537
IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF SHELBY COUNTY,
TENNESSEE FOR THE THIRTIETH JUDICIAL
DISTRICT AT MEMPHIS
_______________________________________________
CORETTA SCOTT KING, et al,
Plaintiffs,
Vs. Case No. 97242
LOYD JOWERS, et al,
Defendants.
_______________________________________________
PROCEEDINGS
November 22nd, 1999
VOLUME V
_______________________________________________
Before the Honorable James E. Swearengen,
Division 4, judge presiding.
_______________________________________________
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI,
RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
COURT REPORTERS
Suite 2200, One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
(901) 529-1999
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
538
- APPEARANCES -
For the Plaintiff: DR. WILLIAM PEPPER
Attorney at Law
New York City, New York
For the Defendant:
MR. LEWIS GARRISON
Attorney at Law
Memphis, Tennessee
Court Reported by:
MR. BRIAN F. DOMINSKI
Certificate of Merit
Registered Professional
Reporter
Daniel, Dillinger,
Dominski, Richberger &
Weatherford
22nd Floor
One Commerce Square
Memphis, Tennessee 38103
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- INDEX -
WITNESS: PAGE/LINE NUMBER
TAPE OF DEXTER KING/ANDREW
YOUNG/LOYD JOWERS PLAYED
TO THE JURY........................... 542 19
ARTHUR HAYNES, JR.
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER......................... 645 19
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:...................... 662 24
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:........................ 667 21
BOBBIE BALFOUR
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:........................ 671 9
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:...................... 680 2
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:........................ 682 21
RECROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:...................... 684 4
WILLIAM R. KEY
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:........................ 684 20
JOE B. BROWN
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:........................ 690 23
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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(November 22nd, 1999, 10:15 a.m.)
THE COURT: Mr. James, would you
bring the jury out, please.
(Jury in.)
THE COURT: Good morning, ladies
and gentlemen. Glad to see that all of you
survived the weekend. We're going to proceed
with our trial at this point.
Mr. Pepper, what's your next order
of proof?
MR. PEPPER: Yes, Your Honor.
If it please the Court, we'd like to --
plaintiffs would like to continue where we
left off with Ambassador Young's testimony by
going directly into the tape-recording of the
meeting that he described with the
defendant.
Though the Court may wish to break
from time to time, we -- the plaintiffs feel
it is important for the jury to hear the
entirety of that tape.
THE COURT: I believe you said
Friday it is about two hours long?
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MR. PEPPER: We believe it is
about two hours.
THE COURT: It might get too
exciting for us.
MR. PEPPER: We might have to
take a break after an hour or so.
THE COURT: Whatever pleases the
Court. Thank you.
THE COURT: We'll begin with
that. Go ahead.
If you would just explain to the
jury the circumstances under which this tape
was made, where it was and then it might be a
little more meaningful.
MR. PEPPER: The tape was made
approximately a year ago, as Ambassador Young
testified. And it was made here in the State
of Tennessee. The participants at the
meeting were the defendant, Mr. Loyd Jowers,
his attorney, Mr. Louis Garrison, Ambassador
Andrew Young and plaintiff Dexter Scott
King.
They came together for the purpose
really of discussing the underlying cause of
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action in this case, Mr. Jowers' role in
respect to the killing of Martin Luther
King.
While there is introductory
information and some banter occasionally, we
would ask the Court and the jury to listen
carefully to the various questions and the
responses to those questions.
MR. GARRISON: Your Honor, we'd
like to have it started at the very
beginning.
MR. PEPPER: Yes, sir. I've
asked the technician to start it from the
beginning.
THE COURT: All right. Go
ahead.
(Tape played for the jury in
open court as follows:)
"LOYD JOWERS: Dexter, what you
been up to?
DEXTER KING: Well, I've been
keeping busy, working hard, traveling a lot.
LOYD JOWERS: You work a lot at
night, don't you?
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DEXTER KING: I do. You
remember. I was working late one night in my
office when I talked to you.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: Keeping, you
know, keeping all things moving forward, just
still trying to deal with this issue. This
is a very trying issue, because, as you know,
my family, particularly my mother, I've been
concerned about because the media has been
very vicious --
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah.
DEXTER KING: -- in trying to
discredit and attack, you know, the family.
We had hoped that we would get to the bottom
of this so we can move on. I think in order
to have true closure, you have to get it
out. You have to get it out in the open.
So we appreciate your willingness to
open up and come forward. As you know, we
continue to support immunity for you, but, as
you know, the District Attorney doesn't seem
like they want the story to come out. So it
appears they are shutting everything down.
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LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: I think that
would be a major tragedy.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, it would be,
definitely.
Don't you think so, Mr. Young?
ANDREW YOUNG: I do. In fact,
I think that -- I don't think I would be out
of order in saying if something happened and
you were indicted for anything, then I would
sure be willing to come over here and testify
on your behalf as having been -- as having
been very helpful to us in trying to
understand that. We would want to make sure
that nothing happened to you.
LOYD JOWERS: Well, you know,
this is what I don't understand, and I never
did understand it about President Kennedy:
That they know there has got to be a
conspiracy. Why they won't admit that and go
from there on the basis of prosecution,
whatever they have to do, I don't understand
why they won't do it.
LEWIS GARRISON: Mr. Jowers, Mr.
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King and and Mr. Young have read the account
of this that I had written from what you had
and I had talked about. So they want to
question you.
LOYD JOWERS: Okay. Any time
you get ready.
LEWIS GARRISON: Feel free to go
forth.
DEXTER KING: When we last met,
you had pretty much taken us I think up to a
point where you had received the rifle from
Lieutenant Clark.
DEXTER KING: And you thought
it was a 30-30, you said, and you might have
been mistaken, that it was a 30-06.
LOYD JOWERS: I very well could
have been. Let me tell you that I knew he
owned a 30-30. I couldn't swear that that
was Clark that I took it from, but I believe
it was.
Now, see, it happened just about
that quick. (Snap of fingers.) I was at the
back door at six-oh-clock like I was supposed
to be. How many seconds did it take him to
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hand me that rifle and get going? That was
just a split second.
LEWIS GARRISON: You said it was
still smoking?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, the smoke was
still coming out the barrel of the rifle. I
breached it. Of course, that's what you've
got to do before you break one down.
LEWIS GARRISON: Clark had been
back that night, that afternoon?
LOYD JOWERS: He had been in the
place that day, yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: Had you seen
him go in the back?
LOYD JOWERS: He went back and
looked out the back. You see, the way the
grill was laid out, up here is where all your
customers are. The kitchen is here. Back
here we've got a storeroom. He walked all
the way back.
Of course, I was there working, you
know. I didn't really pay attention to him.
Of course, he was a friend of mine.
ANDREW YOUNG: You met him by
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the back door by the storeroom?
LOYD JOWERS: You are talking
about that night?
ANDREW YOUNG: Yes.
LOYD JOWERS: Yes, I met him --
yes, I was at the back door.
ANDREW YOUNG: Out of the
storeroom?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
ANDREW YOUNG: And he came up
from the woods back there or bushes?
LOYD JOWERS: From the bushes.
ANDREW YOUNG: And he handed you
the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: About that quick.
All I got was a glance of him. I had the
back door standing open. I didn't have to
open the door or anything. It was standing
open. The rifle was smoking.
I'll put it like this: I thought it
was a 30-30. I didn't examine it. I didn't
have time. All I done was get that empty
shell out of it, and there were no other
shells in it but that one. That's all that
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was in there.
The rifle was smoking. I broke it
down right quick, put it up under my apron,
walked up to the front, set it underneath the
counter. I wrapped it in a table cloth
first.
I stuck it under the counter and
went on up to the front of the building. By
the time the police got there, it took them
about two, two and a half minutes to get
there, I didn't have time to see nobody or do
nothing getting up there that quick. Of
course, I was working by myself.
ANDREW YOUNG: You had heard
the shot before you went to the back?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I was already
in the back.
ANDREW YOUNG: You were already
in the back at six-oh-clock?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
ANDREW YOUNG: You heard the
shot from from back there?
LOYD JOWERS: One shot is all I
heard.
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LEWIS GARRISON: You'd been told
to be back there at six, hadn't you?
LOYD JOWERS: I had been told to
be back there at six, yeah, that a man was
going to pass me a package. He didn't tell
me what it was. I certainly didn't know he
was going to shoot anybody, especially Dr.
King, the fact it turned out to be.
What I would have bet was a 30-30,
but it could have been a 30-06. There is not
that much difference in them if you ever
compared them. There is not that much
difference in them. They both break down
about the same way. I didn't have to break
it down, but I was told to --
ANDREW YOUNG: Did you used to
go hunting with Mr. Clark?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah. I went
hunting with him. Never went with him any
more after that, though.
LEWIS GARRISON: You said you
and Mr. Clark worked at the police department
at same time, that you were a police officer
at the same time he was?
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LOYD JOWERS: He come on the
police department just a short time before I
got off. But now we went hunting down in
Mississippi pretty regularly, went hunting on
Rex Chenault's place down in Mississippi,
down below Hernando.
ANDREW YOUNG: Is Mr. Clark
still alive?
LOYD JOWERS: I think he is,
isn't he?
LEWIS GARRISON: No, he is dead.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, is he?
LEWIS GARRISON: His wife is
still living, though. Mr. Barger is dead.
The only one that is still living is
Officer Zachery, who was in and out of the
grill, wasn't he?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, unless I'm
mistaken about this, Officer Zachery was in
charge of the men that was in charge of Dr.
King's security. Now, I could be wrong about
that, but that's what I thought.
LEWIS GARRISON: He was in and
out of the grill some, Officer Zachery.
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LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: Merrell
McCullough was there, that's one of the first
ones you ever mentioned?
LOYD JOWERS: McCullough, yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: How was he
identified? How was he introduced to you,
Merrell McCullough? Who introduced him to
you?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't remember
if it was Clark or Johnny Barger. It was one
or the other of them.
Now, Johnny Barger was my partner.
We were policemen together. He is the one
who introduced me to Frank Liberto. We used
to go there quite often. They was real good
friends.
Of course, I got to be pretty good
friends with Frank, because he could do you a
lot of good in Memphis, especially on the
police department.
DEXTER KING: Did you know
Frank's family, like his wife?
LOYD JOWERS: I met her one
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time, but as far as really knowing her, I
can't say I did. I never was out with her
ever at a party or anything.
DEXTER KING: Do you know her
name?
LOYD JOWERS: I always called
her Ms. Liberto.
LEWIS GARRISON: Is she still
living?
DEXTER KING: Is she still
living?
LOYD JOWERS: I think she is.
Dexter, you do remember I'm hard of
hearing, don't you? I only hear about thirty
percent in this ear. That's the reason we're
taping this, because sometimes I don't get a
question right. If I don't get it right, I
can't answer it right.
LEWIS GARRISON: They took -- I
don't know if you and Mr. Young are aware or
not, but the FBI questioned Mrs. Liberto, who
was the mother of Mr. Liberto, and his
brother, who was on the police force, and
I've got copies of those statements.
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DEXTER KING: Was his brother
Charles?
LEWIS GARRISON: A Memphis
police officer. They had a picture of Mr.
Ray. They all asked if they knew him, and
they said they did not but he looked
familiar, like someone they had seen around.
DEXTER KING: When they saw the
picture of Ray you are saying they thought it
was somebody --
LEWIS GARRISON: Mr. Ray claimed
in his deposition he had gone to New Orleans
to meet with Raul. In her affidavit and
also his brother and I believe someone else,
they all said Mr. Ray's face looked familiar.
DEXTER KING: Was the brother a
police officer in New Orleans?
LEWIS GARRISON: Yeah. He is
retired now. He is still there, as far as I
know.
DEXTER KING: Does he have a
business?
LEWIS GARRISON: He may. I'm
not sure, to be honest with you. I'm not
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sure. He is retired from the police
department. He may have a business. I'm not
sure.
DEXTER KING: Do you know
anything about his brother, Charles?
LOYD JOWERS: The one that lives
in New Orleans?
DEXTER KING: I think so.
Charles.
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir. I never
did know Charles. Now, I heard of him.
Frank told me about him. But I never met
him, as far as I can remember. I never met
Charles.
DEXTER KING: What about in Dr.
Pepper's book he talks about the market, I
think L&M or I think L&L, Latch & Liberto?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, over on
Scott Street.
DEXTER KING: Okay. I think
there was a Frank Liberto, a produce dealer,
and a Frank Liberto --
LEWIS GARRISON: There were
three of them.
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DEXTER KING: There were three.
LEWIS GARRISON: A car salesman,
liquor store owner and produce dealer.
DEXTER KING: I was going to
ask you did you know all of the three or any
of the three?
LOYD JOWERS: The only one I
knew was Frank. He is the one that always
called me. Like I say, I handled that one
hundred thousand dollars for him. But it
wasn't the first time I handled money for
him. But it was the last time.
DEXTER KING: Let me
understand. They would ask you to receive
the money. They would send it over in a
box?
LOYD JOWERS: With my produce,
yeah, in the bottom.
DEXTER KING: Then somebody
would pick it up from you?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: Pick up the box.
Okay. Now, in the case of the one hundred
thousand that they sent over, did they tell
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you that it was for, you know --
LOYD JOWERS: They never told me
what -- none of the money I handled for them
over the years, they would never tell me what
it was for, just that it would be in there.
This time they told me how much it was. But
I didn't count it. I did not. I never
counted it.
LEWIS GARRISON: Describe for
them what it looked like, Mr. Jowers.
LOYD JOWERS: Well, it was in
one-hundred-dollar bills. Heck, I don't know
how thick it was. About like that. Two
rubber bands around them, one on each end.
It was in a brown paper bag.
ANDREW YOUNG: It was in with
your vegetables?
LOYD JOWERS: It was underneath
my vegetables, it sure was.
DEXTER KING: Now, who picked
up that box?
LOYD JOWERS: First Frank called
me and told me there will be a Cuban by to
pick it up. He said, you give him that
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package. That's when he told me that there
was a hundred thousand dollars in it.
I told him, said, Frank, you know I
ain't going to count that money. If it is a
hundred thousand, that's fine. If there is
not that much, that will have to be fine,
too.
Then he called me back -- let's
see. That was on a Wednesday morning. Then
he called me back and said, now, that wetback
is going to be by there to get that package
that is going to be handed in that back
door. He called him a wetback. I never
heard a Cuban called a wetback. So I don't
know if it was a Cuban or a Mexican, but it
was definitely a foreigner.
DEXTER KING: Was that Raul?
LOYD JOWERS: That's what they
said his name was. I don't believe that was
his name anymore than I believe yours is Jack
Thomas.
DEXTER KING: Why is that?
LOYD JOWERS: I just don't
believe that. Why would a man use his own
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name when he is involved in something like
that? Why would he do that?
No, he would use Jack Jones or --
but Raul, I was going to look that up and
see what that stands for in a foreign
language. I'm not sure what it stands for.
But it is very common among foreigners.
LEWIS GARRISON: You at first
thought he said Royal, didn't you?
LOYD JOWERS: I thought he said
Royal, I sure did. But he corrected me and
told me Raul. I said, well, whatever.
LEWIS GARRISON: Did you know
any of Frank Liberto's close friends, who his
close friends were?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, the lady
that owned a restaurant out on in Highland
Heights.
DEXTER KING: Is that Lavada
Whitlock Addison?
LOYD JOWERS: Ms. Whitlock,
right. Now, I met her one time back along
about that time. She wasn't all that old a
woman, either. I don't remember what the
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occasion was, but I did meet her. Of course,
I knew Nathan over the years after the
assassination took place. I knew Nathan real
well.
DEXTER KING: That was her
son?
LOYD JOWERS: Pardon?
DEXTER KING: Nathan was her
son, right?
LOYD JOWERS: Yes, sir.
DEXTER KING: Now, he knew
Liberto as well?
LOYD JOWERS: He knew him real
well. See, Ms. Whitlock owned a restaurant
out on Highland Heights, on Macon Road, I
believe. I believe that's where it was.
Frank used to stop in there all the time.
The fact is he tried to go to bed
with her all the time, Mrs. Whitlock. He may
have. I don't know. Anyway, he'd get oiled
up, get drunked up, and he'd do a lot of
talking.
DEXTER KING: Do you know any
other friends of his or were those the only
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two?
LOYD JOWERS: You know, apart
from the people on the police department,
Johnny Barger, I'm not sure if Cross was a
friend of his or not, but I know Johnny
Barger was.
We used to be in a squad car in a
territory and we'd leave our territory and go
over on Scott Street to his place of
business. Sometimes we'd stay but a few
minutes, then other times we'd stay longer
than that.
See, you have to understand that
back then, back then everything was done
politically. If you got anywhere, you had to
know somebody that knew somebody. It is
almost that way now, but it was really,
really bad back then. There was no blacks on
the police department, it was just an unheard
of thing.
ANDREW YOUNG: Was that Crump
time? Was Crump in office back then?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah. Crump
is the one that got me the job. I went to
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see him on a Monday, and on a Thursday I went
to see the police commissioner. That Monday
morning I was riding in a squad car with a 38
hanging on my side, billy stick hanging on
this side. That's just the way things
operated back then.
ANDREW YOUNG: Were you in the
military?
LOYD JOWERS: I was in the Navy,
yes. I had been discharged out at
Millington, I don't know, less than a year
after I went on the police department.
Jobs were kind of hard to find back
then. They were doubly hard for black
people. It was hard enough for white people,
but it was tough on blacks back then to find
a job.
DEXTER KING: Any other friends
that come to mind of Mr. Liberto's?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I can't think
of any more. I really can't.
DEXTER KING: What about in
Texas, did you know of any of his
relationships with friends in Texas?
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LOYD JOWERS: Who? Frank?
DEXTER KING: Yes.
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir, I didn't
know any. I didn't know he had people
there. I knew he had a brother that lived in
New Orleans.
DEXTER KING: So you weren't
aware of any business he may have been in
Texas or New Orleans?
LOYD JOWERS: No.
DEXTER KING: You just knew he
had a brother?
LOYD JOWERS: I knew he had a
brother that lived in New Orleans. I don't
remember who told me. I don't think Frank
told me, but he said he was in the same
business that Frank was in. And by that --
DEXTER KING: You mean produce?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. Yeah. And
in the Mafia.
DEXTER KING: When did he first
talk to you about the killing?
LOYD JOWERS: About the killing
of Dr. Martin Luther King?
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DEXTER KING: Uh-huh.
LOYD JOWERS: After it took
place. After it took place.
DEXTER KING: The thing I read
is a little confusing from Mr. Garrison, the
part about -- I thought it said that Frank
Liberto was discussing this potential riot or
March beforehand.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, we talked
about that, sure. But there was no killing
mentioned, no.
DEXTER KING: Okay. But when
he said or alleged that he said that he would
go home with his toes in the air, sticking in
the air or something, sticking up, that if he
comes here, in other words, he will leave
dead, I mean, that's the way I interpreted
it.
LOYD JOWERS: If Frank Liberto
ever told me that, I don't remember. But I
wouldn't doubt him saying that. I would
not. Because that's just the way he was.
