Killing King

by Stuart Wexler

  Events in Memphis do not suggest a well-planned conspiracy, certainly not if Ray was the designated shooter. For one thing, with professional killers available, it seems unlikely anyone would call on Ray to murder their “ultimate prize,” Martin Luther King Jr. Ray lacked any pedigree as a hit man. A rooming house, furthermore, represents a poor choice for a potential shooting location. No one can guarantee that one would find a room facing the Lorraine, or at least one with a good vantage point. In fact, the room Ray did rent offered a very poor view of Room 306 at the Lorraine, where King stayed. This likely is what forced Ray (or any other assassin) to camp out in the bathroom, per William Anschutz’s testimony (the boarder at the rooming house who testified that the assassin shot from the bathroom window). But a rooming house bathroom is also a less-than-desirable shooting location. At any time, someone can knock on the door looking for access to the community toilet or bath—including at the moment a shooter is aiming and ready to pull the trigger. And a different problem presents itself with the choice of rifle, if, as the evidence seems to suggest, someone told Ray to exchange his original purchase for the Gamemaster. If the goal was simply to shoot a relatively stationary target from a short distance, one did not need the more expensive and reputable Gamemaster. Bessie Brewer’s rooming house was just across the street from the Lorraine. If someone told Ray to “trade up” for the better rifle, the likelihood was that the weapon was meant for a more difficult shot from a longer distance.

  The rather haphazard way in which evidence was disposed of at the crime scene also points to a less-than-ideal plan, a last-minute plot formed out of desperation. As a member of the Minutemen confided to the FBI, a professional killer would have used a disassembled rifle, putting the weapon together at the shooting location, firing a shot, then breaking the gun down so it could be smuggled out, for instance, in a briefcase. Here, not only the rifle, but numerous other items, including binoculars and hygiene products, were bundled together in a green blanket that was left in the entryway to Canipe Amusement Company.

  Many have pointed to the bundle as convenient—a too-obvious

  attempt by conspirators to frame James Earl Ray. But anyone shooting from the bathroom in Bessie Brewer’s rooming house had few good options available to him if he wanted to escape Memphis that day, short of the breakdown scenario the Minuteman described. Leaving the material in the rooming house would immediately connect the rifle to any missing boarders inside the building, including any possible fingerprints or identifying information left behind (something even a cautious assassin could not risk). Carrying the bundle to a vehicle would risk discovery and immediate capture at any kind of roadblock dragnet. In many ways, leaving the bundle on the street was the least bad option. In fact, whether intended or not, the materials in the bundle confused law enforcement for up to three weeks. Items in the bundle were initially linked to what appeared to be three or four different people. The rifle was linked to a “Harvey Lowmeyer,” who purchased the weapon in Birmingham; other items belonged to “Eric S. Galt”; and a prison radio, found in the green blanket, was eventually traced to an escaped fugitive from Missouri State Penitentiary: James Earl Ray. Coupled with the reports of a potential shooter fleeing Bessie Brewer’s rooming house, who rented the room under the alias John Willard, it appeared to the FBI as if they were dealing with a conspiracy of at least three to four people. It took weeks before they connected all the aliases to Ray, in part because authorities had to unearth the serial number on the prison radio Ray left in the bundle (he had scratched out the numbers and letters to the best of his ability).

  The best explanation for all the facts is a scenario whereby Ray preempts a legitimate plot against King by choosing to parlay his limited role as a scout into a more lucrative role as the actual shooter. He apparently would do this without consulting with the plotters, assuming he even knew who the major players were, and he would do this at the last minute, hence the haphazard execution. Several additional pieces of evidence point in this direction.

  First, this explanation helps account for one of the most enduring and perplexing mysteries on April 4: the citizens band radio broadcast that diverted law enforcement away from Ray’s escape route. As Ray fled Memphis in his white Ford Mustang to Atlanta, someone led police on a wild goose chase. Some thirty minutes after the King shooting, a citizens band radio operator named William Austein heard a transmission from a fellow CB operator broadcasting a car chase. Contrary to routine procedure, the broadcaster would not identify himself, but he reported that he was chasing a white Mustang driven by King’s killer, fleeing east on Summer Avenue from Parkway Street. The unknown CB operator wanted to make direct contact with the Memphis police. Austein halted a Memphis police cruiser and relayed periodic reports from the other man’s radio broadcasts to a police officer who then relayed them to Memphis police headquarters. Lasting for ten minutes, the transmissions reported the chase of the Mustang through multiple turns and through a red light; the individual in the white Mustang even fired shots at the heroic citizen. The final broadcast occurred at 6:48 p.m., with reports that the vehicle was heading toward a naval base.

