Orders to Kill Page 6

  The extradition requests from the states of Tennessee and Missouri were based largely on the affidavit of one Charles Quitman Stephens, a resident of the South Main Street rooming house, who had emerged as the state’s chief witness. He had provided a tentative eyewitness identification of Ray as a person he allegedly saw in the hallway of the rooming house around the time of the killing.

  Extradition was granted. Ray appealed. Subsequently, on the advice of his new lawyer, Arthur Hanes, Sr., he dropped the appeal. While the extradition proceedings were in process, an entire cell block in the Shelby County Jail in Memphis was prepared for Ray in consultation with the federal government. When Ray was formally extradited to the United States on July 19, 1968, he was placed in the specially arranged facilities.

  The Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson column on July 22, 1968, stated that Ray was a lone gunman. It began:

  “It now looks as if the FBI has exploded the generally prevalent theory that the murder of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King involved a conspiracy.”

  The column went on to confirm that the FBI had “found a robbery where Ray probably got his money.” It continued, “The FBI has been checking very carefully, and one of the robbers answers the description of James Earl Ray. He had the same long hair, the same height and the same physical makeup.”7

  Thus surfaced—for the first time—the Alton, Illinois, bank robbery story. This claim enabled the bureau in 1968 to explain how James covered his living expenses during his period as a fugitive. If he had obtained funds from this source, it could be contended that he had no help from anyone else. (Years later we would learn that not only had Ray nothing to do with this robbery but that there were other prime suspects.)

  From that date, the Hanes father-and-son team, aided by local private investigator Renfro Hays, began to prepare for trial. Then a surprising thing happened. On November 10, just two days before the trial and after a visit from Texas attorney Percy Foreman, Ray dismissed Hanes and retained Foreman. On November 12, Foreman obtained an extension based on his coming into the case so late.

  On December 18, concerned by Foreman’s irregular attendance, the court appointed public defenders Hugh Stanton, Sr., and Hugh Stanton, Jr., to assist Foreman and ordered them to be ready to try the case if Foreman wasn’t available because of his poor health. On January 17, the next court date set after the appointment of the Stantons, Foreman was indeed absent because of illness. The judge said that if Foreman was unable to handle the case, the Stantons would have to try it. The date was confirmed for March 3.

  The Stantons assigned two investigators, George King and George Getz, to interview witnesses and work on the case. Foreman was sick for part of January, and the Stantons were obviously concerned about whether he would be able to carry on. They advised the court that they weren’t going to be ready to go to trial on March 3. The trial was put off for another month.

  Ultimately, the case never came to trial because James Earl Ray entered a plea of guilty on Monday, March 10, 1969.

  THE MATTER WAS HEARD BEFORE JUDGE PRESTON BATTLE. When Judge Battle asked Ray if he understood that the charge of murder in the first degree was being levied against him in this case “because you killed Dr. Martin Luther King under such circumstances that it would make you legally guilty of murder in the first degree under the law as explained to you by your lawyers,” Ray responded, “Yes, legally yes.” After Ray affirmed that the plea of guilty was made freely and voluntarily with full understanding of its meaning and consequences, twelve names were called from the jury pool.

  After the seating of the jury, Phil M. Canale. Jr., the district attorney general of Shelby County, introduced himself, his executive assistant, Robert Dwyer, and his assistant attorney general, James Beasley. His presentation to the court recommended punishment of a term of ninety-nine years. Canale indicated that even though the defendant had consented to the plea, accepted the stipulations, and verified the free and voluntary nature of his undertaking in the voir dire, the state was still obligated to provide fundamental proof to the judge and jury.

  He concluded by saying that the investigation had been conducted by local police, national police organizations, and international law enforcement agents, and that his office had examined over three hundred items of physical evidence. His chief investigator had traveled thousands of miles throughout the United States and to foreign countries, and there was no evidence of any conspiracy involved in this killing, no proof that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was killed by anyone other than or in addition to James Earl Ray. Canale pledged that if any evidence was ever presented that showed there was a conspiracy, he would take “prompt and vigorous action in searching out and asking that an indictment be returned, if there were other people, or if it should ever develop that other people were involved.”

