Speaker 1: Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Tenderfoot TV. The views and opinions expressed in
Speaker 1: this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or
Speaker 1: individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those
Speaker 1: of I Heart Media, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees. Listener
Speaker 1: discretion is advised to understand the context of this killing.
Speaker 1: You should understand that Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, for civil
Speaker 1: rights workers who were buried in the levee, We're all
Speaker 1: slain within about fifty or sixty miles of Memphis. Memphis
Speaker 1: as an interesting reputation of being the first degree murder
Speaker 1: capital of America. And in that context we're not talking
Speaker 1: about street crime but organized land hits. So that explains
Speaker 1: why this. If you were gonna kill somebody, Memphis was
Speaker 1: the place to do it, and you pull off the killing,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile, some other folks have done the skull duggery
Speaker 1: and got some SAPs set up to take the dive
Speaker 1: and fifty years later argue about who did what I
Speaker 1: called the Union Hall. I said, a matter of life
Speaker 1: and death. I said, I think these people are planning
Speaker 1: to kill Dr King. The authorities were parade. Oh, we
Speaker 1: found a gun that James ol Ray bought in Birmingham
Speaker 1: that killed Dr King. Except it wasn't the gun that
Speaker 1: killed Dr King. James Lay was upon for the official
Speaker 1: story from My Heart Radio intended for TV. The plan
Speaker 1: was to get King to the city because they wanted
Speaker 1: it handled. In Memphis were dead and in cat Hamon
Speaker 1: and I have lived with it so long, my sion,
Speaker 1: and they scared for me. The Lord told me to
Speaker 1: not the word. I've been want to tell it all
Speaker 1: my life on Bill Claybourn and this is the MLK tapes.
Speaker 1: At the top of this episode, we heard Judge Joe
Speaker 1: Brown speaking at AEEN symposium at Duquesne University marking the
Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the assassinations of Martin King and Robert Kennedy.
Speaker 1: Judge Brown had just completed a fifteen year run as
Speaker 1: a judge on a TV reality show, but before that
Speaker 1: he had been a real judge in Tennessee and had
Speaker 1: presided over the last attempt to get James Earl Ray
Speaker 1: a trial. That case had been brought by Bill Pepper,
Speaker 1: Ray's attorney at the time, and from the stage of
Speaker 1: the same symposium, Pepper spoke about Judge Brown and those
Speaker 1: events of some twenty years before. We were very pleased
Speaker 1: to have Judge Brown on the bench because finally there
Speaker 1: was an impartial object of and I might say courageous
Speaker 1: man up there who was prepared to do what he
Speaker 1: believed was right. No better expert on ballistics did we
Speaker 1: find anywhere than Judge Brown. Judge Brown was indeed an
Speaker 1: expert when it came to guns, and when he spoke
Speaker 1: that day on the shooting of King, he focused on
Speaker 1: race rifle. Was it really the murder weapon? But before
Speaker 1: we get to forensics, the race of twist lands and
Speaker 1: grooves and all that, let's hear what Brown had to
Speaker 1: say about what it was like to be black in
Speaker 1: Memphis in the bad old days. Joe Brown had a
Speaker 1: unique perspective because he had not grown up in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: He had come of age in sunny California, and after
Speaker 1: law school at U c. L A. He accepted a
Speaker 1: challenging legal fellowship in the nation's heartland. Joe Brown arrived
Speaker 1: in Memphis in nineteen seventy three. He noticed the difference
Speaker 1: right away. Appeared for one of the poverty law centers
Speaker 1: I was working at with five clients at the local
Speaker 1: juvenile court. The judge, who had a sixth grade education,
Speaker 1: he dropped out of the sixth grade, thought I was
Speaker 1: on his docket and he called me the inn words.
Speaker 1: So we had at it. But that was the attitude.
Speaker 1: And I've actually been in court rooms in front of
Speaker 1: a jury and the judge used the in word to
Speaker 1: the jury in describing um some of the defendants on trial.
