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king's killers still at large! by Preston Peet (ptpeet@cs.com) - January 21, 2002 |
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| On Wednesday 8 December 1999, a jury of six whites and six blacks in Tennessee's Shelby County District Court took three hours to find that Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered by conspiracy, not by a lone-nut assassin. But the US government will file no charges. Thirty-one years after MLK Jr. was shot in the face standing on a Memphis hotel balcony, it is too late for James Earl Ray. He died in prison from Hepatitis C in 1998. Ray was accused of shooting King from a nearby bathroom window, with an incriminating bundle containing a rifle of Ray's and lots of his finger prints found nearby immediately after the assassination. Ray initially plead guilty, but recanted three days after being sentenced to 99 years in prison, spending the next 30 years pleading his innocence. On Thursday 16 December 1993, Lloyd Jowers confessed on ABC TV's Prime Time Live news program that: he had hired the shooter to kill MLK; that the shooter was not James Earl Ray; and that a 'friend' gave him the rifle along with the $100,000 to pay for the killing. The King family sued Jowers, former owner of Jim's Grill, and 'unnamed conspirators' for wrongful death, seeking just $100, and a conspiracy finding, both of which the jury awarded them at the conclusion of the three week trial. Not that this recent trial would have helped Ray anyway. The Justice Department under Janet Reno had been conducting a fifteen-month investigation of the assassination since August 1998. Former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder told Reuters newswire (9 December 1999) that the investigation should be completed within weeks, and that the results would be made public. "I would not want people to think that on the basis of the work that we have done that there is the likelihood of any kind of criminal trial. I would not expect that there will be any criminal prosecution out of our report." Representative John Lewis (D-Georgia) told WSB-TV in Atlanta that he would ask both President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno for another investigation of the 1968 assassination. William F. Pepper, author of Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr. (New York: Warner Books, 1995), an incredible book on the MLK assassination, has been investigating the killing since he first interviewed Ray in prison in 1978. After trying in vain for years to obtain a new trial for Ray, Pepper eventually came to represent the King family in this recent civil suit. Pepper told the jury that the assassination had been carried out as part of a large conspiracy involving the Mafia, and US government agents, due to fears over MLK's proposed poor people's march on Washington DC, and over his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War. Pepper said the order to kill came from a New Orleans crime boss, as did the money, and that a military sniper squad was held in backup. Afterwards, the FBI, CIA, military intelligence, the media, and government officials at every level helped perpetuate the cover-up. Even Jower's lawyer told the jury that yes, they could believe that it was a conspiracy, but his client's role in it was minuscule. Jury member David Morphy told the Associated Press syndicate that "We all thought it was a cut and dried case, with the evidence that Pepper brought forth that there were a lot of people involved, everyone from the CIA, military involvement in it--Jowers was involved in it, we felt." The US government and the mainstream media are already putting a spin on the trial's results. After eight refusals to hear evidence to Ray's possible innocence over the last thirty years, now that he is dead, why should a jury decision declaring his innocence change anything? The views expressed above represent the writer and not necessarily those of The Disinformation Company Ltd. |
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The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change MLK Online Seattle Times: Martin Luther King, Jr. Life Magazine: A Tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. The King Center Time 100: Martin Luther King Jr. The MLK Boulevard Project The Martin Luther King, Jr. Historic Site Memphis: We Remember The Nobel Peace Prize 1964: Martin Luther King Jr. The National Civil Rights Museum Powerful Days in Black and White A Tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Archer Audio Archives Crimes of the Century: MLK Jr. FBI Electric Reading Room Real History Archives on The MLK Assassination JFK Lancer Resource Page Who Killed Martin Luther King, Jr.? US Department of Justice Investigation of Recent Allegations Regarding the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy Speech on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death Martin Luther King Jr.: Never Again Where He Was Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination Survey The Martin Luther King You Don't See On TV Ex-FBI Agent Says Papers Indicate Conspiracy To Kill King From Small Time Criminal To Notorious Assassin MLK Streets Anything but Easy Family Forgiveness King for a Day Uneasy Holiday Redux Judgment Day for James Earl Ray Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.: Scavenger Hunt Who Killed MLK Jr.? Disinformation Dossier on 'Geronimo' Pratt Disinformation Article on When David Horowitz Attacks! Are Reparations Racist? Disinformation Dossier on Angela Davis Disinformation Dossier on Leonard Peltier Disinformation Dossier on The Black Panther Party Disinformation Dossier on the JFK Assassination |
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