Freeway Phantom - The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (Truer Crime)

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968 shook the world, and James Earl Ray was named the killer. But the King family believes a darker truth lies beneath the official story. In this season premiere of Truer Crime, we delve into hidden evidence, tangled conspiracies, and a 1999 civil trial that implicated the U.S. government in King’s death. Truer Crime Season 2 drops today! From the Manson Murders to untold stories of injustice, these 10 new episodes will change the way you see true crime. New episodes every Monday here—don’t miss it!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, Freeway Phantom listeners. I'm Selesia Stanton, the host of Truer Crime, a podcast that uncovers untold stories and takes fresh looks at infamous cases. My show goes beyond the surface, diving into the why and how, exploring the people, systems, and legacies behind every story. Today, January 20th, marks the premiere of our newest season, but this date is significant for another reason. It's Martin Luther King Day, and as we honor Dr. King's life and legacy,

I wanted to share an episode from Truro Crime with you. This episode examines Dr. King's assassination, and you might know the official story, that James Earl Ray, a lone gunman, shot Dr. King from a bathroom window. But here's the thing, for decades, the King family has challenged this version of events, pointing to evidence of a broader conspiracy.

It left me wondering, what does justice look like for one of history's most celebrated heroes, and why are so many details of his death still buried? In this episode, we unravel tangled conspiracies, uncover buried evidence, and revisit a groundbreaking 1999 civil trial that implicated the U.S. government and Dr. King's murder. It's a chilling story that confronts hard truths

about our history. If you like what you hear, search for Truer Crime wherever you listen to podcasts. There, you'll find a back catalog of episodes just like this one, with more to come every Monday. But for now, let's dive in. Please note that today's episode includes language some listeners might find offensive, as well as references to gun violence.

Please take care while listening. On the last full day of his life, Martin Luther King spent his morning nervously pressed into a narrow airplane seat bound for Memphis. When I first learned this fact, it struck me, not for its novelty, but for its ordinariness. There's something, I think, about being strapped inside an 80,000-pound steel bird careening through the sky

that seems to level the playing field. At 30,000 feet, even the body of a civil rights icon can feel frustratingly fragile. What's less relatable, though, is the gnawing sense of dread that comes with a deeper knowing. If this plane were to go down, it'd be because you were on it. Before takeoff, King's flight had been delayed. Not for maintenance or weather, but because a bomb threat targeting him needed vetting.

King and the other passengers waited while dogs sniffed through the aisles. When it all clear came, the flight was reboarded. They touched down in Memphis a single hour later than planned. For King, it was just another morning. The dread looming over him had grown larger in the months leading up to this day. From that very first bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama more than a decade earlier, King had been a target.

But as he expanded his mission from civil rights to economic justice and anti-Vietnam War advocacy, he alienated allies and enraged powerful enemies. The threats against him? They'd only grown louder. Still, as King stepped off that plane in Memphis, he knew he had a job to do. He'd come to support striking garbage workers in their quest to form a union. That evening, he stood before a crowd of 2,000

and delivered his soon-to-be-famous mountaintop speech. His voice crescendoed powerfully as he reached his prophetic conclusion. — I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.

My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. At 30,000 feet, or right here on the ground, the body of a civil rights icon can feel frustratingly fragile. The next day, at 6 p.m., King stepped out onto the balcony of his room at the Lorraine Motel. Looking over the railing's edge, he spotted Ben Branch, a talented saxophone player set to play at a celebration for the striking workers later that evening.

Ben, King called out, "'Play Precious Lord tonight. Play it real pretty.' It was his favorite hymn, but he'd never hear it again. A loud cracking noise, a single bullet, and that was it. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was dead. What happened next is a story you might know, a tale repeated on television, across headlines,

and the history books, that the pursuit of King's killer began immediately. — Police have issued an all-points bulletin for a well-dressed young white man seen running from the scene. Officers also reportedly chased and fired on a radio-equipped car containing two white men. — Before long, police would find a rifle out on the street.

Next to it, a bag filled with a strange assortment of items— binoculars, nine bullets, a radio, a pair of pliers, a few beers, and a copy of that day's newspaper. As the story goes, fingerprints on the gun matched a man named James Earl Ray, a fugitive who'd escaped prison and been on the run for a year. Investigators learned that Ray had rented a room in a nearby boarding house, one that gave him access to a bathroom with a clear line of sight to King's balcony.

Finally, after months on the run, Ray was captured at an airport in London. He pled guilty to King's murder and was sentenced to 99 years in the state penitentiary. So, case closed, right? Well, not quite. Because in 1997, nearly 30 years later, Dr. King's son, Dexter King, met with James Earl Ray in prison.

And that meeting? It left me wondering. If you could stand face-to-face with the person who took your father's life, what would you ask? Dexter King had one question in particular. — Did you kill my father? — No, no, I didn't know. — I want you to know that I believe you

and my family believes you. And we are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail. Well, now I was listening. Because if James R. Ray didn't kill King, who did? That's what I was about to find out. This is the story of Dr. Martin Luther King. I'm Sleazy Stanton, and you're listening to Truro Crime. Dexter King's meeting with James R. Ray had not come out of the blue. For years, the King family was suspicious of the official narrative surrounding Dr. King's assassination.

And so, by 1999, still convinced the full truth had yet to be revealed, Coretta Scott King, alongside her children, filed a civil lawsuit implicating local, state, and federal government entities and her husband's death. If the outcome, or perhaps even the existence of this trial are a mystery to you, as they were to me for most of my life, I want you to pause and let that sink in. Here's the thing.

