In fact, as one of his four black police officer bodyguards confirmed, when he had come to Memphis previously, he usually stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn in midtown and the last time he stayed at the Rivermont, where we know every inch of his room was wired. He did receive local people at the Lorraine; usually in room 309, during the day where they were more comfortable, but he did not stay overnight. Parenthetically, because of this I was always concerned with Ralph Abernathy’s statement about arriving at the motel on April 3 and having to wait until their “usual room” was vacated. First, this was not their usual room, and second the register of the hotel revealed that the room was empty when they arrived.

  Next, Waldron rejects the official story that James returned from buying the binoculars and parked his car, not again in front of Jim’s Grill, but further south on Main Street below Canipe’s store. This contention requires him to ignore Hurley’s testimony about the second Mustang with Arkansas plates. It also requires him to ignore the statements given by Hendrix and Reid who inspected James’s Mustang parked in front of Jim’s Grill around 5:40 p.m.

  He goes on to accept Billy Kyles’s false account of being with Dr. King and Ralph Abernathy in room 306 sometime just after their return around 5:40 p.m. This means that he had to ignore officer Richmond’s surveillance notes which had Reverend Kyles knocking on the door, having a brief word, and then walking away down the balcony. Ignoring previous statements and testimony under oath, Waldron unquestioningly accepts the abrupt decisions to remove black detective Redditt from the surveillance detail, as well as the only two black firemen in the nearby fire station from their posts.

  In order for the author to accept the official position that James fired the fatal shot from the bathroom, he had to ignore the sworn statement of taxi driver James McCraw that Charlie Stephens
—the State’s key witness—was dead-drunk and not fit to carry and that the bathroom was empty, the door open, and the light on minutes before the shooting.

  In contending that the shot came from the bathroom, in accordance with the official story, author Waldron discounts Loyd Jowers’s admission—corroborating Betty Spates’s testimony—that he was out in the bushes with the spotter (Earl Clark) and the shooter, and that he did take the rifle back into the Grill after the shooting.

  As detailed elsewhere in this book, Carlos Marcello did have a long-standing, close relationship with a Dixie Mafia family (the family of Russell Adkins) and that family also had a similarly close relationship with J. Edgar Hoover and his Deputy Clyde Tolson. The fact is that James Earl Ray would have been in touch with some of that crowd through his handler, Raul, but is it not surprising that the role of Joseph Milteer, in particular, in no way appears in any of the records? Waldron states that James called an associate of Milteer when he returned to Georgia, but attributes this revelation to the word of an anonymous source. That raises the most serious doubt about the veracity of the allegation.

  Like all of the others before him, Lamar Waldron speculates and opines. To be fair, with respect to his confirmation of the involvement of Marcello and Liberto, he is correct. But that is where his accuracy ends. Like the other writers before, he has not interviewed a single material witness we uncovered. There were about seventy witnesses at the trial. Each one had a piece of the puzzle to put in place.

  One would’ve thought that it might have been useful and responsible to speak, or attempt to speak, with the long list of people who had facts to reveal about the circumstances leading up to and surrounding the assassination.

  When a researcher refuses to conduct himself in this professional manner, one must ask why.

  However, the failure to do so enables the writer to engage in speculation, and yes, selective disinformation.