The Plot to Kill King

by William F. Pepper

  The first wife of Lieutenant Earl Clark, Rebecca Clark, was called as the next defense witness. Prior to her testimony, she had asked for a copy of her deposition to review and was provided with it. Mrs. Garrison established that her husband kept a large collection of guns and that he was an expert shot. She said that she got off work at 4:00 p.m. She then said she believed that her husband got home about an hour or so later and lay down for a nap which lasted thirty to forty or forty-five minutes until a report came over the police walkie-talkie radio, which he had left on the dining room table for her to monitor.

  When word of the assassination came through, she woke him up, and he told her to go and get his clean uniform from the cleaners before they closed. She set out for the cleaner which was about fifteen minutes away while he took a bath. When she returned, he left.

  Attorney Garrison raised the fact that the kind of walkie-talkie she was talking about was not available during those times. She couldn’t comment on that. On cross-examination, I came back several times to the question of whether she was lying to protect her dead, divorced husband and her children. She denied that she would lie for that purpose. One major problem with her alibi for her former husband was the timing of the events, and the conflict between her earlier recollections in her deposition of April 1999 and her current story.

  In her deposition, she had clearly stated that she usually worked until 3:00 p.m., but on that day, she worked until 4:00 p.m. She also set the time of his unannounced arrival at about ten to fifteen minutes after her own. She indicated that he was not asleep very long when the announcement came on the radio. In court, she now remembered that he could have arrived as much as forty-five minutes after her, putting his arrival at or around 5:00 p.m. and that his nap could have lasted for quite some time—an hour or more.

  It appeared to me that she was trying to cover up for an unexplained period of an hour, which may have meant that both she and her husband came home earlier and that he left well before the assassination.

  Attorney Garrison read portions of a “John Doe November 5, 1999” telephone deposition into the record. The witness, who contacted Garrison, declared that he was involved in the assassination of Dr. King, and that he was present when a contract for the killing was put out by Walter Reuther, the leader of the United Auto Workers’ Union. He contended that Reuther was being pressed by Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson because of Dr. King’s antiwar activity, and that Carlos Marcello cooperated but was not directly involved, and James Earl Ray was not even there, having left for Atlanta.

  The defense had subpoenaed Marvin Glankler, the investigator in charge of the Shelby County district attorney general’s last investigation, and retired judges James Beasley and Robert Dwyer, who were assistant attorneys general in 1968 and prepared the state case against James Earl Ray. Beasley’s case actually presented the state’s evidence to the guilty plea jury. Garrison said that initially they told him they would be pleased to take the stand and defend their work and the case against James.

  By early December, close to the time they were due to take the stand, their positions had changed. A motion to quash the subpoena was filed on their behalf by the state attorney general. The motion was argued out of the presence of the jury; the judge denied the motion and ordered the former judges to appear.

  Garrison attempted repeatedly to draw information from Glankler on the attorney general’s investigative report, which was published in 1998. He was met with continual objections from the Tennessee assistant attorney general who was there to represent the state; the Shelby County district attorney general, and, of course, Investigator Glankler. The state lawyer was up and down like a jack-in-the-box. His intention was clearly to limit Glankler’s testimony to the minimum extent possible. He basically contended that the report should speak for itself, and since Glankler did not write it, he could not comment on it. Garrison was able to extract the facts that the district attorney general’s office began an investigation in 1993 and ended it in 1998, that he, Glankler, was the chief investigator, and that the investigation may have included statements taken from about forty witnesses.

  On cross-examination, I took a different tactic. I asked Glankler if he had interviewed twenty-five named witnesses, the evidence from all of whom had already been heard by the jury. I asked him about each one in turn. Of the twenty-five, he had interviewed only two. He had not even heard of most of the others. The negative impact on the credibility of the district attorney general’s investigation and report was evident in the expressions of disbelief on the jurors’ faces.

