The Assassination Of Dr. MLK Jr.

Hey guys, I'm back with another assassination conspiracy from Jesse Ventura's book American Conspiracies, this one coming out of Chapter 5. There's a lot of information to cover here, so thank Jesse Ventura for putting it all together.

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The official word on his death was that James Earl Ray, a racist and escaped convict, shot Dr. King from the window of a rooming house across the street, fled the scene, and was arrested two months later in London. He pled guilty to the murder, so it's a pretty open-and-shut case, right? Wrong.

In 1997, Dr. King's son Dexter met Ray in a Tennesse prison, and straight up asked him "Did you kill my father?". Ray answered "No I didn't", and Dexter said "I believe you, and my family believes you" [1].

In 1999, the King family brought a wrongful death lawsuit in a Tennessee Circuit Court, prompting a month long trial involving 70 witnesses. The jury took only two and a half hours to come back with a verdict that Dr. King was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government [2]. Sounds like the case of the decade, huh? Well even though the whole country was glued to the OJ Simpson trial, only one Memphis TV reporter, and a freelance journlist covered the whole preceeding.

As many of you already knew, the government wasn't exactly Dr. Kings biggest fan club. The Senate's Church Committee concluded that the FBI's attempt to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement involved "attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press" [3]. (It makes more sense to me if it's read as follows: "attempts to discredit him [through]/[by means of] churches, universities, and the press")

Walter Fauntroy was a colleague of Dr. King who served 20 years in Congress, and was chairman of the House subcommittee looking into the assassination for 2 years. Their report concluded that Ray did assassinate King, but that he probably had assistance. "It was apparent that we were dealing with very sophisticated forces", Fauntroy testified at the civil trial, saying he'd found electronic bugs on his TV set and phone. Unless James Earl Ray escaped from prison, planted those bugs, and returned back to prison undetected, there was clearly somebody else involved.

Fauntroy also said that after he left Congress, he found information from Hoover's logs, showing that the FBI director had a series of meetings with members of the CIA and military intelligence (MI) in the three weeks before King's assassination, and also that there were MI agents and Green Berets in Memphis the night he was shot [4].

Supposedly Ray fired the shot, went down some outside stairs, jumped into his white Mustang in an alley and fled the scene. But on the way, he alledgedly dropped a bundle that included a Remington 30.06 rifle with Rays fingerprints and one spent shell in the chamber, some binoculars, and a sale receipt for ammunition. Strange how Ray managed to set up the assassination perfectly, fire a well placed shot that killed Dr. King, but then completely botch the getaway.....As Jesse Ventura put it, "What gets me is, the assassins are so 'successful' in accomplishing the mission, but then utterly inept in the evacuation from the mission."

Ray later claimed that somebody planted that there to frame him, and a witness named Guy Canipe said the package was actually dropped in the doorway to his store around 10 minutes before the shot was fired. Another witness, Olivia Catling, saw a guy in a checkered shirt run out of the alley beside a building across from the Lorraine soon after the killing, and speed away in a green '65 Chevy. Ray was said to be seen fleeing the scene in a white Mustang.

Judge Joe Brown, the first juge on the King family's civil case, spent two years examining the technical questions about the murder weapon, and concluded that "67% of the bullets from my tests did not match the Ray rifle". When he called for further testing, he was taken off the case for showing "bias" by a Tennesse appeals court....:shk:

Brown later said this regarding the test results:

"What you've got in terms of the physical evidence relative to ballistics is frightening.....First, it's not the right type of rifle. It's never been sighted in. It's the wrong kind of scope. With a 30.06, it makes a particularly difficult shot firing at a downward trajectory in that circumstance.....Metallurgical analysis excludes the bullet taken from the body of Dr. King from coming from the cartridge case they say was fired in that rifle" [5].

There are indications that the sniper actually fired from behind some tall shrubs facing the second floor motel balcony. Memphis news reporter Wayne Chastain was told by two witnesses, Dr. King's chauffeur and a lawyer, that the shot came from those bushes. Andrew Young also told the FBI that he heard a sound like a firecracker come from the bushes above the retaining wall across the street from the motel. The next morning, according to Reverend James Orange, an associate of Dr. King, "the bushes were gone. The authorities were said to be cleaning up the area" [6].

Ventura goes on to explain how disturbing the crime scene is the most cardinal error you could possibly make. This is basic Police 101, yet the government/authorities repeatedly make this idiotic mistake when it comes to serious crime scenes.

