James died on April 23, 1998, the thirty-first anniversary of his escape from Jefferson City Penitentiary. I was in London and immediately left for the United States. I agreed to do a Today Show interview at Heathrow Airport just before leaving. Author Gerald Posner was to follow me, but there was an understanding that I would have an opportunity, however briefly, to rebut his comments. In response to a question, I noted that I could name some eighteen individuals who had significant information and that Posner had not spoken to any of them. After that challenge, Posner claimed that James had made a secret tape recording before he died, probably admitting his guilt. He accused me or Jerry of having and hiding the tape, indignantly calling on me to surrender the recording, stating that the American people had a right to know. It was, of course, an outrageous lie, but I was not given the promised opportunity to reply. Even with James dead, nothing had changed.
Postmortem Events
James’s death left us with one last option to have the evidence tested under oath in a court of law—a civil action against Loyd Jowers. Jowers, of course, had voluntarily revealed and discussed his involvement in separate meetings with Dexter King and myself, and with Dexter King and Ambassador Andrew Young. These sessions were the culmination of his attempt to obtain immunity from prosecution that had begun in 1993 when he learned that we had uncovered enough evidence for him to be indicted (had there been any official interest in doing so). His account was continually and expectedly dismissed by the attorney general as having been made in anticipation of a book or movie deal. This was arrant nonsense. In fact, as a result of being forced into the open, Jowers had lost everything. Even his wife left him. There was no book or movie deal, and he was, for the most part, telling the truth.
ABC News convinced him to take a lie detector test, using a former FBI polygrapher, and then announced that he failed. In fact, their claims and program notwithstanding, he passed the test. This was revealed by the taxi driver who drove the ABC team to the airport and who overheard their conversation including the lament of the polygrapher who admitted that he couldn’t get Jowers “to waver.” The same polygrapher would be fined by the relevant Tennessee supervisory body for his conduct of the test. ABC has (also contrary to the law) to this day shamefully refused to provide Jowers with a copy of the transcript and the video of the examination.
Jowers, however, had provided the degree of detail required for a civil action. The family and I discussed the option at length after James’s death in the spring of 1998. There were concerns. Would such an action do any good? Would it not bring the media down on the family again? How would it be financed? I could not speak to or resolve many of the personal concerns of the family. They had to bear the burden. I could only advise them that I thought we had a strong case and that the action would provide us with perhaps the last opportunity to test evidence that had never been brought before a judge or jury. As to cost, I would not charge and believed that some of our friends would raise funds to help us. Since we would be bringing witnesses from every part of the United States and even England, it was going to be an expensive endeavor.
Dexter, who had been in the forefront for the family since they had become involved in 1997, and who had received the brunt of the attacks, was the most cautious. He knew that if the action went ahead, once again he would bear the major responsibility. Mrs. King expressed the feeling that we all had come too far not to complete this effort, which I had begun twenty years before and had kept alive in the face of formidable opposition. We would go to trial.
Wayne and I wasted no time in drafting the complaint against Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators. Without any publicity, the action entitled Plaintiffs the Family of Dr Martin King Jr., Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III, Bernice King, Dexter King, and Yolanda King v. Defendants Loyd Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators, docket kit #97242TD was filed for trial in Division IV on October 2, 1998.
It would take more than a year for it to get on the calendar. We were scheduled to be first out on November 15, 1999, but the judge—James Swearingen—was off and on the bench due to illness, and it was not clear that he would be fit to try the case. At various times, we considered transferring the case to another judge, but in the end we waited, and the judge recovered. It could be the last case of his long and distinguished career.
In the interim, on June 7, 1999, Wayne Chastain died. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer and he finally succumbed. I felt a great personal and professional loss.
Don Wilson’s Materials
Donald Wilson lives in the Chicago area. He is a former FBI agent who joined the Bureau as a young man with a desire to facilitate the civil rights of minority Americans. He became greatly disillusioned, but he had a young family to support and decided to stick it out, eventually retiring after having received a number of commendations from J. Edgar Hoover.
In early 1997, Don Wilson contacted the King family and me, providing us with some extraordinary new information. At first, we communicated through his son, who was a lawyer in a Chicago law firm. When we eventually met, it was on April 15 in the lounge of the Admirals Club at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. He recounted two incidents. He said that shortly after the assassination, he and another agent were riding in the Peachtree area of Atlanta, and they spotted a person who, they were certain, was the man wanted for the murder of Dr. King. The person matched the photograph being circulated of the suspect. Wilson said he and his partner were inclined to apprehend the person they had spotted and radioed the field office for permission to do so. The operator told them to hold on, went off the line for instructions, then came back on, and instructed them to “return to base.” Surprised and disappointed, they did as they were told. To this day, Don Wilson finds it strange and unacceptable that they were not allowed to detain the suspect and yet were not given any explanation.
