Tom Dent said that he left the shop at 5:50 p.m. that evening and went home. He said it was his father’s practice to lock the doors every evening at 6:00 p.m. He continued serving anyone already in the store but let no one else in. That evening, he said, his father followed him home—it was about a fifteen- to twenty-minute drive—and arrived home around 6:40 p.m.
Why would Rebecca Clark and presumably her husband Earl have had to concoct the false alibi story if Earl Clark was not deeply involved in the assassination of Dr. King? If Judge Swearingen had remained on the bench, we would have sought a hearing on the charge of perjury. With him in retirement, this seemed futile, though we resolved to depose Mrs. Clark one more time.
This deposition took place in Memphis on April 27, 2002. The previous day, I attended Mrs. King’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration, which took place on board the Henry C. Grady paddlewheel boat on the lake in Stone Mountain Natural Park, and then went on to Memphis that evening. I thoroughly enjoyed spending several hours with the entire family and was especially pleased to meet Martin’s fiancée Andrea. I also appreciated spending time with Bernice, the youngest daughter. I had not had the opportunity before, never wanting to intrude on her privacy since I knew how deeply she had been affected by the loss of her father when she was three years old. Bernice, a preacher and a lawyer, is without peer when it comes to preaching. Her passion, clarity, and power ever remind me of her father. We agreed to keep in touch.
In Memphis I impulsively drove to the Ridgeway Inn, where the television trial jury had been housed and where Wayne Chastain and I would frequently go to respond to our thirst. I sat at our usual table and thought of the past and the long struggle for some time, and then I left to begin to prepare for Mrs. Clark’s deposition.
The deposition began around 10:00 a.m. in Daniel Dillinger and Dominski’s newly merged offices at 100 North Main Street in Memphis. Brian Dominski was the court reporter and the deposition was videographed. I led Mrs. Clark through the story. She had told us that her blood pressure had climbed to horrific levels after she received my subpoena. She also said that she had spoken with US Assistant Attorney Barry Kowalski, calling him at the Department of Justice after she received the subpoena. I explained to her that we were obligated to schedule this deposition because of new information. She stuck to her story except that she denied having told Reverend Jim Douglas that the police walkie-talkie was the size of a television remote control. She described it as being larger and square. Somehow she had become aware that instruments of the current remote-control size were not available in 1968.
When confronted with the affidavit of Thomas Dent, the son of the owner of the dry cleaners where she stated she had gone on the afternoon of April 4, she seemed shocked. I informed her, as noted above, that Mr. Dent, whom I located on the island of Guam, where he is married and teaches school, categorically stated that he was working in the dry cleaners on the day of the assassination and that he had not seen her at any time. He said he never recalled her picking up her husband’s dry cleaning but that Lieutenant Clark—whom he knew—always came in himself.
Mr. Dent also confirmed that his father always closed the shop promptly at 6:00 p.m. and that they ate together every evening around 6:30 p.m. On the evening of April 4, 1968, he recalled that his father got home between 6:30 and 6:40 p.m. It was a twenty-minute drive and Mr. Dent stated that he left about ten minutes before closing.
Thus, it was clearly apparent that Mrs. Clark’s story would not hold up. Even if Mr. Dent was wrong about seeing her husband in the shop around 5:00 p.m., she could not have reached the cleaners while it was open. She admitted that the drive from her home to the cleaners was about fifteen to twenty minutes. Mrs. Clark had no explanation for the discrepancy. She simply stonewalled, saying her husband would have no reason to send her if the store was closed. Nevertheless, she continued to insist that he came home and took a nap; she woke him up before going to the cleaners.
A. Yes, sir. I woke him up, and that’s when he said, “You have got to get over to the cleaners before they close to get my uniforms.” Because he came home specifically to take a bath and get some clean uniforms because they had been gone for so many days.
Q. Ms. Clark, if the—if these—if these were not available at the time, if they in fact were not standard-issue or special-issue walkie-talkie communications to Memphis Central police Headquarters—if this was not possible, these were not available, what are we to believe?
