The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  He recalled Frank Liberto in the late 1940s as a prominent produce man, whose business was located downtown in the market near Central Police Headquarters. Later, the market moved to Scott Street, and Liberto moved his business there. He denied knowing Frank Liberto well, although he believed that “Frank,” as he called him, did help him get some taxi business from the market.

  He said that he didn’t see Frank Liberto again until 1965. He refused to acknowledge any business dealings with him. In 1966, he left Veterans Cab and went to work for the Yellow Cab Company as a dispatcher. The next year (1967), he opened a restaurant called the Check Off Inn and opened Jim’s Grill in the summer of 1967. He denied the Check Off Inn was a gamblers’ haunt.

  When he opened Jim’s Grill, he hired Betty Spates and her sisters Alda Mae Washington and Bobbi Smith. He bought fresh vegetables from M. E. Carter, which were delivered daily. He said that the back door from the rooming house was boarded up, but he couldn’t explain why it appeared to be open in police evidence photographs that I showed him taken shortly after the killing.

  Jowers said that on April 4, he drove a white Cadillac to work. Bobbi Smith worked on the morning of April 4 but left around 4:00 p.m.. He said Betty Spates did not work at all that day because one of her children was sick. Also, he said that Big Lena and Rosie Lee had been gone from his employ months earlier and that he himself had fixed breakfast for the “egg and sausage” man. Some time prior to Jowers’s deposition, I had located Rosie Lee Dabney, and she confirmed that she was waiting on tables in Jim’s Grill on the afternoon of April 4. She said she served eggs and sausage to a stranger on the afternoon of the shooting and again the next morning. An MPD report corroborated her story.

  Jowers said he was drawing a pitcher of beer at the time of the gunshot. He confirmed with certainty that the bushes in the backyard had been cut down and he actually drew a line surprisingly close to the building up to where he said the thick bushes came. He acknowledged that the waitresses probably did bring food up to Grace Walden but denied telling Bobbi not to bring food up to her on the morning of April 4.

  He denied driving Bobbi to work on the morning of April 5 or going out to the back or even looking out there on the morning after the shooting. Incredibly, he categorically denied having any relationship with Betty Spates. He did, however, admit to speaking with Betty on December 13, 1993, the night the Primetime Live program was filmed, to warn her, he said, that reporters were on the way to her house.

  I showed Jowers a copy of the transcript of the ABC Primetime Live program, and he agreed it was an accurate statement. I then entered it into the record. When I began to question him on the statements he made on the program, he invoked the Fifth Amendment. I noted for the record that the transcript had already been agreed to and entered into evidence and that in my opinion the protection of the Fifth Amendment was not available to him. Garrison then agreed to stipulate “… that the questions were asked and Mr. Jowers gave these answers” (the answers being those responses given during the television program).

  Jowers’s testimony was extraordinary for the number of untruths he told, many of which were clearly contradicted by other evidence and testimony and some of which were the result of him contradicting his earlier statements. For reasons best known to himself and his counsel, Jowers insisted on deposing Betty Spates. Lewis Garrison served a subpoena on her, and she came along in a hostile frame of mind. Before beginning, I took her aside and explained that Jowers, who had denied having any relationship with her, had insisted that she be called. Gradually, she decided to cooperate, confirming the factual truthfulness of the affidavit she had given to me earlier.

  Willie Akins was also deposed and stated that a few years after the event, Jowers admitted that he was involved in the killing. Jowers described his meeting with Raul, who brought the gun to him at the Grill, and Frank Liberto, arranging for a delivery of a large sum of money in a produce box included in a regular delivery. The scene was striking. Jowers greeted Akins cordially, and then Akins, under oath, proceeded to incriminate his old friend. Akins continued to maintain that years later he had been asked by Jowers to kill Frank Holt. At the end of the deposition, Jowers and Akins went off talking about old times.

  Betty’s sister Bobbi Smith was also subpoenaed and appeared on December 22. Under oath, she confirmed what she had told me in an informal interview on December 18, 1992, two years earlier. Jowers had told her not to bring breakfast upstairs to Grace Walden on the morning of April 4. She usually did this about twice a week around 10:00 to 10:30 after the morning rush was over. I had always thought that this was significant because it meant that something was going on up there well before noon that day—some four or more hours before James arrived to rent the room. Bobbi also said that Jowers picked her up on the mornings of April 4 and 5, as usual, in his brown station wagon, which he parked just north of the Grill in front of the store fixtures building.

