Site Map

ORDERS TO KILL -- THE TRUTH BEHIND THE MURDER OF MARTIN LUTHER KING

PART V: THE CONTINUING INVESTIGATION

Chapter 26: Loyd Jowers's Involvement: August-December, 1993

IN THE TRIAL'S AFTERMATH I had begun to focus on Loyd Jowers. I wanted to find a way to put the evidence that we had uncovered about his involvement on the record. In addition we needed to learn as much as possible about what he knew in order to get to the bottom of the conspiracy in Memphis. Though we already had enough evidence to establish James's innocence, the closer we could get to solving the crime, the better our chances of securing freedom for James.

Wayne Chastain knew Jowers's lawyer, Lewis Garrison, and frequently Garrison would discuss the case with him. Garrison told him that his client had dropped hints that he knew much more about the events of April 4 than anyone else. Garrison said that he seemed to be looking for a way to open up.

Ken Herman told me that on his own initiative he had gone to see Garrison and had a discussion with him about the alleged involvement of his client in the killing. He said Garrison somehow had learned about what we knew (I didn't understand how this could be so but I was later to find out). Garrison told him that he had advised Jowers and Willie Akins (who was also a client of his) not to say anything until a grant of immunity was obtained. He had undertaken to his clients to approach the Tennessee attorney general John Pierotti with such a request. John Billings asked his next door neighbor -- black judge and founder of the National Civil Rights Museum, D'Army Bailey -- to quietly ask the attorney general to review the request for immunity, which would shortly be submitted.

I was annoyed that Herman and Billings had taken all of these actions on their own, without instructions. They had both worked for me through the end of the trial. After April 4, 1993 not only did I not have funds to continue to use their services but as a result of the budgetary shortfall previous monies were owed to them and others. Herman and Billings had, however, a continuing legal and ethical responsibility to lames which derived from their association with his defense and myself as his lawyer. Not only had they indirectly tipped-off Jowers and Akins to what we knew, but it was quite possible they had put essential witnesses, already fearful, at risk. If Betty and Bobbi knew that Jowers and Akins had become aware of their cooperation with us, we had little chance of convincing them to cooperate further.

Though I did not learn about this until October 4, sometime in May 1993 Garrison decided to include lames McCraw, Bobbi Smith, and Betty Spates in the request for immunity. It was not clear to me how or even whether he had been authorized to act on behalf of Smith and Spates, but I knew that he had represented the three men on personal injury cases. I also didn't see how any of the people other than Jowers could be charged with any crime, since the statute of limitations had run out on any criminal charges stemming from acts committed after the crime.

I didn't expect attorney general Pierotti to approve the request for immunity, since he and his office had long been closely associated with the official "solution" of the case. Pierotti was a young prosecutor in the office in 1968 when Phil Canale was the attorney general. I was advised by Jim Smith that during the pretrial period Canale kept in touch with developments.

My early contacts with attorney general Pierotti were concerned with gaining access to the evidence for the TV trial, and he appeared to be most reasonable, Eventually, however, he opposed any testing of evidence whatsoever, and would only let us examine it in the Clerk of Court's office where it was stored. I also learned after the trial that his office had unofficially assigned a staffer to assist Hickman Ewing with his prosecution.

Jim Smith also told me that over the years a number of former FBI men had come to work for the office and this group was very protective of the status quo. In fact, it was the ex-FBI cabal and others who made life miserable for Smith after the trial, and caused the renewal of his security clearance to be denied. (By late May 1993 he was getting such hostility from his colleagues that he feared that he might be set up and his career finished. He had seen it happen to others. He therefore provided notice of his intention to leave after the new year and began to job hunt.)

I had no involvement in Garrison's request, but was anxious for the truth to come out, and hoped that all of the possibilities would be fully explored. It was obvious that Jowers would not reveal what he knew unless some sort of satisfactory immunity or plea arrangement could be obtained. There were any number of plea-bargaining possibilities open to the prosecutor and Garrison.