(Deposition of Rebecca Clark, April, 27, 2001, op. cit., 1663)
She appeared to be entirely unbelievable. Aware of this, she repeated the offer she made to Jim Douglas that she was willing to take a lie-detector test if we would make the result public. She also named a number of policemen who were close to her husband, including one who handled snakes. It occurred to us at this point that there are very good reasons why lie-detector tests are not admissible in court. Technology now has likely developed to the point where, with state-of-the-art, government-provided, technical, chemical, or hypnotic assistance, she would likely be able to defeat the purpose of such a test. Her requests that the results be made public were in line with such a tactic.
Our position in respect of a perjury prosecution remained unchanged. Little could be gained and the judge might well refer the matter to the Shelby County district attorney, and we knew what disposition would result.
We believed that the purpose had been served. Mrs. Clark had been confronted with the truth and the alibi she provided for her husband had been shown to be a tissue of lies. She was genuinely surprised when I told her that although I believed that Lieutenant Clark was deeply involved in the assassination, new information received in 2001 was leading me to conclude that he had not pulled the trigger.
Tom Dent’s recollection that Earl Clark was wearing a gray uniform late in the afternoon of April 4, indeed within an hour and a half of the killing, conflicts with Jowers’s statement that he remembers seeing him in a white shirt and blue trousers in late morning. It should also be noted that Jowers had contended that the man who gave him the still-smoking rifle—who he thought was Clark but was not absolutely certain—was also wearing a white shirt.
This could very well mean that someone other than Clark handed over the gun to Jowers, and Clark went down over the wall. Once again, I reflected on the possibility that the shooter could have been the fifth and only unnamed person attending the planning sessions at Jim’s Grill.
One woman told me about a friend of hers who was in the army in 1968, based just outside of Washington, and whose military responsibility concerned logistics, troop transportation, and movements. The informant, who provided her full name and details, told me that her friend revealed to her that on the morning of April 4, 1968, his unit was ordered to be ready to transport a considerable number of soldiers into the capitol that evening. When Dr. King was killed, they were, in fact, at the ready and moved quickly into Washington in anticipation of turbulence. Afterward, the friend realized that on the morning of April 4, the army was aware that Dr. King was going to be assassinated and had decided to order preparedness for the inevitable riots. I asked the lady to ask her friend if he would talk with me. He refused. He did not wish to disrupt his present job or to court any possible notoriety.
What We Then Knew
So, up to this point in our story, with all that has gone before the trial, and the information received in the aftermath of the trial, I believe it useful to summarize what we then knew.
Martin Luther King Jr. stayed around the motel all day. There were various sessions with the Invaders and others without them. Dr. King went down to his brother AD’s room, 201, at one point in the late afternoon, and they called and spoke to their mother. He went back up to his room between 5:40 p.m. and 5:45 p.m. to prepare for the meal at Reverend Kyles’s house. At one point he asked Ralph to call Mrs. Kyles to inquire what they would be eating. Around 5:45 or 5:50 p.m., Andy Young emerged from his room and put his coat on as Bevel and Oran
ge were tussling; Jesse Jackson was out of his room, 305, and down in the parking area, for a time standing near the swimming pool, occasionally glancing at his watch. Reverend Kyles was going around from room to room for a while, even (for some reason) entering 307, which had been abandoned by Dorothy Cotton, Dr. King’s assistant, about an hour and a half earlier. Eventually, after having a quick word with Dr. King at the door of room 306, he walked to the north end of the balcony and waited.
Elsewhere at the motel, New York Times reporter Caldwell was in his room, 215, at the lower level. Dorothy Cotton had gone to the airport earlier in the afternoon, leaving her room, 307. The Invaders milled about, but some were talking in their two rooms, 315 and 316. As the afternoon drew to a close, the Justice Department’s Community Relations Specialist James Laue was in the area. An NBC reporter, Jean Smith, also decided to leave earlier that afternoon, and another unknown black guest with a considerable amount of luggage was preparing to leave. He put in a call to Yellow Cab and asked for a driver to take him to the airport.
