223 Transcript – 3SchemeQueens

Hey, guys.

Hey, guys, what’s up?

Welcome to another episode of the 3SchemeQueens.

That’s the number three, SchemeQueens.

Every time somebody asks me if I have a podcast, I’m always like, it’s called 3SchemeQueens, that’s the number three, one, two, three, SchemeQueens.

Part of my elevator speech.

Happy long weekend, guys.

Happy late Martin Luther King Day.

Yeah.

And also happy Onyx Storm Release Day if you celebrate.

Yeah, we are big celebrators over here, Onyx Storm.

Yeah, what are we doing this weekend, Kait?

Oh, I’m just so happy you asked.

We’re going for a long weekend to a little cozy house.

It had to have a hot tub for Mermaid Girl, you know.

I forgot you’re just going on a little book retreat, reading weekend.

There’s going to be some cooking, some gaming, some crafting, mostly a whole lot of reading.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of girl time.

Yeah.

So is it time for our drink check?

Drink check.

So what are you guys drinking right now?

This evening, I chose to have a snack check.

So I got chilies.

Chilies, chicken, and crispers.

Yeah, I got the chicken crispers with three different sauces.

Which, what’s your faves?

Which sauce?

Honey Chipotle.

Okay.

And honey mustard.

We are big Chili’s fans here at 3SchemeQueens headquarters.

Yes.

I don’t feel like we hyped Chilies enough on our stories.

Kait, what are you drinking?

I’m drinking a little booch right now.

In a wine glass.

I like to drink it out of a wine glass.

Everything tastes better out of a wine glass.

Sleepy girl mocktail vibes.

Yeah.

I’m drinking a little diet cranberry, Canada dry ginger ale.

So cheers.

No, last year, I think you may be…

Last year, didn’t we split up a holiday Costco pack?

Yeah, because it’s my favorite time of the year.

And I was just thinking today, we missed out on the holiday Costco pack.

I don’t think they sold the big one.

They did.

I sent it to you.

The grape one was my favorite.

I’m pretty sure I sent it to you via picture text, but I could be wrong.

So in honor of Martin Luther King Day, we are going to talk about the conspiracy surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

was a Baptist minister famous for his role in the civil rights movement until his assassination in 1968 at the age of 39.

He encouraged nonviolent resistance and nonviolent civil disobedience, leading marches for desegregation and equal rights.

He is most famous for his role in the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his famous I have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Despite his peaceful resistance, he was incarcerated several times and was an object of J.

Edgar Hoover’s FBI counterintelligence program, which was a series of covert and illegal projects between 1956 and 1971.

He was surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting subversive political organizations.

What?

They investigated him for possible ties to communism, spied on him, and secretly recorded him.

In 1964, the FBI sent him a package with a letter and a tape recording alleging King’s sexual indiscretions as an apparent attempt at blackmail.

What?

Yeah.

Well, they don’t teach you this in school.

Now, on April 4th, 1968, James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, allegedly assassinated MLK Jr.

However, many, including MLK Jr.’s family, believed James Earl Ray was just the Patsy.

What really happened to Martin Luther King, Jr.?

Oh, another Patsy.

Yeah, there’s been a lot of Patsy’s.

A lot of Patsy talk recently, huh?

What is Patsy short for?

Like where do we get the term is a good question.

I just think Patricia.

Well, if you actually looked at our Instagram page, I do.

Did you drop the definition?

Yep.

I definitely dropped the definition this week about a Patsy.

But is Patsy short for something?

No.

It’s like an actual term.

Yeah.

I thought it was short for something.

No.

Well, the Italian word Patsy means fool.

But I don’t actually know.

Yes.

I don’t know where the…

But we’ve talked a lot about Patsy’s, right?

We’ve talked about Lee Harvey Oswald.

We’ve talked about Luigi Mangione, where we’re not so sure on him.

Could he be a Patsy?

Could he not be?

Yeah.

We disagreed on him.

So go back to the list of that episode if you haven’t.

It’s been popping off, guys.

And yeah, I think MLK Jr.

also, again, this is a problem with all the conspiracy theories, right?

