[Inspector Evans (whose son Sam Jr. is currently an investigator for attorney general Pierotti’s office) was a significant MPD senior officer and a link between the army and civilian operations. Jowers had been told by Liberto that no police would be around at the time of the killing. Evans was in charge of MPD special services including the emergency TACT units, and on April 3 he ordered the TACT units in and around the area of the Lorraine Motel to pull back. The closest unit—TACT 10—moved its base from the Lorraine to the fire station, thus providing the civilian shooter with more of an opportunity to escape. Also Evans’s introduction to Warren by the alpha team’s CO Captain Billy Eidson, clearly placed him in the loop regarding the army operation.]
Around this time J. D. and his partner were met by their contact officer and taken to their perch on the Tayloe Paper Company water tower.
James, having run some errands earlier that morning, made his way downtown to look for Jim’s Grill where he was to meet Raul in mid afternoon. On the way, he stopped to change a slowly leaking tire, which made him late. James arrived on South Main Street and after going to the wrong bar eventually entered Jim’s Grill. Not seeing Raul inside, he retrieved his car and finally parked it in front of Jim’s Grill around 3:30 p.m. By that time Raul had shown up in the grill. He instructed James to rent a room in the rooming house upstairs which he did under the name of John Willard, although Raul had initially wanted James to rent the room using the Galt alias. James was dressed in a dark suit with a white shirt and tie and looked out of place. Raul was also wearing a dark suit and light shirt but was not wearing a tie.
Loyd Jowers pretty much followed his routine most of the day, except for meeting with Raul and spending time out in the back brush area behind Jim’s Grill.
Raul sent James to purchase binoculars and then instructed him to bring his bag upstairs to the room. James also carried a bedspread up to the room in case he had to sleep there since he didn’t want to sleep on the one provided.
By this time all of the preparations for James to be set up were completed. He had rented the room which was to be the staging area, brought some of his physical possessions into it so that they were available to be planted, and purchased a set of binoculars which could be used to support the allegation that he was surveilling the motel.
AROUND 4:00 P.M. Andrew Young returned from court and joined the SCLC meeting in room 306.
Between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. MPD intelligence bureau lieutenant E. H. Arkin met with Phillip R. Manuel (former army counterintelligence officer and investigator for the U.S. Senate Committee on Permanent Investigations). Manuel had been in Memphis for a couple of days. Sometime after 4:30 p.m. Arkin appeared at fire station 2 and ordered Redditt to go with him to central police headquarters. Between 5:00 and 5:30 p.m. at a headquarters conference room filled with military brass, the Director of Police and Fire Frank Holloman ordered Redditt to go home for his own protection, indicating that there had been a threat on his life. Redditt resisted but was finally driven home by Arkin, who had already learned that the threat was bogus.
Around 4:40–4:45 p.m., a man in a dark blue windbreaker drove up South Main Street in a white Mustang with Arkansas plates and parked it just south of Canipe’s in front of the billboards and just north of the parking lot driveway. He sat in the car for some time and then eventually got out and entered the rooming house, going up to room 5-B where he would join Raul. This white Mustang driver was clearly not James, who was dressed in a suit and tie on that day.
Sometime late that afternoon Raul visited Jowers again in the grill. This time he picked up the rifle he had left earlier. He carried it into the back of the grill and apparently upstairs to James’s room.
Around 5:00 p.m. James Latch answered the phone in the LL&L office and handed it to Frank Liberto. An agitated Liberto yelled at the party on the other end of the phone, “I told you not to call me here, shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony.” He then told the caller that he should collect his money from his (Liberto’s) brother in New Orleans after he had finished the job. The sum mentioned was $5,000. It appears that Liberto was speaking to the shooter, who may have been Raul.
Meanwhile, also around 5:00 p.m. or shortly afterward, Invader Big John Smith arrived at the Lorraine Motel. Passing through the lobby on his way to a meeting room, he noticed a number of MPD officers around the motel, particularly officer Caro Harris. When he came down from the meeting about thirty minutes later (5:30–5:45 p.m.) the officers, including Harris, had all disappeared.
