Orders to Kill Page 7

  At one point during that fateful afternoon, Ray bought a pair of binoculars at the York Arms Store on South Main, allegedly driving there, and on his return parked his car in front of Canipe Amusement Company, just south of Jim’s Grill. (See chart 3) He then returned to his room, where he allegedly moved furniture around, placing a chair near the window so that he could better surveil the motel. Later on he allegedly entered the bathroom at the end of the hall and locked the door. He knocked a screen from the window down to the backyard area behind the rooming house. This overgrown yard ended at an eight-foot wall that rose up from Mulberry Street directly opposite the balcony. Standing in the bathtub (where scuff marks were left) and waiting for the right moment, he rested the rifle on the windowsill. At 6:01 p.m. he fired a single shot, the recoil from which dented the windowsill, and in his haste he neglected to eject the spent cartridge. The shot traveled just over two hundred feet, striking Dr. King in the lower right side of his face, the bullet traveling downward and breaking his jaw, damaging his upper spine, and coming to rest just under the skin below the left shoulder blade.

  CHART 2

  CHART 3

  Immediately after the shooting, Ray allegedly ran to his room, gathered his few belongings into a bundle, and ran down the front stairs, being viewed, as he ran, by Charles Stephens. (Another tenant, Willie Anschutz, also saw a man, whom he couldn’t identify, run from room 5-B down the hall carrying some sort of package.) The state would say that, once on the street, Ray saw a police car parked facing the street near the sidewalk in the driveway of the fire station which caused him to panic and drop the bedspread-wrapped bundle in the recessed doorway of Canipe Amusement Company. He then jumped into his white Mustang just south of Canipe’s and drove to Atlanta, where he abandoned the Mustang.

  Ray then made his way to Canada and eventually to England as Ramon George Sneyd, in whose name he was able to obtain a passport. The state contended that in his determination to get as far away as possible, and in line with his racist inclinations, he explored the possibility of going to Rhodesia. When he was unable to arrange this during a trip to Portugal, he returned to England, where he robbed a bank. He was finally apprehended at Heathrow Airport while on his way to Brussels, where he had intended to explore other African emigration possibilities.

  As to the funds he needed to live on during his fugitive period beginning April 23, 1967, the state contended that he committed various robberies, first in Canada and later in the United States. No evidence whatsoever existed of Ray receiving assistance from anybody, except perhaps members of his own family.

  The picture of James Earl Ray that emerged then—as put out by the authorities from the time he was first identified on April 19, 1968, until he entered a plea of guilty on March 10, 1969, and ever after—was that of a dangerous career criminal who was also a bitter racist and a loner.

  The Dissent

  The only substantial dissenting voice in print in the early years after the assassination was that of investigative writer Harold Weisberg, who relied heavily on the findings of journalist Matt Herron (who was on the scene), news reports, articles, and telephone interviews.

  Weisberg’s book, Frame Up,13 published in 1971, raised a number of new issues. They included the following:

  Eyewitness evidence of chauffeur Solomon Jones seeing someone in the brush immediately after the shot.

  A last-minute change of Dr. King’s hotel from the Rivermont to the Lorraine and a change of his originally assigned room at the Lorraine.

  The presence of another white Mustang, parked in front of Jim’s Grill, within one hundred feet of the Mustang parked in front of Canipe Amusement Company.

  The inability of the FBI laboratory to conclusively match the death slug to the alleged murder weapon.

  The absence of any fingerprints of Ray in the rooming house.

  The transfer of black firemen from the fire station near the scene the evening before the killing.

  The CB “hoax” broadcast that took place moments after the shooting, which Weisberg found indicative of the existence of a conspiracy.

  He also briefly discussed a Louisiana state trooper named Raul Esquivel, whose Baton Rouge barracks contained a telephone whose number Ray had allegedly called. Weisberg obtained the number from Los Angeles Times reporter Jeff Cohen, who said he was given it by Charles Stein, whom Ray met in California and who rode with him from Los Angeles to New Orleans in December 1967. Stein allegedly had seen Ray dial the number and wrote it down.

  Weisberg drew attention to the potential conflict of interest arising out of the literary contracts signed by Ray, his successive lawyers, and author William Bradford Huie. He also discussed at length the hostility of Hoover and the FBI toward Dr. King and the harassment he suffered at their hands. He developed early on a case for a conspiracy, with Ray as a pawn manipulated by a man named Raul.

  Mark Lane’s book, Code Name Zorro, published in 1977, provided other new information pointing to leads and discrepancies in the state’s case.14 Lane referred to the fact that a “screen” of bushes behind the rooming house had been cut down some time after the shooting. He disputed the official reason given by the MPD that the order to remove detective Redditt from his post shortly before the shooting was a result of a threat on Redditt’s life. Redditt also told him that the Invaders were infiltrated by a black undercover cop who was an agent provocateur for violence and illegal activity. Redditt met him years later when the agent, who was undercover, pleaded for his cover not to be blown, saying that he was currently working for the CIA.

