David Garrow
Next on the scene was historian David Garrow. Garrow won the Pulitzer Prize for his work Bearing the Cross, which focused on the official governmental surveillance of Dr. King. In order to reveal the sins of J. Edgar Hoover—long dead—the FBI activities against Dr. King were revealed. Garrow was given access to files and information not ordinarily available, and he set out a horrifying piece of history, documenting Bureau activities against Dr. King and the civil rights movement, which most people surmised were going on.
Without speculating as to why he was selected to out Hoover’s Bureau, though, in retrospect, I have my own view, the revelations of the record are clearly significant.
He may, however, have some regrets. For example, he reveals how moved Maltin was by my Ramparts piece, which led him to me and to formally oppose the war. (See Appendix B.)
Irrespective of the merit of this work, however, Garrow did no research or investigation on the assassination. In spite of this he was trotted out—in the pre-Posner days—as a spokesperson for the official story. It was ludicrous to the extent that he would not appear on any stage with me. Poor chap, he was placed in an impossible position by his masters. He knew little or nothing about the killing and yet he was being asked to defend the indefensible.
Gerald Posner
This didn’t work. Enter Gerald Posner and Killing the Dream. His work was designed to end all debate on the King case as his book, Case Closed, was designed to end the controversy on the assassination of John Kennedy.
He failed, to the point of being ridiculed in the first instance by scholars and researchers familiar with the evidence. You, dear reader, can draw your own conclusions as to how his effort confirms an endorsement of the official story concerning the assassination of Dr. King.
Billy Kyles has always stated that he knocked on Dr. King’s room 306 door shortly after 5:30 p.m. on the day of the assassination and went in and chatted until nearly 6:00 p.m. when they walked out of the room together and stood side-by-side on the balcony.
Abernathy told me that nothing of the sort happened. “Billy Kyles is a liar,” he said. This was the first indication I had that the oft-repeated story was untrue. Posner, of course, was not privy to that conversation, so one could not fault him for choosing to believe Kyles, except for the existence of proof to the contrary. Patrolman Willie B. Richmond’s surveillance notes clearly described Kyles knocking on Dr. King’s room 306 door at 5:50 p.m.—not 5:30 p.m.—and described the door being opened briefly and then closed, with Kyles walking away, down the balcony, where he stood some thirty to forty feet away from Dr. King, who came out at around 6:00 p.m. Richmond’s report and his testimony at the civil trial made it clear that Dr. King stood alone on the balcony. Kyles never approached him but remained that distance away—a fact that had always puzzled me since he was ordinarily not one to miss a photo opportunity.
Since Posner referred to the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office as being like his “second home” it is difficult to understand how he could have missed Richmond’s surveillance report in the file. It is obvious that he either missed it or ignored it.
EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS
In a note describing what eyewitnesses saw, Posner spends a good deal of time attempting to discredit limousine driver Solomon Jones. He even quotes Reverend Kyles as saying Jones was not in a position to have seen anyone in the bushes. Attorney Wayne Chastain, who Posner credits with being generous with his time and extensive knowledge of the case, told me that Solomon Jones told him that he saw a man come down over the wall and run up Mulberry Street. Once again, it is difficult to believe that Wayne—longtime associate counsel in the case—would not have given the same account to Posner. Also missing from Posner’s narrative about witnesses who provided statements in the aftermath of the shooting are the observations of the Reverend James Orange who stated that he saw “smoke” rising from the bushes right after the shot. (We came to believe that the “smoke” was actually dust kicked up from the brush.) Jim said he instinctively dropped to the ground and turned in the direction of the bushes. Posner, ignoring or disregarding the fact that Jim told the story at the time, had the audacity to call it “a new story,” thus relying on his readers’ unfamiliarity with the details.
In an effort to dismiss New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell’s story, Posner does not interview Caldwell but refers to Gerold Frank’s conclusion that he could not possibly have seen a man in the bushes as he has consistently maintained.
One might have expected that a Random House editor would, at least, have required that he interview Caldwell himself rather than relying on quotes of an old report which was secondhand information even then and which omitted any discussion of what Caldwell stated he saw.
These omissions, of course, weigh heavily against his regurgitation of the official story, contending that the shot came, not from the bushes, but from the second-floor rooming house bathroom window.
The Cutting Down of the Bushes
We established, beyond any doubt, that the bushes behind the rooming house were cut down the next morning. Maynard Stiles of the Public Works Department confirmed under oath, six years before Posner published, that he was called by inspector Sam Evans of the MPD and asked to get a team down there to work with the assigned police officers on the morning of April 5 to cut and clean up the crime scene. We also interviewed one of the Public Works workers assigned to the job. Posner ignores this evidence and did not interview Stiles, who is not even mentioned in the index of his book. Then, he blithely contends that the cutting took place the following August.