  On the way in on the morning of April 5, Jowers told Bobbi about the rifle being found in the backyard after the killing. She also confirmed that Jowers often spent the night at the Oakview House, where she lived with her mother and Betty in 1969, and that he had a long-standing affair with Betty during all of this time. Finally, she said that she had told the same story to the FBI and attorney general’s investigators sent by Pierotti, and she did not understand why they would say that she knew nothing or had retracted her story. They told her not to discuss the matter with anyone.

  On Saturday, March 11, 1995, Attorney Lewis Garrison, with Loyd Jowers present, began to depose James in a small conference room at the Riverbend Penitentiary. Throughout the session, Jowers listened intently as James gave the usual answers to the questions he had heard a thousand times before. As he left the prison that afternoon, Loyd Jowers seemed to be more amenable than ever before to revealing details that I believed would ultimately establish James’s innocence.

  Jowers agreed to answer some further critical questions about the killing through his lawyer. There would be no recordings of his statement, and Lewis Garrison would take the follow-up questions to him for his response. On March 14, 1995, the process began in Garrison’s 400 North Main Street office while he provided some new details of the conspiracy. Much of what he said confirmed information obtained previously from Betty Spates, Betty’s sister Bobbi Smith, and taxi driver James McCraw.

  At the outset, Garrison stressed the Holt story was not concocted by his client, but had to acknowledge Jowers went along with it for a while. He was uncertain whose brainstorm it was but believed it originated with Willie Akins and Ken Herman.

  Jowers contended that in March 1968, he was first approached not by Liberto but by a local businessman who dealt in securities and bonds and whom he had come to know from his gambling activity with Frank Liberto. This man told him that because of the location of Jim’s Grill, he was going to be asked to provide certain assistance to the carrying out of a contract to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. He would be paid handsomely.

  Sometime between March 18 and March 28, soon after this conversation, Jowers was approached directly by produce man Frank C. Liberto, to whom he admitted that he owned a very large debt. For some time, I believed that the debt was a gambling loss. More recently, I have come to believe, following further conversations with Garrison, that it was more sinister. I believe that Liberto got rid of the body of a Mexican that Jowers killed after finding him in bed with Betty. Betty confirmed to me that Jowers came in and took the Mexican, whom she had brought home, at the point of a gun. She never saw him again. This debt would be forgiven, and Jowers would receive a large amount of money if he would help. Specifically, Liberto said that $100,000 would be delivered to him in cash in the bottom of an M. E. Carter vegetable produce box. The money came from New Orleans, as apparently did the contract on Dr. King’s life.

  He would be visited by a man who would bring him a rifle and leave it with him for pick-up at the right time. (Upon consideration, it appears that this
was not the murder weapon but a throw-down gun bought by James.)

  At a subsequent point with his client’s consent, attorney Garrison confirmed that there would be a scapegoat or decoy to distract attention.

  The police—some of whom were involved—would be nowhere in sight.

  Jowers agreed. As Liberto said, a man did come to see him. Jowers thought that he introduced himself as “Raul” or “Royal,” and appeared to have a Latin or Indian appearance. He was about five feet nine inches in height and weighed approximately 145 to 155 pounds. He had dark hair and appeared to be between thirty-five and forty years old.

  They discussed the plans for the killing. Raul told Jowers that his role would be to receive and hold the weapon on the day of the killing until it would be picked up. After the shooting, Jowers would have to take charge of the actual murder weapon and keep it concealed. Jowers was also expected to keep his staff out of the way at all times. He confirmed Bobbi’s story that he instructed her not to follow her usual practice of taking food up to Grace Walden.