  But it turns out that the broadcast was a hoax. An investigation never established who perpetrated the fraud, but in reaching out to police, refusing to identify himself, and trying to direct police attention to the northern parts of Memphis, the unknown CB broadcaster was attempting to pull police resources away from the southern route Ray likely used to escape the city.24

  Some claim that the timing of the broadcast, over thirty minutes after the shooting, speaks against this being a conspiratorial act. But the delay could also suggest that the conspirators themselves were caught off guard. If James Earl Ray short-circuited a more elaborate plot against King, perhaps to obtain a larger share of a bounty, it would have placed any conspirator in Memphis in the uncomfortable position of having to guess what happened. The delay between the crime and the broadcast may well represent the time it took for conspirators to surmise that someone within their plot had literally jumped the gun. Under this scenario, using the CB stunt to shift police attention away from the likely getaway direction might be a logical, if delayed, maneuver. Conspirators had good reason to fear what a fleeing shooter might tell law enforcement regarding a wider conspiracy, and if the conspirators realized the unexpected shooter was Ray, they may have surmised that he was heading back to Atlanta. The KKK commonly used CB radios to intercept police broadcasts and stymie police investigations, so much so that Congress cited the practice as widespread in a 1966 report.25 At one point, in their investigation of the MIBURN murders, the FBI was forced to call in help from the Federal Communications Commission to establish a completely independent communications network—one that was immune to CB radio intercepts by the White Knights.

  The possibility that Ray preempted a shooting by professional criminals contracted by the White Knights is further suggested by events that occurred not far from the crime scene. One of the earliest reports from Memphis related to suspicious activity at the William Len Hotel, located just a mile from the Lorraine Motel. As they later described to the FBI, hotel employees observed two men acting suspiciously at 12:05 a.m. on April 5. The two guests had arrived the previous afternoon and looked nervous while waiting to check out at that odd hour. The suspicious men had registered on the afternoon of

  April 4 as Vincent Walker and Lawrence Rand and stayed in two separate but nearby rooms. Both men checked out in a hurry following King’s murder. The FBI was interested in the two men and traced their activities once they left the hotel. One man hailed a cab and asked to go to West Memphis, Arkansas, but some distance into the trip, he insisted that the cab driver turn around and take him to the Memphis airport. The passenger appeared to scout the airport, then told the cabbie to return to the William Len Hotel. Outside, the cabbie met the second man and drove them both to the airport. They boarded the flight under the names W. Davis and B. Chidlaw. Their flight departed a
t 1:50 a.m. on April 5 and arrived in Houston at 2:50 a.m., at which point they took a shuttle and disappeared. The FBI checked the names and addresses on the hotel register, only to find that they were both aliases. So too were the Davis and Chidlaw names provided at the airport. A fingerprint check revealed no suspects, so the FBI gave up, guessing that these were criminals in town for a separate operation who left because they expected an increased police presence following King’s murder.26 It is worth noting that Cliff Fuller and Harold Pruett—two Dixie Mafia gangsters who may be connected to marks on Ray’s Atlanta map—were last arrested in connection with burglaries in Houston, the last point of departure for “W. Davis” and “B. Chidlaw.” Were Fuller and Pruett—or two other Dixie mobsters—caught off guard by Ray’s unilateral decision to kill King himself?