  Percy Foreman then addressed the jury and said it had taken him a month to convince himself that there was no conspiracy. He maintained that he talked with his client for more than fifty hours and estimated that most of that time was spent in cross-examination, “checking each hour and minute and each expenditure of money down to seventy-five cents.”

  After his presentation, Foreman then asked each juror whether he was willing to subscribe to the verdict of ninety-nine years. Each juror answered, “Yes, sir.” At the end of the polling the jury was officially sworn and witnesses called. Testimony was then taken from Reverend Kyles, Dr. King’s personal lawyer Chauncey Eskridge, Coroner Dr. Jerry Francisco, homicide chief N. E. Zachary, and FBI special agent in charge Robert G. Jensen.

  After a recess, Assistant Attorney General Beasley set forth the agreed-upon stipulation of facts that the state would prove, in addition to the testimony previously heard. Beasley summarized the state’s interpretation of the actual killing and the details of the flight of James Earl Ray, his trip overseas, his apprehension, and his return.

  Judge Battle asked the jury to raise their hands if they accepted the compromise and settlement on a guilty plea and a punishment of ninety-nine years. The jury was unanimous, and the verdict was signed. Ray was sentenced to ninety-nine years in the state penitentiary.

  On the face of it, it was difficult to imagine how Ray could have so clearly admitted guilt if in fact he didn’t commit the crime. (Only many years later would I learn about the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the guilty plea.) At one point in the proceedings he appeared to object to what was being said and done. After both sides accepted the jury, he interrupted the proceedings by saying:

  “Your Honor, I would like to say something. I don’t want to change anything that I have said, but I just want to enter one other thing. The only thing that I have to say is that I can’t agree with Mr. Clark.”

  “Mr. who?” asked the court.

  “Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, I agree with all these stipulations, and I am not trying to change anything.”

  “You don’t agree with whose theories?”

  “Mr. Canale’s, Mr. Clark’s, and Mr. J. Edgar Hoover’s about the conspiracy. I don’t want to add something on that I haven’t agreed to in the past.”

  Then Mr. Foreman said, “I think that what he said is that he doesn’t agree that Ramsey Clark is right, or that J. Edgar Hoover is right. I didn’t argue that as evidence in this case, I simply stated that underriding the statement of [Attorney] General Canale that they had made the same statement. You are not required to agree with it at all.”

  Though the general public was made well aware of the guilty plea, Ray’s equivocation at the hearing went largely unnoticed.

  It was all over by lunchtime. Within three days of arriving at the penitentiary, Ray had written to the court requesting that his plea of guilty be set aside and that he be given a trial.

  Three days after Ray’s letter to the court, on March 16, the Washington Post led off a front-page national news section with the heading “Ray Alone Still Talks of a Plot.”

  After quoting Memphis prosecutors who had “access to the massive investigative
files of the FBI” and who see “Ray as a man who had a general hatred of Negroes and at best an unspecific and unstructured desire to harm King,” the article went on to assert that Ray remained the only person associated with the case who believed that there was a conspiracy.

  The fact that many others—including Dr. King’s widow, Ralph Abernathy, and other associates—believed in the existence of a conspiracy was ignored.

  PART III

  The Initial Investigation

  8

  Reentry: Late 1977–October 15, 1978

  DURING THE NEXT NINE YEARS I had virtually nothing to do with the civil rights or antiwar movements, having walked away after Dr. King’s funeral. I had no hope that the nation could be reconstructed without Martin King’s singular leadership. There quite simply was no one else. Ralph Abernathy and I had had only sporadic contact during those nine years. I had completed degree studies in education and law and written two books, and he had taken on and then been forced to give up, with some bitterness, the leadership of the SCLC.

