Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck.
Speaker 2: And this is part two of our two parter. I'm
Speaker 2: the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior.
Speaker 1: That's right where we locked off with Part one was
Speaker 1: the funeral of Martin Luther King Junior. And we're going
Speaker 1: to pick up now with the investigation and the manhunt.
Speaker 1: And while we're talking about that, we might as well
Speaker 1: go ahead and say it's still perhaps the largest manhunt
Speaker 1: and FBI history, depending on who you ask, cost a
Speaker 1: couple of million bucks in those dollars, thirty five hundred investigators.
Speaker 1: And it was all just a bit awkward because, as
Speaker 1: we all know, or maybe some people don't know this,
Speaker 1: but the FBI had been tracking Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 1: since nineteen fifty six, so for twelve years under a
Speaker 1: program called racial Matters, Racial matters.
Speaker 2: And then I don't think they meant like matters like
Speaker 2: race matters.
Speaker 3: No, I think they meant the other way, like the
Speaker 3: matters of race.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: And then in nineteen sixty three they started tapping his
Speaker 1: bones under the Communist infiltration program and Jay Edgar Hoover
Speaker 1: was still around at the time, because it seems like
Speaker 1: he was there for three hundred years. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: didn't like Martin Luther King Junior. He called the most
Speaker 1: notorious liar in the country publicly at a press conference
Speaker 1: because King had been criticizing the FBI because they, you know,
Speaker 1: weren't protecting the civil rights of black Americans, and so.
Speaker 3: Hoover didn't like the guy.
Speaker 1: Yet he was the guy kind of at the top
Speaker 1: of this huge investigation.
Speaker 2: I read Martin Luther King's cool response to Jaegar Hoover
Speaker 2: calling the most notorious liar. Get bent, No, no, He
Speaker 2: said that Jayegar Hoover must be under tremendous pressure to
Speaker 2: have said such a thing. Was sympathetic.
Speaker 3: Jeez, let's talk about the high road man.
Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
Speaker 1: All right, So, the FBI gets a hold of that
Speaker 1: thirty out six rifle that was determined to be the
Speaker 1: murder weapon. They couldn't actually conclusively link that bullet to
Speaker 1: the gun because the shell had been fragmented, but it
Speaker 1: was the same caliber, and everybody was like, come on,
Speaker 1: it's the gun. Can we all just agree to that?
Speaker 2: How many rifles do you guys? Have just laying around
Speaker 2: in Memphis that day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dumped minutes after by a guy who sped away
Speaker 1: in a Mustang.
Speaker 2: Right hundreds of just one hundred feet or so away
Speaker 2: from the murder scene. So yeah, they couldn't conclusively link
Speaker 2: that to the gun, but they were able to trace
Speaker 2: the serial number, and they traced it back to a
Speaker 2: sporting goods store in Birmingham, Alabama called Aeromarine Supply, and
Speaker 2: they confirmed that it had been purchased just a few
Speaker 2: days before MLK was assassinated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, along with a scope and a gentleman who said
Speaker 1: that he was going hunting on a hunting trip with
Speaker 1: his brother.
Speaker 2: Okay, because yeah, you have to you have to be
Speaker 2: like that, that's believable, right, when you're buying a gun,
Speaker 2: you gotta have a cover story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and under an alias, under the name Harvey Lomyer.
Speaker 2: Right. So, two weeks after the killing, they figured out
Speaker 2: that the prints on the gun matched those of a
Speaker 2: guy named James Earl Ray. And at the time, James
Speaker 2: Orl Ray had been an escape convict from a state
Speaker 2: prison in Missouri for basically a year, he'd been on
Speaker 2: the run. So now we had a suspect and we
Speaker 2: had photos, and they started circulating it around to people
Speaker 2: who had putatively interacted with James Orlray, including the guy
Speaker 2: at the aeromarine supply store who sold him the gun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he was like, that's the guy.
Speaker 1: There are witnesses we mentioned earlier in part one at
Speaker 1: Bessie Brewer boarding house. They also looked at pictures and
Speaker 1: they were like, yeah, that's the guy we saw running away.
Speaker 1: And they went to the hotel clerk or the boarding
Speaker 1: house clerk and they said, yeah, this guy signed in.
Speaker 1: That's him for sure, under the name John Willard. So
Speaker 1: he had multiple aliases, and they that portable radio that
Speaker 1: they found in the bundle had a scratched out ID
Speaker 1: number and they eventually figured out that that was his
Speaker 1: his prison radio. It had his his inmate number on it.
Speaker 1: So he escaped prison, was like, I'm taking my radio.
Speaker 2: It seems pretty conclusive that James o'ray would have been
Speaker 2: the shooter, right, Yeah, So they issued an indictment for
Speaker 2: his arrest for the murder of Martin Luther King Junior
Speaker 2: on May seventh, a couple months after or Noah month
Speaker 2: after MLK was murdered, and an international manhunt began I
Speaker 2: know the FBI was definitely concentrating on the United States,
Speaker 2: but they didn't rule out the possibility that he had
Speaker 2: started to go abroad, and so they he issued it
Speaker 2: far and wide, a wanted poster with his data and
Speaker 2: his photos on it.