  New evidence uncovered by the authors in the past year suggests that Ray may even have had limited contact with the Walker and Rand characters at the William Len. Among hundreds of items of evidence collected by the Shelby County district attorneys in their prosecution of Ray was a matchbook from the William Len.27 Unfortunately and oddly, there is no explanation for how this piece of evidence came into possession of the authorities—nothing on who collected it, nothing on where it was collected. A careful review of several different inventories of evidence, lists of material the FBI or Memphis police collected at different locations, reveals references to matchbooks but none that specify the William Len matchbook (and several that, in fact, could not be the matchbook in question). The exception is a vague reference to matches found in the hotel room Ray stayed in prior to shifting locations to Bessie Brewer’s rooming house. If one assumes that every item of evidence was carefully noted (and the lists are thorough), then process of elimination would make this matchbook the William Len matchbook, but frustratingly, the list does not actually take note of the wording on the matchbook. In any event, the matchbook suggests the possibility that Ray met the figures from the William Len, and that may help explain the CB radio incident. The men in question would have been caught off guard by the shooting of King, but they would have been familiar enough with Ray to realize that the fugitive was the likely culprit. This understanding would explain why the CB radio trickster diverted police away from the direction Ray would take as he escaped from Memphis. After some delay, they would have realized who the actual shooter was and guessed as to where he was heading: Atlanta.

  Whether Ray pulled the trigger or knew who did, his decision to return to Atlanta makes little sense even if, as he claimed, he realized that authorities would be looking for him. Ray always admitted that he knew that the King murder would trigger a massive manhunt. If he fired the shot he certainly knew they would be looking for him; but even by his own “I was as shocked as anyone” claims in the years that followed, Ray admitted that he realized he was cooked. Ray claimed that he put two and two together immediately—that he knew after he heard about the King assassination on his car radio in Memphis (a dubious claim itself, as the radio appears to have been broken) that he had been framed. That is why he fled Tennessee so quickly. But Georgia lay in the opposite direction of both Canada and Mexico, the two places any seasoned criminal would go if he wanted to escape a massive manhunt. Atlanta is where the money for the King bounty originated. And if Ray literally and figuratively jumped the gun on his fellow conspirators, it is where he would need to go to be paid. The evidence suggests that is exactly what he did.

  12

  manhunt

  By April 5, as America’s cities continued to burn, the FBI launched the largest manhunt in its history. In reality, they were launching three manhunts, but only the hunt for the Memphis shooter was apparent to the public.

  The first was for James Earl Ray, and while it was initially confounded by Ray’s use of many aliases, it eventually succeeded, thanks to an impressive amount of lab work and shoe-leather investigation. Yet in narrowing its field of view on Ray over time, the initial manhunt also overlooked key leads discovered early in the case. A second manhunt started almost as soon as the first, for reasons still unclear. Indeed, this manhunt’s very causes and its contours are obscured by incomplete records and deliberate obfuscation by the FBI. Its target was Tommy Tarrants. Had it been pursued properly, it likely would have exposed the intended patsy in the King assassination, and by implication, the real killers. But the third manhunt was even more disappointing than the second. This was the search for Donald James Nissen, who predicted King’s murder in June 1967, but who now was missing from Atlanta. This manhunt forced a reinvestigation of that old lead, revealing new information that, taken together with the search for Ray and the search for Tarrants, should have exposed the full dimensions of the plot against King. Instead, the FBI missed another opportunity to do justice by Martin Luther King Jr., just as they had missed the chance Nissen provided to save King’s life in the first place.

  The first manhunt—for Ray—started as a search for three different people, all of them Ray’s aliases and none of them Ray himself. A report from the New Rebel Motor Hotel allowed them to connect the reports of a fleeing white Mustang to Eric S. Galt; the guest registry at Bessie Brewer’s rooming house suggested that John Willard, occupant of Room 5B, was the missing man who fled the building; and most importantly, the rifle, discovered in the bundle of items in the green blanket outside Canipe Amusement Company, pointed to Harvey Lowmeyer. They traced the rifle to the Aeromarine Supply Company, and from that, to the Lowmeyer name. The FBI was running the fingerprints collected from various items in the blanket bundle, including the rifle, but it would be weeks before they realized that all of them belonged to the same man: James Earl Ray, whose prison radio was also in the bundle.1