Speaker 1: So it's not unusual now. I also happened to be
Speaker 1: the first black prosecutor for the city in Memphis, and
Speaker 1: one of the interesting, rather disgusting charges that I would
Speaker 1: see on records when I would be asked to make
Speaker 1: an offer on something was something like this reckless eyeballing
Speaker 1: by a colored person. That's a quote on what the
Speaker 1: charge was, colored person refusing to remove from sidewalk for
Speaker 1: passage of white person. This was the interesting one, acting
Speaker 1: too colored in public. So I would see these kind
Speaker 1: of charges on people's rap sheets, and that was the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, you still had that thing
Speaker 1: going on. And describing his shock at Landing and what
Speaker 1: for him was the wild West, Judge Brown recalled a
Speaker 1: particular evening in a Memphis courtroom. Well, we had this
Speaker 1: old guy late eighties maybe early nineties, and he was
Speaker 1: on the dockets. So I asked the judge if I
Speaker 1: could advance the case since the arresting officer was coming
Speaker 1: in that evening on a traffic matter. So the judge
Speaker 1: gave me permission. I got the file jacket brought to
Speaker 1: the courtroom and I'm standing around waiting for this case
Speaker 1: to come up. When the back door the courtroom is
Speaker 1: kicked in, and he was an old man. He had
Speaker 1: his Model nineteen three fifty seven Smith up in the air,
Speaker 1: and the many officers in the courtroom, instead of doing
Speaker 1: what you think they do, they all dived under the
Speaker 1: cover of the pews. So he walked in and he said,
Speaker 1: who the devil? Et cetera, et ceter was cussing and
Speaker 1: put his hands on my nigro. So nobody touched my
Speaker 1: nigga's and my hunting animals but me. So he walks
Speaker 1: up to the cop in question, grabs him by the collar,
Speaker 1: puts the pistol to his head and said, I'll blow
Speaker 1: your brains out. I kill you, your granty looking wife,
Speaker 1: all your children, your livestock, and your hunting animals, if
Speaker 1: you ever do this again? Who he walks over and
Speaker 1: shut up. Robert, that was the judge's name. I used
Speaker 1: to do your mama. You you maybe wanna mind it.
Speaker 1: I don't know about it. O. Judge said, Mr Brown,
Speaker 1: whatnover is? He had the dock and I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I th show those this this. So he walked out
Speaker 1: of here. I said, why didn't nobody do what he thin?
Speaker 1: He said, that's Jimmie Thompson. That's death in Carnie Brown
Speaker 1: didn't know who Jimmy Thompson was, but during a recess
Speaker 1: he was pulled aside by some old timer who tried
Speaker 1: to fill him in. Turns out, Jimmie Thompson had at
Speaker 1: one time been sheriff in Memphis for some sixteen years.
Speaker 1: Here's old guys, let me tell you store about when
Speaker 1: I was a young deputy with the sheriff departing. Before
Speaker 1: I got on, the police departing said we was out
Speaker 1: and you know we busted two good old of a
Speaker 1: couple of good old boys and they were drunk. Jimmy
Speaker 1: Thompson pulled up in his V twelve packet automobile and
Speaker 1: he stopped. He came on, say I know this man.
Speaker 1: He's saying, none but scumb He said, who you? So
Speaker 1: the guy told him, he said, you take care of
Speaker 1: your wife and children. He said, well, yes, sir, I tried,
Speaker 1: so you that's wrong to that right, Get on up
Speaker 1: out of here. He says, I'm wondering what the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: gonna do. He pulls his revolver, I shoots the other
Speaker 1: man in the head. Tways said, I told this scarm
Speaker 1: he ain't on dirty up my jail. No more call
Speaker 1: to meet wagon. So that was my first time meeting
Speaker 1: to share a face to face. He said, Jimmy's gonna
Speaker 1: kill forty five fifty people in his career. So when
Speaker 1: Jimmy pull out a gun, everybody diving for couple because
Speaker 1: somebody likely to that. But you see, this is the
Speaker 1: background in Memphis, Tennessee at this point in time. Joe
Speaker 1: Brown would go on to be the first black prosecutor
Speaker 1: in the city of Memphis, and after that he began
Speaker 1: his own law practice. In he became a criminal court
Speaker 1: judge in Shelby County, which includes Memphis, US In Bill
Speaker 1: Pepper brought a lawsuit seeking to reopen the case against
Speaker 1: James Earl Ray with that time had been imprisoned for
Speaker 1: twenty five years. The case landed in Judge Brown's courtroom,
Speaker 1: a lucky break for Pepper and Ray, because Brown took
Speaker 1: an active interest in the cases that came before him,
Speaker 1: and I did a lot of trial work. And one
Speaker 1: of the things that I did was I helped train
Speaker 1: the Capitol defense team for the Public Defender's Office. So
Speaker 1: that wound up getting me involved in forty forty two
Speaker 1: first degree murder cases. They're fascinating. One of the things
Speaker 1: I learned from trying that kind of case is when
Speaker 1: you get it, go to the scene, take a look
Speaker 1: around and see if what you see on the ground
Speaker 1: matches the theory. Well, one of the problems that came
Speaker 1: out when I got the Ray case is that some
Speaker 1: of the evidence, as far as I was concerned, did
Speaker 1: not match the circumstances. First off, let's get a clarification
Speaker 1: in here. The news media likes to put it out
Speaker 1: James Earl Ray, the self confess killer of Dr Martin
Speaker 1: Luther King. Well, that's an error. He never confessed. He
Speaker 1: always denied it. This might seem like a strange thing
Speaker 1: for Judge Brown to say, because in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: James L. Ray did plead guilty to the explicit charge
Speaker 1: of murdering Dr Martin Luther King. If you were with
Speaker 1: us in episode four, you heard about the strange circumstances
Speaker 1: under which that plea was made. And as we heard
Speaker 1: from his first attorney, Art Haynes Jr. Ray always said
Speaker 1: that he did not shoot King or anyone else that day.