So Ray fires the shot, hops in the car that's waiting for him, drives to Canada, then goes to London? All by himself? Judge Joe Brown analyzes that scenario in this quote:

"You want to say that a three-time loser, an escaped convict with no obvious financial resources and no technical knowledge, is going to not only miraculously learn how to become a good marksman:This one individual is able to acquire the resources to get identities of deceased individuals, come up with very good forgeries for passports and fake identification, and somehow acquire funds for a very expensive itinerary and travel schedule? Now be real!...What you've got in this case was a stooge whose task was to throw everybody off the trail" [7].

Before extradition, Ray told a British officer that he'd expected to profit from being involved in the killing. Later, he testified to the House committee that he figured he'd only be charged with "conspiracy". However his second attorney, Percy Foreman, convinced Ray to cop a plea or else face the death penalty. Although he reluctantly agreed, he maintained his stance that he was innocent all the way up to his death in prison in 1998.

A 1968 Justice Department memorandum based on confidential information from informers, including a "well placed protege of Carlos Marcello in New Orleans", that somehow got withheld from congressional investigators, said the following:

"The Cosa Nostra [Mafia] agreed to 'broker' or arrange the assassination [of Dr. King] for an amount somewhat in excess of three hundred thousand ($300,000) after they were contacted by representatives of 'Forever White', an elite organization of wealthy segregationists [in the] Southeastern states. The Mafia's interest was less the money than the investment-type opportunity presented, i.e., to get in a position to extract (or extort) governmental or other favors from some well placed Souther white persons, including the KKK and White Citizens' Councils" [8].

The memo was based on sources located by journalist William Sartor. Although the FBI wasn't interested in following his leads, Sartor uncovered information about a pre-assassination meeting between Ray and three of Marcello's associates in New Orleans--after which Ray left town with $2,500 cash and a promise of $12,000 more "for doing one last big job in 2 to 3 months" [9]. Sartor was in Texas in 1971 preparing to interview a nightclub owner linked to Marcello, when he was found murdered [10]. A similar thing happened involving the assassination of Malcolm X:

When Leon Ameer, a 32-year-old aide to Malcolm, went to the FBI 10 days after the assassination to talk about a conspiracy that included elements of the government, he was found dead a few days later in his Boston apartment. First it was ruled a suicide, then a drug overdose, and finally "natural causes." [14]

That same Justice Department memo described one participant in the plotting, "Frank [C.] Liberto...a Memphis racketeer and lieutenant of Carlos Marcello". Liberto's name came up recently with two other people tied to the King case. One was Lloyd Jowers, who owned Jim's Grill across the street from the Lorraine Motel. In 1993, facing a possible indictment by Ray's last attorney, William Pepper, Jowers went public on ABC's Prime Time Live. He said he's been asked to help in the King plot by a gambling associate of his, a Memphis produce dealer named Frank Liberto who had a courier deliver $100,000 for Jowers to hold at his restaurant [11].

Jowers claimed that Liberto told him that there would be a decoy, apparently Ray, and that the police "wouldn't be there that night". Ventura says that he knows from other research that four tactical police units pulled back from the vicinity of King's motel on the morning of the assassination, making the assassins getaway a breeze.

In a taped confession he later gave to King's son Dexter and ex-UN Ambassador Andrew Young, Jowers explained that planning for the assassination had taken place at his restaurant. The plotters included three Memphis cops, and two men he believed were federal agents.

Before the assassination, Jowers was promised a substantial sum if he he'd receive a package and pass it along to somebody else. When it arrived he opened it, found a rifle inside, and stashed it in a back room until another man came to pick it up on the day of the murder. Jowers said that he'd been instructed to be standing outside his back door that night at 6PM. At that time, one of the Memphis policemen that had planned the assassination handed him a "still-smoking gun", which Jowers broke down into two pieces, wrapped in a tablecloth, and hit in his shop until it was picked up the next day [12].

However another person claimed that Jowers was in deeper than that. One of the witnesses who testified at the King family's civil trial claimed that a deceased friend, James McCraw, more than once asserted that Jowers had given him the rifle rolled up in an oil cloth right after the shooting, and told him "to get it out of here now". Supposedly McCraw did, tossing the rifle off a bridge into the Mississippi River [13].

Frank Liberto was also implicated by John McFerren, a store owner who said he came to Liberto's warehouse to pick up some produce around 45 minutes before King was shot. He overheard Liberto on the phone saying "Shoot the son-of-a-b**** on the balcony". A cafe owner friend of Liberto testified at the 1999 civil trial that Liberto flatly told her that he "had Martin Luther King killed". The friends son backed up her testimony: "[Liberto] said 'I didn't kill the n***** but I had it done'", and also that Ray "'was a front man, a set-up man'" [14].