I discovered an alternative route for obtaining immunity. A little-known Tennessee statute provides that:

40-12-106. Prosecution of persons applying to testify not barred -- Express immunity. -- Notwithstanding any contrary provision of law, no person applying to testify before the grand jury shall be immune from prosecution based upon testimony subsequently given pursuant to such application, except under express grant of immunity by the grand jury. (emphasis added)

This allowed us to sidestep the attorney general's office and approach the grand jury directly and ask that body to hear evidence on the case. Ken Herman said he mentioned my suggestion to Garrison, but the lawyer insisted on going the conventional route. Herman said that he and Garrison both believed that the story was too big for Pierotti to suppress.

Garrison met with Pierotti at 3:00 p.m. on June 3 and laid out the request, stating that his unnamed clients wished to provide specific evidence pertaining to the killing of Martin Luther King in exchange for a grant of immunity from the state and federal governments. Pierotti asked Garrison for a brief statement outlining the evidence. Herman said Garrison quoted the attorney general as having said that once Garrison provided this there would be no problem issuing the grant. Garrison submitted the formal written request on June 22, 1993.

Meanwhile bits and pieces of Jowers's and Akins's story began to be passed on to me (usually now through Wayne Chastain, to whom Herman and gradually Lewis Garrison would talk). The allegation surfaced that Jowers had hired Frank Holt, a black produce-truck unloader, to do the shooting. (This report brought instantly to mind Coy Love's story about seeing a black man throw a hooded sweatshirt into a dumpster behind the Tayloe Paper Company.) Holt worked at the time for M. E. Carter Produce Company, which was located on Front Street (which ran parallel to South Main and was the next block east. We had come across Holt's name in an FBI 302 report, which stated that he had been in front of Jim's Grill immediately after the shooting and was told by the police to go inside the grill and stay out of the way. I had asked Ken Herman to look for Holt as a possible witness in our pretrial investigation but Herman couldn't locate him. According to Herman, Jowers told Garrison that Frank Liberto (the produce man) had given him the contract to murder King, thus apparently independently confirming John McFerren's story.

Jowers apparently acknowledged having seen lames in the grill on April 4 seated at a table with a dark-haired Latino. This was almost exactly as James had described his meeting with Raul on the afternoon of the killing. Jowers also indicated that the money for the contract came from New Orleans and was delivered to Memphis in an M. E. Carter Produce Company truck carrying produce from that city. Herman also reported that Jowers had confirmed Betty's story about the events of April 4 leading up to the shooting.

There was no indication where and with whom the contract originated and it was quite possible that the information Jowers knew extended only to the local details of the actual killing. In any case, Jowers was insisting that he wouldn't reveal all he knew until he was granted immunity.

It transpired that Akins did not know Jowers at the time of the killing, but only became involved with him about a year later.

***

IN LATE JULY, I widened the focus of my investigation. I met with Steve Tompkins, the former Commercial Appeal investigative reporter, whose front-page piece on the active role of army intelligence since the end of World War I in surveilling and infiltrating black organizations and civil rights groups had been published on March 21, 1993.

Army intelligence had spied on Dr. King's family for three generations. The article noted that there was an extraordinary fear in official circles of what would happen if Dr. King was allowed to lead masses of American poor into Washington that spring. It stated that army intelligence was "... desperately searching for a way to stop him. ..."

I wanted to learn whether Tompkins, who had spent eighteen months researching his piece, knew anything about the King killing and if so whether he could open up some doors for me. Since Dr. King had been under army surveillance I wondered if the killing had been seen and even photographed. I had earlier read about this possibility in Douglas Valentine's book, The Phoenix Program, though at the time it appeared to be too speculative. [1]

Tompkins, a lanky, guardedly friendly man, had gone to work for the Tennessee Governor's Economic Development Department. I noted that he had confirmed the presence in Memphis that day of a number of army intelligence operatives. I needed to know their roles and, if possible, who they were. He would not give me their names but he did offer an observation that surprised and chilled me. He explained that he had stumbled on certain information which he was unable to print because of the lack of corroboration. He said that he had come to believe that in addition to surveilling Dr. King on April 4, 1968, the army presence in Memphis had a more sinister mission related to the assassination.

