The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  Holt said that on the day before the shooting, he had gone on a delivery run deep into Mississippi and did not return until late morning or early afternoon of the following day. When he reached Memphis, he made the rounds of a few bars and eventually ended up in Jim’s Grill late in the afternoon. To the best of his recollection, he was inside the Grill at the time of the shooting and could not explain the reference in the FBI report that he was passing the Grill on his way to work. He did not recall ever being interviewed by the police or FBI. This could have been explained by Holt’s own faulty memory, the passage of time, and/or alcohol abuse.

  When asked why Loyd Jowers named him, he was puzzled. “He probably thought I was dead,” he said. Holt had left Memphis in late 1969. He had no interest in notoriety and abhorred being linked to the assassination. He seemed credible and a most unlikely assassin. That afternoon, he took another lie detector test and underwent hypnosis. Both the hypnotist and the polygraph concluded that Frank Holt was not involved in the crime. Late in the afternoon of December 23, I shook hands with Frank Holt and said good-bye. He had, I had told him, further assisted in clearing his name.

  I returned to England believing that Jowers was lying about Holt’s involvement and was either covering up his own role as the shooter or was protecting someone else by implicating Holt. Even his claim that he had asked Akins to find Holt and kill him in 1974 was incredible. By that time, Holt had been gone from Memphis for five years.

  In 1994, Jowers may have been constructing one of his self-protective stories, for around this time James was about to obtain a habeas corpus hearing. When threatened by events over the almost twenty-six-year history of this case, Jowers had always developed such stories. It would take time to discover why.

  Breakthroughs: January–April 15, 1994

  In an interview with the Tennessean on January 7, 1994, Attorney General Pierotti said that he was going to tell the grand jury to go ahead and listen to what Chastain had to say. The foreman, Herbert Robinson, said that even though Chastain “was a pain,” they would hear him sometime after January 18 when the new grand jury was formed. He was still waiting to be called in 1995. I found this appalling. When James pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, the original prosecutor, Attorney General Canale, pledged on the record of that hearing 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….”

  Fortunately, we had already decided to proceed with filing a petition for trial. I flew to Nashville to meet James who was in good spirits and interested in the possibility of using the imminent petition to obtain declassification of relevant documents, files, and reports.

  On Monday January 10, Wayne filed the petition for the trial along with five volumes of exhibits and two video exhibits. We then drove out to Jim Lawson’s old church, Centenary Methodist, where a press conference had been scheduled to call for an independent grand jury investigation. When we got there a number of participants, including Reverend Lawson, who had flown in from Los Angeles, had already arrived. I briefed the group, which included several prominent church leaders (among them, my dear friend and marital pastor, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, whom I had long regarded as one of the most articulate preachers in America), and we answered questions before the two-hour press conference. This focused on the group’s commitment that a grand jury should independently investigate the murder of Dr. King under the leadership of its own foreman and an independent prosecutor not associated in any way with the Shelby County district attorney general. All agreed that he couldn’t be regarded as an objective, impartial investigator.

  We left the meeting feeling uplifted. Later that day, we learned that the petition had gone to the court of Judge Joe Brown, with the hearing scheduled for the following morning. When we arrived at the Criminal Justice Center, television cameras were already there. During the brief hearing, the judge raised the question of whether or not our petition could prevail because of prior decisions that had been reached on some of the issues, primarily related to overturning a plea of guilty. We argued that those prior decisions were made without the benefit of the new evidence we now sought to produce, which proved James’s actual innocence of the crime. The judge asked both sides to prepare memoranda of law on the issues, scheduling a hearing for April 4, the twenty-sixth anniversary of the assassination.

  Early that afternoon we met John McFerren, who on April 4, 1968 had overheard Frank Liberto calling for Dr. King to be shot on the balcony and who promised that this time he would not “chicken out.” He recalled hearing from a local man, Tommy Wright, that on Saturday mornings Liberto would meet regularly with a high-level Tennessee state official at his law office in Fayette County. Alarm bells went off. James had found a government business card with the name Randy Rosenson scribbled on the back in the white Mustang before crossing the border from Mexico to California. Raul, who had paid for the car, kept a spare set of keys. Randy Rosenson had insisted that in 1978, around the time of his interviews by HSCA staff, he had been visited by the same high-level Tennessee state official who tried to get him to say that he had been acquainted with James Earl Ray. If Rosenson had known James, then he could have dropped the cigarette pack containing the card himself. If he didn’t know James, then someone else had to have left the pack and card behind. James had always stated that he believed the card was linked to Raul. The State and the HSCA had taken the position that Raul did not exist, so any evidence to the contrary had to be a problem for them.

  The connection being alleged between Liberto and the official could explain why pressure was put on Rosenson to say that he knew James. McFerren said that another source of information was his lawyer from Jackson, Tennessee, Mr. H. Regan. He had told McFerren quietly, years ago, that the same state official “handled” matters and looked out for the interests of organized crime in Tennessee. Retired MPD Captain Tommy Smith confided that various senior officers of the department were regularly on the take back in 1968, but he didn’t know any details. He was out of the loop. He also said that the police officers who went to the FBI Academy—N. E. Zachary, Robert Cochran, Glyn King, and others—formed a special clique.

