Chuck was very apprehensive about being seen with me but he consented to go with me to the scene. We parked in what he thought was the exact spot on Mulberry Street where his father had parked. Dr. King’s room would have been slightly behind him or north of where he would have been sitting in the front seat (see chart 6). From this position he would have been able to see a car parked in the spot where he said he saw the white car.
It was obvious to me that in 1995, twenty-seven years later, Chuck was somewhat disoriented with respect to the physical scene. He thought that there was a second driveway into the Lorraine off Mulberry Street. There wasn’t, although there was an entrance from Butler near the southern stairway. More importantly, he didn’t initially appreciate the fact that the fire station backed right down onto Mulberry Street, neither did he realize how large it was. On the Mulberry Street side the parking lot was closed in by a tall chain-link fence which was set back a short distance (around four feet) from the wall. Though the fence was mostly covered by brush and weeds it was bare and clearly visible near the north corner bordering the rooming house rear yard. Chuck said that he never noticed the fence and that the man he saw simply went back into the brush away from the wall.
CHART 6
I recalled that the area where Reverend James Orange had always insisted that he saw the smoke appeared to be very close to the spot where Chuck said he had seen the shooter. I had always assumed that Orange had been mistaken and that he must have meant the bushes behind Jim’s Grill and the north wing of the rooming house, because the trajectory of the bullet and observations of other witnesses pointed to the shot having been fired from further north. I couldn’t conceive how a shot fired from a point that far south, which would have been to his left, could have struck Dr. King in the right cheek, exited below the right jawbone and reentered the right side of his neck. For this to happen he would have had to turn considerably to his left just before being hit and there is no eyewitness indication of this.
I was also unable to find anyone who remembered seeing Chuck’s father’s car parked on the west side of Mulberry.
When I interviewed Carthel Weeden, who was in charge of fire station 2 in 1968, he said that immediately after the shooting he ran across to the Lorraine and helped Benny Thornton put Dr. King on the stretcher for transportation to the hospital. At one point he was confronted by a hysterical, somewhat heavy-set black woman dressed in black. He learned that her name was Catherine. She was screaming that, “he was shot in a white car.” Weeden thought she meant that the shot came from below from a passing white car. I thought this must have been the young woman referred to in a note in 1968 defense co-counsel Hugh Stanton’s file, who was identified as a LeMoyne college student and described as screaming at the police to go after a man she saw getting away. As discussed earlier, I had tried unsuccessfully to locate her. It was possible that she meant that the shooter was leaving in a white car.
I had never heard any report about Chuck’s father participating in any meeting with Dr. King on that day. For at least some of the time that Chuck said his father was meeting with Dr. King there was an SCLC executive staff meeting in progress. Reverend Hosea Williams did not recall any outsiders being present during the meeting but believed that some people from Mississippi had been called to Memphis. Reverend Lawson was not at the meeting but said that people often drove long distances to see Dr. King about any number of things. Such a visit would not have been unusual at that time since the southern leg of the Poor People’s march was starting in Mississippi. I spoke with some black leaders in Tunica who knew Chuck’s family. No one said that they had heard about his father ever meeting with Dr. King. One community leader even said that the family left the area in the early 1960s, moving to Memphis. One of Chuck’s brothers, who was three years older than Chuck, said that they were tenant farmers in Tunica in 1968 but that it was very unlikely that his father would leave the farm to go to Memphis in April. He said that he certainly did not remember it happening.
Chuck’s elderly mother, on the other hand, did recall her husband saying that he had met with Dr. King. She said he mentioned it more than once but she was not certain when the meeting or meetings took place. She also vaguely remembered hearing about something that Chuck saw that was kept secret, but she could not, or would not, recall any details. She did say that during this time she was ill and away from the family and she believed that her husband and the younger children did live in Memphis for a while. She also remembered that six-year-old Chuck did have plaited hair for a while.
I discussed these conversations with Chuck on Sunday, July 2. He told me that he had gone to a funeral the day before at which his brother and one or more of the community leaders with whom I had spoken told him that if he continued to talk he would get himself killed. Chuck had the impression that their concern was centered round secrets other than the King assassination that he might have heard when he was around his father. They also invited him to join the local Masonic lodge where previously he had been excluded from membership. His brother pressed him to join. As a “brother” in the lodge he would be bound to secrecy.
When I spoke with Chuck’s common-law wife she confirmed that Chuck had told her this story many years ago. She had known him since about 1979 and she believed that he first unburdened himself about what he saw in 1987 or 1988. She also said that at the time of the television trial she went with Chuck to visit his family and during that visit he brought up the experience. The family members did not want it raised and advised Chuck for his own good to keep quiet. She had always found Chuck to be truthful. Whatever his faults, lying was not one of them. His attorney, Lewis Garrison, basically confirmed his reliability but noted that he had had a minor drug problem and had recently served a short jail term.
