Orders to Kill

by William F Pepper Esq

  In retrospect this could explain why official pressure might have been put on Rosenson to say that he knew James. At the time I couldn’t understand why this official would be at all interested in this matter. In light of the connection now being alleged between Liberto and the official, it made more sense. McFerren said that another source of information was his lawyer from Jackson, Tennessee, Mr H. Ragan. Ragan had handled McFerren’s divorce and had become quite friendly with him. He had told McFerren quietly, years ago, that the same state official “handled” matters and looked out for the interests of organized crime in Tennessee. McFerren thought that Ragan would confirm the relationship. Ragan repeatedly refused to speak with me. He appeared frightened and certainly did not want to continue the discussion he had previously had with John McFerren.

  I had better luck with Tommy Wright. He remembered seeing “fat” Frank, the produce man, in 1968 at the law offices of the high-level Tennessee state official who had allegedly visited Randy Rosenson prior to one of his HSCA interviews.

  At 2:30, I parted with McFerren and Granberry and met with retired MPD Captain Tommy Smith. In response to my question, Smith confided that various senior officers of the MPD were regularly on the take back in 1968, but he didn’t know any details. He said that he was out of the loop because they knew that he wasn’t interested.

  He also said that the police officers who went to the FBI Academy—N. E. Zachary, Robert Cochran, Glynn King and others—formed a special clique.

  Tommy Smith then surprised me by saying that Zachary had called him before he testified at the TV trial, apparently in an attempt to influence what he would say. Tommy said that was probably one of the reasons for his decision to testify. He said he told Zachary that he wasn’t going to say what Zachary wanted him to confirm. My mind flashed back to Glynn King’s testimony and his explicit statement that Charles Stephens was sober just after the assassination. In light of what so many other witnesses said, King’s observations were inexplicable.

  That evening, Wayne and I went to visit John McFerren’s sister Sallie Boyd, who had arranged for us to interview Margaret Toler. As the assistant director of food services for St. Jude’s hospital, Toler used to order food from M. E. Carter but, she said, the food was always delivered in Frank Liberto’s trucks. The invoices were also sent by Liberto’s company, and frequently some of them were for food and produce that was never delivered. She estimated that the hospital lost between $90,000 and $100,000 per year as a result of this scam. Jowers had maintained that the money for his operation was brought to Memphis in an M. E. Carter truck. Frank Holt had earlier described to me Frank Liberto’s regular presence at M. E. Carter. Toler’s recollections seemed to confirm the relationship between M. E. Carter and Liberto.

  IN LATE JANUARY I WAS finally able to speak with Betty Spates. After reading the letter I sent to her, she had told Cliff Dates that she and Bobbi would only talk to me. She said that Jowers, Akins, and others said they were interested in doing a book or movie about the case, and wanted her to change her story to say that she saw a black man hand the rifle to Loyd in the doorway of the kitchen, seconds after the shooting. She refused.

  Jowers himself had called her and asked her to tell this story, and Willie Akins came around with a tape recorder and a tape that she was supposed to listen to help her get the story straight. When she refused to go along with this farce, Akins told her that she had “blown it” for all of them. He said that they could have split $300,000 if she had cooperated.

  Just before Jowers went on Prime Time Live, when Sam Donaldson was in Memphis filming interviews for the program, Akins brought Donaldson or someone from the program around to Spates’s house. She wouldn’t let them in though Akins began to bang on the windows. She even heard the ABC person say, “I don’t want to bother this lady, if she doesn’t want to talk to me.” Eventually they left.

  Betty totally refuted Jowers’s claims about Frank Holt and strongly insisted, as before, that when she saw Jowers running toward the back door there was no one with him. We agreed to meet the next time I was in Memphis.

  In a telephone conversation in mid-January Betty told me that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) had called her and wanted to interview her. She wanted to know what I thought she should do. I advised her to see them and answer their questions truthfully.

  Then, over the last weekend of January, John Billings told me that he learned that Pierotti had asked the TBI to conduct an investigation into the new Jowers evidence. He said that they had already spoken to McCraw on two occasions and McCraw said he had stuck to his story. Billings called the Memphis TBI office and spoke with the investigator, who appeared to have very little knowledge about the case. When he offered to be interviewed and volunteered Ken Herman as well, Billings was told that the attorney general would have to approve such an interview. He would check. The impression Billings received was that they wouldn’t be interviewed, and that by using the TBI Pierotti was distancing himself from direct responsibility for the investigation while still controlling the enquiry. As it turned out, they were never interviewed.

  I wrote to Pierotti offering any reasonable assistance to the TBI investigation of the new evidence. I told him that James was interested in being released and not in solving the murder. I also advised Pierotti (hoping that the word would reach others) that if released, James intended to leave the country, but while he stayed inside the investigation aimed at establishing his innocence would, of course, continue.

  When questioned by the Tennessean about the results of his investigation, Pierotti had claimed that the witnesses had retracted their stories. Following this comment I called Betty and asked her what had happened in her interview. She told me that they only asked her about statements Ken Herman had made about what she had said. Since she was angry with him, believing that he had betrayed her trust, I was concerned about what her responses might have been.