Speaker 3: So the FBI started tracking his movements.
Speaker 1: He's got all these aliases in that year that he
Speaker 1: was on the LAMB. After the shooting, he was into
Speaker 1: politics for a little while, supporting Alabama Governor George Wallace
Speaker 1: his presidential campaign. He was in la for a little while,
Speaker 1: he took dance lessons, He went to Bartending School. He
Speaker 1: lived in Mexico for like a month or so, trying
Speaker 1: to become a pornography director under the name Eric Salvo Galt.
Speaker 1: That didn't work out, so he left Mexico came back
Speaker 1: to the States, and apparently in like the month or
Speaker 1: so before the assassination, he had been stalking King and
Speaker 1: had followed him from Atlanta to Memphis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it seemed like the month before he murdered
Speaker 2: Martin Luther King Junior. He suddenly got that idea in
Speaker 2: his head because none of his movement suggested that he
Speaker 2: had even focused on Martin Luther King at all up
Speaker 2: to that point. After the assassination, James ro'ray fled to Toronto.
Speaker 2: It's eventually where he landed first. Sorry, I'm sorry Toronto.
Speaker 2: I know that too, thanks Chuck. So at the time, apparently,
Speaker 2: if you were an American criminal in Canada, they were very,
Speaker 2: very trusting at the time. They basically said, if you
Speaker 2: swear that you're a Canadian citizen, you give us your name,
Speaker 2: we'll send you a passport. And that's what crooks would do.
Speaker 2: They would go to Canada when they were on the run.
Speaker 2: They would look up old newspapers at the library and
Speaker 2: find birth announcements from about the same time that they
Speaker 2: were born, finding people who were their age, and they
Speaker 2: would get their name. They would get their mother's maiden
Speaker 2: name sometimes And apparently you didn't even need that. You
Speaker 2: just fill out this form, say your name, say yes,
Speaker 2: I swear I'm a Canadian citizen, and mail off for
Speaker 2: a passport which would be mailed back to you too sweet.
Speaker 2: And now you had a fraudulent, but official and legitimate
Speaker 2: passport that you could use to travel the world with
Speaker 2: under a new alias.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this time his alias was because you know,
Speaker 1: it was a real dude. In fact, the guy was
Speaker 1: a cop. Pretty ironic. But his name was Raymond George.
Speaker 1: I guess sneid sn e y d.
Speaker 2: I heard snaid from somebody. Want. I don't know if
Speaker 2: that was definitive.
Speaker 1: Okay, well it's good that we spelled it out because
Speaker 1: that'll come into play in a minute here. But from
Speaker 1: Toronto he went to London. He was actually in London
Speaker 1: a couple of times. He passed through London on his
Speaker 1: way to Lisbon after that first flight from Canada. And
Speaker 1: he was going to Lisbon because he was hoping to
Speaker 1: go to Africa before the murder, and then afterward, his
Speaker 1: long term plan was to go to Rhodesia now Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: because in nineteen sixty a five percent white minority there
Speaker 1: had assumed independence from the UK and he was to
Speaker 1: go to Rhodesia and I'm gonna integrate into this small
Speaker 1: white minority and become a paid mercenary.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So, I mean he went to Lisbon hoping to
Speaker 2: secure passage to Africa, and while he was there, he's like,
Speaker 2: I got a great idea, surely that people are on
Speaker 2: my trail, that Feds are on my trail now, and
Speaker 2: they might even know my alias, so I need a
Speaker 2: new alias. I'm going to go to the Canadian consulate
Speaker 2: here in Lisbon. I'm going to tell them that they
Speaker 2: misspelled my name on my passport. So he went there
Speaker 2: and he told the Canadian consulate there that his last
Speaker 2: name actually is spelled with an A, not a D.
Speaker 2: And they're like, okay, whatever, here's your new passport with
Speaker 2: your last name spelled correctly. And he had a new alias,
Speaker 2: Ramon George Snee Yeah, instead of Snade. So there's one
Speaker 2: letter change. And apparently that's satisfied James Orlray that he
Speaker 2: had a new alias.
Speaker 3: Now, yeah, we'll get to who Ray was a little bit.
Speaker 1: But the one takeaway from everything that I've read is
Speaker 1: he was not a very smart person.
Speaker 2: Not a criminal mastermind. He was no brain from Pinky
Speaker 2: in the Brain No.
Speaker 1: Also, because he did not throw that first passport away
Speaker 1: and that was would be his undoing. He like, like
Speaker 1: we said, he could not secure that passage to Africa,
Speaker 1: so he went back to London to figure out what
Speaker 1: his next move was. He called a This is a
Speaker 1: sort of a weird part of the story. He called
Speaker 1: a reporter named Ian Colvin at the Daily Mail's foreign desk,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if this guy had written articles
Speaker 1: about it mercenaries or something.
