Setting for a Murder [2]

to Jackson, Mississippi. He called it a walk against fear, and it was meant to encourage black men and women to register to vote. On the second day out on the road, Meredith was ambushed and wounded by a white man with a shotgun. Meredith was rushed back to a hospital in Memphis, his wounds not serious. The following morning, Martin Luther King flew in to see him, and the Reverend James Lawson, pastor and civil rights leader in Memphis,

drove out to the airport to pick him up. I was met on the concourse by a couple of black police officers who were dressed in suits and ties, white shirts and ties. They informed me there will be no violence in Memphis and King is going to be safe in Memphis. Claud Armor, the Commissioner of Fire and Police. He is appointed eight officers of the police force in Memphis to work with him and accompany him as a security unit. For nineteen sixty six on Dr King's office

cooperated with that black security squad of eight men. They're the ones who would not allow him to stay at any hotel with balcony sea. They wanted him to be inside where they could not keep the scenery clear. Was that unit assigned to him on his final visit to Memphis, that all black unit. No, it was withdrawn. That security union was reassigned. I called the union hall. I said, a matter of life and death. I said, I think these people are planning to kill Dr King. The authorities

were parade. Oh, we found a gun, the James L. Raybod in Birmingham that killed Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun that killed Dr King. James Lvy was upon for the official story from My Heart radio intender for TV. The plan was to get King to the city because they wanted it handled in Memphis. Were dead in incate hamon and I have lived with us alone, monsieur, and they they skied for me. The Lord told me to not the word. I've been wanting to tell it all

my life. I'm Bill Clayburg and this is d MLK tapes. Reverend Lawson was a good friend of Martin Luther King, and he was one of the first to question the official story of the assassination. Lawson will tell us how he came to know doctor King and about the things he learned that created doubt about the murder. Then we'll hear from people who were in Memphis that faithful day and how what they experienced spoke to the very things that troubled Reverend Lawson. At the time of King's murder,

Lawson was the pastor of the Sentinary Methodist Church in Memphis. Lawson, like King, was a third generation minister, and he decided to fight for racial justice at an early age. When he was just twenty two, he sent to federal prison for refusing induction into the army. Lawson was locked up for a year and then went to India as a missionary. It was while he was in India that Laws and learned of the Montgomery bus boycott. We spoke last summer. The Montgomery bus boycott was on the top news all

across India the early part of December nine. I'm sitting at my desk in my apartment in no for India, and the immediate headline that caught my eye in my life Negroes in Montgomery Boycott. I knew as I finished my term in nineteen fifty six that I were really going to return to home and would be involved in that campaign. I didn't know where or what, or when or who, but I knew it was going to happen,

and it did happened. Lawson met King when he got back from India, where he had studied the life and methods of Mahatma Gandhi. King was impressed. He urged me, and I can't remember all the words, but he said, come now, don't wait. We don't have anyone like you in the South, and we need your experience, We need your work and help. So Lawson went south, where he would lead the lunch counter sit ins in Nashville and

be arrested as a freedom writer in Jackson, Mississippi. He then became the pastor at the Centenary Methodist Church and in the summer of six, he joined a group of ministers that went to Vietnam to make a report, a report critical of the war that he personally sent to Martin Luther King. Less than two years after you made that report, Dr King then made his speech at Riverside Church,

the speech that shocked the nation fourth nineteen seven. And I knew that I'm America would never invest the necessary funds are images in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such. King's opposition to the war might have sounded like a practical matter. Money spent on military adventures abroad could not be used to help people at home.

