Lewis Garrison at Centenary, 1998
(Photo Copyright © by Joseph Backes)
Years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s murder, his birthday became a holiday --- a day in which to reflect upon his message of justice, hope, and nonviolence. While we remember the legacy of his life, we fail his cause if we do not recognize how he was taken from us. His leadership would have served us better than his death, but that made his assassination inevitable.
Represented by attorney Percy Foreman, James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to King's murder in 1969. Ray claimed that he had been maneuvered into his position by a man named "Raul." But Ray's story, if true, still made him an accomplice, and therefore guilty. He might have been acquitted if he could prove that he was not witting of the plan to kill King. Foreman, however, was apparently more interested in convicting Ray than defending him. Foreman declared to the jury that it had taken him months to conclude that there was no conspiracy, and he polled the jury to determine if they would accept a 99-year sentence for his client. The "trial" lasted nearly four hours. Nobody asked Ray if he shot Dr. King. No witnesses were cross-examined by anybody.
A wealth of information indicating Ray's innocence or the involvement of others has surfaced over the years. The FBI tested the alleged murder weapon and found the scope was not properly aligned. If Ray had looked down that sight and laid the cross-hairs on his target, he certainly would have missed. The Bureau analyzed Ray's alleged ammunition and suppressed the results because the lead composition of the death slug did not match the rest of his bullets. William Pepper, who represented Ray in the last years of Ray's life, located Raul. Former FBI Agent Donald Wilson came forward with evidence in the case. And Lloyd Jowers, who once owned a restaurant at the assassination scene, confessed his role in the conspiracy and apologized to the King family.
The response of the authorities was to oppose defense tests of the alleged murder weapon, to deny a new trial for Ray, and to confound public understanding of the circumstances behind Dr. King's assassination. The King family sought a full and open investigation; the Justice Department answered with a closed and carefully limited review.
When investigators will not investigate and prosecutors will not prosecute, criminal law cannot bring justice. The King family brought a civil suit against Lloyd Jowers and trial followed. News coverage did not.
On December 8, 1999, a jury in Memphis, Tennessee, found Lloyd Jowers liable in the wrongful death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The next night on CBS news, Dan Rather reported that the jury had "opined" the existence of a conspiracy in King's death. According to Webster's dictionary, "opine" means "to hold or express an opinion; think; suppose: now usually humorous." Instead of providing details on the witnesses or their accounts, CBS sought the opinion of Gerald Posner, author of Killing the Dream, a book advancing the lone assassin theory of King's murder. CBS's message to its viewing audience was unmistakable. The verdict will be, at best, a footnote in the story of how James Ray shot Dr. King.
On December 9, 1999, on page A23, next to the weather and the national classified ads, The New York Times reported on the verdict in Memphis. By way of background information, the Times claimed that James Ray confessed to firing the shot that killed Dr. King --- which is not true --- and added a quote from Gerald Posner:
It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it.
With that broad swipe at the King family, the judge, the attorneys, and the jury's verdict, the Times's story closed.
On December 10, the Times ran a lengthier and more prominently placed follow-up article. Like CBS, The New York Times saw little need to describe testimony of the witnesses. The Times concluded its second report like the first --- not with details about the case, but with speculations on psychology. People "want to embrace the sweeping conspiracy theory" because, according to Posner,
it matches the stature of the man and somehow gives even more meaning and power to his death.
Posner was on NBC's Today show to lament the trial in Memphis, and he wrote about the trial for the Washington Post. (12/13/1999, p. A25) According to Posner, the district attorney determined that Jowers wanted to make a lot of money from an unfounded story. While accusations of venality are easy to bandy about, naming anyone who offered or paid Jowers any money has proven impossible. Jowers's attorney, Lewis Garrison, "incredibly told the jury that his client was indeed part of a conspiracy..." Garrison conducted "an astonishingly lethargic defense" in Posner's view --- a peculiar assessment considering that Jowers had confessed. The trial lasted a month, but Posner didn't name any witnesses or relate anything of their testimony. The verdict, he believes, will not change the official view of the assassination. That's probably true, although not for the reasons he imagines.
Since news reports of the Jowers trial were virtually information-free, I looked elsewhere. I had met Lewis Garrison during the 1998 meeting in Memphis of the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He addressed the audience at the Centenary United Methodist Church, the site of Dr. King's last press conference. Among the speakers that evening were retired Memphis Police Homicide Detective Jerry Williams, retired Memphis Police Captain Thomas Smith, John McFerren, Jerry Ray, Reverend James Orange, and former FBI agent Donald Wilson. (See Memphis and Memphis Miasma in Fair Play #22, May-June 1998, for details on the meeting at Centenary.) Lewis Garrison, of course, talked about Lloyd Jowers.
Jowers owned Jim's Grill, on South Main Street in Memphis. The back door of the restaurant opened onto a vacant lot which faced the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed. Jowers said he received $100,000 from Memphis produce vendor Frank Liberto to help arrange the killing. Jowers also identified others connected to the plot, including a friend of his, Memphis police officer Earl Clark.
