You're general impression is correct, but you have some of your facts a little mixed up. My dad is actually good friends with William Pepper, who is the attorney who represented the King family in their civil lawsuit against Lloyd Jowers, so I have heard the details of this thing far more often than one would ever want to.

So here are some bits of info:

1. Jesse was actually in the parking lot. The famous picture you show there was actually taken the day before and was a publicity shot which actually appeared in some newspapers the morning of the assassination.

2. King was not actually alone on the balcony when he was shot. Billy Kyles was standing a few feet from him. He also knew about it in advance, and finally admitted this a few years ago on the 30th anniversary of the assassination when he was demonstrating what happened. He is quoted as saying "He was here and I stood there. Only when I moved away so that they would have a clear shot, then the shot rang out." Since that day, he has refused to talk about it again.

3. There was a local black security group called the "Invaders" that always provided protection to King whenever he was in Memphis. About an hour before the assassination, Jesse Jackson went to the hotel room of their head guy, Charles Cabbage, and told him they were being relieved of their duty and they had to vacate their rooms within 30 minutes or else the SCLC would not pick up the hotel tab for the rooms. Cabbage has testified to this in court in the above case. He also said this sort of thing had never happened before on all of King's prior visits to Memphis. Coby Smith, also of the Invaders, testified to the same thing.

4. While the Invaders were rushing to pack their stuff and get out of there, Jackson was seen by several people pacing back and fourth in the parking lot and constantly looking at his watch.

5. When King was shot, Jackson rushed upstairs, ran onto the balcony, layed down next to King, and that's how he got the blood on his shirt. This piece of information actually comes from Abernathy, who as you stated was in the room at the time King was shot. Jackson instructed the rest of them to not speak to the media and that he would handle the media. As you may know, shortly after the assassination, a rift developed between Jackson and the SCLC, and he left the organization. Knowing what we do now, it's quite obvious what the rift was about. It would not have served their purpose to implicate people within the organization in King's murder, but obviously they all knew what had happened.

6. At the time of the shooting, Ray was at a auto repair shop a few miles away getting his oil changed in his car.

7. Lloyd Jowers was the owner of a Bistro which was across the street, up and over the hill facing the other way on the main street, so that the back door of the Bistro had an eagle-eye view of the front of the Hotel through some trees and bushes. Several employees of the bistro said that about a minute after the shots rang out, Jowers went out the back door of the kitchen and came back with a package which looked like a set of golf clubs wrapped in brown paper wrapping, and he took the package down into the basement. (obviously the riffle)

8. The jury in the case delivered a guilty verdict against Jowers after 90 minutes of deliberation.

The transcript of the case can be read here:

http://www.thekingcenter.org/news/trial.html

And here is an article about the case:

http://www.courttv.com/archive/trial...99_pm_ctv.html

The most telling thing about the trial was the Jowers took the 5th when he was asked if he thought Ray had committed the murder.


BTW, what was not discussed much in the case, but is discussed in much detail in Pepper's book, is that the assassination was most likely carried out by Army's 111th Military Intelligence Group. While there is no smoking gun here, what we do know from Army Intelligence files released through the Freedom of Information Act is that the 111th Military Intelligence Group was in Memphis and their sole purpose there was to keep King under 24-hour per day surveillance. While the files released through FOIA do not specifically say that they carried out the assassination, the files do indeed say that video footage existed (or exists) of the assassination. Yet all attemps to get the video of their surveillance from that day released through FOIA have been denied.

The gun which they say Ray fired was never tested to see if it matched the bullet, and no evidence exists linking Ray to the murder except that he was staying at a hotel across the street.

Ray was kept awake with bright lights in an interigation room for 36 hours straight after his capture with no food. He was told if he signed a confession, they would feed him and let him go to sleep, and he would have 48 hours to change his mind and enter a plea of not guilty, which his public defender lawyer confirmed to him. Tennessee law at the time stated that the presiding judge had to reverse a confession if such a reversal was delivered to him within 48 hours of the confession. So the following day, Ray's attorney claims he delivered the motion to reverse his confession. That afternoon, the judge had a heart attack while sitting at his desk in his office, and drowned to death in his soup. (I'm not even joking -- that is the official cause of death.....you can't even make this stuff up...). A new judge was not assigned the case until 36 hours later. The new judge denied the motion to reverse the confession saying it was delivered too late. The end result was that the confession along with Ray's guilty plea stood, and Ray was sentence to life without the possibility for parole.

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my experience on X5world when I spend too much
time posting in political threads in the lounge...