America's Secret Jihad: The Hidden History of Religious Terrorism in the United States (31 page)

The Jackson field office spent a considerable amount of time trying to verify the whereabouts of KKK members on April 4, looking to see if their cars were in driveways or if the lights in their homes were on. One member had an easy alibi: On the evening of April 4, 1968, Meridian police ticketed Danny Joe Hawkins, a member with Tommy Tarrants of Bowers's 1968 covert hit squad, for speeding the wrong way down a one-way street.

Yet if Hawkins was attempting to establish some kind of alibi for the murder, assuming he expected it to materialize as it did on April 4, he clearly could have found better ways. For all his jubilation over the riots that followed the King murder, and for all the suspicious activity suggesting that Sam Bowers knew about a Memphis plot in advance, informant reports suggest that the Imperial Wizard did not, at first, like the timing of the death. Something may have been expected in Memphis. But was it the shooting at the Lorraine?

The fact that, according to Donald Nissen, several thousand dollars had exchanged hands between Atlanta and Jackson suggests that something very serious was in play. Such bounties circulated through America's prisons, including the Missouri State Penitentiary, from whence Ray escaped in April 1967. Yes, some evidence suggests that Ray, a native of Jim Crow St. Louis, harbored racial prejudices consistent with his times and upbringing, but little evidence suggests that racism and politics played a major role in his thinking before 1968. Comments made after the assassination by Ray's brother, Jerry, to his girlfriend and her landlady—unaware that the two were informing for the FBI—suggest that Ray was responding to the same incentive that always motivated him: money. Asked by the girlfriend “if his brother shot King,” Jerry replied, “I didn't ask him. If I was in his position and had 18 years to serve and someone offered me a lot of money to kill someone I didn't like anyhow and get me out of the country, I'd do it.”
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But the actual mechanics of the Memphis assassination suggest an ill-conceived plot—perhaps one put together by Ray at the last minute—that preempted a well-planned assassination by actual
contract killers at the behest of white supremacists. Those who think Ray was a complete dupe must maintain the most implausible theory of all. Under the far-fetched scenario offered by Ray's last attorney, William Pepper, Ray brought a rifle to Memphis to provide to the mysterious Raul, the actual assassin, completely oblivious to the possibility of an assassination. Raul then completed Ray's setup by having him visit Bessie Brewer's rooming house on the eve of the murder, killing King in Ray's absence, and then framing Ray by planting evidence. But in Pepper's scenario, the puppet master Raul made two huge, critical mistakes in setting up Ray—only to be saved by sheer luck.

First having arranged for Ray to drop off the GameMaster rifle, complete with Ray's fingerprints on them, Raul elected to use an entirely different (and as yet undiscovered) gun for the actual murder, according to Pepper. The Remington GameMaster that Ray took to Memphis was more than capable of firing the assassination round. But according to Pepper, for reasons that are unclear, Raul used a gun that, if not for the vagaries of ballistics, should have clearly pointed to someone other than James Earl Ray.

Much has been made about the inability of forensic experts to match the King murder slug to the GameMaster that Ray purchased in Birmingham and brought to Memphis, the gun found by law enforcement wrapped in a green blanket outside of Canipe's Amusements. But ballistics tests showed that the rifle itself was the problem. Normally, the lands and grooves inside a rifle's barrel etch consistent patterns on a spinning bullet as it is propelled from the gun—patterns that are unique to that rifle. A firearms expert need only fire a test bullet from a suspect's weapon and compare it under a microscope to a crime-scene bullet to see if the slug came from the gun. But with the GameMaster found in Memphis, forensic experts could not get any two test-fired rounds to match each other, meaning that the lands and grooves of the actual murder slug could not be used for a ballistics comparison. The assassination bullet might have come from the same weapon, but there is no way to know. This aspect of the King murder weapon is anomalous; Raul would have had every reason to think that a bullet could and would be matched to the GameMaster. For that reason, Raul's actions, per Ray and
his defenders, make no sense. Raul manipulated Ray into buying a rifle in Birmingham, fooled Ray into bringing it to Memphis, and took possession of the GameMaster with Ray's fingerprints on it to frame him. But Raul, under this scenario, decided it would make more sense to use an entirely different gun to assassinate King. Just as he had every reason to (incorrectly) think that the GameMaster would yield a traceable murder bullet, Raul, if he knew anything about rifles, would have known that a different gun would have produced a round that would
not
match the GameMaster. If this is true, Raul went ahead and planted the GameMaster outside Canipe's knowing that, within a matter of days, experts would realize that Ray's weapon was not used in the King murder; ballistics tests, under normal circumstances, would have
cleared
Ray. So why go through the burden of framing James Earl Ray in the first place? More to the point, why wouldn't you simply use the GameMaster to kill King in the first place? Raul thus fails Frame-up 101.