Speaker 1: So that is what Judge Brown is referring to the
Speaker 1: little known fact that James Earl Ray always said he
Speaker 1: did not shoot Martin Luther King. Of course, the authorities
Speaker 1: said that he did, and their best evidence was not
Speaker 1: the drunk who said he saw Ray running from the scene,
Speaker 1: but the rifle found on the street, the one Ray
Speaker 1: had bought just two days before. But Judge Brown was
Speaker 1: far from convinced that this rifle raised rifle was the
Speaker 1: actual murder weapon. The state claimed that its reasonable factual
Speaker 1: basis was raised rifle a thirty odd six caliber Remingtons
Speaker 1: seven sixty game Master, a pump rifle. The interesting thing
Speaker 1: is is that that really went astray at that point
Speaker 1: because the FBI claimed that they could not make a
Speaker 1: ballistics match between Ray's rifle and the bullet they pulled
Speaker 1: out of King's body. They said it was too distorted
Speaker 1: to test that is the death's lug. However, examining the
Speaker 1: evidence and the evidence room, it most certainly was not there.
Speaker 1: It was a big bruga about me ordering the rifle reachsted.
Speaker 1: In most cases, when you test fire a gun to
Speaker 1: see if it's the weapon used in a particular murder,
Speaker 1: you're creating a bullet that can be compared to the
Speaker 1: death slug. If the markings on the two bullets are
Speaker 1: a perfect match, you have determined that this gun fired
Speaker 1: the fatal shot to the exclusion of all other guns
Speaker 1: in the universe. Very often the match is less than perfect.
Speaker 1: In this case, if the class characteristics are the same,
Speaker 1: like the caliber bullet, you have determined that the weapon
Speaker 1: tested could have fired the bullet, and that's the best
Speaker 1: the FBI could do. In essence, King was killed with
Speaker 1: a thirty caliber bullet, and raised rifle could fire a
Speaker 1: thirty caliber bullet. So what did Judge Brown discover about
Speaker 1: the rifle and the bullet when this case landed in
Speaker 1: his courtroom? Recognize thats the seven sixty game master and
Speaker 1: evidence in this case? Did you have a cadianum to
Speaker 1: consider this weapon as a murder weapon in this case,
Speaker 1: some degree of debt and careful consideration. I did so.
Speaker 1: And when was that? That was during the course of
Speaker 1: proceedings brought by the lady James or A Ray and
Speaker 1: what is known as the post conviction relief proceedings to
Speaker 1: challenge his inviction. You're listening to Judge Joe Brown testify
Speaker 1: at the civil trial. Brown a few years earlier had
Speaker 1: presided over the lawsuits seeking to reopen the case against
Speaker 1: James Earl Ray. The man asking the questions is Bill Pepper,
Speaker 1: who at the civil trial is representing the King family. Now,
Speaker 1: Judge Brown, how long did you pres over those sin
Speaker 1: I'd like to say about three years. It all sort
Speaker 1: of shifts into a blur that got in my courtroom.
Speaker 1: There was at that time a set of laws and
Speaker 1: cases that have been decided that basically caused me to
Speaker 1: deny the petition of James or a Raid. So what
Speaker 1: I've ordered was that the petition would be denied, but
Speaker 1: I will allow the petitioner to put on what is
Speaker 1: known as a proper of proof. In other words, if
Speaker 1: he will allowed to present this evidence, this is what
Speaker 1: it would show. So on appellate court could determine whether
Speaker 1: or not the law need to be needed to be refused. Well,
Speaker 1: in any event, I ordered that the rifle will be retested.
Speaker 1: It went to the Port of Criminal Appeals who went
Speaker 1: along to the prosecutorial side of things and declined to
Speaker 1: allow that rifle to be retested. And issue of state
Speaker 1: the blue that Judge Brown just mentioned has to do
Speaker 1: with the fact that the rate case in his court
Speaker 1: dragged on for the better part of three years to nine.