Speaker 2: I don't know either, That's the only thing I can
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 1: Because he called this random reporter and said, hey, you
Speaker 1: got any contacts for these mercenaries. Colvian was like, no,
Speaker 1: but if you're I guess, if you're looking to get
Speaker 1: into that kind of thing, check into Brussels, because that's
Speaker 1: where he might have better luck. It's a very strange
Speaker 1: little side part of this story, for sure.
Speaker 2: It really is. So James Earl Ray was like, thank you,
Speaker 2: thank you much and starts booking a flight two Brussels
Speaker 2: from London. And it was in London on his way
Speaker 2: to Brussels that he finally got nabbed. But not because
Speaker 2: somebody noticed his mugshot or wanted poster and saw that
Speaker 2: he was him, but because he had those two Canadian
Speaker 2: passports and he had him in the same wallet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, two different names, yes.
Speaker 2: And the passport checker noticed that he had two passports
Speaker 2: and asked him about it. And I guess a cop
Speaker 2: was standing nearby and stepped over and was like, hey,
Speaker 2: why don't you join us in the back room. We've
Speaker 2: got some questions for you, and that was it for
Speaker 2: Ramon George Snade Snea. Yeah, he was quickly identified as
Speaker 2: James Rolray. He had a thirty eight caliber pistol tucked
Speaker 2: in the back of his pants going to board a plane.
Speaker 3: You could do that back then any metals detectors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as long as you didn't shoot it off because
Speaker 2: you were excited during takeoff in the plane that they
Speaker 2: didn't really care.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he was confirmed as James Lray. He was
Speaker 1: taken into custody and on July nineteenth was flown back
Speaker 1: to the US to stand trial. And that seems like
Speaker 1: a great place for our first break.
Speaker 2: Okay, So James Arrol Ray's been taken into custody and
Speaker 2: he's flown back to the United States on July nineteenth
Speaker 2: to stand trial, and the whole world is watching. They
Speaker 2: want to know why the man who assassinated Martin Luther
Speaker 2: King Junior, did that, Why he murdered MLK, What was
Speaker 2: the point, what was the reason. They also wanted to
Speaker 2: know if he had been working with other people, because
Speaker 2: from the outset people were the public was just openly
Speaker 2: skeptical that there was some conspiracy that had resulted in
Speaker 2: mlk's murder and the world got none of that because
Speaker 2: James o'ray pled guilty instead of going to trial. And
Speaker 2: there was a paper reporting on the case who was
Speaker 2: at this hearing where he played guilty and said that
Speaker 2: it brought a shockingly swift ending to the case and
Speaker 2: everybody was like, what just happened? And that was essentially
Speaker 2: that there was no trial ever and there were no
Speaker 2: facts presented, so it was just like, yep, I did
Speaker 2: it send me to jail? Yeah.
Speaker 1: His attorney at the time, Percy Foreman, said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if you go to a jury trial, you're probably going
Speaker 1: to get a death sentence because of you know, because
Speaker 1: of the murder and its impact on the country. Basically
Speaker 1: like you're not going to avoid the electric chair. So
Speaker 1: if you plead guilty, you can get the maximum life sentence,
Speaker 1: which is ninety nine years in prison in Tennessee. And
Speaker 1: he said that's probably the right route to take, so
Speaker 1: Ray took it. It was a two hour affair in court.
Speaker 1: No one got the satisfaction of hearing any of the evidence.
Speaker 1: It also meant he wouldn't be eligible for parole for
Speaker 1: thirty years, whereas if he had gotten a life sentence
Speaker 1: and not the ninety nine. He could have gotten out
Speaker 1: in twelve and a half, but just three days after
Speaker 1: he pleaded guilty, he recanted and tried for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life to get a new trial, tried to escape.
Speaker 1: He did escape. In fact, if you listened to our
Speaker 1: Barkley Marathon episode, he escaped success for three days in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and was picked up in Brushy Mountain
Speaker 1: where that race takes place. But he would eventually die
Speaker 1: in prison in nineteen ninety eight at the age of seventy,
Speaker 1: which would also been the year he was first eligible
Speaker 1: for parole.
Speaker 2: Yes, and you said earlier that we were going to
Speaker 2: talk a little bit about James Rolray in his criminal career.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: So he was born in Illinois, but mostly grew up
Speaker 2: in Missouri, and he was the oldest of nine kids,
Speaker 2: and his family was impoverished. His father was a convict
Speaker 2: himself who didn't work very often. His mother was, as
Speaker 2: James Earlray put it, a woman of very limited intelligence,
Speaker 2: barely able to communicate, and she also drank very heavily.
Speaker 2: And there was a report card from grade school that
Speaker 2: said his attitude towards regulations was that he violates all
Speaker 2: of them. This was him as a kid, and he
Speaker 2: didn't improve very much as an adult. He dropped out
Speaker 2: of high school at sixteen, worked for a while, and
Speaker 2: then he joined the arm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he joined the army. Yeah, he dropped out of
Speaker 1: high school at sixteen. King was in college at fifteen.