Shamelessly, Posner states that the House Select Committee could find no records from the Public Works Department that a cleanup took place. Presumably, Posner was also unable to locate any such documentation.
It is a shame he did not find the time to interview Maynard Stiles, the Public Works official who organized the cleanup and who confirmed it under oath years before Posner published.
The brush was worked even in August, but as an afterthought—perhaps deliberately. It had nothing to do with the cleanup four months earlier, which, by the way, is reflected in most photographs of the scene taken at the time, including one in Posner’s book.
It is ironic that the photograph reproduced by Posner shows the area of the bushes scraped clean with a thin covering of grass. Among others, Earl Caldwell and J. A. Hodges, one of the MPD officers who went into the bushes shortly after the killing, said, as I noted in An Act of State that he had to fight his way through a dense thicket of bushes, which went almost all the way back to the kitchen door back entrance to Jim’s Grill.
MPD Homicide Lieutenant Tommy Smith (although his role has been thrown into question by Ron Tyler Adkins’s firsthand recollections), also omitted from Posner’s interview list in the index in his book, would have—if he had been asked—confirmed that Charlie Stephens, the State’s key witness, was dead-drunk when he talked to him right after the shooting. Tommy said they had to take him to headquarters and fill him with black coffee before he was even partially coherent. Posner neglects to include this information—as well as Chastain’s similar recollection, Stephen’s roommate Grace Walden who insisted that he saw nothing, Loyd Jowers’s observations when he came down to the Grill earlier that afternoon, and taxi driver James McCraw, who saw him minutes before the killing, too drunk to carry in his cab, and left him in a stupor in his room. Posner, while focusing on other information about McCraw, does not discuss his observations about Stephens. Instead, what he does do is recount his interview with MPD officer Roy Davis who saw Stephens some hours later at MFD Headquarters after—as Tommy Smith stated—he had been filled with black coffee.
Even then, Posner quotes Davis as saying that when he took a statement from Stephens at Headquarters he was “… not real drunk but he was not sober, even then. I distinctly remember that he could not identify the man (leaving the second floor of the rooming house). I would not like to rely on him as my o
nly witness.”
So much for Charlie Stephens and Posner’s treatment of the state’s key witness.
The Bathroom
A primary aspect of the official story that had to be supported by its adherents is the proposition that the fatal shot was fired from the second-floor bathroom window of the rooming house.
Aside from the references of individuals like Billy Kyles to that site, the allegation principally rests upon the statement coaxed out of drunken Charlie Stephens, who claimed to see someone running down the hall carrying a bundle.
Such a conclusion ignores taxicab driver McCraw’s sworn statement that not only was Stephens dead drunk and incapable of reliably seeing anything, but also his observation within minutes of the shooting when he was leaving Stephen’s room—deciding not to carry him—that the bathroom door was open and the bathroom was empty.
To embrace this official scenario, one would have to discount the statements set out earlier of Reverend Orange, Solomon Jones, and Earl Caldwell, and eventually, Betty Spates, Loyd Jowers himself, Olivia Catling, and Louie Ward, all of whom independently confirmed that the shot came from the bushes.
I have set out these observations in detail elsewhere and so it is not necessary to repeat them here.
I suggest that the proposition that the shot came from the bathroom window is beyond any reasonable consideration.
Betty Spates
One of the real victims of my investigation was Betty Spates, who I believe without a doubt told the truth when she gave me a detailed sworn statement of seeing Loyd Dowers run past her into the kitchen of Jim’s Grill looking “white as a ghost” carrying a still-smoking rifle. Betty was not only a victim of harassment and pressure by state and city investigators but, I am sorry to say, of my own investigators and a television producer who tried to get her to alter her story and name an innocent black man—Frank Holt—as the killer. In addition, at that time in 1993–1994, she had a developing brain tumor. She harbored a dreadful secret for twenty-five years both out of fear of, and concern for, Loyd Jowers, with whom she had an affair from the time she was seventeen and with whom she had a child. She also feared Jowers might kill her, and this was mixed with concern because she believed he had been the shooter.
Intimidated into recanting her story, she ultimately confirmed to me (as did Jowers) that her original story as I have set it out in earlier works was the truth.
Posner discounts it as unreliable and tainted with the rogue efforts of people around me to make money on the revelation.
In fairness, one cannot fault Posner for taking this position even as he was unaware that subsequent to his book, Loyd Jowers would confirm to me and his lawyer that Betty Spates had been telling the truth.
John McFerren and Frank Liberto
Posner and the advocates of the official lone “nut” assassin story had a more difficult time in dismissing the story of John McFerren that he overheard local Mafia operative Frank Liberto shout into a telephone in his produce warehouse where John shopped every Thursday, buying goods for his small gas station and general store in Somerville. At the time he thought nothing of the exclamation that said, “Shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony.” Only later, when he learned the details of the assassination, did he realize the significance of what he heard.