Speaker 1: It was a legal battle over whether Ray would have
Speaker 1: the right to present evidence that might overturn his conviction,
Speaker 1: even though the statute of limitations for doing such a
Speaker 1: thing had long ago run out. There were orders, stays, appeals,
Speaker 1: changes in state law, more stays. Most of the time
Speaker 1: was spent waiting around for a ruling on some appeal
Speaker 1: of a ruling made in Judge Brown's court. It was
Speaker 1: a frustrating, messy affair that defies any simple description, but
Speaker 1: we will touch on some of the important points. As
Speaker 1: Judge Brown said, the Court of Appeals initially prevented him
Speaker 1: from ordering a test firing of the rifle, but it
Speaker 1: didn't prevent him from going through the case files. Sometime
Speaker 1: in ninety six, he had the death slug fragments put
Speaker 1: under a high powered electron microscope. When he did this,
Speaker 1: sure enough, the rifling had a right hand twist, just
Speaker 1: as the FBI said. But as he told the court
Speaker 1: that day, there was something else, something that required a
Speaker 1: little high school trigonometry. It appears that the death slugged
Speaker 1: it was taken out of King's body, was fired from
Speaker 1: a rifle that had a rate of rifling twist of
Speaker 1: one turn in every eleven and a quarter inches. Raised rifle,
Speaker 1: for those who are interested, had a rate of rifling
Speaker 1: twist of one turn in ten inches. If you've got
Speaker 1: an eleven and a quarter inch rate of rifling twist,
Speaker 1: you're talking custom barrel and James Drew Ray I assure
Speaker 1: you had no access to anybody making custom barrels at
Speaker 1: that time. If Judge Brown's calculations are correct, and you
Speaker 1: could get the case back in court, it would go
Speaker 1: a long way to proving that raised rifle was not
Speaker 1: the murder weapon. More certain still, Judge Brown's poking around
Speaker 1: like that was beginning to make people uncomfortable. Most judges
Speaker 1: don't use microscopes to look at bullets. Most judges don't
Speaker 1: think in terms of metallurgy or rates of twist, but
Speaker 1: Judge Brown did, and the pressure to relieve him of
Speaker 1: his duties increased, and strange things were starting to happen.
Speaker 1: Judge Brown told me of several incidents. In one ninety seven,
Speaker 1: his house was invaded by men wearing ski masks. He
Speaker 1: had gotten home late, fallen asleep at the kitchen table,
Speaker 1: and then woke up. I heard some noise and I
Speaker 1: was sitting in my kitchen and I became aware of
Speaker 1: some shadows out back and some out front. And to
Speaker 1: make a long story short, two people tried to break
Speaker 1: in the front, three in the back at the same time.
Speaker 1: They jammie the screens out of the windows and took
Speaker 1: wild glass cutters to cut the pain out so they
Speaker 1: could open the windows. Were dressed in pretty much the
Speaker 1: same thing, dark clothing, balaklavs with just the eyes out,
Speaker 1: and apparently they had on some heavy kevlar armor and
Speaker 1: they had side arms on the side. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: why the police raiding me? And then I said, these
Speaker 1: aren't police. I'm a sitting judge. This is three thirty
Speaker 1: am in the morning. And they came in and there
Speaker 1: was a shootout. I wound up having to patch the walls.
Speaker 1: I called my friend Winfrey, who was the director of
Speaker 1: the police at that time. He came out. We looked around.
Speaker 1: We found some blood trails out front, out back, and
Speaker 1: there was no report of anyone being treated in an
Speaker 1: emergency room and no reports of this incident. So that's
Speaker 1: a little wild. But actually my disposition I found it intriguing.
Speaker 1: Intriguing or not. According to Judge Brown, nothing ever came
Speaker 1: of that into in but one afternoon, not long after that,
Speaker 1: Brown said he got a phone call while he was
Speaker 1: in court. What's going on, Judge, is to Detective Song.
Speaker 1: So and Song so we're out in the parking lot.
Speaker 1: Somebody's trying to break in your lexus. Okay. Five minutes later,
Speaker 1: Judge the Song so they were trying to plant two
Speaker 1: key loads of coke in your car. Oh wow, all right,
Speaker 1: we got them. What's going on? They stayed there, were
Speaker 1: with a federal agency and uh, they made a mistake
Speaker 1: during this sting. But your name's on your parking place,
Speaker 1: you know. Stuff like that. It's hard to know just
Speaker 1: what to make of such stories, but Judge Brown feels
Speaker 1: they were related to his handling of the race case,
Speaker 1: and things were starting to heat up because, although he
Speaker 1: had initially been prevented from having the rifle test fired,
Speaker 1: Judge Brown finally won permission to do that very thing.
Speaker 1: The rifle was tested by ballistics expert Robert Hathaway at
Speaker 1: the University of Rhode Island Crime Lab, and two weeks
Speaker 1: later the results were revealed in court. After hearing testimony
Speaker 1: from ballistics experts, Memphis, Judge Joe Brown decided further examination
Speaker 1: of test fire bullets from James R. Ray's rifle maybe needed.
Speaker 1: This was one headline the day after the test results
Speaker 1: of the rifle were announced. Hathaway testified that he fired
Speaker 1: and recovered eighteen bullets like the one that killed Dr. King.