He had come to this conclusion after a conversation with a former Special Forces soldier now living in Latin America. The nervous ex-soldier had showed up with an AK-47 rifle which he kept near at hand throughout the interview. This man was the only member of the army unit whom Tompkins had been able to interview. Another member had been shot in the back of the head in New Orleans. The ex-soldier told Tompkins that he decided to leave the country after one of the members of the unit deployed to Memphis had been killed. He said it appeared that a "cleanup" operation was underway and that he had better get out.

I was at once excited and frustrated because this important information greatly complicated the picture. It was imperative that I investigate it as far as I could. Tompkins warned me that, if publicly questioned, he would deny telling me the information. As we parted, he said he was relieved to be away from the project, stating, "These people are incredibly dangerous. They'd kill you, your mother or your kids, as soon as look at you. You have to be very careful."

In a subsequent conversation I asked him if he would take me to his contacts or at least provide me with the names of people involved so that I might seek them out myself. I hoped he would become involved since he himself had been in naval intelligence and so had initial credibility and military access. He also understood far better than I could the mentality of that special community and how they operated. He reluctantly agreed to think about it.

***

TWO AND A HALF MONTHS after Garrison met with Pierotti there was no sign that the attorney general was going to act or even that he was seriously considering Garrison's request. I had therefore begun to think about ways of applying pressure in an attempt to force his hand.

On August 16 I wrote to him, informing him that I was aware of Garrison's petition, calling on him to grant the petition (or make a plea bargain arrangement with Jowers) and pointing out its potential impact, both in setting the record straight and in bringing about the release of a man who had been unjustly imprisoned for almost a quarter century. I also pointed out that the individuals concerned were effectively benefiting from de facto immunity.

Pierotti was on holiday at the time. He responded on September 8:

Some months ago an attorney came to my office and stated that he knew of people who had knowledge of the murder of Dr. King which had heretofore not been revealed. He asked me if I would be interested in this information, to which I replied affirmatively. He stated that he could not reveal these people's identity unless I was in a position to seek, from the Courts or through Grand Jury proceeding, a grant of immunity from prosecution.

I told this attorney that I would not consider immunity unless I had a full and complete statement detailing their knowledge of this matter. I would further only be interested in considering immunity if the information they provided could be corroborated by independent sources and documents. I asked this attorney if he was working with you or working independently. He replied he was working independently, so we therefore must be referring to different people. ...

As you state in your letter, your client has been incarcerated for over twenty-four (24) years and you believe him to be innocent. However, I have not been presented with any information or documentation to support your belief. I, therefore, have no reason to consider granting anyone immunity, and I will not consider any such action unless and until I have evidence which can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.

Correspondence continued. It became clear that he had no intention of considering the request. On September 15 he even denied having anything to consider, stating that: "... I have not been presented with any document requesting formal immunity for anyone in connection with this case, nor have I been presented with a summary of the evidence which any such applicant might possess which would cause me to consider immunity should such an application be made. If and when such evidence is presented to me I will consider it carefully but at this time I have nothing to consider."

I wrote back that, sadly, I had to conclude that he was being economical with the truth. He promptly replied that he had to hear from the federal government and that there was no use in continuing the exchange of letters until then.

I believed that Pierotti was seeking to make the federal government a scapegoat for his own inaction. In fact if immunity was granted for a state crime and a federal grant of immunity then requested in respect of other lesser federal offenses, it would be unusual for the federal government not to accede to the state's request.

On October 4, at the request of Lewis Garrison and Ken Herman, Wayne Chastain met both men in Garrison's office. To Chastain's surprise, Garrison provided him with a copy of the actual request for immunity submitted to the attorney general on June 22. Despite Pierotti's representations in his letter to me of September 15, the request was indeed a document asking for immunity and it contained a summary of the evidence on which the request was based.