In 1999, I was just four years old. Now, in 2025, I'm mere months away from 30. How is it possible that in the last 25 years, I've never been told the details of a trial where the King family accused the US government of conspiring to kill one of our nation's most celebrated heroes? Sure, I'd heard whispers.

The government killed King. A fleeting remark here and there, casually dropped by a friend or relative, something that always sounded equal parts obvious and conspiratorial. But no explanations ever followed. And I don't think I'm alone in that. While preparing for today's episode, I mentioned this trial to so many people, and the response was almost universal.

A knowing nod, widened eyes, and some variation of, oh yeah, I think I heard something about that once. But if we've forgotten the details, it's not entirely our fault. As I discovered in my research, American media barely covered the trials results, despite its immense significance. One journalist for Lisbon's Daily Publico summed it up perfectly. covered the trial's results, despite its immense significance.

One journalist for Lisbon's Daily Publico summed it up perfectly. Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson's trial was the trial of the century. Clinton's trial, trial of the century. But this, this is the trial of the century, and who's here? Still, reported or not, in November of 1999, the King family put the U.S. government on trial. Over the course of three-plus weeks, 70 witnesses were called to testify.

When it was all over, the jury deliberated for just an hour before delivering their verdict. Yes, they concluded, the US government was among a group of co-conspirators responsible for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The following day, Coretta Scott King held a press conference. Standing before a cluster of reporters,

she addressed the nation. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America, and a great victory for truth itself. The jury was clearly convinced that a conspiracy of the mafia, local, state, and federal government agencies were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence

that identified someone else, not James O. Ray, as the shooter in Memphis, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. So what was this overwhelming evidence that Coretta Scott King had found so compelling? And why had I, like so many others, never heard much, if anything, about it? That's what I needed to find out.

In the spring of 1968, King felt death closing in on him. Those closest to him said he knew it. You could see it in the way he moved, hear it in the way he spoke. But even if you didn't know King personally, the clues were there. Remember that prophetic warning King gave the day before his death, when he'd stood before a crowd of thousands and proclaimed that he might not live to see the future they were all fighting for. It's always struck me that those words feel

like the admission of a man who'd spent a lot of long nights reckoning with his own mortality. But also, in his position, wouldn't we all? The threats on King's life weren't just whispered warnings. They were loud, relentless, determined. By the time April 1968 rolled around, those threats had escalated to a fever pitch. Everything seemed to shift into overdrive when, a year before his death, he delivered his controversial, beyond Vietnam speech. This business of burning human beings with napalm,

sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields, physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. His remarks had left a lot of people feeling unsettled. This, some scoffed, was a diversion. No longer just a message of equal rights for Black Americans, King was using his immense platform

to forward new issues of social justice. He would be slammed in the media for his audacity. Life Magazine called the speech, "'Demagogic slander,' a page of the playbook of the worst sort of communist. Tensions rose. The calls to silence him grew louder. And when King planned his final trip to Memphis,

it wasn't just a rally for sanitation workers. It was a step directly into the eye of the storm. Memphis, it turned out, was already simmering. King had visited twice in March, on the 18th and 28th, each time receiving anonymous threats warning that something would happen to him. I read once that if you hope to truly understand someone, understand their contradictions.

It stuck with me. As I delved deeper, unraveling the threads of King's life, I started to notice his contradictions. Here was a man who resisted the idea of using bodyguards, yet he was repeatedly gripped by an almost certain fear of his impending mortality. Despite his promises to the crowds of sanitation workers on the evening of April 3rd that he was not afraid, the stress of all those mounting threats had taken their toll on him. He was fearful, yes, but he wasn't stopping. Describing his dislike for personal security, he said,

I can't lead that kind of life. I'd feel like a bird in a cage. There's no way in the world you can keep somebody from killing you if they really want to kill you. But whether King wanted it or not, his protection wasn't entirely up to him. The burden fell on law enforcement and what they chose to do with that responsibility

is where today's story starts to unravel. A complete mystery surrounds the decisions made during King's final days in Memphis, one that started to pique my own suspicion as I dove deeper into the case. Take this. When King landed in Memphis on April 3rd, the day before his death, his usual all-Black security detail wasn't there to meet him. Instead, a group of white officers escorted him to the Lorraine Motel.

And then, just six hours later, that detail was disbanded entirely, leaving King unprotected for the rest of the night and all of April 4th, the day of his assassination. Why? No one seems to know. The Memphis Police Department's after action report offered no explanation. Frank Holloman, Memphis' Fire and Police Director, approved the stand down,

but later he claimed he couldn't even remember doing so. He admitted that abandoning security under the circumstances was not proper. Not proper, I thought. That sounded like a massive understatement. But here's the thing. The strangeness doesn't stop there. Because the night before the shooting,

two black firefighters, Norval Wallace and Floyd Newsome, were abruptly reassigned from their positions at the fire station, a fire station that happened to overlook the Lorraine Motel. The reason for the reassignment? Alleged threats against their lives. Later, those transfers were deemed unnecessary. Here's Bill Pepper, the lawyer who represented the King family during their 1999 civil trial, questioning one of those were allowed to be on duty on that day. Right.

And you never received a satisfactory explanation. No. Never did. Not to this day. And then there's Detective Ed Redditt. He was a part of King's all-black security detail during previous visits. But this time, his role had shifted to surveillance, stationed at that same firehouse overlooking the Lorraine Motel to monitor the comings and goings.