DEXTER KING: So you don't
remember talking about the killing until
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actually after it took place?
LOYD JOWERS: If he -- he didn't
mention it until after the fact. I do not
remember.
DEXTER KING: When he did, what
did he tell you, when he finally mentioned
it?
LOYD JOWERS: He asked me a
question. He didn't come down to the place.
He called me on the phone. He said, do you
know what that bundle money was for? I said,
well, I have no idea. He said, well, that's
what it cost me to get King killed.
Word for word, that's what he told
me. I almost dropped the damn telephone.
Well, you know, it surprised me. I figured
it was to buy guns with or dope or whatever
it was he was dealing with.
DEXTER KING: So you were
surprised? You were really shocked?
LOYD JOWERS: I certainly was.
Why, sure I was. Now, if there was no
conspiracy -- let me pass this by you. If
there was no conspiracy, Dr. King, whenever
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he come up to Memphis, he checked into the
Rivermont Hotel where he stayed when he come
to Memphis. Everybody knew that. I knew it,
even. I kept up with him not real close.
You know, the black people that come in my
restaurant, we'd talk about it. I'd carry on
a conversation with them.
The very next day, I think the very
next day, they moved him over to the
Lorraine.
Okay. Now -- I can't remember her
name. Anyway, the lady that runs the place.
DEXTER KING: Ms. Bailey?
LOYD JOWERS: Ms. Bailey. She
put him downstairs. They almost -- I don't
think he stayed downstairs one night. They
almost immediately moved him to the second
floor.
Now, there had to be a conspiracy.
I couldn't have done it. James Earl Ray
couldn't have done it. There had -- it had
to be his security people or the CIA or the
FBI. It had to be.
DEXTER KING: Did you know of
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anybody else who may have mentioned the plot
before, you know, it happened other than
Liberto? I mean, did anybody mention the
possibility that this might happen or that it
was going to happen to you?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't remember
anyone mentioning it black or white. I
really don't. I had about half my
customers -- I'm talking about overall about
half black and half white, because I was in a
mixed neighborhood. Which was fine with me.
I didn't care what color they were. You
know, I always tried to see that everybody
had enough food when they left. But to my
knowledge, no one ever mentioned that.
ANDREW YOUNG: Mr. Jowers, do
you mind saying how old you are now?
LOYD JOWERS: I'm just passed
seventy-one. November 20th I'll be
seventy-two. I have glaucoma in both eyes.
I've got a cataract on this one.
ANDREW YOUNG: But you are
looking pretty fit, though?
LOYD JOWERS: I am. I exercise
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every day. I do. I exercise every day.
Hell, I may live to be a hundred, but I don't
believe it. I smoke two packs of cigarettes
every day.
LEWIS GARRISON: You told
Mr. King before about a meeting that was held
in your place where some people identified
themselves as --
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. Do you
remember me telling you that?
DEXTER KING: I do.
LOYD JOWERS: About these
policemen meeting there.
LEWIS GARRISON: The CIA and
FBI -- (Inaudible).
LOYD JOWERS: The CIA and the
FBI were there, but they weren't there the
same time all those policemen were there.
They were not there at the same time. But
that wasn't unusual. Cab drivers would meet
in there, policemen met in my place.
ANDREW YOUNG: This is all
before Dr. King was killed?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, this
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all took place before. Very rarely did they
have any more meetings after the -- if a
policeman came in, it would be be Johnny
Barger or Clark or someone like that that
would just stop in for a minute.
DEXTER KING: So did you ever
overhear anything that they were saying or
did you have a sense for what they were
meeting about?
LOYD JOWERS: Now, I would be
working. You know how it is in a
restaurant. I would be working and I'd pick
up a word. I wouldn't know what the meeting
was about. What was discussed, I couldn't
say. Of course, I would only get a word now
and then from going by the table.
DEXTER KING: Now, you said
they didn't meet together. You mean the
Memphis police met separately from the CIA?
LOYD JOWERS: In the past,
yeah. See, this CIA business with the FBI on
my part of it was just guesswork, because
they always wear plain clothes.
ANDREW YOUNG: Did they come
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together, the FBI and CIA?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, they was
together.
ANDREW YOUNG: But not with
the --
LOYD JOWERS: They were not with
the -- now, there was one stranger who was
with the police that I never seen before or
after the meeting. That was with Johnny
Barger and Clark. I just don't remember who
all was at that meeting. Like I say, I was
working. They had been there spending
money. Of course, I waited on them.
LEWIS GARRISON: How many times
was Merrell McCullough there before this?
LOYD JOWERS: How many times
what now?
LEWIS GARRISON: How many times
was Merrell McCullough in there before this
meeting?
LOYD JOWERS: How many times was
he in there? I can't remember. He could
have been in there when I wasn't even
around.
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LEWIS GARRISON: But you saw him
in there several times?
LOYD JOWERS: I saw him several
times, sure.
LEWIS GARRISON: He was
introduced to you as a police officer, wasn't
he?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: Johnny Barger
told you that was his assistant or --
LOYD JOWERS: I believe he was a
sergeant at that time.
LEWIS GARRISON: Barger?
LOYD JOWERS: No.
LEWIS GARRISON: Merrell
McCullough?
LOYD JOWERS: McCullough. I
believe he was a sergeant when Dr. King got
killed. I think he was.
LEWIS GARRISON: Was he in a
police uniform when you saw him?
LOYD JOWERS: No.
LEWIS GARRISON: He was not?
LOYD JOWERS: No. He was
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plainclothed whenever he would come in the
restaurant. I never did see him in his
uniform. Now, Johnny Barger always came in
his uniform.
DEXTER KING: Tell me again,
because I just want to make sure I've got the
details down, when you received the money,
who brought the produce to you, the produce
box?
LOYD JOWERS: One of Frank's
regular drivers. I don't recall his name, I
really don't, if I ever knew his name.
DEXTER KING: Do you remember
when you received it, what date and time,
that kind of thing?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. They
brought my produce on Wednesday.
DEXTER KING: Okay. This was
afternoon or --
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, it would be
in the afternoon. I opened up about five
o'clock, got lunch ready, I wouldn't go home
until four o'clock in the afternoon.
DEXTER KING: Then Frank called
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you that afternoon?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: To ask you
whether you received it?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: What did he say
about the money?
LOYD JOWERS: He described
this -- he called him a Cuban the first time,
then he called him a wetback after that. So
I don't know. He was a foreigner, anyway.
DEXTER KING: What did he say
about the money? He just said the money was
in the box?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. He didn't
tell me where. I knew it was hid then the
bottom of it
DEXTER KING: He asked you if
you had counted it?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: You said no, you
weren't going to count it?
LOYD JOWERS: That's the first
and last, only time, he ever asked me if I
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had counted it.
DEXTER KING: Okay. But then
what did he say you were supposed to did with
the money?
LOYD JOWERS: He said put it up
until tomorrow, there will be a wetback or a
Cuban by there to pick it up. I said, well,
okay. So I put it in the old cook stove I
didn't use, because nobody ever went in
there, and I knew they didn't. But they
couldn't have got by me anyway.
DEXTER KING: So did the Cuban
come and pick it up?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, the next
any. The next day.
DEXTER KING: That's the person
that is alleged to be Raul?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: Was that your
first time ever seeing him?
LOYD JOWERS: If he had ever
been in there before then, I didn't know it.
Now, I won't tell you he wasn't in there, but
I didn't know if he was.
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DEXTER KING: So you just gave
him the money panned that was it?
LOYD JOWERS: Sure. He walked
on out the door. Same way when he come and
picked that rifle up I took in the back
door. He come in, picked it up, hit that
door, turned right north on Main Street, and
I haven't seen him anymore since then.
DEXTER KING: That was Clark?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I'm talking
about Raul.
DEXTER KING: I'm sorry. I was
confused. You said you haven't seen him
since he came to the back door. Is that what
you said?
LOYD JOWERS: I'm talking about
the guy that picked the rifle up the next
day, the one that actually --
DEXTER KING: Is that the same
guy you gave the money to?
LOYD JOWERS: Yes, same guy.
DEXTER KING: Same guy?
LOYD JOWERS: Same guy.
DEXTER KING: Okay.
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LOYD JOWERS: Now, they said it
his name was Raul. It could have been.
DEXTER KING: What's confusing
is I think that -- I thought that the person
who picked up the money was different from
the person who picked up the rifle.
LOYD JOWERS: No.
DEXTER KING: It was the same
person?
LOYD JOWERS: Same person.
ANDREW YOUNG: But a different
person gave you the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah,
definitely.
ANDREW YOUNG: Who gave you the
smoking rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: That was a white
man that gave me the rifle. I could see that
much.
LEWIS GARRISON: Wait a minute,
Mr. Jowers. You are getting confused. You
are talking about after the shot was fired?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: A white man
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gave you -- this white man gave you a rifle
after the shot was fired?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, in the back
door.
LEWIS GARRISON: You are pretty
sure that's Clark?
LOYD JOWERS: I'd almost swear
to it. But now as far as getting a good look
at him, I did not, because the thing really
took (snapping of fingers) that fast.
LEWIS GARRISON: But the person
who brought the gun in was the one he called
a wetback?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: Then the person
when came back and got it was --
LOYD JOWERS: The same person,
sure was.
ANDREW YOUNG: Let's see.
We've got three trips: One that they came to
pick up the money. That was the same man
that brought you the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: The same man that
picked it up, yeah.
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ANDREW YOUNG: He brought you
the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
ANDREW YOUNG: He picked up the
money. Then he came back and picked up the
rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: Now, wait a minute
now. There is a misunderstanding here
somewhere. I never seen a rifle in my
restaurant until after the killing.
LEWIS GARRISON: You said they
brought in a box.
LOYD JOWERS: There was a box.
How would I know? It had never been opened.
I don't know what it was. Now, there was a
box.
LEWIS GARRISON: A long box?
LOYD JOWERS: It was big enough
for that rifle to go in.
ANDREW YOUNG: Raul brought
that -- I mean the Cuban had brought that
box?
LOYD JOWERS: The same guy.
There are three trips he made.
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ANDREW YOUNG: Okay.
LOYD JOWERS: That's right.
DEXTER KING: Okay. So he
brought the box after the produce was
delivered, the long box?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, he brought
that separate.
DEXTER KING: But he didn't
deliver the produce?
LOYD JOWERS: No.
DEXTER KING: That came from
Frank's market?
LOYD JOWERS: Frank Liberto.
LEWIS GARRISON: You bought from
them pretty regularly? You bought all your
produce from them, didn't you?
LOYD JOWERS: The same driver,
yeah. It was the same driver.
LEWIS GARRISON: How long had
you owned Jim's Grill at that time?
LOYD JOWERS: I opened that
grill up I believe in either late 1966 or
early 1967.
LEWIS GARRISON: You had been
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buying produce from this same place all the
time?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. If Frank
didn't have something, I would get it from --
ANDREW YOUNG: Do you remember
what it was, what kind of produce it was with
the money?
LOYD JOWERS: That day?
ANDREW YOUNG: Uh-huh.
LOYD JOWERS: If I thought about
it long enough, I could remember. Well, I
know I ordered three or four stalks of
celery, because I was going to have soup.
You have to have celery to go in soup.
Anyway, I know that celery was in there and
maybe a head or two of lettuce. Just what
you would use in a restaurant.
DEXTER KING: Then when he
brought the long box -- when was that
brought?
LOYD JOWERS: What time of day?
DEXTER KING: Was this the same
day?
LEWIS GARRISON: Was it the
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same -- are you talking about the same day he
brought the produce in?
DEXTER KING: Right. The same
day?
LOYD JOWERS: You know, I don't
believe it was. I don't think there was but
that one delivery that day. You know, I
don't believe that long box was brought when
I was -- you know, I believe that long box
was brought when I wasn't there. That would
have been the next day. That would have been
the day that Dr. King got killed.
DEXTER KING: Who came and got
the long box? Who came and got the rifle?
How did they get the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: If it was a
rifle. If it was a rifle.
DEXTER KING: Okay.
LOYD JOWERS: Raul would have
had to have picked it up. He had to come
after it, because I never give that long box
to no one else.
DEXTER KING: Where did you put
it?
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LOYD JOWERS: Under the
counter. Under my -- you know, you have a
long counter. I put it up under the
counter. Now, it wasn't wrapped up or
anything. It was just along box. It was
about that thick, about that wide. It wasn't
all that long. Maybe as long as this table.
DEXTER KING: They told you to
store it?
LOYD JOWERS: Just hold on to
it.
DEXTER KING: So they came back
to get it when you weren't there?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't remember
giving it to anyone, I don't. I do not.
ANDREW YOUNG: And the police
never searched your store?
LOYD JOWERS: No, never. I
talked to one. He said he was FBI. That's
the next day.
ANDREW YOUNG: But they never
searched your place?
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir.
ANDREW YOUNG: Never looked
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back in the back in the storeroom?
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir. To my
knowledge -- it had a full basement
underneath that place. To my knowledge, they
never went down there. As far as I know,
they didn't.
Now, I thought that was kind of
strange. There could have been a half dozen
people down in that basement, you know. Of
course, there wasn't nothing down there.
DEXTER KING: Who owned the
produce company that sent you the vegetables?
LOYD JOWERS: Who owned it?
DEXTER KING: Who owned it?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, I always
believe Frank Liberto owned it. But that
don't mean he did. He always said he owned
it, anyway.
DEXTER KING: Did Latch have
any --
LOYD JOWERS: I don't know. I
can't answer that.
DEXTER KING: Did you know
Latch?
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LOYD JOWERS: Pardon.
DEXTER KING: Latch, do you
know Latch? Is he still living?
LOYD JOWERS: No. I met him one
time. As far as knowing anything about him,
I don't.
DEXTER KING: I wanted to go
back to the meeting with McCullough. Did he
come in with the Memphis Police officers or
with the Feds?
LOYD JOWERS: No, he come in
with the Memphis Police. I believe there was
a total amount of five. The reason I say
that, we had two people sit here and two over
here at a booth, and I took them a chair, so
there had to be five.
I know one I had seen -- I know one
I had never seen before and haven't seen him
since. Now he could have been FBI, could
have been CIA. I don't know.
DEXTER KING: You never heard
their conversation, but you had a sense of
what they were meeting about?
LOYD JOWERS: I knew it was
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something illegal. I knew that part of it.
I would pick up a word now and then. I knew
they were up to something illegal, sure I
did. I wasn't really too concerned about it
because I didn't want to know about it. I
really didn't.
DEXTER KING: Did anybody else
see the money that you received?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. Betty
Spates says she saw it. Now, whether she did
or not, I don't know.
LEWIS GARRISON: One of the
other ladies that worked there?
LOYD JOWERS: She described it
to me.
LEWIS GARRISON: Her sister?
LOYD JOWERS: I'm almost sure
she saw it.
LEWIS GARRISON: Two of them
did.
DEXTER KING: How would she
have seen it? Did she go and look in the --
LOYD JOWERS: She would have had
to have opened that oven up, the old stove,
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and looked at it.
LEWIS GARRISON: We have taken a
deposition from her.
DEXTER KING: Now, Betty Spates
was the black waitress?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: And you had a
relationship with her. Is that correct?
LOYD JOWERS: That's true.
DEXTER KING: Would she have --
I'm wandering around a little bit because I'm
going off my memory.
LOYD JOWERS: I'm following you
pretty good. Go ahead.
DEXTER KING: Did she say that
she saw you run in with the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: She said that,
Dexter, but she couldn't have because she was
not there that night. She was not.
Now, I was the only one working that
night. If Harold Parker was still living, he
would tell you that. He would also tell you
I went to the back door at six o'clock, too.
He was sitting -- there a row of booths
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here. He was sitting sitting in the back
booth, and the back door was down here. And
the back door was standing open.
DEXTER KING: What did Frank
tell you about the murder weapon? I remember
before we met -- when we met before, he said
something about he said it was his property.
LOYD JOWERS: He said it was
his, yeah, he sure did.
DEXTER KING: But that was
after you retrieved it and put it under --
well, let me ask you.
LOYD JOWERS: When he told me
that, I had already given i to Raul or
whatever his name was.
DEXTER KING: The next day?
LOYD JOWERS: He didn't tell me
the next day, I don't think. Two or three
days later after that I talked to him.
DEXTER KING: No. I'm saying
when did you give it to Raul?
LOYD JOWERS: I give it to him
early the next day, sure did.
DEXTER KING: April 5th?
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LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, the very
next day.
DEXTER KING: Okay. But
Liberto didn't know that Raul was picking it
up?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yes, he did,
too. I wouldn't have give it to him if
Liberto hadn't told me. I believe he called
him a wetback, he would be there to pick that
package up you got in the back door.
Of course, after the shooting took
place, then I knew what that damn rifle had
done, I really had.
DEXTER KING: You had put it
all together then?
LOYD JOWERS: Sure. It wasn't
very hard to put together. I knew I was
right in the middle of it. So all I could do
from then on was keep my damn mouth shut.
That's what I done. That's what the
Mafia knew I would do. But I don't know. I
don't think we'll ever get any more with it
myself. Well just have to see.
ANDREW YOUNG: McCullough is a
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pretty young man?
LOYD JOWERS: He was young back
then.
ANDREW YOUNG: He will be
around a long time.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: That is thirty
years ago. He'd probably be -- (Inaudible).
LOYD JOWERS: Don't he work for
the CIA now?
ANDREW YOUNG: That's what I
thought.
LOYD JOWERS: That's what I
heard.
LEWIS GARRISON: Yeah.
LOYD JOWERS: That's what I
thought. That's what I heard. I didn't know
that for sure.
LEWIS GARRISON: If this was
thirty years ago and -- I think he would have
been in his twenties back then, and this was
thirty years ago.
LOYD JOWERS: I think the only
way we're ever going to be able to prove that
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this conspiracy is to get the FBI and CIA's
records on it. It is common knowledge, white
and black both know, that J. Edgar Hoover
hated Dr. King with a personal passion.
ANDREW YOUNG: But there
wouldn't be any record of it.
LOYD JOWERS: You don't think
they would make records on something like
that?
ANDREW YOUNG: No.
LOYD JOWERS: Well, you are
probably right. It wouldn't be too smart to,
would it? How do you prove it?
ANDREW YOUNG: Well, it is very
difficult to prove. That's the reason why
we've advocated what they did in South
Africa, declare general amnesty and let
everybody come forward and clear their
conscience.
LOYD JOWERS: Now, that would
work if they did that.
ANDREW YOUNG: And it would
help -- I think it would help the country.
LEWIS GARRISON: I do --
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(Inaudible.)
DEXTER KING: Let me ask you,
Mr. Jowers, I know you are really afraid of
being indicted if you come forward, but what
if you were to come to the media, tell your
story, like maybe talk to a reporter who is
friendly, I mean, somebody who we feel would
be sensitive, they wouldn't try to paint you
in a -- you know, in a negative light, but
just tell the story the way it happened, not
the way you've been dealt with in the past,
you know, by some of the media.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, right.