The statement he heard was indeed evidence of the existence of a conspiracy. As such it had to be neglected or discounted by the Select Committee, MPD, and FBI investigations, not to mention the official story tellers like Gerald Posner.
Posner, like the others, dismissed John McFerren’s story and questioned credibility based on John’s mistaken identification of Ray as a former employee of Liberto. John’s understandable paranoia developed over the years. Both Baxter Bryant and Reverend Lawson recall the statement exactly as John has always told it to me. After becoming aware of the harassment, attacks, and threats John has faced, it is little wonder that this pioneering civil rights leader in the most racist county in Tennessee is nervous and suspicious of strangers.
Posner has equal disdain for Nathan Whitlock who knew Frank Liberto. Liberto used to frequent his mother’s small restaurant on his way home from the Scott Street Market and one day, when the Select Committee Hearings were on the television in the cafe, he blurted to Mrs. Addison that he had King killed. This upset her greatly, and subsequently Nate confronted Liberto who confirmed it. Posner says it stretches credibility that Liberto, would make such an admission. Unfortunately, Posner never bothered to interview Whitlock or his mother, both of whom testified under oath to having heard this admission.
With respect to the mafia involvement, Posner also elected to ignore my October 15, 1994, interview with Memphis mafia associate Art Baldwin. He confirmed that he had become an FBI informant as a result of working closely with the Marcello organization and its chief representative in Memphis, the local godfather Gene Luchese. He told me about being present when Liberto talked with Luchese and was treated like a “puppy dog” by the godfather, who complained to Liberto that Ray was supposed to have been killed in Memphis, but the job was botched.
This hard information from a mafia insider is deplorable, but given the damage the involvement of Liberto does to the official story, it is understandable as to why Posner and his like, would also not be interested in interviewing either Art Baldwin or Nathan Whitlock. Nor would they be interested in interviewing LaVada Whitlock, who testified under oath about Frank Liberto telling her about his involvement
Glenda Grabow and Raul
Since I have covered the story of Glenda Grabow in considerable detail elsewhere it is not necessary to go into it here. As with other inconvenient witnesses, Posner attempts to discredit her accounts and capitalize on her fear, vacillation, and less-than-precise recollection of everything Raul said to her, as well as ridiculing her connecting him to the JFK assassination. Ultimately, Posner supports the conclusion of the Shelby County DA’s investigations that the person we believed to be Raul was an innocent immigrant autoworker who never traveled, rarely missed work, and was being unfairly maligned. In order to reach this conclusion, he had to discount or ignore the following:
• A photograph of this Raul was picked out from a spread instantly 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 finally identified him in a photo—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 which lasted—as the phone bill shows—for several minutes.
• This 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.
• In some papers which FBI Agent Donald Wilson obtained from James’s Mustang when they found it 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 Reiss’s interview with Raul’s wife who 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 h
is 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.
The Two Mustangs
Posner maintains—and the official story requires—that there was only one Mustang. He says that on the afternoon of April 4, James drove to the York Arms Company, not very far from the rooming house, bought a pair of binoculars, and returned to the rooming house. Posner maintains that the spot he had in front of Jim’s Grill was taken so he parked further south, just below Canipe’s store which was on the corner of the building, and on the edge of an uncut lot, which was used for parking of some vehicles. The official story, embraced by Posner, was that as a result of seeing a parked MPD Tact Unit station wagon, James panicked and dropped the bundle in Canipe’s doorway.
James told me that on his first try he had difficulty finding the York Arms Store and so he returned to check the directions again with Raul. He then went out, as instructed by Raul, found the store, bought the binoculars, and brought them back to the room where he threw them on the bed. He could not buy the infrared type and informed Raul of such. He told me that he returned to park in the same spot in front of Jim’s Grill, not further south on Main Street.
For the official story, there is ample independent evidence—ignored or overlooked by Posner. The statements of witnesses William Reed and Roy Hendrix, in the MPD file, have them examining the car parked in front of the Grill, as James said, upon leaving Jim’s Grill around twenty minutes before the shooting. Posner also ignores the statement of Charles Hurley, who parked behind the second Mustang, waiting to pick up his wife when she left work at the Seabrook Wallpaper Company sometime before 5:00 p.m. Hurley has consistently said that the Mustang behind which he parked had Arkansas plates. James’s Mustang, of course, had Alabama plates.
As I have noted elsewhere, Gerold Frank, at least, recognized the problem and tried to pass it off on both states having red and white plates. Arkansas plates, however, had red letters on white background, and began with three letters (Hurley was even able to remember two of the three letters) while Alabama plates had a red background with white letters.
The Plot to Kill King Page 42