Chuck seemed sincere but corroboration was virtually nonexistent and his story implausible. On the face of it, the degree of specificity seemed impressive but even if he was telling the truth he could easily have been mistaken as to the details, particularly since he was only six years old at the time. He had no apparent reason to lie but it was possible that the entire story was a fabrication. In light of all the available conflicting information, and absent additional corroboration, I had to discount Chuck’s story.
BY MAY 1995 THE INVESTIGATION in Houston had not borne fruit. In the interim Garrison said he had been told by Herman that the man they believed to be Raul who they were looking at lived in Detroit, was using the name Diablo, and was in the import/export business specializing in a particular product. A search of those businesses led nowhere and I assumed that Herman was putting out disinformation. Too, James had told me that Herman and Saltman had shown him an old photograph which he said was the same picture he had seen in 1979 and which he had recognized as being of Raul. He could not however recognize a 1994 photograph they showed him of a man they claimed was the same person.
At the time of Loyd Jowers’s deposition on November 2, 1994, Garrison showed Jowers the 1994 photograph which was provided to him by Herman and returned to him. Jowers said that he could not make a positive identification. Garrison also showed me the photograph which was of a relatively slim man dressed in a blue jacket, white shirt and tie, with graying brown hair.
Sometime later attorney Garrison informed me that Jowers was later shown the earlier photograph of the man alleged to be the younger Raul Pereira and he tentatively said that he was the man named “Raul” or “Royal” who he knew was involved with the crime.
Cheryl told me that she too had been shown the more recent photograph. At first she said she couldn’t be certain because the greying hair confused her. She likened it to someone wearing a wig. Subsequently, she told me that the similarity of the facial structure convinced her that it was the Raul Pereira she knew.
I decided to go to Houston myself with Cheryl and Bob. We retraced Cheryl’s movements from the time she first moved to Houston at age fourteen. A Waffle House restaurant now stood on the spot where the gas station had be
en located. We spent time in the area of the docks and Navigation Avenue observing an old house which was one of the places where she said Raul stayed during the time she saw him in Houston. We also drove past the house rented by Torrino where Cheryl said Raul allegedly admitted the killing and she was raped. It was now painted a grayish blue color (see photograph #26). The places Raul Pereira used in Houston appeared to be temporary accommodations. I had the impression that he might have had a permanent base elsewhere. Cheryl and Bob were nervous being in the obviously rough and hostile area, where strangers, particularly those with cameras, were regarded as the enemy and often subjected to drive-by shootings. The scene, they said, was very much as it was back then, incredibly poor and dilapidated. The Alabama Theatre was now a bookstore but Cheryl was able to point out Ross Vallone’s old office where he held court, always seated in a recliner chair.
Bob tried to talk to some of the people who had been around during the 1960s and 1970s. The few he located were reluctant to talk, with the exception of one person who did talk and even gave him a photograph of Amaro which he gave to me.
Before parting company Cheryl executed an affidavit which set out her story in detail and said that she knew James Earl Ray was innocent and that she was prepared to testify in court on his behalf and tell what she knew.
Upon my return to England, a Houston area lawyer confirmed in a lengthy telephone conversation that Percy Foreman had become in the 1960s and 1970s the foremost lawyer for organized crime figures. Former mob lawyer Frank Ragano, who had represented Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, had previously told me about Foreman’s role as a lawyer for prominent mob figures. (He also revealed their extensive dissatisfaction with his services.)
I heard a rumor that the man I was looking for lived in the Northeast. I began a computerized state-by-state, name and residence check and cross-referenced search, using the name of Raul Pereira provided by Cheryl. It was a long shot that the man might be using his real name but there was always a chance. A small number of people named Raul Pereira surfaced. I instituted credit and other checks on these persons. By a process of elimination based primarily on age, ethnic origin (I had decided to focus only on white male immigrants between fifty-five and sixty-eight years of age with Portuguese or Brazilian origins), the list gradually reduced. The search was completed in early June and one person remained who satisfied the basic criteria. He appeared to be a relatively successful businessman, nearly sixty-one years old. He jointly owned his home, which was in a middle to upper middle class neighborhood in a city in the Northeast, with his wife. He had two grown children, one a twenty-five-year-old daughter and a son who appeared to be thirty-three. I then did a yellow pages search of import/export companies specializing in a particular product in that man’s county. One possibility came up. When I called the business number an answer machine referred me to the home telephone number of the man I was focusing on.
I turned my attention to gathering more information about his personal life as well as his business. He owned another property on the same street where his import/export business was located in one of the city’s poorest areas. He was reportedly a member of the local Portuguese American society and had no criminal record. From immigration records I learned that he had entered the United States from Portugal through New York City. His social security number had been issued in New York between 1961 and 1963 and he first appeared in his city telephone directory in 1965. (I recalled that Cheryl had said she first met this man she knew as Raul Pereira in Houston in 1962.) If this was James’s Raul then for at least twenty years he had clearly led a double life.
