Carthew tried desperately to contact me, getting nowhere until he contacted the General Council of the Bar in London which gave him my address. He assured me that Raul did indeed exist. Carthew said Raul approached him at the Neptune sometime in 1967. Raul had struck up a conversation about the sale of guns. Carthew had a passing interest, and Raul said he would sell him some Browning 9mm handguns. Carthew said he would take four, and Raul, apparently thinking he meant four boxes, entered into negotiations. He quickly turned off, however, when it became clear that Carthew was only talking about four weapons rather than boxes. Carthew said Raul muttered something about it being typical of the English, who never had enough money to pay for anything.
Sid Carthew described Raul as being about 5'8" tall and weighing approximately 145 pounds. He had a dark, Mediterraneanlike complexion and dark brown hair. (This was consistant with James’s description of Raul.) Carthew remembered him saying that the guns were stolen from a military base and that the price included the fee for the master sergeant who organized the supply and who, according to Raul, would deliver them himself to his ship in exchange for cash. This dovetailed with Tompkins’s account of the New Orleans gunrunning activity of the Special Forces soldiers.
In addition Carthew remembered Raul asking him about the possibility of someone going to England on board a ship such as his. He told him that it would not be a problem, insisting that seamen tried to help out any person in trouble. He said that Raul seemed skeptical about the arrangements. It was as though he was looking for an assurance that it wouldn’t work. In any event he did not pursue the matter.
I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Carthew said that he believed that a shipmate and friend of his named Joe Sheehan, with whom Carthew had lost touch, was also present at the table in the bar when the discussion about the guns was going on. We eventually tracked down Sheehan, who said he wasn’t at the Neptune that particular night but confirmed that Carthew had mentioned the incident to him sometime afterward at the annual general meeting of the National Union of Seamen in May 1968.
THE HEARING ORIGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR April 4 had been put off until April 15. Judge Joe Brown’s courtroom was practically empty at 11 a.m. that morning except the jury box which was jammed with the media. The state’s side of the table had the attorney general and two assistant attorneys general crammed together, with Wayne and me sitting on the defense side. The handful of spectators included Ken Herman, John Billings, Lewis Garrison, and, to my surprise, Willie Akins.
After the preliminaries, the state (through assistant attorney general William Campbell) argued on behalf of its motion to dismiss the petition. Their argument was that on a strict interpretation of Tennessee law the petition had to be denied. While admitting that James might claim relief under federal law, Campbell argued that after all the time that had elapsed he was technically precluded under state law, essentially because he had entered a plea of guilty.
This would mean that anyone who had pleaded guilty, whether that plea was coerced or not, would never be entitled to a trial, even in a case like this where new evidence of actual innocence came to light.
When my turn came, I reviewed the factual history of the case and argued for relief based upon the guarantees of rights contained in both the Tennessee and U.S. constitutions. I contended that the court should examine the new evidence pertaining to the actual innocence of James. I argued that it was now substantially clear that the guilty plea was coerced and that in any event the state should not be allowed to deny a trial in a case where the defendant is actually innocent. The state’s blatant attempt to separate Tennessee law and procedure from the minimal obligations required under federal law was unconstitutional.
Though the hearing was to focus on the law, I argued the law by substantially elaborating upon and applying the facts. This enabled me to put a long list of suppressed factual evidence and factual discrepancies on the record and of course to be heard by the judge and the media.
Pierotti spoke for about 15 minutes as part of the state’s rebuttal argument and clearly appeared to be agitated. He made the mistake of actually addressing me, asking whether or not I had represented one of the Ray brothers before the HSCA. This allowed me to rise and interrupt him to explain to the court (and put on the record) the circumstances that led to my representing Jerry Ray.
At the end of the argument the judge complimented both sides and then, referring to lengthy notes, stated that although the state might be technically correct, requiring him to deny the petition, nevertheless he was going to allow us to put forward evidence. This evidentiary record would be available to an appellate court, he said, as well as to history. In an impassioned reference to the importance of Dr. King, he said history compelled him to allow as much information as possible to be placed before the public under the auspices of his court.
The state was stunned. Campbell inquired what this meant. The judge said that he would not finalize or file any order until after the proffer (submission of evidence) was over. We were elated.
When asked by reporters outside of the courtroom what he was going to do, the attorney general responded that he was “… going to pull out the rest of my hair,” and labeled our case “garbage.”
It was an extraordinary result. If he had explicitly ruled in our favor and granted a trial or a full evidentiary hearing, the state would have appealed, and considering the inclination of the court of appeals and the Supreme Court, he would likely have been overturned. In any event we would have been off on the appellate trail. By not finalizing any ruling (effectively pocketing it), he kept the matter before him and could thus allow us to call witnesses and submit evidence. We intended, for example, to file a motion asking to test the rifle and the bullets in evidence. Whether or not the judge would go so far as to order a trial at the conclusion of our evidence remained to be seen, but following the hearing on April 15 I believed that there was a chance.