It stated that Jowers (designated as Witness Green) was approached before the assassination and offered money to locate a person to assassinate Dr. King. The funds would come from another city through a local person or persons. Jowers, who had close contact with some persons in the MPD, was advised that he was in a strategic location to assist and that Dr. King would be a guest at the Lorraine Motel from a certain date. Jowers was to be provided with a weapon. Jowers located a person to do the job and funds were delivered to Jowers before the assassination in stacks of large bills. At the time of the shooting Jowers was stationed close to the assassin and once the shot was fired, the weapon was passed to Jowers who disassembled it and wrapped it in a covering. Jowers had been advised by other conspirators that there would be no reason to suspect him or any of the other participants in the actual assassination since there would be a decoy following the assassination.

The proposal next recounted information allegedly known by Betty Spates (designated as "Witness Brown ... a close acquaintance of Jowers"). She would state that she was "within a few feet of the location where the shot was fired." Betty would also testify that she saw Witness Green with a rifle immediately after hearing the shot. She would state that she saw a large amount of money that had been delivered to Jowers. The money was in stacks of large-denomination bills. McCraw stated (he was Witness Black) that on the day after the killing Jowers showed him the gun and told him that it was the one used to assassinate Dr. King. Willie Akins (Witness White) would testify that he was asked, after the fact, by Jowers to take care of certain people "who knew too much." He was also told by Jowers that Jowers received the gun after the killing from the actual assassin. Bobbi Smith (Witness Gray) allegedly would testify that she was aware of the large amount of money paid to Jowers just before the assassination and that she had knowledge of other details about the actual killing.

The submission ended with a formal request for immunity for all five persons.

Jowers's story, as summed up for Chastain by Garrison, was that he had agreed at the request of produce-man Frank Liberto to hire a man to kill Dr. King on his last visit to Memphis. He had received $100,000 for his facilitation and he had paid a certain amount to the assassin, Frank Holt, who had worked as a loader for the M. E. Carter Company.

Jowers also contended that he tried to have Holt done away with; a task he gave to his heavy Willie Akins. Akins apparently confirmed this assignment although he said at first that he didn't know why Jowers wanted the man killed. Akins said that before he could carry out the job the man disappeared.

Since I had no doubt that the attorney general would continue to stonewall any action based upon this evidence, I had to take steps on behalf of lames. I retained Wayne Chastain as local counsel to approach the grand jury on James's behalf. I planned to ask the grand jury to subpoena attorney Garrison, at which time, if he so chose, he could request immunity for his client(s) in exchange for their testimony. I also formally asked the governor's counsel to ask the governor to hold off on issuing any ruling on our Motion for Exoneration since new evidence was forthcoming. I suggested that the governor could look foolish if he went ahead and ruled against us in light of information that would shortly be revealed.

***

BY OCTOBER 17 WAYNE CHASTAIN and I had agreed on the text of his submission to the grand jury. I would also provide Wayne with the name's and addresses of the five people to be subpoenaed (which Garrison had not given to him) and a list of suggested questions. I suggested that Wayne ask the grand jury to formally request that federal immunity also be granted. In any event, once primary immunity was granted on behalf of the state, the witnesses would have no choice. Under pain of contempt they would have to tell all that they knew.

We delayed our actual submission because Wayne advised giving the attorney general every chance to act. In any event I believed that because most grand juries were closely controlled by the prosecutor it would be desirable to focus some publicity on the request in order to maximize the possibility of the members taking our submission seriously and acting independently. I therefore began to brief certain representatives of the American mass media.

By the beginning of December I was increasingly frustrated by the lack of any progress concerning the request for immunity and the unwillingness of the media to take up the issue. On Tuesday evening December 7, I gave Wayne the go-ahead for the grand jury submission. He was to deliver the request (in the form of a letter and an affidavit) to testify the next day. He rushed it in and, on his own initiative, attached the names and addresses of the people to be subpoenaed. (I would have preferred that he had provided the names while testifying, but he thought that their inclusion would increase the sense of urgency.)