By this time, then, all security had been stripped away from Dr. King’s immediate area. In contrast, massive surveillance units were in place. Three rooms at the Lorraine, including Dr. King’s room, 306, were bugged and the telephones tapped. Eye-to-eye physical surveillance was in place from units on Butler and Huling Streets and photographic surveillance was in process from the roof of the fire station. Also still in place were the Alpha 184 sniper teams.
SOMETIME AROUND 5:15 P.M. Raul gave James $200 and told him to go to the movies as he wanted to meet alone with a gunrunner. Raul also told James to leave the car, as he would be using it later. Instructed to return in two to three hours, James left the rooming house around 5:20, got a quick bite to eat, and then remembered the flat spare tire. Deciding to try to have it repaired, he went looking for a gas station. He drove north on South Main for two blocks and then at Vance Avenue turned right at about 5:50–5:55 directly in front of two Jim’s Grill customers (Ray Hendrix and William Reed) who were walking to their hotel—Clarks Hotel.
Between 5:30–5:50 p.m., with James out of the way, the shooter was in the brush area with the murder weapon, where he was joined by Loyd Jowers. The two began to watch the motel, waiting for Dr. King to come outside.
Meanwhile, another person waited in room 5-B, prepared to take the bundle containing the rifle James bought and other items of his downstairs to plant them.
Also at 5:50 p.m., as J. Edgar Hoover was settling in at his favorite Washington eating and drinking place (Harvey’s Restaurant), ACSI Yarborough was en route to attend a reception for the Chinese Ambassador at 3225 Woodley Road N.W.
Back in Memphis, around 5:45–5:50 p.m., Redditt’s surveillance partner Richmond observed the hurried departure of the Invaders from their motel rooms 315 and 316. Some left in Charles Cabbage’s car and others departed on foot. Soon after they left, Richmond observed Reverend Billy Kyles knock on the door of room 306. He saw Dr. King answer the door, speak briefly with Kyles and then go back inside, closing the door behind him. Right around then, the 111th MIG undercover agent Marrell McCollough drove into the parking lot of the Lorraine with SCLC’s Jim Orange and Jim Bevel.
Shortly afterwards the SCLC staff meeting broke up. Reverend Kyles was on the balcony some fifteen to twenty feet north of Dr. King’s room. The exiting staff members left Dr. King’s room quickly and headed for their rooms to freshen up in preparation for the soul food dinner planned at Reverend Kyles’s home.
A minute or two before 6:00 p.m. Dr. King came out on the balcony, leaned on the railing, and began to talk to people in the group right below him in the parking lot, one of whom was Andy Young.
Betty Spates had entered the grill just before 6:00 p.m., coming across the street from the Seabrook Wallpaper Company looking for Jowers. She made her way back into the kitchen, noting that the kitchen door, which was always open or at least ajar, was closed. Jowers was nowhere to be seen.
As Dr. King stood at the railing at 6:00 p.m. he was center mass in J. D.’s sights. J. D. waited for the order to fire. At the same time Andrew Young, who was standing in the motel parking area, was also held center mass in Warren’s sights.
Unknown to either army sniper, the civilian shooter was also “drawing a bead” on Dr. King from the brush area, with Loyd Jowers kneeling nearby.
At exactly 6:01 the shooter fired and his bullet struck Martin King in the side of the face. The impact rocked him back and then he fell where he had been stand
ing.
As the impact rocked Dr. King backward and he began to fall, Reynolds snapped four or five shots catching Dr. King as he fell. Norton then swung his camera from the direction of the parking lot of the Lorraine to the left, focusing on the brush area to catch the shooter lowering his rifle and leaving the scene. After dropping the gun on the ground, the shooter scrambled through the brush and down the wall. Jumping down onto Mulberry Street he ran north to Huling and went around the front of a waiting MPD car to get into it on the passenger side. The car then drove quickly away, heading north on Mulberry Street.