  DURING THIS TIME STEVE TOMPKINS called and left an urgent message. When I returned his call he said that to his surprise he had received a telegram from a Special Forces contact he had previously interviewed, whom I will call Warren, who now lived in Latin America. The message was simply that “… he now knew who Dr. William Pepper was” and that he was prepared to answer any questions I would put to him through Tompkins. Under no circumstances would he meet directly with me. The date he set for the meeting, outside of the U.S., was the last weekend in March. Steve Tompkins was willing to go as a consultant and put my questions to Warren, who he said had never lied to him, although, on occasion, he would refuse to discuss a matter or say that he did not know. Based on what Tompkins had told me about him, I knew that he and his partner, whom I will call Murphy, who lived in the same country but who had never met Tompkins, had vital information. He said that though I would have the names of and personal details about Warren, Murphy, and perhaps others, one of the conditions would be that I agree not to name them. Without that understanding there could be no cooperation. If I broke my word on this issue he thought it likely that both of us would be killed. I agreed to the condition but was unclear on whether I could name any participants who had since died. He said simply, “That’s your call.” Since he would be working for me, he had no problem with my using his name. He would provide detailed written reports.

  Through James, I got another lead on the army’s role. He had asked me to contact a private investigator named Alexander Taylor following a meeting he had had with him some while ago. The former intelligence officer told me he would do what he could to help our investigation and mentioned a telephone discussion he recently had had with the retired former Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence Major General William P. Yarborough. Taylor reported that Yarborough believed that it was time for the American people to be told how close America was to civil war during the late 1960s and how extensive was the military preparation. Taylor said he had heard independently in the autumn of last year that “someone new” (he assumed it was me) had co
me on the scene and was particularly thorough. As a result, he thought the whole picture of the role of the military might evolve. With respect to the King case, Taylor volunteered that the time could well be right for a deal to be made, as a result of which James might walk. Taylor offered to reach out for a meeting with Vice President Gore through his congressman. I was unclear about Taylor’s motivation and pessimistic about the chance of success but not opposed to such an effort being made. In any event, nothing came of it.

  THEN, on February 22, 1994, after nearly six years of my urging, Amnesty International entered the case and wrote to the attorney general. They specifically asked him what he was doing about the new evidence and expressed their wish that it be thoroughly aired in open court.

  Pierotti wrote back on February 28 advising Amnesty that James was in prison not because he was a political prisoner but because he murdered Dr. King. He termed the new evidence “baseless fabrications.” After a further exchange of letters, it became clear that he was not going to answer their specific questions. Amnesty decided not to pursue the matter further. There seemed to be no end to Pierotti’s arrogance. I believed he knew that aspects of Jowers’s story had been confirmed, and yet he continued to maintain that it was all a sham.

  ON MARCH 7, 8, and 9 I spent a total of thirteen hours with Betty Spates. She agreed to tell me her story from the beginning, adding that she had been racking her brains, trying to remember each detail about what she observed on April 4, 1968. I met her in her darkened home and for the entirety of my visits we sat at her dining room table, interrupted from time to time by one or another of her adult children. She told the story of her involvement with Jowers and the grill as she had always told it, adding details. She said, for example, that after Loyd’s wife divorced him, he bought a white Cadillac identical to the one that she had owned and driven when they were married. There were a few surprises, however, when she related the events of April 4, 1968.

  Now Betty remembered going over to the grill just before noon on that day and noticing that Loyd was nowhere around. She went back to the kitchen at the rear to look for him. The door was slightly ajar. She was only in the kitchen for a short time when Loyd came through the back door carrying a rifle. The gun had a fairly light brown stock and handle and a barrel that appeared to be of normal length; she did not remember seeing a scope. She said that Loyd did not appear to be in a hurry, nor did he seem to be under stress. He was almost nonchalant.

  She was startled and asked, “Loyd, what are you doing with that gun?” He replied, half jokingly, “I’m going to use it on you, if I catch you with a nigger.” She said, “Loyd, you know I wouldn’t do that,” and he said he was only kidding, that she knew he’d never hurt her.

  He put the gun down alongside a keg of beer and then, as though he had second thoughts, picked it up again and proceeded to break it down in front of her. He then carried the pieces through the grill, went out the front door, and turned left, walking several feet to where his old brown station wagon was parked. As she watched through the window he put the broken-down rifle into the back of the wagon, looking around afterward to see if anyone was watching. Then he came back inside.

  She confirmed that during the course of that afternoon she was in and out of the grill, going back and forth to Seabrook. Although Jowers always discouraged her from being around on Thursdays when his wife would drop by, that Thursday he seemed especially ill at ease and kept chasing her out. That only made Betty more suspicious that he was cheating on her, and she was in the grill when Jowers’s wife came in around 4:00 p.m. Mrs. Jowers walked straight up to her and called her a whore and told her to get out. Loyd intervened, telling his wife to get out herself and directing Betty to get behind the counter. Sullen and speechless, Loyd’s wife stalked out.