Things get worse for the Pepper scenario, as Raul, having carefully managed Ray's travels with his invisible hand, suddenly decides that it would be wise to let James Earl Ray wander around Memphis on his own accord in the immediate period before and during King's execution. Unfortunately for Ray, and very fortunately for Raul, Ray did not do anything that could establish a firm alibi. For forty years, none of Ray's investigators or lawyers ever found a single reliable witness to place Ray outside the rooming house. Raul must have thanked the conspiracy gods that Ray lacked witnesses or receipts to confirm his alibi.

On the other hand, the events in Memphis do not suggest a well-planned conspiracy either, certainly not if Ray was the designated shooter. For one thing, with professional killers available, it seems unlikely that anyone would call on Ray to murder their “ultimate prize,” Martin Luther King Jr. Ray lacked any pedigree as a hit man. A rooming house, furthermore, represents a poor choice for a potential shooting location. No one can guarantee the availability of a room facing the Lorraine, or at least one with a good vantage point. In fact, the room Ray did rent offered a very poor view of Room 306. This likely is what forced Ray (or another assassin) to camp out in the bathroom, per testimony of William Anschutz (a border
at the rooming house who testified that the assassin shot from the bathroom window).
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But a rooming house bathroom is also a less-than-desirable shooting location. At any time—including at the moment a shooter is aiming and ready to pull the trigger—someone can knock on the door looking for access to the community toilet or bath.

And a different problem presents itself with the choice of rifle if, as the evidence seems to suggest, someone told Ray to exchange his original purchase for the GameMaster. If the goal was simply to shoot a relatively stationary target from a short distance, one did not need the more expensive and well-reputed GameMaster. Bessie Brewer's rooming house was just across the street from the Lorraine. If someone told Ray to trade up for the better rifle, the likelihood was that the weapon was meant for a more difficult shot from a longer distance.

The rather haphazard way in which evidence was disposed of at the crime scene also points to a less-than-ideal plan, a last-minute plot formed out of desperation. As a member of the Minutemen confided to the FBI, a professional killer would have used a disassembled rifle, putting the weapon together at the shooting location, firing a shot, and then breaking the gun down so that it could be smuggled out, for instance in a briefcase.
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Here, not only the rifle but numerous other items, including binoculars and hygiene products, were bundled together in a green blanket and left in the entryway of Canipe's Amusements, not far from Bessie Brewer's rooming house.

Many have pointed to the bundle as convenient—a too-obvious attempt by conspirators to frame James Earl Ray. But anyone shooting from the bathroom in Bessie Brewer's rooming house had few good options available to him if he wanted to escape Memphis that day, short of the breakdown scenario described by the Minuteman. Leaving the material in the rooming house would immediately connect the rifle to any missing boarders inside the building, including any fingerprints or identifying information left behind (something even a cautious assassin could not risk). Carrying the bundle to a vehicle would risk discovery and immediate capture at any kind of roadblock dragnet. In many ways, leaving the bundle on the street was the least bad option.

In fact, whether intended or not, the materials in the bundle confused law enforcement for up to three weeks. Items in the bundle were initially linked to what appeared to be three or four different people. The rifle was linked to a Harvey Lowmeyer, who had purchased the weapon in Birmingham. Other items belonged to an Eric S. Galt, and a prison radio was eventually traced to an escaped fugitive from Missouri State Penitentiary: James Earl Ray. Coupled with reports of a potential shooter (who had rented a room under the alias John Willard) fleeing Bessie Brewer's rooming house, it appeared to the FBI as if they were dealing with a conspiracy of at least three or four people. It took weeks before they connected all the aliases to Ray, in part because authorities had to “unearth” the serial number on the prison radio Ray left in the bundle (he scratched out the numbers and letters to the best of his ability.)

The best explanation for all the facts is a scenario whereby Ray preempts a legitimate plot against King by choosing to parlay his limited role as a scout into a more lucrative role as the actual shooter. He would do this without consulting with the plotters, assuming he even knew who the major players were, and he would do this at the last minute, hence the haphazard execution. Several additional pieces of evidence point in this direction.

