Authors: Lamar Waldron
than fifty miles] east of Memphis,” as he had been doing every Thursday
for at least two years. McFerren had originally begun making the long
drives to Memphis to buy his supplies almost eight years earlier, when
white merchants in his small county had refused to sell to black store
owners. As recounted in
Time
magazine in 1960 and 1961, the situation
came about after McFerren had been one of the leaders of an effort to
increase black voting in the county, after white officials had “turned
away every one of the . . . Negroes who tried to vote,” even though the
county was majority black.16
The following is based on an FBI report that included a detailed
account of William Sartor’s first interview with McFerren, later the basis
for a shorter 1968 article in
Time
magazine. McFerren said that on April
4, “as he walked through the doorway he heard a man’s voice from an
office just off the hall. ‘The man was screaming and I could hear his voice
before I got inside. . . . I just stopped inside the doorway and listened for
a moment . . . .outside the office where this man was screaming.’”17
The man McFerren later identified as Frank C. Liberto “kept scream-
ing over the phone: ‘Kill him. Kill him. I don’t care how you do it. Kill
the son of a bitch on the balcony.’” Another man, walking up the hall,
noticed McFerren “and told me to go on inside the food locker and
help myself.” McFerren says he made sure he “obediently shuffled off,”
playing the “acquiescent [role] he adopted years ago for self-protection”
584
LEGACY OF SECRECY
when dealing with white businessmen. But “as he was leaving the [food]
locker four or five minutes later, the phone in [Liberto’s] office rang
again.” A man with a scar answered it and passed it to Liberto, who
“was in no mood for further talk.”18
Frank Liberto “sat with both feet on the desk and growled: ‘Don’t
call me no more. And don’t come near my place. You know my brother
in New Orleans—he’ll give you the $5,000. Don’t bring your ass near
my place again.’” McFerren says that Frank C. Liberto “slammed the
phone down without waiting for a reply.” John McFerren “made out
like I didn’t hear what he said. . . . Every time I go in there I play like
I’m hard of hearing. . . . I went up and paid my bill and left. . . . I didn’t
want to stay around there.”19
In 1978, Frank C. Liberto briefly affirmed his role in King’s murder to
someone he trusted. Each morning for the past year, the aging, extremely
overweight Liberto had stopped once, sometimes twice, a day at a Mem-
phis restaurant run by LaVada Whitlock Addison. He came in every
workday for breakfast, and sometimes had a “beer or two” in the after-
noon. According to Addison’s sworn testimony, as described by Ray’s
last attorney William Pepper, Liberto “developed a friendship of sorts
with [her] and he would occasionally be candid with her and her son,”
who would listen to Frank C. Liberto’s complaints about his wife and
mistress. Sometimes Addison would even “sit down at the table” to
chat with Liberto. “On one occasion she recalled that something about
the King assassination came on the television and Liberto calmly com-
mented, partly to Mrs. [Addison] and partly to no one in particular, ‘I
had Martin Luther King killed.’ Startled, she responded instantly . . .
saying, ‘Don’t tell me such things,’ and ‘I don’t believe it anyway.’”20
However, Mrs. Addison was apparently concerned enough to tell her
son about the conversation. According to her son’s sworn testimony as
recounted by Pepper, he confronted Frank C. Liberto one afternoon at
the restaurant, and Liberto responded by saying, “I didn’t kill the nigger
but I had it done.” The son left for Canada soon afterward. While Addi-
son’s and her son’s accounts would not become public for more than
a decade after 1978, the HSCA questioned Liberto about the McFerren
report that same year. Frank C. Liberto denied having had anything to
do with Dr. King’s assassination; he died later that year, apparently of
natural causes.21 Pepper also noted an FBI report that described how
in the weeks before James Earl Ray had left Los Angeles, a man calling
himself “J. C. Hardin” had left messages about contacting Ray with the
manager of the St. Francis Hotel—the Los Angeles hotel to which Ray
had delivered drugs after his return from Mexico. The FBI was never
able to identify “Hardin,” meaning the name was probably an alias,
and Pepper pointed out that “Hardin” was Liberto’s mother’s maiden
name.22
The Justice Department memo about Frank C. Liberto, based on Sar-
tor’s sources including a “protégé of Marcello,” also said:
. . . the original plan was that Ray would be arrested immediately
after the shooting, tried, and acquitted. There was a change, how-
ever, perhaps as late as an hour before the shooting, due to a mix-up
involving the money. Either the Mafia wanted him at large until the
balance of the price was paid or, more likely, says Sartor, the shares
of those in Memphis (Liberto and others) had not been paid, and it
was they who wanted Ray at large [for leverage].23
The Justice Department memo also indicates why a Memphis police-
man might have been involved. Sartor said that “information possessed
by former [Memphis] Mayor Ingram concerning corruption in the Police
Department suggests that” one or more “officers may have known of
or participated in the conspiracy—because they were bribed or feared
exposure.” As likely happened with Officer J. D. Tippit in Dallas, any
Memphis officer involved wouldn’t have been fully aware of the plot—
only told or manipulated to be at a certain place at a certain time to take,
or not take, certain action. However, we still agree with the HSCA con-
clusion that no evidence has yet surfaced proving any Memphis officer’s
involvement. In fact, so many officers were in Dr. King’s vicinity that it
would have been difficult for one, two, or more to have done anything
unusual without calling attention to themselves.24
Frank C. Holloman was one of the Memphis police officials who was
investigated closely and cleared by Rep. Stokes and the HSCA. Hollo-
man was the Fire and Police Director for the city of Memphis, and on
April 4, 1968, he was trying to get Martin Luther King to leave Mem-
phis. Years later, Holloman had attracted suspicion from some writers
