Authors: Lamar Waldron
tor) and King associate Walter Fauntroy. In addition, we sometimes
quote FBI reports that are at odds with what became the Bureau’s offi-
cial “lone assassin” story, or that appear to have been withheld from the
HSCA. Finally, we cite the findings of independent researchers where
they can be documented. While the HSCA found that many of the key
facts surrounding Dr. King’s murder can’t be determined with scien-
tific precision, the essential story that emerges is consistent with James
Earl Ray’s being part of a contract hit that Carlos Marcello brokered for
Joseph Milteer and his Atlanta partners.
Martin Luther King’s trip to Memphis on April 3, 1968, got off to a bad
start that foreshadowed the difficulties to come. As Bobby Kennedy
and LBJ were meeting in Washington, Dr. King was waiting in a com-
mercial airliner at Atlanta’s large Municipal Airport. There had been a
bomb threat, which said, “Your airline brought Martin Luther King to
Memphis, and when he comes again a bomb will go off, and he will be
assassinated.”2
As was the FBI’s usual procedure, it had not passed word of the threat
to Dr. King. He first heard about it when the pilot finally announced they
were ready for takeoff and blamed the delay on the threat against King.
Since Dr. King already knew he was going into a very tense situation in
Memphis, the bomb threat only magnified the strain he was under.3
When Dr. King finally arrived in Memphis, he checked into the Lor-
raine Motel, where, Congressional investigators confirmed, he had
stayed many times before. Dr. King wound up in his usual room, num-
ber 306, in the newest part of the motel on the second floor. Its outdoor
balcony, overlooking the parking lot, was typical for the time. The motel
faced Mulberry Street, and anyone driving past it would have a per-
fect view of someone on the balcony. Across Mulberry Street were the
backs of several older two- and three-story buildings, which faced a
run-down portion of South Main Street. Numerous rear windows in
those buildings also had an unobstructed view of the Lorraine Motel
balcony.
More unobstructed views of the balcony were available from the roof
and rear windows of Fire Station 2, where undercover black Memphis
police officers, including Ed Redditt of the intelligence unit, had set up
surveillance on Dr. King. Because of police behavior on his last visit
(and before that, against the strikers), as well as his stance against armed
security, Dr. King’s group had refused protection from the Memphis
Police. In addition, some of Dr. King’s aides believed it was sometimes
hard to tell whether local police were providing protection or running
surveillance.
Military Intelligence was also running surveillance on Dr. King, and
the FBI had an informant in Dr. King’s entourage, later identified as an
SCLC financial official. When Dr. King met with the young black mili-
tant group known as the Invaders, on the afternoon of April 3, he didn’t
realize that one of them—Marrell McCullough—was also an undercover
Memphis police officer.4
Dr. King was under intense surveillance for two reasons. First was to
monitor his actions leading up to his next large demonstration, planned
for April 8. City officials were trying to stop the march with an injunc-
tion, which federal marshals served to Dr. King at 2:30 PM on April 3.
Second was to protect him, since an attack on Dr. King by racists or even
black militants (not a realistic threat, except in the minds of some white
city officials) could trigger more rioting in a downtown business district
still recovering from its previous turmoil.5
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
After an exhausting day of meetings, punctuated by thunderstorms
and reports of tornadoes, Dr. King learned that the crowd expected
for that night’s speech at the Mason Temple was far smaller than his
last crowd, only about two thousand people. Worried that Dr. King’s
support would appear to be sagging, the group instead sent Ralph
David Abernathy to speak, accompanied by Jesse Jackson and Andrew
Young. But the crowd was obviously disappointed by King’s absence,
so, despite the worsening weather (tornadoes would kill five people
and demolish forty mobile homes around Memphis that night), Dr. King
went to speak.
The last speech Martin Luther King ever gave, on April 3, 1968, was
one of his greatest, full of emotion. Nick Kotz writes that, after praising
the bravery of the striking workers and their families, Dr. King “told
about his brushes with death as a civil rights leader,” including the
day in 1958 when he was stabbed in the chest in Harlem. After telling
the crowd that the attending physician said the blade was so close to
his heart that a sneeze would have killed him, Dr. King launched into
a litany of all the important moments he would have missed “if I had
sneezed.”6
Dr. King had delivered those lines many times before and was on a roll
that night, but as he said, “And they were telling me . . . ” he paused. Sud-
denly, his tone shifted, and he became far more serious. He continued,
saying, “It doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter.” He explained
that when he’d left Atlanta that morning, there had been a bomb scare.
After arriving in Memphis, “some began to say the threats—or talk
about the threats—that were out, what would happen to me from some
of our sick white brothers.”7 Dr. King couldn’t have known how tragi-
cally accurate he was about “sick white brothers,” such as Ray, Milteer,
Marcello, and Spake, but the recent strains made his own mortality all
too clear. King continued, saying, “I don’t know what will happen now,”
then appeared to be fighting back tears as he declared, “We’ve got some
difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now.8
“Because I’ve been to the mountain top,” Martin Luther King’s voice
rang out, even as it started to break with emotion. He said that “Like
anybody, I would like to live—a long life—longevity has its place. But
I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And
he’s allowed me to go up the mountain . . . and I’ve looked over. And I
have seen the Promised Land. And I may not get there with you, but I
want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised
Land!” His expression softened as he added, “So I’m happy tonight. I’m
not worried about anything. I’m not worried about any man. Mine eyes
have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” The already rapturous
crowd erupted as an exhausted and emotionally drained Dr. King fell
into the arms of Abernathy, who helped him to his seat.9
On April 4, 1968, the daylong battle being fought in a Memphis court-
room may have influenced the timing for the hit on Martin Luther King.