But underneath there was a powerful moral argument that went much deeper. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society in sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Holland. Did you concur in that speech? Did you agree with Dr King? Oh? Absolutely? But his speech was not very well received by the overall American media and some people

in the civil rights movement as well. Is that not true. That's true. We knew in our conversations the extent to which they would say he had no business talking about which causes the idiocy of our conventional wisdom. In the United States, we think that preachers ought not to talk about evil. In ninety eight, Memphis, racial tensions were high. There were a few decent employment opportunities to open the black citizens. Only the most menial work, and that was

always Underpaidred sanitation workers were the textbook case. A day after filthy work, black workers were not allowed to shower and change clothes at the garage, but the way workers were if it was raining, they were sent home without pay, while their white drivers were allowed to go back to the garage, play cards and stay on the payroll. There were constant humiliations, and if you objected to any of it,

you'd be fired. On April one, two black workers in Cole Cole and Robert Walker hopped into the back of their garbage truck to get out of the rain. It's trash compactor supposedly malfunctioned, switching on and they were crushed to death, and if the horror of that were not enough, the wives and families of the two men were barely compensated. It was the last straw, and the sanitation workers walked

off the job. The city of Memphis declared the strike illegal and refused to discuss the workers concerns, and about all the workers could do was march and attend rallies. This is Reverend Lawson describing what happened during one peaceful march that he was leading, a march he had cleared

with police Chief Holliman. We were walking on the right side of the street going south, and these cars came from the side streets on the main street and rolled up all alongside of us, so that there was a long line of police cars, perhaps the length of the walk. Then I noticed some of the cars coming over the yellow line and trying to intimidate some of us walking. So I turned around and went to the couple of the race cars and said, now, look, we had Holloman's

permission to walk. You guys have designed to provoke an incident, so stay where you are. And then it happened again. They moved over on the marchers, and this time the sanitation workers put their hands in the car, and like that, the police cars all of it. Now that line stopped. Officers poured out of the cars with cans of the base and seated the mace everybody they could place. They had some targets they dragged off to a vikingople out the river. By how many I had glasses on, So

they're mad in face. But the march was broken up in that fashion. But as the strike entered its second month, it moved into something more threatening even than police violence. There were now families with no savings and no income and no way to put food on the table. The strikers badly needed outside help, national attention. So Reverend Lawson asked his friend Martin Luther King to come to Memphis and speak at a rally. And they were standing room

only in that meeting. So I suspect that we probably had as many as ten the twelve thousand people in that sanctuary and in that building. I picked up Dr King at the airport and we had to walk through mobs of people who were overjoyed that Martin King was in Memphis for this strike. So this is a very powerful moment for him and for us in the euphoria that followed a speech, King agreed to come back to

Memphis and join in a protest march. When the day came, King's plane was delayed and he was a little late in getting there. The march began, and King and his people arrived and took their place near the front of

the marchers. But things were not going well. When I turned on the main street, I saw just beyond our first rank of marshals, who were maybe fifty yards ahead of us, I saw in front of them police officers in riot deer stretched across that main street in ranks of three or four ranks on the side of the street. But we're trying to break the store windows. No police officer moved to stop them, So I said to myself,

they are planning again to break up this march. Knowing what was coming next, Lawson ran back and demanded that King of this party retire. They're coming to get you, Martin, he said, and we don't want that. King objected at first, but then agreed, and his party retired to the Rivermont Hotel with the honest help of a nearby police car. Later last in another strike, leaders examined photos that were

taken that day. According to them, the windows smashing and looting had not been done by the marchers, but rather by some Beal street low lifes and others they didn't know. As we heard at the beginning of the episode, from the time of the Meredith shooting forward, King had an all black security unit when it came to Memphis, but for some reason, on the King's final visit to the city,

that unit was not called on to protect him. Instead, a police detail of four officers under the command of Inspector Donald Smith met doctor King at the airport and escorted him to the Lorraine Motel, where they remained on duty till five in the afternoon. But none of them were black, and none of them returned the next day,