  In that first month, while they were more open to conspiracy angles, the FBI considered a number of leads described in this book. This included the Barnes-Crommelin-Gale-Carden-Smith plot in Birmingham (after the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church), the bounty offer to Sparks, the attempt on King’s life by Keith Gilbert, and others. But problems with compartmentalization of information often meant that they did not treat these leads as seriously as they should have.2 For the Birmingham plot, for instance, the FBI did not check the files of Sidney Barnes housed in the Mississippi field office; that file contains a taped transcript between Barnes and his friend Willie Somersett (the same informant who taped Joseph Milteer predicting the murder of JFK in 1963), in which Barnes describes the plot as continuing on through 1964. Recall that Somersett provided Barnes with a marked rifle to help Miami police trace the plot.3 The boast by White Knight Billy Buckles, about using a criminal for a major operation in 1964,4 was never connected to the Sparks bounty reports, which the FBI didn’t even believe was an actual plot.5 Information revealed in 1999 showed that Bowers used the Ben Chester White murder as a trap to lure King into an ambush, but this was in files on that murder, and never even considered in the King assassination investigation.6 Time and time again, information wasn’t cross-referenced across file streams.

  And yet, quite mysteriously, as the FBI initiated the second manhunt, they focused their interest on the chief terrorist for the White Knights of Mississippi, Tommy Tarrants, a man who knew Barnes, Bowers, and Swift. In early April when the government was still under the impression that King was killed by a conspiracy of Galt, Willard, and Lowmeyer, the potential range of suspects was far wider than even those three names. Absent a picture of any of the men, they considered the possibility that any one of them were aliases (just not for James Earl Ray) and hence almost everyone was a potential suspect, save those, like Stoner and Bowers, who were curiously eliminated from consideration because they were not in Memphis. But as wide-ranging as the first three weeks of investigation were, nothing yet explains why the FBI was interested so early in Tommy Tarrants. An FBI agent was at Tarrants’s home in Mobile as early as the evening of April 4; decades later, the agent, Gerard Robinson, told the authors that this visit was odd for three reasons. First, th
e visit took him outside his normal zone of activity on the outskirts of Mobile. Second, the FBI sent him to the residence without his partner, a direct violation of fundamental procedures, put in place for reasons that would become obvious that day when Tarrants’s father greeted him with a shotgun. Finally, he was not told specifically why Tarrants was of interest to the FBI in Mobile—and they never told him after. Robinson realized just how dangerous Tarrants was ten weeks later when Tarrants’s capture for the 1967 and 1968 bombings in Mississippi became national news. But in April of 1968 the FBI had no idea who the southern Mississippi bomber even was—they simply labeled him “the Man.” The extent of Tarrants’s known crimes as of April were the gun charge he faced in Mississippi from the previous winter, and the fact that he jumped bond.7 Federal law enforcement had no idea as to the extent of Tarrants’s racist violence.

  The importance and mysteriousness of the timing of the FBI’s interest in Tarrants cannot be overstated. Just two days later, on April 6, Tarrants’s picture was shown at the Gun Rack in Alabama, the first place Ray had attempted to buy a gun. Keep in mind, again, that at this point, Tarrants’s only offense was jumping bond on a firearms charge.8 Yet his picture was shown at the same time as Eugene Mansfield, the one-time Grand Dragon from Texas who suddenly left his job in Alabama to live with White Knights Grand-Wizard-to-be L. E. Matthews and who talked to Matthews—prior to the King assassination—about “hits” and “doing a job.” In addition, Mansfield did not have an alibi on April 4. The FBI’s central headquarters knew all of this from the Jackson field office and urgently reported it to the Birmingham field office. Hence it makes complete sense that Mansfield’s pictures were shown that day.9 In fact, the authors can find the reasons why every one of the first wave of pictures in the FBI’s documents were shown at the Gun Rack. Likewise, the authors can find justification for why the FBI showed subsequent sets of pictures at the store on later days—for instance, when they showed a picture of Jimmy George Robinson, an NSRP member who assaulted King in 1965; or when they showed a picture of Byron de la Beckwith, the man the FBI concluded had assassinated Medgar Evers with a rifle similar to the King weapon, in 1963. Just as oddly, every picture the Birmingham FBI agents displayed on April 6 came from readily available mugshots from local and state law enforcement agencies in Alabama. The exception was Tarrants—his picture was the only one sourced to an FBI file from Mobile.