  Lane’s account further disputed the official story by contending that Dr. King had never previously stayed at the Lorraine. He quoted Memphis reporter Kay Black, who had covered some of Dr. King’s earlier visits. She said that she remembered him staying at the Claridge Hotel, and before his last visit she didn’t even know where the Lorraine Motel was located. Lane also questioned what had happened to the rooming house’s register, which had long since disappeared.

  Clearly only the secondary press attempted to raise the issues of the case and generate discussion about Ray’s guilt or innocence.

  Quietly and behind the scenes, as other commitments allowed, I began to investigate. When I became aware that on September 10, 1976, the MPD burned all the files of its intelligence bureau, despite an effort by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to prevent their destruction, I realized that a reconstruction of the events leading up to the assassination was going to be that much more difficult.

  I TURNED WITH NEW INTEREST TO THE ACTIVITY OF THE HSCA. The first year of its work had been turbulent. Its first chief counsel, former Pennsylvania prosecutor Richard Sprague, a tough, honest professional, had been summarily replaced by Cornell University law professor G. Robert Blakey in early 1977.

  Following Sprague’s removal in the wake of concerted personal attacks against him by the press, it was evident that the scope of the subcommittee inquiry on Dr. King’s death had become restricted solely to James Earl Ray and his brothers, John and Jerry.

  In an interview with Sprague shortly after his dismissal, he told me he had taken the job because he was promised a free hand by the Ninety-fifth Congress, yet hardly had the committee been organized when House Speaker Tip O’Neill demanded, in order to justify additional funds, that it “prove” to the Congress there was a conspiracy. Sprague maintained that after he left, the committee’s approach changed drastically. Whereas he had been committed to an open-ended, formal investigation for as long as it took and regardless of where it led, the new chief counsel clearly favored an approach that Sprague termed “evaluative” (as opposed to “investigative”), which focused on closing rather than opening doors. Articles, books, and stories were evaluated individually, without cross-referencing, so they couldn’t be used as sources for new information. Sprague was cynically resigned to the fact that the public didn’t care. He believed that Congress and the executive branch were at best never interested in a real investigation
and at worst committed to covering up the truth. Chief deputy counsel Robert Lehner eventually resigned, disagreeing with Blakey’s decision to limit the investigation to the Ray brothers.

  During the HSCA investigation, the media again turned their focus on Ray. Time set the tone in its January 26, 1976 issue with an article variously referring to him as a “narcotics addict” and a “narcotics peddler,” based on George McMillan’s book.15 Missouri Corrections Department chief George M. Camp tried to contact McMillan for details about the allegation in his book that Ray financed the killing of Dr. King by selling drugs as an inmate. Camp stated publicly that McMillan’s charges were “totally unsubstantiated” and that he wanted McMillan to “either put up or shut up.”16 Aside from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s coverage, Camp’s refutation was ignored around the country.

  A UPI wire service release on January 25, 1978—at the beginning of the last year of the investigation—also variously referred to Ray as having gone “insane” (1963–1964), sending an “obscene letter” to the post office (1967–1968), constantly reading “girlie magazines,” harassing “two women with late night telephone calls” (1967–1968), being involved with “drug traffic” and even having “cheated fellow prisoners in crooked card games.”

  ROBERT BLAKEY WAS A PURPORTED EXPERT ON ORGANIZED CRIME who had taught at both Notre Dame and Cornell law schools. At Cornell he was the director of its Institute of Organized Crime, and previously he served as a special attorney with the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the U.S. Department of Justice under Robert Kennedy.

  As my investigation proceeded during these early days, I reviewed a copy of a most unusual affidavit executed by Blakey on February 4, 1976.17 It was prepared and submitted to the court in a civil action brought by Cleveland-Las Vegas crime syndicate leader Morris Dalitz against Penthouse magazine as a result of an article that alleged the involvement of organized crime in the development of Rancho La Costa California resort.18 The allegation of criminal involvement was tied to Dalitz’s involvement with the project.

  Blakey, as an expert witness, contended that Moe Dalitz had no connection with organized crime.19 This was extraordinary because it was by then a well-established fact that Dalitz was a long-time major syndicate operator. Subsequently, on September 10, 1979, the Wall Street Journal noted that Dalitz had long been identified by federal authorities as an ongoing senior advisor to organized crime.

  Because the murder of Dr. King could well have involved elements of organized crime, I was concerned that the counsel steering the investigation would take such a position only a short time before he took over control of the HSCA. (Blakey’s expert opinion was ultimately not accepted and Penthouse’s defense of the piece was successful.)

  I was also very uneasy with the new chief counsel’s apparently cozy relationship with the CIA and the FBI, which moved him to give the intelligence agencies influence over his staff’s requests for files, documents, and records. Other factors were unsettling as well: the early removal of twenty-eight staffers, the insistence on secrecy (even the requirement that all staff sign nondisclosure agreements, with harsh penalties for violation), the instruction to staff members that they were to have no contact with critics without Blakey’s personal authorization, and the absence of accountability of committee consultants to anyone beyond the immediate committee leadership. I was thus led to conclude early on that the reconstituted committee leadership had no intention of conducting an independent investigation.