Later that day Wayne urged me to allow him to go to see the attorney general. I exploded. It was beyond me how he could believe there was a scintilla of hope that the attorney general would act. I was concerned that Pierotti knew the names of the witnesses and resolved to write to him to put him on notice that any contact with these witnesses outside of the grand jury room would be closely scrutinized. I explained to Wayne that on a previous occasion when one of these witnesses had tried in her way to come forward and get the truth out in order to clear James, she was visited unofficially in her home and, the record indicates, then called in officially and interrogated. Frightened off, it took twenty years for her to begin to come around again. I obviously had to do everything possible to prevent this happening again. My client was unlikely to survive another such period of recalcitrance.

I called Andrew Billen at the London Observer, one of England's oldest and most reputable broadsheets, to see if they would be interested. Billen had covered the trial and had a good working knowledge of the case. He was excited. So was his editor. It was clearly front-page material. Convinced that no American media entity would break the story, I gave the Observer the go-ahead.

Around this time I learned from some American contacts that lack Saltman was talking to various media people, trying to sell the story and name the witnesses. I was also advised that Herman and Saltman had been working together for some time.

I was appalled. The privilege of confidentiality to James had been cast to the wind. Saltman had violated the rules established for the TV trial with regard to security witnesses. In confidence I had disclosed the existence of the security witnesses and the nature of their testimony. My trust was being flouted. Such a disclosure was likely to drive all of the witnesses away. In that event James would be the clear loser.

I confronted Herman. Our relationship, which had been strained since the trial, was now irreparably damaged.

I instructed Wayne to add the names of Ken Herman and lack Saltman to the list of those persons to be subpoenaed. The next day, Thursday, December 9th, Wayne delivered the names directly to an attendant at the entrance to the grand jury room and waited. He was not called.

On Friday, Jim Smith told me that the attorney general and his number two, Strother, were closeted together continually and the local FBI special agent in charge had also been in for meetings. Jim said they seemed to have a "bunker mentality." I had no doubt that Wayne's request to appear before the grand jury was a source of their anxiety. The pressure was building.

Next, I became aware of and increasingly concerned about the rogue efforts of Herman and John Billings to locate Frank Holt. We all believed that Holt was in the Orlando area. Since, for their own reasons, they were determined to find Holt, I believed it essential that I exercise control over how he was approached. I was aware of a witness who saw a black man in the room lames had rented. It could have been Holt. I needed to know exactly what he was going to say. I told them that I would go to Orlando to approach and personally interview Holt if he could be found.

I also sent them formal notices asserting attorney's privilege over everything they knew or had connected with the case.

I would bring black investigator Cliff Dates with me. If Holt could be found, Dates would approach him in as nonthreatening a manner as possible and begin to discuss his problem, which was not going to go away.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal quoted Pierotti as having denounced both Garrison and me, calling the entire story a "fraud" or "scam."

***

ON THE MORNING the Observer hit the newstands, I caught the flight to Orlando. C. D. "Buck" Buchanan, the Orlando P.I. I had hired for the job, had come up with an address for Holt. Memphis investigator Cliff Dates met me in Orlando and we went to 32 North Terry, a small transient boarding house, and walked up to the porch where we found a fairly intoxicated Jimmie Lee Branner, his sister, and Theresa, a young boarder. A paper bag filled with empty beer cans lay on one side. Jimmie Lee said Holt had not been there for months. Theresa pulled us aside and told us about some "crooks" who had been looking for Holt. They said they were from the church, but they weren't because they gave Jimmie whiskey and money and told him not to tell anyone else that they were looking for Holt.

We continued to comb the streets of the area. Later, as we drove around, we saw a grey Cadillac approaching. We both recognized Ken Herman in the back, sitting between a black man in a baseball cap and John Billings. I thought that they must have seen us. We pulled over opposite the boarding house and Cliff Dates went up to the porch to see Theresa. I remained in the car. Over my right shoulder I saw the grey Cadillac approaching up the side street just behind us. The back of my head was clearly visible. As the car reached Terry Street and turned left to go in the opposite direction, it burned rubber.