His job was less about protecting King and more about surveilling him, but more on that later. For now, what you need to know is this. On April 4th, just hours before King's assassination, Reddit was abruptly pulled from his post and taken to police headquarters. At the 1999 civil trial, Redditt described the surreal scene waiting for him back at headquarters. A room filled with top law enforcement officials

and a secret service agent who claimed he'd flown in from Washington just to share that a contract had allegedly been taken out on Redditt's life. Who takes out a contract on a lowly police detective, Redditt had wondered, and what does the Secret Service have to do with it? Later, the whole ordeal would be brushed off as a mix-up. Turns out there hadn't been a threat on Redditt's life

after all. But by the time the detective was cleared to return, King was already dead. And look, I'm inherently skeptical of conspiracy theories. The kind of person who usually suspects negligence over malevolence, but it is weird, isn't it? That King was casually left unprotected while the Secret Service seemed willing to pull out all the stops for a random police detective? It was oddities upon oddities.

The reassigned firefighters, the disbanded security detail, the removal of Detective Ruddett. And yet, after King's assassination, authorities were quick to declare that they had the full story. A rifle was found near the crime scene with fingerprints all over it. The fingerprints of James Earl Ray, that man I discussed earlier, the one who was charged with King's murder. And by June, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declared Ray a racist with a motive to kill King. So case closed, right?

Not even close. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death, her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beth Lee is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head.

Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. A few steps and we eat. That many times you have blood splatter, where's the change?

Close. She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent human being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet and that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father. He went to a local church. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door.

But he was leading a double life. He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do. He then began entering the houses. He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful. He was a monster hiding in plain sight. Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices

of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the

team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else, like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show, Ears Edition on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news.

When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult. I think there were many individuals present. I don't know who pulled the trigger. A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw nothing Nothing to happen. An arrest, trial, and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent.

He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, season three, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. So let's talk about James Earl Ray, the man who, according to official accounts, pulled the trigger that killed Dr. King. To understand his story, you have to go back to the streets of St. Louis, where Ray grew up during the Great Depression. His family was poor, his childhood unstable, and his education limited. By the time he reached adulthood, Ray had built a criminal record, a string of petty thefts and nonviolent crimes that landed him in and out of prison. In 1959, Ray's life took a darker turn. After his third felony conviction, this time for robbing a grocery store, he was sentenced

to 20 years in the Missouri State Penitentiary. But in 1967, after serving less than a decade, Ray managed to escape. He slipped out of the prison in a bread truck and began living on the run, adopting a series of aliases to evade capture. At first, his life on the lam seemed aimless. A restaurant job in Chicago under a fake name, a brief stint in Montreal,

and over and over again, Ray managed to evade capture. Until, of course, he was captured for the murder of Dr. King. Once charged, Ray began working with two lawyers I'll call the Haynes duo, a father-son attorney team from Birmingham with a reputation for defending those accused of the most high-profile crimes during the Civil Rights era.

The son, Art Haynes Jr., would say during an interview for the MLK Tapes podcast that Ray was consistent from the very start. Did Ray ever demonstrate anything to you to indicate that he wanted to be known as the man who killed King? Why, certainly not. He denied it vehemently from the beginning.

He was an escaped con. He didn't care. He just didn't want to go back to the penitentiary. I found that interesting. If Ray was so insistent on his innocence, I wanted to know what his story was. This is what I found out. It's during Ray's brief stint in Montreal

that his version of events first emerged from the prosecutions. Because it was there, Ray said, that he first met a mysterious man named Raoul. Ray claimed that the two had struck up a conversation at a bar and quickly found common ground. Raoul, Ray said, was a man of opportunity. He promised Ray travel documents with a simple catch. Ray just needed to run a few errands first.

These errands, though, they were unusual. They involved Ray smuggling goods across the U.S.-Canada border in his car. Ray did as he was told, though, and while he claimed to not know exactly what he was smuggling, he was paid for his time. Despite the promised travel documents never materializing, Ray remained hooked, enticed by the promise of a new identity and the allure of a steady, reliable income.

So he continued to follow Raoul's instructions. Eventually, Ray insisted, Raoul brought him to Birmingham. And once there, it was Raoul, Ray said, who gave him $2,000 to buy a white 1966 Mustang, the same car witnesses would describe fleeing the scene of King's assassination. And it was Raoul, Ray insisted, who directed him to purchase the rifle in Birmingham that would eventually be linked to King's murder.

Ray's version of events is a patchwork of peculiarities. He described meeting Raoul the night before the assassination to hand over the rifle he was asked to purchase. The next day, Raoul instructed Ray to check into a boarding house near the Lorraine Motel. From the nearby bathroom, Ray could see the very spot where King would later be killed while standing on the balcony.

But Ray claimed he wasn't there when the shot was fired. Instead, he said, he was headed to a local gas station to see about getting a flat tire fixed. When we returned to the area, he noticed chaos. Police cars, flashing lights, and news spreading that King had been shot. And then he panicked. Hearing reports that authorities were looking

for a white man in a white Mustang, he fled Memphis and began a frantic journey that would take him to Atlanta, Detroit, and eventually London. And while I think it's very reasonable to find Ray's story a bit sketchy and super convenient, from the moment he was captured, Ray maintained his innocence.

He insisted he was a pawn in a larger conspiracy, a claim that gained momentum when he began working with the Haynes, who insisted that they believed their client was telling them the truth. But the prosecution's case was weak. But then, suddenly, just before the trial was set to begin, something unexpected happened when the Haynes set to begin, something unexpected happened when the Haynes went to meet with Bray in jail.

Art Haynes Jr. recalled the memory for the MLK Tapes podcast. We got there and we had bought two suits for him to wear to trial and Ty asked to go with him. And we were going to take him the suits and buck him up a little bit on the eve before trial. When we got to the jail, it was spitting snow, it was right cold that night. When we got to the jail, we were handed a note and said, thanks for all you've done, but I've decided to change lawyers. So we left. I mean, we were just lawyers. We were just lawyers.