Speaker 1: Twelve of those eighteen emerged with unique markings matching them
Speaker 1: to each other and to the rifle itself, but they
Speaker 1: didn't match the fatal slug recovered from Dr. King. But
Speaker 1: six bullets did not have those particular markings, even though
Speaker 1: they were fired from the same weapon. Hathaway's tests strongly
Speaker 1: suggested that the death slug was not fired from Ray's rifle,
Speaker 1: but it was short of proving that if six bullets
Speaker 1: could have been fired by the rifle but not be
Speaker 1: with certainty trace back to it. Then the same could
Speaker 1: be true for the death slog. There was immediate talk
Speaker 1: of retest. More scientific tests may be conducted on James
Speaker 1: Earl Ray's rifle to see if it was used to
Speaker 1: kill Martin Luther King. Tests described Friday were inconclusive, though
Speaker 1: a build up of material and the rifle barrel could
Speaker 1: be to blame. But today experts told that Joe Brown
Speaker 1: James L. Ray's rifle had not been thoroughly cleaned since
Speaker 1: the last test firing, and that build up within the
Speaker 1: barrel may have jeopardized the accuracy of this testing. As
Speaker 1: soon as the results of the rifle test were announced,
Speaker 1: Bill Pepper asked for the rifle to be tested again.
Speaker 1: Judge Brown then asked the Appeals Court for permission to
Speaker 1: retest the gun after it had been cleaned. What we
Speaker 1: wanted was to get everything out so we could get
Speaker 1: a pristine bore and get the best sample possible. There's
Speaker 1: a company called Outers and they made cleaning supply is
Speaker 1: for weapons. They had a reverse plating device known as
Speaker 1: a foul out, and what you do is when you
Speaker 1: hook the weapons rifle up to this, you get an
Speaker 1: electric current going which causes any fouling in the bore
Speaker 1: to come out without having to scrub it. But the
Speaker 1: authorities were not keen on this proposal. State witness Tommy
Speaker 1: Heflin of the Tennessee Bureau of an Investigation testified, cleaning
Speaker 1: the rifle may damage it and could alter the markings
Speaker 1: on the bullets win fire. So you're gonna change and
Speaker 1: either take away or you're gonna add things to them.
Speaker 1: They had the idea of what you're gonna do is
Speaker 1: take a wire brush and run it up and down
Speaker 1: the boar, and they were worried about that damaging the rifle.
Speaker 1: They had a very peculiar thing that they put in
Speaker 1: their documentation to state said if the rifle is tested
Speaker 1: at this point, it may become damaged, which would quote
Speaker 1: prevented from being retested in the future unquote. Now that
Speaker 1: one eludes me. If you don't want it tested now,
Speaker 1: why do you want it tested in the future. As
Speaker 1: it turned out, Judge Brown never got permission to test
Speaker 1: the rifle again, and what finally happened to raise appeal.
Speaker 1: Here is Judge Brown's response to that very question asked
Speaker 1: by Bill Pepper at the civil trial. Well, they're removed
Speaker 1: from the case. He said, I'll be biased for James
Speaker 1: row a rate which I found rather astonishing. Anybody knows
Speaker 1: me to be being a biased in favor of itself
Speaker 1: about racist and bigot is just absolutely disgusting in the
Speaker 1: concept what I've always tried to do to be fair
Speaker 1: and Parson wotfully detached, straight down the middle and sometimes
Speaker 1: with another that upsets people when things don't go as
Speaker 1: they expect them to go, or you were ruined by
Speaker 1: the from a case by Whome Tennessee Cord from Peas
Speaker 1: So Judge Brown was removed and another judge was brought
Speaker 1: in and raised petition for post conviction relief was dismissed.
Speaker 1: But the mystery surrounding Raise Rifle have only deepened. Anyone
Speaker 1: today who looks into the case can learn soon enough
Speaker 1: that the FBI could not match the death slug to
Speaker 1: Raise rifle. But at the time of the murder and
Speaker 1: raise subsequent plea hearing a year later, the common wisdom
Speaker 1: in the country was that a match had been made.
Speaker 1: How had this come about? It is incumbent upon the
Speaker 1: state in a plea of guilty to murder in the
Speaker 1: first degree to put on certain proof for your consideration.
Speaker 1: We have to put on proof of what we lawyers
Speaker 1: call the proof of corpus delicti, which is the body
Speaker 1: of the crime. This is a reading of the words
Speaker 1: of Assistant Attorney General James Beasley, spoken at Ray's plea
Speaker 1: hearing in March nineteen sixty eight in Tennessee. At the time,
Speaker 1: after a person had pleaded guilty to murder, the state
Speaker 1: was obligated to present some of the evidence they would
Speaker 1: have offered had there been a trial. So the state
Speaker 1: put on an abbreviated and uncontested version of their case.