28
Setbacks and Surprises: April 16–October 30, 1994
YEARS EARLIER JOHN MCFERREN HAD TOLD ME (as he had also told writer Bill Sartor in 1968) about an incident that occurred shortly after James’s capture in 1968. He was produce shopping in Palazolla’s market store when suddenly the manager saw him and began to cry. Startled, McFerren asked one of the black employees (Robert Tyus), whom he knew as Old Pal, what the problem was. Old Pal took him aside and explained that seeing him must have reminded Mr. Palazolla about the death of his teenage son. The boy had had a stall in Frank Liberto’s LL& L wholesale produce store in the market at 815 Scott Street and might have learned too much about Liberto’s involvement in the killing of Dr. King. Shortly after McFerren had given his statement setting out the conversation he overheard on April 4, in which Liberto told someone “to shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony,” the Palazolla boy died, supposedly in an automobile accident. By making his statement McFerren had put Frank Liberto clearly in the frame with regard to the King killing. The tightly knit section of the Italian community involved in the produce business knew about McFerren’s allegations. Old Pal implied that the death was arranged by Liberto to ensure his silence.
I had long been unable to corroborate this death. When I asked Ken Herman to check it out in 1992 he told me that there was no record of it. Over the years McFerren had become unable to remember the details of the incident. Then, when I asked him about the management of the Palazolla operation, McFerren spontaneously said that Mr. Bob Palazolla, who was running the business for his father, was the one who cried. McFerren said he remembered now that he was told that Mr. Palazolla broke down because the death of his son was somehow associated with him learning information about Liberto’s role in the killing of Dr. King. Robert Chapman, a restaurateur who was a friend of Wayne’s and a longtime large-volume customer of the Palazolla Produce Company, offered to ask Michael Palazolla, who currently runs the business, about the death of a youngster around that time. He was told that family patriarch Walter had a grandson who
had died as a teenager. Walter’s son, the boy’s father, was Bob Palazolla. John agreed to try to locate ‘Old Pal’ and see what further information he could obtain.
ON APRIL 22, 1994 I left for Dallas to meet with oil man H. L. Hunt’s former chief aide John Curington. We would meet again the following November 6, at which time he brought along Clyde Lovingood a former aide and close friend of Mr Hunt. Months earlier I had instructed one of my investigators Jim Johnson, to raise certain preliminary questions with him when he was available to be interviewed. In meetings that lasted more than thirteen hours, he expanded considerably on the information he’d given my investigator and offered many new revelations on the billionaire oil man’s close ties to several of the institutions and individuals that were emerging as having involvement in the conspiracy—in particular the FBI and the Mafia.
Curington had worked for Hunt Oil for fifteen years and for nearly thirteen of these had worked for H. L. Hunt personally, occupying the office right next to him, only by a door, which usually stood open. As was not unusual with such an employer, he frequently worked eighteen-hour days and seven-day weeks and often traveled with him. In such a position few things should have escaped his notice.
As he explained it, he was basically Mr. Hunt’s “follow-through” guy. He did whatever was necessary to get a job done. While not engaging in the dirty work himself, he made the arrangements at the old man’s request. My investigator had said at one point that he had even referred to himself as Hunt’s “bag man,” saying that he carried and delivered cash, sometimes in very large amounts, to any number of places, organizations, and individuals in support of right-wing activities as well as to pay for specific operations. Curington insisted that no one knew all of the old man’s business since he would frequently assign confidential tasks to particular individuals whom he trusted.
Though Curington was clearly concerned about his own legal position, since he had participated in many of the illegal activities he detailed, he was remarkably frank overall. While continually referring to documents in an old brown leather suitcase, the sixty-seven-year-old Texan confirmed that a closer relationship than had ever been publicly known existed between his ex-boss and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. Their association went back to the early 1950s. My investigator Jim Johnson had witnessed this relationship during his boyhood visit to Monroe Waldridge’s east Texas ranch. Apparently they had been poker-playing friends for many years, and their compatible right-wing political views made them allies. Hoover had even seconded a trusted FBI agent, Paul Rothermel, to Hunt as his head of security. Rothermel left the bureau in late 1954 and joined Hunt in 1955.
Curington was present at various meetings between the two men when Martin Luther King was discussed. Usually Hoover came to the old man’s hotel room. While the two men shared a dislike for Dr. King, Hoover’s animosity was more passionate and obsessive, more personal. Hoover regularly provided Hunt with a considerable amount of documentation and material to be used as ammunition against Dr. King in the oil baron’s extreme right-wing, daily nationally syndicated Life Line radio broadcasts. King was a favorite and a regular target of Life Line venom, and Hoover provided the poison. Curington recalled one meeting in Chicago between Hunt and Hoover, which to the best of his recollection was held around the time of the American Medical Association national convention in the year that Milford Rouse was elected president (upon checking I learned that that convention was held in June 1967). At that meeting in Hunt’s hotel room, he recalled Hunt telling Hoover that he could finish King by constantly attacking him on his daily radio broadcasts. Hoover replied that it would not work. He said the only way to stop King would be to “completely silence” him. After King’s murder, Hunt acknowledged to Curington that Hoover had won that argument.
He also said that the old man had a private telephone that he kept in his desk drawer. The phone was in the name of a dead man, John McKinley. It was on this phone that he would receive and occasionally place phone calls about sensitive matters. Very few people had the McKinley phone number. Hoover was one and he would call only on this phone.