At the same trial, many witnesses backed up Ray's story of a mysterious figure he knew as Raul, whom he'd first met in Montreal three months after he escaped from prison. Ray had long claimed that Raul gave him the funds to purchase the rifle and the Mustang, but then set up in Memphis, however the House committee concluded that Ray's story was "not worthy of belief, and may have been invented partly to cover for help received from his brothers John and Jerry". But at the trial, Jowers picked out a passport photo of Raul as the guy who'd bought him the rifle to hang onto before the assassination. Glenda Grabow, who'd known Raul as a gunrunner, testified that he'd once flown off the handle and told her that he'd killed Dr. King [15].

The Army's 111th Military intelligence (MI) Group was keeping Dr. King under round-the-clock surveillance during the garbage strike in Memphis that spring of 1968. One of the MI guys, Marrell McCollough, was undercover with the Memphis police, and according to Jowers, was also involved in the planning sessions for the assassination. Attorney Pepper's investigation found that McCullough went on to work for the CIA in the 1970s [16].

Seymour Gelber, a judge in Miami's Dade County, wrote the US Attorney Generals office suggesting an investigation that would look at three men with a history of racial violence and a plot against Dr. King's life in 1964 [17]. Within 48 hours, the FBI had other leads pointing to Sam Bowers, leader of the White Knights, and his associates in the Klan. FBI field officers were starting to check all of this out, but Hoover ordered it to be put on hold because they'd identified a fingerprint and were pursuing one fugitive (Ray) [18]. (Check out the Malcolm X thread in my signature to see Hoover's involvement in that assassination too)

At this point it seems pretty obvious that James Earl Ray was the fall-guy, however Ventura explores a different avenue: hypnosis, and the possibility that Ray was used in a MK-ULTRA-esque manner. I'm not going to go into too much detail here, but if you're interested you can pick the book up to read more about this topic.

Early in 1968, Ray got into practicing self-hypnosis. He saw a "psychologist-hypnotist", and also visited "seven other psychiatrists, hypnotists, or scientologists" [19]. His brother John reporter a change in his attitude when he returned from Germany in 1948[20].

When Congressman Mendel Rivers tried to get his army file, Mahor General Kenneth Wickham said that it can't be done: "This is particularly true since there are medical aspects that cannot be disassociated from any discussion of Mr. Ray's military background [21].

Ray's brother described an encounter in Montral with a CIA asset who had ties to the Klan, Jules Ron "Ricco" Kimbo. Kimble said that "an older man came out from McGill University's Allen Memorial Institute to hypnotize" Ray and his brother. Royal Canadian Mounted Police files back verify this. Experiments were being conducted at McGill under the CIA's MK-ULTRA sub-project 68 [22].

And in early 1968, Ray "began writing certain phrases over and over on paper". One of the phrases James wrote was "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country" [23].

Sources:

American Conspiracies, Chapter 5, Jesse Ventura

[1] - King family and Ray: "Dexter King visits James Earl Ray in prison; says he believes Ray is innocent", Jet , April 14, 1997.

[2] - Civil trial: www.maryferrell.org...

[3] - FBI and King: Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Repect to Intelligence Activities, Book III, cited in Legacy of Secrecy, p. 550.

[4] - Hoover's logs: "the Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis", by Jim Douglass, Spring 2000, Probe Magazine, at www.ratical.org...
[5] - Brown on evidence: Douglass.

[6] - Shot from bushes: Douglass.

[7] - Judge Joe Brown: "a King-Sized Conspiracy", by Dick Russell, High Times magazine, 1999, www.dickrussell.org...

[8] - Justice Department memo: Legacy of Secrecy, by Lamar Waldron with Thom Hartmann (Counterpoint: Berkeley, Ca., 2008), p. 513

[9] - Ray in New Orleans: Waldron/Hartmann, p. 541.

[10] - Sartor killed: Waldron/Hartmann, p. 514.

[11] - Jowers and Liberto: "The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis"

[12] - Jowers and rifle: "The Martin Luther King Conspriacy Exposed in Memphis", portions also recounted in "A King-Sized Conspiracy", Russell.

[13] - "The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis", testimony of William Hamblin. Ray's attorney, William Pepper, believed Hamblin, rather than Jowers' account.

[14] - Liberto witnesses: "The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis", citing testimony of Lavada Addison and her son Nathan Whitlock.

[15] - "The Martin Luther King Conspiracy Exposed in Memphis"

[16] - McCollough: An Act of State, by William F. Pepper Verso, 2008 edition, pp. 73-74.