Speaker 1: They called witnesses who saw doctor King brought down by
Speaker 1: a bullet. They introduced a doctor who said that doctor
Speaker 1: King died because of that bullet, and a police officer
Speaker 1: who found a thirty caliber rifle on the street. Beasley
Speaker 1: then spoke of an expert who would testify that he
Speaker 1: discovered the fingerprints of James Earl Ray on that rifle,
Speaker 1: and then the clincher assistant A. G. Beasley spoke of
Speaker 1: an FBI man who testify at the trial had there
Speaker 1: been one, as to his examination of the death slug
Speaker 1: and its relationship to the found rifle. He examined the
Speaker 1: cartridges the whole from the chamber of this rifle the
Speaker 1: slug removed from the body of doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speaker 1: And would testify to his conclusions as follows. The death
Speaker 1: slug was identical in all physical characteristics with the five
Speaker 1: loaded thirty at six Springfield cartridges found in the bag
Speaker 1: in front of cannipes. The cartridge case had in fact
Speaker 1: been fired in this thirty at six rifle, that the
Speaker 1: death slug removed from the body contained land and groove
Speaker 1: impressions and direction of twist consistent with those that were
Speaker 1: in the barrel of this rifle. To the jurors and
Speaker 1: the newsmen in the room, it seemed that nothing more
Speaker 1: needed to be said. But Mark Lane, who would be
Speaker 1: raised attorney eight years later, said the following about what
Speaker 1: had happened in his book Murder in Memphis. Quote. The
Speaker 1: veteran lawyers in the courtroom smiled to themselves in much
Speaker 1: the same way as professional magicians might do when they
Speaker 1: observed an audience puzzled by a simple but well performed trick.
Speaker 1: So what was the trick? All the fancy talk of
Speaker 1: direction of twists and landing grooves impressions being consistent with
Speaker 1: the barrel of Ray's rifle didn't mean that the bullet
Speaker 1: had been matched to the rifle. It only meant that
Speaker 1: Ray's rifle could have fired that bullet, along with thousands
Speaker 1: of other thirty caliber rifles. But to the newsmen present
Speaker 1: and the American people who would read their stories, the
Speaker 1: case was a slam dunk. Not only had Ray entered
Speaker 1: a guilty plea the police that found his rifle and
Speaker 1: determined that it was the gun that killed King, but
Speaker 1: just below the surface, practically in plain sight, was a
Speaker 1: much more troubling problem about the attempt to match the
Speaker 1: death slug to the gun purchased by James Earl Ray.
Speaker 1: But as simple as it was, it took any five
Speaker 1: years for it to raise its ugly head. Captain, do
Speaker 1: you recognize this photograph? I recognize the body directs a
Speaker 1: bullet that was there as being a photograph that I
Speaker 1: took at the morgue of Dr Martin Luther King. This
Speaker 1: audio comes from the HBO trial. Bill Pepper is cross
Speaker 1: examining Captain Tommy Smith, who was a Memphis Police lieutenant
Speaker 1: at the time of the murder. Off to the side
Speaker 1: next to where Pepper is standing. Dr King's lifeless back
Speaker 1: is displayed on a screen. Attorney Pepper gestures towards the image.
Speaker 1: When you're pointing to the bullet. Are you indicating this
Speaker 1: lump here? Dr King's back by his shoulder blade area?
Speaker 1: Did you attempt to determine the from outside the skin
Speaker 1: the structure of that bullet under the skin? Yes? Or
Speaker 1: I did, and you could take your finger and pinch
Speaker 1: and fea and roll that bullet under the skin. But
Speaker 1: did you do that? I did? And what did you
Speaker 1: feel as you pinched? And I felt a very good
Speaker 1: bullet and was very thankful that we had a bullet
Speaker 1: to compare, And was it in one piece? And intact
Speaker 1: what I could fea was in one piece? In preparing
Speaker 1: for the televised mock trial, Pepper had discovered the photograph
Speaker 1: of King's back in the police files. When he found
Speaker 1: out who had taken it, he contacted Captain Smith, who
Speaker 1: agreed to testify as to what he had seen that
Speaker 1: night and if Smith were correct, if the lump under
Speaker 1: the skin was indeed the death slog, and if it
Speaker 1: were in such good condition that it could roll around
Speaker 1: under the skin at one point in time did it
Speaker 1: become the three grossly misshaped pieces of lead, which is
Speaker 1: what we have of the fatal bullet today. It's a
Speaker 1: valid question and one without a good answer. The problem
Speaker 1: for Pepper was that although Smith had touched the object
Speaker 1: under the skin and rolled it around with his finger,
Speaker 1: he had not actually seen the bullet removed. But then
Speaker 1: Pepper discovered a man who was said to have seen
Speaker 1: the bullet taken from King's body. It was retired homicide
Speaker 1: detective Barry Lynnville, who lived some distance outside of Memphis.