We were lawyers doing our duty. That's right. Just before trial, James Earl Ray fired his lawyers. He made a last-minute decision to replace the Haynes with a celebrity attorney named Percy Foreman. Foreman, Ray said, had promised to win his case. But things didn't go as planned. Foreman quickly began pressuring Ray to plead guilty, or at least that's how Ray described

it. The Haynes, too, quickly grew uneasy with Foreman's approach. We had witness statements, outlines of arguments. I mean, we had a complete ready file. He came through Birmingham and we offered him that file. We offered to sit down with him. We offered to outline our defense with him, to give him the witness state. Everything that we had, all he wanted to do and all we did was feed him steak and Scotch whiskey at the club in Birmingham and hear him ramble on about what a fabulous lawyer he was.

Truth of the matter is, Percy Foreman was the biggest fraud and blowhard I ever encountered in over 50 years of practicing law. I saw absolutely no evidence ever, either directly or secondhand, of any inclination or willingness on his part to defend that case as it should have been defended. Under the pressure of what Foreman made seem like an inevitable execution, Ray folded. On March 10, 1969, he entered a guilty plea, securing a 99-year prison sentence, but avoiding the death penalty. Almost immediately, Ray regretted his decision. He wrote to the judge, asking to withdraw his plea, claiming he'd been coerced, but

it was too late. The case was closed. The official narrative had been set. And maybe it's all just a sad, unfortunate coincidence. A flaw in the American justice system. Plenty of people who claim their innocence end up taking a plea deal to avoid worse consequences. But what I can't shake is a chilling fact.

In 1975, just six years after Ray claimed Foreman had coerced him into pleading guilty, Foreman was indicted for attempting to manipulate another client. The indictment revealed that Foreman had received $50,000 to ensure his client stayed silent. How? By coercing him to plead guilty.

So this Foreman thing was interesting, but Ray's story with its gaps and contradictions was one that prosecutors were more than content to ignore. This idea that Ray was some kind of pawn in a broader conspiracy was dismissed outright and the trial never happened. Instead, the state relied on a confession made under questionable circumstances to close the case. But here's the thing. Tennessee law requires the state to present some evidence of Ray's guilt, even without

a trial. Perfect, I thought. This was my chance to really understand what they had on Ray, even without a trial. Perfect, I thought. This was my chance to really understand what they had on Ray, to get a closer look at why prosecutors were so convinced of his guilt. At first glance, I think this state's case against James R. Ray might seem straightforward. A rifle, fingerprints, a fugitive desperate to stay hidden.

But as I dug deeper, the picture blurred and my questions grew. So I want to go through everything the prosecution presented in that case against Ray, so you can decide for yourself what you think. Let's start with the witnesses. The prosecution had folks ready to testify that they'd heard the gunshot that killed King,

but notably, no one who actually saw the shooter. Their most significant witness was a man named Charlie Stevens. He had been staying at the same rooming house as James Earl Ray, the one that had that bathroom that had the perfect line of sight to King's balcony. An interesting tidbit about that bathroom is that it was actually accessible to multiple people.

This wasn't like a bathroom in James Earl Ray's private room. No, actually, it was open to anyone staying at the rooming house. So when the state star witness Charlie Stevens claimed that he saw a man fleeing from the direction of the bathroom just moments after the fatal shot was fired, it packed a little less punch than it might have otherwise. And as James Earl Ray's original lawyer, Art Haynes Jr., described it, Charlie Stevens wasn't necessarily reliable.

Oh, good gracious. Charlie Stevens was drunk as a goat when Dr. King was killed. We had a taxi driver who was going to testify. Stevens had called a cab, and the cab driver refused to let him in the cab because he was too drunk to ride in a cab. So if your star witness is too drunk to ride in a cab, we felt his testimony was worth nothing.

And I wondered about James Earl Ray's alibi. If it could be confirmed, it would cast even more doubt on what Charlie Stevens claimed to have seen. Ray insisted that at the time of the assassination, he was driving away from the area to fix a flat tire. His story might have been easy to dismiss, but decades after his conviction, evidence emerged that gave it weight. Bill Pepper, the King family lawyer in that 1999 civil trial,

uncovered FBI statements from two men who were near the crime scene on the day of the assassination. Both reported seeing a white Mustang, Ray's car, driving away from the area around 5 45 p.m. That timeline matches Ray's story and places him away from the rooming house 20 minutes before King was killed. And why had this evidence stayed buried for so long? Because the FBI withheld it from Ray's legal team. And why did they do that? Well, we still don't know. But back to the prosecution's case.

Next up was their physical evidence. The state pointed to a rifle found near the crime scene, a Remington.30-06 Game Master with Ray's fingerprints on it, as a smoking gun. The rifle was found wrapped in a blanket bundle right outside the front door of a local shop. And that's where things get a bit murky. According to the shop's owner, Guy Knapp's, he noticed the gun trapped outside his store before the assassination.

Not after. Ray's original lawyer, Art Haynes Jr., would elaborate on the store owner's claims on the MLK Tapes podcast. He had no motive or stake in it and truthfully was not particularly excited to be involved, but he was willing to be. You'll see the fire station overlooks the Lorraine Motel. That fire station was packed with city policemen, federal agents, spectators, curiosity seekers, and others who were looking out over the Lorraine Motel to see the activities of Dr. King and his entourage.