What he told me next was more significant. When the field office received a request from the Atlanta police to check out a white Mustang, which had been parked for some days at the Capitol Homes Housing Project, he went along with a senior colleague to the scene. The suspicion was that the car, with Alabama license plates, had been involved in the King assassination. Wilson said that when he opened the car door on the passenger’s side, an envelope and some papers fell out. Instinctively, he put his foot on the papers, bent over, picked them up, and put them in his pocket. The young agent was nervous, thinking that he might have disturbed the evidence at the crime scene. Later, when he had an opportunity to examine the individual sheets of paper, he was shocked and realized that if he turned them over to his superiors, they would never see the light of day.
He kept them hidden for twenty-nine years.
One piece came from a 1963 Dallas, Texas, telephone directory. It was part of a page that had been torn out. The telephone numbers on the page included those of the family of H. L. Hunt, but more significantly, in handwriting at the top of the page, was the name “Raul,” the letter “J” and a Dallas telephone number, of a club in Dallas which at the time was run by Jack Ruby, the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald.
The second piece of paper contained several names; alongside of each were sums of money. It appeared to be some sort of payoff list, and at the bottom was Raul’s name and date for payment. Wilson also said that he had recovered a third piece of paper, on which was written the telephone number and extension of the Atlanta FBI field office.
The Wilson materials raised the serious issue of the potential collusion of the Atlanta field office, or at least the connection of one or more persons in that office, with someone who had access to James’s white Mustang. From that, we knew that the most likely candidate for the FBI liaison had to be Raul. I believed that every effort would be made to discredit Don and his materials.
After considerable discussion with the King family, it was agreed that Don would provide the materials to the Atlanta district attorney, ask them to investigate, and immediately thereafter release the information to the medi
a.
Don and I eventually met with the district attorney who said that he did not have the staff resources necessary for such an investigation, but that he would formally request that the US attorney general institute a full investigation.
The reaction to our press conference was quiet and predictable. The FBI dismissed the materials without even seeing them and attacked Wilson as a fraud, saying that there was no record of him being a part of the team which examined the Mustang. He never said he was. He had access to the Mustang in the Capitol Homes parking lot before it was towed to (and examined by others in) the FBI garage.
Don initially made an offer directly to the attorney general to meet with her and show her the materials. When the FBI attacks began, he withdrew the offer. Eventually, he allowed Atlanta Journal Bulletin reporter Arthur Brice to come to Chicago and review the original materials. Brice did so and wrote a fair, descriptive story, a rarity in respect of this particular development—of course, in respect of any of the new evidence.
Don Wilson’s material pointed me in a direction that I did not want to go, toward connections between the Dr. King and John Kennedy assassinations. Glenda Grabow had told me how in 1963 she had occasionally seen a man whom she only knew as “Jack” with Raul. At one point, in the autumn of that year, she had been intimate with him. It was about a month or two before Roy was released from prison.
She only realized who he was when his photograph was flashed across the world after he had killed Lee Harvey Oswald. I decided not to introduce the element of Glenda’s story into our legal submissions on behalf of James. I knew that James’s efforts for a trial would not be well served by this linkup. As it was, we were always being depicted as conspiracy nuts. Imagine what our enemies would do with this new information.
Then, along came Don Wilson and his material, on which the name of Raul was written next to the letter “J” and the telephone number of Jack Ruby’s Vegas Club. It was problematical in terms of James’s interests, but I decided to travel to Dallas in order to interview some former strippers who had worked for Ruby and were around him a good deal.
I met separately with Beverly Oliver, Chari Angel, and Madeleine Brown. Madeleine had not worked for Ruby but was Lyndon Johnson’s mistress for years, and, in fact, had given birth to his only son; she also knew Ruby and frequented his main club—the Carousel.
When I put the spread of photographs in front of each of them on separate occasions, each one independently confirmed that she had seen Ruby with the man we had identified as Raul. In fact, Beverly remembered Raul giving Ruby what appeared to be a large amount of cash in what she described as a Piggly Wiggly grocery store paper bag.
There was no doubt that each of these women corroborated Glenda Grabow’s information that Jack Ruby and Raul knew each other. Don Wilson’s materials appeared to fortify that fact.
Prior to James’s death, the King family and I discussed the possibility of calling for a new investigation or one conducted by the Justice Department. But we’d rather have one conducted by a truly independent body with subpoena power and the authority to grant immunity from prosecution in exchange for information. In reality, we wished for a commission modeled after the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The family met with President Clinton and explained their wishes. He eventually refused their request and instead asked Attorney General Reno to conduct a limited investigation, which would focus on the new evidence provided by Don Wilson and the admissions of Loyd Jowers.
This was clearly unsatisfactory, for it was one more instance of the government investigating itself, but we had little choice but to cooperate with the effort that was to be led by the Justice Department’s senior civil rights criminal trial attorney Barry Kowalski.