DEXTER KING: But what if they
did a print story first and then you followed
that up immediately, like let's say the story
came out in the morning and you call a press
conference that day and you told your story
in front of a host of reporters where they
can't isolate you, you know, like with ABC
Prime Time and Turning Point, you know, they
could control the message, whereas if you do
you it in a live press conference, they can't
edit it, they can't spin it in a way that
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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they want it to be, how would you feel about
that?
LOYD JOWERS: If I thought it
would do any good, I'd do it in a minute. I
think what it will do -- I'm going to tell
you what I think, Dexter. If I thought it
would do any good, I would do it in a
minute. But let me tell you, if I do that
without immunity, the first damn thing a
prosecutor in Memphis is going to do is get
me indicted.
Now, you can just believe that or
not, but that's what will happen. He has
already said he has got enough evidence to
indict me but he don't have enough evidence
to get a conviction. That's the reason I'm
not indicted right now. I guarantee you it
is.
ANDREW YOUNG: They would
indict you for being part of a conspiracy?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, they sure
would.
LEWIS GARRISON: They did make
that statement.
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LOYD JOWERS: Sure they did.
The fact is I've investigated it. I had four
or five beers in my belly, and I called him.
I said, you son-of-a-bitch, do you think I'm
scared to you? You are wrong.
DEXTER KING: Was this Cook?
LOYD JOWERS: What was that
guy's name?
LEWIS GARRISON: Glankler?
LOYD JOWERS: Mark Glankler.
That's who it was. I sure called him, got
him out of a meeting. I told him, I said,
hell, I'll come over and talk to you in a
minute.
LEWIS GARRISON: They never did
talk to you?
LOYD JOWERS: Ug-huh. He didn't
have a whole lot to say. I went off on him.
I sure did do it.
LEWIS GARRISON: From the time
this occurred on April 4th, 1968, they never
talked to you about any part you had in it?
LOYD JOWERS: No, never have.
Whenever I went down to the police station
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the next day -- maybe it was the next day. I
think it was on the 6th. I went down and
gave them a statement, you know, about who
was in there.
Of course, that had just happened.
I remembered everybody that was in the
place. I knew most all of them. I knew all
of them personally, even the black guy they
put in, Frank Holt, I knew him personally.
But as far as them asking me anything, no.
DEXTER KING: What was Holt
doing there? Do you know?
LOYD JOWERS: All I know is what
he told me. He was going to work at the
produce place. Damn, I can't remember the
name of it. It wasn't Frank Liberto's
place. It was the one over on Front Street.
LEWIS GARRISON: I can't think of
the name of it, either.
LOYD JOWERS: Well, Carter's,
that's where he worked.
DEXTER KING: Did the rifle
have a scope on it?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yes, sure
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did. Clip-on kind.
LEWIS GARRISON: The problem
with wht Mr. Holt is saying, Mr. Jowers, is
they didn't operate at night over at the
produce company, did they?
LOYD JOWERS: To my knowledge,
they closed around five o'clock.
LEWIS GARRISON: I don't know
that he had anything to do with this case at
all.
LOYD JOWERS: I don't know,
either. Not really.
LEWIS GARRISON: There is
nothing to indicate that he ever had anything
to do with it at all. You never told anyone
he had anything to do with it?
LOYD JOWERS: All that detail
that come out on ABC was Willie Akins' idea.
ANDREW YOUNG: Was there
anybody black other than McCullough that was
in on the early planning?
LOYD JOWERS: Not that I know
of. There could have been.
ANDREW YOUNG: But he was the
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only one that showed up in your place?
LOYD JOWERS: He is the only one
that ever showed up down there that had
anything to do with it. If there was any
more, if Jones was involved in it -- that was
Dr. King's driver. I knew him pretty well.
Is he still living?
DEXTER KING: People talk and
say they have seen him, but nobody has been
able to really pinpoint or locate him.
LOYD JOWERS: I hadn't seen him
in years. But I did know him.
LEWIS GARRISON: Last fall, a
year ago, Mr. Young, you've heard of an
Officer Redditt, an African-American, I had a
chance to talk to him a long time, and --
have you ever talked to him, Mr. King?
DEXTER KING: No, I haven't.
LEWIS GARRISON: He said that he
was there and, as you know, had been watching
Dr. King and I guess Mr. Young when they were
in Memphis, and he told me he was startled
because he had no knowledge of anyone ever
threatening him and had no reason to. The
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first thing he knew, some officer came, I
forget the name of the officer, and got him
and took him to the police department, and
the police commissioner was there along with
who they identified as FBI agents and told
him that he had received a threat.
They took him to his home. An
officer went home with him to make sure he
stayed there. He said he knew what was going
on. By the time he got home, he heard about
the assassination. (Inaudible.) Strange
thing to me, though -- I've seen so many
strange things -- there is Mr. McCullough,
undoubtedly with the police department it has
been established, there he was, an
African-American on the scene, yet Officer
Redditt and the firemen, they were removed.
DEXTER KING: I think the point
you made was he was not interviewed as a
witness.
LEWIS GARRISON: Never. Not in
the police department or anywhere. His name
doesn't appear. He is shown in the pictures.
ANDREW YOUNG: Sam Donaldson was
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the first one that pointed him out to me. He
said he was with Army intelligence and that
he was there to make sure that Dr. King was
dead.
LOYD JOWERS: Make sure Dr. King
was what?
ANDREW YOUNG: Was really dead.
DEXTER KING: He was checking
his pulse when he leaned over.
LEWIS GARRISON: I heard he was
supposed to give some type of a sign if he
wasn't.
(Reporter note: At this point
the tape ends and picks up with the following
statement by Mr. Jowers:)
LOYD JOWERS: Snub .38, a
short-shot .38. It was and snub nose.
That's four-inch of barrel. It shot a
projectile about that long. They called it a
short .38. They didn't make many of them. I
got it stolen from me.
LEWIS GARRISON: Mr. Jowers, you
told Mr. King, too, before what happened to
the casing of the bullet. What did you do
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with that?
LOYD JOWERS: I put it down -- I
tried to bend it together. Well, I did bend
it together. I put it down in the commode
and flushed it. It didn't go down. It
stopped the damn commode up. Anyway -- this
is the next day. I got it out. That night,
whenever I closed, I drove across the
Mississippi bridge, and about in the center
of it I throwed it over the side while I was
driving along. It is in the bottom of the
Mississippi River, the actual shell, the
casing.
DEXTER KING: What time did
Lieutenant Clark -- what time did you see him
on April 4th? Like how many times or what
time did you see him in the grill? Was he in
before the actual shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: He had to be there
before ten o'clock, because I left there
about ten, ten-thirty.
DEXTER KING: That was in the
morning?
LOYD JOWERS: In the morning,
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yeah.
DEXTER KING: What was he doing
there?
LOYD JOWERS: Pardon?
DEXTER KING: What was he doing
there?
LOYD JOWERS: He just stopped by
like the policemen used to always do.
ANDREW YOUNG: That was
Mr. Clark?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: This is on April
4th?
LOYD JOWERS: This was on the
day of the assassination, yeah. I don't
think Johnny Barger come by that day, but I
know Clark did.
ANDREW YOUNG: But now Clark had
to come into the -- into your store and had
gone out through the back?
LOYD JOWERS: He didn't go all
the way to the back. You mean that
afternoon?
ANDREW YOUNG: That afternoon.
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LOYD JOWERS: It is a long brick
building.
ANDREW YOUNG: I know it.
LOYD JOWERS: It had an opening
over here. All he had to do was walk in
front of that fire station, walk on into
the -- no, he didn't have to come through my
place.
ANDREW YOUNG: What I was trying
to figure out is how did the rifle get out in
the backyard.
LOYD JOWERS: Clark had to carry
it out there, if he is in fact the one that
had it.
ANDREW YOUNG: So he carried it
from the back of your store?
LOYD JOWERS: Wait a minute. He
carried it from his car or a car. It could
have been a police car for all I know. I
wasn't back there. He carried it from the
street. Here is the fire station over here.
It ran around behind my store right around to
wherever it was he wanted to do the shooting
from, I guess.
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ANDREW YOUNG: But the box was
in your store on the day before?
LOYD JOWERS: The box had been
in my store, but I didn't give it to anyone.
That's what I'm telling you. I did not.
ANDREW YOUNG: Okay.
LOYD JOWERS: But now someone
picked it up. But I didn't give it to no
one. I couldn't swear it was a rifle. I
think it was. Which anyone -- you know, I
just didn't.
ANDREW YOUNG: But you are
pretty sure that when you were standing at
the back door, Clark gave you a smoking
rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: I'm sure it was
Clark.
ANDREW YOUNG: And then you put
it under the counter?
LOYD JOWERS: I broke it down
and put it under the counter. I breached
it. You know how you take the empty shell
out.
ANDREW YOUNG: Yeah.
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LOYD JOWERS: I broke it down
into two pieces, wrapped it in a table cloth,
put it up under the counter and put some more
towels on top of it. That's where it stayed
until the next day.
ANDREW YOUNG: And it was Raul
that came back and picked it up?
LOYD JOWERS: He didn't do
anything with it except left it wrapped in
that table cloth. He went out the front door
with it.
LEWIS GARRISON: What did he
tell you he came in for that day, Mr. Jowers?
LOYD JOWERS: What did who say?
Raul?
LEWIS GARRISON: Raul or Royal,
whatever --
LOYD JOWERS: He come to pick
that rifle up.
LEWIS GARRISON: Did he tell you
he came to pick the rifle up?
LOYD JOWERS: He asked me if I
had a package for him. I said, well, sure,
I've got it under the counter, I got it last
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night. He said, that's what I'm asking for.
He was real short about it, like if
I wasn't going to give it to him, he'd blow
me away. Anyway, I give it to him, and
that's the last I seen of him.
DEXTER KING: Do you recall an
hour before the killing there was a phone
call made to Frank Liberto about -- in
Pepper's book they talk about this guy
McFerren overhearing a comment about "get the
SOB when he is on the balcony" or something
like that.
LOYD JOWERS: There was no phone
call that I know of made from my restaurant
whatever. I had a pay phone, but there was
not one made from my restaurant. If it
was --
DEXTER KING: You don't have
any idea who Liberto might have been speaking
with?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I do not.
Now, I had heard that, and I don't doubt it
taking place, but all I know is if somebody
made a phone call from my place, they would
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have stepped inside and they called back
there while I was working. I was running
that place myself that night because I had no
help.
ANDREW YOUNG: Did you tell the
help to stay home?
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir.
ANDREW YOUNG: They just stayed
home accidentally?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't know if it
was accidental or not. I always wondered
about that, you know, because they were good
workers. Betty was a good worker, always
come to work.
ANDREW YOUNG: Is she still
alive?
LOYD JOWERS: Yes, she is still
alive. She lives in Memphis somewhere.
ANDREW YOUNG: Do you know where
she lives?
LEWIS GARRISON: She gave her
deposition.
LOYD JOWERS: She give a
deposition. She lives at 931 Roland.
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LEWIS GARRISON: I'm not sure.
Something like that.
LOYD JOWERS: That's where she
lives. I understand she either has sold the
house or done something with it and moved. I
have no idea where.
DEXTER KING: You mentioned a
pay phone. Where was it located?
LOYD JOWERS: Right in the front
of the building. There was a front door --
like there is a front door here. The pay
phone was between the front of the building
and my steam tables. Now, someone could have
stepped in and used that phone.
DEXTER KING: You don't
remember anybody --
LOYD JOWERS: I don't remember
seeing anybody.
DEXTER KING: -- about
four-thirty?
LOYD JOWERS: I sure don't.
That don't mean someone couldn't have stepped
in that door and used that phone and I never
would have known about it. Because I was
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trying to wait on everybody in the place. I
think I had it full of customers, and I was
trying to wait on them.
DEXTER KING: Did you discuss
any of the details of what happened with any
of your associates, like Adkins (sic) or
anybody like that?
LOYD JOWERS: No. Willie said I
told him a lot of things, but he is a big old
liar. I ain't told him nothing. I'll tell
him that, too, if I ever see him again.
DEXTER KING: What time did you
come to work on the 4th, April the 4th?
LOYD JOWERS: Four o'clock.
That's the time I came every day unless --
LEWIS GARRISON: Four a.m.?
LOYD JOWERS: No, p.m. You was
talking about in the afternoon, wasn't you?
LEWIS GARRISON: He was talking
about in the morning. What time did you open
in the morning?
LOYD JOWERS: I opened at five.
I thought you meant that afternoon. I
already told you that I was home during the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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day.
DEXTER KING: Right. Did you
come in on April 4th in the morning?
LOYD JOWERS: I was in there
that morning, oh, yeah, about four o'clock,
because I opened up at five.
DEXTER KING: What were you
saying about four, that you came in at --
LOYD JOWERS: That afternoon I
come in. See, after I got lunch ready, I
turned it over to my cook, and she handled
the lunch crowd. Then I come back to work
that afternoon at four o'clock.
DEXTER KING: What type of car
were you driving that day?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't know if I
was driving my station wagon or my Cadillac.
It was one or the other. Whichever one my
wife wasn't driving, I was driving the other
one.
DEXTER KING: Did you hear --
were you told that there would be --
actually, I read it -- that there would be
somebody in the organization, in Dr. King's
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organization, that would get him on the
balcony, so to speak, or get him in the
position? Had you been told that?
LOYD JOWERS: To my
recollection, I don't remember anybody
telling me that, I do not. Now, that doesn't
mean they didn't do it. We're talking about
thirty years ago or longer.
DEXTER KING: Had you heard of
anybody on the inside that they had
infiltrateed or penetrated?
LOYD JOWERS: Sure, I heard
that. I sure did, from customers in the
restaurant. I heard plenty of it. How much
of that talk was true, I don't know. Maybe
none of it. I tend not to believe half of
it.
DEXTER KING: What kind of
stuff did you hear?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, I heard that
Jones was involved in it. Then I heard that
the other person I heard was -- it wouldn't
make sense to me, but the guy that took his
place, what's his name?
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ANDREW YOUNG: Ralph Abernathy?
LOYD JOWERS: Abernathy, yes. I
heard he had him moved from downstairs to
upstairs. I always doubted that. But
somebody had it done. It had to be someone
in his organization that would do it, I would
think, or his security. I always figured his
security had to have done it.
DEXTER KING: You never heard
anything mentioned about Reverend Kyles or
Reverend Jackson?
LOYD JOWERS: No, sir. I never
did. I never did. I heard a lot of good
about them. I never heard anything bad about
either of those men.
DEXTER KING: Did Liberto ever
mention his ties to Marcellous or -- what was
the guy in Memphis? -- Genovise or Venovise?
LOYD JOWERS: No, not that I can
remember.
DEXTER KING: But it was pretty
common knowledge that he was associated with
the Marcellous organization:
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah. Half
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the police department knew that. Or maybe
more than that.
LEWIS GARRISON: I believe you
are talking about prostitution, gambling and
what else?
LOYD JOWERS: Who you are
talking about?
LEWIS GARRISON: Mr. Liberto.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, Frank? He
had a little gun-running deal, selling guns
to I guess the Cuban rebels, I guess, or at
least that is what I was told, you know.
LEWIS GARRISON: Gambling,
drugs?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah.
LEWIS GARRISON: Prostitution?
LOYD JOWERS: I would think that
money I handled for him before the
assassination, that that money was going to
buy drugs, guns, and payoff money. Now, he
had to pay off, I can tell you that.
LEWIS GARRISON: Who did he have
to pay off?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, he had the
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police department in New Orleans, the police
department in Memphis. That got him a long
way. I'm not too sure he didn't pay
Mr. Crump some money back years ago. Because
he was one powerful dude in this town, you
can believe that.
DEXTER KING: Were there two
back doors from the building leading to the
brush area, one from the kitchen and the
other one from the rear stairway of the
rooming house?
LOYD JOWERS: Well now, are you
talking about where my restaurant was?
DEXTER KING: Yes, sir.
LOYD JOWERS: Okay. My
restaurant had a front entrance and it had a
back entrance. Okay. The upstairs had a
stairwell that come down the side, but it
stayed blocked off all the time. How they
got around the Fire Department blocking that
off, I do not know, but they did.
You could go down the steps, but you
get to that door and it would not open inside
or out. Of course, they had a front
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entrance, and it went right down beside my
grill, which was inside the building, and it
went right out right next to my door.
My door was like here. Their
entrance was right here, just right around
the corner.
DEXTER KING: Do you know the
name of the people who were staying upstairs
in the rooming house --
LOYD JOWERS: Charlie Stephens.
DEXTER KING: -- on April 4th?
LOYD JOWERS: Charlie Stephens
is the only one I really knew. And the
crippled boy lived there. Damn, his name --
I'll be darn. I knew his name because he was
a customer that come in and bought a lot of
beer.
DEXTER KING: Was Earl Clark up
there or Raul that afternoon?
LOYD JOWERS: Not to my
knowledge. Not to my knowledge.
DEXTER KING: Do you remember
what Clark was wearing that afternoon?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I sure don't.
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He wasn't wearing a police uniform. I know
that.
DEXTER KING: I remember you
mentioning a white shirt I thought the last
time.
LOYD JOWERS: Are you talking
about the guy that handed me the gun?
DEXTER KING: Right.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, he had a
white shirt on. Sure did.
DEXTER KING: Do you remember
what else he may have had on?
LOYD JOWERS: Dark pants and a
white shirt. Other than that, I cannot tell
you, because it happened so fast, about like
that and he was gone.
DEXTER KING: Are you pretty
comfortable -- I should ask, did you see him
fire the shot, the rifle?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I did not. I
did not. I heard the shot when it went off.
I couldn't miss hearing it. Whether it went
off from upstairs or down in the bushes, I
couldn't miss hearing it. It sounded like a
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damn cannon.
DEXTER KING: You say it did go
off upstairs?
LOYD JOWERS: Whichever place it
went off. There wasn't but how many feet up
there, ten, twelve feet. That was right over
my back door. That's where the bathroom is.
My back door is right here, and the bathroom
is about ten, twelve feet above.
DEXTER KING: But if he handed
you the rifle, how could he have been
upstairs?
LOYD JOWERS: He couldn't have
been. Now, how you explain that and the test
shows that that bullet was going down, there
is only one explanation for it, and two or
three different people have said this
happened. Jones said something to him about
getting his overcoat or a coat, and he bent
over the counter -- this is the only
explanation I can come up with. He bent over
the rail. That's when he got shot on the
balcony.
DEXTER KING: From down in the
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bushes?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
ANDREW YOUNG: Your place was on
a hill, though.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
ANDREW YOUNG: So the bushes and
the room were about the same level?
LOYD JOWERS: They were about
the same level. You see, if you shoot a
rifle --
ANDREW YOUNG: He was sort of
like that, leaning over talking.
LOYD JOWERS: He was leaning
over trying to hear what Jones was talking
about. That has to be the only explanation.
It went in long about here.
ANDREW YOUNG: It hit the tip
of his chin.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, it did? It
did hit his chin? Okay.
ANDREW YOUNG: And then --
LOYD JOWERS: So he had to be
leaning over that railing. Now, if he in
fact was shot from there, from that backyard,
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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then that's where it had to be. I would say
it would be a pretty good angle from up in
that rooming house. Whether that is the way
it happened, I don't know. That's the only
explanation I have for it.