  In late January, I was finally able to speak again with Betty Spates. She said that Jowers, Akins, and others were interested in doing a book or movie about the case. They wanted her to change her story to say she saw a black man handing the rifle to Loyd in the doorway of the kitchen seconds after the shooting. Willie Akins came around with a tape recorder and she was supposed to listen to help get her story straight. When she refused to go along with this farce, Akins told her that she had “blown it” for all of them. They could have split $300,000 if she had cooperated.

  Betty totally refuted the story involving Frank Holt and strongly insisted, as before, that when she saw Jowers running toward the back door of Jim Grill’s kitchen, no one was with him. In mid-January, Betty told me that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation had called and wanted to interview her. I advised her to meet with them and answer their questions truthfully. Over the last weekend of January, John Billings told me that he had learned that Pierotti had asked the FBI to conduct an investigation into the new Jowers evidence. He said that they had already spoken to McCraw, who was sticking to his story. Billings offered to be interviewed by the FBI, and Ken Herman was also willing to throw new light on the case. Billings was told that the attorney general would have to agree. The impression Billings received was that they wouldn’t be interviewed and that by using the FBI, Pierotti was distancing himself from direct responsibility for the investigation while still controlling the inquiry. They were never interviewed. I wrote to Pierotti offering any reasonable assistance to the FBI investigation of the new evidence. I told him James was interested in being released and not in solving the murder. If released, James intended to leave the country, but while he stayed inside, the investigation aimed at establishing his innocence would, of cours
e, continue.

  On March 7, 8, and 9, I spent a total of thirteen hours with Betty Spates. She agreed to tell me her story from the beginning, adding that she had been racking her brains, trying to remember each detail about what she observed on April 4, 1968. I met her in her darkened home on Roland Street. She told the story of her involvement with Jowers and the Grill as she had always told it, adding details. There were a few surprises, however, when she related the events of April 4, 1968.

  Now Betty remembered going over to the Grill just before noon on that day and noticing that Loyd was nowhere around. Somewhat nervous, and always insecure in her interracial, extra-marital relationship with Jowers, she went back to the kitchen at the rear to look for him. The door was slightly ajar. She was only in the kitchen for a short time when Loyd came through the back door carrying a rifle. The gun had a fairly light brown stock and handle and a barrel that appeared to be of normal length; she did not remember seeing a scope. She said that Loyd did not appear to be in a hurry or under stress. He was almost nonchalant. She was startled and asked, “Loyd, what are you doing with that gun?”

  He replied, half-jokingly, “I’m going to use it on you if I catch you with a nigger.”

  She said, “Loyd, you know I wouldn’t do that.” He said he was only kidding, that she knew he’d never hurt her.

  He put the gun down alongside a keg of beer and then, as though he had second thoughts, picked it up again, and proceeded to break it down in front of her. He carried the pieces through the Grill, went out the front door, and turned left, walking several feet to where his old brown station wagon was parked. As she watched through the window, he put the broken-down rifle into the back of the wagon, looking around afterward to see if anyone was watching. Then he came back inside. She confirmed that during the course of the afternoon, she was in and out of the Grill. Although Jowers always discouraged her from being around on Thursdays when his wife would drop by, that Thursday, he seemed especially ill at ease and kept chasing her out. That only made Betty more suspicious that he was cheating on her, and she was in the Grill when Jowers’s wife came in around 4:00 p.m. Mrs. Jowers walked straight up to her and called her a whore and told her to get out. Loyd intervened, telling his wife to get out herself and directing Betty to get behind the counter. Sullen and speechless, Loyd’s wife stalked out.

  After a while, Betty went back across the street returning to the Grill to check on Loyd sometime before 6:00 p.m. She believed that Bobbi was still there. Loyd, however, was again nowhere in sight. Eventually, she went back toward the kitchen, noticing that this time the door between the restaurant section and the kitchen was tightly closed. Thinking that this was unusual, she made her way into the kitchen, where she noticed that the door leading to the backyard was ajar. Soon after she recalled hearing what sounded like a loud firecracker, and then within seconds, she looked out, and saw Jowers rushing from the brush area through the door carrying another rifle. When she first saw him, he was about ten to fifteen feet from the door. He was out of breath, she said, and white as a ghost. His hair was in disarray, and the knees of his trousers were wet and muddy as though he had been kneeling in the soggy grass or brush area.

  When he caught his breath, he didn’t appear angry but plaintively said to her, “You wouldn’t ever do anything to hurt me, would you?”

  Betty said, “Of course I wouldn’t, Loyd.” Without another word, he moved quickly to the door leading into the Grill which opened right next to the counter on the left. In one quick step, with the rifle at his side, he was behind the counter. She saw him break the rifle down, wrap it in a cloth, and put it on a shelf under the counter and push it farther back.

  She remembered that the rifle was distinctive. It had a dark mahogany brown stock, a scope, and a short barrel that made the gun look like a toy. Something was screwed or fixed on to the barrel somehow, fitting over it and increasing its diameter.