Investigators knew of Jowers's possible involvement months before Ray's conviction. A Memphis police intelligence division report, dated February 3, 1969, disclosed that a "reliable source," bailbondsman Alexander Wright, had reported the existence of possible witnesses against Jowers. One of them was Betty Spates, a waitress at Jim's Grill. According to a handwritten note on the report, the attorney general's office also held a tape recording "brought to this office on January 30." Spates was apparently interviewed on February 12, 1969, and denied making any of the statements attributed to her. The report of the interview contains a space for Spates's signature --- but the space is blank.
At Centenary, Garrison described the key elements of his client's account:
[T]hat immediately after the shot was fired that a Memphis police officer who had been his hunting companion --- they had been hunting on many trips before this --- either threw or gave him a gun which was still smoking, and that he was told to be at the back door of his restaurant at six o'clock.
Somehow, none of that information made it into news accounts in 1998. A year later, when Garrison's client faced a jury, that remained true.
I called Garrison in December of 1999, and he was quite willing to discuss the case. The King family, he said,
decided that the only way they would get a hearing would be under civil law in this state. And they, of course, decided that the only person they, of course, could sue at this point --- of course, Mr. Ray's dead and you can't sue someone who's deceased --- but they decided the only person they could sue that was still living and where they could pursue the matter was Mr. Jowers. Of course, they sued other known and unknown conspirators.
The jury heard a great deal of testimony and spent little time in deliberations. Mr. Jowers, they concluded, had been part of a conspiracy which included James Ray, Frank Liberto, Earl Clark, the U.S. government, and the City of Memphis.
How did Jowers become a part of the operation to murder King? Garrison said he was merely helping Mr. Frank Liberto:
Mr. Jowers was a police officer for the City of Memphis for some period of time. And one time he was accused of being intoxicated on the job; and they fired him. And this Mr. Liberto had a lot of political influence in Memphis, so he was able to get his job back for him. Another time, Mr. Jowers, while he was a police officer, had applied to obtain a franchise to operate a taxicab, and he was turned down. And Mr. Liberto was able to get a franchise for him...So he felt that he owed Mr. Liberto.
Jowers, Garrison said, repaid Liberto by performing small favors. For example, he occasionally held sums of money for Liberto. According to Jowers, Liberto was connected to gambling, prostitution, and drugs. Shortly before King's murder, Liberto asked Jowers for a favor. Some money would be arriving, along with a box. Jowers was to keep the box until someone came to pick it up. Someone did. Apparently, the rifle used to kill Dr. King was in that box. Liberto had one more task for Jowers. Jowers was to appear at the back door of Jim's Grill at 6:00 p.m. on April 4, 1968.
Jowers did as he was told. At the door, he says, he was given the rifle which had just felled Dr. King. Jowers removed the casing in the chamber, took the rifle apart, wrapped it in a tablecloth, and held it until the next day. Garrison told me a man came in for breakfast:
And he sat around and drank coffee until everybody left. And he said, "I've come to get Frank's property" --- the words he used. And he said he gave him the gun, the man left out of the front of his restaurant and turned north on Main Street. And he said that was the last seen of him.
Jim's Grill was used twice as a meeting place for police officers and others connected to the assassination. Jowers presumed the meetings involved illegal activities, but he said he didn't participate. (And why would he? He took his directions from Liberto.) Jowers alleged that one of the men at those meetings was officer Johnny Barger, the man who had introduced Jowers to Frank Liberto. Another, Jowers alleged, was Marrell McCollough. Garrison described it this way:
...[Jowers] said that Mr. Barger came in with this young man, and told him who he was, and told him his name and said, you know, he's my partner. Police officer. He's my partner.
McCollough was photographed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel within minutes of the shooting, kneeling by Dr. King's body. According to William Pepper, McCollough was an undercover agent from the 111th Military Intelligence Group, headquartered at Camp McPherson, Georgia. (Orders to Kill, p. 433.)
A few days before the assassination, Liberto had asked Jowers if he knew someone who "would do a job" --- which Jowers understood to mean "commit a murder." Jowers asked a couple of people in his restaurant about it (!), but he never found any takers. Garrison said the claim that Jowers had hired a black man named Frank Holt to kill Dr. King was "totally untrue." Jowers admitted, however, that Frank Holt could have been one of the men he asked about the "job."
On the evening of the assassination, the police rushed to the upstairs bathroom. They took the names of the customers in Jim's Grill, but they did not search the restaurant.
With each detail, the scene at Jim's Grill takes on new clarity. Jowers, an ex-policeman who was still in touch with men on the force, was running a restaurant which, no doubt, policemen visited. Jowers was part of a scheme to launder or transfer money, working for a man he met through a policeman. And he evidently knew some people (policemen?) well enough to ask about hiring a murderer. Nice place, Jim's Grill.
What about reports that Jowers had changed his story over the years? "If he has ever changed it," Garrison said, "he hasn't changed it to me." Jowers met the King family twice, and his story was consistent.