LEWIS GARRISON: Was the door to
the basement open that afternoon?
LOYD JOWERS: I never locked
it. There wasn't nothing down there. I
figured there was no reason to lock it.
There sure wasn't.
DEXTER KING: Do you know
whether Clark or anybody went down there
after the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea.
DEXTER KING: Do you think
Clark put on a uniform or had a uniform after
the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea.
DEXTER KING: But if he had on
a white shirt, would it have been easy for
him to change into other clothes?
LOYD JOWERS: He could change
shirts in a matter of seconds if you didn't
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have it already buttoned up. Sure you
could. He could have changed that when he
got in the car.
DEXTER KING: So you never saw
him anymore after that?
LOYD JOWERS: No.
DEXTER KING: Who was in the
brush area at the time of the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea.
DEXTER KING: So you took the
rifle and just went inside?
LOYD JOWERS: I was already
inside. He handed me the rifle through the
back door.
DEXTER KING: He just came into
the back door or to the back door?
LOYD JOWERS: He was about from
here to Junior there. He didn't have to hand
me the rifle. He threw it to me. He threw
it to me like you would do a soldier. Of
course, I caught it. It had just been
fired. I heard it when it went off. I done
what Frank told me to, I broke it down and
put it under the counter and went on and
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
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waited on my customers.
DEXTER KING: Did you see
anybody driving the Mustang that afternoon, a
white Mustang?
LOYD JOWERS: I did not. I know
there was one parked in my parking place when
I got to work at four o'clock. I pulled
right up behind him like that.
DEXTER KING: That was on South
Main?
LOYD JOWERS: On South Main. I
did notice it had out-of-state tags, but I
don't know what state it was. I knew it
wasn't local. I figured it was shoppers over
across the street over there shopping.
That's what I figured. I got as far away
from that sparkplug (sic) as I could and got
on out and went to work.
DEXTER KING: In your opinion,
and I know it is just an opinion, do you
think Earl Clark was the trigger man?
LOYD JOWERS: Now, you know, I
have an opinion of that. Now, my personal
opinion, I think he was. I sure do.
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DEXTER KING: Why do you --
aside from him throwing you a rifle, was
there any conversation you all had beforehand
or any talk you had heard about did he have a
reason to or was it just money? Why would he
have done it? What was his motive, I guess?
LOYD JOWERS: I would think
probably for money. That's what I would
think. That's what I believed at the time.
ANDREW YOUNG: Somebody -- was
there any evidence that he lived a little
better after the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: I really don't
know, Mr. Young.
ANDREW YOUNG: You didn't see
him anymore?
LOYD JOWERS: If I ever seen
that man any more up until -- he is dead,
isn't he?
LEWIS GARRISON: I think he has
died.
LOYD JOWERS: I don't remember.
I don't think I ever seen him anymore.
LEWIS GARRISON: Even though you
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had been a close friend and had been hunting
companions?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, we had
been friends for years.
DEXTER KING: What about do you
recall which police officers interviewed you
after the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea.
They really didn't do any interviewing that
night. They took down a name and address and
telephone number and told us to go home when
they got all the information, name, address
and telephone number. That's all I give them
that night.
DEXTER KING: Who conducted the
crime scene I guess interrogation? Was it
FBI or the Memphis police?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea.
DEXTER KING: What about the
people, Barger -- is it Barger or Barjer?
LOYD JOWERS: Barger,
B A R G E R.
DEXTER KING: Zachery,
McCullough, Clark, Liberto, did you see any
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of those people after the killing?
LOYD JOWERS: You mean that
night?
DEXTER KING: Right.
LOYD JOWERS: Or the next day?
No, sir.
DEXTER KING: Or even the next
day. I know you talked to Liberto.
LOYD JOWERS: I talked to
Liberto. I didn't see him. I didn't see
none of them the next day. I sure didn't.
DEXTER KING: How many times
did you meet McCullough?
LOYD JOWERS: As far as actually
meeting him, like you telling me his your
name is McCullough and me telling him my
name, I don't think I ever did. I did know
him. I knew him when I seen him and still
would, I think, even though it has been
thirty years.
DEXTER KING: How deep do you
think he was involved in the killing?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't really --
really and truly? I think he was just
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following orders. That's exactly what I
think. I always believed that. I believed
he was just doing what he was supposed to be
doing.
DEXTER KING: How many planning
sessions did you see him attend?
LOYD JOWERS: How many what?
DEXTER KING: How many planning
sessions did you see him attend?
LOYD JOWERS: Just that one time
when he come in the grill. I had no idea
what they were talking about. I got a word
here or there. I knew it was illegal,
whatever it was. It wasn't unusual.
DEXTER KING: And Barger
brought him in?
LOYD JOWERS: I didn't say --
DEXTER KING: Did he work for
Barger?
LOYD JOWERS: See, Barger was a
field inspector.
DEXTER KING: What does that
mean? He was over the uniformed division?
LOYD JOWERS: He was over a
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section of the uniformed. They had four
field inspectors. I don't know how many
policemen worked on each section. If I had
to guess, I'd say about a hundred, maybe a
hundred twenty-five.
Of course, they had the city split
up. Each one of them had -- I believe they
call them assistant chiefs now, but they were
field inspectors back then.
DEXTER KING: How much money
was Clark paid?
LOYD JOWERS: I have no idea. I
don't have the slightest idea.
DEXTER KING: What do you -- who
do you think paid him, then?
LOYD JOWERS: The man who said
his name was Raul. He is the one I gave the
money to. He had to be the one who paid him.
DEXTER KING: Do you think that
Raul approached Clark about being the
trigger man?
LOYD JOWERS: I don't know. I
wouldn't doubt it, but I don't know.
DEXTER KING: Do you know of
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any other Memphis police officers that would
have received money for the operation?
LOYD JOWERS: No, I do not. I
don't know that Clark got any money out of
it. I just know I believe he did. But as
far as I seen him getting any, he may have
done it for the fun of it. I don't know.
You never know about people.
DEXTER KING: Did you ever hear
anything about this hoax radio broadcast, you
know, that this broadcast was put out over
the police radio that the suspect was
traveling in one direction?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, I heard
about that. He was supposed to have been out
in Raleigh or somewhere like that, a white
Mustang, the police were supposed to have
been behind him, and James Earl Ray said he
was going the other direction going down 65.
DEXTER KING: Going north?
Going north or south.
LEWIS GARRISON: South.
DEXTER KING: South, rather.
But the radio said he was going north?
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LOYD JOWERS: Going north, yeah.
DEXTER KING: Now, it has been
said the only people who would have had the
technology to break into police radio
frequency would have been the military.
LOYD JOWERS: They are wrong
about that. I had a scanner that picked
up -- I think they had four channels. I had
a scanner that picked up all four of those
channels.
DEXTER KING: No, no, not pick
up but to actually break in and broadcast.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, to
break in and talk on it, that would be the
military.
DEXTER KING: In fact, that
came out in the House Select when they did
their investigation.
LOYD JOWERS: I misunderstood
you.
DEXTER KING: Sure.
LOYD JOWERS: I thought you
said --
DEXTER KING: To listen. You
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can monitor. But to actually break in and
broadcast.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: What about the
taxi driver that picked up the passenger at
the time of the killing and said they saw a
man who came down over the wall and get into
a Memphis police car up on I think Huling?
Is it Huling Street?
LOYD JOWERS: Huling, yeah.
DEXTER KING: And the driver
was killed that night.
LEWIS GARRISON: I don't think
he knows anything about that. What happened
with that was after this Prime Time telecast,
there was a gentleman that called me and gave
his name to Dr. Pepper, like he states in his
book.
The statement he made was that he
was a cab driver that night and that a friend
of his was also a cab driver and that this
friend was over at the Lorraine Motel and
radioed him and said I just saw -- well, he
said he was unloading some luggage and that
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he was looking up and recognized Dr. King,
and he said -- he radioed to his friend that
"I just saw Dr. King was shot."
He said he called his dispatcher,
and he told him to go ahead and get out of
the area. So the gentleman called me who is
still living in Memphis and said that he told
his friend to meet him out at the airport at
a place they frequent out there.
He said two officers came out
there. He heard his friend give the police
officer an account of what he had saw. He
had seen just what you said, someone who ran
and got in a police car.
Then he'll tell you this today -- he
has talked to several people. But at any
rate, he said the police officer said, okay,
come down in the morning to the station and
give us a full statement. So the next
morning they found the man's body across the
bridge on the Arkansas side and they said he
had been thrown out of a car.
LOYD JOWERS: I remember that
cab driver getting killed. I didn't know
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about all that.
LEWIS GARRISON: But there is no
account of it. You can't find a thing about
this. But this man will tell you that
today. I gave his name to Dr. Pepper.
ANDREW YOUNG: Do you remember
his name?
LEWIS GARRISON: No, sir, I
don't have it here with me right now.
DEXTER KING: This is actually
in Pepper's book, the name of the fellow?
LEWIS GARRISON: Yes. He gave
Dr. Pepper his name.
LOYD JOWERS: I didn't know
anything about it.
LEWIS GARRISON: I've had
someone interview him before Dr. Pepper did.
That's exactly what happened. Louis Ward, I
believe it is something like that.
DEXTER KING: You believe they
just got rid of the file?
LEWIS GARRISON: I think there
is no question. After we began to dig into
it, we could find no record where the man was
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even killed. I believe his name is
Mr. Ward. He will tell you today that's what
happened.
He said he heard the man at the
airport tell the two police officers that he
had seen Dr. King -- he was unloading
luggage, looked up and saw Dr. King over the
railing, and he said he saw him -- it looked
to him like it blowed his whole face off. He
looked around immediately and saw a man
running and get into a police car.
Then he radioed his dispatcher. Of
course, he said they were close friends.
This man said he was out in East Memphis. He
said, well, let's meet at the airport and
we'll talk about it. He said two police
officers came out there and interviewed the
man.
He said, I heard him give the
statement, tell the police exactly what he
had seen. They said to come in in the
morning and give a full statement at the
police station. But then he was found dead
on the Arkansas side. The story was someone
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threw him out of a car.
But we can't find even a trace of
it. In fact, the cab company claims they
can't find a company record that he even
worked there. We went so far to check with
the cab company. They couldn't find
anything. They won't admit it.
DEXTER KING: What did you hear
was learned about any prior knowledge about
the killing or involvement of anybody with a
public or private person in Memphis or
elsewhere or any state officials or federal
officials?
LOYD JOWERS: Any knowledge I
had prior to the assassination?
DEXTER KING: Uh-huh. Or even
after.
LOYD JOWERS: I heard everything
in the world I guess after. But I didn't put
much stock in it. Most of it was just beer
talk, you know.
DEXTER KING: Anything before?
LOYD JOWERS: Never heard a
thing before.
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DEXTER KING: You mentioned
Solomon Jones. But you heard that after.
That is beer talk, is that what you mean when
you you said beer talk, the thing you said
about Solomon Jones?
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, I heard
that afterwards, that he was talking to Dr.
King up on the balcony. If he in fact was
shot from my backyard, Dr. King would had to
have been leaning over that balcony. He
would have had to have been. Otherwise that
bullet could have gone up. I mean, it was
that or it would have gone level.
ANDREW YOUNG: It could have
gone either way. It really -- you can't tell
which way it went because it was such a clean
wound that --
LOYD JOWERS: Didn't it hit a
bone in his --
ANDREW YOUNG: A bone in his
spinal cord. I don't think it hit anything
in his shoulder.
LOYD JOWERS: I thought it hit
his collar bone.
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LEWIS GARRISON: I don't think
so.
ANDREW YOUNG: The collar bone
is up here.
LOYD JOWERS: That's what I'm
talking about. It was like from here to here
just blown away.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: Now, Mr. Jowers,
when we met the last time, it was clear that
we felt we needed to meet again to really
get --
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah.
DEXTER KING: -- get more
detail. I'm trying to remember, and I'm
going off the top of my head, what you had
stated today that you haven't already stated,
and I can't really seem to pinpoint anything
much different than what you already said
then.
I wanted to just ask for your -- if
you could help me here, because I'm trying to
recall was there something that I missed the
last time that you stated today that you
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didn't state before.
LOYD JOWERS: The only
difference is that I'm almost positive it was
Clark in my back door, and I'm not sure about
the rifle. But I'll tell you what I
thought. I thought it was a 30-30. It could
have been a 30-06, as well as it could have
been a 30-30.
Now, when the shot went off, it
sounded like a 30-30, because they are a lot
louder than a 30-06 when they are fired.
That is two things. The other -- I told you
something else that I didn't tell you
before. I don't know what it was. It is on
that tape, of course.
DEXTER KING: Well, is there
anything you want to tell me that I haven't
asked that you think might be helpful?
LOYD JOWERS: I can't think of a
thing, Dexter. Now, I've told you up to now
everything I know about it.
DEXTER KING: What have you --
or from your opinion or what you have heard,
rumors included, at what level of government
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or involvement do you think this
assassination was carried out by plan?
LOYD JOWERS: What you want to
know is where the order come from?
DEXTER KING: Right.
LOYD JOWERS: It is my opinion
and my belief that the order come from J.
Edgar Hoover. Now, that's where the order
come from.
How to prove that, there is no way.
I could just easily said the President, but I
know better than that, because I don't
believe the president would have done that.
But now J. Edgar Hoover hated your dad.
DEXTER KING: How could -- if
military were involved, wouldn't the
Commander in Chief by just from you being in
the service and knowing --
LOYD JOWERS: Well now, wait a
minute now. The CIA or FBI are not
military. No.
DEXTER KING: No, I'm
saying --
LOYD JOWERS: You mean if the
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military was involved?
DEXTER KING: Right.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah. Not only
that, but there would be a record of it.
DEXTER KING: And wouldn't the
Commander in Chief have to give the order if
they were involved in something like that?
LOYD JOWERS: Some word between
the guy that was doing the assassination and
the President, somebody in between there
would give the order. But first it would
have to come from the head honcho.
ANDREW YOUNG: Hoover had a man
who was his number two man who was almost
staying in the White House, Lee DeLoach. He
was the one that was keeping -- that was sort
of telling Lyndon Johnson what they wanted
him to know.
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: Let me also ask
you is there anyone that you know of that can
present scientific evidence about this case,
anything that occurred that you know of,
somebody who is still living that would
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have -- that would be able to say not only
did I see this, here is evidence, a rifle or,
you know, anything concrete?
LOYD JOWERS: To my knowledge, I
don't know of anyone that has scientific
evidence of which rifle did actually kill
him. I definitely don't believe it was the
one the police found. I'll never believe
that in a million years.
ANDREW YOUNG: Where did they
find that?
LOYD JOWERS: Right in front
of -- see, this was the street here and the
sidewalk. My building was right here.
You've got the rooming house, two doors here,
two rooming house doors, then you've got an
amusement company over here. His front door
sits back I guess it must be ten feet.
That's where the rifle was found.
DEXTER KING: So it is your
feeling that James Earl Ray did not --
LOYD JOWERS: No. He didn't no
more kill him than you killed your own dad.
No. No. Nope. I'd never believe that in a
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million -- even if he told me I wouldn't
believe it.
DEXTER KING: So why was he set
up?
LOYD JOWERS: His own fault.
They got him out of jail. They furnished him
money. They furnished him passports. Now,
they come up with that tale about him setting
up a gun deal, but that wasn't true. They
may have told him that, you know.
But now he stalked your father
halfway across the United States, went to
Atlanta, had all that written down. Now, he
was doing that for the CIA and the Mafia.
That's exactly why he was doing that.
DEXTER KING: What if they told
him to go to these places so they could
establish a paper trail with established
documentation? If they were in fact using
him as a set-up person, wouldn't they want
him to appear that he was stalking him?
LOYD JOWERS: Why, certainly
they would. Sure they would.
DEXTER KING: So is it possible
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that he was doing things that appeared to be
stalking but maybe he didn't realize it?
LOYD JOWERS: He probably didn't
even realize it, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure
that's the way it went down. I'm sure.
Because if he wasn't going to -- if he had no
intention of hurting Dr. King, which I don't
believe he did, why would he want to be
stalking him?
He was doing what he was told to
do. That was to make it look like that he
was stalking Dr. King, whether he was or
not.
DEXTER KING: Well, I think I
have asked --
ANDREW YOUNG: Do you mind me
taking a picture of this?
LOYD JOWERS: No, no. We'll
make you a tape of that, if you want to.
Help yourself. Go right ahead.
ANDREW YOUNG: Why don't you
lean toward --
LOYD JOWERS: Can you see all of
us?
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ANDREW YOUNG: Yeah, I can.
LOYD JOWERS: Do you want me
to -- do you want to take some pictures for
your family?
DEXTER KING: Sure.
LOYD JOWERS: Do you want me to
smile or not? Okay, I was just kidding.
DEXTER KING: Do you want me to
snap you?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, Dexter, I
wish I knew exactly who done the killing, but
I don't. If I did, believe me, I'd say it.
But I do know this for sure: It was a
for-sure conspiracy.
LEWIS GARRISON: Well,
Mr. Jowers, isn't it true that Mr. Young and
Mr. King --
LOYD JOWERS: Lewis, I can't
hear you.
LEWIS GARRISON: Isn't it really
true that Mr. -- that lieutenant Clark did
it? You know that, don't you?
LOYD JOWERS: I'm almost
positive. But as far as seeing his face, I
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did not.
LEWIS GARRISON: But he had on
the clothes and all that you had seen him in
earlier?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah, I had seen
him in the same clothes. But as far as me
seeing his face, I did not. Now, I saw the
back of his head.
ANDREW YOUNG: The people who
were involved in this as far as you know that
are still alive would be --
LEWIS GARRISON: Lieutenant
Zachery.
LOYD JOWERS: Zachery is still
alive.
LEWIS GARRISON: McCullough.
McCullough is still alive.
LOYD JOWERS: McCullough.
LEWIS GARRISON: Who else? Of
course, Mr. Jowers. Ms. Spates in front of
Mr. Jowers -- he knows because he was
there -- she says what he saw.
LOYD JOWERS: That was a big old
lie.
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LEWIS GARRISON: You know she
described it in lengthy statements under oath
that she saw this.
LOYD JOWERS: Oh, yeah, sure.
LEWIS GARRISON: You heard that
under oath, heard her say that?
LOYD JOWERS: Sure, I was right
there.
LEWIS GARRISON: She had given
the deposition. She gave affidavit after
affidavit and described what she saw. You
know, that don't you?
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: That's what I
don't understand. How would she -- why would
she go to that extent?
LOYD JOWERS: To get at me.
DEXTER KING: What?
LOYD JOWERS: That's why. No
other reason. She is really and truly -- she
is serious about that, too. There is not a
dad-gum word of it that is true, but she
believes it, and there is nobody that can
change her mind, that I actually done the
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shooting.
DEXTER KING: Oh, she thinks
you did the shooting?
LOYD JOWERS: Damn right she
said it. I don't know if she said it in the
deposition or not, but she told me that.
DEXTER KING: Now, how many
times did you see Clark that day in your
grill?
LOYD JOWERS: One time.
DEXTER KING: That was in the
morning?