  My misgivings about the HSCA were reinforced when in the summer of 1978 I learned about a clandestine assignment given to previous FBI informer and HSCA undercover agent Oliver Patterson to establish a relationship with Ray’s brother Jerry, and to provide as much information as possible from these contacts. He was instructed to obtain hair samples from Jerry and to go through his personal things from time to time, looking for anything that might be of interest, including correspondence.

  In August 1978 Patterson was instructed to publicly discredit Mark Lane, who was James Earl Ray’s lawyer at the time.

  In a sworn statement dated August 14, 1978, Patterson stated that his HSCA handlers instructed him to give a private interview to New York Times reporter Anthony J. Marro on Monday, August 7, 1978, in which he was told to accuse Mark Lane of being gay, state that Lane had told him that he knew there was no person named Raul, and further allege that his [Patterson’s] own undercover work had confirmed James Earl Ray’s guilt.

  When Lane (tipped off by Susan Wadsworth, a friend of Patterson’s) uncovered the plot and confronted Patterson, Patterson agreed to cooperate with him. Consequently, when Marro arrived at noon at the designated St. Louis hotel he found himself walking into a room filled with news cameras and reporters. He ran from the room with Lane behind him asking whether he wanted the truth. Lane then addressed a press conference, and with Patterson and Wadsworth present revealed the history of the HSCA’s illicit use of Oliver Patterson. Affidavits setting out details about this matter were executed by Wadsworth, and another friend of Patterson, Tina Denaro.

  Chief counsel Blakey subsequently issued a statement in which he said that a complete investigation of Patterson’s allegations would be made but that on the basis of a preliminary investigation, “the Committee categorically denies each and every allegation of wrongdoing. It states with assurance that no federal, state, or local law, or any rule of the House or of the Committee has been violated by the investigator or by any other member of the Committee staff.”

  Patterson never repudiated his allegations against the committee.

  9

  The Visit: October 17, 1978

  BY MID-OCTOBER 1978 I was ready to meet Ray at the Brushy Mountain prison in Tennessee. Mark Lane agreed to arrange for as long a session as we wished, which we could record in any way we chose. Our group was to include Ralph Abernathy, psychiatrist Howard Berens of Boston, who specialized in interpreting body language, and two photographers.

  I had learned as much as possible about our subject’s life. James Earl Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois. He and his family, which included his two brothers, Jerry and John, moved some six years later to Ewing, Missouri, where his father gave the family the name of “Rayns” to avoid an association with some of James’s uncle’s petty criminal activities. Thus Ray’s first alias was provided to him by his own father when he was six.

  Ray finished elementary school (eighth grade) and promptly dropped out. He moved back to Alton, and at age sixteen he worked at the International Shoe Tannery in East Hartford, Illinois. He enlisted in the army in January 1946. Eventually, he was stationed in West Germany.

  In December 1948, he received a general discharge, which cited his “inaptness and lack of adaptability to military service.” He returned to Alton and soon began drifting from job to job.

  In September 1949, he left Chicago for California, and in October he was arrested for a minor burglary, a charge he has always denied. He was sentenced to ninety days in prison. After returning to Illinois in 1950, he worked in supermarkets and factories and attempted to earn his high school diploma by going to night school. In May 1952, he robbed a cab driver of eleven dollars. He was sent to the state penitentiary at Joliet and later transferred to the state prison farm in Pontiac, where he remained until he was released on March 12, 1954.

  Though he stayed out of trouble for a while, at a bar he met Walter Rife, who persuaded him to help sell U.S. postal money orders Rife had stolen. They were caught, and on July 1, 1955, Ray was sentenced to forty-five months at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas. It is interesting to note that Rife, who apparently turned informer, received a lesser sentence even though he had actually stolen the money orders. In a subsequent interview (March 12, 1979) Ray would reflect philosophically on the issue of informing, saying that he didn’t want to end up like Joe Valachi, the mob informant. He felt that if someone else wanted to inform that was their business, but he would neither inform nor assist i
n the prosecution of anyone. Over the years, I have become impressed with the strength of this commitment. For Ray, this is more than a way to stay alive in prison. He believes it is wrong and will not relent. In this respect Ray is an old-fashioned con, respected wherever he has done time.

  He was paroled from Leavenworth in early 1959, only to be tried and convicted for a grocery store robbery in St. Louis in December 1959. In March of 1960 he began serving a twenty-year sentence at the Missouri State Penitentiary.

  He was always on the lookout for ways to escape. After two unsuccessful attempts he succeeded on April 23, 1967, when he began the Odyssey that was to end over a year later with his extradition from the United Kingdom. After being convicted and eventually incarcerated at Brushy Mountain, Ray again tried to escape. His second attempt there was successful. On June 10, 1977 he went over the wall but was caught and returned in just over two days. At that time it had become clear that the HSCA (the future of which had been in doubt) was going to continue. I was uneasy when I learned that a large number of FBI agents appeared extraordinarily quickly on the scene.

  On October 16, the day before our meeting was to take place, the members of our small group gathered at a hotel on the outskirts of Knoxville. Late that evening we were joined by Mark Lane and one of his assistants, Barbara Rabbito. For several hours that evening Ralph and I went over questions I had drafted, preparing for the next day’s interview.