As a non-believer, when we started this podcast, it’s like you read about one and you’re like, yeah, what else are they doing?

Right.

You just saw victim to them all.

Yeah.

So hopefully, there’s been promises that the JFK and MLK Jr.

assassination classified information is going to be declassified under this new administration, but we’ve heard that before, so we’ll see.

Yeah, we’ll see.

Questionable.

But what do you guys think about MLK Jr.?

What do you guys think?

Like about what?

Well, this is the part now where we take a poll before I give you the facts.

Okay.

I think I need more.

We’ve only recorded like 65 podcasts, but yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, but I’m not going to…

Yeah, please cut this out of the podcast.

I don’t think I realized he was assassinated.

You didn’t know he was assassinated?

Which I wish we could keep that in.

Colleen, Colleen, if Kait was Colleen, she would say, listen, it happened before 1997.

So I can’t be expected to know about any of that.

That is so funny.

Wait, I feel like I kind of knew it, but I…

It’s like a known fact.

I don’t know who was assassinated.

No, Kait, we talked about it.

It was after the speech though.

Oh, my God, guys.

Yeah, so as you recall, we talked about it in our JFK episodes that the United House Select Committee on Assassinations was created in the 70s to kind of look in to whether or not they were conspiracies behind the MLK Jr.

and JFK assassination.

So they were kind of investigated together.

Well, this is like when Megan will be like, Kait, how do you remember all the details of the books you read?

And I just think, how do you remember all the details of the podcast?

Okay, so God, this is already off the rails.

So Kait didn’t know Martin Luther King Jr.

was assassinated.

What did you think?

He lived to the ripe old age of 90?

No, I feel like I knew he like died young, but I mean, I probably knew he was assassinated, but I think that I know, I don’t know how I’m digging myself out of this hole.

Okay.

Okay, Colleen, what do you think?

I don’t know.

I feel like I need to know more details because I don’t know much about anything that happened in that era.

Do you think there could have been like a mentee be involved?

Oh.

So let me tell you a little bit about Martin Luther King’s background.

Did you know he was actually born Michael Luther King Jr.?

Oh.

He was born in Atlanta, Georgia on January 15th, 1929.

He was the first son in a long line of Baptist pastors and vocal proponents of equal rights.

Okay.

So when he was six, his father changed both his and his son’s name from Michael to Martin.

Why?

I’m so happy you asked.

Oh, okay.

This was in honor of the 16th century religious leader of the Protestant Reformation.

Oh, yeah.

Martin Luther.

Yeah.

So Martin Luther King, Jr.

excelled academically.

At the age of 15, he graduated from high school early and enrolled at Morehouse College.

He went on to become an ordained minister in his father’s church before graduating from Morehouse and going on to study at the racially integrated Groeser Theologic Seminary and took additional course in philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania.

So pretty smart guy.

It was during this time that he became influenced by the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi in his stance on nonviolent resistance.

So after graduation, he enrolled in a doctoral program at Boston University, and he took supplemental courses at Harvard.

And this is where he met Coretta Scott, his future wife, because she was a student at the New England Conservatory of Music.

Oh, hey, Colleen, have you, I remember I did a little bus tour in Boston and we drove by his apartment.

I don’t think I had any idea he studied in Boston at all.

Shocker.

There’s like a little plaque.

It looks like he was living in like an English basement or something in Boston.

And so there’s like a little, there’s like a little-

Like a row house or whatever.

Yeah.

So there’s like a little plaque where it’s like, this is where he lived.

I had no idea he studied in Boston.

That’s crazy.

I want to know how many student loans he had from all this studying.

Do you think he had a lot?

Or you think it’s over the 60s?

How much did school cost?

Yeah, it was probably before it became astronomical.

And also it sounds like he came from a pretty, like well-to-do family.

Like they were pretty comfortable.

So-

Oh, okay.

They might have helped him.

I mean, my husband is so private.

That’s a great question, Kait.

I don’t know.

So anyway, he and Coretta Scott, they got married on June 18th, 1953.