April four, the day the King was murdered. Late in the afternoon of April four, Lawson went to the motel to report to doctor King about his day in court, fighting successfully, as it turned out, for the right to march. Lawson left King at around five pm. He was home having dinner with his wife when he got the news that doctor King had been shot. He then dashed around the city trying to keep things calm. But several days

later he got a strange package in the mail. I received the brown envelope and on the inside of it the invisible tape. It was wrapped around a bullet. It had scribbled on the sheet of paper to the bullet woods attached, there is one of these for you. Lawson didn't tell anyone other than his wife about the package. But a few days later we got a call on some matter from police Chief Holloman, and towards the end of the conversation, Holloman said, we understand that you received

the package in the mail. Lawson, as was his way, remained polite, but as he hung up the phone, he wondered, how did you know that? And as time went on, Lawson was troubled by a few other things he discovered

after the murder. This is what he had to say in I learned that one or two firemen, and I got trying to check the next details with living two firemen who were into fire station across the street Kenny torn the little hotel Black fireman were transferred from that station in ways that at least those fireman thought was unusual. Big contact at me and Ralph Jackson, all with two

others about their removal. I learned that Ed Reid, who's on surveillance from the fire station, was moved an hour before. I learned that patrol cars that were in the region when he was there patrolling Allberry made but suddenly disappeared with Dora. He found, and after James el Ray had been captured, more odd things began to pop into Lawson's head. When he found out that Ray was being held in a cell where the lights were kept on twenty four

hours a day. It brought to his mind sleep deprivations used by the North Koreans to break American captives. My only regret is that I did not then go and find a way to visit him in that cell at County Jail. As a pastor, I made a series is air in not getting acquainted with James el Ray in that cell. And when James finally had his day in court and pleaded guilty, Lawson was again disturbed. His plea astonished me, and it didn't astonished me from his point

of view. It estonished me from the official legal court point of view. Just why would the local police and district attorney, in an assassination of a major USA figure not moved to have an open child I've come to call this Lawson's question. It's a good one. If this case is the big slam dunk that the police and d A like to say it was, why the big push for the plea? Why wouldn't the d A's office pursue a trial to prove without a doubt that James

OL Ray killed Martin Luther King. As you just heard, Reverend Lawson felt badly about not having visited Ray while he was held captive for eight months before his court day. The Lawson would make up for that. He visited Ray in jail after he was convicted. He came to know Ray in a way few other men did. Lawson even married Ray in jail and at the end sat with him as he awaited death. So what was his measure

of the man? Of course, the motive that was given to Ray was that he hated black people so much that he escaped from prison with the sole intention of murdering doctor King. That was a lie. That was the major lie. Now, remember, I've been fighting racism since age tour, so I think I do know racism and a white person. I visited James O. Ray, and I found ignorance in James O. Rae and some illiteracy, and I found elements of a poor white man, but I found no races.

Reverend Lawson, do you believe that James el Ray murdered your friend Martin Luther King? James el Ray was a pond for the official story. Dr King was not assassinated by James el Ray. As Reverend Lawson told us, he noticed some strange activity in the Memphis newspapers in the week leading up to King's murder, stories attacking King for staying at white owned hotels when there was a perfectly good black hotel, the Lorraine, that he could have patronized.

What was this about, Lawson wondered, where was this coming from? There were, of course good reasons for King to stay at the white hotel, to integrate them, for one, and for another, Lawson says, the King's all black security detail like hotels such as the Rivermont or the Admiral Benbo with interior access to rooms that they could secure and guard, instead of motels like the Lorraine, whose rooms were accessed

by an open exterior walkway. But whether because of the attacks in the newspapers or because he just chose to be there, King was booked into the Lorraine Motel for his final visit to Memphis, but at first he was booked into room two O two, which had a ground floor entry off an interior alcove, and at the last minute, King's room was changed to three oh six, which was reached by the exposed walkway. So the question is why

was King's room changed? The person best able to answer that question was Lorraine Bailey, the owner with her husband of the Lorraine Motel. According to an account from Bill Pepper's book The Plot to Kill King, on April two, the day before King arrived in Memphis, she told her husband that she had been visited by someone she described as an SCLC advanced man, who insisted that King be moved to a room overlooking the empty motel swimming pool.