Speaker 1: To just contrast the two situations, and forty sixty he
Speaker 1: joined the army after being laid off from his civilian
Speaker 1: job in the army. He was charged with drunkenness with
Speaker 1: breaking arrest. He served three months in the army clink
Speaker 1: hard labor for that. He was discharged less than honorably
Speaker 1: for quote ineptness and lack of adaptability to military service
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty eight. So just a couple of years
Speaker 1: in the army. And then was a drifter and a
Speaker 1: petty criminal who was in and out of jail over
Speaker 1: and over.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was serving a twenty year sentence for
Speaker 2: robbery in Missouri. He started at nineteen sixty when he
Speaker 2: broke out in nineteen sixty seven and began that year
Speaker 2: on the lamb that culminated in the assassination of MLK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, it was really a twenty year
Speaker 1: prison sentence for everything because it was a pretty small
Speaker 1: like robbery at Kroger that wouldn't have gotten a twenty year.
Speaker 1: But he had other armed robbery convictions, He had mail
Speaker 1: fraud convictions and escape attempts, so it was like, hey,
Speaker 1: we're just going to try and put you away for
Speaker 1: a while. And if you're curious how he escaped, he
Speaker 1: hid in a bread delivery truck that was leaving the prison.
Speaker 2: I heard that too. Yeah, you would have found me
Speaker 2: eating loaves of bread too, with.
Speaker 3: Your little portable radio prison radio.
Speaker 2: Just snaffing my fingers with a mouthful of bread. So
Speaker 2: his criminal history, just because your lifetime criminal doesn't mean
Speaker 2: you're good at it. Yeah, And James Earl Ray is
Speaker 2: an excellent example of that time. Magazine described him back
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven as a bungling, petty gunman and
Speaker 2: burglar whose life of crime has mostly been one fizzle
Speaker 2: after another. And they weren't lying because some of his
Speaker 2: greatest hits that they went on to site was that
Speaker 2: at one crime scene he dropped identification, He dropped his ID. Yeah,
Speaker 2: one hold up in a neighborhood he got lost drive
Speaker 2: as he was making his getaway, ended up back driving
Speaker 2: back into the neighborhood where he just robbed somebody and
Speaker 2: was caught by the police who'd arrived on the scene
Speaker 2: by then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, who are apparently surprised. I imagine they were like,
Speaker 1: oh wait a minute.
Speaker 3: Is that him coming back?
Speaker 2: Get a load of this guy.
Speaker 1: Another time he came back to re rob a place
Speaker 1: he had already robbed, re entered the window to get
Speaker 1: more stuff.
Speaker 2: That is a no, no, that is crime. One oh one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, get out of there. I'm not a criminal,
Speaker 1: but I would get out of there.
Speaker 2: So even when he was in London too, when he
Speaker 2: was on the run after assassinating MLK, he carried out
Speaker 2: not one, but two bungle robberies.
Speaker 3: It's crazy.
Speaker 2: One was a bank and he managed to only get
Speaker 2: one hundred pounds from a bank.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other was a jewelry store. He got nothing because
Speaker 2: the owner knocked the gun out of his hand and
Speaker 2: pressed the alarm. So James Lreay ran away.
Speaker 1: And these are Londoners, they're not used to knocking guns
Speaker 1: out of hands, and this guy still managed to do it.
Speaker 3: That's right, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just was not a very good criminal, even
Speaker 2: though he tried it over and over again, and he
Speaker 2: was successful. I mean, like he did successfully rob people
Speaker 2: and break into places and all that. But if you
Speaker 2: put it all together, he didn't have like a violent
Speaker 2: criminal rap sheet. He was just kind of this petty criminal.
Speaker 2: That's how he supported himself in life as a criminal
Speaker 2: who went from that to murdering one of the most
Speaker 2: important Americans in history in one single action, seemingly overnight.
Speaker 2: And a lot of people say that just doesn't add up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we don't lend our show than
Speaker 1: ourselves to conspira. We're not conspiracy minded generally, but you
Speaker 1: don't have to be to look at this and say
Speaker 1: he probably didn't act alone. It just doesn't add up,
Speaker 1: Like you said, So, there have been congressional committees over
Speaker 1: the years. They have been family members of Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Junior that said, yeah, this was this was part
Speaker 1: of a conspiracy. There's never been any solid agreement on
Speaker 1: what kind of conspiracy and who else was behind it.
Speaker 1: And we're not going to get into the nitty gritty
Speaker 1: of all the there's a lot of there's a lot
Speaker 1: of discounted stuff and stuff that rabbit holes.
Speaker 3: He shouldn't even go down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're not going to get into those, but
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about the legit idea of
Speaker 1: a conspiracy and who could have been involved, like for real?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because again, how did this petty criminal plan an
Speaker 2: assassination that he successfully carried out and then also panic
Speaker 2: in a panic like dropped us the murder weapon and
Speaker 2: ran off in a place where it be found within
Speaker 2: a minute or two. Where did he get the funding
Speaker 2: that he would need to support himself for a year
Speaker 2: on the lamb and then to travel abroad to flee
Speaker 2: after the assassination. These are just a few of the
Speaker 2: questions people have come up with, and the obvious solution
Speaker 2: is that he had help in some way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: But another really big question that I think that a
Speaker 2: lot of people overlook is why, like why did he
Speaker 2: murder Martin Luther King Junior. He wasn't known as a fanatic.