LOYD JOWERS: That don't mean he
wasn't in there more than that. See, I left
about ten, somewhere around ten.
DEXTER KING: You said
Ms. Spates used to be your girlfriend?
LOYD JOWERS: Yes, sir.
ANDREW YOUNG: Hell hath no
fury like a woman scorned.
LOYD JOWERS: And, buddy, she
got one hell of a temper, too.
LEWIS GARRISON: She has two
children and says he is the father.
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LOYD JOWERS: I offered to go
with her to take a blood test. Then we'll
find out if I am or not. She backed out.
Right on up to the time to go, then she
backed out. She knew damn well I wasn't the
father of those children. If I had been, I
would have been supporting them.
LEWIS GARRISON: Mr. Jowers,
under oath, though, you said you were engaged
in a sexual relationship with her?
LOYD JOWERS: Well, hell, yeah,
for some period of time.
LEWIS GARRISON: That went on
for a year or two?
LOYD JOWERS: It was longer than
that, more like five years.
LEWIS GARRISON: I several
years?
LOYD JOWERS: Like I say about
the President, a man is allowed to do any
damn thing, you know, especially a lounge
man.
LEWIS GARRISON: Why don't you
step outside a moment and let me talk to
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them.
LOYD JOWERS: Okay.
ANDREW YOUNG: We really
appreciate your seeing us, your coming
forward.
LOYD JOWERS: I hate I'm not any
more help now. If there is anything I can
do, you can believe I'll do it.
DEXTER KING: You said if you
thought it would help, you would come
forward --
LOYD JOWERS: Yeah.
DEXTER KING: -- to the media?
Don't you think it would cause people to
start --
LOYD JOWERS: I think it would
get me put in jail. I think it would get me
indicted. That's exactly what I think. I
could be wrong, but I don't think so.
DEXTER KING: Okay.
ANDREW YOUNG: Thank you very
much.
LOYD JOWERS: See you later.
ANDREW YOUNG: Okay."
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(This is the end of the tape
proceedings played in the court room.)
THE COURT: All right, ladies
and gentlemen. This is a good time for us to
break for lunch.
(Jury out.)
(Lunch recess.)
THE COURT: All right. Bring
the jury out, please, sir.
(Jury in).
THE COURT: All right, Mr.
Pepper. You may proceed.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiffs call His Honor Judge Arthur
Haynes.
ARTHUR J. HAYNES, JR.
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Judge Haynes.
A. Good afternoon, sir.
Q. Thank you very much for joining us
here this afternoon: Would you state for the
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record, your full name and address.
A. Arthur Jackson Haynes, Jr., 3533
Spring Valley Terrace, Birmingham, Alabama.
Q. And what is your present occupation?
A. I'm a circuit judge, Tenth Judicial
Circuit, Birmingham, Alabama.
Q. How long have you been a circuit
court judge?
A. Fifteen years.
Q. And before you were a circuit court
judge, what did you do?
A. I was a lawyer, a courtroom lawyer.
Q. You were a trial lawyer?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Was there a time in 1968 that you
were asked to become involved in the case of
the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.?
A. I was.
Q. And what was the position that you
undertook at that time?
A. Well, simple arithmetic will tell you
I was a very young lawyer at the time. James
Earl Ray contacted my father, who was also a
trial lawyer. We had had some success in
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defending highly-publicized difficult,
unpopular cases.
When James Earl Ray was arrested in
London and contacted us, asked us to
undertake his representation. Actually, we
were contacted by R. J. Sneyed, which was the
name he was traveling under on a Canadian
passport. We went to London.
Q. You and your father then became
defense lawyers for James Earl Ray?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You were his first defense lawyers.
Is that right?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And did you undertake the trial
preparation of that case?
A. Absolutely.
Q. And were you ready to go to trial?
A. Yes, sir. Absolutely. He changed
lawyers the night before I was going to give
the opening statement in the case.
Q. You were prepared to go to trial
right up to the night before the trial date
and then what happened?
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A. I left James Earl Ray on Friday. I
spent all day with him here in Memphis on
Friday getting ready for trial. I returned
to Birmingham late Friday evening and came
back on Sunday night. I had to get new
suits, do some final things to get ready for
trial. When we arrived, we were handed a
note saying that when changed lawyers.
Q. Were you able to eventually learn
what happened and why he made that change of
counsel at the midnight hour?
A. I never did know for sure, Mr.
Pepper. That remains a mystery to me. I
know that he contacted us approximately one
week later and said, gentlemen, I made the
biggest mistake I ever made, would you please
come back to try this case for me, all this
new fellow wanted me to do is plead guilty.
Q. It was too late by then?
A. Yes, sir. The case was so bolloxed
up that we just weren't willing to get back
involved in it.
Q. Judge Haynes, since you took that
case up to the eve of trial and diligently
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prepared the trial, you were very familiar
with the evidence that the State had?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. We're going to talk about a
particular aspect of that evidence here this
afternoon, but in general what is your view,
what can you tell us now in terms of how you
saw the case?
A. In 1968 on the eve of trial the State
was absolutely confined to a theory of one
man: James Earl Ray, acting alone, killed
Dr. King. Our view of it was that the
evidence and testimony was inescapable that
that was an impossible result both factually
and it was an impossible result at the
trial. We were absolutely confident that the
case would be won.
Q. Were you and your father not in fact
asked to take a plea bargain to James Earl
Ray offered by the State early on because
they didn't want to try this case?
A. I don't know what they wanted to do,
but, yes, we had a plea bargain offered
earlier and took it to James Earl Ray.
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Q. What were were the terms of that plea
bargain, do you recall?
A. I've forgot exactly what they were,
Mr. Pepper. Whatever the plea was, the plea
we were offered allowed for parole in ten
years. I believe he took a ninety-nine year
sentence, which at that time made him
eligible for parole in thirty-three years.
And we were offered a sentence that allowed
for parole in ten years. Of course, parole
wasn't a likelihood in that case, anyway.
The offer was better than the one we had, at
least theoretically.
Q. What was James Earl Ray's response to
that offer?
A. It was preposterous. Neither he nor
we were going to consider a plea of guilty in
a case that should have been won. Obviously
we would have considered a reasonable plea,
but I think the circumstances were such that
a lesser plea simply was not something that
the prosecutors were putting forward.
Q. Okay. Moving on, you and your father
and your team of investigators obviously
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interviewed a good number of witnesses.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you do some of this interviewing
yourself personally?
A. Yes, I did.
Q. And did you at one time or another
interview a man called Canipe, who owned a
store on South Main Street?
A. Sure. Canipe Amusement Company, yes,
sir. We interviewed Mr. Canipe.
Q. So that we can set the location of
that, Judge, if I can bring you back to an
area which I'm sure you haven't thought about
in many years, but --
A. I recognize it vividly.
Q. This, you see, is a depiction of the
rooming house --
A. Yes, sir.
Q. -- which it had two wings?
A. Right.
Q. And underneath one wing do you see
roughly where Canipe's store would have been?
A. Put your pointer right back where it
was. I believe there was a doorway to the
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rooming house there and then to the right
there was an angle doorway. If you would cut
off that corner roughly there was an angled
entranceway to the Canipe Amusement Company.
It would be in the lower right-hand portion
of that building where you are pointing,
right about where your pointer is.
Q. That's where Canipe's Amusement
Parlor was located?
A. Yes.
Q. Now let's put up a couple of
photographs. Does that look familiar?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. This is the amusement company you are
speaking about?
A. Right. That's the angled
entranceway.
Q. That's the angled entrance here?
A. Yes.
Q. This is the entrance -- one of the
entrances to the rooming house.
A. Yes, sir.
Q. The other entrance is right over here
between the two wings of the rooming house.
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Q. There was a -- on the second floor --
I never went out that entrance, but there was
a crosswalk used by anyone that went in that
entrance there. There was another entrance
there or around the back, one, I forget
which.
Q. Right. Now, what was the State's
contention with respect to evidence that was
found in this area?
A. The State's theory was there was a
Browning box, a Browning rifle box, that
contained some items of clothing, a radio
that had James Earl Ray's Missouri state
penitentiary number on it and a Remmington
760 rifle that James Earl Ray had bought in
Birmingham. That box was -- I believe the
rifle itself was wrapped in clothing. I'm
not totally sure of that. The box itself was
wrapped and tied in some fashion.
The State's theory was that James
Earl Ray had fired the shot that killed Dr.
King, had run across the entranceway there in
that slant between the two buildings.
Adjoining these two buildings was sort of a
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rickety metal connecting-way. The State's
theory this was James Earl Ray had fired the
shot from the bathroom on that second floor,
come down that hallway into his room and
carefully packed that box, tied it up, then
had proceeded across the walkway the length
of the building to the back where that stair
from that door came up, had come down the
stairs out the door, placed the Browning box
containing the rifle and the radio there in
the Canipe entryway.
That was the State's theory. It was
the only theory that they could have with
James Earl Ray acting alone in order to prove
their theory.
Q. Then he proceeded to get into a
Mustang and drive away?
A. That's right.
Q. The Mustang was supposedly parked
somewhere around here.
Would you put on the second
photograph. Now, that's a closer view of the
angled doorway. Where did they say this
evidence box was --
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A. I've never seen that picture,
Mr. Pepper. I believe the evidence box was
to the right sort of up against that brick
wall to the right, I believe.
Q. Right here?
A. Yes.
Q. We're talking about thirty-one,
thirty-two years ago. I believe that's where
it was. Mr. Canipe, who owned that amusement
company, was on the scene at the time of the
killing. Is that right?
A. That's what they told me, yes, sir.
Q. Did you have an opportunity to
interview him?
A. Yes.
Q. How long after the actual event do
you recall that you interviewed him?
A. How long after the event was it when
we interviewed him?
Q. Yes.
A. Dr. King was killed April the 4th.
James Earl Ray was arrested in June. He
contacted us immediately. We started
investigating it immediately, even before we
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went to London. I would say it was in the
August range, July, August of 1968.
Q. The summer of 1968?
A. I'd say so, yes, sir.
Q. That was at a time when the events
would have been fresh in the mind of Mr.
Canipe?
A. Of course, I don't know what was --
here I am being a judge. I'm sustaining the
objection. I don't know what was in his
mind, but it should have been fresh. It was
immediate.
Q. When you spoke with him, did he
appear to be aware of --
A. Absolutely, sure. He remembered it
very vividly. In fact, we turned over that
entire area, as you can, imagine looking for
not only witnesses but also to exclude people
who later may or may not have knowledge about
it.
He was one of the more reliable
people truthfully that we found down there.
Those in Dr. King's party, they were not
aware of what was happening, as they were on
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the other side of the street.
Q. What did he tell you -- precisely
what did he tell you about what he recalled
about the dropping of that evidence?
A. He said that the package was dropped
in his doorway by a man who dropped it in his
doorway and headed down South Main Street,
headed south down Main Street on foot, and
that this happened at about ten minutes
before the shot was fired. He was tied up
doing something but saw it happen and didn't
go out to check what it was.
Q. He told you that this bundle of
evidence was dropped in his doorway about ten
minutes before the shot was actually fired?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What did you think of that?
A. We thought it was terrific evidence.
Furthermore, it was very credible, because
right next to that was a fire station, and
the fire station was packed with Memphis
Tactical Squad detectives, firemen, curiosity
seekers, people who were security for Dr.
King and also surveilling him. The fire
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station was packed with people looking out
the back.
Of course, when they saw Dr. King go
down, the fire station erupted like a
beehive, and they poured out down the
driveway out the door coming looking both in
the bushes, where most of them thought the
shot was fired, and also on down on Main
Street.
So to us it is circumstantial. In
addition to the time involved, it was
circumstantially almost impossible to believe
that somebody had been able to throw that
down and leave right in the face of that
erupting fire station.
Not only was Mr. Canipe a credible
witness, but what he said was very credible
taking into account all the circumstances.
We were very very impressed with his
testimony.
Q. Judge Haynes, at this point in the
plaintiffs' case we're dealing with the
rifle, the rifle in evidence.
A. Yes, sir.
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Q. And the death slug. Was the rifle
that was found in that box the weapon that
the State contended was the murder weapon?
A. It was. It was the only weapon
found.
Q. Were you familiar at that time with
any ballistics testing of that weapon?
A. Yes, sir, from the FBI lab. Of
course, they took it to Washington and
performed ballistics tests.
Q. What were the results of that testing
that was done at the time?
A. I believe the phraseology used in the
report was that the evidence slug, that is,
the slug taken from Dr. King's body, and the
rifle, that the evidence slug was consistent
with the type of slug fired by that rifle.
In essence, the best they could do was that
Dr. King was killed by a 30-06 rifle and that
this was a 30-06 rifle.
Q. That's all they could say. Could
they match the bullet, the death slug itself,
to that rifle?
A. We didn't think they had a chance in
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the world of matching it. As the FBI -- if
there is a match, if they can make a match
out of a little piece of a slug the size of
your little fingernail, if they did, the
testimony would be that the evidence weapon
to the exclusion of all other weapons in the
world fired the evidence slug. No, sir, they
could not do that.
Q. But is there any doubt in your mind
that if they could have matched that death
slug they took from Dr. King's body to that
rifle in evidence, that they would have done
so?
A. There is no doubt about that. They
would have prized that testimony. That would
be crucial testimony. Then you wouldn't have
to rely on any of the vagaries of eyewitness
testimony. Sure, that would be very
important testimony. Well, we thought it was
important.
Q. Now, did there come a time in the
course of your investigation when you
actually yourself saw, held, examined
personally the death slug?
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A. Yes, sir. I held the slug that
killed Dr. King in my hand.
Q. Had you seen other death shrugs and
other bullets at that point in your career?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What was your view with respect to
that particular slug that you examined at the
time?
A. To the naked eye, it was as good an
evidence slug as you can have. It was a
Remmington core lot bullet and it had a metal
base to the slug. The metal base wasn't
skewed. It was almost perfectly round. See
could the lands and grooves, the marks on the
slug with your naked eye. Visually it was an
excellent evidence slug.
Q. As you looked at it, did you think
that it could be matched easily if it was in
fact the death slug?
A. It was a very small room I guess this
courtroom, certainly the criminal courthouse,
and when I saw that slug, I knew right then
if the James Earl Ray fired that slug, we
were going to see every expert that you can
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imagine in the whole world to put that slug
with that rifle. It just didn't pan out that
way.
Q. Judge Haynes, as a result of your
intensive trial preparation and analysis of
the State's case right up to that November
date, how did you believe that a sitting jury
at that time analyzing that evidence and
weighing that charge would have voted?
A. Well, of course, all a trial lawyer
can do is the best he can in assessing what a
jury is going to do. I have considered in my
thirty-five-year career a jury is the best
lie detector there is. But we felt like the
jury would, if it would follow the law and
the evidence, that on the evidence available
and the law in the case, there was virtually
no chance that the State could prove beyond a
reasonable doubt that James Earl Ray could
have acted alone in firing the shot that
killed Dr. King.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further.
Thank you.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
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BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Judge Haynes, I'm Lewis Garrisoin
representing the Defendant Loyd Jowers. I'm
going to ask you a few questions.
During your interviews with Mr. Ray
and the others you interviewed, did they ever
mention anything going on in James Grill
located here next to the rooming house?
A. Yes, sir. James Earl Ray said at
some point in the afternoon -- he said he had
an accomplice, an associate by the name of
Raul. He said at some point in the
afternoon that one or both of them had gone
into Jim's Grill I think to have a beer. We
interviewed everybody we could lay our hands
on who was in Jim's Grill and could find no
corroboration that they went in there.
Q. Did you ever hear the name Loyd
Jowers mentioned in the investigation?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. In what capacity was he mentioned?
A. Renfro Hayes was an investigator who
worked for us at the time. We had hired
Renfro because, among other things, he knew
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that area of town and a lot of people
involved.
Q. I knew Mr. Hayes well.
A. Then you know what I'm talking
about. Hayes knew Loyd Jowers and at the
time Loyd Jowers was operating Jim's Grill.
Hayes reported back to us that there was
nobody in Jim's Grill that had testimony to
offer that would in any way affect the case.
We had so much ground to cover, we just
excluded that.
Q. Did you ever hear the name Frank
Liberto mentioned by Mr. Ray or anyone during
your investigation?
A. I never heard the name Jowers or
Liberto mentioned by Ray at all. The answer
to that question is no. I think I heard the
Liberto name -- yes, before today I've heard
the name Liberto. I know that Hayes
mentioned it to me maybe in the 1970's but
not contemporaneous with this.
Q. Did you make some effort to locate
this person called Raul?
A. Yes. To some extent. To some
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extent. Bear in mind the question we had on
the table was defending a murder case, not
proving who killed Dr. King. Therefore, our
focus was different than the search for
Raul. But if you want me to go forward to
the extent that we were interested in him --
Q. Yes.
A. -- there was some information about
New Orleans. We thought it was very -- there
was something about it that triggered us as
being very important. In fact, Ray told us
the reason the rifle was in Memphis was that
it was part of an operation to bring guns
from Mississippi down to New Orleans to Cuban
revolutionaries.
We wanted to go to New Orleans. We
thought it was very, very strange that James
Earl Ray refused to allow us to go to New
Orleans. He instructed us that no matter
what happens, to do nothing to investigate
that connection.
To that extent, yeah, we were trying
to trace down -- if nothing else, to -- a
criminal case, as a criminal lawyer, you try
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to make your case on the evidence. You just
cannot rely on what the client tells you. To
some extent we were trying to corroborate
what he had told us, but he wouldn't let us
go.
Q. Judge, did Mr. Ray ever tell you that
he -- let me ask you, first of all, did you
really think there was such a person name
Raul?
A. It was inescapable to us that there
weren't conspirators.
Q. I spent two days taking his testimony
in prison. He never could tell me at any
time that anyone ever saw him with this
person named Raul.
A. Mr. Garrison, we looked and looked
just for that, something that would
corroborate that, to no avail. In fact,
that's why we were interested in the Jim's
Grill people, because that was
contemporaneous. We were looking for
anything, anybody that saw a stranger there
who knew Ray or, ideally, Ray with a
stranger. But nobody there at that time
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would say anything about that.
Q. Did you ever learn at any time that
there was a witness who saw someone in the
brush area? Did anyone ever tell you that,
that they actually saw some person that in
that brush area?
A. If I may reflect on the question you
are asking. The only person that we talked
to who we believe ever knew who fired the
shot was a man in the rooming house. I'll
tell you about him in a minute if you are
interested.
As far as the brushy area is
concerned, there were some associates of Dr.
King who were on the hotel side of the street
who said that they thought the shot came from
there. But that was all regarding that
issue.
MR. GARRISON: Thank you, Judge
Haynes. Nothing further.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Judge Haynes, I know you said you did
an extensive investigation of potential
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witnesses. Were there any Memphis Police or
Fire Department witnesses the State shared
with you?
A. I know we received none as far as the
police or fire department.
Q. But you uncovered some of these
witnesses yourself?
A. Sure, yes, sir.
Q. Are you familiar with the contention
of the prosecution at that time that the
bullet has fired from the bathroom window of
the rooming house?