***

AFTER TAKING DATES to the airport so that he could catch his plane back to Memphis, I returned to the area that night and scoured the streets and checked two homeless centers in the area, with no success.

I was hindered in my search for Frank Holt by having to spend part of the next two days (December 14 and 15) negotiating with the ABC Prime Time Live producers. I had learned that Jack Saltman had sold the story and his consulting services to them. I saw the program as potentially being useful to the effort to free James, but I was afraid that they might name the witnesses. This would likely hurt our legal efforts, since if Betty and Bobbi were named without their consent and before their statements could be heard in a courtroom, they would probably repudiate earlier statements, or not discuss the matter at all. This, of course, is exactly what had happened before. The two sisters had been scheduled to testify at the trial only to back out in fear at the last minute.

I contacted the ABC producer. Eventually he promised that only the witnesses they actually interviewed would be named. I was told that they planned to interview only Jowers and Akins. In fact senior correspondent Sam Donaldson was already interviewing Jowers and Akins, preparing to move on to Pierotti late that afternoon.

On the program, which aired nationwide on Thursday, December 16, 1993, Loyd Jowers cleared lames Earl Ray, saying that he did not shoot Dr. King but that he, Jowers, had hired a shooter, after he was approached by Memphis produce man Frank Liberto and paid $100,000 to facilitate the assassination. He also said that he had been visited by a man named Raul who delivered a rifle to him and asked him to hold it until final arrangements were made.

Loyd's cleanup man Akins confirmed he was ordered to kill the unnamed shooter but before Akins could get him in a place where he could "pop" him, the shooter disappeared, running off to Florida.

The producer's promise was worthless. Betty had been surreptitiously filmed leaving her place of work. Though partially obscured, she was recognizable and she was named. I was apprehensive about the effect.

The next morning I asked Cliff Dates to contact Betty and gauge her reaction to the show. He reported back that she was hurt and hostile and blamed me. She didn't realize that Herman and Saltman hadn't worked with me for eight months. Since she wouldn't talk to me I sent her a letter explaining the facts. From 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. that morning while doing other things I flipped back and forth from CNN to CBS to NBC and ABC. Incredible as it seemed, there was no news coverage of the previous night's program; not even on ABC. A review of the day's newspapers including the New York Times, U.S.A. Today, and the Washington Post showed only small mentions in the latter two, featuring Pierotti's new willingness not to reopen the case but to investigate further. Here was a confession, on prime-time television, to one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the republic -- and there was virtually no American mass media coverage. The story was buried.

Andrew Billen, who thought the silence of the American media extraordinary, wrote a follow-up article on the television revelations in the Observer.

Having concluded that the governor would not seriously consider the basis for the motion for exoneration, I filed a petition on James's behalf seeking a trial on the basis of the new evidence discovered during the course of our investigation as well as the sensational public admissions of Loyd Jowers.

On the night the program aired (December 16) John Billings, who was trying to keep lines of communication open, called to tell me that they had still not found Holt. He said that the leads were strong and it was only a question of time before he surfaced. He insisted that when they found him I would be the first to know. I just listened. Earlier that morning Jim Smith had said that it was all over Memphis that Holt was the person implicated. He also said that he had heard that Holt had been found.

I was scheduled to fly back to London on Friday, December 17. About an hour before the flight I learned that Dwight Lewis of the Nashville Tennessean newspaper had left a message on the office answering machine: they had found Frank Holt and he wanted to get my reaction to Holt's statement. My heart stopped.

I called Lewis, who told me that two of the Tennessean's re- porters and a photographer had located Holt that day at the men's homeless center on Central Boulevard in Orlando, one of the shelters where I had "hung out" earlier in the week. He would move from one shelter to another since any semblance of continuing stay was not allowed. He apparently said that he had been inside Jim's Grill on the afternoon of April 4 but knew nothing about the assassination. The Tennessean had flown him to Nashville where he had taken and passed a lie detector test.