Speaker 2: He was a racist, and like we said, he supported
Speaker 2: George Wallace for his segregationists presidential bid, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: He wasn't like a fanatic, and also like he didn't
Speaker 2: have any particularly deep emotions one way or another for MLK.
Speaker 2: He just was his murderer. And it just does not
Speaker 2: make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So after he retracted that confession, just days after
Speaker 1: his conviction, he started saying, I was set up, and
Speaker 1: I was set.
Speaker 3: Up by a guy named Raoul.
Speaker 1: So supposedly he had a lot of interactions with this
Speaker 1: Rol guy, but he went from describing him as a
Speaker 1: Latino with blonde hair to a French Canadian with red hair.
Speaker 1: Nobody ever witnessed him with anyone that looked like either
Speaker 1: one of those people. A lot of people think there
Speaker 1: is no Raoul at all, but he still could have
Speaker 1: had help, you know, from someone else.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you mentioned congressional committees that concluded that there
Speaker 2: was some sort of conspiracy. One of them was House
Speaker 2: Select Committee on Assassinations in nineteen seventy eight. They said
Speaker 2: that there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination
Speaker 2: of doctor King, but they didn't think it like Raoul
Speaker 2: was involved or anything like that. It was much more
Speaker 2: pedestrian and mundane, and in my opinion then much more
Speaker 2: likely as far as the conspiracy theories go. But they
Speaker 2: put it on two prominent but shady Saint Louis's I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure that's what you call people from Saint Louis.
Speaker 2: One was a former stockbroker who became a motel owner.
Speaker 2: His name was John R. Kaufman. The other was a
Speaker 2: patent lawyer in town named John H. Sutherland, and both
Speaker 2: of them were dead by the time the committee hearings
Speaker 2: were held in nineteen seventy eight, but they supposedly put
Speaker 2: a bounty on mlk's head, and James E. O'ray, whose
Speaker 2: brother was a tavern owner in Saint Louis at the time,
Speaker 2: heard about this bounty and decided that he would go
Speaker 2: ahead and murder MLK and collect on the bounty. And
Speaker 2: I also saw that he probably believed that as a
Speaker 2: white man, he would never be convicted of murdering a
Speaker 2: black man in the South, and even if he did,
Speaker 2: George Wallace was definitely going to win the nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: eight election, and George Wallace would pardon him. So if
Speaker 2: you put all that together, it really seems like a
Speaker 2: pretty legitimate explanation for the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as far as Martin Luther King Junior's widow, Coretta.
Speaker 3: Scott King, she was she always thought the FBI might
Speaker 3: have had something to do with it.
Speaker 1: She knew that they had been surveilled and their phones
Speaker 1: had been tapped. She thought they, you know, were a
Speaker 1: possible you know, bad actors. They even you know, this
Speaker 1: is sort of startling, and in fact it startled the
Speaker 1: country in the late nineties, but they came around to
Speaker 1: believing James Ray. Dexter Scott King, one of his sons,
Speaker 1: visited James Ray in prison. They pushed for him to
Speaker 1: get an appeal. He apparently asked him point blank, like
Speaker 1: did you kill my father? And James or Ray said no,
Speaker 1: I didn't know, And then apparently he also said, but
Speaker 1: like I like I say, sometimes these questions are difficult
Speaker 1: to answer. Sometimes you have to make your own evaluation
Speaker 1: and maybe come to the conclusion. I think that could
Speaker 1: be done today, but not thirty years ago, which is
Speaker 1: none of that makes any sense.
Speaker 2: No, because it isn't difficult to say you either did
Speaker 2: or you did not commit murder.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but as shocking as this meeting was, they got
Speaker 1: on board and said, I don't think you did this.
Speaker 1: I think you were patsy. I think you were set up.
Speaker 1: And a lot of Americans were confused and a lot
Speaker 1: were offended. Politzer Prize winning biographer of Martin Luther King junior.
Speaker 1: David Garo said that Dexter King's support was of Ray
Speaker 1: was egregious and embarrassing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I say we take a break and we come
Speaker 2: back and kind of get stick with the late nineties
Speaker 2: because they were kind of the nineties were a big
Speaker 2: decade for conspiracy theories in the MLK assassination. How about that, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Let's do it.
Speaker 1: So there's an attorney named William Pepper who was a
Speaker 1: very conspiracy theory minded attorney. He became James Olray's attorney eventually.
Speaker 1: And he's not someone that a lot of people thought
Speaker 1: a lot of In his career, he'd been described as
Speaker 1: disgraceful by some the most gullible person I've ever met
Speaker 1: by someone else. He was readily and willing to just
Speaker 1: malign innocent people to get his theories out there. And
Speaker 1: I remember this happening. I didn't watch it, but on
Speaker 1: the twenty fifth anniversary of King's murder, so I guess
Speaker 1: somewhere in the mid nineties he sold HBO on producing
Speaker 1: and broadcasting a mock trial TV special of James Olray
Speaker 1: in which Ray was acquitted by the mock jury.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that was you know, Oh, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: But it's a mock trial on HBO, and it's a
Speaker 2: mock jury. It doesn't mean anything. It just basically promoted
Speaker 2: William Pepper and his theories. But after that special was aired,
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories about the MLK assassination got a real boost
Speaker 2: because a guy named Lloyd Jowers came forward. He said
Speaker 2: he was inspired to come forward by the series and
Speaker 2: has come clean essentially after all of these years. And
Speaker 2: he owned a tavern in Memphis called Jim's Grill, which
Speaker 2: just happened to be located beneath Bessie Brewer's boarding house
Speaker 2: where the fatal shot that killed MLK was fired from.