The fight was over the injunction to stop not just Dr. King’s planned
April 8 demonstration, but any other march through the Memphis busi-
ness district as well. Trying to get the injunction lifted was the SCLC,
buttressed by additional attorneys from the American Civil Liberties
Union. Some aides, like Andrew Young, were at the hearing as wit-
nesses, while Dr. King remained at the Lorraine Motel, resting from his
taxing schedule before making calls and having more meetings.
If the city of Memphis prevailed in court and the injunction were
upheld, Martin Luther King could have returned to Atlanta at any time,
since appeals to higher courts might take weeks. Should that happen,
Marcello’s representatives working with Ray on the King contract would
lose a prime opportunity. Two independent sources referenced in the
1968 Justice Department memo, including one of journalist William
Sartor’s mob informants from New Orleans, said that “the assassina-
tion was originally scheduled to take place after the march for which Dr.
King had returned to Memphis.” That might make sense, because the
march itself and the hours leading up to it would have called for very
tight security, perhaps including thousands of National Guard troops,
so getting to Dr. King—and getting away afterward—would have been
difficult. Yet the period after the march, when the crowds had gone
and those around Dr. King had relaxed, could have been an opportune
time.10
As for who was helping Ray in Memphis, one of Sartor’s named
sources spoke about that directly to a Justice Department investigator in
1968. The informant was “a petty gambler with sources of information
close to Frank [C.] Liberto,” the Memphis produce dealer who worked
with Carlos Marcello. The Justice Department investigator wrote that
“in my presence,” the named informant said that “Ray met Joe Caca-
meci at a Lion Service Station [in Memphis] on the night before or the
day of the shooting.” As we noted earlier, that person’s actual name
was likely Frank Joseph Caracci, a Marcello lieutenant who owned an
amusement company in New Orleans. Caracci had been questioned
after JFK’s assassination about his contacts with Jack Ruby, and the FBI
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had opened an unrelated criminal-intelligence investigation on Caracci
in the fall of 1967.11
Apparently because of the mobsters involved, the informant
“expressed concern for the safety of his wife and children.” Apparently,
the FBI withheld the Justice Department account of this incident—like
much of Sartor’s other information about Marcello’s brokering the hit
contract for an out-of-state group of racists—from the HSCA, even
though the Bureau did provide less important information about the
frightened informant. The Justice Department memo also names a “pro-
fessional killer” (and two of his aliases) said to be involved in the Mar-
cello contract with Caracci. None of those names or aliases surfaced in
the HSCA investigation and, like all the leads linked to Marcello, appear
to have not been investigated seriously by the FBI—at least, based on
the files released so far.12
Because of the court hearing that could cause Dr. King to leave Mem-
phis as early as the night of April 4, the plan to kill King had to move fast.
The Memphis newspaper said Dr. King was at the Lorraine Motel, and a
radio news report even gave his room number. A copy of that Memphis
newspaper, with Ray’s fingerprint on it, would later be found among
his possessions. According to the 1977 Justice Department Task Force,
“Ray left the Rebel Inn before the 1 PM checkout time.” His next two
hours are unaccounted for. Then, “between 3:00 and 3:30 PM . . . a man
generally answering Ray’s description rented” a room at a flophouse “at
422 1/2 South Main Street.” The back of that building faced the Lorraine
Motel. Ray turned down the first room he was offered, on the first floor,
but took the next room offered, on the second floor, without bothering
to look inside first to check the view. If he had, he would have seen that
to have an unobstructed shot at the balcony in front of Dr. King’s room,
he would have to lean far out of the window. Before accepting the room,
Ray also didn’t check out the shared bathroom at the end of the hall,
which did have an unobstructed view.13
The fact that Ray didn’t inspect either view first could indicate that
he had been directed to the rooming house by someone who had, or
who at least was more familiar with Memphis than Ray. Like Atlanta,
Memphis was a city Ray had never visited before. Typically, in order
to avoid problems, an out-of-town hit man will be given information
about where to go and what to do. Ray registered under the name “John
Willard,” and was later unable to explain how he came up with the
alias. “John Willard,” like “Eric S. Galt,” was one of four Toronto names
of real men that Ray used as aliases. They all lived within two miles of
each other, and three of the men generally resembled Ray. All four were
legitimate businessmen with no criminal past, whose identities had been
stolen—most likely by the Montreal/Toronto arm of the Marcello-linked
drug network Ray had worked for, which also specialized in providing
fake identities.14
Ray then left the rooming house and drove his Mustang to the York
Arms Company store at 162 South Main Street, where, he later admit-
ted, he bought “a pair of Bushnell binoculars for . . . $41.55.” According
to the Justice Department, Ray returned to the rooming house “by 5
PM at the latest [and] parked his Mustang” approximately four spaces
south of the entrance to his flophouse. Ray also “had taken his zipper
bag and bedspread to Room 5-B.” However, Ray may have done more
than buy binoculars while he was out—he could have also called Frank
C. Liberto.15
On the afternoon of April 4, 1968, at approximately 4:30 PM, civil rights
worker John McFerren entered Frank Liberto’s produce market to buy
stock for his “small country grocery store [located] in the hills [more