  After a while Betty went back across the street to Seabrook, returning to the grill to check on Loyd sometime before 6:00. She recalled Bobbi was still there. She often “hung on” to maximize her tips after her shift finished at 3:30. Rosetta and Rosie Lee had gone home. Loyd, however, was again nowhere in sight.

  Eventually, she went back toward the kitchen, noticing that this time the door between the restaurant section and the kitchen was tightly closed. Thinking that this was unusual, she made her way into the kitchen where she noticed that the door leading to the backyard was ajar. Soon after, she recalled hearing what sounded like a loud firecracker, and then within seconds she looked out and saw Jowers rushing from the brush area through the door, carrying another rifle. When she first saw him he was about ten to fifteen feet from the door. He was out of breath, she said, and white as a ghost. His hair was in disarray, and the knees of his trousers were wet and muddy as though he had been kneeling in the soggy grass or brush area.

  When he caught his breath he didn’t appear angry, but plaintively said to her, “You wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt me, would you?” She said, “Of course I wouldn’t, Loyd.” Without another word he moved quickly to the door leading into the grill, which opened right next to the counter on the left. In one quick step, with the rifle at his side, he was behind the counter and she saw him place the gun on a shelf under the counter and push it farther back.

  She remembered that the rifle was distinctive. It had a dark mahogany-brown stock, a scope, and a short barrel that made the gun look like a toy gun. There was something screwed or fixed onto the barrel somehow, fitting over it and increasing its diameter.

  In this statement, for the first time, Betty had spoken of two separate instances of seeing Loyd Jowers bringing a gun in from the brush area behind the kitchen. It was somewhat worrying that this was the first time she had mentioned a second gun. On the other hand, this account corroborated what McCraw had said all along about Jowers showing him the gun under the counter.

  Betty went on to say that a few months after the killing in 1968, she was visited by three persons who she believed were government officials. One was black, another white, and the third appeared to be Spanish or Latino. They offered her and her sisters new identities, relocation, and money for, it was said, their own protection. They refused, supported by their mother, and the men left.

  Two of the same men returned about five years later. (This would have been around the time that James was being given an evidentiary hearing in federal court.) The offer was repeated and again refused.

  In the early 1980s, in addition to the incident when Akins fired at her and her two sons, one evening he came in through the back door of her house when she had just returned, exhausted, from work. As she was seated on her sofa, he pulled out his pistol and fired three shots into the sofa, missing her by inches. As she thought about it, Betty believed that Akins was only trying to frighten and not to kill her.

  Betty signed detailed affidavits in support of all of these events.

  When we filed Betty’s primary affidavit with the court the Tennessean published its contents. Shortly afterward attorney general Pierotti leaked a statement taken by the TBI on January 25 that we found distressing. It was purportedly under oath, handwritten by TBI special agent John Simmons and witnessed by one of Pierotti’s investigators, Mark Glanker. In it Betty denied seeing Jowers with the rifle at 6:00 p.m. and further denied having any information supporting James’s innocence.

  When I asked Betty about it she did not recall giving the specific answers recorded. Once again she said they only asked her to respond to specific points in Ken Herman’s statement.

  It did appear, however, that she had signed the TBI statement. I realized that I would not get to the bottom of the discrepancies until I could obtain the statement and copies of the complete tape recordings of the TBI interview. This latter would not be possible unless we had an evidentiary hearing and we could obtain them in discovery. At the end of March, however, I was able to obtain a copy of the TBI interview statement of Betty Spates. On its face the handwritten statement dated January 25, 1994 appeared to contradict the affidavit she had given me on March 8, 1994. When I showed it to
her and asked her how she could have signed it, she said she didn’t read it because her glasses were broken. It was read to her, and the investigator wrote as he asked her questions, telling her not to volunteer information but to simply answer questions about Herman’s statement. She said the men from the attorney general’s office and the TBI made her afraid. Betty went out of her way to assure me that she now wanted to testify and to clear her name of any hint of her being a liar.

  For some time I had known that Betty had a brain tumor that affected her memory from time to time, but until then I had not taken it seriously. The tumor also resulted in her having blinding headaches. She was afraid to undergo surgery because of what she believed was the risk of permanent brain damage.

  SID CARTHEW LIVES IN ENGLAND. In 1967-1968 he was a merchant seaman sailing on both cargo and passenger ships destined for ports around the world. He frequently traveled to North America and spent time in the U.S. Gulf ports as well as in Montreal. In Montreal he would frequent the Neptune Tavern on West Commissioner’s Street, because it was right down near the docks, and was a hangout for merchant seamen. It was in that bar on two occasions that he met a man named Raul.

  Carthew came upon the TV trial by accident. Knowing nothing about the case before seeing the trial, Carthew became interested when he heard James Earl Ray testify about being in the Neptune in late July and August of 1967. His interest was heightened when James went on to describe his meetings in that bar with Raul. Then Carthew heard prosecutor Hickman Ewing ridicule James’s contention not only that Raul could have manipulated James into being a patsy for the killing of Dr. King, but that he even existed.