Throughout his studies, he continued to return to Atlanta during summer breaks, and he would preach at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, which I think this was like his mom’s dad’s church, and then his dad inherited the church, and then he and his dad were like co-casters at this church.

So after graduation, he received a post at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

And it was only months into his assignment when on December 1st, 1955, seamstress Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus leading to her arrest.

They’re all connected?

Yeah.

Didn’t we all take AP US history?

Yeah, but I did not do well.

Martin Luther King, again, he did not start the boycott of the public transportation system in response to the Rosa Parks arrest, but he was recruited to lead the movement.

And this is when he first kind of becomes like a public personality.

During the year long protest, he was arrested.

His home was twice bombed.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah.

And he received death threats.

But the protest ended with the US Supreme Court ruling segregation on buses was unconstitutional.

So, yay Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King and everyone else.

In 1957, King helped form and led the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to coordinate activities related to the Civil Rights Movement and he published an autobiographical book about the boycotts.

I was just thinking about Colleen, how I made fun of her earlier.

While he was on a promotional tour for this book, he was attacked and stabbed by a mentally troubled African American woman.

So, there is in fact a men TB in this story.

So, then he became so busy with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and all of his civil rights leadership responsibilities.

So, he actually left the post in Alabama and went back to Atlanta and again, joins his father as the co-pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church.

So, over the following decade, he encouraged non-violent demonstrations such as sit-ins, segregated lunch counters, theaters, and other venues.

He met with JFK Jr, led a protest march in Birmingham, Alabama where he was arrested and wrote of injustices he experienced.

And most famously, in August 1963, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom was held with a quarter million people, at least 60,000 of which were white.

And this is where he made his famous I Have a Dream speech on the steps to Lincoln Memorial and was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year back when that meant something.

Am I right?

Right.

Thanks in a large part to his efforts, the Civil Rights Bill of 1964 was passed in the same year he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

He helped pass the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

He was a vocal protester of the Vietnam War, and he began organizing another march in Washington during which the impoverished were to descend on DC for a series of sit-ins, rallies, protests, and boycotts.

It was his advocacy for the working class that took him to Memphis, Tennessee to speak at protests for sanitation workers.

The sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee were protesting their poor working conditions.

Because he was this working class advocate, he went to make a speech.

So March 28th, these protests are happening and they devolved into riot.

So MLK Jr.

had to leave, he didn’t get to make a speech.

So he said, like, I’m going to come back.

So he comes back on April 4th, a week later, 1968, and he delivered the mountaintop speech.

This mountaintop speech was very famous and in it, he referenced the possibility that he could be assassinated.

So that’s creepy.

That is creepy.

So was somebody after him and he knew it?

Will we get to that?

Yeah, I hope we get to.

Okay.

So apparently, the official story allegedly is he was followed by James Earl Ray, who was in the audience.

Now, James Earl Ray was a career criminal and he had escaped from Missouri State Penitentiary a year prior.

He was known to be deeply racist, vocal about his hatred for MLK Jr.

and a known supporter of Wallace, who was a famous aggregationist.

Like this guy was such a supporter that he escapes the penitentiary.

And then he’s living in California and he volunteered to work on Wallace’s presidential campaign.

So that’s some devotion.

If you’re using your, you’re like, you’ve escaped prison and you’re in hiding, but you’re bold enough to go just like south pamphlets for your candidate.

He checked into a boarding house with an unobstructed view of the room MLK was staying in at the Lorraine Motel.

That evening, allegedly he shot MLK Jr.

from the bathroom of his rooming house.

MLK Jr.

was supposed to be on the main floor, but for whatever reason he was moved to the second floor.

And so he came out, he was on the second floor balcony in front of his room.

He bent over to tie his shoe and he was shot in the neck at 6:01 PM.

Oh my goodness.

And died at St.

Joseph’s Hospital at 7:05 PM at the age of 39.

And it is really too bad because if he hadn’t bent over to tie his shoe, he probably would have survived.

Wow, it’s just like if Trump hadn’t turned his head, he would have died here.

Yeah.

So James Earl Ray then allegedly fled, dropping a bundle of personal items, including the murder weapon on the street, before leaving his car in Atlanta and traveling to Canada and then catching a flight to London.