Frank Liberto remained at his Scott Street market produce warehouse during the afternoon. Late in the afternoon, between 4:45 and 5:00 p.m., he took two telephone calls, one right after another, apparently from Earl Clark, who may have made them from the rear of Dent Cleaners. These were the phone calls overheard by John McFerren as he completed his shopping for the day at LL&L, Liberto’s warehouse.
We now know that it was not possible that Earl Clark went home that afternoon for any extended period, if at all, despite the desperate and perhaps understandable attempts of his former wife to shield herself and her family from the stigma surrounding the possibility of her husband’s involvement in the assassination. We now know what he actually did on the afternoon of April 4.
It is likely that he left a rifle up in room 5-B of the rooming house with Raul. The rooming house registration book had disappeared, making it impossible to see if there were any other rooms let out during that week. When, at the television trial, I questioned the MPD officer (Glyn King) who inspected it shortly after the assassination about why he had not taken it into evidence, he simply said he did not know. Clark and/or the fifth person who, in all likelihood, was also an MPD sharpshooter descended the back staircase, and one of them was fleetingly seen going down the stairs by Grace Walden Stephens who was lying on her bed looking through the opening in the door. Clark and his colleague probably entered the brush behind the rooming house no later than 5:45 p.m., making their way far forward to a previously chosen spot on the north side of the lot, some feet back from the wall. They were eventually joined by Loyd Jowers shortly after getting settled. They knelt on the ground still soggy from the previous night’s downpour and watched and waited.
James was out of the rooming house most of the afternoon, having been told by Raul that he expected some gun dealers to arrive late in the afternoon, and he wanted to see them by himself. After returning with the binoculars, James left, went outside, and ate a hamburger. He walked around for a while and then went to the Chisca Hotel for some ice cream. He came back in around 5:00 p.m. or a little earlier, and Raul told him to go to a movie but to leave the car since he would need it later. James went downstairs, walked around, and sat in the car for a while. He eventually decided to have the flat spare tire repaired just in case Raul had any problem. (That morning, he had changed the right rear tire, which was getting flat, putting on the spare.) Raul remained in the rooming house, monitoring events. He may have intended to drive James’s Mustang away before the shooting, ditch it somewhere, leaving the car registered to Eric Galt to be found by the police, thus completing the circumstantial evidentiary case against James Earl Ray. It would eventually emerge that, as Harvey Lowmeyer, James had purchased a rifle (not the murder weapon), which would be thrown down near the scene. As John Willard, he rented room 5-B in the rooming house and later bought a pair of binoculars. Finally, the car, a white Mustang (seen leaving the scene soon after the shooting), when found would be registered in the name of Eric S. Galt, the identity used for the last nine months by escaped prisoner James Earl Ray, whose prints on the thrown-down rifle would reveal his true identity.
In the end, the process was somewhat delayed, and Raul probably had to leave on foot since James drove off to try and get the spare tire repaired—in the process almost hitting Ray Hendrix and William Reed as they walked from Jim’s Grill to the Clark Hotel as he turned right on to Vance Avenue in search of a service station.
An unnoticed MPD traffic car pulled up and stopped at the intersection with Mulberry, having been directed into position either by Raul or Clark, once Clark and the fifth man were set and the time appeared near.
Everything was ready. All eyes were on the Lorraine Motel, where shortly after 5:40 p.m., Dr. King had returned to his room and began to get ready to go to dinner, chatting all the time with his friend David (as Abernathy was called by those close to him).
A few doors away, between 5:45 p.m. and 5:50 p.m., a housekeeper knocked on the door of one of the Invaders’ room and advised them that SCLC was no longer paying for their room, and they would have to leave. In response to the question about who actually gave this order, she said it had been Reverend Jackson. Charles Cabbage looked over her shoulder and saw Jesse Jackson standing by the swimming pool, glancing at his watch.
Annoyed, but puzzled more than anything else, the group quickly packed up their things, including their weapons, and in disgust began to move out. Surely, their bill for that night had to have been paid. The daily check out time did not go beyond noon, and here it was nearly 6:00 p.m. So, if the bill was already paid, why were they being evicted? It made no sense, but if, for some reason, SCLC had decided on the spur of the moment that they didn’t want their help, then that would be their loss.