The moment the shot was fired and Dr. King went down, that fire station erupted like a beehive, Police going in all directions. The very idea that someone could fire that shot, stop in a room, very carefully wrap that package, put the gun in it, and tie it, and then drop it it is, in our way of thinking, simply preposterous and unbelievable. And then there was the bullet itself. While the prosecution implied that there was a definitive match between the fatal bullet and Ray's rifle, the truth was that ballistics couldn't conclusively link the two.

The bullet was consistent with Ray's rifle, yes, but it could have been fired from thousands of other.30 caliber rifles. So what are we left with? A rifle that may or may not have been the murder weapon, a key witness deemed unreliable, and an alibi bolstered by evidence the FBI chose to hide. And then there's this.

James R. Wray had no history of violence, no known ties to extremist groups, and no clear motive to assassinate Dr. King. An escaped convict previously found guilty of little more than petty theft who seemed desperate to stay under the radar suddenly decided to murder one of the most famous men in America knowing it would almost certainly end in his capture? For me, it was all starting to feel a little hard to square.

So let's humor an alternative for a second. Let's say that Ray wasn't solely responsible. If not him, then who? To find answers, you have to start with Jim's Grill. Located just across the street from the Lorraine Motel, Jim's Grill played a key role in the official narrative of the assassination. The rooming house above the restaurant was said to be the origin of the fatal shot, fired from that bathroom window overlooking the motel.

But not everyone bought into that explanation. Some believed the shot came from the brushy yard below the window, a spot accessible through the back door of Jim's Grill. And that's where things get interesting. A woman named Betty Spates, who worked as a waitress at Jim's Grill, claimed to have witnessed an unforgettable scene that unfolded just moments after Dr. King was shot. Betty, who was also involved in an affair with the Grill's owner, Lloyd Jowers, recalled seeing Jowers burst through the Grill's back door holding a smoking rifle.

Years later, she shared her account with Bill Pepper, the King's family's lawyer during the 1999 civil trial. He looked like he had split his finger in the socket. Lord, hell was standing up. And he looked like somebody had drained all the blood out of his body. He was so white. Ooh, he was so white.

He had been on his knees. How do you know he'd been on his knees? I know he had been on his knees. It cuts the ground with that. It cuts what? The ground was damp been on his knees? I know he had been on his knees. It caused the brown with that. He caused what? The brown was damp and his knees was dirty. And when he came in there and went behind the counter, and put that gun on the counter,

it was a brand new, pretty rifle. The brown love was black, but it was shine like it been wax. The hell love was dark brown. It had waxed. The hell of it was dog brown. It was black paint on top of it. Jower, she said, quickly disassembled the rifle, stashing it on a shelf. And then he turned to her, pale and trembling, and asked, you would never do anything to hurt me, Betty, would you?

She assured him she wouldn't. So what did Lloyd Jower have to say about Betty's story? Well, for years, he denied any involvement, claiming he was busy serving beer when the shot was fired. That is, until 1993, when he appeared on ABC's Primetime Live with Sam Donaldson and made a shocking revelation. Did James Earl Ray kill Dr. Martin Luther King? No, he did not. Do you know who killed Dr. King? I know who was paid to do it.

Lloyd Jowers claimed he knew who was paid to kill Dr. King, but he wouldn't name names. He said he was too scared and didn't have immunity from prosecution. His attorney tried to strike a deal, immunity in exchange for cooperation, but the authorities weren't interested. Still, Jowers and his lawyer met with Dr. King's son, Dexter King, to share what he said was the full story.

Jowers claimed he was coerced by Frank Liberto, a Memphis businessman allegedly tied to organized crime. Liberto, he said, used debts and favors to pressure him into letting the grill be used as a staging ground for the assassination. According to Jowers, Liberto handed him a box of produce with cash in it inside and told him to give it to a man named Raul, the same Raul that James O'Rae claimed had framed him. Jowers also said that he was told to be at the back door of the grill at 6.30 p.m. when someone handed him a smoking rifle.

He said he brought the gun inside and hid it in a storeroom, but his most shocking claim? That the fatal shot came from the bushy area behind the grill fired by a Memphis police officer, a man who perhaps conveniently was no longer alive to defend himself. But almost as quickly as the story came out, Jowers began denying it. Despite his meeting with the King family, the authorities remained uninterested

in giving Jowers immunity. And during a 1994 deposition, after being presented with a transcript of his concepts on ABC's Primetime Live, he pled the fifth to every question. Jower's story shifted constantly over the years, a tangle of lies and half-truths. He insisted on his innocence,

but that didn't square with his confession on ABC or the things he privately had told his attorney. What did stand out to me, though, was that Jower seemed to come into money not long after King's assassination, money he used to purchase the second-largest cab company in Memphis. And while his story wasn't consistent,

parts of it align with some suspicious circumstantial evidence. For example, the brush area behind Drim's Grill, where some other witnesses reported seeing a man moving just after the shooting, was cleared out the very next morning. Memphis Public Works employees inexplicably cut down the bushes, destroying what may have otherwise been a key crime scene.

And then there's Betty Spates. There were a few other times she had forwarded her same story about Lloyd Jowers. Less than a year after King's assassination, in fact, she reportedly told two people that her boss, presumably Jowers, was involved in the murder. In one instance, Spates allegedly told someone that Jowers was, quote, in on it, though she denied saying so when police questioned her later. In another instance, while arranging bail for her brother, she told two bail bondsmen that she knew who shot King and that Ray wasn't responsible. When investigators followed up,

though, Spates again denied knowing anything. Despite these denials, Betty later came forward with a clear and unwavering account. She told the King family lawyer Bill Pepper that she witnessed Lloyd Jowers running into the grill with a smoking rifle around 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, and she stood by her statement, even in the face of intimidation and efforts to discredit her. "'I will not retract the truthful accounts of the events which I witnessed,' she said. James Earl Ray was not the person who shot Dr. King. Still, the authorities doubled down on the lone gunman theory, dismissing Spates and Jowers' claims as fabrications.