A. Yes.
Q. And that it was fired from the
bathroom window, having been rested on a
window sill?
A. I think so.
Q. And that the prosecution claimed that
a dent in that window sill was made by the
rifle itself?
A. I've heard that. I just cannot
believe that they would have actually tried
to prove that in court, though. That's
beyond belief.
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Q. Well, would it surprise you to learn
that in fact at the guilty plea hearing on
March 10th, 1969, this contention was put
forth as a matter of certainty that it could
be proven that the dent was caused by the
rifle?
A. I would be shocked if a lawyer said
they could prove that with certainty based
upon what I know of the layout.
Q. Did they turn over to you at any
point in your investigation FBI reports with
respect to laboratory analysis of evidence?
A. No, sir. Of the window sill?
Q. Yes.
A. I don't think so.
Q. It has been entered into these
proceedings as evidence, plaintiffs'
evidence, those reports which indicated that
they could in fact not prove that the window
sill -- that the rifle rested on the window
sill.
A. A report saying that they could not
prove that?
Q. Yes.
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A. I didn't need a report. I could see
the window sill and the rifle. That just
wasn't an issue.
Q. I'm just wondering if that was
disclosed to you in the course of your
investigation, that report?
A. I don't remember, Mr. Pepper,
specifically. I know this: There were reams
and reams of evidence, much of which, as soon
as we realized what it was, we were on to
something else. We just didn't have time to
chew on every little piece.
The window sill -- you could not
prove that that rifle rested on that window
sill. There is no way. We know that as
lawyers. If we saw a report that said we
can't prove the rifle rested on the window
sill, we would just flip that over and say,
sure, and then move on.
MR. PEPPER: Judge Haynes, thank
you very much.
MR. GARRISON: No questions for
Judge Haynes.
THE COURT: You may stand down.
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THE WITNESS: May I be excused?
THE COURT: You may.
(Witness excused.)
MR. PEPPER: The plaintiffs call
Ms. Bobbie Balfour.
BOBBIE BALFOUR
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Ms. Balfour.
A. Good afternoon.
Q. Thank you very much for coming here
this afternoon.
A. Oh, you are welcome.
Q. Would you please state for the record
your full name and address.
A. Bobby King Balfour, 422 (Inaudible.)
Q. Ms. Balfour, are you presently
employed?
A. Yes, I am.
Q. What do you do?
A. I'm a cook.
Q. Where do you work?
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A. At Embassy Suites on American Way.
Q. In 1967 and 1968 were you employed at
Jim's Grill on South Main Street in Memphis,
Tennessee?
A. I probably was, sir, but it has been
so long, it is hard to remember what year it
was.
Q. Well, do you remember being employed
in Jim's Grill at the time of the
assassination of Martin Luther King?
A. Oh, yes, I do, uh-huh.
Q. On April 4th, 1968?
A. Right.
Q. And who was your employer at that
time?
A. Loyd Jowers.
Q. Mr. Jowers, Loyd Jowers?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. What were your duties then,
Ms. Balfour, at the time?
A. Waitress and cook, all around. I did
everything.
Q. So you waited on tables and you
cooked and you --
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A. Short-order cooked and cooked.
Q. Goodness. How many hours a day did
you work?
A. We came to work in the morning time
when he'd pick us up about four-thirty and
stay there as long as he needed us.
Q. So you started at four-thirty?
A. Yeah. He would pick us up.
Q. He would pick you up and drive you?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. And who else did he pick up?
A. Another lady was named Rosetta.
Q. On April 4th, 1968, did he pick you
and Rosetta up on that day as well?
A. I don't don't think Rosetta came to
work that day, but I did.
Q. Do you think you were picked up by
Mr. Jowers and independently taken to work on
that day?
A. I know I was.
Q. You know you were?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. And you started at the usual time
that morning?
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A. Uh-huh.
Q. Now, in the course of your work at
Jim's Grill, were you familiar with a lady
who lived on the second floor just above the
grill in the rooming house named grace
Stephens?
A. Yes. I would take her breakfast.
Q. You used to take her breakfast?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. What time did you take her breakfast
up there as a rule?
A. Between eight-thirty and nine
o'clock, somewhere like that.
Q. Eight-thirty or nine o'clock you
would take her breakfast up?
A. Yeah.
Q. And would you leave the food with her
and then come back downstairs?
A. I would set it beside the bed.
Q. And then would you go and get the
dishes at another time?
A. No.
Q. What happened to the dishes that you
left there?
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A. I don't know, but I guess they got
back. I didn't bring them back.
Q. So you didn't bring them back?
A. No.
Q. So you just went up -- you delivered
the breakfast to her?
A. Right.
Q. Why was that? Was she ill?
A. She was in bed all the time.
Q. She was in bed all the time?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Do you know if she had an illness or
sickness?
A. No, I don't, didn't know what it was.
Q. You didn't know?
A. No.
Q. How long did you have that practice
of going up there and delivering her
food?
A. Oh, just sometimes. I didn't go all
the time because sometimes Rosetta went.
Q. Sometimes Rosetta went?
A. Right.
Q. Was Rosetta working that morning on
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April 4th, as you recall?
A. I don't think so. It has been a long
time. I can't hardly remember, though. I
don't think Rosetta worked that day.
Q. You don't think she did?
A. I don't think she did.
Q. You were there alone?
A. No, I wasn't there alone. He had
another girl there, too.
Q. He had another girl working there?
A. Yes.
Q. Ms. Balfour, did you take breakfast
up to Ms. Grace Stephens that morning?
A. No, I did not.
Q. And why didn't you take breakfast up
to Mrs. Grace Stephens that morning?
A. Mr. Jowers said I didn't have to take
it up there that day.
Q. Mr. Jowers said you didn't have to
take it up there that morning?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. So he told you not to go upstairs
with the breakfast that morning?
A. Right.
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Q. Did he explain to you why he did not
want you to go onto the second floor of the
rooming house?
A. No, he did not.
Q. Did you ask him?
A. No.
Q. You just followed him because he was
the boss?
A. Right.
Q. Do you know if Grace Stephens got her
breakfast that day?
A. I don't know.
Q. Ms. Balfour, how long did you work on
that day?
A. Well, I went in that morning, and I
don't know the exact time it was, but just as
I run across the street just in time to catch
the bus, then I made it in the house and it
came on the TV that King had got killed.
Q. So you left Jim's Grill sometime
early prior to the assassination, and by the
time you got home, you heard about it?
A. Right.
Q. Now, did you go to work the next
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morning?
A. Yes, I did. He picked me up.
Q. Mr. Jowers picked you up the next
morning?
A. Right.
Q. And he drove you to work?
A. Right.
Q. In the course of that ride to work
the next morning, do you recall if he
mentioned a rifle to you?
A. No. I remember him saying, you
should have been here last night, we had a
lot of excitement. I asked him what was he
talking about. He said that the police had
come through our place of business and found
a gun.
Q. The police had come through the
restaurant?
A. Right.
Q. And found a gun?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Where did they say they found the
gun?
A. In the backyard.
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Q. In the backyard?
A. In the backyard.
Q. Did you ever look out into that back
area through the back door?
A. I have looked out that back door, but
it was kind of woody out there, a lot of
grass, weeds and stuff out there.
Q. Could you describe that area as you
recall it as you looked onto it?
A. There was a lot of grass out there,
you know, little trees that had grown up back
there. It was in bad shape back there.
Q. Bad shape?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. Mr. Jowers said the police came
through there and they found the gun in that
back area somewhere?
A. Right.
Q. Did he say anything else about the
finding of the gun or about the events of the
night before?
A. Ug-huh.
Q. Nothing more than that?
A. No.
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MR. PEPPER: Nothing further.
CROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Ms. Balfour, you had gone to work
that day at the grill about four or five
o'clock in the morning?
A. Right.
Q. Mr. Jowers as usual had come to your
home and gotten you that morning and took you
on to work?
A. That's true.
Q. Let me ask you something. On the day
that this occurred, April the 4th, 1968, that
was a Thursday, had you worked all that week
as you recall?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did you ever see any money in that
restaurant, anyone bring any money?
A. No.
Q. You were there most of the time in
and out of the back?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you ever see a gun?
A. No.
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Q. No gun at all?
A. No.
Q. Did you ever hear Mr. Jowers make any
statement before it occurred about the
assassination of Dr. King or Dr. King, any
talk about that at all?
A. No, Jowers wasn't that type person.
Q. He was not prejudiced at all, was he?
A. No, he wasn't.
Q. Very fair, wasn't he?
A. He sure was.
Q. Did you ever see any police officers
in the grill before the assassination of Dr.
King, did any of them come in on a regular
basis?
A. No.
Q. Let me ask you, Ms. Balfour, on the
day of the assassination, what time did you
leave?
A. I don't know what time it was, but it
was kind of late. Because after I made it in
the house, it came on the TV that King had
got killed.
Q. Did you see any new faces that were
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there, any strangers in the grill that day
that you remember?
A. No.
Q. Now, as far as taking the breakfast
to Ms. Stephens, do you know if Mr. Stephens
was paying Mr. Jowers for this?
A. No, I sure don't. Charlie Stephens
paid him all the time.
Q. In fact, that day Mr. Jowers had run
Mr. Stephens out of the restaurant because he
was so drunk he told him to get out of there,
didn't he?
A. Several times.
Q. That had some problems, didn't they?
A. Yeah.
MR. GARRISON: That's all.
THE COURT: Anything further of
this witness?
MR. PEPPER: Just briefly, Your
Honor.
REDIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Mrs. Balfour, were you -- did you
ever give a statement to the police or any
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investigating authority about what you told
this Court today?
A. After King got killed?
Q. Yes.
A. No, they never did ask me.
Q. I'm sorry?
A. No, didn't nobody ever question me at
that time. When they came in that next day,
they asked me a question, but when I gave
them an answer, they told me to go back in
the kitchen.
Q. They told you what?
A. Go back in the kitchen.
Q. Told you to go back in the kitchen?
A. Uh-huh.
Q. They asked you a question, you gave
them an answer, and they told you to go back
in the kitchen?
A. Right.
Q. And no investigating authorities had
ever questioned you about what you saw or
what you heard or anything?
A. No.
MR. PEPPER: Thank you very
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much, Mrs. Balfour.
MR. GARRISON: Let me ask you
one other thing.
RECROSS-EXAMINATION
BY MR. GARRISON:
Q. Did anyone from the police, FBI or
Sheriff's Office ever come into the grill
while you were there to look around,
investigate anything after the assassination?
A. No.
MR. GARRISON: That's all.
THE COURT: You may stand down.
(Witness excused.)
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiffs call the clerk of the criminal
court, William key.
WILLIAM R. KEY
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Key. Thank you
very much for coming here this afternoon.
Would you state your full name and address
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for the record, please.
A. William R. Key. I live at 1574
Cherry Park Drive, Memphis, Tennessee, 38120.
Q. Mr. Key, would you tell the Court
what is your present position?
A. I'm the criminal court clerk of
Shelby County.
Q. What are your responsibilities as the
clerk of the criminal court?
A. Basically the clerk of the court is
the keeper of the records. In our case, we
also keep the property and evidence.
Q. And you maintain an evidence room
over in the criminal court clerk's office?
A. That is correct, on the 4th floor.
Q. When you keep property in that
evidence room, what is the nature of the
property that you keep there?
A. Those properties are brought in for
court proceedings, and after that we continue
to hold the property until the case disposed
of, some of it for twenty, twenty-five years.
Q. And has the property in the case
relating to the assassination of Martin
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Luther King been kept in your office or
property room?
A. The property in the case of Martin
Luther King's death is kept in a vault. We
have a large room larger than this room here
where most of the property is kept. However,
in the case of the King killing, it is kept
in a safe that is separate from that where we
keep money and diamonds and things of that
nature.
Q. Would you say that all of the
evidence in that case that is known that has
been turned over is kept in that facility?
A. That is correct. There are thirteen
boxes of it, two hundred sixty-seven items.
Q. It is under your direct supervision?
A. That is true.
Q. Your care and custody?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. That evidence that has been kept in
that vault in terms of its custodial chain,
it has been kept in that vault since 1968?
A. Not in this particular vault. The
criminal court clerk's office was moved
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across to 201 Poplar from 157 Poplar, and
when it was moved there, it was formerly in a
vault in 157, and when we moved into the new
quarters there at 201 Poplar, it was moved
there in 1981.
Q. So it has moved to a different
facility?
A. Yes.
Q. But it has always been under the
supervision, control, care and custody of the
clerk of the criminal court, which includes
your predecessors?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You are the most recent in a long
line?
A. Five years. I've had it for five
years. Previous to that Mr. Blackwell had
it.
Q. Now, Mr. Key, are you in attendance
here this afternoon under subpoena?
A. Yes, I am.
Q. Have you been asked to bring a piece
of evidence with you to this courtroom?
A. That is correct.
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Q. And what is that evidence that you
have brought here to show us?
A. The rifle that is purported to have
been the weapon that slew Dr. King.
Q. This is the evidence rifle in the
case, the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther
King?
A. That is correct.
Q. Is that evidence in this courtroom?
A. Yes, it is.
Q. Where is it?
A. It is over there.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor, if the
evidence may be brought forward.
THE COURT: Go ahead. Test it
to make sure it won't fire.
(Rifle passed to the witness.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Now, do you recognize
that as the evidence rifle in the case, the
alleged murder weapon of Dr. Martin Luther
King?
A. Yes, it is. This is the weapon that
we've had since I've been there, and it was
taken to Rhode Island and Pennsylvania for
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firing and testing.
Q. That is the weapon that has been in
the care and custody and has not been
tampered with or exchanged or replaced in any
way?
A. That is correct, since I've been
there. Before I came into that office, I
can't testify to that, but I have some
feeling that it was kept there in the office
that we presently keep it in.
Q. Mr. Key, is that rifle presently, as
far as you are aware, capable of being used?
A. Yes, it is. It still is. We
witnessed it being fired in Pennsylvania and
Rhode Island.
MR. PEPPER: I have nothing
further of this witness.
MR. GARRISON: I have no
questions for Mr. Key. I know Mr. Key well.
I've known you many years. What is it,
forty?
THE WITNESS: A few years.
THE COURT: Let me see it.
(Rifle passed to the Court.)
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MR. PEPPER: It is a 30-06 760
Gamemaster. Your Honor, we would just like
the jury to have a visit with that weapon, if
it is possible.
THE WITNESS: Let me mention
this. I am under court order that no one
examines it nor holds it.
THE COURT: You may hold it for
their inspection.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further, Your
Honor. Plaintiffs would like the weapon to
remain in the courtroom for the next
witness.
THE COURT: Is the next
testimony concerning this?
MR. PEPPER: The next witness is
on his way, yes.
THE COURT: Would you stay?
THE WITNESS: We will stay
here.
THE COURT: All right.
(Witness excused.)
JOE B. BROWN
Having been first duly sworn, was examined
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and testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION
BY MR. PEPPER:
Q. Good afternoon, Judge.
A. Good afternoon, sir. How are you.
Q. If you would state for the record,
please, your full name address.
A. Joseph B. Brown, business address,
201 Poplar.
Q. Thank you. What is is your present
position, sir?
A. I'm a state judge for the 30th
Judicial District, State of Tennessee,
Division IX, Criminal Court of Shelby County.
Q. Are you testifying here this
afternoon voluntarily or under subpoena?
A. Under subpoena.
Q. Thank you again for joining us.
Judge Brown, would you tell the Court some of
your qualifications and professional
training.
A. All right. I have a law degree from
the University of California, Los Angeles,
1973. Came out here -- let's see. I've been
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a member of the bar of the State of Tennessee
since 1975, worked for Legal Services here,
then the Equal Employment Opportunity
Commission.
I was I believe the first black
prosecutor for the City of Memphis and I ran
the City Public Defender's Office for awhile,
then I went into private practice, and in
1990 I was elected judge for Division IX of
the Criminal Courts, August of 1998
re-elected for another term.
Q. Prior to your law career, could you
tell us what was your professional training
and what was your --
A. You mean relative to the subject at
hand?
Q. Relative to the subject at hand.
A. I've always had an intense interest
in the field of ballistics, firearms and such
like. I've been a hunter, target-shooter.
It is sort of a hobby of mine.
At one time in life I thought when I
night go into criminal law it was a decision
I made to get as much into the subject as I
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might so I would be able to properly defend
certain defendants.
Q. Over what period of time did you
develop this knowledge and experience with
weapons?
A. Let's see. My father taught me to
shoot when I was six years old. So that
would be going on too close to fifty years
ago.
Q. And had you on your own studied and
read about the science of ballistics and
weapons?
A. I have.
Q. Over what period of time have you
done that?
A. About the last forty years or so.
Q. How long have you handled weapons of
various kinds?
A. Like I said, starting about six or
seven years old.
Q. How long have you handled or had
experience with rifles such as the type
involved in this case?
A. I'd say thirty, thirty-five years
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worth of experience.
Q. And during the course of that
experience, have you explored the nuances of
ballistics and the matching of bullets to
particular weapons?
A. I have, sir.
Q. Are you familiar with the techniques
used in that process?
A. Yes, sir, I am.
Q. Have you familiarized yourself with
the types of weapons and the types of bullets
that go with those weapons, the range of
weapons?
A. I have, sir.
MR. PEPPER: Your Honor,
plaintiff would move that Judge Brown be --
Judge Brown's testimony testimony here be
admitted as that of an expert for the purpose
of this discussion.
MR. GARRISON: I certainly agree
and have no objection.
THE COURT: All right. You may
proceed.
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Judge Brown, would
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you please initially begin a discussion so
that the Court and the jury can become aware
generally of what the science of ballistics
is about and how it is practiced.
A. Actually what ballistics is about is
the flight of projectiles, in other words, a
projectile that has an initial impetus placed
upon it such as a ballistic missle, where
there is a thrust at the beginning of the
flight of the object, a projectile fired out
of a catapult in Ancient Roman times where
there is a slinging of an object, what
happens once it gets that initial impetus,
closely at hand what happens when you fire a
bullet, projectile, from a rifle or pistol or
such like, how does it behave as it travels
from its point of firing to its target or
until it impacts the ground or, in other
words, stops its forward flight.
Now, in that process there are
certain specified or special categories such
as studying the internal ballistics they call
the subject, that is how does a projectile
behave in the barrel of a weapon, what
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happens when you take one of the
self-contained cartridges that are about
universal today, put that in the appropriate
weapon, pull the trigger and fire it, what
happens. Those are called internal
ballistics. That is called internal
ballistics.
One of the things that is common
today is to take a projectile, a bullet, if
you would, that has been found in the body of
the victim of a homicide or a wounding and
attempt to compare that bullet with the known
sample fired from the suspect weapon. What
commonly happens is the bullet is placed in a
device that amounts to a microscope where the
examiner can carefully move the suspect
bullet around and then take the known sample
and attempt to compare it using striations,
which are fine grooves that are engraved on
the bullet based on the particular
characteristics of the weapon.
There are basal or base
characteristics that are determined by the
nature of the weapon, what caliber it is, who
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the manufacturer is, and then there are
individual characteristics of weapons that
are brought about by manufacturing flaws.