because in the late 1950s he had been an assistant to J. Edgar Hoover in
Washington, D.C., before heading the Atlanta FBI office at the start of
its anti-King activities.25
On April 4, Holloman testified in court on behalf of the city of Mem-
phis as they tried to maintain the injunction against Dr. King’s demon-
stration. Holloman told the court that not only had “white citizens of
Memphis” written and called him to say they were “greatly agitated,”
586
LEGACY OF SECRECY
but also that “there was a theft from a sporting good store last evening of
guns and ammunition.” Often overlooked by many writers, but pointed
out by Taylor Branch, is that in open court Holloman cited “numerous
threats that King would not survive” his demonstration in Memphis.26
Holloman was extremely concerned that another riot might be trig-
gered in the still-recovering downtown area, and from the stand he
rattled off “fourteen reasons why the march would endanger the half-
million citizens in his charge,” since he was “convinced that Dr. Martin
Luther King, his leaders, or others cannot control a massive march of this
kind.” Memphis was a powder keg at the time, and would logically face
another riot if Dr. King were attacked there. Holloman’s career would
be enhanced by stopping a riot, not starting one—hence his testimony
that fateful day. After much investigation, the HSCA found misjudg-
ments on Holloman’s part, but no deliberate involvement in Dr. King’s
murder.27
The HSCA looked into two other incidents involving the police earlier
that day, and found that the situations weren’t as suspicious as some
of Ray’s attorneys had claimed. One event was the removal that day of
black undercover officer Ed Redditt from his Fire Station 2 surveillance
post across from the Lorraine Motel, and the other was the reassignment
of the only two black firemen at the station. After investigating, Stokes
and the HSCA concluded that “Redditt was removed because his supe-
rior perceived real danger to his safety.” That day, Redditt received “a
threatening phone call” at the firehouse, in addition to “another threat
Redditt had received at the airport,” and yet another threat transmit-
ted to Memphis authorities by a Senate investigator. Moreover, even
Redditt’s removal still left another black undercover policeman on duty
at the fire station. Redditt’s removal was not part of any big conspiracy
involving the Memphis police, but we don’t rule out the possibility that
someone outside the force made one or more of those threats to get Red-
ditt away from Dr. King.28
Likewise, the HSCA determined that the removal of the only two
black firemen at the fire station was not part of a conspiracy. Ironically,
the HSCA concluded that the firemen’s transfers “were made . . . out of
a concern for the security of the surveillance post [and] Redditt himself
was the person who initiated the request.” The Memphis police were
worried that the firemen, one of whom was “very sympathetic with the
strike,” might blow Redditt’s cover.29
As 6:00 PM approached, the police forces near Dr. King were con-
siderable. The HSCA found “53 to 66 law enforcement officers [were]
within a mile of the Lorraine Motel,” including six tactical (or “tact”)
units, each with three or four vehicles, designed “to respond to any
disorder or emergency.” By 6:00 PM, one of those tact units, with twelve
officers, “was on a rest break at Fire Station 2.” The fire station was
about fifty yards from the Lorraine Motel. One officer was even closer:
“Marrell McCullough, an undercover officer who was in the Lorraine
parking lot,” as a member of the Invaders militant group that had been
negotiating with Dr. King and his men.30
Chapter Fifty
In a first-floor room at the Lorraine Motel, Martin Luther King was
buoyed when Andrew Young returned from court to report that the
hearing seemed to have gone well. The tension and fear of the previous
night were gone, as four of King’s men playfully attacked Young with
pillows for not having kept Dr. King better informed throughout the
day. Around 5:30 PM, their attorney arrived to say the march had been
approved with conditions that satisfied King. As described by Taylor
Branch, these included “a prescribed route, no weapons, and narrow
ranks [so] the marshals [could] keep the spectators away.”1
That began a fresh round of discussion among Dr. King and his men,
about planning sessions scheduled over the weekend to finalize Mon-
day’s march, which soon ended so they could begin preparing for dinner.
Dr. King and Ralph David Abernathy headed up to King’s room at 5:40
PM. Once there, King pressed Abernathy to find a way to be in Washing-
ton on April 29 for the start of the lobbying portion of the Poor People’s
Campaign. They were soon joined by local Reverend Billy Kyles, who
was hosting Dr. King for a home-cooked dinner that night.2
Downstairs shortly before 6:00 PM, Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson
stepped out of their room, where Jackson had been leading a musical
group, the Breadbasket Band. Dr. King went outside and leaned over
the railing, calling out for Jackson “to come to dinner with me,” but
Kyles said that Jackson had already been invited. Jesse Jackson looked
up from the parking lot and pointed out to Dr. King his group’s saxo-
phonist, Ben Branch.3
Martin Luther King recognized Branch, saying, “He’s my man. . . .
Ben, I want you to play my favorite song, ‘Precious Lord, Take My
Hand.’”4
Seconds later, a loud
CRACK
that sounded like a firecracker shattered
the hopes and dreams of millions. It was 6:01 PM.
The 30.06 slug tore through the right side of Dr. King’s face, severing
his spine and throwing him backward. As he lay on the ground, one
foot stuck through the balcony railing, Abernathy tried to comfort the
dying man, saying, “Martin—it’s all right. This is Ralph. Martin, can
you hear me?”5
In the Lorraine Motel parking lot, volunteer driver Solomon Jones had
just begun talking to Dr. King when the shot rang out. Andrew Young
and another aide immediately pushed Jones to the ground. According
to one account, an FBI report said that “to Andrew Young . . . the sound
was a firecracker and it came from the bushes above the retaining wall
across the street from the motel.” The HSCA found that “others in the
courtyard, including Ben Branch and Jesse Jackson . . . believed that