  IN LATE 1977, during a telephone conversation, Ralph told me he wasn’t satisfied by the official explanation of Dr. King’s murder and wanted to have a face-to-face meeting with the alleged assassin of his old friend. He said he would welcome an opportunity to hear Ray’s story and assess it directly for himself. Would I arrange such a meeting and accompany him?

  His interest in the case was clearly motivated by the activity of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). HSCA investigations into the murders of President Kennedy and Dr. King were in progress at the time.

  The HSCA had been formed in 1976 in response to a growing public disbelief in the conclusions of the report of the Warren Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy. Public confidence in government had been shaken early on by the allegations of New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, the Watergate scandal, and the 1973 Senate Judiciary Sub-Committee Report (detailing the widespread surveillance of American civilians by army intelligence). This was followed by the Rockefeller Commission Report issued in June 1975 (detailing CIA domestic activities against American civilians) and the findings of the 1975 House Judiciary Committee (detailing the FBI’s counterintelligence program [COINTELPRO]). Confidence in the government sank even farther, if possible, as a result of the 1976 Church Committee Report (which contained one hundred pages devoted to FBI and other government agency harassment and surveillance of Dr. King), and the 1976 House Intelligence Committee report (covering the domestic activities of the CIA).

  Walter Fauntroy, a former colleague of Abernathy and King, was chairman of the HSCA subcommittee investigating King’s assassination. Although I was skeptical of such committees, having experienced congressional investigations of the antiwar movement a decade earlier, there was a general air of expectation that perhaps, at last, some of the hitherto unanswered questions would be addressed. It occurs to me now that Abernathy may well have been looking for a way to make his presence felt in this process.

  To properly assist Ralph, I knew I had to do a considerable amount of preparation. I agreed to help him as long as no meeting took place until I believed that we were ready. I wasn’t going to become involved in any way that would embarrass King’s memory or allow Ralph to be used by a clever lawyer of Ray’s. I believed we were likely to have only one opportunity to put some serious questions to Ray and I wanted us to make the most of it. It was clear that Ralph would be interviewed by the press at the end of our session, and any position he took would have to be based on solid information. If this were not the case, his renewed interest in the case could well prove to be an embarrassment to himself and a disservice to Ray’s latest effort to obtain a trial. Ray had been trying to get a trial for nearly ten years. If the man was innocent, I certainly didn’t want to hurt his chances for release. Ralph agreed to these ground rules, as did Mark Lane, Ray’s lawyer at the time.

  I read everything I could find about the killing, but there wasn’t a great deal available. One of the earliest and most prominent works was Gerold Frank’s An American Death,8 which became, in effect, the official account of the case. Years later, I came across an internal FBI document dated March 11, 1969, the day after Ray’s guilty plea hearing. This memo to Hoover’s number two and closest confidant, Clyde Tolson, came from Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach. Specifically, he wrote:

  Now that Ray has been convicted and is serving a 99-year sentence, I would like to suggest that the Director allow us to choose a friendly, capable author, or the Reader’s Digest, and proceed with a book based on this case.

  A carefully written factual book would do much to preserve the true history of this case. While it will not dispel or put down future rumors, it would certainly help to have a book of this nature on college and high school library shelves so that the future would be protected.

  [Underneath this is handwritten the words “Whom do you suggest?”]

  I would also like to suggest that consideration be given to advising a friendly newspaper contact, on a strictly confidential basis, that Coretta King and Reverend Abernathy are deliberately plotting to keep King’s assassination in the news by pulling the ruse of maintaining that King’s murder was definitely a conspiracy and not committed by one man. This, of course, is obviously a rank trick in order to keep the money coming in to Mrs. King, Abernathy, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. We can do this without any attribution to the FBI and without anyone knowing that the information came from a wire tap.