In April 1968, Life Line produced a fifteen-minute daily program, six days a week, on 429 stations in 398 cities across America. Between 1967 and 1968 Hunt spent nearly $2,000,000 on this program alone. Curington revealed that the entire effort, as well as other shadowy, often deeply covert political activity, was funded by monies diverted by Hunt from H.L.H. Products Inc. Curington ran this company, which the “old man” had established as a front for funding such political activity. This is why Curington found charges of embezzlement made by Hunt’s sons Bunker and Herbert and nephew Tom Hunt in 1969 against himself and Paul Rothermel hard to take: funds were routinely siphoned off, and kickbacks from purchasers were collected and diverted, on the old man’s instructions. James’s former lawyer, Percy Foreman, who also represented the Hunts, was ultimately indicted for charges connected with the wiretapping of Hunt aides Curington and Rothermel as a part of the effort to prove the embezzlement charges.
Curington also acknowledged that his boss and Hoover shared many of the same friends, including several kingpins of organized crime. Not only was Hunt close to gamblers Frank Erickson (to whom he once owed $400,000) and Ray Ryan (who at the same time owed him a large amount), but he associated with Frank Costello (the mob’s liaison to Hoover) and Meyer Lansky. Clyde Lovingood, who handled other sensitive assignments for Hunt, confirmed that he was the direct liaison with Lansky. Hunt’s top-level mob ties also included Carlos Marcello and Dallas boss Joe Civello.
Subsequently, in Curington’s file I found a Dallas Morning News obituary for Civello, dated January 19, 1970, which indicated that one of H.L.H. Products’ senior officers, John H. Brown, was a pallbearer at Civello’s funeral. Other pallbearers included Civello’s Baton Rouge relatives, the Polito family, long associated with Carlos Marcello. Brown lived across the street from Civello, and when the FBI wanted an informant on Civello, Curington arranged for Brown—with Civello’s permission—to provide innocuous bits and pieces of information, so that the Hunt relationship with both the bureau and Civello was enhanced. According to Curington, it was not as though Hoover would ever do anything contrary to Civello’s interests, but he realized that information was power and he liked to know as much as possible. Hunt also knew and closely relied upon certain Houston individuals who were very close to Marcello.
In politics, he noted that Sam Rayburn, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, and his protégé Lyndon Johnson were both lifelong close political assets of Mr. Hunt.
Other political allies of Hunt, and the beneficiaries of his largesse, across the nation, included John Connally in Texas and Senator James Eastland of Mississippi, who headed the right-wing Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Curington said that all these people received payoffs or unrecorded contributions from Hunt, delivered in a variety of ways. Connally or Eastland, for example, might sell cattle to Hunt, who would vastly overpay them. He said that a Louisiana state official was the conduit for cash payments to Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union, whose assistance was bought for the purpose of dealing with labor problems at any of the Hunt operations. In one instance, Hoffa actually pulled the union out of a Hunt operation in Muncie, Indiana. The Teamsters connections were often used to beat up or kill people who created problems at any of the Hunt operations.
Curington also said that H. L. Hunt’s daily liaison with President Lyndon Johnson on political matters was former FBI agent Booth Mooney, who was personally close to the president. Mooney not only delivered communications back and forth between Johnson and Hunt but also wrote over half of the Life Line broadcast tracts, including many of those attacking Dr. King.
Turning to the killing of Dr. King, Curington said that on the evening of the assassination, shortly after the shooting, Hoover called Hunt and advised him to cancel his anti-King “Life Line” programs that were to be aired that evening and the morning of April 5. After that call Curington said
he was called to Hunt’s home and given the task of putting together a team of secretaries to call the radio stations. Then on April 5, the day after the assassination, Hunt told him to make arrangements for him (Hunt) and his wife to travel to a Holiday Inn resort hotel in El Paso, Texas. The tickets were in the names of Curington and his wife, and he took Curington’s American Express card with him. They checked in at the Holiday Inn on April 5 in the names of John and Mary Ann Curington. Curington said the hotel was on 6655 Gateway East, El Paso. Providing a copy of the hotel bill, Curington pointed out that before Hunt checked out of the Holiday Inn in El Paso, Texas on April 6 he engaged in a lengthy long-distance telephone call. Curington speculated that whoever was on the other end of that call must have given Hunt a grave message, which caused him to leave the hotel suddenly. He then disappeared for about ten days. In my review of sections of the Hunt organization file provided to me by Curington, I found a memo that Curington stated had been prepared by Paul Rothermel dated April 9, 1968. It revealed that Martin Luther King was very much on his mind on the morning of April 6. It began, “At 6:50 a.m. April 6, Mr. Hunt called from El Paso, Texas and said that a book on Martin Luther King absolutely had to be written.” He wanted the book to prove King “… to be practically a communist …” The memo recorded a further call at 8:00 a.m. and even “several times” more leaving messages “… always to the effecct that the book must be written …” Hunt was noted as suggesting that the book be called “The Career of King or Martin Luther King.”
Orders to Kill Page 36