And then he was arrested two months later, attempting to purchase a ticket to Brussels.

So James Earl Ray was arrested for the assassination and entered an Alfred plea in 1969 to avoid a death sentence.

Okay, so an Alfred plea for you non-true crime fans out there is when you don’t plead guilty, but you acknowledge that there’s enough evidence to find you guilty.

So it’s pretty much a guilty plea.

I know the prosecution has enough evidence against me, but I did not do it.

So James Earl Ray did the same thing.

He entered this Alfred plea in 1969 because he wanted to avoid a death sentence.

Years later, he said he was coerced and he was framed.

He was sentenced to 99 years in prison, and his story suggested that he had been part of a larger conspiracy.

We’ll get into that.

Following MLK Jr.’s death, he was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977, Congressional Gold Medal in 2003.

Reagan signed legislation in the 1980s designating MLK Jr.

Day, and the MLK Jr.

Memorial on the National Mall was dedicated in 2011.

He left behind a wife and four children.

So pretty good guy who I’ve been to the National Mall.

Yeah, I’ve been.

I’ve seen that.

Yeah, I know that guy.

I know that statue.

So it was so trippy because you walk up and you don’t expect to see his face.

I mean, everyone and then you go around and you’re like, wait a second.

That’s him.

I mean, you guys have all definitely stood in front of it and crossed your arms and mimic the pose, right?

I feel like that’s a photo op everyone does.

I don’t think I’ve ever taken a photo like that.

I don’t think I ever did that either.

Okay.

Well, you guys are weird.

You should go or you’re weird.

Anyway.

Who was this guy, Megan?

Kait, I am so happy you asked.

He was a con man, a career criminal, an amateur porn director, and an escapee from the Missouri Penitentiary.

Wow.

Now Colleen’s intrigued.

That’s quite a CV.

He had served seven of 20 years for an armed robbery before escaping prison in a bread truck.

Which, fun fact, we’re going to cover Alcatraz in the future hopefully with Birdman.

But this is also a method that was used in the Alcatraz story.

So apparently a lot of prisoners escaped by hiding in bread trucks.

He then spent time bopping around the US and Canada for settling in Alabama.

We don’t really know how long he was in Alabama, but he did have a driver’s license and we know that Kait hasn’t even done that, and she’s been living in Virginia for over a decade.

So that’s something.

Don’t call me out like that, Megan.

He goes to Mexico for a while as part of this porn scheme.

A porn scheme.

Well, I think he was going down and he was like, I’m a professional porn director, and he was paying these sex workers to let him film them.

Then he got into a fight with one of them, and so he had to flee back to the United States.

Okay, well, color me surprised.

I bet he looks creepy.

Does he have a mustache?

Actually, I want to tell you this, he’s had a couple of facial reconstructions.

What?

That is suspicious.

Also very similar to the Alcatraz story, but stand by.

So then he flees from Mexico and he moves to California.

That’s where he starts working on George Wallace’s campaign, I told you about, who was the famous segregationist who ran for president.

So if you believe the theory that Earl Ray did this and acted alone, then he thought he could collect a bounty.

That’s like the theory.

The reason he did this, his motive, was that he could collect a bounty from pro segregationists and that a white man would never be convicted for the death of a black man in the 1960s South.

Well, he was wrong.

He also thought that Wallace would pardon him.

He was also wrong.

And so, yes, while he’s in California working on this campaign, he gets himself some facial reconstruction surgery.

Again, suspicious.

I think it’s not really that suspicious because he is an escaped convict.

But anyway, my kid was very, a little sus, mom.

They say it like that.

But back when he was in Canada, he alleges that he met this guy.

This is his version of events, okay?

He met this guy named Raoul in Montreal.

He said he did a lot of projects for Raoul.

Raoul gave him $2,000 to buy a Mustang, and he would deliver packages for him back and forth across the border.

Wow.

Raoul sounds a little sketch.

Yeah.

Well, Raoul is definitely not a good guy.

So he told him to purchase a rifle and bring it to Memphis and take it to a rooming house, which he did.

So he’s like, I did this.