But as soon as she heard that doctor King had been shot, Lorraine Bailey ran to her room screaming, what have I done? She then suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness. She died a few days later, and the question of who was behind the room changed remained a mystery. But this was not the only odd occurrence

taking place near the murder site. Reverend Lawson mentioned a few others like the transfer of the only two black firemen assigned a fire station number two, or the two's as it was called. The fire station overlooked the motel, and a lot would be happening in and around that firehouse, and the two firemen, as the story goes, being black, were thought to be a risk. But what excuse should

be used to remove them? According to a witness we will hear later, it was decided that the easiest thing was to say that a threat had been made on their lives? Is that what happened? Well, the fireman can tell us in their own words as they respond to questions by Attorney Bill Pepper, who represented Coretta Scott King and the King family at the civil trial in Memphis. First is Norville Wallace, who in thirty seven years of service attained the rank of captain, which is why Pepper

refers to him as chief Fouse. You you were employed by the Menda's fire departments, were a number years true years from six Moss when she falls? Did you serve as the first one day making ses six? I will have November where you at any time transferred out of that stage? Were transferred out on eight p m. Of the night of the killing or the night before the night of the pool? And how were you transferred? How do you receive your orders to be transferred out without

receiving from that game? He should add, going be detailed for thirty three was at the airport? This was the nine of April third. You were told by your captain to go out to the airportage in thirty three? She was Did you ever ask what this was all about? Yes? And then what were you told? Told that head in three? And why would you be friend? Was putting out of bires, I guess, but there was a thread on your life. Say so, the education out of the areas, that's what

it doesn't get mad here? How many black firemen were signed the number two, just you and the lower Boston to Obviously we're learning the nine of one of you were allowed the right and you never received the satisfactory explanatic. Say so, Norville Wallace has transferred out of fire station number two to a firehouse out of the airport. He is told that the transfer was caused by a threat upon his life, and Wallace cannot imagine why anyone would

wish him harm. So take the explanation that Wallace was removed because of a threat to his life. This is something real or something made up? Because one might think if a real threat had been made, details would be provided to the threatened person as a matter of responsible conduct. If you were fireman Wallace, what might you want to know? How do they know about this threat? Where is it coming from? Who more than the threatened party deserves to

know these details? But no details are given, no explanation is offered. In fact, the threat is never mentioned again. So does this sound like something real or something made up? And as Wallace testified, there was another black fireman at the two's, Floyd Newsom, and his story as told from the same witness stand, it's quite similar to that, Mr Wallace.

Where are you on duty on the fourth of April nineteen fire station number two at the time of the assass today, I was from Judy, but I wasn't the number twos. You were not at the number two I was supposed to be. You were supposed to be at the number dudes. If you were at another dude, you tell the jury y you were not the number two. I was that day because Abler ThReD not able. The third obviously called home from our internet at that times the times, who is struck to me? Not your pot?

Aren't you the number two on our regular duty to note the company? But instead they posed two number thirty months. That was that am gold and crossing possibly in the tent at the time of nine. Did you receive this call? After ten? After ten a fucking night, you received the call and orders to go to another five? That's right? The next step, what was the emergency that caused you to be changed? You to be moved to another fire?

Surely wasted my emergency it was? And when you went to that other station in the next stat did you find that you were neat? Also, I was not needed my leading not company. That's not company after serious and that's somebody else's details of my company in my state. So you're telling this course that you were surplus to requirements where you were said that under man your your homecom So there's a video. Ever inquired why you were

assigned away from your station? Yes? What did you learn? Much? Times? I was transferred about waiting on it about a quick So finally you gotta answer to your question, and you were told that you were transferred at the request of the Memphis Colsia before any opinion your own about why you were transferred, not really, I just know it was very unusually necessary, so it had to be done for

