125,000 Reasons [13]

After King is murdered, John Curington notices increased contact between H.L. Hunt and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. One day, Hunt gives Curington a satchel to bring to Ray's attorney, Percy Foreman. As he hands the bag to Foreman, Curington says the words he was told to say: "Here are 125,000 reasons for Ray to plead guilty."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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 (00:22):
It was about seven o'clock in the evening.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
I got a teletype. It was from the Memphis Field
office and all it said was Martin Luther King has
been shot while standing on a balcony in a hotel
in Memphis. That was it. That was the whole message.
And I called Hoover at home. I didn't want him
to hear it over the news. I called him and

(00:46):
I said, mister Hoover, I just got a telex message
from our Memphis office said that Martin Luther King was
shot while standing on a belcon in that city. And
then there was this pause, and his reaction to me
was is he dead?

Speaker 4 (01:08):
I called the Union Hall. I said, it's a matter
of life and death.

Speaker 5 (01:12):
I said, I think these peoples are planning to kill
doctor King.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
The authorities were parade, Oh, we found a gun that
James o'ray bought in Birmingham that killed doctor King. Except
it wasn't the gun that killed doctor King.

Speaker 6 (01:27):
James Lray was a pawn for the official story.

Speaker 7 (01:34):
From My Heart Radio and Tender for TV.

Speaker 8 (01:36):
The plan was to get King to the city because
they wanted it handled in Memphis where Daddy and then
could handle it.

Speaker 9 (01:45):
And I've lived with it so long, my searity, and
they scared for me.

Speaker 4 (01:49):
The Lord told me, not the word. I've been wanting
to tell it all my life.

Speaker 7 (01:54):
I'm Bill Cleeburgh. And this is the MLK tapes. In
the nineteen sixties, as the FBI was making life as
difficult as it could for Martin Luther King, its director
j Edgar Hoover was living the sweet life in upscale

(02:16):
restaurants and five star hotels, the Waldorf Astoria in New
York and exclusive resorts in Florida and California. And Hoover
didn't go to these places alone, and virtually every instance
he was accompanied by his second in command, Clyde Tolson.
So who was Toulson, when did he arrive and what

(02:38):
was the deal there? To help with this, we recently
spoke with author Philip Nelson, whose excellent book Who really
killed Martin Luther King was published just three years ago.

Speaker 10 (02:50):
Clyde Tolson grew up in a small town in Missouri.
After public schooling, he attended George Washington University, where he
received a law degree in nineteen ten twenty seven. The
next year, he applied for a job with the Bureau
of Investigation, where j Edgar Hoover was boss. Apparently Hoover
already knew Tulson. In any case, Toulson was hired, and

(03:13):
only two years later, in nineteen thirty he rose to
the position of assistant director of the Bureau, which became
the FBI in nineteen thirty three, with Toulson as Hoover's
number two, a position he held until Hoover died in
nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 7 (03:31):
It is widely assumed that Hoover and Twlson were lovers
for forty years. They lived in what appeared to be
a spousal relationship. Tulson maintained an apartment near to where
Hoover lived. The two men were driven to and from
work every day in the same car, and they ate
all their meals together.

Speaker 10 (03:48):
Hoover and Toulson had lunch every day in the reb
room in the Mayflower Hotel. They didn't pay for their
food or drinks For dinner. Most evenings they would eat
at Harvey's Restaurant, where they were also comped at great
expense to the owners, something that was never reported to
the irs.

Speaker 7 (04:06):
And it wasn't just a workday relationship. For many years,
Hoover and Tulson went on extended vacations together.

Speaker 10 (04:14):
In the winter, they would go for weeks at a
time to the Gulf Stream Hotel in Miami, and in
the summer it would be the Del Chro Hotel in California.
At neither place did they pay for room or board.
All travel, either by rail or by air, was built
to their government expense account under the pretense that they

(04:34):
were on official business inspecting FBI field offices, but they
did nothing of the kind. Instead, they spent all of
their time either at the local racetrack or lounging around
the hotel swimming pool.