Kowalski’s team moved quickly into high gear as they promptly reached out for Don Wilson. The early contacts were amicable, but it soon turned ominously nasty.
I was in touch with Don off and on during his experience in the summer of 1997. He said that, initially, he was inclined to cooperate, and then he learned that the attorney general’s team had placed a surveillance officer outside of the bank where he kept the materials in a safe deposit box. A bank officer became suspicious of this lingering person and called the police, who came and apprehended him. When the officer flashed the documentation of a federal marshal, Don knew that he was a part of the attorney general’s team, and he was livid. He refused to cooperate and became hostile to the attorney general’s team’s effort to acquire his materials.
His life changed drastically after he went public with his story. Before he surfaced he ran a profitable talent agency, representing a number of music groups. After he went public, it all went away. Clients were contacted and told that their careers would not be benefited if Don Wilson continued to be their agent.
His business was ruined. In order to make a living, he took a teaching job. It got worse. One day after he had left for work, his wife received a call and was told that they had access to her health records and knew about her asthmatic condition, which was aggravated by stress. The caller said that her husband was a liar and that if he didn’t turn over the materials he would go to jail. Eventually, in response to a subpoena, Don gave them the original Dallas telephone directory page and the pay list. Wilson told me in no uncertain terms that these people were not friends of ours, nor did they want the truth in Dr. King’s assassination. He said they verbally attacked Dexter King and myself.
I spoke with Barry Kowalski from Eastern Europe when this was going on. I raised the issue of the treatment of the Wilsons, and he defended his actions, saying that they were necessary in order to obtain the materials. He said that otherwise Wilson was not going to surrender the materials to them or, he said, to me.
Shortly afterward, Don told me that his wife was shopping in a suburban shopping area near their home. When she returned to her car, she found the tires slashed. This type of vandalism was unprecedented in that area. They filed a police complaint to no avail. Don was outraged, but he felt powerless and alone, and he began to question the wisdom of coming forward and trying to help. He was concerned about the strain and pressure on Fran, his wife. When we filed the civil action in October 1998, he made it clear that we could not count on his testimony when the case came to trial. By the time the trial date rolled around—November 15, 1999—it was firm. Don would not be moved by any entreaties. I considered him and his story to be a casualty of the attorney general’s investigation.
The task force seemed to be attempting to speak to a wide range of people, each of whom had various pieces of information. In November 1999 I learned that the previous June they had obtained what work records of Raul’s were available. This was revealed to me when I obtained the same records. Those records, however, indicated a history of extended absences and time off—strange for a simple automobile worker.
The Justice Department team never did speak to Loyd Jowers. Jowers understandably wanted immunity before he would meet with them. While they indicated that they could arrange it with the Shelby County district attorney’s office, in fact, an offer never materialized, and they would not be able to interview him. Though they appeared to be close to finalizing their report in the summer of 1999, the trial would come to an end in December without a report being issued.
PART V
Chapter 15
THE CIVIL TRIAL
Where once an ordeal
With pain as the goal
A jury now was the means to heal
And truth imposed the only toll
Day after day, they were there
Unsmiling and troubled they stayed
Citizens all required to care
Assessing the facts before them laid.
After the passage of one year, while the Justice Department investigation had yet to produce a report, our case against Loyd Jowers and others was called.
We were indeed “first out” in Judge Swearingen’s courtroom on November 15, 1999. The judge agreed to let
one media pool camera in the courtroom along with our own video camera. The media camera, like the media itself, would come and go. They were nearly always absent, with the notable and sole exception of local anchorman Wendell Stacey, who almost lost his job at the time over his insistence that he attend every day. He was eventually fired but won a wrongful dismissal action and was rehired.
Jury selection began that morning in the small Division IV courtroom. We discussed moving the case to a larger courtroom, but because of the judge’s health needs, it was agreed that the trial would remain in his usual room. The judge disclosed to both sides that he had been a member of the group that had carried Dr. King’s casket from the funeral home in Memphis after the assassination. If, therefore, either side wanted him to withdraw, he said he would. We certainly had no reason to do so; Defense Attorney Garrison also had no objections.
After almost despairing about finding an acceptable local counsel, I finally was able to obtain the services of Juliet Hill-Akines, a young black lawyer, who had been admitted to the bar in 1994. Before Juliet agreed, I discussed the possibility with a large number of local lawyers, all of whom turned down the opportunity—usually because they were advised that it would have a negative impact on their careers. Rather than expressing such apprehensions, Juliet took it as a challenge and an honor to be representing the family of Martin Luther King Jr. I admired her decision and was grateful for her independence and courage.
Judge James Swearingen barred the media from the jury selection process. Due to the sensitivity of the case, he was anxious to protect the identities of the individual jury members and, to the most extent possible, ensure their privacy. He would issue a further order barring any cameras from being directed at the jury at any time during the trial.
The Plot to Kill King Page 24