some reason. I don't know the reason. And as if there weren't enough strange things going on at the twos that day, there was something else, some thing that Reverend Lawson didn't know about, nor did anyone else, because no one in the murder investigation had interviewed Carthel Weeden, the chief of fire Station number two, about what he saw

that day. Years later, Weedon would come forward and say that the morning of the murder, he was approached by two men who flashed army I d and asked to be placed on the roof of the firehouse where they could photograph the Lorrain Motel. This is Chief Weedon telling his account of what happened that morning on April fourth. Yea, they have the assassination. Were you approached by to Morrow Lawson? That's what he indicated to the time. Show you any

military identification? Well, I'm sure the dear I want to hear about there for that. You know, we have a lot of people coming in and that you know, and what did they ask you to do? They wanted to look out for dance, right, okay? They wanted if they want an advantage point in a rent these arm rolls And did you put them somewhere? I put them on the roof to the No. To fire station? You put these army officers on the roof for the number two fire stations on fourth of Agos ninetiess year? And were

they carrying anything? They had great case station? Did you come to learn that it was in those Greek place? Did they tell you that one was in the brief phase they said they wanted to banage point or doing so to photographic where rats you came to believe that they had camera equipment in those Well that's what they they indicate in doing. I placed the motor root when they yet did you see the leaves? Ris Ween? Has many law enforcement officers ever asked you about about that?

Any rich nobody's ever saw him? To you, this is a simple story, but curious why would two men flashing army I d asked to go to the roof of the firehouse so they could photograph the area around the Lorraine Motel. Unjust what happened to be the day that Martin Luther King was shot? Who were these men what were they doing that day? And if there were an innocent explanation, why haven't these men come forward? And where

are the photographs that they presumably took. In the previous segment, we heard the accounts of the two black firemen who were removed from the critically located fire station number two, and from the former chief of that station who told up bringing two men up to the roof so they could photograph the area around the Lorraine Motel. This on a morning where he said a lot of people were coming and going, but something darker still appeared to be

taking place within the Memphis Police Department. On his previous visits to Memphis in nineteen sixty eight, Martin Luther King was met and guarded by a special detail of black police officers. Reverend Lawson told us of how he was at the airport waiting for doctor King the first time

that unit made their appearance. He told us how their commander, Captain Jerry Williams, promised to keep King safe, but according to Lawson, on King's final visit to that troubled city, Williams strangely did not receive the order to form his unit. This is what Captain Williams had to say about it years later, responding to the questions of Attorney Bill Peppers, and he bously gonna police department. Actually was how long were you? Was very honest later? When years? And what

were you doing in nineteen sevens? At that time I was assigned to them as sign and I would be in charge of security party Police department and then women have celebrities or some daystarious accompts to numbers. Kevin Williams, um were you assigned to provide security for Dr Martin Luther King whenever he came to Men, Well, for the first two times that he came to my knowledge, I was assigned. I have a very time. I was not talking about the Earth assiseration, the you assassination in eight

and tell us how you would put together? How about security unit that you've had people together? Inspected Dunston, the old security supervisor. He would call me and asked me to select a group of officers, possibly nine. I would help about sister tatives through you and the coming in. Would you stay with doctor King throughout his visit? When yes, how would you provide security? Point? Well, we would get his continerary. When you come to the Memphis we would

meet at the tail port. When he did planned it would be right with him. We would following him to his hotel. If he would go to church first was we would lead to details of the church. Where did he stay overnight? When on one ocagent who stayed up to river, wont and your unit would protect him and from my secur to that, yes, or we would go in and check the rooms, make sure the telephone on about, check under the bed to check the over where. Then I was signed to the officers building the outside of

this door. We would take times about every two hours and would do that. All right, love now and Dr King's lost visit to menis were you asked to form this usual security unit? You know? So you were not? Was not? Why were you not absolutely formed at security unit on the lost n So? I don't know. I was just alled as somebody as within the assignment when they lack office and label white officers. Did you ever ask any questions as to why you weren't something well,