Speaker 7 (04:49):
The Delchara Hotel in La Jolla, California, where Hoover and
Tulson went each summer, was a high end resort owned
by oil barring Clint Murchison. To the history website Gibson's
World Quote, the hotel was frequented by guests such as
Mobsters Meyer, Lanski, Carlos Marcello, Johnny Rosselli, and Sam g

(05:11):
and Kanna, along with politicos such as Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon,
and Jay Edgar Hoover with his partner Clyde Tolson Murchison
gained control of the nearby del Mar Racetrack, where Hoover
was set up with his own private box. So the
head of our National Police Force, who by reputation was
the very personification of thrift and honesty, was in real

(05:34):
life something entirely different. And while the FBI was good
at chasing down bank robbers and carthieves, and quite keen
on raising the alarm about communists said to be hiding
in the chambers of government, it didn't do a thing
against organized crime, which decade after decade, became a stronger
force in the American landscape. One would have thought that

(05:55):
the head of the National Police Force would have been
eager to take on organized crime, but Hoover wasn't. Moreover,
he said publicly that organized crime didn't really exist in America.
What could be the explanation for this? According to Bill Pepper,
Mobster Meyer Lanski, who was basically running things at the
Gulfstream Hotel, was pulling the strings here.

Speaker 11 (06:18):
Meyer set that up. Meyer instructed Costello, who had a
suite at the Waldorf Astoria as did Hoover, to go
visit Hoover and to show him photographs of him in
sexual activity with Tulsen and put the photographs on a
table and say to him, well, you can have a

(06:41):
wonderful life, Edgar, or we can release these. Well. Hoover,
being the coward that he was, had no choice in
his own mind. When Frank Costello confronted him and he
agreed that he would do what they require, and what

(07:01):
they required was that the mob didn't exist. He has
sold out to them entirely.

Speaker 7 (07:09):
The story of Meyer Lansky bringing Hoover on board is
best described in Anthony Summer's book The Secret Life of
Jay Edgar Hoover. According to Summer's sources, Lansky had Hoover
in its control because he had photographs of him engaging
in sex with Tulson and other men. I don't know
if this is true, but it's not an outrageous idea.

(07:32):
As we heard earlier, Hoover was happy to bug every
hotel room that Martin Luther King stayed in so how
hard would it have been for someone to do that
to him in the forties and fifties, when Hoover and
Tulson were staying for extended periods of time without charge
in mob connected hotels. Once Lansky or anyone else had

(07:53):
those photographs, he would virtually own the director of the FBI.
And there is little one who's actions over the years
to say that wasn't the case. He just didn't go
after the mob. To be sure, there are other possible
reasons for Hoover's reluctance to act against organized crime. Arresting

(08:15):
and convicting a mobster would be a lot more work
than what was required to bring down a car thief.
Mobsters could afford good lawyers, and when scary guys were
put on trial, jurys were more likely to end up undecided,
and Hoover was particularly proud of the Bureau's conviction rate.
And along with that, it probably felt pretty good getting

(08:37):
tips on horse races from people on the inside and
hanging around the pool with film stars and gangsters, being
treated like a celebrity and paying for none of it.
Of course, the people offering the free stuff were most
likely expecting something in return. So was Hoover being blackmailed
or was he simply corrupted? And which is worse? Besides

(09:00):
living the good life with Hoover when they were off duty,
one might wonder what Tulson's responsibilities were inside the FBI
as the second in command. Quite simply, it was to
protect Hoover from any threat, real or imagined, that might
arise within the bureau or without. Tulson was not only
a second pair of eyes and ears. He had his
own informants, a reputation for being mean, and he might

(09:23):
end a man's career over nothing just to show others
that he could do it. In short, he was Hoover's
hatchet man, and everyone was afraid of him because he
was sitting on the right hand of God. But beyond that,
Tulson gave Hoover a way to get things done that
didn't have to be recorded in an order or a memo.
He could run important errands for Hoover, errands that were

(09:45):
completely off the books. And it appears that's what Tulson
was doing when he becomes part of our story by
showing up in Memphis.

Speaker 8 (10:11):
The first time I met him was at Memphis Airport.
But it was a little old wireporard, you know, I
mean they didn't have seven forty seven was dropping in
and all that, and we went on latter and picked
him up the airport.

Speaker 7 (10:25):
In previous episodes, we have heard from Ronnie Lee Atkins,
who was only sixteen years old when King was murdered.
Atkins lived in Memphis and was privy to many discussions
about the need to kill King because he was a
son of Russell atkinsor the man who led many of
these meetings. Atkins was a man of influence in Memphis,

(10:45):
and beyond that, he had a special friend in Washington
who would visit every so often.