I was concerned about Holt's safety and pleaded with Lewis not to mention his most recent address in the piece they were going to run the next day. Lewis said he would raise my concern with his editor. It was obvious that the decision was not his to make.

The Tennessean published a feature article on their interview with Frank Holt on Sunday, December 19. That morning I learned that Lewis had gone to the airport to put Holt on a plane bound for Orlando. Checking the schedules of flights to Orlando that day, I concluded that Holt had likely been put on a direct American flight. I asked Buck Buchanan to meet the flight and offer Holt a temporary safe house. Though the Tennessean had not printed Holt's address, since his name and general location were public and he had publicly refuted the allegations that he was the shooter, I thought his life might very well be in danger. After all, Akins had contended that Jowers had asked him in 1974 to get rid of Holt.

Buchanan met the plane and Frank Holt accepted the offer of protection and temporary accommodation until I could arrive to interview him on Wednesday. Buck settled him into a motel just outside of Orlando.

On Tuesday, Buchanan was contacted by the Tennessean as well as by investigators from Attorney General Pierotti's office. He had left his name at the homeless center the previous week when searching for Holt, and both the newspaper and the Shelby County officials had become aware of his interest.

The prosecutor had had five witnesses under his nose for over six months and had made no move to interview them, yet the Tennessean's story was not even two days old and Pierotti had already sent a team to another state to search him out to, as he put it, "shoot full of holes" the story told by Loyd Jowers.

Buchanan told the reporter that he could give him no information unless authorized to do so by his client, and he told the Memphis investigators that he was instructed by an attorney and bound by the privilege. (I found this investigator's attitude refreshing.) He advised me that they did not ask him to request my permission to allow them to have access to Holt, nor did I ever receive any request from the attorney general or any member of his staff. They went away empty-handed.

Buchanan met me on my arrival in Orlando around 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, December 23, and we took Holt out to dinner. He was a generally placid, almost expressionless man, and as we talked over the next three and one half hours, rapport was gradually established. He was concerned about his safety, saying that he wanted to leave the Orlando area and go to Tampa or elsewhere in the state.

The next morning Buck brought Holt around to my motel, where from about 8 a.m. until noon I interviewed him. He was uneasy about the tape recorder so I kept it off, taking notes instead. I had the benefit of informal comments he had volunteered to Buchanan before I arrived, including his impression that I had some responsibility to stop Jowers from telling lies about him.

Though I questioned him repeatedly, his story never varied. He said that he had left his home in Darling, Mississippi, in the mid-1950s and ended up in the Jacksonville area, which he had come to regard as a second home. In the early 1960s he went to Memphis and eventually took a job at the M. E. Carter Produce Company as a driver's helper, going on deliveries to towns in Arkansas and Mississippi.

Occasionally he would travel with the truck to Gulf port, Mississippi, and New Orleans where they would pick up some produce and bring it back to Memphis. This was the job he was doing in 1968 at the time of the assassination.

He had the impression that Frank Liberto, who had his own produce business (LL&L) out on Scott Street in the market, also had some interest in M. E. Carter because he frequently came around to the company's Front Street offices. Occasionally, he overheard conversations between Liberto and the "big wheels" of M. E. Carter, and on one occasion during the sanitation workers' strike he heard Liberto say, "King is a trouble-maker and he should be killed. If he is killed then he will cause no more trouble." Holt also recalled that Charles Liberto, whom he thought was Frank Liberto's brother, seemed to have a negative feeling about Dr. King.

Holt said that he drank beer at Jim's Grill two or three times a week and had frequented the cafe before Jowers took it over after Jim's death. He insisted that he didn't really know Jowers and that Jowers certainly didn't know him except to serve him.

He remembered Betty Spates and her sister, who were waitresses in the grill. He knew that Jowers had something going with Betty, and he recalled that he had heard that this was why Jowers split up with his wife. He recalled that Betty and Bobbi were always friendly to him when Jowers was not around but that they were less so when he was present.

