A civil trial in 1999 found that Loyd Jowers and Government Agencies participated in, and were a party to a conspiracy to harm Martin Luther King Jr. I believe these findings dispel the myth that James Earl Ray acted alone and even bring into question whether or not he was the the actual shooter. What say you?
Except from a recently published book entitled “Vindication”
Any chance you could summerize how some government agencies were “party to the conspiracy?”
I read a great book called Conspiracy! by the Insecurity Council, and they brought up many good “problems”, things that didn’;t make sense about the whole thing.
I don’t have it right now, will try to request it then I can show you what the authors are trying to say.
It appears that the only party to the suit was Loyd Jowers. The other “unnamed defendants” had no opportunity to participate in the suit and present a defense.
For this reason alone, I suggest the “verdict” is not particularly trustworthy.
Sigh…
I think the trial was yet another embarrassing moment for Dr. King’s family, who seem determined to tarnish his legacy.
Several years ago, I recall seeing Dr. King’s son embracing James Earl Ray, and professing his belief in Ray’s innocence. I found that disgusting. James Earl Ray DID kill Dr. King. I’ve seen NO plausible evidence to suggest otherwise.
Now, did Ray have some help (financial or otherwise) from somebody else? Possibly. He certainly EXPECTED to get a big payday from racist organizations in the South, The only question is, did he get concrete promises of money from such organizations, or did he simply hear rumors of racists offering money to anyone who’d kill King, and take action on his own.
But Ray was the killer. There is no reasonable doubt about that. He was also a lifelong con man, and he uses his grifting skills to con the King family into working on his behalf.
Moderator’s Note: Corrected typo in thread title.
vanilla, “problems” don’t prove there was a conspiracy. This is a common fallacy; the notion that if you find little inconsistencies in the evidence, that somehow proves the whole thing never happened the way it seemed to.
To prove a conspiracy, you’d have to have POSITIVE EVIDENCE of a conspiracy. Eyewitnesses. Documents. Physical evidence.
An earlier thread on this subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=22075
Good god. The trial wasn’t even contested. If the King family sued you, EasyPhil, for the murder of MLK, and put on evidence that you had claimed you did it, and you didn’t defend yourself, you would be “found by a jury” to have killed Dr. King. That verdict would bear about as much resemblance to reality as the Jowers verdict, i.e., none whatsoever.
May I suggest you read Gerald Posner’s excellent Killing the Dream?
I’m reading Posner’s “Killing the Dream” right now, and let me tell you, its not looking goof for JER. His fingerprints were all over things, and peope remember him renting the room. I’m not finished yet, but I have severe doubts that any objections to this are going to be reasonable.
Its amazing what how having the assassin live for many years afterwards and pleading guilty kind screws the pooch on crazy conspiracy theories. Mostly.
I thought about this over lunch and had to add:
There’s a scene in “Unforgiven” where Richard Harris, playing the assassin English Bob, is commenting on the news story that President Garfield is dying from a gunman’s bullet. He remarks that this makes Britain better, because some schmoe could never assassinate a Queen; after all, says Bob, if you walked up to a monarch with a gun, their very majesty would awe you so much you’d be unable to do it.
I think people just have a lot of difficuty accepting that Dr. King and others like JFK are really just mortal men, and that it’s possible for a very ordinary man to kill them. Kennedy and King were heroes, giants, men who by virtue of being President (JFK) or by being perhaps the greatest American of the century (King) were idolized by people, placed on a great pedestal.
It’s emotionally difficult, then, to come to grips with the fact that men of such greatness could be killed by, to be quite honest, a couple of total losers. I mean, Kennedy stared down the whole Soviet Union, right? King helped an entire PEOPLE rise above three centuries of hatred and abuse. How could such men “defeat,” in a sense, such towering giants?
Well, they did. There’s just no reasonable conclusion otherwise; James Earl Ray murdered Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and it is 99.99% certain he did it of his own accord, and that there was no grand conspiracy to do it. It’s a scary fact of life that great people and great societies and great efforts CAN be laid low if one person, no matter how small or meaningless, is willing to resort to murder and mayhem.
King’s family isn’t trying to dishonor King’s legacy by being suckered in by Ray (who, I am glad to remind everyone, is dead.) It’s just that they, understandly, are having trouble accepting that their father was murdered by a peice of shit. They believe what English Bob said, that it’s impossible, but sadly, it’s not.
Thanks for the link, it doesn’t reference any of the material that I have provided a link to, nor does it mention the book that I have mentions.
mentioned.
It seems that the rifle that JER purchased wasn’t the murder weapon.
From the link posted above:
Joe Brown is an idiot and his testimony is contradicted by bunches and bunches of evidence.
So what about the FBI report? Contradticted by bunches and bunches of evidence as well?
That’s a great perspective on these issues, RickJay, and one with much merit IMO.
I cannot comment on the supposed “April 5, 1968 FBI report, which stated that the rifle, on the day after the killing, had failed an accuracy test.” I have never heard of such a report, nor have I ever seen any evidence that Ray’s rifle was anything less than accurate. It is highly improper for a witness to testify about such a report when the report is not in evidence, but of course, the other side would have to object to that line of questioning as hearsay, and Jowers didn’t defend himself at all. Nor have I ever seen any evidence that “the metallurgical composition of the death slug lead was different from the composition of the other bullets.”
Unless somebody turns up some evidence of those wild-ass allegations, I’m going to have to conclude that Judge Joe Brown–who is, all things considered, a fucking loon–is either greatly exaggerating or making it up.
If anybody has the slightest doubt that Loyd Jowers was a lying sack of shit, I would suggest that you read through the Department of Justice report, which thoroughly documents his ever-changing story of lies, fabrications, falsehoods, and horseshit, created with the hope of striking it rich.
I’d post here, but this says it all.
I guess there is some possibilty of some “unanmed government agancies” supplying some cash to Ray- but he pulled the trigger. There is as little doubt in that as there can be in anything that ocurred in the past.
The 3 1/2" left/ 4" down sounds like a none issue, without more data. What that probably means is that the rifle, when fired from a mechanical rest (remove human error), with that particular load, at that particular range, will hit a few inches off dead center. So what? Most rifles are not $20,000 jobs, handcrafted by german sniper gnomes. A few inches of swag doesn’t mean too much to the average race-war loving assassin.