  Respectfully, C. D. DeLoach9

  On the very next day, DeLoach transmitted an addendum in which he stated the following:

  If the Director approves, we have in mind considering cooperating in the preparation of a book with either the Reader’s Digest or author Gerold Frank…. Frank is a well known author whose most recent book is “The Boston Strangler.” Frank is already working on a book on the Ray case and has asked the Bureau’s cooperation in the preparation of the book on a number of occasions. We have nothing derogatory on him in our files, and our relationship with him has been excellent.10

  At the bottom of this addendum is handwritten the word “O.K.” and the initial “H.”

  Also at the bottom of DeLoach’s letter to Tolson is a handwritten reference to George E. McMillan, which apparently refers to the bureau passing certain documentation to author George E. McMillan. McMillan, who had well-known intelligence connections, published a book on the case, The Making of an Assassin, which was allegedly a psychological profile of Ray and very much supported the bureau’s lone assassin theory.11

  Gerold Frank brought to light a few issues of interest. He revealed the presence of Memphis police detectives in the fire station across the street monitoring activity at the Lorraine, and the withdrawal on the afternoon of April 4 of one of them, Ed Redditt, ostensibly for his own safety after there had apparently been a threat on his life. He also mentioned the absence of an all points bulletin (a general alert describing the suspect) and a citizens band broadcast that drew police attention away from the downtown area where the shooting took place. He attributed the broadcast to a teenage hoaxer. Frank also disclosed a rumor that an eleven-year-old boy had seen the shooting and run into the fire station.

  William Bradford Huie’s book, He Slew the Dreamer, published in 1968, was compromised from the outset because the author had entered into contracts with two of Ray’s lawyers, agreeing to pay them in exchange for information and leads that the defendant would provide in response to written questions carried to him by the lawyers.12 Initially, Huie clearly accepted the existence of a conspiracy, even stating that the state’s main witness, Charlie Stephens, was too drunk to be transported by cab driver James McCraw around the time of the shooting. Huie abruptly switched positions, however, to contend that Ray was a lone assassin.

  During the early years after the killing, these books and the mass media gave prominent voice to significant aspects of the state’s case. The prosecution’s scenario was put out
to the world as the final word.

  The State’s Case

  The accused assassin was described as a racist whose motives for the crime were a hatred of blacks—Dr. King in particular—and a desire to achieve the recognition that responsibility for such a crime provided. The state rejected out of hand the existence of a shadowy figure named Raoul who Ray claimed set him up and directed his movements from the moment of their first meeting in August 1967 until the afternoon of the killing. (James never learned how the man spelled his name and spelled it differently at various times, eventually adopting the spelling “Raoul,” although the more prevalent spelling of that Latin name is “Raul” which I have elected to use throughout.) The state claimed that Ray had allegedly stalked Dr. King for some time, beginning the weekend of March 17, 1968, when Dr. King arrived in Los Angeles.

  Around March 22, Ray was in Selma, Alabama, near where Dr. King was scheduled to organize for his Poor People’s Campaign. He was placed in Atlanta during the last week in March, leaving on March 30 to purchase the rifle. The state alleged that on March 31 he returned to Atlanta, where he left clothes at a local laundry on April 1. The Atlanta map discovered with Ray’s belongings left behind in the Atlanta rooming house allegedly had markings around the locations of Dr. King’s house, church, and office. Carrying the murder weapon with him, Ray arrived in Memphis on April 3, the same day on which Dr. King began his final visit to that city.

  On April 4, Ray drove to the downtown area and rented a room under the alias John Willard in the seedy rooming house at 422 ½ South Main Street. While being shown around by landlady Bessie Brewer, he would reject one “housekeeping room” in the south wing of the house for a smaller “sleeping room” in the rear of the north wing. This room had a view of the Lorraine Motel, where, allegedly, Dr. King always stayed when he was in Memphis. The old rooming house had separate entrances for each wing. The room chosen by Ray, 5-B, which adjoined that of two long-term residents—Charles Quitman Stephens and Grace Walden—was at the end of a hall and near a rear-facing bathroom overlooking the motel balcony where Dr. King was standing when he was killed. (See chart 2)