  On the morning of April 4, sometime around 11:00 a.m. after the rush was over, Raul, according to plan, came into Jim’s Grill, bringing with him a rifle concealed in a box that he turned over to Jowers to hold. Jowers said that Raul told him that he would be back later that afternoon to pick it up. Jowers put the gun under the counter and carried on with his work. He next admitted that he went away to take a rest sometime around or after 1:00 p.m. when the lunch crowd had gone. When he returned to work, it was around 3:30 p.m. Sometime later, Raul returned briefly and took the gun from him and went back into the kitchen area with it. Jowers claimed to be uncertain as to whether he remained in the rear of the Grill or went upstairs by the back stairway. (According to James’s recollections, Raul was upstairs off and on during the afternoon. It therefore seems more likely that Raul took the gun upstairs to room 5-B and concealed it there.)

  Jowers said that sometime before 6:00 p.m., he went out into the brush where he joined another person. He did not provide any more details except to admit that immediately after the shot he picked up the rifle that had been placed on the ground and carried it through the back door of Jim’s Grill. As he ran into the back of the Grill, he was confronted by Betty who, as she had said, stood near him as he broke the gun down, wrapped it in a cloth, and quickly put it under the counter in the Grill. Jowers finally confirmed her recollection of the events was basically correct. He also admitted that the next morning between 10:00 and 11:00, he showed the rifle in a box under the counter to taxi driver James McCraw, thus confirming McCraw’s recollection. Sometime later that morning, Raul reappeared in the Grill, picked up the gun, and took it away. Jowers said he never saw the rifle again and has no idea where it was taken or where it is today. The version of events just laid out was completely at odds with the answers Jowers gave in his deposition. Jowers had altered some of these details, probably to cast his role in a slightly better light. Some years later, he would bring us closer to the more complete truth about the events leading up to and taking place on April 4, 1968.

  New Strands and Connections—H. L. Hunt

  Billionaire oilman H. L. Hunt, who had been dead since 1974, had close ties with people and institutions emerging as pivotal players in the conspiracy now unfolding.

  I approached his former chief aide, John Curington, who offered many new revelations on Hunt’s close ties to the FBI and the Mafia. Curington had worked for Hunt Oil for fifteen years and for nearly thirteen of them had worked for H. L. Hunt personally, occupying the office right next to him. He frequently worked eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, and often traveled with Hunt.

  As he explained it, he was basically Mr. Hunt’s “follow-through” guy. He did whatever was necessary to get a job done. While not directly engaging in the “dirty” work, he made the arrangements at the old man’s request. According to one of my investigators, at one point he had even referred to himself as Hunt’s “bat man,” saying that he carried and delivered cash, sometimes in very large amounts, to any number of places, organizations, and individuals in support of right-wing activities. Some went to pay for specific operations.

  Curington had participated in many of the illegal activities he detailed and was remarkably frank. While continually referring to documents in an old brown leather suitcase, the then–sixty-seven-year-old Texan confirmed that a closer relationship than had ever been publicly known existed between his ex-boss and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, which even included a direct-line red telephone in Hunt’s desk drawer. Their association went back to the early 1950s. Apparently, they had been poker-playing friends for many years, and their compatible right-wing political views, though differing sexual orientations, made them allies. Hoover had even seconded one of his trusted FBI agents, Paul Rothermel, to Hunt to be his head of security. Rothermel left the bureau in late 1954 and joined Hunt in 1955.

  Curington was present at various meetings between Hoover and Hunt when Dr. King was discussed. Usually, Hoover came to the old man’s hotel room. While the two men shared a dislike for Dr. King, Hoover’s animosity was more passionate and obsessive, more personal. Hoover regularly provided Hunt with a considerable amount of documentation and material to be used as ammunition against Dr. King in his extreme right-wing, daily nationally syndicated “Lifeline” radio broadcasts. Dr. King was a favorite and a regular target of “Lifeline” venom.

  Curington recalled one meeting in June 1967 in Chicago between Hunt and Hoover in Hunt’s hotel room. Hunt told Hoover he could finish Dr. King by constantly attacking him on his daily radio broadcasts. Hoover replied that it would not work. He said the only way to stop Dr. King would be to “completely silence” him. After Dr. King’s murder, Hunt acknowledged to Curington that Hoover had won that argument.