  The defense next called LaVada Whitlock Addison, Nathan Whitlock’s mother, and, as noted earlier, she testified in detail about the time in her cafe when her regular customer, Memphis produce man Frank Liberto, told her that he had arranged the killing of Martin Luther King Jr. She said that she ran the little pizza parlor—which was between Liberto’s home and his warehouse in the Scott Street market—between 1976 and 1982. On the day in question, she said they were sitting together at two tables pushed together, and something came on the television about Dr. King. (The congressional hearings were being televised in 1978.) Liberto leaned toward her and said, “I had Dr. Martin Luther King killed.”

  She said she recoiled and told him, “Don’t be telling me anything like that. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t believe it anyway.” She said this was the only time he ever mentioned it to her, though she saw him many times afterward.

  Attorney Garrison read large portions of James Earl Ray’s deposition into the record, which basically set out James’s story and the history of his involvement from the time he escaped from prison in 1967.

  After the Spates rebuttal evidence, discussed earlier, was concluded, defense counsel Garrison renewed his motion for a mistrial, based upon his client’s absence from court. This was denied promptly, and he then filed a motion for directed verdict, which he argued was justified because the plaintiffs did not meet the required burden of proof. I argued that the evidence adduced on behalf of the plaintiffs was overwhelming and though we had met the standard, we decided not to move for a directed verdict in this case because we wanted it to go to the jury. The judge denied the motion, and closing arguments began.

  Meanwhile, the attorney general appealed Judge Swearingen’s denial of the motion to quash the subpoenas served upon judges Beasley and Dwyer to the court of appeals and the court promptly overturned the ruling and ordered the subpoena quashed. Judges Beasley and Dwyer were spared the inevitably uncomfortable task of defending the state’s investigation and justifying certain representations made on March 10, 1969, to the guilty plea hearing jury.

  The Closing Arguments

  Over a period of nearly two hours, I took the jury through the evidence, step-by-step, reminding them that the King family had brought this trial because the initial investigation was badly flawed and had not been remedied by any subsequent official local or federal investigation. I reminded them that the truth had been covered up for thirty-one years but that in this courtroom, even though the media had been absent most of the time and the outside world had not learned about the evidence or even heard about the trial, the truth had been revealed. As Dr. King had said, “Truth crushed to earth shall rise again”—and so it did.

  During the last half hour, with the use of computer graphics, we took the jury through the last twenty-one minutes of Dr. King’s life and the eleven minutes immediately following the killing. Lewis Garrison contended that if his client had any liability, he was at worst only a small cog in the conspiracy that took Martin Luther King’s life. He tried to focus the jury’s attention on the city, state, and federal government as well as on James Earl Ray.

  The Jury Instructions

  By late morning, we were finished and the judge instructed the jury. He gave the standard instructions, defining direct and circumstantial evidence, advising them that they, and only they, must decide questions of and how much weight to put on the various aspects of evidence tha
t had been laid before them, while he would determine the law. He reminded them that they must find for the plaintiffs if they found that the plaintiffs’ allegations were proved by a preponderance of the evidence—in other words, if the allegations were more likely true than not. On the issue of damages, he reminded them that they were bound by the parties’ stipulation that the damages should not exceed $100—a payment toward the funeral expenses.

  Finally, he told them that he had prepared a jury verdict sheet, which contained these questions to be answered:

  • Did the defendant Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King? If yes,

  • Did you also find that others, including governmental agencies were parties to this conspiracy, as alleged by the defendant?

  • What is the total amount of damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs?

  The case went to the jury just before lunch.

  The Verdict

  It took the jury about one hour to decide. After nearly four weeks of trial and about seventy witnesses they found that:

  • Yes—Loyd Jowers participated in a conspiracy to do harm to Martin Luther King.

  • Yes—others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy, as alleged by the defendant.

  • Total damages to be awarded to the plaintiffs—$100.