Speaker 2: And Lloyd Jowers said that he was part of a big,
Speaker 2: giant conspiracy to murder MLK that included the Memphis Police,
Speaker 2: the FBI, the mafia, himself, and some other just you know,
Speaker 2: tangential players who were all coming together to kill King
Speaker 2: in order to collect on a bunch of money. Lloyd
Speaker 2: Jowers said that he was him, just him alone, was
Speaker 2: offered one hundred thousand dollars to basically project to manage
Speaker 2: the contract killing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like if you're floating a conspiracy about
Speaker 1: an assassination, if you just throw out like local cops
Speaker 1: in mafia, then you're probably halfway there.
Speaker 2: Yeah for you, Yeah, oh definitely, that'll get everybody's attention.
Speaker 1: So Martin Luther King Junior's family sued him for wrongful
Speaker 1: death in civil court. Again, this is not a criminal
Speaker 1: trial or anything. They didn't want money. They wanted a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. They basically wanted to get all these claims
Speaker 1: heard in court and have it you know published, you know,
Speaker 1: out in public. And they this is sort of shocking
Speaker 1: as well. The family was represented by that attorney, William Pepper,
Speaker 1: who had represented James Haray. The jury did decide that
Speaker 1: Jowers and others, including government agencies, had been responsible for
Speaker 1: King's debts, So they actually won that civil trial.
Speaker 2: They did, and I've read two things. I read that
Speaker 2: Dexter King basically said like, we did this so that,
Speaker 2: you know, to prove that the investigation needed to be reopened.
Speaker 2: And then he also said, regardless of whether it gets
Speaker 2: reopened or not, this is like the period on the
Speaker 2: sentence for us, Like this just basically supports everything we've
Speaker 2: always said. Right. The Justice Department, their Civil Rights Division,
Speaker 2: had simultaneously launched an investigation in de Lloyd Jowers claims.
Speaker 2: I guess they seemed legitimate enough. But also this investigation
Speaker 2: entailed claims made by a former FBI agent named Donald Wilson,
Speaker 2: and Wilson said that he had been I guess he
Speaker 2: had been one of the people who had searched through
Speaker 2: the mustang that James Rolraay got away in, and that
Speaker 2: he had found some papers in this mustang that had
Speaker 2: in foe about the jfk assassination. Okay, I think Donald
Speaker 2: Wilson's like, how can I get people to listen JFK.
Speaker 2: He also said that the name Raoul was mentioned in
Speaker 2: it as well, in these papers, and so the Justice
Speaker 2: Department starts looking into it, and they concluded in a
Speaker 2: report in two thousand that this is all just kind
Speaker 2: of bs.
Speaker 1: To paraphrase, Yeah, basically he's out for a book deal,
Speaker 1: is what they concluded. Percy Foreman, the original attorney for
Speaker 1: James Olray, as far as he was concerned, he thought
Speaker 1: Ray acted alone. His biographer, William Bradford Hughey, also said, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think he acted alone, and he was trying to
Speaker 1: just become a bigger criminal and like impress larger criminals
Speaker 1: that he was a valuable guy to work with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was an investigative reporter too who investigated James R. Lray,
Speaker 2: as investigative reporters do. His name was George Mill him.
Speaker 2: He interviewed a bunch of Ray's fellow prisoners from the
Speaker 2: Missouri prison that he broke out of in nineteen sixty seven,
Speaker 2: and they were like, yeah, he was a huge drug
Speaker 2: dealer in prison, like he was rolling in it. One
Speaker 2: of them claimed that he was able to smuggle out
Speaker 2: sixty five hundred dollars from the prison. Yeah, and in
Speaker 2: today's money, that's about sixty thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that alone, if true, satisfies that really big question
Speaker 2: about how could he's this petty criminal support himself for
Speaker 2: a year on the lamb. Sixty k can go a
Speaker 2: long way, especially if you're committing other crimes. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it sounds like he blew a lot of it on
Speaker 2: bartending school and dance lessons. Still, you could live for
Speaker 2: a year on sixty k, no problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he had to buy some of that camera
Speaker 1: equipment because he tried to be a porn director in Mexico.
Speaker 2: That's right, you know.
Speaker 1: So I guess we're at the point now where we
Speaker 1: can kind of talk a little bit about, you know,
Speaker 1: had the sliding doors gone another way and had that
Speaker 1: march gone for on April fourth, and maybe James Orray
Speaker 1: doesn't get that shot, what would have happened had King
Speaker 1: been around. I guess we'll talk at first about what
Speaker 1: happened since that that did occur, was that he was
Speaker 1: an instant martyr, you know, for all practical purposes, he was.