Speaker 1: Pepper called detective Lynnville and asked if he could come
Speaker 1: by with a few questions about the King murder. When
Speaker 1: Pepper arrived, Lynnville asserted that he had indeed been in
Speaker 1: the autopsy room and that he had seen the death
Speaker 1: slug removed from doctor King's shoulder. Pepper then showed Lynnville
Speaker 1: the FBI photo of the three bullet fragments said to
Speaker 1: be what remained of the death slug. Lynville was stunned
Speaker 1: because the fragments in the photo in no way resembled
Speaker 1: what he saw in the morgue. Detective Lynnville could not
Speaker 1: be compelled to appear at the HBO trial. He could
Speaker 1: have stayed out of it, but he was so disturbed
Speaker 1: by what he saw he agreed to testify, where he
Speaker 1: was questioned by Bill Pepper. And were you present when
Speaker 1: the body was received at the Morgan in Dr Francisco's presence, Yes,
Speaker 1: and would you describe? But what happened at that point?
Speaker 1: We're examined the wound and then when we turned the
Speaker 1: body over we could see the bullet underneath the skin
Speaker 1: on the left shoulder. Were you present when that bullet
Speaker 1: was removed? Yes? And how was that done? With a
Speaker 1: scap and who did that, Doctor Francisco? You observed Dr
Speaker 1: Francisco removed the bullet the death slug. Would you describe
Speaker 1: this bullet appeared to be a thirty all six caliber
Speaker 1: UH copper. The entire copper jacket was intact in the
Speaker 1: end of the bullet was flattened out. The lead at
Speaker 1: the end of the thirty dollar six it's got about
Speaker 1: all appropment quarter of an ancient lead and would flattened out.
Speaker 1: But the copper was all intact and showed excellent land
Speaker 1: and bruise. And how many bullets would you say you
Speaker 1: have seen in your homicide career? Foutums And in terms
Speaker 1: of the physical condition of this bullet, how would you
Speaker 1: rate it? I'd rated on our scale of one to day,
Speaker 1: and i'd rated man intact intact. Pepper then displayed the
Speaker 1: official FBI photo of the disclog in three fragments. Do
Speaker 1: you see these three fragments on the screen? These have
Speaker 1: been introduced as the death slug in this case? Is
Speaker 1: this the bullet you saw? No? Does it resemble the
Speaker 1: bullets you saw in any way? No? I have no
Speaker 1: further questions for Prosecutor Hickman. Ewing rose and began his
Speaker 1: cross examination. Lynnville's story of seeing a near perfect bullet
Speaker 1: removed from King's back presented serious problems, problems that had
Speaker 1: never been exp floored before, because for twenty five years,
Speaker 1: the death slug had been represented by three very distorted
Speaker 1: pieces of lead. How could that be if the actual
Speaker 1: bullet had emerged intact? Eing questioned Linnville, but his story
Speaker 1: remained the same. Ewing then had Linnville come down from
Speaker 1: the witness stand and draw on an easel a rough
Speaker 1: picture of the bullet he had seen removed from King's body.
Speaker 1: The bullet he drew was in one piece and perfectly
Speaker 1: shaped except for some flattening on the tip. Ewing was stumped.
Speaker 1: You're saying what you all saw taken out of doctor
Speaker 1: King looked like that. It was. It was perfect in
Speaker 1: every manner. We felt like we'd found a piece of
Speaker 1: gold when we found a bullet. Have you been asked
Speaker 1: about this over the last twenty five years? Is this
Speaker 1: the first time a week ago? Just first time a
Speaker 1: week the first time I've been asked about the bullet? Ever,
Speaker 1: Lynnville said to Ewing that when they discovered the fatal
Speaker 1: bullet in near pristine condition, they felt like they had
Speaker 1: found a piece of gold. He meant that a death
Speaker 1: slug in such good condition carries a lot of information
Speaker 1: that can be very useful in solving a crime. In
Speaker 1: this case, such a bullet might well have proved without
Speaker 1: a doubt, that hadn't been fired by Ray's rifle, as
Speaker 1: the district attorney said it was, or it might have
Speaker 1: proved that race gun had not fired this bullet. This
Speaker 1: is a strange conflict to discover twenty five years after
Speaker 1: an important murder. Regarding the most critical piece of physical evidence.
Speaker 1: Prosecutor Ewing couldn't really argue with Lynnville about what he
Speaker 1: said he saw he wasn't there. Lynnville was, but he
Speaker 1: could challenge his testimony in another way. When ballistics expert
Speaker 1: Charles Morton took the stand, Ewing pointed to the images
Speaker 1: of the three pieces of lead shown in the FBI photograph,
Speaker 1: and then you got these little pieces here, how how
Speaker 1: much would you say that would weigh? Well, I'm in
Speaker 1: an advantage. I read the report that says at sixty
Speaker 1: four grains, which a little bit less than half of
Speaker 1: the weight. You're saying a perfect bullet, it's hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty grains, and this weighed sixty four point four grains right.