A letter arrived from James in which he said that he had received a letter from Saltman stating that he and Herman had confronted Raul. He had apparently been hostile, taken photographs of them, and had his Spanish-speaking wife ask them to leave.
I wanted to obtain a current photograph of the Raul Pereira I was looking at in order to show it to Cheryl and also to determine whether this was the same man whom Herman and Saltman were considering, whose photograph I had seen at Jowers’s deposition. So, in June 1995 I instructed a surveillance team to take photographs of him. When the photographs arrived at my office in London, I anxiously opened the courier pack. I was virtually certain it was the same man whose photograph I saw at the time of Jowers’s deposition. The man I had begun to focus on earlier that spring clearly appeared to be the same person Herman and Saltman were looking at.
I decided to call Herman. He put Saltman on and they confirmed the visit and the hostile reception. Raul would not come to the door. His daughter spoke to them, lying in response to even the most simple and apparently nonthreatening questions. Giving no indication of where the man was or the man’s identity, they both assured me that the man that they had found was Cheryl’s Raul. When I expressed skepticism designed to draw out information, they jointly confirmed to me that the birth date and social security number of the man in the older photograph were identical to the birth date and the social security number of the man they had recently visited and who was the man in the more recent photographs. Herman later said that a C.I.A. contact of his told him that there was an active C.I.A. file on this person. The file reportedly indicated that Raul had worked for the Portuguese Government’s national munitions company with some coordinating responsibility for weapons sales and distribution between October 1957 and December 1961.
Immediately thereafter I spoke with Cheryl. She told me that prior to Herman and Saltman’s visit to Raul, they arranged for her to participate in a telephone conversation which was put through to Raul Pereira’s home. She believed various members of his family, including himself, his wife, his daughter and son-in-law, were on various extensions and participated at different times. Cheryl said when Raul came on the phone she knew it was the Raul Pereira she had known in Houston, because of the way he pronounced her name. He never could pronounce it correctly. Despite what became hysterical denials of knowing her and ever being in Houston, she said she had no doubt this was the man.
It was obvious that Raul Pereira had been well and truly alerted and I was concerned that he might flee. This, of course, would allow the state to continue to contend that he was not the right man and that James’s Raul never existed. In addition, since Herman and Saltman said they did not have enough to satisfy their television producers I was apprehensive about what further action they might take which could induce him to flee.
There therefore appeared to be little choice but to promptly join Raul Pereira as a party in the civil action against Jowers. We prepared a summons to go along with the original complaint in which he had been named, and a notice of deposition. The complaint against Raul alleged that:
He entered into a conspiracy with others to kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
In furtherance of his participation in this conspiracy he instructed, controlled, and orchestrated the movements of James Earl Ray in such manner as to arrange for a rifle with Ray’s fingerprints on it to be found near the scene of the crime and for Ray to be charged with said crime.
In collusion with other codefendants he participated in providing and taking away a second rifle which may have been the actual murder weapon.
There was, however, always the possibility that he was not the right man and we had to acknowledge it. A mistake could greatly destroy our credibility, yet inaction could lose for us one of the most, if not the most, significant on-the-scene player whose very existence had been denied by the MPD, the FBI, and the HSCA.
I decided upon a middle ground. At the time he was being served he would be handed a letter informing him that if he was not the man we sought and was willing to talk to us and confirm the fact that we were in error, then we would withdraw the action against him. In the meantime we would request an order from the court sealing the file so that the fact that a summons and complaint and a notice of deposition had been issued and served upon him would not be made public.
Accordingly, Chastain and Garrison went in
to the judge’s chambers on Friday, June 23, and secured an order sealing the file until further order of the court.
Around this time private investigator Bob Cruz told me that a source of his inside the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) had informed him that Raul Pereira had come into the United States on December 11, 1961. His source also said that Raul’s INS file had been transferred in October 1994 to Memphis, Tennessee. He commented that there was no apparent reason for sending the file to Memphis and that the file would only be transferred at the request of another federal agency.
With time of the essence, I arranged a meeting with Cheryl and Bob in Memphis on the weekend of June 24. I showed Cheryl the photographs I had obtained of Raul Pereira. I was virtually certain that they were of the same man Herman and Saltman had photographed but she would not confirm that this was the Raul she knew. She did say once again that the man she talked to on the telephone call was the Raul she knew, and stated that the phone call was actually made from her home. This meant that the number would have been on a recent month’s bill. She and Bob promised to give us the number so that we could compare it with the number we had for the Raul Pereira we had located.
Cheryl executed an affidavit in which she stated she recognized Raul from a 1960s photograph and also recognized the facial features of the man in a 1994 photograph she had been shown by Ken Herman. She further stated that she participated in a telephone conversation with Raul Pereira and that she was positive that this was the Raul she knew in Houston because of his inability to correctly pronounce her name, and that based upon her identification she understood we were preparing to bring him into the law suit against Loyd Jowers and others.
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