He recalled going upstairs in the rooming house to visit and drink beer with two friends -- Applebooty and Commodore. Applebooty had worked at the warehouse at M. E. Carter. The last time Holt remembered being upstairs in the rooming house was before Commodore moved, which was sometime before the shooting. From his description of the layout, it appeared clear that Commodore had occupied room 5-B, the room rented by James on the afternoon of April 4, under the name John Willard. Bessie Brewer, the manager of the rooming house, had stated that the occupant of the room before lames was named Commodore, except she said that he had become ill and was taken to the hospital where he died.

Holt said that on the day before the shooting he had gone on a delivery run deep into Mississippi and that they did not return until late morning or early afternoon of the following day, Thursday, April 4. When he reached Memphis he made the rounds of a few bars and eventually ended up in Jim's Grill late in the afternoon. To the best of his recollection he was inside the grill at the time of the shooting and could not explain the reference in the FBI report that he was passing the grill on his way to work. He did not recall ever being interviewed by the police or FBI. I found his recollections somewhat worrying, but the discrepancy could have been explained by Holt's own faulty memory, hampered by the passage of time and his alcohol abuse.

He remembered another Frank who had worked at M. E. Carter. He was also tall, and only had one eye. He didn't know him well but thought he was married and lived in the area. (For some time Ken Herman and John Billings had been looking for a one-eyed Frank Holt with a street name of Chicken Hawk. I wondered if they could have confused the two.) Holt even said that he had seen the other Frank on the afternoon of April 4 and believed that he was wearing a lumber jacket of some sort. He did not think that the other Frank was any more likely to have been involved in the shooting than he was. (I resolved to try to locate him, nevertheless, but we were unable to do so.)

Holt said that he had no gun of any kind at that time. He had hunted rabbits and squirrels in Mississippi with a single-shot .22 rifle years ago but had no experience with larger caliber guns such as that which was used to kill Dr. King.

He said he had known Coy Love, the street artist, but didn't recall seeing him on April 4.

When asked why Loyd Jowers or anyone would have named him, he was puzzled. "They probably thought I was dead," he said. Holt had been gone from Memphis for 24 years, leaving in late 1969, and returning only for a few hours in 1993 to visit a sick friend.

He had no interest in notoriety and abhorred being linked to the assassination. My impression after our interview was that he was credible and that I was not likely to see a more unpromising candidate for the assassin.

Buck and I spent that afternoon with Holt, as he took another lie detector test, essentially covering the same ground as the Tennessean's had, and underwent hypnosis. Both sessions were videotaped, and both the hypnotist and the polygrapher involved concluded that Frank Holt was not involved in the crime.

Late in the afternoon of December 23, I shook hands with Frank Holt and said good-bye. I told him that I believed that he had further assisted in the clearing of his name.

I returned to England for Christmas believing that Jowers was either covering up his own role as the shooter or was protecting someone else. Akins's claim that he tried to find Holt and kill him in 1974 was incredible. By that time Holt had been gone from Memphis for five years.

In 1974, Jowers may have been constructing one of his self-protective stories, for around this time James was about to obtain a habeas corpus hearing. When threatened by events over the almost twenty-six-year history of this case, Jowers had always developed such stories. The morning after the shooting he told Bobbi that he had found a gun in the back and turned it over to the police. On that day he told cab driver McCraw a similar story. In 1968-1969 he identified lack Youngblood to Wayne Chastain as the mysterious stranger who was in the grill and who had been picked up by the police, only to deny it to Wayne and reporter Jeff Cohen in 1972. He then confirmed the Youngblood story to me in 1978 when the HSCA investigation was preparing to call lames. Regarding the presence of the waitresses in the grill on April 4, Jowers was strikingly inconsistent. In 1982, as I was pursuing some other leads in Memphis, he apparently instructed Akins to kill Betty. Six years later he finally tried to obstruct my locating Betty as well as her sisters Bobbi and Alda and the other waitress, Rosie Lee Dabney. It is thus possible to see an erratic pattern of cover-up or attempted cover-up activity by Loyd Jowers over the entire history of the case. This conduct has only begun to make sense in the perspective of the events of the last two years.

Go to Next Page