In Betty's case, they pointed to her earlier denials as proof she wasn't credible, but it did make me wonder. Was she truly unaware of what happened happened or was she just too scared or intimidated to speak out? As for Jowers, they dismissed his story as a ploy for profit, claiming he hoped to make money from a movie deal about the assassination. A movie which, by the way, never got off the ground. But here's what doesn't sit right with me still.

Why would Lloyd Jowers, a man who spent years denying involvement, suddenly implicate himself in one of the most consequential assassinations in American history? For a movie deal that never even materialized? It feels like a pretty big risk for a pretty uncertain reward.

And that's the thing that lingers. Jower's story has its gaps, and so does Betty's spates, a messy mix of denials and later revelations. But when you step back, aren't those holes about as big as the ones in the case against James Earl Ray? And what if I told you there's also a twist? More evidence that actually lends weight to Jower's version of events. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here.

In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beth Lee is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head. Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright-Pacheco.

Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. If you stab somebody that many times, you have blood splatter. Where's the change? Close.

She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent human being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet. And that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father. He went to a local church. He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door. But he was leading a double life. He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do. He then began entering the houses. He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught.

He felt very powerful. He was a monster hiding in plain sight. Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

John Stewart is back in the host chair at The Daily Show, which means he's also back in our ears on The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. The Daily Show podcast has everything you need to stay on top of today's news and pop culture. You get hilarious, satirical takes on entertainment, politics, sports, and more from John and the team of correspondents and contributors. The podcast also has content you can't get anywhere else like extended interviews and a roundup of the weekly headlines. Listen to The Daily Show Ears Edition on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There was big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered found in a cemetery. Big, big news. I mean, white girl gets murdered, found in a cemetery. Big, big news. When a young woman is murdered, a desperate search for answers takes investigators to

some unexpected places. He believed it could be part of a satanic cult. I think there were many individuals present. I don't know who pulled the trigger. A long investigation stalls until someone changes their story. I like saw what they were having. An arrest, trial and conviction soon follow. He just saw his body just kind of collapsing. Two decades later, a new team of lawyers says their client is innocent. He did not kill her. There's no way. Is the real killer rightly behind bars or still walking free? Are you capable of murder? I definitely am not. Did you kill her? Listen to The Real Killer, season three on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. When Lloyd Jowers claimed on national television that James O. Ray was a front man in a larger conspiracy to kill Dr. King, his statement was met with a mix of intrigue and skepticism. When the fuller story came out, he pointed the finger at Frank Liberto, a businessman with alleged connections to organized crime who he said coerced him to take part in the assassination. And as it turned out, Jowers wasn't the only one who thought Frank Liberto had a hand in the murder of Dr. King. Let's start with a woman named Levada Addison.

Addison owned a pizza parlor near Frank Liberto's business and spent quite a bit of time around him. One day, as a report about King's assassination played on TV, Addison claimed that Liberto leaned in close and said, "'I had Martin Luther King killed.'" Addison was so disturbed by the comment that she immediately told her son, Nathan Whitlock,

about it. As Nathan said during the 1999 civil trial, he just couldn't let it go. I went directly to Mr. Frank about it when he showed up to the pitch park. And I was just asking, I said, "'Hey man, Mr. Frank, did you kill Martin Luther King? He glared at me, he says, you didn't talk to your mother, had you? I said, yeah.

He said, you wired? I didn't even know what he meant by that. I went, no, I'm not wired. I thought he was talking about if I'm taking amphetamine pills, we're wired up. I said, no, I'm not crazy. And he said, there was a reason I don't want to offend anybody by saying this. He told me, he said, I didn't kill the nigger, but I had it done. And I said, what about that other son of a bitch up there taking

credit for him? He says, he wasn't nothing but a trouble maker from Missouri. He was a front man. And I didn't know what that meant. Because front man me means something different than what he was thinking about. I said, a what? He said, a set up man. I said, well why did you give him a preacher for? He says, boy you don't even need to be hearing about this.

He said, don't you say nothing. He stood up and he acted like he was gonna slap me upside the head. So I stood up there and me and him were looking at each other and he's got this glaring look on his eye. And I could tell he was thinking about hitting me. And by that time the phone rang, so I just walked up to the international phone

and I'm busy with a piece of stuff and I looked up, he's gone. But it wasn't just Lovata Addison and her son Nathan Whitlock. No, because there was also John McFerrin, a civil rights leader from Fayette County who had his own alarming encounter. McFerrin regularly purchased produce from Liberto, and on April 4th, the day of the assassination,

he overheard Liberto during a heated phone call. The chilling words he caught? Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony. McFerrin was so shaken that he reported the incident to a trusted minister, Reverend Bryant, who would later independently verify the story McFerrin had told him. At the urging of the minister,