I bought a gun and I went to a rooming house and I left it there.

Then Raoul said that he was meeting with gun dealers.

And so James Earl, he should leave.

He says at 5:45 p.m., almost 20 minutes before the shooting, he took his Mustang and he left.

He said he stopped at a service center, asked them to fix his tire.

But apparently the owner of the garage says they weren’t even open that day.

None of the employees recognized him.

So this alibi did not.

Didn’t pan out.

Although decades later, two witnesses did come forward to confirm this alibi.

But initially, during this investigation, this alibi is a little weak.

Weak.

So he headed back toward Raoul.

He says he’s driving around because Raoul’s meeting up with these gun dealers.

And then he starts to head back to the rooming house and he sees a police presence.

So he’s like, I’m an escaped convict who’s up to no good.

I probably shouldn’t be hanging with the police.

I’m just hanging with some, yeah.

Yeah, so he tries to avoid them.

He thought there was maybe a raid or something happening.

And so he just like kind of takes off and starts driving.

And then on the radio, he hears about the shooting and they were looking for a white Mustang.

And he’s like, what the fuck?

I’ve got a white Mustang.

And so that’s what prompted him to like flee, he says up to Canada.

Oh, he was fleeing just because he was wrongly accused.

Yeah, I think if you believe his story, he’s like, while he’s just like driving around, he kind of has this like, oh my god, I think I’m being set up and I need to flee, right?

Okay.

So he flees to England, as I said, and he was using this false name, Ramone Snaide.

Ramone Snaide, what a name.

Who thought about that?

It’s a terrible name.

How did you pick that name out?

For someone, it’s another, sometimes you’re like, these people could be so smart and yet so stupid.

Yep.

He kept saying like, I’m Ramone, I’m Ramone.

And they were like, we know you’re James Earl Ray.

And he’s like, no, I’m Ramone.

And they said, okay, well, while we’re sorting this out, is there anyone we can call for you?

And he says, yeah, you can call my brother, Jerry Ray.

So like, what an idiot.

I’m telling you, these people.

So he got extradited to the United States and he did initially admit to the murder, but lately he recanted claiming that Raul, a member of the United States government was the responsible one.

He claimed he didn’t want to plead guilty and he was coerced by his lawyer, Percy Foreman, who also claimed that his brother would go down as a co-conspirator.

This is where it gets, it’s like a little, it’s all a lot of like ethical, so he was paying for his lawyer with a book deal.

I wrote him a letter, so he wrote his lawyer a letter, asking for a $500 advance so that his brother could find him another lawyer, and his lawyer wrote a letter back, this is proof proof, and it said, this advance, this is a quote, this advance is contingent upon the plea of guilty and sentence going through on March 10th, 1969 without any unseemly conduct on your part in court.

So like he hires this lawyer who has control of his finances because he’s only funding him with this book deal that doesn’t exist, like that hasn’t been written yet.

And when he’s like, hey, I need access to some of my money, he’s like, I’ll give you the money, but only if you plead guilty.

Okay.

He’s like, okay, I’ll do that.

He’s like blackmailing me.

I feel like this guy would be disbarred now.

Right.

Okay.

Are you ready for this now?

Yes.

Are you ready for this?

This lawyer, Percy Foreman, guess who else he served as a lawyer for?

No.

Did he?

Wait, isn’t this the 60s?

Yes.

I can’t.

Good.

Well, this guy was Jack Ruby’s lawyer also.

Jack Ruby, who shot Lee Harvey Oswald.

What?

It’s all related.

They’re allegedly HL.

Hunt, who was an oil tycoon.

He is someone who was alleged to, if you go back to our JFKs episode and like, you know, where was J Edgar Hoover involved in JFKs assassination, was Lyndon Johnson involved.

HL.

Hunt was also someone who was like potentially a co-conspirator.

So his assistant says he paid Foreman $125,000, that’s the lawyer, to get his client to plead guilty.

So this guy who’s involved with Lyndon M.

Johnson and J Edgar Hoover pays this lawyer $125,000, says you get this money if you can make your client plead guilty.