Paul, the Yellow Cab driver of car number 58, who was picking up a fare at the Lorraine, saw the shooter coming over the wall and into the police car and immediately reported it to his dispatcher over his radio.
Meanwhile Loyd Jowers had picked up the murder weapon which had been left on the ground by the shooter and began to run back to the rear door of his kitchen. Inside, Betty, hearing a shot and seeing the back door open, went to it and looked out. Jowers was then about ten to fifteen feet away, coming toward her. She stepped back and he ran into the building. He was white as a ghost, out of breath, and his hair was in disarray. The knees of his trousers were muddy. In the kitchen he turned to her and said plaintively, “You wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt me, would you? She replied, “You know I wouldn’t Loyd.” In front of her, he quickly broke down the gun into two or three pieces and covered it with a cloth. He left the kitchen, stepping quickly behind the counter under which he placed the gun on a shelf, pushing it back out of sight.
Immediately after the shot, 111th MIG agent Marrell McCollough raced up the stairs to reach the fallen Dr. King and knelt over him, apparently checking him for life signs.
Very close to the time of the shot, a person dressed in a dark suit exited James’s room 5-B, went down the stairs, out of the building, and dropped the bundle in the recessed doorway of Canipe’s store. He then got into the Mustang just south of Canipe’s and drove away, going north on South Main Street.
IN THE FIVE MINUTES immediately following the shooting (TTH+6), Warren and Murphy on the Illinois Central Railroad building and J. D. and his partner on the water tower were ordered by Captain Billy Eidson to disengage and proceed to their respective preassigned egress routes. Sometime thereafter Reynolds and Norton made their descent from the roof of the fire station.
MPD officers Joe Hodges, Torrence Landers, and Carroll Dunn, having penetrated the thick brush at the rear of the rooming house, found what appeared to be a fresh set of large footprints. One was 13 1/2 inches long and the other nearly 14 inches. They were at the top of the alley which ran between the buildings and pointed in the direction of the door at the end (which led to the basement and also into the grill). No proper search was conducted of the basement of the rooming house.
Dr. King was rushed to St. Joseph’s Hospital.
James, returning to the rooming house area, saw a policeman blocking traffic on South Main Street. Constantly aware of his fugitive status, he headed south out of the area, intending to call his New Orleans contact number in order to learn what had happened. When he heard on the radio that Dr. King had been shot and that the police were looking for a white man in a white Mustang, he decided to head straight for Atlanta.
Inexplicably no all points bulletin (APB) and no signal Y (blocking exit routes from the city) were issued by the MPD. Within half an hour after the killing, a hoax CB broadcast took place depicting a car chase on an outward egress route in the northern end of the city, (Remember that the Alpha 184 recon team had on February 25 mapped egress routes in that section of the city.)
Yellow Cab driver Paul dropped his Lorraine fare off at the airport and reported what he had seen, first to another Yellow Cab driver, Louie Ward, and then to three MPD officers. He was subsequently also interviewed that evening by the police at the Yellow Cab offices on South Second Street. Paul reportedly died late on the night of April 4, either falling or being pushed out of a car on the Memphis Arkansas bridge.
On the evening of April 4, H. L. Hunt was called by J. Edgar Hoover and advised to pull off the air all anti-King Life Line radio programs being aired in the next twenty-four hours. Hunt immediately summoned John Curington to his home and gave him the assignment of organizing a group of secretaries to make the radio station calls. Hunt began feverishly working on an anti-King book on the day after the assassination, only to abruptly abandon the project.
In the course of the rest of the evening, Dr. King was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s and his friends paid their last respects. In performing the autopsy the coroner would strangely fail to trace the path of the bullet in Dr. King’s body. The death slug was removed in one piece from Dr. King’s back where it came to rest just under his left shoulder blade. MPD officers, often accompanied by FBI agents, began to take statements from witnesses in the area, and the rifle, death slug, and items found in the bundle in front of Canipe’s were sent off to the FBI laboratory for forensic examination.