I did later on altimary timent. But after the assassination, in the aftermath the assassination, while you still were a certain officer, did you ever raise that question with any on the inside the department, no income wait at the most house black officers, and we didn't took the vers as to why. But nobody knew why. You know, you have to realize at that time to tell you, when we used to go, plakers were very supergated. There's a lot of I still the situation of change formatically since

then black people was only talking to black people. White people gone talking the white people. So a lot I still have tea. I don't know, my Woodpool, I just don't know. I don't know what the answer that since factor gave me was. But you ask, and I just know who wasn't working on that pay and you were not in a position as an officer in the departments and black home really be able to ask any money and require an anser wrest. But there was a black

police detective who was working that day. His name was ed Reddit and with this black partner, patrolman Willie Richmond, he met doctor King at the airport on April third, as an auxiliary to the official security detail that included

the white officers under Inspector Smith the police. Smith and his men in one car and read it and Richmond and another escorted King to the Lorraine Motel read it and Richmond were not part of the official detail, so after they arrived they went up to the firehouse, where from a back window they looked out at the Lorraine. They were not so much guarding King as putting him under surveillance, making notes as to who came and went.

It's not clear where Smith's all White details stationed themselves that day. Bill Pepper thinks they mostly hung out at the motel office reading newspapers, but we don't know that. What we do know is that Smith called headquarters at five p m. Asking for permission to end their watch

despite numerous and credible threats to King's life. The officers were sent home without any one replacing them, and the security detail did not return the next day, the day Dr King was murdered, but Reddit did return to his post at the firehouse. On the morning of April four, Reddit said there was no sign of Smith or his detail. Sometime in the late morning, Willie Richmond rejoined Reddit, but

it would be a rather strange afternoon. What follows his detective Reddit on the witness stand, answering the questions of Bill Pepper, Well, you serve as officer me where did you becoming a police Munity Relations officer SA as a police munity relations officer on your duties. Well, but when we started there was nothing written about us. For we developed our long methods and ways of getting this community, and it was how do we get the community through

the response to understanding word of us. At the sign of the Sanentation workers strike, were you still working with the community and you said involved with amusingly, how did you related the events of going on? Well, I was somewhat pool out to kind of surveyor serve. I thought it sabailas I was given then cop mons do, but I thought it was a bit necessary, and I think the whole background idea was too to observe or to find out anyone who made me come into the city

to disrupt it. That gives you any problems in terms of your relationship you had in the community because you've been working with the community and moving into the world, No one, that's intelligence. We're gett see the contrete everybody you will be And I'm going about it now that there come a time when you were assigned to a a specific detail at the fire station. Firevation number two.

What it is about the sibers one that out of side on hand that I had noticed something was unusual about all right again Rant King, and I noticed there was nobody else there in the past when we were signed about the team. We stayed with him, guarding him up down steps and stayed with it. Nobody with him. So I went to cross the street at the fire department because we're coming in, and observed greet and I wish he did and who accompanied you? In the will

of the Richmond. He took up a position uh in the fire station on the third of April, and from the rear of the fire station people were able to see the Lorraine would tell about clear and did you return with Officer Richmond the next the next day we were the next day, as we learned from Station Chief wheten,

the firehouse was alive with people not normally there. By official count, there were thirteen policemen inside the firehouse when King was murdered thirty, but read it was not one of them, because at some time near five o'clock, Lieutenant Arkin showed up and told Reddit that the boss wanted to see him down at headquarters. What four He wouldn't say, So Reddit went with Arkan and Richmond was left still

watching out the window. When Reddit arrived at headquarters, he was shown to a conference room and was stunned by what he saw. It was like a meeting of the choint chiefs of staff. He said. In this room were the heads and seconds of every law enforcement operation in the area, Sheriff, highway patrol, army, intelligence, national Guard, you name it, it was in the room. Then read it,

said the chief. Holloman approached and pointed to a man in civilian clothes who he said was with the Secret Service. Holloman said this man had flown in from Washington that day with news that a contract had been taken out on Redditt's life, and that Reddit had to go home immediately. Reddit found the scene utterly surreal. Who takes out a contract on a lowly police detective and who would fly from Washington with such news? And what would the Secret