[17] - Gelber lead: FBI Headquarters file, Murkin King Section 10; Birmingham to director with copies to Memphis, LA, Mobile/response to Miami report of April 6, 1964.

[18] - Hoover edict: FBI Headquarters file, Murking King Section 10, director to SAC's in Birmingham, Memphis, and Los Angeles. Order to hold ID checks and leads.

[19] - William Bradford Huie, He Slew the Dreamer, New York: Delacorte Press, 1970, pp. 91-97.

[20] - Ray's mental condition: Truth at Last, by John Larry Ray and Lyndon Barsten, Lyons Press, Guilford, Ct., 2008, pp. 23 and 27.

[21] - Generals response: Truth at Last

[22] - Kimble and McGill: Truth at Last

[23] - Ray phrases: Truth at Last

Ray dropped the rifle cuz the cops drove by and he diddn't want it in his car.
NO one has ever seen 'Raoul'.
Ray was a long time criminal and scammer with zero credibility.

this book goes into great detail on the crime

www.amazon.com...

He was an (Earth Angel) who came with the message of LOVE and CO OPERATION and was killed/sent by those who felt he was beginning to be a voice of reason and balance. Hence why angels w/ ARC abilities embeed now on 3dsphere Earth for more balance WITH THE SAME MESSAGE this time there may be more visual evidence of the messangers now which off sets the who influenced the death of MLK. MAY HE REST IN PEACE it was a harsh time back then for the Africanaz Americanaz and many other minorities to be accepted into this 3dimensional environment land mass America.

Whats wild is HIS DREAM CAME TRUE ( S S S MH). I grew up when it was the racial divide with the baby boomers influence but once We generation X hit color was thrown way out the highest window and onto the street to be ran over and left to be covered in the mess it influenced. There are so many good people that were forbidden to SHINE due to them fearing their same color neighboors avoiding and hating them for accepting others of another color BLACKS AND WHITE. Earth was so intertwined in the SEGRATION FACTOR IT WAS ALARMING. This is why these youth from Gen "X" and beyond are a lil different they didnt let the racisim drag their densities down a hellish drain of ignorance, AND I RESPECT THEM FOR OVERCOMMING THIS ISSUE. a WILD BUNCH OF EBNERGY LOL YES RECEPTIVE TO CHANGE YES GENETIC PROGRESSION YES.

NAMASTE*******

reply to post by works4dhs

Ray dropped the rifle cuz the cops drove by and he diddn't want it in his car.

So it's better to leave the rifle with his fingerprints less than 200 yards from the crime scene than take it with him and dispose of it? No way, I can't believe that a guy who can somehow scrape together the cash to buy a rifle, mustang, fake IDs and passports wouldn't completely screw up the plan by leaving his fingerprints on a weapon that he would leave at the crime scene.

NO one has ever seen 'Raoul'.

Ray had long claimed that Raul gave him the funds to purchase the rifle and the Mustang, but then set up in Memphis, however the House committee concluded that Ray's story was "not worthy of belief, and may have been invented partly to cover for help received from his brothers John and Jerry". [color=limegreen]But at the trial, Jowers picked out a passport photo of Raul as the guy who'd bought him the rifle to hang onto before the assassination. Glenda Grabow, who'd known Raul as a gunrunner, testified that he'd once flown off the handle and told her that he'd killed Dr. King

Ray was a long time criminal and scammer with zero credibility.

Try reading the thread, there's more than just Ray's own words being used as evidence. Other witness testimonies back up what he says.

Another excellent post my friend!

Strange i was just watching this documentary last night.

reply to post by TechVampyre


Thanks for posting that video, I'll check it out sometime soon. Not that I need any more convincing, because it's pretty clear that the James Earl Ray assassination story isn't true, but some more info can't hurt.

I do lean heavily towards believing King was assassinated by elements within the government. The reason being that King started to focus attention on not just civil rights, but issues in society as a whole such as war and poverty. He spoke out about the Vietnam War and he planned a Poor People's March on Washington which would involve poor people from all races and backgrounds. It was going to be his major project, probably the biggest thing he'd done.

I think at the point, the government decided they had to do something.

Also Malcolm X had expressed a willingness to work with Martin Luther King and had expressed this to Correta Scott King (Martin's wife) when they had met each other at some event.

I've read Hellhound on his Trail which is an excellent and gripping book. It's worth reading even if you believe in the conspiracy.

One thing that puzzled me was that it never (or at least I don't remember) mentioned how or where Ray got all his money from.

A bit off topic, but considering the conspiracies surrounding Malcolm X and MLK and also RFK, are there any conspiracies surrounding the death of John Lennon. Considering the U.S government felt he was a thorn in their side and especially as he was very outspoken about the war.

reply to post by Kram09

I do lean heavily towards believing King was assassinated by elements within the government. The reason being that King started to focus attention on not just civil rights, but issues in society as a whole such as war and poverty. He spoke out about the Vietnam War and he planned a Poor People's March on Washington which would involve poor people from all races and backgrounds. It was going to be his major project, probably the biggest thing he'd done.

I think at the point, the government decided they had to do something.

Yeah thanks for bringing this up, I don't know how I left out why the government would want Dr. King dead in the first place.

He was definitely a really influential and controversial figure at the time, and he was involved in lots of marches, speeches, gatherings, protests, and so on, and like you said he was beginning to get involved in world issues and not just civil rights issues. On top of that, he and Malcolm X considered joining together after meeting and getting to know each other, so put those two together and have them addressing not just civil rights but world issues and that's a big problem for lots of powerful people.

reply to post by Kram09

A bit off topic, but considering the conspiracies surrounding Malcolm X and MLK and also RFK, are there any conspiracies surrounding the death of John Lennon. Considering the U.S government felt he was a thorn in their side and especially as he was very outspoken about the war.

Yeah Robert Kennedy's assassination will be my next thread, and that one has some pretty solid evidence supporting an MK-ULTRA type scenario.

It's never the A-holes like George Bush or Cheney that get assassinated, it's always the good people like Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., John and Robert Kennedy, hell even lots of the good rap artists get killed.

reply to post by TupacShakur


Yes, by the time of his assassination there were some black people in the cities who just viewed MLK as a preacher man who was out of touch and that his policy of non-violence wasn't working.

Malcolm X had the ear of the black ghettos and I'm sure could have allied that faction so to speak with MLK's and brought them all together.

Originally posted by Kram09
I've read Hellhound on his Trail which is an excellent and gripping book. It's worth reading even if you believe in the conspiracy.

One thing that puzzled me was that it never (or at least I don't remember) mentioned how or where Ray got all his money from.

constant petty scams and thefts.

re the rifle; as I recall he was going out to his car, saw the police drive by and threw the rifle/package in the bushes. he had succesfully wiped most of the prints.

re the travel; it took a few weeks before he was a suspect. if he'd had a little more money he would have made it to South Africa (his intended destination). had passport issues in Canada. travel in the 60s was of course infinitely more low-tech and uncontrolled than today.

reply to post by works4dhs


The whole purpose of this thread was to tear apart the official story that Ray was the assassin. How can you endorse that theory when it's been basically debunked in this thread?

Re-stating the official story and further elaborating it doesn't make it any less inconsistent with reality.

M L K knew he was going to get whacked
At about 1:20 on the video he begins to let us know his near future. And don't forget, this was a day or two before he was shot.

reply to post by TupacShakur


Well it doesn't seem that idiotic for Qaddafi to be calling for the re-opening of these cases. Yes. He did so in 2009 in front of the UN.

We all know there is a shadow government. We all know they will continually lie to cover their tracks. We may not be able to prove it but there is enough evidence of their activities.

reply to post by LightAssassin

Well it doesn't seem that idiotic for Qaddafi to be calling for the re-opening of these cases. Yes. He did so in 2009 in front of the UN.

Really? It's funny that the big-bad dictator who our country had to assist in ousting was looking out for our best interests at one point.....

We all know there is a shadow government. We all know they will continually lie to cover their tracks. We may not be able to prove it but there is enough evidence of their activities.

I agree completely. There was a thread a while back about the history of banking, and most if not all of the Presidents/politicians who have been against the Federal Reserve have been assassinated. That leads me to believe that the rich banksters have much, much more control over things that we can even begin to imagine.

They don't like somebody or they feel threatened, then they kill them and blame it on some lone-nut. Then they use the mainstream media that they control to push propaganda which gives people the idea that anybody who questions the official story and suggests anything themselves is just a loony conspiracy theory.

Maybe it's not the rich banksters, maybe it's the Bilderberg group, maybe it's some top-secret sector of our government at home that runs the show, IDK. But what I do know is that somebody in a position of power is calling the shots.

It's scary, but it's reality, and the sooner people look at the patterns throughout history and get an understanding of how things really work in this country, the better. But millions of people live their lives completely oblivious to these things, and the very idea that our government and our media would lie to us about big events like assassinations is inconceivable to them.