McFerrin reported what he heard to the FBI, but ultimately they dismissed it. But as the jury and the 1999 civil trial would later conclude, this wasn't just about a handful of men conspiring to kill Dr. King. The U.S. government was implicated, and that's a tough pill to swallow. Why would government entities go to such lengths? Isn't that just some conspiracy theory? Let's take a step back and look at what Dr. King was doing in the months leading up to his assassination. Like we discussed earlier, by 1968, King's activism

had expanded well beyond the fight for racial equity. He was challenging the foundations of American power, uniting the poor, opposing the Vietnam War, and demanding systemic change. In December of 1967, King announced the Poor People's Campaign, a multiracial movement that would march on Washington, D.C. that summer. It wasn't just about Black civil rights anymore. King was building alliances with poor white folks, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Indigenous people. King saw economic inequality as a shared struggle, one that had long been used

to divide and conquer. And of course, there was that infamous beyond Vietnam speech we discussed earlier, the one where he condemned the Vietnam War as an immoral drain on resources that could be used to fight poverty at home. The backlash was immediate and harsh. By one count, 168 major newspapers condemned the speech. The Washington Post declared that King had diminished his usefulness, and the New York Times called his stance wasteful and self-defeating. And I think it's important to clarify that the backlash wasn't just media-driven. And I think it's important to clarify that the backlash wasn't just media-driven. According to a 1966 Gallup poll, 63% of Americans had a negative view of King.

It's tempting to think of racism in the 60s as the beliefs of some loud minority, but King's unpopularity tells a different story. Many people in positions of power saw him not as a hero, but as a threat. J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI's longstanding director, was perhaps King's most vocal detractor. Hoover viewed King as a communist sympathizer and called him the most dangerous Negro in America.

He even told reporters that King was the most notorious liar in the country. And so, under Hoover's leadership, the FBI didn't just stand idly by. They sought to destroy King. At the center of this campaign was COINTELPRO, the FBI's counterintelligence program, initially created to combat communist threats. COINTELPRO morphed into a dirty tricks operation aimed at discrediting activist groups. King was a prime target. Here's Arthur Murtaugh, one of the agents involved in the FBI's anti-King

activities, describing his experience. I was on a squad that was referred to as a security squad. I would say that probably 98% of the time of the people on that squad was involved in one way or another with the investigation of Dr. King. They also were involved in counterintelligence operations which were designed to make up stories about Dr. King, any kind of a story, to denigrate his character and then go to what the Bureau referred to and the Bureau papers referred to as friendly members of the press. I was very ambivalent about what to do. I knew about a lot of this stuff at least by 1955, and it bothered me.

I didn't know whether to resign or stay in. One of my brothers said to me, we had a big family, eight of us, he said, Art, if things are as bad in the FBI as you say they are, the whole system would crumble. I said, it won't crumble because Hoover has the power to keep it from crumbling. He has everybody scared to death. They do exactly as they tell him.

And Art was right. Following orders, they surveilled King's every move. His phones were tapped, his hotel rooms bugged, and his private life picked apart for anything that could be used against him. Hoover's goal was clear—to find her that could ruin King's reputation as a moral leader of the civil rights movement. But perhaps the most shocking part of this campaign was the FBI's decision to send King an anonymous letter urging him to kill himself.

The letter opened with a harsh accusation. You are a colossal fraud and an evil vicious one at that. It claimed to have detailed knowledge of King's private life and alleged affairs, even including audio tapes supposedly proving the accusations. The writer gave King a 34 day deadline to take the action before quote, your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

The letter ended with a chilling statement. There is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. So now that we've laid out just how contentious the relationship between King and the FBI was, let's go back to something I mentioned at the very beginning of this story. Shortly after James Earl Ray was captured,

but before he was officially charged, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover publicly declared that Ray was a racist with a motive to kill King. That statement set the official narrative in motion, but Hoover's influence didn't stop there. He had a connection to H.L. Hunt, a wealthy oil tycoon and conservative radio mogul. Hunt's radio programs often featured anti-King rhetoric, much of it allegedly sourced directly from the FBI.

According to Hunt's assistant, John Currington, the two men collaborated frequently, especially after King's assassination, and they had their own reasons for wanting James Earl Ray locked up. Here's Currington speaking with the King family lawyer, Bill Pepper. Hoover and Johnson and Mr. Hunt all shared the same view that if James Earl Ray should go to trial, he could blow everybody out of the boat that was floating around out in the ocean there. So I think in the opinion of J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, and H.L. Hunt that it was necessary for James Earl Ray to plead guilty to that where none of his testimony would be made public.

But there's another chilling revelation that Hunt's assistant John Currington shared, one that stuck with me. Currington described an afternoon when, after a phone call with Hoover, his boss summoned him to his office. Hunt then made another call, this time to Percy Foreman, James Earl Ray's lawyer. Remember, Ray later claimed that Foreman pressured him into pleading guilty. During the call, Hunt told Foreman that there was a young lawyer in his office who'd laid out some compelling reasons why Ray should plead guilty.

The twist? The young lawyer was actually Currington himself, Hunt's assistant. Hunt suggests sending this lawyer to meet Foreman in person to go over the reasons for Ray to plead guilty. The next morning, Currington did exactly that, and he wasn't traveling empty-handed. I had a briefcase with $125,000 cash in it. Mr. Foreman and I had probably exchanged a few pledges for two or three minutes, and I just simply

stated to him that I had jotted down 125,000 reasons why James Earl Ray should plead guilty to killing Martin Luther King and would like to leave those reasons with him. And Percy Foreman, without any comment, said, just leave your briefcase. That was the extent of our conversation. So could Carrington's story be true? Well, consider this. Foreman was later indicted for pressuring a separate client to plead guilty in exchange for money.