Service have to do with it? Returning to Reddit's testimony at the civil trial, a group of man and I was a man once to survive inside the holms. That was a man there who had just falling in and that was CONTRACTE. I was going home totally have that. It was basically to go back to where I was to take care of what the director HOMEO had three bar argamentations about you going home anyway, It's my job to take into arm take home. Reddit said he was kept at home for the next week, then he was

told he could return to work. The whole thing was said to be a mix up. The threat was actually on some other black police detective in Knoxville. So detective Reddit, though apparently not the ject of a real contract, was the third black man removed from the fire station in two days, and the second man removed because of reported threat upon his life. A dangerous time to be working at the two's. So a lot of strange stuff going on.

And if you lived in Memphis when King was killed and we're paying attention like Reverend Lawson, you may have been aware of these odd stories. But most people in America were not. And in part this was because James el Ray never had a trial, though according to Ray and many others, he wanted a trial and always insisted that he did not shoot Martin Luther King. You heard the voices of the men in these stories because we

jumped ahead thirty years to the civil trial. A lawsuit for wrongful death brought in Memphis and by Coretta Scott King. She no longer believed the official version of her husband's murder, and she wanted the evidence of that crime as incomplete as it was to be recorded in a courtful law so the people coming later could read what the witnesses had to say, or in our case here what they

had to say. But we really haven't gone anywhere. We're still in Memphis in nineteen sixty eight looking at some of the strange things that went down the day King was killed. We've got fifty years of revelations still in front of us, and that's how this story will continue to emerge, piece by piece, year by year, as we hear people overcome their fear or surrender to their conscience.

So what you've just heard is for openers, for background, and as ominous as it all sounds, it's possible that there are reasonable explanations for some or all of these events. And none of these stories by themselves or even collectively, proves that there was conspiracy to murder Dr King. But if these events were table setting for a murder, then the finger of guilt would point back to those with

the power to make these strange things happen. But one thing we do know is that these events could not have been the doing of James el Ray, who drifted into Memphis for the very first time just a few hours before Dr King was shot. What is his story? Who or what brought him to Memphis and where was he when Dr King was killed? Well, James el Ray will tell you himself, but be warned it's no simple town. Next time. On the email K tapes we received a letter dear Mr Haynes, I'm here in jail. I've been

accused of a murderer. I don't know anything about it. Will you please come help me. No, he never did have no hostility towards any race, not only Blacks, but Hispanics or anybody. And we said a lads together and he was all maybe, he was all happy and as he had money money on him, so he said, I'm going out to berminghended by a late Laul parts you have this, he said, I'm working up a Mr. Rawl sadly remember how the rawle came And I'm working for

a guy named Row or something like that. A boat came all the radio saying that the Reverend Martin Laus kame and shops so I didn't take too much cant on that, but I kept on driving and wasn't too long you have thought. He said, Uh, they were looking for a white man and white mustang. And the next one of the shooting my dad, James will really and uh,

We're sitting on the floor of that shower stall. And the first thing out of anybody's mouth was my dad looking at this client of ours and say, who are you? Thanks for listening to The mL K Tapes, a production of I Heart Radio intended for TV. This podcast is not specifically endorsed by the King Family or the King of State. D email K Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Claper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers Trevor

Young and ben Keebrick. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Stepman. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Cover art by Mr soul to six with photography by Artemus Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at U t A the Nord Group, back Median Marketing, Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If you have questions, you can visit our website, the email k tapes dot com.

We posted photos and videos related to the podcast on our social media accounts. You can check them out at the email k Tapes From More podcasts from I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV, please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,