Speaker 8 (10:51):
He was a big connection with Daddy. I mean he
you know, he used Daddy and give Daddy money to
do different things, you know, but he is there, you know,
two or three times a year, maybe four or five.

Speaker 4 (11:04):
Times a year.

Speaker 8 (11:05):
Then hid Carl and you know, did he'd go get
him and you know in the cab or. I almost
told you call him uncle Clyde. I said, yes, I
well from then on he was on Clyde.

Speaker 7 (11:16):
So who was this man who would fly in from Washington,
the man who Ronnie Lee Atkins was told to call
Uncle Clyde. It was Clyde Tolson, Hoover's second in command.

Speaker 4 (11:26):
This is Bill Pepper.

Speaker 11 (11:28):
Hoover used to send in Tolson on a regular basis
to meet with Adkin. The Atkins family to Dixie Mafia people.
Dixie Mafia people were junior cousins of the of the
Marcello organization, but they worked together. They were closely. When
Marchello might might not have wanted something to happen, but

(11:51):
it had to happen, they would have used the Atkins
family to do this. And what surprised me was of
the extent to which he used Clyde Tolson, who was
his number two, as the messenger.

Speaker 7 (12:07):
Always, for as long as Atkins could remember, Clyde Tolson
would visit his house a couple times a year. When
Atkins gave his deposition to Bill Pepper, he brought several
backyard photographs of himself and Toulson, which you can check
out on our website.

Speaker 8 (12:23):
Heyu is Clyde Lee and kid lived girl street.

Speaker 12 (12:28):
All right, Hian and you would have been how old here?

Speaker 4 (12:31):
Seven? Dumm? Yeah? Probably six seven?

Speaker 12 (12:35):
Okay, So this then would have been fifty eight or
fifty nine yes, sir, photograph.

Speaker 7 (12:41):
What we learned from these photos is that Toulson and
Ronnie Lee's father, Russell Senior, had a relationship that went
back for years, and part of what would happen on
some of these visits is that Toulson would bring cash
money for Russell Senior to pass along to those on
the off the books.

Speaker 8 (12:57):
Payroll came directly from Clyde Towson to my father's hand
in a brown bag or a sup or kind of
like a doctor's bag. I have saying Clyde Towlson open
the bag up and pull his papers out and take
the money out.

Speaker 4 (13:11):
And it was usually in a bag, you know, and
they did.

Speaker 8 (13:14):
He'd open a sack up and pull the money out,
and then they'd go to count, and then they'd both count. Yeah,
I mean, you know they you know, one potato, two, potato, three,
potato four.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
That's why they did it.

Speaker 7 (13:23):
Pepper then asked Atkins if he knew how much money
changed hands.

Speaker 4 (13:28):
I had no idea.

Speaker 8 (13:29):
I always started saying, you know, a good chunk over, but
it just didn't happen. I got allowance. It's pretty good, though,
you know. I get some bedy washers and peanuts, and
stuff when I.

Speaker 7 (13:38):
When I wanted so, Toulson would bring money to Atkins, who,
as we discovered in an earlier episode, was a leader
in the Dixie mafia. As Atkins said, Towlson would use
his father and give his father money to do different things.
This arrangement gave Hoover players on the board who were
not g men and who could do things did not

(13:58):
have to make reports. As Atkins would describe, there had
often been talk about killing King at various plan and
Meson meetings going back into the nineteen fifties, but after
King's nineteen sixty three march on Washington and his awarded
the Nobel Prize in nineteen sixty four, the talk took
on a sense of urgency. More ideas were floated about

(14:19):
how it could be done. And if you've come with
us this far, you've heard how Ronnie Lee described the
general plan. But we play his words here another time
because they are important words.

Speaker 8 (14:31):
The plan was to disrupt the city because they was
gonna get King to the city, because Tolsen said that
they wanted it handled in Memphis for Daddy and M
could handle it. Words specifically, Daddy and M could handle it.
So the workers would get King to town. That's what

(14:52):
it all boiled down to. And by getting him to town,
then they was going to take care of him. So
apparently come down from over Cloud was doing that on
his own.

Speaker 7 (15:02):
So this was the deal as fourteen year old Ronnie
Lee Atkins understood it. But the working relationship between Toulson
and Russell Senior was derailed when Toulson suffered a stroke
in nineteen sixty six and Atkins Senior died a year later.
But according to Ronnie Lee, the plotting kept on under
new leadership, the part of his father assumed by his

(15:24):
thirty six year old half brother, Russell Junior, and the
role of Toulson picked up by veteran FBI agent Frank Holloman,
who would become the next head of fire and Police
in Memphis just a few months before King was killed.
What follows is Bill Pepper questioning Ronnie Lee Atkins, who
was testifying under oath, with his lawyer Stephen Tolan sitting

(15:45):
close by.

Speaker 12 (15:48):
We're into nineteen sixty eight. The guest sanitation workers strike hits, Yes,
that is dead. Hey, your father's dead. Who's taken over
the Russell Junior in Holloman so Russell Jr. And Frank
Hollman are running as the assassination effort.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Yes. Do you know how long your father knew Holloman?
He knew Frank pretty good while.

Speaker 12 (16:14):
Is it possible because Holloman, of course ran Hoover's office
and for a number of years. Yes, is it possible
that Holloman introduced Tulson to your father?

Speaker 8 (16:23):
I think that Tulson introduced Frank to Daddy.

Speaker 4 (16:30):
I think guess how that happened. You think it worked
the other way around.

Speaker 8 (16:33):
I think Tulson was the one that put Daddy with Frank.
Of course, Frank run this office here for years.

Speaker 7 (16:40):
Frank Hollman had joined the FBI right out of law
school in nineteen thirty seven. He worked hard and found
favor with Director Hoover, and for seven years in the
nineteen fifties was the man who ran Hoover's office in Washington.
Then he left for important posts in the field, becoming
the agent in charge in Atlanta and then continuing on
the Memphis Which is what Atkins was referring to when

(17:01):
he said he had run this office for years. And
this is important because Frank Hollman was no stranger to Memphis.
When he became the director of Fire and Police, he
already knew who everybody was and what they were up to,
and according to Atkins, Holloman was an important part of
what they were up to.

Speaker 4 (17:21):
What was said anything significant? Senate then of the Frank
Hollomantel Russell Jr.

Speaker 8 (17:27):
I want some bitch shot, shoot Asomo bitch in the
mouth and say that our dead Birkery Baptist Church in
a meeting.

Speaker 4 (17:34):
And do you remember when that meeting was?

Speaker 8 (17:36):
That was probably less than two weeks before they killed him.

Speaker 7 (17:41):
As we saw in the previous segment, in the week
before King was killed, the FBI had composed a nasty
article to be secretly released to friendly news outlets that
attacked King for staying at a posh, white owned hotel
in Memphis when there was a perfectly good black owned hotel,
the Lorraine, where he could stay if he was willing

(18:02):
to patronize black owned businesses as he was telling his
followers to do. Why did the FBI care were King
state in Memphis? This was an easy question for running
the Yapkins.

Speaker 8 (18:15):
I think they had it set up for him to
stay at the Lorraine ahead of time, because they were
set up to work out at Jowler's this place.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Now one or night they were going to hit him
from the window. I don't know, I don't think so.

Speaker 8 (18:29):
I think they were going to try to hit him
from the fire station at first, as far as old firemen,
I know that they had some move My brother had
talked to somebody and I think it was Holloman about
having a moved. And I think it was Halloman. It
came up with the idea, if there's a threat, if

(18:52):
we can show some kind of a threat, we could
have a mood. And I think that's what they used,
was a threat.

Speaker 7 (19:00):
As Adkins relates, the first idea was to shoot King
from some position at the firehouse, but even with the
black fireman removed, there were too many people there to
assure privacy at the back window. But the brush covered
yard behind Jim's grill had promise. So who made the call?
Atkins said it was his brother Russell Junior and Frank Holloman.

Speaker 8 (19:22):
Work came down to hitting him from behind the grill.
I don't know if he ever was down there after that,
but man, there was a ton of sh had back here,
so it was the perfect place the angle wasn't right.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
They needed him up where he was level with him.

Speaker 7 (19:41):
At least the angle wasn't right, and that would explain
the sudden need for a room change. King had been
successfully booked into the rain motel, where ambush awaited, but
he'd been booked into room two oh two, on the
ground floor from the firehouse. A man standing outside Room
too o two might have been a decent target, but

(20:01):
not from the yard behind Jowers Grill. If the shooter
were back far enough to be covered by the brush,
the hill itself would hide the rooms on the ground floor.
This problem was apparently recognized a day or so before
King was to arrive, and there was a rushed effort
to get King into another room, preferably on the second floor,
across from the yard behind Jowers Grill.

Speaker 4 (20:23):
So there it is.

Speaker 7 (20:24):
King was moved to room three oh six. Martin Luther

(20:45):
King was shot in Memphis at six in the evening.
Almost instantly the news appeared on the FBI teletype, But
in Washington it was a little after seven and most
people had already left. But Paul Leturski, a young man
who was serving is Hoover's personal assistant, was still there.
He saw the teletype come in, ripped it from the machine,

(21:06):
and headed for the phone.

Speaker 3 (21:09):
I called Hoover at home. I didn't want him to
hear it over the news. I called him and I said,
mister Hoover, I just got a telex message from our
Memphis office said that Martin Luther King was shot while
standing on a belt get in that city. And then
there was this pause, and his immediate reaction to me

(21:33):
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,

(21:55):
they'll make a martyr on Those are his exact words,
and I'll never forget it.

Speaker 7 (22:03):
So do Hoover's words upon hearing the news about King
reveal anything to us. Paul Letursky, who just came out
with a book about his years in the FBI titled
The Director, was pretty clear with me that he thought
Hoover's words should remove him from any suspicion about the murder.
I was surprised because I didn't hear it that way.
So I played the clip for a friend and he

(22:25):
said something similar that a man who holps another man
doesn't die, isn't the one we should suspect of killing him.
That makes sense if you don't mind being overly literal
with Hoover's words. See in another way, if Hoover had
played any part in the killing of King, however passive,
he would have had time to reflect on possible unfortunate

(22:46):
side effects, such as even in death, King would best him,
as he clearly has done. So. Of course, Hoover might
say what he said about King becoming a martyr, but
regardless of which way you think his words point, there
can be no dispute about the hatred you can hear
in them. At about the same time that Laturski was
on the phone with his boss Hoover, John Currington was

(23:10):
on the phone with his boss H. L.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Hunt.

Speaker 6 (23:13):
Mister Hunt, he called me, I would say, within less
than ten minutes after Martin Lucy King was killed there
in Memphis. There and told me to call every radio
station in the United States or everywhere that lifeline was broadcast.
We were also in Mexico and at that time Hawaii

(23:35):
and have them not to do the program on Martin
Lucy King. We were doing a very derogatory series of
stories on Martin Lucy King, most of which had come
through jegg Or Hoover. Over a period of time of
about two hours, we were able to call all the
radio stations.

Speaker 7 (23:54):
As soon as Currington had accomplished this task, Hunt had
another He wanted to go into hiding. His views on
King were well known and he didn't feel safe in
his home. He asked Carrington to arrange for travel and
lodging under an assumed name. So under the names of
mister and missus John Krrington, Hunt and his wife Ruth

(24:14):
flew out to El Paso and checked into a hotel.
But first thing Monday, a call came into Hunt's Dallas office,
someone wanting to speak to the absent mister Hunt.

Speaker 6 (24:26):
Jaeger Hoover called, I'd say about nine or nine thirty
on a Monday morning after the death of Martin Lucy
King on Friday, and asked for mister Hunt, and the
switchboard advised mister Hoover that miss Trump was out of
town at that time. Mister Hunt asked our switchboard operator
if John was in and for I know he never

(24:49):
knew my last name, but anyway, I got on the
phone and Hoover asked where mister Hunt was. I told him.
He asked if I could get a hold of him
and ask him if he would come to Washington. I
told him yes I could.

Speaker 7 (25:03):
According to Currington, he called Hunt and told him that
Hoover not only wanted to talk to him, but wanted
to do the talking in person. Would Hunt travel to Washington?
Hunt said yes, and Curington again made the reservations under
another name. Hunt flew to Washington and stayed for a
couple of days. In our previous episode, we heard attorney

(25:26):
John Currington describe how one day out of the blue,
he was selected to be H. L. Hunt's personal assistant,
a position he held for twelve years. Hunt was an
extremely wealthy Texas oilman, often called the richest man in America.
As Currington tells us, Hunt was a longtime supporter of
Lyndon Johnson and also had an ongoing alliance with jayag

(25:50):
Good Hoover.

Speaker 6 (25:51):
Miss Hunt felt like he could do certain things for
Jag or Hoover that Hoover couldn't do for himself. But
more important, Miss Hunt believed that Jaeger Hoover could furnish
him information that he could use in his business activities.

Speaker 7 (26:06):
What activities. As we've heard, mister Hunt produced a radio
program called Lifeline that was designed to advance his rather
extreme political views. It was only fifteen minutes in length,
but a new show came out every day, six days
a week, and was carried by over five hundred radio
stations across the country.

Speaker 6 (26:26):
The program did a lot of derogatory comments on Martin
Luther King. Edgar Hoover Camp a personal file on them,
and we were privileged to a lot of that information
in those files that was redrafted and rewritten and used
in Lifeline programmed.

Speaker 7 (26:45):
As Curington would reveal, Hoover and Hunt would have brief
conversations on the phone, maybe once a month. It was
a romance of sorts. Hunt had wealth, Hoover had power,
and they shared a deep hatred of Martin Luther King.
According to Curington, Hunt felt sure that he could destroy
King with his radio program.

Speaker 6 (27:06):
Mister Hunt was under the impression that the message against
Martin Lucy King that Lifeline could deliver would eventually attract somebody,
or some want or some group that would say that
Martin Lucy King was removed from power.

Speaker 7 (27:25):
Hoover, according to Curington, was less certain than Hunt that
Lifeline alone could achieve this, but he was willing to help.

Speaker 4 (27:32):
So.

Speaker 7 (27:33):
Jed Garoover, the nation's top lawman, broke the law continuously
by secretly giving to Hunt material on King that Hunt
could turn around and use on his radio programs. When
President John Kennedy was murdered, Attorney General Robert Kennedy lost
all control over the FBI and jaed Gar Hoover and

(27:53):
the new President, Lyndon Johnson apparently had no desire to
shield King from Hoover, though he and King time maintained
an outwardly friendly relationship, but in private, Johnson's real feelings
with Surface and Carrington was privy to some of it.

Speaker 6 (28:11):
I've never heard such now language as Linda Johnson used
in describing his feeling for Martin Lucor King. So for
the public, they were accepted as very close friends, all
both looking out for each other. But I don't know
of anybody that Linda Johnson had a more dislike for
than Martin Lucor King, and the same thing with Jaigar Hoover.

Speaker 7 (28:36):
When Hoover invited Hunt to come to Washington right after
King had been killed, it allowed for more private and
personal conversations than either man was willing to have on
the phone. Carrington wasn't privy to any of that.

Speaker 6 (28:50):
I have no worse the idea of what they talked about,
but I believe that Jayacker, Hoover, X L. Hunt, and
Linda Johnson were putting themselves into a holding past and
were if anything did surface that would suggest they had
advanced knowledge of this, they wanted to have as clean
a pass as possible.

Speaker 7 (29:10):
Of course, a totally clean path was hard to be
certain of because the alleged killer of doctor King had
not been captured, and no one could be sure what
he might reveal once he was, assuming he was captured alive.
At that time, H. L. Hunt and Jo Savillo, the
powerful mafia boss, both lived in Dallas. The two men
were not what you would call friends, but they shared

(29:31):
a respect, stayed out of each other's business, and once
in a while might meet at Sivillo's place out at
the airport, where, according to Carrington, Savilla might offer a
short lesson on how to get away with murder.

Speaker 6 (29:43):
Savello's in comments to Missus Hunt told him that, you know,
hiring somebody to kill someone was no problem at all,
but immediately after that killing was done, you either had
to one destroy the person who did to kill him,
or if the may god indicted, you had to make
a rationalist if that man played guilty, so he could

(30:06):
not testify an open court as to what he knew
or did not know on a protecular crime.

Speaker 7 (30:11):
There Two months after King's murder, James Earl Ray was
captured in London. He was brought to Memphis, where he
was held in communicado for eight months. Exactly what you
would do if you were not sure what the man
might say if allowed to speak in public. But if
others were involved in the killing the King, it would
appear that Ray did not pose a danger at least

(30:32):
as far as telling secrets, because he didn't know much.
But Ray did pose a danger because if he went
to trial, the evidence would have to bear up under
examination and the case against him might fall apart, as
his first attorney, Arthur Haines, thought it would, and who
knew what other witnesses might appear and what they might
have to say. And if Ray were found not guilty,

(30:55):
or worse still, if the case against him were shown
to be a sham, where would that, Jay ar Hoover
in the vaunted FBI, who would run the investigation if
Ray had been set up, who had done the setting up,
who had allowed them to do it, and who had
accepted and promoted the phony evidence. These questions threatened to

(31:15):
absolutely destroy Jade car Hoover again.

Speaker 6 (31:19):
John Carrington, Hoover and Johnson and mister Hunt all shared
the same view that if James Arrol Ray should go
to trial, he could throw everybody out of the boat
that was volating around out in the ocean there. So
I think, in the opinion of Jaegar Hoover, Lend Johnson

(31:40):
hl Hunt, that it was necessary for James Earl Ray
to play guilty to that work, none of his testimony
would be made public.

Speaker 7 (31:49):
According to John Carrington, Hoover and Hunt were on the
phone more often after Ray had been captured. The door
between Carrington's office and Hunt's office was always open at
Hunt's assistance, So there wasn't much that happened in that
office that John Currington wasn't privy to one afternoon. According
to Currington, after Hoover had been on the phone with Hunt,

(32:10):
Kurrington was called into Hunt's office, whereupon Hunt made another
phone call.

Speaker 6 (32:15):
Mister h called Percy Foreman one day and he told
mister Foreman that he had a young lawyer in his office,
said it'd come up with a lot of ideas as
to why James row Ray should enter a guilty plea
in the killing of Martin Lucy King. And the young
lawyer was myself, and he asked if I came to Houston,
would Percy Foreman visit with me and go over the

(32:38):
series and I had jotted down and Percy Foreman agreed
to do that. I left the next morning.

Speaker 7 (32:46):
Kurrington made the quick flight from Dallas to Houston, took
a cab from the airport, and arrived at Foreman's office.
He was not empty handed.

Speaker 6 (32:55):
I had a briefcase with a one hundred and twenty
five thousand dollars cash in it. Mixter Foreman and I
probably exchange a few pleasures for two or three minutes,
and I just simply stated to him that had jotted
down one hundred and twenty five thousand raisers why James
Row Ray should plead guilty to Keillan Martin Lucy King,
and would like to leave those reasons with him and

(33:19):
Percy Foreman without any comment, say just leave you a briefcase.
That was the extent of our conversation.

Speaker 7 (33:26):
Currington would say that the lack of any questions or
conversation on the part of Percy Foreman felt spooky to him.
He left Foreman's office feeling that this was a deal
that had been set up will in advance.

Speaker 6 (33:39):
If I were just making an editorial type of comment.
In my opinion, I believe that Jay Hoover himself would
have made a call to Percy Foreman and told him
what was fiction.

Speaker 4 (33:51):
To have with.

Speaker 7 (33:53):
This is a stunning story. According to Curington, he brings
one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars to Foreman in
exchange for the promise that Ray will plead guilty. What
reasons do we have for believing him?

Speaker 3 (34:06):
First?

Speaker 7 (34:07):
It would go a long way to explaining Foreman's strange
conduct toward Ray, pushing his way into the case and
forcing out a pair of lawyers who were preparing an
affirmative defensive Ray then doing nothing on Race behalf and
finally putting Ray under extraordinary pressure to plead guilty while
publicly pretending that was always the plan. And if that

(34:28):
were not enough, Foreman then puts his name to an
article in a national magazine assigning nasty, untrue motives for
Ray in regards to the murder, such as what he
was really trying to do was start a race war.
At every turn, Percy Foreman seems to be acting in
the interest of someone off stage. Would Foreman really take

(34:48):
money and betray a client by secretly working for the
other side, Well, as we heard in episode four, Foreman
did that very thing. Just a few years after the
King murder. Foreman signed up a client who had a
conflict with Bunker and Herbert Hunt, the sons of H. L. Hunt,
and then approached the Hunts and took one hundred thousand
dollars from them in return forgetting his client to do

(35:11):
what the Hunts wanted. Is all laid out in a
federal indictment. So I think we now know how it
was that James Olray put in a plea of guilty
when he really wanted to go to trial. It was arranged,
paid for, he was forced into it. Foreman was simply
not going to defend him. And the chief beneficiary of

(35:31):
all that was j Edgar Hoover. He was the one
on the hook if the trial of James Olray took
a bad turn. In nineteen twenty four, j at Gar Hoover,
at the age of twenty nine, became the first head
of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the FBI,
and he was still director of the FBI when he

(35:52):
died in nineteen seventy two. He had seen presidents come
and go, and he had used his office to collect
information on just about every one, which made him the
most feared man in America, unless, of course, you were
with a mob. Though many wanted to, no president dared
to replace the man. It was only after Hoover died
that the Senate Church Committee was formed to investigate what

(36:15):
they would call quote the criminal abuse of power by
the FBI. Two years later, Lewis Stokes, chairman of the
House Select Committee looking into the assassination of Martin Luther King,
read a statement of his own into the record that
took the FBI's conduct to the very edge of murder.

Speaker 9 (36:35):
Should the Committee take special note that the conduct of
the FBI in this conspiracy of harassment of doctor King
was not only unjustified as policy, it was also illegal
and unconstitutional. Did the conduct of the FBI contribute in
any significant degree to the sequence of events that occurred

(36:59):
in Memphis and led to doctor King's death?

Speaker 7 (37:04):
In the MLK tapes, we have attempted to answer that
question by presenting the stories of people who have told
what they knew about the murder of Martin Luther King.
No one had a complete picture. Each person only knew
what he or she saw, heard, or did. We heard
from Police Captain Jerry Williams, whose all black security detail

(37:25):
was not called to protect King on his final visit
to Memphis. Fire Captain Carthel Whedon, who on the day
of the murder brought men with cameras and fancy id
up to the roof of the firehouse. Attorney ur Haines,
who had a witness who saw the package with a
rifle placed on the street minutes before the shooting. Judge
Joe Brown, who offered hard reasons why that rifle could

(37:48):
not have been the murder weapon. Detective Barry Linvill who
saw a bullet in near perfect condition removed from the
body of King, something that in no way resembled the
pieces of lead the FBI would later offer as the
death's luck. Ronnie Lee Atkins, who told us how the
shot was fired from the yard behind the grille where
there was plenty of cover. Betty Spates who saw a

(38:10):
smoking gun brought in from that yard, and a lot
of others with similar stories that did not fit with
the official version of the crime. But even collectively, their
testimony doesn't tell everything. Each is only a tile in
the mosaic, and when they are all in place, the
image is still incomplete. We don't know all the actors

(38:31):
and the roles they played, but if you step back
and look at the mosaic, you can see a picture.
The murder of doctor Martin Luther King was a planned event,
and that fact was covered up by the people who
were in charge of investigating the crime. And when it
appeared that Rai's attorneys were really going to fight the
charge in court and call into question the shaky evidence,

(38:54):
something had to be done. So Percy Foreman was sent
in at the last moment to rest the case away
from Rai's attorneys and force a plea of guilty, which
is precisely what he did and what he was paid
to do. The evidence of this is overwhelming. As a nation,
we choose what we want to remember. Each year, on

(39:16):
the third Monday of January, we celebrate the birth of
doctor Martin Luther King with a national holiday that bears
his name. Newspapers and magazines publish flattering portraits and gush
about what a great man he was, conveniently forgetting the
awful things they said about him after he spoke against
the war. Now they remember him not as the traitor

(39:36):
they once denounced, but as an American saint. But they
never ask questions about how he died, and their pages
are used to shout down anyone who does. Meanwhile, the
man who used his public position to take massive bribes,
who every day violated the law he was sworn to uphold,
the man who tried to destroy King at every turn

(40:00):
and finally helped to arrange his death, that man has
a granite faced building named in his honor in our
nation's capital. For Tenderfoot TV and iHeartRadio, I'm Bill Klaber
and this has been the MLK types.

Speaker 5 (40:28):
Thanks for listening to the MLK tapes. A production of
iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. This podcast is not specifically
endorsed by the King Family or the King of State.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
The MLK Tapes is written.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
And hosted by Bill Claper. Matt Frederick and Alex Williams
are executive producers on behalf of iHeart Radio with producers
Trevor Young and Jesse Phone. Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay
are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV with producers
Jamie Albright and Meredith Stedman. Original music by Makeup in
Vanity Set, cover art by Mister Soul to One with

(41:01):
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.

Speaker 1 (41:21):
You can check them out at the emailk Tapes.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, please visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.