First, this explanation helps account for one of the most enduring and perplexing mysteries of April 4: the CB radio broadcast that diverted law enforcement away from Ray's escape route. As Ray fled from Memphis to Atlanta in his white Ford Mustang, someone led police on a wild goose chase. Some thirty minutes after the King shooting, a CB radio operator named William Austein heard a transmission from a fellow CB operator broadcasting a car chase. Contrary to routine procedure, the broadcaster would not identify himself, but he reported that he was chasing a white Mustang driven by King's killer, fleeing east on Summer Avenue from Parkway Street. The unknown CB operator wanted to make direct contact with the Memphis police. Austein halted a Memphis police cruiser and relayed periodic reports from the other man's radio broadcasts to a police officer, who then relayed them to Memphis police headquarters. Lasting for ten minutes, the transmissions reported the chase of the Mustang through multiple turns and through a red light; the
individual in the white Mustang even fired shots at the heroic citizen. The final broadcast occurred at 6:48
PM
, with reports that the vehicle was heading toward a naval base.

It turns out that the broadcast was a hoax. An investigation never established who perpetrated the fraud, but in reaching out to police, refusing to identify his name, and trying to direct police attention to the northern parts of Memphis, the fake CB broadcaster was attempting to pull police resources away from the southern route that Ray likely used to escape the city.
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Some claim that the timing of the broadcast, more than thirty minutes after the shooting, speaks against this being a conspiratorial act. But the delay might also suggest that the conspirators themselves were caught off guard. If James Earl Ray short-circuited a more elaborate plot against King (perhaps to obtain a larger share of a bounty), he would have placed any conspirator in Memphis in the uncomfortable position of having to guess what had happened. The delay between the crime and the broadcast may well represent the time it took for conspirators to surmise that someone within their plot had literally jumped the gun. Under this speculative scenario, using the CB stunt to shift police attention away from the likely getaway direction might have been a logical, if delayed, maneuver. Conspirators had good reason to fear what a fleeing shooter might tell law enforcement regarding a wider conspiracy, and if the conspirators realized the unexpected shooter was Ray, they may have surmised that he was heading back to Atlanta. The KKK commonly used CB radios to intercept police broadcasts and stymie police investigations, so much so that Congress cited the practice as widespread in a 1966 report. At one point, in its investigation of the MIBURN murders, the FBI was forced to call in help from the Federal Communications Commission to establish a completely independent communications network—one that was immune to CB radio intercepts by the White Knights.

The possibility that Ray preempted a shooting by professional criminals contracted by the White Knights is further suggested by events that occurred not far from the crime scene. One of the earliest reports from Memphis related to suspicious activity at the William Len Hotel, located just a mile from the Lorraine. As they later
described to the FBI, hotel employees observed two men acting suspiciously at 12:05
AM
on April 5. The two guests had arrived the previous afternoon and looked nervous while waiting to check out at that odd hour. The suspicious men had registered on the afternoon of April 4 as Vincent Walker and Lawrence Rand and had stayed in two separate but nearby rooms. Both men left in a hurry following King's murder. The FBI was interested in the two men and traced their activities once they left the hotel. One man hailed a cab and asked to go to West Memphis, Arkansas, but some distance into the trip, he insisted that the cab driver turn around and take him to the Memphis airport. The passenger appeared to scout the airport and then told the cabbie to return to the William Len Hotel. Outside, the cabbie met the second man and drove him to the airport. They boarded a flight under the names W. Davis and B. Chidlaw. Their flight departed at 1:50
AM
on April 5 and arrived in Houston at 2:50
AM,
at which point they took a shuttle and more or less disappeared. The FBI checked the names and addresses on the hotel register, only to find out that they were both aliases. So too were the Davis and Chidlaw names provided at the airport. A fingerprint check revealed no suspects, so the FBI gave up, guessing that these were criminals in town for a separate operation who left because they expected an increased police presence following King's murder. It is worth noting that Cliff Fuller and Hugh Pruett—two Dixie Mafia gangsters who may have been connected to marks on Ray's Atlanta map—were last arrested in connection with burglaries in Houston, the last point of departure for “W. Davis” and “B. Chidlaw.” Were Fuller and Pruett—or two other Dixie mobsters—caught off guard by Ray's unilateral decision to kill King himself?
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