  In April 1968, “Lifeline,” Hunt’s program, produced a fifteen-minute daily program, six days a week, on 429 stations in 398 cities across America. Between 1967 and 1968, Hunt spent nearly $2 million on this program alone. Curington revealed that the entire effort, as well as other shadowy, often deeply covert, political activities, was funded by moneys diverted by Hunt from H. L. H. Products, Inc.

  Curington ran this company, which the “old man” had established as a front for funding such political activity. He also acknowledged that his boss and Hoover shared many of the same friends, including several kingpins of organized crime. Not only was Hunt close to gamblers Frank Erickson (to whom he once owed $400,000), and Ray Ryan (who at the same time owed him a large amount), but he associated with Frank Costello, the mob’s liaison to Hoover. Hunt’s top-level mob ties also included Carlos Marcello and Dallas boss Joe Civello.

  In politics, Curington noted that Sam Rayburn, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, and his protégé Lyndon Johnson were both lifelong close political assets of Mr. Hunt. Curington also said that H. L. Hunt’s daily liaison with President Lyndon Johnson on political matters was former FBI agent Booth Mooney, who was personally close to the President. Mooney not only delivered communications between Johnson and Hunt but also wrote over half of the “Lifeline” broadcast tracts, including many of those attacking Dr. King.

  On April 5, the day after Dr. King’s assassination, Hunt told Curington to make arrangements for him (Hunt) and his wife to travel to a Holiday Inn Resort hotel in El Paso, Texas. For whatever reasons, the old man wanted to be away and inaccessible in the aftermath of the killing of Dr. King. Curington said that on the evening of the assassination shortly after the shooting, Hoover called Hunt and advised him to cancel his anti-King “Lifeline” programs, which were to be aired that evening and the morning of April 5. After that call, Curington said he was called to Hunt’s home and told to put together a team of secretaries to call the radio stations.

  By the end of our session, I concluded that John Curington, twenty-five years later, still appeared to be in awe of the man who, he said, moved on an entirely different level from “the rest of us.”

  James’s L
ast Parole Hearing

  A parole hearing for James was set for May 25, 1994. This would be the first time he appeared before the board. Such hearings are largely confined to a review of conduct during the time served. They are not concerned with any determination of guilt or innocence. I had no doubt that the decision would be made on purely political grounds and had already been made. Consequently, we decided to use this hearing as a forum to focus on James’s innocence.

  I challenged the Board to act independently of the governor who appointed them and who had publicly expressed his wish that they deny parole and also to disavow the previous statements of the board’s former executive director, who said James was told he could apply again in five years after he had served a full thirty years.

  At a post-hearing press conference in response to a question about the testing of the rifle, Pierotti made the extraordinary statement that he didn’t know if James was guilty and he didn’t have to prove it—so much for the requirement that prosecutors shall be primarily concerned with justice.

  I was more convinced than ever that our best hope lay in Judge Brown’s courtroom. Judge Brown had been pressing us for some time to submit our draft order for the testing of the rifle and the bullets in evidence. I believed it likely that once the judge granted our request, the state would appeal his order and seek a delay pending review. This, of course, is what ultimately happened with our efforts resulting in a May 8, 1955 Criminal Court of Appeals ruling endorsing the Judge’s action.

  The Whitlock/Liberto Story

  Around 10:30 p.m. on the evening of June 4, 1994, I received a call from Memphis cab driver Nathan Whitlock, who had known Frank Liberto in the 1970s and who, I heard, had been told by Liberto himself that he had paid to have Dr. King killed. Whitlock usually drove a cab at night, and on that evening, he was driving a limousine. I rode with him, so we could talk. He told me about his conversation with “Mr. Frank” some sixteen years before. He said that his mother LaVada had owned a restaurant that lay on the route between Liberto’s home and his LL&L produce company business. Nearly every day, the produce man would stop in for breakfast in the morning on his way to LL&L and for drinks in the afternoon on his way home. Nathan said that when he had had a few drinks, Liberto took to baring his soul to LaVada. She would often leave her post at the bar, sit down at the table, and talk with him. One day, as the congressional committee’s work was being reported on the television in the restaurant, he told her he had arranged for the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. Nathan said that when his mother told him about this, he became upset that Mr. Frank would involve his mother in this “gangster” talk.