  In this statement, for the first time, Betty had spoken of two separate instances of seeing Loyd Jowers bringing a gun in from the brush area behind the kitchen. It was worrying that this was the first time she had mentioned a second gun. On the other hand, this account corroborated what McCraw had said all along about Jowers showing him the gun under the counter.

  Betty went on to say that a few months after the killing in 1968, she was visited by three people who she believed were government officials. One was black, another white, and the third appeared to be Spanish or Latino. They offered her and her sisters new identities, relocation, and money, for “[their] own protection.” They refused, supported by their mother, and the men left. Two of the same men returned about five years later. (This would have been around the time that James was being given an evidentiary hearing in federal court.) The offer was repeated and again refused.

  Jowers’s friend Willie Akins had acted aggressively toward Betty, firing at her and her two sons on one occasion and firing three shots into her sofa on another. She believed he was trying to frighten, not kill, her. Betty signed detailed affidavits in support of all of these events. When we filed Betty’s primary affidavit with the court, the Tennessean published its contents. Shortly afterwards, Attorney General Pierotti leaked a statement taken by the FBI on January 25 that we found distressing. In it, also purportedly under oath, Betty denied seeing Jowers with the rifle at 6:00 p.m. and further denied having any information supporting James’s innocence. When I asked Betty about it, she did not recall giving the specific answers recorded. She said they only asked her to respond to specific points in Ken Herman’s statement.

  It did appear, however, that she had signed the FBI statement. I obtained a copy. The handwritten statement, dated January 25 1994, appeared to contradict the affidavit she had given me on March 8, 1994. However, she said she didn’t read it because her glasses were broken. It was read to her, and the investigator wrote as he asked her questions, telling her not to volunteer information but to simply answer questions. She said the men from the attorney general’s office and the FBI made her afraid. Betty went out of her way to assure me that she now wanted to testify and to clear her name of any hint of being a liar.

  The April 4 hearing had been put off until April 15. Though the hearing was to focus on the law, I argued the law by substantially elaborating upon and applying the facts. This enabled me to put a long list of suppressed factual evidence and factual discrepancies on the record and, of course, to be heard by the judge and the media seated in the chairs normally occupied by the jury.

  Pierotti spoke for about fifteen minutes as part of the state’s rebuttal argument and appeared to be agitated. At the end of the argument, the judge complimented both sides and then, referring to lengthy notes, stated that although the state might be technically correct, requiring him to deny the petition, nevertheless he was going to allow us to put forward evidence. This evidentiary record would be available to an appellate court, he said, as well as to history. In an impassioned reference to the importance of Dr. King, he said history compelled him to allow as much information as possible to be placed before the public under the auspices of his court. The state was stunned. Judge Brown said he would not finalize or file any judgment until after the submission of evidence was over. We were elated.

  Chapter 10

  ROOTS OF THE CIVIL TRIAL

  A window open, slightly ajar

  Affords an image

  A change in what has long been the bar

  An opening door of the timeless cage.

  It was an extraordinary outcome. Judge Brown’s ruling could hardly have been more creative. If he had explicitly ruled in our favor and granted a trial or a full evidentiary hearing, the state would have appealed, and considering the inclination of the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, he would likely have been overturned. In any event, we would have been off on the appellate trial. By not finalizing any ruling, he kept the matter before him and could thus allow us to call witnesses and submit evidence. We intended, for example, to file a motion asking to
test the rifle and the bullets in evidence. Whether or not the judge would go so far as to order a trial at the conclusion of our evidence remained to be seen.

  I eventually decided to open up another legal front and sue Loyd Jowers on behalf of James. Jowers had, after all, actually admitted on primetime television that he played a key role in the case for which James had spent twenty-five years in prison. Jowers had also publicly admitted that James was a scapegoat and did not know what was going on. Thus, Jowers’s acts and his continued silence had resulted in the unjust imprisonment of James.

  We filed the complaint for the civil suit against Loyd Jowers, Raul (unknown last name), and other unknown parties on Thursday, August 25, 1994. We alleged that Jowers had participated in the tort of conspiracy, as a result of which James had been deprived of his liberty, and been wrongly imprisoned. We added the newly developed ancillary tort of outrage, which was justified by the very nature and continuation of the wrongful acts. Damages sought were $6,500,000 actual and compensatory and $39,500 punitive.

  Early on, we decided to depose Jowers, and the deposition took place over a nine-and-a-half-hour period. He had with him a typed clause asserting his Fifth Amendment rights ready for use. Nine hours would pass before he would use it. We began at a gentle pace as I took him from his childhood and early life in a large rural family to his days on the police force, which lasted roughly from 1946 to 1948. After that, he formed his own Veterans Cab Company staffed at first by Second World War veterans. It was during his brief career as a police officer that he met Memphis produce dealer Frank C. Liberto in 1946 or 1947. He said that back in 1946, he knew both patrolmen N. E. Zachary and Sam Evans. Jowers supplied details of his own six marriages (three to the same woman).