He turns around, tells his client, I’ll pay you $500 if you plead guilty.

And the guy pleads, makes his offer.

$500.

Imagine doing it for $500.

Well, that tells me, because imagine your lawyer just like, your lawyer can just be bought, you know?

I mean, I’m sure that there are things like that happen all the time that we just don’t realize.

Yeah.

So, Hugh Stanton, Sr., this is another lawyer.

This is a court-appointed lawyer, and he was supposed to help Percy Foreman in the defense.

But conflict of interest alert, he was also a lawyer for the state star witness, Charles Stevens against James Earl Ray.

So, they give this guy a lawyer, and they’re like, but he’s also defending the witness who is speaking out against you.

I feel like you couldn’t do that.

Yeah, that’s like conflict of interest, exactly.

I mean, I want the Lincoln lawyer, and this exact situation happened, where he’s like, I can’t be your lawyer and their lawyer because it’s like, I can’t be a lawyer for the person you killed and for you as the murderer.

So anyway, so Hugh Stanton was appointed at 9 a.m.

At 2 p.m., he was meeting with Percy Foreman advising him that James Earl Ray should plead guilty.

I mean, that’s like, you get a lawyer and you’re like, within six hours, they’ve already been like, yeah, we just got to plead guilty.

And the trial itself, two and a half hours, over, done.

What?

Let’s talk about some of the evidence that disproves our story and then I’ll give you the theories and then you tell me what you guys think.

So there is no physical evidence.

In court, they argued that there was this dent in a window sill that could have been from the rifle if the shooter were to stand in the bathtub and rest the rifle against the sill and fire the shot.

But modern forensics have disproved that the dent could have come from that rifle, so when they actually time his alleged path from the shooting to his car, there is no way he could have made it.

He could have shot him, put the gun down and fled out to his car before the first police officer showed up because there was already sort of a police presence given that he was around.

They always kind of contract it with the police and you know, you’re familiar with how that works, right?

So it wasn’t like 15 minutes before police showed up.

Police were there pretty instantly and they’re like, there’s no way he could have fled without being seen by all these police officers.

Wow, that’s like very much like just like Lee Harvey Oswald’s like reminding me like the bullet didn’t even come from his direction and he was like arrested right away.

Yeah, maybe they just didn’t think in the 60s that like our science is going to get so good that all of their, you know.

Like I just feel like it was probably so much easier to get away with a crime 50 years ago.

100 percent.

Well, yeah, pre-DNA, yeah.

Yeah, and like cameras and all that stuff.

Yeah.

Okay.

Then I told you that they found this bundle that he apparently dropped that had like his gun.

Well, it had a lot of random stuff in it.

It had beer cans, it had bobby pins, it was just like random junk.

And so why would he collect all this stuff and then just like drop it in a doorway?

It’s more likely if it was all this, like this was all planted to point fingers at James Earl Ray.

Yeah, so the first officers on the scene were asked if they saw the bundle on their arrival and they said they had not.

In fact, one says that he went into Jim’s Grill and told the police to lock down and remain calm.

And so he says it was in there for 15 seconds.

And when he came out, he had to like kind of step over the bundle.

So someone placed this bundle while the police were present.

So it’s not, it doesn’t line up with the story, but like Ladin just dropped it.

And again, why would he have this bundle of random things that linked to him?

Right, unless somebody was trying to frame him.

The star witness I mentioned earlier, who identified him, he was drunk.

He had tried to buy some drinks at the Jim’s Grill and they wouldn’t serve him, but they were like, you’re too drunk to have these here, but I will sell you two beers to go.

Captain Tommy’s, it’s kind of like a COVID thing.

As long as you don’t drink them here, it’s all good.

So Captain Tommy Stevens said he couldn’t identify anyone, much less stand up, but he was put into police protections as their star witness.

And then he claimed the one hunt he tried to, he did not succeed.

He tried to claim the $165,000 reward.

So it just sounds like he’s this guy’s apparently like so drunk he can’t stand.

But now they’re like, oh, he saw everything.

Right.

And he’s like, yes, I’ll testify.

And I would like my $165,000 in it to win it.

Yeah.