  The Judgment

  The issue of comparative liability was agreed to rest with the judge. Based on the evidence before him, Judge Swearingen apportioned liability as follows:

  • 30 percent—defendant Loyd Jowers.

  • 70 percent—all other co-conspirators, including state, federal, and city agencies and officials.

  Chapter 16

  RAUL COELHO (“RAUL”)

  The shadows, he plied his trade

  Deception a tool, though gray

  Here and there always paid,

  In his master’s service night and day.

  James never backed away from insisting that he was under the control of a man who he came to know as Raul during much of his fugitive times in 1967.

  The prosecution continued that this person was a fictional character. The state offered no explanation why James, when desperate to leave the country, having made it to the Montreal docks, all of a sudden turned around and re-entered the United States, going to Birmingham, Alabama, where he mysteriously came up with money to buy a white Mustang.

  James, of course, consistently said that Raul gave him the funds to buy the car, which he would use as instructed by Raul, to whom he gave a second set of keys. As part of his consenting to follow Raul’s instructions he was promised that “travel documents” would eventually be provided for him to leave the country for good.

  The state offered no credible explanation for where he got the money for the car. As discussed elsewhere the HSCA advanced the theory that after his escape James participated in a bank robbery in Alton, Illinois, and that this gave him the money he needed to go to Canada, and turn around and go to Birmingham where he purchased the car.

  The problem with this “theory” is that I called the local sheriff and the bank president in Alton. I was advised that they knew that James had nothing to do with the robbery. The real culprits were known but there was not enough evidence to charge them. When I informed the HSCA of my conversation—during their hearings’ examination of Jerry Ray, who they also tried to implicate (Jerry was at work all day on the day of the robbery)—they quickly moved from the subject.

  The Alton bank robbery (“theory”), however, was perpetuated in their final report, and the official story, desperate to deny Raul’s existence, remained unchanged.

  Eventually, we gradually learned a good deal about the shadowy Raul. He had emigrated to the United States from Portugal, where he appears to have previously had a military/intelligence history in Angola. He lived in—of all places—my old home city of Yonkers, New York, and took what we came to believe was cover, an assembly-line job at a General Motors factory in North Tarrytown, which was reasonably close to his home.

  I put him under photographic surveillance for about two weeks. By then he had retired. Subsequently, my apartment was entered and only that photographic record was taken. We were, however, able to obtain his Immigration Naturalization Service photograph.

  One of our Memphis private investigators, John Billings, provided the background information on how that photograph was obtained. Ironically, a Memphis Police Department officer, who had been assigned to the District Attorney General’s task force, had obtained the Immigration and Naturalization Service photograph and turned it over to our investigators in an effort to convince them that he was willing to cooperate and work with them in the search for the truth. Eventually, they learned that nothing could have been further from his true intentions. But, in the short run at least, it gave them the photograph taken in 1961 when Raul emigrated to the United States from Portugal. Billing’s colleague, then our lead investigator Ken Herman, organized a spread of six photographs to exhibit to witnesses. Billings stated that, in his presence, when he placed the spread in front of him, James Earl Ray readily identified the man in the spread as being the person who had controlled his movements and given him money and who he had come to know as Raul. As mentioned elsewhere, James had seen the same photograph in 1978 and, at that time, identified it (with some media coverage), so this was not a surprising revelation.

  Our witness, Glenda Grabow, had earlier and consistently identified the man in the photograph as the person she had known in Houston from 1963 onward and who, in or around 1974, in a fit of rage, implicated himself in the assassination of Dr. King just before he raped her.

  At the time of the trial, Glenda had injured ribs from an automobile accident and was suffering from internal bleeding, preventing her from testifying. Her husband, Roy, testified instead and confirmed that he had been present when she gave her earlier affidavit statements. Thus, the civil trial jury had access to Glenda’s story, including that James Earl Ray, though innocent, had to be sacrificed and the fact that Foreman knew—or so he said—Raul.