VERY EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, in response to a request from the MPD, Memphis Public Works deputy director Maynard Stiles assigned two supervisory workers Dutch Goodman and Willie Crawford (remember non supervisory workers were on strike) to go to the rear of the rooming house where under MPD supervision they cut the brush to the ground. The tall hedge which ran between the fire station and the parking area immediately adjoining the rooming house was also cut to the ground. A large tree branch between the bathroom window and the Lorraine may also have been cut down sometime after the killing, thus eliminating an apparent obstacle to a clear shot from the bathroom window.
The MPD investigation was aborted almost from the outset, taken over and controlled by the FBI, even though the murder was a state and not a federal crime. Though detectives conducted numerous interviews, glaringly obvious leads and significant witnesses were ignored, and the drunkenness of the state’s main witness, Charlie Stephens, was concealed. The investigation files were also clearly sanitized. Where, for example, are: the interviews conducted of Yellow Cab driver Paul; the photographs of the bullet removed from Dr. King’s body; the photographs of the scene of the crime as it was at the time, before the bushes at the back of the rooming house and the hedge between the parking lot and the fire station had been cut down?
Loyd Jowers opened the grill the morning after the shooting after driving Bobbi to work. On the way he told her about finding a gun out back which he said he had turned over to the police. Sometime in late morning he lifted the lid of a box and showed Yellow Cab driver James McCraw the rifle he had hidden under his counter within a minute or two immediately after the shooting. A scope was also in the box but it was not attached to the rifle. Jowers told McCraw that this was the rifle which had been used to kill Dr. King and that he had found it out back and was going to turn it over to the police. It seems that Jowers was already beginning to construct a cover story.
OBVIOUSLY IT IS TOO MUCH of a coincidence for the Alpha 184 army snipers and the “civilian” assassin to have been there independently taking aim at Dr. King at the same moment. The whole arrangement: the manipulation of Martin Luther King into the exposed balcony room; the stripping away of security and potential witnesses who could not be controlled; the provision of a patsy; the positioning of massive surveillance and a sniper team; the provision of local intelligence and logistical assistance; the restriction of the investigation by FBI control; the ignoring of leads and evidence begging for attention; the alteration of the scene of the crime could only have been possible with the knowledge and cooperation of the FBI, army intelligence, the ASA, the 20th SFG, elements of the ACSI’s office, the CIA, the mob, and senior officers of the MPD. Further, we know from Warren’s orders that the White House, the Secretary of Defense, the FBI, and officials of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, were aware of the Memphis army deployment. The relationship between the army and the civilian assassination operations is further revealed by James’s use of the alias of Eric S. Galt. Galt, holdi
ng top secret clearance, was at the time involved in another covert operation (Project MEXPO) with the same unit (the 902nd MIG) which carried out the Memphis deployment and coordinated the 111th MIG, ASA, and 20th SFG forces on-site. In fact, Gardner of the 902nd MIG himself selected the eight-man Alpha 184 sniper team.
It clearly appears that the hit was to be carried out by the civilian contract killer with the army snipers there as backup shooters if the contract shooter could not make the shot or if he failed to kill King. How two snipers shooting from different locations could take out both King and Young and still pin the shooting on James Earl Ray is difficult to reconcile until one remembers that the initial plan appeared to be to shoot at a moving target in a car. Because of the movement of the car and the fact that bullets would be deflected back and forth inside, it would be virtually impossible to determine the origin of the shots. The army snipers were surprised that their targets Dr. King and Andy Young were outside of their rooms in exposed positions just before six p.m. Not believing their luck, they quickly got them in their sights and waited for the order to fire. They were amazed when this did not come.
While particular senior level officials must have been aware of the whole picture, the lower level participants only knew what their particular roles were. Thus, the army snipers knew nothing of the local subcontract and Warren assumed when King was shot that it was one of their snipers who had fired too early. Similarly, the civilian operatives were unlikely to have known about the military presence. Even if the fiction of the lone assassin James Earl Ray could not be sustained there was at the next level, already in place, an officially deniable local contract and assassination operation ostensibly carried out exclusively by organized crime.
Orders to Kill Page 50