Garrison knew it was going to be difficult to persuade a jury that his client was not involved in the assassination. For one thing, Jowers had confessed to the King family, to Andrew Young, and on ABC's Prime Time.
Beyond the issue of Jowers's role, however, was the question of a larger conspiracy. Most of the evidence presented dealt with other aspects of the plot, and Garrison had no reason to object to it.
Dozens of witnesses testified at the trial. "Some of the same people who were at the Centenary Church [in 1998]?" I asked.
"Well, there were many more than that," Garrison replied.
One of the witnesses was Lavada Whitlock Addison. Her husband, now deceased, had been chaplain of the Shelby County jail in Memphis. Garrison has known Lavada for decades, and he described her as credible and honest. She once operated a restaurant frequented by Frank Liberto, and she often talked with him. She said that one day in 1978, Liberto was at the restaurant and commented on a news report which mentioned the assassination by saying that he had arranged the murder.
Garrison discussed the testimony of Carthel Weeden, a former fire department captain at the station across the street from the Lorraine Motel, who had said that before the assassination,
...two soldiers, U.S. soldiers, showed up and had some equipment with them, and they wanted to get up on top of the fire station. He said, "Not only did I let them, I took them up there." They were up there the whole time. And they didn't come down until after the assassination.
That position offers a clear view of the Lorraine Motel and the lot behind Jim's Grill, so one wonders what they saw. Pepper contends that they had cameras, so one wonders what they photographed.
Arthur Hanes, Sr. and Arthur Hanes, Jr. represented James Ray before he made his critical mistake --- firing them and hiring Percy Foreman. Attorney Mark Lane represented James Ray in the late 70s and early 80s. They told Lane that Percy Foreman did not examine the files they had developed. Arthur Hanes, Sr. said, "My judgment is that the man [Foreman] never even considered trying the case. Far as I can ascertain, he never prepared and he never investigated. He never considered giving James Ray a trial." (Murder in Memphis, Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, p. 200.) Arthur Hanes, Jr. testified at Jowers's trial that prosecutors were extremely interested in expediting the case in 1968. Hanes, Jr. "is now a judge," Garrison noted, "a circuit judge of Birmingham, and I don't think he'd tell a story about something under oath...He said they offered, made an offer to Mr. Ray of a life sentence, and he would be eligible for parole in ten years. And Ray turned it down."
How are we to interpret such accounts, and the many more not summarized here? Understandably, the prosecution didn't call those witnesses at Ray's trial in 1969. But why didn't the defense? As Mark Lane once noted of the Warren Commission's criteria for acceptance or rejection of witnesses, the common denominator among them --- if it is not perjury --- must be truth. Lewis Garrison reached a similar conclusion about witnesses to the assassination of Dr. King:
...But there was so many things like that, of course, that happened, you know, that people testified to. You gotta believe that there's more to it than, you know, especially the news media want you to know about...Well, somebody asked me today. I said, well, do you think --- that out of 70 [witnesses], many of them were firemen and police officers that are retired --- is everybody lying? I mean, you know, after all these years? Some of these people were captains, lieutenants with the department, were long-time, like 30 years, employees, who were trusted and all. I said, "Surely they're not all lying. It doesn't seem to me they'd have any reason to."
Yes, there are different standards in criminal and civil proceedings, Garrison told me; and some of the evidence presented at Jowers's trial probably would not have been admitted under other circumstances. "But it wasn't anything that really made that much difference. Most of the things that were important were from live witnesses, who, as I said, were former policemen and former firemen, people like that, that certainly had no interest in the case other than to tell what they knew."
In 1998, when I first talked to Garrison, he said that Shelby County prosecutors had not yet questioned his client. As of December 14, 1999, they still hadn't gotten around to it. Attorney general Janet Reno authorized the Justice Department to conduct a "limited review" of Jowers's confession and the evidence brought forward by Donald Wilson. The review must be limited indeed; they haven't questioned Jowers, either. They've talked to Garrison; they've hinted at immunity; but it hasn't gone any farther than that.
Jowers is an old man in failing health, with a stubborn kidney infection and a tumor in his lungs. What's the hurry?
Is this the whole story? Of course not. When I sat down to write this piece, I realized there were details, large and small, that I hadn't covered. Garrison hadn't volunteered any information about Raul, and I hadn't asked. I wondered what had happened to the casing Jowers removed from the murder weapon, and I didn't feel as though I had the full story on Earl Clark or Frank Holt. None of that is Mr. Garrison's fault, however. He was generous with his time, and we talked about a lot of things. But no single conversation could possibly be sufficient to touch upon all of the issues connected to the case.
I had no difficulty contacting Garrison. I'm convinced that if reporters had approached him, he would have been forthcoming. So why didn't they? Or, if they did, why didn't any of it end up in the papers? News agencies of record reported not the trial of Lloyd Jowers, but a fictional event in which the cover story protecting Dr. King's killers was somehow vindicated. News agencies of record assured us that James Ray murdered Dr. King and history books will not be rewritten any time soon.
Return to Main Page
* * *