  After Roy confirmed its authenticity, I introduced into evidence a telephone bill from their home telephone that showed, on April 20, 1996, a six-minute telephone call to Raul’s home number. Under questioning, Roy stated that Glenda would not have stayed on the phone for six minutes with this person unless he was known to her. It is hard to imagine anyone keeping a conversation going with a complete stranger for that period of time.

  Glenda had some time previously provided me with notes of her conversation with Raul, written, however, after the conversation. While I believe them to be an accurate account of the conversation, I did not think that, in Glenda’s absence, we should attempt to enter them into evidence. It is useful, however, to see records of this communication in the context of Raul’s denials about even knowing Glenda. (See Appendix E for proof of the April 20, 1995, conversation.)

  The conversation went as follows:

  Glenda: Raul?

  Raul: Yes.

  Glenda: This is Glenda Grabow.

  Raul: Olinda.

  Glenda: Yes. I was just calling to tell you I was supposed to come to New York.

  Raul: Where you at?

  Glenda: Houston.

  Raul: Houston?

  Glenda: When I come to New York, I will call you.

  Raul: When?

  Glenda: I still don’t know yet when. You sell wine now?

  Raul: Ya.

  Glenda: Do you still deal in guns?

  Raul: Ya, I still deal in lots of guns.

  Glenda: You do?

  Raul: Ya.

  Glenda: Have you heard from Jack V—lately?

  Raul: No, not for long time. Why you want to know? Why you call me?

  Glenda: I will try and talk to you when I get there.

  Raul: OK. Oh ya.

  Glenda: I heard your daughter was getting married?

  Raul: Ya, she gets married. How many you have now?

  G
lenda: I just have the two girls and they are grown now. Time flies. Well, I will call back later. When is the best time to call?

  Raul: My wife gets here, or (leaves here) at 6:00.

  Glenda: OK, I will call you when I get there.

  Raul: OK.

  Glenda: Bye.

  Glenda’s brother, Royce Wilburn, an electrical contractor from Nashville, Tennessee, who had not discussed the case or his testimony with his sister, testified that the man he knew as “Dago,” and whose photograph he picked out of the spread, did indeed hang out, off and on, at a gas station near their home in Houston. He confirmed that his sister and he used to see and talk with the man because the gas station, where he hung out, was between their home and school.

  British merchant seaman Sid Carthew, in a telephone deposition, described how he had met Raul—whom he had under oath previously identified from the spread of photographs—late in the summer of 1967, in the Neptune Bar on West Commissioners Street in the Montreal docks area. At that time, he said Raul appeared to be with another person who may well have been James. Carthew said at one point Raul came over and introduced himself (as Raul). Sid, who was identified with the British Naturalist Party, said that the Neptune was a regular haunt of his and his mates when they came ashore following days at sea on the voyage from Liverpool. Someone in the bar must have told Raul about his politics because eventually the conversation came around to the question of whether Sid might want to buy some guns. Sid said he expressed interest, and they began to negotiate. Raul said that their guns were new army (US) issue, and the price reflected the money that had to be paid to a sergeant who was organizing the supply. (To my mind, this matched Warren’s earlier account of guns being taken from Camp Shelby or other military installations, trucked to New Orleans, and delivered to Carlos Marcello, who organized the sales.)

  Former UK Thames Television producer Jack Saltman, who had produced the 1993 Thames/HBO television trial of James Earl Ray, took the stand to testify that after the trial, when convinced that an egregious injustice had been down, he continued some investigating efforts on his own. He particularly focused on Raul. At one point, he took the spread of photographs to Raul’s front door. The jury heard the tape-recorded exchange between Saltman and Raul’s daughter, who was on the other side of the door. They heard her admit that the photograph was indeed that of her father. Her words were effectively that “Anyone could get that picture of my father.” It was a startling admission. For now, Raul’s own daughter had joined the ranks of the others who had confirmed that the critical photographic evidence was indeed her father.