Speaker 1: He was sainted in that moment. It was just so sudden,
Speaker 1: it was so violent. And the polling, you know, we
Speaker 1: talked about polling in episode one about how white Americans
Speaker 1: felt about him. In nineteen sixty six, people polled, thirty
Speaker 1: six percent of all Americans had a favorable opinion of King,
Speaker 1: twenty seven percent of white America, and in twenty eleven
Speaker 1: that number had gone to ninety three percent of white
Speaker 1: Americans had a favorable view of King, and eighty one
Speaker 1: percent of all American adults said he had a positive
Speaker 1: impact on the US. So that's from sixty six to
Speaker 1: twenty eleven. But that was also happening at the time,
Speaker 1: Like in the days and months before and after, there
Speaker 1: was a stark difference, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was an almost immediate change and opinion of
Speaker 2: him after he died. It was like the band Cinderella said,
Speaker 2: you don't know what you got till it's gone.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: There was this just complete happenstance study that had been
Speaker 2: carried out in February March of nineteen sixty eight, where
Speaker 2: they sent ten thousand surveys to college and university trustees
Speaker 2: I guess to take a pulse on the university and
Speaker 2: college trustee subculture that asked, among other things, how they
Speaker 2: felt about Martin Luther King, how they felt about his views,
Speaker 2: how much they aligned with their own views. And after
Speaker 2: MLK was assassinated, they went through and they separated the
Speaker 2: surveys that they'd received before his death and after his death,
Speaker 2: and there was a stark difference. Before he was assassinated,
Speaker 2: thirty six percent of the respondent said that they held
Speaker 2: similar views to King. After the assassination, that rose to
Speaker 2: fifty percent. This is within a couple of weeks. Before
Speaker 2: the assassination, thirty percent, more than thirty percent said that
Speaker 2: King's views were very unlike theirs. Afterward it dropped down
Speaker 2: to nineteen percent. So it was happening in real time,
Speaker 2: and we know that thanks to that poll, and it's
Speaker 2: really hard to overstate the effect, the immediate effect that
Speaker 2: his assassination had on the conscience of the United States.
Speaker 2: I think it really made a lot of probably everyday
Speaker 2: racist Americans really rethink themselves. You know that at the time,
Speaker 2: you could dislike Martin Luther King Junior. He was alive,
Speaker 2: he was railing against Vietnam and going on about poor
Speaker 2: people and everything. But now he's gone murdered, and just
Speaker 2: something like that can really shock people into focusing more
Speaker 2: on themselves and on their viewpoints than otherwise you would.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: I mean one thing that definitely came out of this
Speaker 1: was Lyndon Johnson kind of used this to get the
Speaker 1: Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight passed. It had
Speaker 1: failed in sixty six and sixty seven, so it wasn't
Speaker 1: a bill that looked like it had an immediate future.
Speaker 1: So he kind of did the same thing with the
Speaker 1: Civil Rights Act to sixty four right after JFK was assassinated, So,
Speaker 1: you know, very politically savvy kind of get these things
Speaker 1: passed through when the nation would have been more on
Speaker 1: board with that and politicians would.
Speaker 3: Have been more on board.
Speaker 1: Maybe wouldn't have been able to get it passed through
Speaker 1: in sixty eight, and then he had already announced that
Speaker 1: he wasn't running for reelection before the assassination. So given
Speaker 1: what happened with Nixon and then Reagan coming in, if
Speaker 1: King had lived, it's doubtful that he would have had
Speaker 1: the kind of relationship that he had with Johnson with
Speaker 1: those two guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but remember also that he and Johnson had already
Speaker 2: had a rift because of mlk's more open vocal stance
Speaker 2: against Vietnam. Yeah, and you know, he would have definitely
Speaker 2: kept railing against Vietnam, so that rift would have widened
Speaker 2: even further. And also general Americans opinions of him probably
Speaker 2: would have declined even further because remember after that nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty seven Vietnam speech, his popularity, especially among white Americans,
Speaker 2: just plummeted, in part because he called the US government
Speaker 2: the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. That's
Speaker 2: a pretty direct shot against, you know, the government. And
Speaker 2: if you are all about the government and this, you know,
Speaker 2: black civil rights leader saying stuff like that, you're going
Speaker 2: to take your angst out on the black civil rights
Speaker 2: leader who's saying it. Rather than stopping and questioning whether
Speaker 2: he's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. A lot of people point out that,
Speaker 1: like the he would have continued to work for civil
Speaker 1: rights for black Americans Americans, but also may have started
Speaker 1: championing the cause of the LGBTQ rights as a community.
Speaker 3: Correta.
Speaker 1: Scott King vocally supported this stuff, you know, after his passing,
Speaker 1: and Martin Luther King Junior worked very closely with a
Speaker 1: gentleman named Bayard Rustin, and openly gay civil rights advocate
Speaker 1: who could have kept himself in the closet, but very
Speaker 1: much was out. And so people think that, yeah, King
Speaker 1: probably would have taken up that cause as well.