As the Invaders were moving out, heading toward the south stairway, Reverend Kyles approached room 306 and knocked on the door. Dr. King opened it. Kyles pressed him to leave, saying that they were running late. Dr. King would have told him that they were almost ready. He closed the door, and Kyles walked away back near the position where he had been standing. He put his hands on the railing and waited. About this time, Raul left the rooming house, going down the front stairs and out onto South Main Street. He must have been furious when he discovered that James’s Mustang was gone, but he probably began to walk north toward the city center.
A couple of minutes later, Dr. King came out onto the balcony by himself, leaving the door to the room somewhat open since Ralph Abernathy had delayed for a moment, saying that he had forgotten to put on aftershave lotion. Dr. King stood alone at the railing in front of the room waiting for his friend David and began to chat with the people down in the parking lot. Chauffeur Solomon Jones got the engine running, Bevel and Orange ended their horseplay, Marrell McCollough moved toward the north stairway. Andy Young had by now put on his coat (as he did so he was being observed by the sniper team on the roof of the Illinois Central railroad building) and Yellow Cab no. 58 driven by Buddy pulled into the driveway at just about or a little before 6:00 p.m. to pick up his passenger who was impatiently waiting off to the side and who immediately brought his luggage to the rear of the cab so that it could be put into the trunk. At this moment, Ernestine Campbell, the owner of the Trumpet Hotel, had begun to drive home, proceeding west on Butler toward Mulberry with her windows closed. As she passed the motel driveway opening on Butler, she glanced to the right, and through the passenger side window, she saw Dr. King standing on the balcony. When she reached Mulberry, she stopped briefly and turned right heading north.
As cabbie Buddy was helping to load the luggage, he stopped to look at the bushes across the road because some type of movement caught his eye. His passenger immediately redirected his attention to Dr. King standing on the balcony. The shooter took careful aim from a low position slightly above his target, with Jowers kneeling not far away off to the side and just behind him. It was a head shot he was looking for, and for him it was a piece of cake. H
e had the full target less than 200 feet away. As he squeezed the trigger, Dr. King must have moved slightly. The shot rang out, striking Dr. King in the lower face and jaw, proceeding downward nicking the spine, and coming to rest just under the skin beneath the left shoulder blade.
The shooter handed the gun to Jowers, who raced back in through the rear door of his Grill. He was inside within twenty seconds after the shot, being confronted inside the door by Betty Spates. He would placate her, eject the shell, and throw it into the toilet, where it refused to flush.
He then wrapped the weapon in a tablecloth, put it under his apron, and slipped into the cafe behind the counter. He accomplished this within a minute after the shot was fired. The customers were still talking, drinking, and playing shuffleboard. He quickly and discreetly placed the rifle on the shelf under the counter and went over to taxi driver Harold Parker and asked if he had heard the noise. Then he went back behind the counter, where he remained until sheriff’s deputy Vernon Dollahite burst open the door and ordered him to lock the place up and keep everyone inside. Jowers then rushed from behind the counter to lock the door.
Clark, meanwhile, had raced down over the wall to the ground and headed north on Mulberry to the intersection at Huling where he entered the MPD traffic car, which began to move west, picking him up on the north end corner, and driving away at a fast clip.
The shooter also instantly ran in the other direction, entered the alleyway between the buildings, and eventually went down into the cellars. Immediately after the shot, Marrell McCollough raced up the stairs, running past Reverend Kyles to reach the prone body of Dr. King to check him for life signs. As others began to gather, he responded to a question and said that the shot came from the building across the street. Jesse Jackson also began to climb up the north stairway, hesitating on the first step to take out or put something into a bag he was carrying. (The reason for, or purpose of, the bag, as well as where it came from, has never been clear.) As this was happening, Ernestine Campbell had stopped in front of the driveway and observed him. The Reverend Jackson looked up and was startled when he saw her and then turned to climb the stairs. Ernestine waited for a short while and then began to pull away while glancing at the side view mirror, in which she saw taillights and the back of Buddy’s yellow cab.
The Plot to Kill King Page 31