Nothing is perfect, and everything
that is manufactured basically is going to
leave some tool marks in the bore of the
weapon. The idea is to see if you can
compare the individual signature of a weapon
that it would leave on a specimen or bullet,
sample bullet, and see if you can match that
up with the bullet that you have removed from
the body of the victim.
Q. Right. Your Honor, would you
describe for the jury the kind of bullet,
projectile -- but bullets are we're talking
about here -- that is involved in this case?
A. We're talking about a bullet that is
nominally a .308 diameter, commonly known as
a .30-caliber bullet. The allegation of the
State was that that bullet was fired from a
weapon known as a 30-06, in other words,
a .30-caliber weapon firing a cartridge
that was based on a military cartridge known
as .30-caliber of 1906.
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It was a modification of the
earlier .30-caliber of the model 1903 which
resulted in a shortening of the case neck of
that cartridge, a reduction of the weight of
the initial military bullet from 220 grains
down to appointed 150-grain bullet. That
became known as a 30-06.
The actual caliber of the projectile
is .308. In European terms that is known as
a 7.62 by 63 millimeter cartridge. We know
it as a 30-06.
Q. Judge, would you describe for the
jury the difference between a military bullet
or a hard point and a solt-point bullet?
A. As a result of the Geneva Convention,
the military establishments of most of the
world agreed to not use expanding bullets for
humane purposes. In the latter part of the
19th Century, the English in India were
concerned about the lack of stopping power
that their bullets showed on some of the
native population, so they had a dumb dumb
arsenal in India.
They started producing a bullet with
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a large amount of lead exposed at the tip of
the bullet, and in certain instances hollow
pointed, that is, the bullet has a hole in
the front or a large amount of lead exposed,
and that would cause the bullet to expand
when it hit flesh, which would result in a
recovered bullet looking something like a
mushroom. That caused a very, very bad
wound.
So as a humane matter, most of the
world has agreed not to use soft-point
bullets, and they use what they call full
metal jacketed bullets, where the point of
the bullet is covered with a gilding of steel
or brass or composite jacket so it does not
expand. Most bullets still have a lead core.
Q. Would you explain how the bullets are
manufactured by various manufacturers in
terms of the composition of the lead and the
similarity from batch to batch?
A. Regarding the case at hand, the
situation is this: A manufacturer, say
Remmington, Winchester or Olin, Federal, when
they make up a batch of bullets, they are
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faced with this: They do not have any
machines that are dedicated to one particular
type of bullet. So what happens, they may
make a run of twenty-five million or
thirty-five million of a given type a bullet,
say 150-grain .308 bullets.
Then after they make that run, they
may switch over to 6.5 millimeter with the
same machine and run fifteen to twenty
million of those. Then when it comes time to
convert it back to .30-caliber, which was
the .308, they can't get the tolerances
exactly as they were before, so what they
tend to do is they run batches which they
call lots, L O T S, and they give each batch
a lot number.
When they load up ammunition, that
is, the completed cartridge, they generally
try to make the lots consistent so that the
customer can be assured that he will get
reasonable accuracy and predictability with
any cartridge that he buys from this
company.
So what happens is they have a lot
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of bullets or a batch of bullets with an
assigned lot number. The powder varies, too,
from one batch number, so they'll have a lot
number assigned to a particular batch of
powder and they'll have a batch with a lot
number assigned to the cartridge case that is
to be used in the loaded cartridge. They
will also do the same with primer.
So when they make a run, a batch of
these cartridges, everything will have
similar lot numbers, in other words, the
bullets might be EO71565J3 with a number on
that, and the same with the cartridge. They
will use the same run or batch of lead, the
same run or batch of gilding, the same run or
batch of copper or alloy or brass for the
cartridge case and the same applies.
So what happens is if you run a
metallurgical analysis on any of the
materials, you will expect to find that there
is a metallurgical consistency from one
cartridge to the next in the same batch, from
one sample of powder taken out of a cartridge
with another in the same batch, and the same
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with the bullets, the gilding metal of the
jacket will be the same and the lead cores
would be the same.
Q. Thank you, Judge. Have you
familiarized yourself with the death slug in
this case?
A. I have, sir.
Q. Have you familiarizeed yourself with
other bullets and cartridges that were found
in an evidence bundle in this case?
A. Yes, sir. What seems to have
happened is that when the rifle in question
was recovered, there were four unfired
cartridge cases that were recovered along
with the rifle and one fired cartridge case.
A primitive metallurgical analysis done some
thirty years ago revealed or suggests that
the fired cartridge case and the four unfired
cartridge cases are metallurgically
identical, that is, they are from the same
lot.
The bullets from the four unfired
cartridge cases are metallurgically identical
when the lead cores are analyzed, whereas the
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bullet removed from Dr. King is not
identical. It is metallurgically different
in its composition, which would suggest it is
not from the same lot. That would be totally
contrary to the policies of the ammunition
companies.
Q. Let us understand what it is you are
saying here. It is that the evidence bullets
that were found in the bundle, the evidence
bundle that was dropped, have a different
metallurgical composition than the slug that
was taken from Dr. King's body?
A. That's correct.
Q. Are you saying --
A. Further, the significance of that is
developed by the fact that this cartridge
case that appears to have definitely been
fired in the rifle that is in evidence is in
fact of the same lot as the other four
unfired cartridges. You would expect the
bullet that had been removed from Dr. King's
body to have been of the same lot.
That suggests that this bullet was
not fired from that empty cartridge case that
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was found with the rifle, and it was
definitely fired in the rifle as per some
tests that were run on that cartridge and
that rifle and other sample cartridges.
Q. All right. Thank you. Now, would
you tell the jury about the nature of the
weapon -- we're going to take a look at that
in a minute -- but the nature of the weapon
as you understand it, the alleged murder
weapon in this case?
A. The murder weapon in this case is a
Remmington 760 Gamemaster, caliber 30-06.
Q. And what is significant about the 760
Gamemaster rifle in terms of its comparison
with other 30-06's?
A. It is what is known as a pump-action
rifle. It is basically the only one still
manufactured in America, though Browning last
year came out with a weapon similarly
activated.
At one time it was popular, but over
the years since the end of the 19th century
that is basically the only remaining
center-fire pump-action rifle. There is also
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a slightly different version of that which is
a semiautomatic weapon.
Q. Is there a counterpart weapon that is
a military issue?
A. Well, I wouldn't say it is exactly a
counterpart, but what you are talking about
is .30-caliber weapons generally. It is
perhaps the most popular caliber in America.
You have several weapons that will
fire an identical bullet. By that, I mean
that if you manufactured a lot of or a batch
of these bullets, you could load those
bullets correctly in several different
caliber weapons.
One is what is known as a 308
Winchester, which is a civilian nomenclature
applied to something known as a 76 2x51 nail
round. It was adopted in 1954 by the U. S.
Government and most of the NATO forces after
some tests. It also fires a .308 bullet.
Likewise, there is what is known as
a 300 Holland & Holland Magnum, a 30 Supra is
another name for it, and it fires a .308
bullet, the same one. It you hand load, you
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can take a .308 bullet that you would buy in
a gun shop, and if it is suitable for your
purposes, you could load that in a 308
Winchester, a 30-06, a 300 H&H, also in a 300
Winchester Magnum.
You can load that very same bullet
in a 300 Weatherby. Now you can load it
in -- let's see, I'm talking about factory
ammunition only -- a 30 x 378 Weatherby, and
they have a 330 Super Magnum that Remmington
has that will take the same bullet.
There is something Laseroni has out
called a WarBird, a very specialized thing.
There is a company called Dakota that puts
one out. They all use this exact same .308
bullet.
Now, what happens, back to your
question about the military, is currently,
since it is a standard NATO round, you have
such items as the M-60 machine gun, which
we're not talking about here, but you do have
what is known as the M-14, which was adopted
in 1956 as the standard battle weapon for the
U.S. military, that is, the Marine Corps and
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the Army, that has been superseded by the
M-16 family of weapons.
There is also an M-21, which is a
sniper edition of the M-14. You have an
M-24, which is a Winchester Model 70 that the
military used in the late 1960's that was a
bolt-action sniper weapon.
You have a version of the Remmington
700 bolt-action weapon that the military
currently uses as a sniper weapon, along with
refurbished editions of the M-21. You have
various and sundry permutations of weaponry
that are .30-caliber that the military has
used from time to time.
On the civilian market there are
also a number of semiautomatic weapons that
had military intentions initially, such as
the F. N. Fowl that was commonly available
and the G3/H and K91, which are available
from time to time. So there are a number of
weapons that will be such as to fire a
similar bullet.
Q. And were there a number of weapons
that could fire such a bullet back in 1969?
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A. There were. A number I could think
of. The 308 Winchester was popular.
The 30-06 was even more popular at the
time. Those two would have probably been
what you would have encountered if you were
talking about a hunting caliber center-firing
30-06 or a 308 Winchester. You also have
the old .30-30, which fires a similar
diameter bullet, but that would be a
blunt-nosed slug, which is an entirely
different design for feeding through a
tubular magazine.
You also had a.30-40 Frig that was
this use starting from 1892 and the U.S.
military used a .308 slug,, and if somebody
was shooting one of those, you would have had
it firing a similar bullet. Or if someone
hand-loaded it, that would still be the
case. There were very many foreign copies of
the same weapon.
Q. So any one of those range of weapons
could have fired this type of slug at that
time?
A. That's correct, sir.
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MR. PEPPER: If it please the
Court, I'd like to have the witness examine
the weapon in evidence.
(Rifle passed to the witness.)
Q. (BY MR. PEPPER) Do you recognize that
weapon?
A. Yes, that's the 760 Gamemaster in
evidence in this case.
Q. What can you tell the jury about this
particular weapon?
A. Although it doesn't exactly look it
right now, it is a fairly new weapon. It has
a Redfield 2 to 7 variable scope on it. It
is mounted in Weaver scope rings, and mounts
it is a pump-action weapon. And it is
from the evidence, the marking on the
barrel, 30-06 in caliber.
Q. Did you have occasion to consider
this weapon as the murder weapon in this case
in some degree of depth and careful
consideration?
A. I did, sir.
Q. When was that?
A. That was during the course of
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proceedings brought by the late James Earl
Ray, what are known as post-conviction relief
proceedings to challenge his conviction.
Mr. Ray had never confessed to the
killing of Dr. King, but he had entered what
is known as an Alford versus North Carolina
plea. That is a plea delivered under the
principle of the case of Alford versus North
Carolina, which is a moderately old U.S.
Supreme Court case that stands for the
proposition that you may plead guilty even if
you are not actually guilty if you believe it
is in your best interest to do so, from all
of the proof in evidence you think it in your
best interest to do that and you did it
freely, voluntarily, knowingly, advisedly and
intelligently if the State otherwise has a
reasonable factual basis upon which to
proceed.
In other words, you might say you
may plead guilty even if you are not guilty
if you think that is in your best interest if
the State otherwise has a reasonable factual
basis upon which to proceed. In other words,
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you might say you may cop out and plead
guilty even if you are not guilty if that is
in your best interest if the State has some
case that they can go forward upon.
The entirety of that case, according
to the petitioner's theory, was based on this
rifle, which is what hooked him up with the
case. During the course of reviewing the
record for this matter, it developed that
there was a transcript of James Earl Ray's
guilty plea.
It develops that Mr. Ray aforesaid
had never actually confessed to the killing
of Dr. King. I believe there are at least
two places in that transcript that revealed
that when an investigator for the District
Attorney's office testified during the course
of the guilty plea procedings and indicated
that James Earl Ray acted alone, in at least
one instance Mr. Ray rose and in sort of a
mild outburst indicated that that was not
true, that he did not act by himself,
whereupon a recess was taken. That happened
again. Another recess was taken. And then
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he did not rise the third time. They then
went through the process.
It is not unusual, and we have a lot
of cases that are disposed of on what we call
Alford pleas. In other words, the defendant
has a criminal record that would be revealed
to a jury in the event that he testified
which might be something that he would be
leery of. There would be an instruction
given to the jury to the effect that if the
defendant testifies and you find that he has
any felony convictions, you are not to
consider this as touching upon his guilt or
innocence but you may consider it in terms of
evaluating his credibility.
Well, unless there is an exceptional
situation, and you get in front of a jury and
they find out you've got a criminal history,
they are not going to look at you as well as
they might have otherwise even in spite of
the instructions give by the judge. You may
think that the case is so outrageous or so
gross or horrible that you don't really want
to take your chances in front of a jury and
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you will settle for what has been offered.
So that is what we had going on here
as far as the petitioner's theory. In other
words, at the time, considering the person
who was slain, the public outcry and uproar
and the possible sentence he could have
gotten, he thought it was in his interest to
enter what is known as an Alford plea.
Q. Now, Judge Brown, how long did you
preside over those proceedings?
A. I'd like to say about three years.
It all sort of shifts into a blur. It got in
my courtroom, there was at that time a set of
laws and cases that had been decided that
basically caused me to deny the petition of
James Earl Ray for not being timely.
However, I did note that there was a
loophole in the existing laws in the State of
Tennessee, and it was this: A person could
be sitting on death row, let's say, and
through the use of DNA evidence he could
prove his absolute innocence. But unless he
had filed that case within the existing
statute of limitations for post-conviction
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relief proceedings, which at that time was
three years, and raised that evidence or he
was able to avail himself of what was known
as petition of era crim nobis, which has been
an ancient thing, of within one year, then he
had no remedy.
The law abhors a situation which is
legal where there is no judicial remedy,
which, of course, the only thing he could do
was apply to the governor's office for
clemency.
So what I ordered is that the
petition would be denied, but I would allow
the petitioner to put on what is known as a
proffer of proof. In other words, if he were
allowed to present this evidence, this is
what it would show so an appellate court
could determine whether or not the law needed
to be reviewed.
Well, in any event, I ordered that
the rifle be retested. That was in
accordance with an order given by the late
Preston Battle, who was the original judge.
In 1968 Judge Battle entered an order that
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said the rifle was to be tellsed since he was
not satisfied with the ballistics tests that
had been run at that point. But that rifle
was never retested.
So I ordered it retested. It went
to the Court of Criminal Appeals who went
along with the prosecutorial side of things
and declined to allow that rifle to be
retested and issued a stay.
Well, a few weeks after that stay
was issued, it developed that the
legislature, which I was aware of, had been
working on a new post-conviction relief
statute and they passed that statute and they
said if there is new scientific methodology
that would establish the innocence of a
petitioner, there is no statute of
limitations, and such post-conviction relief
petitions have no time limit on when they can
be filed and no time limit on when they can
be reopened for showing by new scientific
evidence or methodology that the defendant is
innocent. That is so you don't get someone
stuck on death row when there is methodology
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such as DNA testing that would show he is not
the fellow.
Q. Judge Brown, in the course of
preceding over those proceedings for
post-conviction relief, did you consider very
carefully the testing history of that rifle
and familiarize yourself with it?
A. I did, sir. I thought that it was
totally inadequate. At the time this weapon
was tested by the FBI, what they did is they
took four cartridges and fired them through
this weapon into what is known as cotton
waste. If you fire a high-velocity
projectile into cotton waste, you totally
obliterate, that is, destroy, the fine
striations that would enable you to do a
valid ballistics test.
The only thing you can get to out of
that would be the basal characteristics, in
other words, the base characteristics, which
would be this weapon fired a .30-caliber
bullet of .308 in diameter, and it had four
lands and grooves with an apparent right-hand
twist.
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One thing they never did resolve out
of that was what was the rate of twist.
Historically 30-06's had rates of twist of
one full turn in every ten inches. Weapons
that are designed from the front end as 308
weapons have one full turn every twelve
inches, though there are examples of each
where the rifling twist is as the other would
be. It depends upon what you are trying to
achieve with the weapon, whether you think
you will fire a heavier bullet or a lighter
bullet for the caliber.
But, in any event, the tests that
they did indicated -- the tests that they did
were totally incapable of giving a valid
basis of comparison to determine whether the
bullet removed from the body of Dr. King was
in fact fired from this weapon.
Now, in any event, there are some
other things that happened that I became
aware of during the course of my examination
of the record. One thing, I believe Mr. Key
came up with this, that is when I asked for
an inventory of all evidence in the case, he
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noted that there was a picture of the bullet
or the slug that was removed from Dr. King's
body before it was transmitted to the FBI.
That picture revealed that the bullet was
intact, though mushroomed.
What the FBI sent back after the
conclusion of the test was three jacket
fragments and three lead core fragments that
had been cut as though you were taking a
banana and just pulled the peels all the way
off of the banana and then took a knife and
cut the banana length-wise in three equal
sections.
Q. Judge, let me just stop you there.
Let me put this picture up. Is that the
photograph you referred to?
A. You found the picture, I see. It
looks similar to that. I can't say if that
is the actual item in evidence.
Q. Does it look similar to the evidence
photo? That was a photograph of three
fragments?
A. Right.
Q. So would you describe, as best can
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you --
A. What you can see in the lower
right-hand corner is the jacket itself. It
has been peeled back by a mushroom process.
What you are looking at is the other two
items are pieces of the lead core.
Q. Would you explain how that could
occur.
A. Well, it could be that it was not a
very well-constructed bullet and it simply
fell out at some time during the course of
testing. But what I found later in there was
not just what you look at there but before
the jacket had been peeled back so there are
three separate fragments to the jacket
itself.
Q. So the bullet that was taken from Dr.
King's body was in one piece?
A. It was in one piece. It is a hunting
bullet. It is a soft-core bullet. That
bullet is designed for the human harvesting
of animals. You don't want an animal to
suffer. So what you want is for the maximum
energy of the rifle to be dumped into the
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target so it dies quickly due to massive
injuries. It mushrooms so the bullet
transfers most of its energy into the animal
rather than putting a clean hole through it.
If you were to shoot an animal
between one hundred and about three hundred
fifty pounds, any of the animals that are
typical of this continent, with a 30-06 from
say under a hundred fifty yards, which would
be typical hunting range, if you got a solid
torso hit in the lung or heart area, you
could pretty much count on that animal
dying. That would be a non-survivable
wound.
You would dump the entire energy of
the weapon into the target, and that would be
about a ton and a half of energy at somewhere
between a hundred fifty yards down to close
to the muzzle.
In other words, if you fired this
weapon, you would have 150-grain bullet
moving at a nominal velocity, and with the
type of ammo they were likely to have had in
1968, at about twenty-seven hundred,
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twenty-seven hundred fifty feet per second,
which would leave you going on three thousand
foot pounds of energy.
In other words, if you put a scale
in front of the muzzle of this rifle, one
foot in front of it, and fired it, you could
register what that bullet weighed, and it
would weigh about a ten and a half when it
hit this scale.
What usually happens is when you
shoot somebody with a military bullet, which
is a full metal jacket, you put a nice clean
hole in them and most of the energy is dumped
in the dirt or in a tree or rock behind the
target. If you shoot an animal with this,
you dump all the energy in the animal and it
expires quickly.
Generally hunters prefer these days
to have the bullet completely penetrate the
animal so you can leave a blood trail. But I
will assure you it leaves a much bigger hole
on the way out then it does going in.