Speaker 2: Later on, Yeah, we did an episode from twenty fifteen
Speaker 2: on the March on Washington. We talked about Bayard Rustin
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He's also often compared to Nelson Mandela. Had MLK lived,
Speaker 2: they people say, like he might have followed some sort
Speaker 2: of trajectory similar to Nelson Mandela's, but Mandela became President
Speaker 2: of South Africa. Would MLK have ever run for president?
Speaker 2: From what I saw, most historians say probably not. That
Speaker 2: was never an aspiration of his h and in fact,
Speaker 2: he actually turned down and offered to run on a
Speaker 2: third party ticket, the People's Party ticket for the nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight election, with pediatrician the author of the very
Speaker 2: famous baby book, doctor Benjamin Spock, who had turned anti
Speaker 2: war activist as his vice president, So he probably would
Speaker 2: not have ever run for president, but he still would
Speaker 2: have remained a very potent, powerful voice for civil rights
Speaker 2: for everybody. But had he not been assassinated, I don't
Speaker 2: think his legacy would be anything like it is today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How great though, would it have been to be able
Speaker 1: to source a King Spock sixty eight T shirt or
Speaker 1: bumper sticker?
Speaker 2: I guess somebody like dummied that up or else. Oh? Really,
Speaker 2: it got far enough that somebody made buttons, because I
Speaker 2: saw some image of that on the internet. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know if it was made up or not. You
Speaker 2: can't tell these days, you know.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 1: And then this all culminated finally with Martin Luther King
Speaker 1: Junior the national holiday. The campaign for that federal holiday
Speaker 1: began just a few days after he was killed in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, and it would be installed in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty three.
Speaker 3: It took a little while.
Speaker 1: Representative John Conyer's, a Democrat from Michigan reintroduced that legislation
Speaker 1: every single year with the backing of the Congressional Black Caucus,
Speaker 1: which he helped found, and it was denied every single
Speaker 1: year until fifteen years later when President Ronald Reagan signed
Speaker 1: that bill making the third Monday in January federal holiday.
Speaker 1: And then it was first observed in nineteen eighty six
Speaker 1: by everybody, very famously except for Arizona.
Speaker 3: They were the last holdout.
Speaker 1: I remember this happening very well, mainly because of the
Speaker 1: great great song by the time I get to Arizona
Speaker 1: by Public Enemy that came out. So we got that
Speaker 1: out of it, which is pretty great. But the NFL
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, you're not getting the super
Speaker 1: Bowl in nineteen ninety three, and then after that they said,
Speaker 1: we'll get on board.
Speaker 3: So we can have a super.
Speaker 2: Bowl whatever it takes, by any months necessary.
Speaker 3: Arizona get it together.
Speaker 2: They did. That was way back in nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: Those policymakers are all dead and gone by now.
Speaker 3: I know. I lived in Arizona. I love that place.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's right, Uma, right yeah. Do you ever
Speaker 2: take the three ten uh?
Speaker 3: No? No trains?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, since I made Chuck laugh. I think that
Speaker 2: we should end on a high note here and say
Speaker 2: that it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 3: That's right, by pointing out a Josh mass error.
Speaker 2: Oh great, so sorry, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, always laugh when hearing when you quickly correct
Speaker 1: yourselves before the email start. I didn't hear that one
Speaker 1: today though, and I'm sure you'll get more than just
Speaker 1: this email.
Speaker 3: Actually, Andrew, we didn't. You were the only one that
Speaker 3: caught this.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, Andrew.
Speaker 1: This was in the uh what would this have been? GPS?
Speaker 1: I guess okay, By the way, I never posted that
Speaker 1: that uh what do you call it? When things intersect?
Speaker 1: The vin diagram that I sent you that said bingo,
Speaker 1: I need to put.
Speaker 3: That on our Insta. Please do I'll do it, hey, guys.
Speaker 1: When Josh was describing the two D trilateration circles and
Speaker 1: distance from Denver, he said, to draw a circle around
Speaker 1: the named city with a diameter of distance described. But
Speaker 1: that would be a circle too small. You need a
Speaker 1: circle with a radius for that distance, or a diameter
Speaker 1: of twice that radius. Your compass would be said, to
Speaker 1: the width of the distance you are from the city,
Speaker 1: and you draw that circle, which would give you a
Speaker 1: circle around a city where every point on that circle
Speaker 1: is that described distance from city center point. This is
Speaker 1: from an electrical engineer in Knoxville, Tennessee, Andrew White, who said,
Speaker 1: it makes me happy to listen and learn from you
Speaker 1: all each day. So I trust you, Andrew, because you're
Speaker 1: an electrical engineer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Andrew White, the fastest compass in Tennessee. Thanks a lot, Andrew,
Speaker 2: I totally get that. That was very well explained, better
Speaker 2: than I explained it, for sure. And if you want
Speaker 2: to be like Andrew and correct my math. There's not
Speaker 2: really much sport in it, but you can still do
Speaker 2: it anyway by sending us an email to Stuff Podcasts
Speaker 2: at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
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