Speaker 1: Ewing then wrote the numbers one, fifty and sixty four
Speaker 1: side by side on an easel with Lynnville's drawing of
Speaker 1: the bullet to make his point the bullet fragments weighed
Speaker 1: less than half of what Lynnville said he saw. Ewing
Speaker 1: may have felt as though he had damaged Lynnville's assertion
Speaker 1: of an intact bullet, but to the jurors who would
Speaker 1: ultimately find Ray not guilty, the large difference in appearance
Speaker 1: and wait may well have made them feel that something
Speaker 1: was very wrong. Assuming that Officer Smith and Detective Lynnville
Speaker 1: are telling the truth and I can think of no
Speaker 1: reason for them to lie. We are presented with two possibilities.
Speaker 1: The first is that something happened to the evidence bullet,
Speaker 1: some handling or mishandling to make it look like it
Speaker 1: does today. But how are there no records of this?
Speaker 1: And how does a found bullet lose more than half
Speaker 1: its weight. The other possibility is that the bullet seen
Speaker 1: by Lynnville was discarded and the mangled lead we see
Speaker 1: today was put in its place. I don't know the
Speaker 1: answer here, and this may be a bigger leap than
Speaker 1: some of you are willing to make, But for context,
Speaker 1: I can say that I studied the Robert Kennedy murder
Speaker 1: for years, I wrote a book about it, and what
Speaker 1: I can tell you to a certainty is that the
Speaker 1: police lied about the bullet evidence they recovered, and when
Speaker 1: that lie was about to be exposed, they destroyed the
Speaker 1: evidence itself. Again, I don't know what happened to the
Speaker 1: bullet in the kin case, but when you were looking
Speaker 1: at evidence presented by the authorities, you might do well
Speaker 1: to remember the song. It ain't necessarily so. Also, I
Speaker 1: invite you to go to our website and look at
Speaker 1: the photograph of the death slug fry mints posted alongside
Speaker 1: the drawing of the evidence bullet made by the detective Lynnville.
Speaker 1: The explanation for the difference may be innocent, or it
Speaker 1: may be nefarious, but whatever it is, this is one
Speaker 1: hell of an alteration of a prime piece of evidence.
Speaker 1: A problem with a bullet might also be a reason
Speaker 1: why there was such pressure en Ray to plead guilty.
Speaker 1: For if he had a trial and an attorney serving
Speaker 1: his interests, that attorney may well have discovered the conflict.
Speaker 1: He would have been able to put others on the
Speaker 1: witness stand who had been at the morgue and had
Speaker 1: seen what detective Lynnville and Smith testified too. He could
Speaker 1: have demanded to see documents and photos in the police
Speaker 1: and FBI files. He could have asked the jury, how
Speaker 1: was it that a bullet that might well approve his
Speaker 1: client's innocence could end up as three pieces of tortured
Speaker 1: lad Looking back from a distance of fifty years, it
Speaker 1: is hard for us to sort it out with certainty.
Speaker 1: But it might have been a very different story at
Speaker 1: ray trial if he'd had one Next time on the
Speaker 1: email k tapes, next thing that taken a lot of
Speaker 1: pride in itself. It was paternalist. They had made some games,
Speaker 1: but it was raised to the court. They had a
Speaker 1: list that this clue club plan and citizen Council passed
Speaker 1: a run and the list contained name they called the
Speaker 1: trouble makers with exs behind The plan was get King
Speaker 1: to the city because they wanted it handled in Memphis
Speaker 1: for dead in them could handle it. He told me, he
Speaker 1: he said I had killed it what I had done,
Speaker 1: And I said, what about the other son of a bitch?
Speaker 1: I'll they're taking credit for He says he wasn't known
Speaker 1: about a trouble maker from a suri. He was a
Speaker 1: front man. Last Wednesday morning, the FBI told me they
Speaker 1: didn't believe the story related in any way to the
Speaker 1: King's assassin and they were through with it. He said
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be there. They won't be there that night.
Speaker 1: Did he say there would be a decoy there? Yeah,
Speaker 1: be set up or look black somewhere else done the killings.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the m l K Tapes a
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast
Speaker 1: is not specifically endorsed by the King family or the
Speaker 1: King of State. D email K Tapes is written and
Speaker 1: hosted by Bill Claper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams are
Speaker 1: executive producers on behalf of I Heart Radio with producers
Speaker 1: Trevor Young and ben Keebrick. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
Speaker 1: are executive producers on half of Tenderfoot TV with producers
Speaker 1: Jamie Albright and Meredith Steadman. Original music by Makeup and
Speaker 1: Vanity Said. Cover art by Mr Soul two six with
Speaker 1: photography by Artemis Jenkins. Special thanks to Owen Rosenbaum and
Speaker 1: Grace Royer at U t A, The Nord Group, Back
Speaker 1: Media and Marketing, Envisioned Business Management, and Station sixteen. If
Speaker 1: you have questions, you can visit our website, the email
Speaker 1: k Tapes dot com. We posted photos and videos related
Speaker 1: to the podcast on our social media accounts. You can
Speaker 1: check them out at the email k Tapes. From more
Speaker 1: podcasts from I Heart Radio and tender Foot TV, please
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows,