Navigated to BONUS: Memphis Blues - Transcript

BONUS: Memphis Blues

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1

Welcome to the MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent those of iHeartMedia, Tenderfoot TV, or their employees.

Listener discretion is advised.

Speaker 2

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis traces the history of slavery in America and then follows the nation's long struggle for human rights.

Its rooms portray lunch counter sit ins, freedom rides, bus boycotts, and burned churches.

To walk through its halls is a moving experience, made all the more exceptional because the museum is built into the shell of the former Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was murdered.

Being at the Lorraine also helps to bring into focus some of the unresolved questions surrounding the death of doctor King, more so because in two thousand and two, the museum acquired the neighboring rooming house from where James Earl Ray was said to have fired the fatal bullet.

The rooming house has been renovated to accommodate the public and its access from the museum by way of a tunnel.

Its interior is dedicated to displays that pertained to the assassination, such as a rifle said to be the murder weapon and a replica of Ray's famous white Mustang.

But a few places had been preserved in the condition in which they were found after the murder, such as the bedroom that Ray had rented and the bathroom from which he was said to have fired the shot.

When I visited Memphis last year, I was joined by historian Ryan Jones, who accompanied me through both the Lorraine and the rooming house sections of the museum.

I was not permitted to record any sound, so the voice of mister Jones that you'll hear in this segment was recorded at a later date.

Mister Jones had grown up in Memphis and has been with the museum for ten years.

He is an expert on the King assassination, and I asked him what God him interested in the case.

Speaker 3

It wasn't until I moved back to Memphis in nineteen ninety seven.

Speaker 4

I think I was watching a talk show.

Speaker 3

It may have been Montell Williams to be exact, and the King family, some of his children appeared on that talk show and they were talking of getting James Olray, the accused assassin, a trial here in Memphis, which he never got in nineteen sixty eight and sixty nine.

And I really didn't get back into it until I began starting to work at the museum.

Speaker 4

And it was there when I realized that the.

Speaker 3

Museum holds all of the state's evidence against James Alray and its collections, and I just began to go by box by box, file by file.

Speaker 4

I left no foul, you know, unturned.

Speaker 3

So I just began to do my own individual research and began to interview people.

And almost ten years later, you know, I feel like I have a pathway of what truly happened here in Memphis at the Lorraine on April fourth, nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2

It should be noted here that on the issue of whether James Earl Ray was the lone assassin or if others were involved, the museum itself takes what it calls a neutral position.

The people who work there are entitled to their opinions, But we should remember that Ryan Jones is speaking here on his own and not for the museum itself.

Of course, working at the museum in the old Lorraine motel.

Jones is in an excellent position to have an informed opinion about certain matters.

For example, did King always stay at the Lorraine when he came to Memphis, has some said?

Or did he usually stay at other places and was shamed or maneuvered into staying at the Lorraine because a certain reception had been planned.

Speaker 3

There is this myth that has been floating around for the past fifty two years that doctor King was a normal guest, and even that he stayed at the Lorraine on numerous occasions.

Speaker 4

This is, however, not true.

This is indeed false.

Speaker 3

The Reverend James Lawson, who lived in Memphis at the time, whom King met with the day before his assassination, stated affirmatively many times that when he came to Memphis, they would stay at his house, they'd go to the Peabody, They'd stayed at the Admiral Bimbo.

Speaker 2

On March twenty eight, the night following the Memphis March that became a riot, King stayed at the Rivermont Hotel and held a press conference there the next morning, where he condemned the riot but couldn't say for sure how it had started, though there were those in his camp who believed the window smashing and looting had somehow been arranged in advance.

Seven years later, in congressional hearings, it would be revealed that the same morning that King was speaking to the press, document was being produced by the FBI in Washington.

It was in the form of a press release that criticized King for staying at the Rivermont and specifically named the Lorraine Motel as the more appropriate place for him to stay.

It bore the approving initials of J at Gar Hoover and was to be circulated to what the FBI called friendly news outlets.

Speaker 3

The very next day, on the twenty ninth, there is a press release calling doctor King a hypocrite, and it pretty much states that you are staying at a predominantly white business and you're asking African Americans to boycott white merchants when you're not even given business to the lavish and plus Lorraine Motel.

This was an FBI memorandum that was released on March to twenty ninth, nineteen sixty eight.

Whyou the FBI care where doctor King stays at this time unless the Lorraine Motel was a particular area that they needed him to be at, and of course, you know, he was eventually moved from his original room which was down below, and was moved upstairs to three of six.

Speaker 2

And just how did this room change come about?

There are two stories.

Both come from the owner of the Lorraine, Walter Bailey.

Speaker 3

Mister Bailey told this story to an investigative reporter by the name of Wayne Chastain, and the story states that someone who appeared to be very tall and athletic with it like complexion, came to missus Bailey, who did all of the hotel reservations, and stated that doctor King did not want this nice room inside and away from the original trajectory, and that he wonted room three US six on the second floor.

The second story is that it was a phone call from Atlanta that was made so that the Bailey's got a phone call from Atlanta a day or two before they arrived, stating that doctor King specifically won at room three oh six.

Speaker 2

Why two stories, both supposedly from mister Bailey, we don't know, But if the real story involved the phone call from Atlanta, why would Walter Bailey make up another story of a tall, athletic man coming to the Lorraine to make the room change.

Speaker 5

It makes no sense.

Speaker 2

But if it were the other way around, and the room was changed by someone posing as an advanced man, a description of that man might, upon further thought, be a dangerous story to tell and give birth to the supposed phone call.

Of course, a quick conversation with missus Bailey who changed the room could clear up the situation, but as mister Jones explains, that was never possible.

Speaker 3

Her name was Laurie Bailey, and she really was the one who ran the Loraino Motel.

On the afternoon of April fourth, nineteen sixty eight, doctor King speaks with Missus Bailey standing on the balcony and he says, listen, Missus Bailey, if the food over at Reverend Kyle's's home is not good, I'm going to come back and count on you.

And she kind of blushed and said, of course, anything for you, Doctor King, And then they go back into the kitchen area of the diner of the Lorraine.

Then the shot rings out and the Baileys hear it from inside.

They walk outside and they see doctor King Worley wounded on the second floor outside of room three of six, and immediately Missus Bailey says, why why, why?

She took her hand and she kept hitting the side of her temple to the point where he could see her blood vessels moving oddly enough, mister Bailey left the Lora Hotel a few hours he lays his wife when there's police and investigators all over the motel's grounds, and he goes to his other job at the Holiday Inn on Lamar Avenue, and he gets a call from his brother, Beatrice Bailey, and Beatrice says Laurie, he's not an answering, She's not answering, And then they finally get to her, and they found her slumped over and she's gone into a coma to a stroke where she never gains consciousness again and actually dies at nine am on April and ninth, nineteen sixty eight.

We know now that a bud vessel ruptured in her brain.

Speaker 2

Mister Jones and I walk through the tunnel to the basement of the rooming house and then take the elevator up to the second floor.

We come upon a glass case displaying the rifle that was found on the street just minutes after the shooting.

Mister jo Jones gives a small laugh and informs me that the scope on the rifle is still not properly sighted.

The rooming house has been gut renovated, so on the inside it doesn't look like it did in nineteen sixty eight, but the room that Ray rented and the bathroom down the hall had been recreated to be replicas of what was found right after King was killed.

Over the years, a lot has been made about Ray choosing room five B because of its window rather than the only other room, which had no view but did have a stove.

I asked Jones about five B and what problems it might present to a would be assassin.

Speaker 3

You are able to see the Lorainotel, and you are able to see the second four balcony of the Lorainmotel as well.

Now, however, if your purpose is to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr.

And you're using a rifle, you have a significant problem.

In order to get a sufficient trajectory, have to walk outside of the bedroom of five B, down the hall and into a community bathroom in order to even get an attempt.

Speaker 2

The problem with that window was although you could see the rear part of the Lorraine Motel, you could not see room three h six, where doctor King was staying.

Without opening the window and leaning out, and no one has ever said the shot was fired from there.

I asked mister Jones to describe the bathroom, but I encourage the listener to look on her website to see the photo of the tiny room to better understand the issues at play here.

Speaker 3

When you look inside of this very small community bathroom that was shared by other people who were staying on the same floor, you see a commode, you see a very small sink, and until the left and the corner right beneath a partially open window, there's a bathtub.

Now here's a significant red flag with that.

James Olray was six feet in height, and the weapon that he admitted to buying in Birmingham, Alabama, a few days prior to doctor King's death is not a small weapon at all.

It's a fairly large weapon with a scope as well.

And James Alray, we know, was a right handed marksman.

I about six feet, I'm about five to nine, and I've gotten into that bathtub with a rifle that's not the size of the one that rifle is accused of musing.

And it was almost impossible for myself, also right handed, to have gotten a sufficient trajectory and My honest estimation is that if there was a shot fired from that community bathroom, which I don't think happened, you will have had to have been a left handed marksman to situate yourself in the bathtub in a very uncomfortable position.

Speaker 2

The bathroom window is small and leaves very little room for a weapon and a body to gain the needed angle to make the shot not impossible, But it's not like someone would just walk up to this window, take aim, and shoot something directly in front of it.

As it exists today, the window is now open, just a matter of benches, as it apparently was on the day of the murder, and it appears to me as though the wooden bottom frame of the window would block or partially block the view through the scope of the rifle, even assuming it was properly sighted.

But what got me most when I looked at the bathroom is the tub, a small, narrow, old fashioned bathtub with steep sloping sides.

So instead of spreading his legs and creating a secure base for a difficult shot, our presumed shooter, mister Ray has to stand with his feet close together inside this narrow bathtub and get all balanced and squared away at just the time the King came out of his room at the Lorraine.

Then Ray fired the only bullet he had loaded into his gun because he was that certain of his skill with the rifle he had only owned for four days.

Then there is the question of what needs to happen in the next couple of minutes.

As soon as the fatal shot us fired.

Ray would need to return to Room five B, place the rifle in the box, and throw his personal belongings into a bag made from a bedspread, if he hadn't already done that before making his way down to his car.

But instead of just throwing his stuff into his car, he leaves the bag and the gun on the street.

Harold Weisberg's nineteen seventy one book Frame Up was the first to call into question the official story of the king murder, and we all owe him a debt.

He died in two thousand and two, but I'd like to play for you here.

His take on the stuff found on the street with Ray's rifle ridiculous.

Speaker 6

He's required of going to his room in the flophouse and picked up the why does collection of junk bobby pins, bobby pins, cans of beer that hadn't been opened.

You know, a guy has been a crime like that and he's playing for his life.

You're going to pick up a couple of cans of beer or bobby pin.

The box didn't hold the rifle.

He had to put the rifle in that all sorts of other junk, ridiculous collection of it.

The one thing that that bundle served to do was the point a finger it ready.

Speaker 2

Ryan Jones agrees with Weisberg's doubt about the likelihood that Ray was the one who left the bundle with the rifle on the street.

Speaker 3

Why he would have ever have done that will always be a mystery.

The car wasn't parked right in front of Jim's drills.

Speaker 7

Parked a little closer to the firehouse, but it's close enough to where he does not have to like run a significant long way.

Speaker 3

He had more than enough time.

It was probably safer for him to just put the rifle and his car and drive off.

Speaker 2

It was strange to stand on South Maine with Ryan Jones and try to imagine things that had happened.

Speaker 5

Fifty years ago.

Speaker 2

There's no question that James Earl Ray rented Room five B from Bessie Brewer the day of the murder, but all the rest of it seems unlikely.

I was grateful for the time Ryan Jones spent with me, so I asked him if he had anything else he wanted to say.

Speaker 3

I think that this would have been a very very interesting trial had Ray gone to trial.

We have this weapon and it's never you know, the ballistics and trajectory are not tested.

The room changed, Why the weapon was found when it was found?

Who supplied Ray?

The aliases of Gault Lobyer, Willard Bridgeman, Snay and you know what, this was a hate crime.

You know I'm not buying it is said, hey crime, any ku kluks klansmen could have gotten doctor King of Montgomery.

They could have got him in Reachville, Georgia.

They could have gotten him in Birmingham.

They could have got him in Saint Augustine Selma, Chicago, walking the two hundred and twenty one mile distance from Memphis to Jackson at the March against Fear.

But no, they don't get him until he is opposing the Vietnam War in April of nineteen sixty seven.

For the very last year.

They wait and get him when he proposes on December fourth, nineteen sixty seven to the Poor People's Campaign, where he wants to bring black and white people who are stricken by poverty to the nation's capital and to demand that the country, you know, write the check to the people out in their backyard versus an a war.

I think that the story that we've been given for the past fifty three years is just fictional.

It's laughable in certain areas that this limon was sold to the American public, that this insignificant man is James Olray was able to kill Martin Luther King Junior standing on the balcony of a Memphis hotel room, and to flee and get away untouched, not once.

At the end of the day, when we look at it, the people who hated him the most yetbi who was committed to discrediting him, to destroy him, who urged him to commit suicide in January nineteen sixty five, are the same people responsible for investigating his death.

If that's done a disservice to justice in this country, I don't know it is.

And I feel that the story will never rest, and I will never rest until we get it to the bottom of it, until we give the justice that's due and served to doctor King's family into history.

Speaker 5

One of my court reporters was down at the Shelby County Courthouse and said there was a British English producer named Jack Saltman there and he was going to be doing this teletrial that never occurred, the trial of James Earl Ray.

I thought it was a hoax at first, but I threw on my coat, ran down seven blocks on a cold winter's day, and there was Jack Saltman with contract in hand.

He said, I need a real time court reporting for this trial I'm doing.

It's going to be a real trial for all intents and purposes, but it will have no judicial weight.

Trial of James Earl Ray is what it was called.

Speaker 2

I'm in Memphis, a block away from the Formula Rainbow Tel talking to Brian de Minski, who is a court reporter and someone who has lived in Memphis.

Speaker 5

For most of his life.

Speaker 2

For the last three decades, he's had a front row seat for some of the more important events in the ongoing challenge to the story of how Martin Luther King was murdered.

As we just heard, Brian's entrance into the case began when he offered himself as a court reporter to an English producer who was attempting to stage a.

Speaker 5

Mock trial of James Earl Ray.

Speaker 2

The trial was to mimic in all possible ways a real trial, with a retired federal judge presiding, attorneys arguing both sides, and an impartial jury to hear the evidence and to come to a verdict.

This is in nineteen ninety three.

An edited tape of the trial was televised on HBO on the twenty fifth anniversary of the murder of Martin Luther King.

Speaker 5

It was a little surreal doing my job as a court reporter, but so that my left is a track with a journey on it and a big television camera filming me.

It was cool stuff.

I enjoyed it.

Speaker 8

And who were the attorneys involved?

Speaker 5

Bill Pepper, William Pepper and Pickman Ewing Junior, who was our United States District Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee prior to that he had left that post and they hired him as the prosecutor against versus Bill.

James Rolry tested via satellite for two full days and one of the days was a vigorous cross examination by Hickman Ewing Jr.

The jury was sequestered every evening.

It was done airtight, better than the ones that I actually would handle in my other court reporting life.

Speaker 2

And for our listeners who were not in class that day, what was the result of the trial.

Speaker 5

That Ray was not guilty of the assassination of Martin Luther King?

Speaker 2

Okay, so tell us about Bill Pepper?

What was he like?

Speaker 5

He was very difficult during that entire time.

He was frankly, he was an ass to everybody.

And as you and I know, he's a charming, wonderful man.

But during that trial it was so intense because he was having his shot now.

He was extremely intense and he was difficult to everybody.

He even made his co consul cry during the trial.

April Ferguson made her cry because I don't know what the issue was, so she left the table during one of the days in tears.

Speaker 8

Did you feel going into the HBO trial that there was something wrong with the King murder or did you basically think that Ray had done ed?

What was your mindset before you went in or did it change during the trial.

Speaker 5

I had an open mind.

As the days unfolded, though, I was just astounded at what I didn't know and then what I was learning.

Speaker 8

What witnesses stick out in your mind from that trial, Well, there's there's Lieutenant Hamby who is sent to a coroner of Francisco's office to pick up the slug and bring it back to Director Holloman's office, the head of Fire in place of Memphis.

Speaker 5

He saw it was an intact bullet.

And now even at the Civil Rights Museum across the street from where we're at, there was this three fragments of a bullet.

I recall they were going to put Lloyd Jowers on the stand.

I think he actually was on the stand, and there were certain questions that Judge Frankel said, we're not going there.

You're not going to ask this.

Well, Pepper tried to ask it anyway.

He asked, mister Jowers, well, you know what were you doing behind your bar and grilla in that day?

And Judge Frankel said, you'll see me in chambers right now.

And they went into the chambers, hic Youing and Jowers, lawyer Lewis Garrison and Bill and they came back out and they took Jowers off the stand.

Speaker 8

Frankel had some objection to asking Jowers whether he was involved or what he might have been doing.

Speaker 5

Correct now.

During the HbA trial is when I first saw the photograph of the open window where they alleged ray what fired the shot from in the rooming house.

Sergeant Papia testified and he said that he came upon the scene at approximately six point thirty and goes up to the rooming house and then requisitions a photographer to come up there.

So that's the exact position of the window.

And in the Civil Rights Museum there is a photograph of that on the wall.

And when you look at that window, it is open.

We couldn't go in the bathroom and measure it three four inches max.

If you take the Remington game Master with scope and you put it into that window sill, the scope then a butts into the wood of the window sill.

That's the first time I came across that evidence.

After the HBO trial, we left shaking hands and he went on his way.

I went on my way, thinking I'd never hear from him again.

About three years later, he calls me up out of the blue and says, I need to use your services and your conference room, Brian, and I want you to be the court reporter.

We have another trial coming up, a civil trial involving doctor King's death, and this one will be in Shelby County Circuit Court, and we need to take some depositions.

Can you do that?

And of course I said yes, And it was a different William Pepper this time around.

I like to say that once that aired on HBO and national television, it shook things loose because people saw that and they said I was there that day too, or I know this, and they started contacting William Pepper or others saying I'd like to come forth and give you my testimony of what happened.

So that was a real watershed event for the case.

Speaker 8

So who did you depose?

Speaker 5

We had a series of people like Glinda Grabo, the captain of the fire station, Carthel Whedon, taxi drivers.

We deposed the Jowers.

Although I didn't do Jowers deposition, one of my associates did.

At that day.

A lot of the people that appear in the ninety nine trial were deposed.

First.

Speaker 8

Now, you said you deposed Glinda Grabo.

Tell me about Glenda Grabo, Well.

Speaker 5

She was extremely nervous.

She was going to testify a trial, but she became ill.

She didn't want to take the stand in a public forum.

But she did give her deposition.

It speaks for itself.

But she tied in the fact that she knew Raoul the operative that we had learned that was raised operative leading him around the country.

Speaker 8

I'm kind of interested in your perception of her as a person.

Did she have some reason to come and make up a story that you're aware of?

Speaker 5

I sensed her she was fearing for her life just giving her deposition.

I mean, she was extremely nervous, and Pepper had a kind of draw out from her by this point that William Pepper is representing the King family, not James Alray.

They've come to him and they said, you know, we know you're onto something.

We believe what you've got.

We'd like to retain you for the civil trial.

What was it like.

Speaker 8

I don't know being there with Coreta Scott King.

Speaker 5

I'm not a big spiritual person, but when Missus King, she was the first witness when she took the stand, the jury hadn't come out yet, and the core reporters spot was right in front of the witness stand, so Missus King was standing there and I introduced myself and we chatted for a moment, and she had this angelic glow about her, just a specially touched person.

And again I'm not spiritual, but she had just a glower aura that she was unique.

Speaker 2

We are listening to a conversation that I had this past summer with court reporter Brian Domnski, who's been involved in the King case in one way or another for thirty years.

He has told us how he was brought in as court reporter for the nineteen ninety three hbo Mont trial, which found James Earl Ray not guilty of murdering Martin Luther King.

Now we served the same function in the nineteen ninety nine civil trial King Family versus Showers, which found that doctor King had been killed by a conspiracy.

But in the twenty plus years following the civil trial, Dominski participated in or was witnessed to a half dozen events that brought new understanding to the murder of doctor King.

One of those events was something Dominski did on his own, the publication of the entire transcript of the ninety nine civil trial.

Speaker 5

It took me a good five years because I was fearful too that if I put this out, particularly under my name in Memphis I'd have lawyers saying I'm never using Dominski again.

I finally came to the conclusion.

I said, somebody's going to find this transcript in my attic one day after I'm deceased and go, oh my god, this is the ninety nine King trial, and then read it and go, wait a second.

They've just proved that it wasn't James, all right.

Speaker 2

The book is titled The Thirteenth Juror, and anyone can buy it online.

It is seven hundred and fifty pages, a complete record of the civil trial, and it was a has helped me in the making of this podcast.

Another unique contribution by Domnski was his in depth interview of Lewis Garrison, the lawyer for the self confessed conspirator Lloyd Jowers.

Speaker 5

So we have Lewis Garrison, who represented Lloyd Jowers from approximately nineteen seventy two, and he was his lawyer for the HBO trial.

He was a lawyer for the ninety nine trial.

I know Lewis.

He's a Memphis lawyer.

I'd known him over the years.

We would chat about the case because we both intimately involved.

So in twenty seventeen, Lewis calls me he says, Brian, because of your involvement in the case and being licensed corport as stenographer, I'd like you to come to my office.

I want to tell you everything I know.

Lewis is about eighty nine at this point eighty seven, and I don't know if it's a Catharsis or what.

But I videoed it as well, since wasn't an illegal proceeding pending anymore, I just called it a video affidavit of Lewis Garrison not attaching in I llegal proceeding.

But yet I swore him in under oath, and he being a member of the Memphis barr he felt that oath was binding.

And he testified for about an hour and a half and he spoke of everything that mister Jowers had told him over the years as his lawyer.

But he said the Jowers had received one hundred thousand dollars from mister Loberto and bought the cab company shortly some time after the assassination, and how he could have never done that owning a greasy spoon bar and grill, and he didn't have one hundred thousand dollars to buy that.

And Lewis Garrison said he bought the cab company with the money he got for acting as the facilitator.

Lewis had said when Lloyd Jowers passing away on his deathbed, he called Lewis up and the day before he died he told Lewis that yes, I was a shooter.

Now, that's in juxtaposition to two other stories that we know.

Speaker 2

Dominski was also in the room with Bill Pepper and Martin king Thid for the two thousand and three sworn deposition of Lenny Curtis.

Speaker 5

Lenny Curtis was a janitor at the MPD shooting range and Jim and on the day of the assassination.

Lenny Curtis testified that Frank Strauser had came in early that day and was carrying a rifle and went down to the shooting range and was constantly firing away.

Around noon, Director Hollman, Mayor Loeb and two people he doesn't know in suits and ties come and meet with Frank Strauser in a conference room.

He's next door sweeping.

He's trying to listen in and he doesn't quite pick up on what they're talking about, but they leave.

Strausser then goes and practices a little longer and then leaves in a sports car with the rifle.

Speaker 2

As we heard Curtis tell us in episode eleven, he felt certain that Strausser was intending to shoot doctor King.

Curtis tried to call a minister he knew to pass the warning along, but he couldn't get through.

Curtis told his story in the presence of Martin King II, with a promise that no one could listen to it or even hear of it until after he had died.

But after Curtis did die, Bill Pepper sought out Frank Strausser and offered him five hundred if he would have.

Speaker 5

Lunch with him.

Speaker 2

Strausser agrees, and the two men meet and Brian Demnsky is sitting at a nearby table.

Speaker 5

Ahead of time.

Bill asked that I have him wired for sound, and we did a rudimentary attempt at that recorder in his pocket, but Bill welcomed him and they sat down and they had about a forty five minute chat about what life was like in nineteen sixty eight in Memphis and that sort of thing.