And guess who was behind that bribe? Well, that indictment named none other than the sons of H.L. Hunt, the very same family now tied to the situation with James Earl Ray. But here's the thing, even if none of this definitively proves the FBI's involvement in a conspiracy to kill King, it raises serious questions. And even without a smoking gun, weren't they still guilty of something? The wiretapping, the harassment, it was relentless. Hoover's assistant, Paul Luturski, would be the one to tell his boss that King had

been shot. And as Luturski chillingly recalled, even then, Hoover's reaction appeared to be one of calculation. I called Hoover at home. I didn't want him to hear it over the news. I called him and I said, Mr. Hoover, I just got a Telex message from our Memphis office. It said that Martin Luther King was shot while standing on a balcony in that city.

And then there was this pause, and his immediate reaction to me was, is he dead? And I said, I don't know. All I have is the fact that he was shot. And then I asked him if he would like me to connect him with the head of the Memphis office, and he said, yeah, do that. Then there was another slight delay and he said to me, I hope the son of a bitch doesn't die because if he does, they'll make a martyr on him. Those were his exact words and I'll never forget it.

When the gavel fell on that 1999 civil trial, it uncovered hard truths. But the silence that followed revealed a country still reluctant to confront them. The media response ranged from doubtful to dismissive. The New York Times claimed that, "...a vast conspiracy was alleged but not proven," while the U.S. News and World Report claimed that the King family lawyer was, quote, prone to bizarre conspiracy theories. And while the civil trial and the King family's efforts would encourage future investigations by the U.S. government, the official narrative remained

always intact. The New York Times summed it up best in a line that still startles me. Quote, According to officials and former officials of the Justice Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau has checked out various assertions of such a conspiracy and has found virtually all to be without substance. In other words, the Justice Department and FBI investigated themselves and found nothing wrong.

Breaking news indeed. What strikes me most though, is how hard it was to find detailed accessible information about this trial. It's as though the story itself was buried under a mountain of caveats, dismissals, and missing evidence. Critics pointed out that the witness statements were contradictory, the jury lacked hard proof,

but isn't it kind of ironic? The case against James R. Ray suffered from the very same flaws, yet it stood unchallenged for decades. And at the heart of all of this is a question that haunts me. How are we supposed to trust the same justice system accused of being complicit in King's murder to deliver us the truth about it?

In the decade since King's death, we've sanitized his memory. Today, he's frozen in time, a man of soaring speeches and unshakable faith, but this was a man who knew fear, who faced relentless threats, and who ultimately gave his life for a vision of a more perfect union. He wasn't some mythical hero, he was real, with all the fragility that comes with being human. And the price of his dream was staggering, devastating. Let's not dishonor that sacrifice by forgetting what it demanded, by glossing over the threads of injustice still left unraveled,

by passively accepting a narrative that still leaves so much unsaid. Because honoring Dr. King's legacy requires us to confront the complexities of his life and death, ready and willing to wrestle with the uncomfortable questions they leave behind. Thanks so much for listening today. And before you top away, I just wanna share how excited I am to be back, how much it means to me that you listened.

And I just, I really can't wait to share the rest of the season with you. If you're listening to this episode on the day of its release, you probably know that it's MLK Day, and for me, today, and every day, I think it's so important that we're working to challenge ourselves to really engage with MLK's life and legacy

in a way that really goes beyond the surface, to be intentional about the ways that we're honoring and caring for the work that he started during his life. So that being said, I really encourage you to scroll down past this episode's description and click over to poorpeoplescampaign.org. This is an organization that has affiliate committees in states nationwide. And you might recognize the name because the Poor People's Campaign was the unfinished work of King.

This is what he was doing right before his death, the March on Washington that he had planned for the summer of 1968 that never got to be realized under his leadership. And so this organization is really reviving that work. And the modern version of their campaign is to unite people across the country to challenge systemic racism, poverty and so much more. There's lots of amazing information on their website, but make sure to click on the tab that says Take Action,

and then once you're there, you can search for your state committee and see research news and action specific to where you live, which I think is super impactful and important to be able to do things that are local. Lastly, definitely make sure to follow them on Instagram at Poor People's Campaign to stay up to date on all the great work they're doing. And next, I wanna make sure that you check out

the MLK Tapes. This is another amazing podcast produced by Tenderfoot TV. And I can't even begin to tell you how much more there is to today's story than what I was able to fit into a singular episode. MLK Tapes was the primary source that I was able to use for doing my research on this story. And if you ended today's story

with any lingering questions about the case, I can almost guarantee you're gonna find that answer in that podcast. I said during the episode, but it's super hard to find information about the assassination of MLK that mentions anything other than this sort of like official narrative.

Everything else is kind of just hand wavy, like, oh yeah, that was a conspiracy. There's not much evidence to support it when in fact there's quite a bit out there. And MLK Tapes does this thorough investigative deep dive that's super comprehensive and really just a really important lesson. And of course, as always, for a full source list and links to today's action items, make sure to check out our website at Trurocrimepodcast.com. Season two is going to be a big one, an exciting one, so make sure to keep up with us on Instagram and X at Trurocrimepod. You can also find me on Instagram and TikTok at Selesia Stanton and through my weekly newsletter,

Sincerely Selesia at SincerelySleesia.Substack.com Truer Crime is created, hosted, and written by me, Sleesia Stanton, and is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with Odyssey. Additional writing and research by Olivia Husingfeld. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. Additional production by Olivia Husingfeld and Jamie Albright. Editing by Liam Luxon, with additional editing support by Sydney Evans and Jaajal Muhammad.

Our supervising producer is Tracy Kaplan. Artwork by Station 16. Original music by Jay Ragsdale. Mix by Dayton Cole. Thank you to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, and the Nord Group. For more podcasts like True or Crime, search Tenderfoot TV on your favorite podcast app,

or visit us at tenderfoot.tv. Thanks for listening. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Begley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense.

Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail. The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was a Boy Scout leader, a podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.