If you shoot a deer, very seldom
will one of them drop right in its tracks.
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It will usually take off and run twenty-five,
a hundred fifty yards, and you've got the
task of tracking that animal through the
underbrush until you find the body which has
expired from blood loss.
If you shoot the animal right and
the bullet does not penetrate downward but
stays inside and disintegrates, which is
known as a bullet failure, then you may still
disrupt the animal's central nervous system
and it will drop in its tracks. That happens
from time to time.
Q. Judge, do you recall from the
evidence before you at that time how the
petitioner came to buy that particular rifle?
A. What seems to have happened from the
record is that James Earl Ray went into a
business that sold firearms and bought what
is known as a 243 Winchester. It is one of
the 308 rounds that we had been talking about
or at least the cartridge case, neck down,
to .243 caliber. In other words, about six
millimeters versus seven point six two
millimeter.
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He brought it back the next day and
advised the proprietor that he had been told
or advised to get a .30-caliber weapon,
whereupon he reportedly purchased this item
right here and they mounted a scope on this
weapon.
Q. Judge, I'm going to come to the
scope, but could I ask you, was the 243
Winchester not an adequate rifle for the
purpose that this one was allegedly used for?
A. Actually a 243 actually probably
would have been a better weapon for the
purpose than this would have been, commonly
used to dispatch deer and also varments.
Also, it is a pretty accurate round, and
we're talking about a range that is less than
a hundred fifty yards, if you have any idea
of the ultimate layout of the scene, which is
Dr. King at the Lorraine Hotel with the
apparent point of firing being somewhere
within a hundred fifty yards.
Q. The 243 Winchester in fact was as
good or a better a rifle for the purpose of
assassination than that weapon?
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A. At least as well. It would have been
quite a bit better caliber than the one that
was used to kill President John F. Kennedy.
Q. Why, then, in your opinion, after
considering the varieties of the two rifles
and the choice ultimately settling on this
30-06, why was petitioner instructed to buy
this caliber rifle?
A. Based on the entirety of the record
and the entirety of the circumstances of the
case, it was my belief that it was so there
could be a number of common-caliber weapons
that might have been on the scene of the
killing.
Q. That would have had the same
caliber -- produced the same caliber bullet?
A. Same caliber bullet. If the test for
ballistic comparison purposes were run as
they were by the FBI, that is, firing the
sample projectiles into cotton waste so that
you could not get more striations on them so
you could compare the bullets with what was
taken from Dr. King's body, you would have
about sixteen or so million weapons that
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could have been the one that fired this
bullet.
I think Remmington ultimately made
right now somewhere around eight or nine
million of these using the same barrel
machinery, either with this permutation of
the 760 Gamemaster, the 740 semiauto or the
Model 700 bolt-action series.
Q. Moving on to the scope, you were
about to tell us about what you concluded
with respect to the scope.
A. It is interesting in that the
proprietor of the shop never did what they
call polarimated this scope. You can't just
take a new rifle with a scope mount on it,
put some rings on it and then put a scope on
it and expect to hit anything. You've got to
zero the thing. That is not very neat.
There is a device called a
polarimeter, which looks like a small
telescope, that has a little spindle that
will fit down in the muzzle of this weapon.
Usually when you get a polarimater, they give
you a number of spindles that will fit most
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common calibers.
You put that spindle-mounted
polarimater into the muzzle, you line it up.
There are some crosshairs on it. You take
these scaps right here of the scope and
you'll see in here a slot. What you do is
you move these screws or these devices around
using a coin until you get the crosshairs on
the scope matching the crosshairs on the
polarimater.
There is another alternative method
that you can use with a bolt action, which is
to take the bolt out, and the receiver will
be open. You lay this rifle on a sandbag and
you aim down the barrel itself at some item
about a hundred yards away, a small circular
item, and you try to align it in the middle
of the bore with the same amount of the bore
showing around this item. Then you
manipulate the adjustment knobs on the scope
to align the crosshairs with the item one
hundred yards away, and you keep looking back
and forth.
As you can see with this rifle, it
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has got a closed receiver, so you cannot
bore-sight this using that particular
method. You'd have to polarimate it.
It has been my experience over the
last thirty years firing I don't know how
many hundreds of rifles that even when do you
get it polarimated or you bore a sight, right
after, when you take it out to the range to
finalize your sight-in process and you put up
a target at about twenty-five yards distance,
that I would say would be about the size of
one of these picture frames on the wall, you
might be lucky to get it in at the bottom
left-hand corner at twenty-five yards. Then
you'd have to dial in sixty clicks up, sixty
clicks to the right or left to get it close
on and then back out to a hundred yards and
then try to sight the thing in further, and
by a slow process make it so that the bullet
impacts where your crosshairs are located.
Now, usually what you do on a
.30-caliber weapon, if you are a hunter or
somebody else, you try and get the typical
bullet impact approximately two inches, maybe
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an inch and be a half or two inches, above
point of aim. That would put your rifle dead
on at two hundred yards, maybe two fifty
actually, two hundred fifty yards.
That would mean if you fired at a
target with the weapon cited in like that at
twenty-five yards, you'd hit with a scope
like this on it about three quarters of an
inch to an inch below the target. At about
fifty yards you would start crossing over
that target line. At about sixty-five to
seventy you would hit right on.
At one hundred yards you'd be about
an inch and a half, inch point nine, maybe
two inches high. You'd be slightly over that
at two hundred yards. And at two hundred
fifty you'd be dead on. And at three hundred
you might be six or seven inches low.
So you would have to sight this
thing in. It does not appear that this
weapon was ever sighted in.
Now, there was also an FBI report in
the record that talked about this weapon
having been test-fired shortly after it was
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taken into evidence. And that report
revealed that it shot several feet to one
side at a hundred yards and slightly half
that low. So this does not appear to have
been a sighted-in weapon.
Now, it is possible that it could
have been knocked out of zero, but this rifle
is not one for that to be something that was
as likely as it would be with other weapons.
You will note that it has got a
two-piece stock. This stock really is not
firmly affixed to the barrel. There is a
rod, an operating rod, upon which this slide
is affixed. That keeps it from having any
impact on the barrel at all. This barrel is
fixed tight with the receiver. You simply
have a butt stock here which keeps this thing
from occurring like your typical bolt action
where there is wood that goes all the way up
the receiver and up along the barrel which
tends to warp one way or the other depending
upon the temperature and humidity.
So this rifle probably would not
have gotten much out of zero, and what I call
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out of zero is maybe an inch or so one way or
the other. If you get real finicky, you make
sure you get it right back on.
So this weapon, if it was in the
condition it was in three some days, four
some days after it was taken into evidence,
literally could not have hit the broadside of
a barn if somebody was shooting with it at a
target.
That brings up some other
circumstances if you want me to go into it
about what I was observing about the target
conditions themselves.
Q. Yes, I'd like like you to briefly
summarize that. Let me also understand what
you have told us now. Based upon your review
of the --
A. You want me to say it simply? In
other words, you buy one of these, put a
scope sight on it, you've got to sight it
in. It takes a bit of doing. It takes a
little help with some mechanical devices on
the front end. That was not done with this
weapon.
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It does not appear that this weapon
was sighted in. And when it was recovered
and first taken into evidence, it would not
hit what it was shooting at. It would hit
several feet to either right or left. I
think it was four feet one way and two feet
down.
Q. Yes. That is what the FBI report
indicates?
A. That's right. Anyway --
Q. Could that rifle scope have been
thrown out that amount had it been dropped on
a sidewalk?
A. That amount, no. I had one of these
very scopes, fell out of a tree and landed on
the bloody thing. Damn near broke my leg.
But I could carry on with the hunt.
Q. The scope was intact?
A. Scope was intact. Rugged scope.
That's why they sold a lot of them, the
Redfield two to seven variable. One of the
earlier variables, but a pretty good one.
Q. Let me just ask you: Moving on,
based upon all this analysis and review of
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this rifle, the testing information, the
documentation, is it your opinion that this
weapon was the murder weapon that killed
Martin Luther King, Jr.?
A. Well, I've not discussed the further
ballistics tests I ordered and the result.
But based on the entirety of the record and
the further ballistics tests I had run on
this rifle, it is my opinion this is not the
muder weapon.
Q. Could you just summarize for us the
basis of that opinion?
A. Okay. The basis of that opinion
would be run based on the subsequent
ballistics analysis that was done with this
weapon using scanning electron microscopy to
analyze the sample bullet and compare it with
the slug removed from Dr. King, the
circumstances attendant upon the lack of
similar batch status of the bullets from the
rest the cartridges, this weapon itself in
terms of it not being sighted in and also a
description of the shooting itself in terms
of what supposedly transpired that makes this
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a rather unique weapon.
Now, if you would like, I'll talk
about the ballistics test that I got the
results of.
Q. Yes, please. Go on.
A. Okay. What ultimately happened is I
ordered this rifle thoroughly cleaned for
this reason: It is a new weapon. The bore
has not been shot in. It has not been broken
in. The bores of rifles need to be broken in
just like your car needs to be broken in.
They are still rough.
Remmington was not the worst at
that, but in 1968, 1967, 1966, the firearms
companies were switching over from a lot of
hand labor to machine-manufacturing processes
that had not been perfected. There was a big
hue and cry in the whole gun world about the
defects that you often found with new
products. I know I had to send one back
every four or fifth time I got a hunting
rifle. There was a flaw in it that had to be
sent back for correction.
In any event, I ordered this weapon
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cleaned, because even though it had -- you
can look through it right now. It looks like
you've got a shiny bore. If you look under
it -- at it under certain light conditions,
this whole bore is smeared with jacket
powder. Basically a bullet fired in a
hunting weapon has a lead core. It has a
gilding metal jacket or a bronze jacket, and
there is coating over the top of that.
When you fire it down this bore with
the high heat of the combustion process and
the higher pressure and the velocity, it
leaves trace elements of that jacket all down
the barrel. The more of the barrel that is
broken in and the smoother it gets, the less
it leaves.
When I inspected this weapon
initially, the bore impressed me as quite
filfthy. I used a bore sight. It is a
little device with a light in it. You can
look through this thing. It is absolutely
filfthy.
In any event, I ordered it cleaned.
They apparently did not clean it more than to
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run a patch down one or twice through it. I
had given as a suggestion that they use
something known as a file out, which is a
device made by a company known as Outers,
that is nonintrusive.
You fill this barrel with a
chemical. You put a plug in it, an electrode
in it, hook the barrel up to the other
electrode and you leave it for twenty-four
hours and it works a reverse-plating process
and you get all the filings stripped out of
this barrel and it adheres to the electrode.
So you would have a pristinely-clean
weapon in twenty-four hours. They chose not
to do that but to simply run a patch through
it for a number of reasons, which through
mistake -- which was going against their
mistaken understanding of my order -- they
thought I order them not to clean it.
But in any event, they fired
eighteen bullets from this weapon into a
water tank. Twelve of those bullets, that
is, sixty-six point three four or seven five
or sixty-seven percent, showed a similar
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characteristic that was a very unusual
characteristic.
What usually happens when you take a
bullet and you fire it down a rifle barrel is
that the actual diameter of the bullet, that
is, the .308 in this case, would match the
bore diameter. But when you have the bore,
there are some lands, some ribs that stick
down. Those ribs would engrave the bullet.
They would press markings into the bullet.
What was unusual about the
characteristic of the projectiles that were
fired out of this weapon is that there was a
defect somewhere in this barrel that caused
the bullet not to be pressed down but to come
up into this particular flaw. So what you
did is instead of a rounding, say one of
these styrofoam coffee cups, with grooves
that had been indented in that, imagine, if
you can, that there would be a bump that
would be sticking up on the surface.
So that is very unusual and
indicated that there was some shattering in
the tool that was used to make this barrel.
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It very seldom happens. It is very rare.
But it was present on these bullets.
Now, because this weapon was not
cleaned, what happened was that the filing
material was being blown out of this flaw.
So one of these bullets would have a gross
reflection of this flaw. The next shot
through it would be somewhat less impressed
because of the filing that had filled up this
defect. The third one would have even less
of an impression. Then the filing would get
blown out. The next bullets through would
not show it to a gross extent.
So you've got twelve bullets with
the same common characteristic, that is, this
raised area on the surface of the bullet.
There was not -- that was not found on the
corresponding portion of the bullet removed
from Dr. King.
Now, using scanning electron
microscopy, you can get a much more clear
view of what you are looking at than the
traditional method. One of the problems with
the so-called experts that were called in on
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this is none of them were really expert in
much of anything concerning firearms other
than simply looking at one bullet, comparing
it with another bullet, in a microscopic
setting.
None of them had any experience in
scanning electron microscopy, none of them
had any significant experience in actually
shooting or using a rifle or anything other
than what they did in the laboratory.
None of them had ever cleaned a
rifle other than I believe the testimony was
that when they found one clogged with mud or
dirt or debris, they would run a rod through
just to get that out so they didn't destruct
the weapon.
In any event, this characteristic
was common. Sixty-seven percent of the
bullets showed it. I ordered the weapon be
be retested once this cleaning was done. The
nature of the defect was such that it would
be expected that one hundred percent of the
rounds fired would show this defect.
If I can give that to you in lay
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terms, it is like this: You are sixty-seven
years old, seventy-four years, you are having
trouble urinating. You go to the doctor. He
says, I think you need to go see a
proctologist, I'm noting a very hard area in
your -- hard something in your prostate
area. The proctologist says, okay, fine, we
need to run some tests. Every test they run
is saying, okay, you've got prostate cancer.
That's where we are with this rifle
here. The next step would have simply been a
confirmation of everything that had gone
before. But this does not appear to be the
rifle that was used to kill Dr. King.
There is another thing about that
that is unusual, too: The testimony that the
barrel of this rifle was rested across a hard
wood window sill, that the gunman, using one
foot to prop himself up, holding on and using
another arm to hold the weapon, he supposedly
rested this barrel on this window sill and
pulled the trigger.
Well, there is an unusual thing
about this one. Being a slide-action, if you
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do that, nine times out of ten the slide is
going to cycle itself before the pressure is
dropped in the barrel, and what you'll get is
a blown-up or ruptured shell casing, which
will be quite exciting when it happens.
So this rifle fortuitously is
incapable of being used as they indicated in
the proof that was in the record.
So we've got, one, non-similar lots
of components, two, we've got a rifle that
has never been cited in, three, we've got a
usage suggested for that that is impossible
for this particular type of weapon, and then
in addition, when we run the more advanced
ballistic comparison tests, none of that
matches up.
Q. Judge, after all of that analysis,
you had come to order retesting under very
strict guidelines?
A. Very strict.
Q. The cleaning and the retesting. That
was about to go forward. What happened?
A. Well, they removed me from the case.
They said I was biased towards James Earl
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Ray, which found rather astonishing. If
anybody knows me, me being biased in favor of
a self-avowed racist and bigot is absolutely
disgusting as a concept.
What I've always tried to do is be
fair and impartial and neutral and detached
straight down the middle, and sometimes I
know that upsets people when things don't go
as they expect them to go.
Q. So you were removed from the case by
whom?
A. The Tennessee Court of Criminal
Appeals. It is interesting that was done
before a full transcript was developed. I
must say this: That during the course of
these procedings, whenever the prosecution
didn't like what I was doing, they would run
up and file affidavits, which in my personal
opinion misrepresented the state of the
evidence, and they would go up there to get
an emergency stay before a transcript was
prepared.
Now, one thing that struck me as
quite unusual is one of the affidavits they
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filed in this particular case, which was,
quote, the weapon should not be tested
because if it is tested, it may be damaged,
which would prevent it from being tested in
the future, unquote.
Q. Judge, would you explain to the jury
how firing that caliber weapon might generate
what appears to onlookers to be smoke rising
from a brush area?
A. It is my saying you do not get smoke
from smokeless power, but when you have a
high-intensity cartridge like a 30-06, you
don't, but what you might find is the
following: The compression may cause a
condensation of water, which is a phenomenon
that I've observed from time to time hunting
or shooting, or, two, you may kick up fine
dust in the area immediately in front of the
rifle, or, three, because this rifle slug may
be moving close to the speed of sound, the
shock waive from the bullet passing a bush or
some foliage that has dust on it will cause
it to rise and it will look to the onlooker
like smoke.
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Now, there is another thing about
this rifle that is of significance. It goes
back to what you asked me in terms of my
opinion about why the .30-caliber weapon.
Not only could you use a number of civilian
weapons, but if somebody were analyze the
basal characteristics of a slug taken from
Dr. King and this weapon with what the FBI
did, you could not tell whether that weapon
came out of an M-14, a M-21, an M-24 or the
Remmington 700 military sniper weapon that
they had at the time, nor could you tell if
it came out of that.
One of the things that they did not
do is attempt to analyze the twist of the
projectile that was recovered which might
have been helpful. But in any event, what
you have is a situation where let's say you
have one, two, three, four or five people who
have been for one reason or the other
convinced that they were doing something
worthwhile, they could have all been out
there attempting to carry out their own
little particular portion in some perceived
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assassination. Meanwhile, other people could
have been involved, and if any of those
people had been out there, then each of the
.30-caliber weapons they possessed could
have been tied into the case just like this
one was.
Q. That fatal shot could have been fired
from any number of .30-caliber weapons?
A. Any number of .30-caliber weapons,
military or civilian. Let's put it this
way: As a professional involved in the
criminal justice system for a very long time,
as a prosecutor, public defender, defense
lawyer handling murders, robberies, very
serious crimes, this had to be one of the
most inept and incapable, if not downright
incompetent investigations, I've ever seen in
my life.
It would it would have struck me
that if they had really wanted to analyze
bullets fired out of this rifle, they would
have fired them into water, not cotton
waste. It would have struck me that they
would have done a more intense analysis of
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what you have over there.
Now, you've got a base of that
bullet that is completely intact, and it is
quite subject to even ordinary ballistic
analysis for striations. They did not do
that.
Q. Judge, on that tack, the FBI reports
indicated that the death slug was too badly
deformed for them to do that kind of
analysis?
A. That's not a badly-deformed slug.
What you have here is an intact base. That
is what you need. What has gone on here is
that most of what is in this record is
something that you would accept on trust.
Ballistics is an arcane subject.
The FBI is supposed to know everything there
is about the subject. In 1996 the FBI was
trusted. The FBI said in our professional
opinion this is not capable of being
analyzed. They didn't do anything on,
absolutely nothing at all, except the worst
things you could do if you wanted to develop
some test results.
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Judge Preston Battle looked at what
they supplied, and even back in 1968 he was
not satisfied with these tests, and ordered
that they be redone. So from 1968 up until
James Earl Ray died, there was a resistance
on the part of local authorities to keep this
weapon from being retested.
The first judge ordered it. I
ordered it. When it was tested, sixty-seven
percent of the bullets were found to not
match that murder slug.
MR. PEPPER: Judge Brown, thank
you very much.
THE WITNESS: You are welcome.
MR. GARRISON: I have no
questions of Judge Brown.
THE COURT: Thank you, Judge.
THE WITNESS: Thank you, Judge.
(Witness excused.)
(Jury out.)
(The proceedings were adjourned
at 4:35 p.m.)
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