Speaker 2

In episode eleven, you can hear our recreation of Pepper's conversation with Frank Strausser that Brian de Minsky overheard and taped via recorder in Bill Pepper's shirt pocket.

Dominski was also in the room, this time as a court reporter.

During the stunning seven hours sworn deposition by Ronnie Lee Atkins.

Speaker 5

Ronnie Lee was a fascinating interesting man.

He was an iron horseman, biker and his family.

They were the Dixie Mafia family, not mafia as an Italian mafia.

Dixie Mafias in Southern tough guys that do things, illicit things, and they still exist.

He gave his deposition for seven hours.

At first I was skeptical.

He almost looked like Hulk Hogan.

He's had this flowing hair, big mustache.

I had to be two eighty but really built strong.

But as he gave his testimony over those seven hours, he had so many intricate Memphis facts.

No, he's from Memphis, so it's understandable, but he had so much detail that he couldn't have possibly made this up.

Bill.

He was telling the story of his life and his family's life back in the day.

Speaker 2

As we were beginning to pack up, I asked Brian Demnsky if looking back, he felt encouraged by all the people that have braved the storm and come forward and all the evidence they have brought with them, or was he discouraged by how immune to it all the lie surrounding King's murder seemed to be he was upbeat.

Speaker 5

Pepper would like this, I'm a wax poetic, but doctor King used to like to quote the truth crushed Earth will rise again.

So as the years passed, it is rising.

It's coming out.

But we're not totally there now.

The ninety nine Trials a wonderful template, and there's more, of course, the weave on Earth, and there's still a little bit more that we don't have, but we did a pretty good job of those two trials.

Speaker 2

This is Bill Klaber, creator of the MLK Tapes.

Before we walk away from the podcast, I wanted to play the interviews you just heard of two people who have had a front row seat as this story has played out in Memphis.

For most of us, the murder of Martin Luther King is something that took place over fifty years ago, but for Ryan Jones and Brian Deminski, it is a battle between truth and lies that is still very much alive today.

If you are with us this far, I would like to think that you now know a great deal more about the murder of Martin Luther King than you did before, and considering the importance of the man murdered, I hope that feels odd to you, and it should, because US Americans think King was killed by alone assassin driven by racial hatred.

They think this because for fifty years, the American media has seen fit to champion the single corrupt story that was provided to them and to allow for nothing else.

So, for example, if you have written a book that challenges the official version of this crime, as Bill Pepper has done, your book, no matter how carefully vetted, will not even be reviewed.

Polite people don't talk about the.

Speaker 5

Murder of doctor King.

Speaker 2

But podcasts offer a way around those gatekeepers.

So we have put the evidence as we know it into audio episodes and shot them out into the ether, where from now on.

Speaker 5

Anyone can access them.

Speaker 2

Anyone can hear how Percy Foreman was paid to make sure that James Earl Ray pled guilty, and they can ask themselves how did this happen and why?

And of course, none of this could have happened if Bill Pepper hadn't decided to investigate the murder of his friend Martin King, so I want to thank Bill again for those efforts and for his bravery.

I also want to thank Donald Albright and Jamie Olbright of Tenderfoot TV, and Matt Frederick and Trevor Young of iHeartMedia for the belief and the importance of this story and for their confidence in me.

I'm grateful for their exceptional talent and for the spirit they brought with it.

It's not every day that one gets to shatter a lie as big as this one.

Speaker 9

Thanks for listening to The MLK Tapes, a production of iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV.

This podcast is not specifically endorsed by the King Family or the King of State.

The MLK Tapes is written and hosted by Bill Clayber, Matt Frederick, and Alex Williams our executive producers on behalf of iHeartRadio, with producers Trevor Young and Jesse Fonk.

Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, with producers Jamie Albright and Meredith Dedman.

Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set.

Cover art by Mister Soul two one six with photography by Artemis Jenkins.

Special thanks to Owin Rosenbaum and Grace Royer at UTA, the Nord Group, Beck Median Marketing, Envision Business Management, and Station sixteen.

If you have questions, you can visit our website, the emailktapes dot com.

We posted photos and videos related to the podcast on our social media accounts.

You can check them out at the emailk Tapes.

For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,