It feels very much like Adnan and Jay, right?

When like Jay spoke out against Adnan and then he tried to collect the reward.

We know that the FBI was surveilling MLK Jr.

that day.

And we’ll talk about that.

But so how could they not have seen this entire event happen?

That’s very suspicious.

The Memphis police also had a group of police officers.

And they always, whenever he would travel, again, they would come and kind of provide additional security.

But the day before the assassination, the seven member team assigned to protect him was pulled.

There were three 12-person tactile teams that were in the surrounding blocks.

They were also pulled the day of the assassination.

So like all these security that were usually around, someone just said, no security today.

And no one can say where, like who made that decision, who made that call.

But very suspicious that you would think there could be some government involvement.

You know?

Really weird.

Yeah.

And so the thought is that they were like one of the officers who was assigned to MLK.

They’re like, oh, there’s an assassination threat against this officer.

And the thought is that that was used to like distract law enforcement in the area and kind of like pull some of these officers.

There was an undercover police intelligence officer in MLK’s entourage.

We actually see him in a photo that Kait can post to Instagram.

He’s like bent over the body right after the shooting.

The owner of the motel was a police informant, as was MLK’s chauffeur, although again, he claims that James Earl Ray was not the shooter.

And the police and FBI in Memphis had close ties with the police chief being a former head of the FBI in Memphis and working under J Edgar Hoover for seven years.

And I think J Edgar Hoover was definitely involved in this.

We had no police investigation to the murder.

Nobody came out of the scene to collect evidence.

We just had secret service swarming.

James Earl Ray used identities of multiple Montreal residents that matched his appearance, and people theorized that these were provided to him by the intelligence agents.

The identification was too good, and how could he have scouted these people with matching scars to his own?

The thought is that, again, maybe he did meet somebody in the government, like Raoul, who was setting him up and giving him resources.

How did this guy escape from prison?

Right.

Was there an insider helping him set him up?

I feel like yes.

So based on that, I mean, are you guys just stopping there without anybody else’s motives?

Are you sold on James Earl Ray having done this?

No.

No, not.

No, absolutely not.

He’s a patsy.

Yeah.

So then if we agree, I mean, I agree with you guys.

I just think there’s like too many holes.

So if we are to believe that he didn’t do it, then it’s like, who did?

What was their motive?

You know, so I believe these theories have all the same players as a JFK assassination.

And I believe this to be a large scale collusion between government agencies and organized crime, much like I thought had happened with JFK.

Right?

Here are the motives.

His anti-war stance and criticism of the US foreign policy were a threat to the CIA and FBI’s goals.

Again, very similar to JFK.

He had a lot of followers, therefore a lot of power.

He had proved that he could invigorate and mobilize people.

Within two days of the March on Washington, there was an FBI memo that was written saying, quote, after the March on Washington, it is clear that MLK Jr.

is the most dangerous Negro in America.

What?

And we have to use every resource at our disposal to destroy him.

What?

End quote.

Yes.

The CIA and other US government agencies were deeply suspicious of King’s relationships with foreign leaders and his increasingly anti-imperialist rhetoric.

This led some to view him as a possible communist sympathizer or subversive.

This in turn could have led them to see his removal as necessary to maintain order and control during this period of political instability.

So Daniel Leveson, he was like a known member of the Communist Party, and he was one of MLK Jr.’s closest advisors.

So there were truly some concerns about his association.

Again, this is like the McCarthy trials and all of that, right?

So there were really concerns about his associating with like a Communist.

So RFK and JFK both privately advised him to distance himself from Leveson and the Communist Party, and MLK is like, yep, you’re right, I’m going to do that, I’ll distance myself.

Well, we’re going to get into this, but there was a lot of wiretapping happening during this time.

So the government was wiretapping Leveson, and we learn that he is no longer in the Communist Party, so that’s a real relief, but he still buddies with MLK, Jr., and they’re still interacting.

So now everyone is displeased, like RFK and JFK were like, we’ve got your back, MLK, we all agree on the same goals, we agree on the same things.

But now they’re like, we can’t even trust this guy, he promised us he wasn’t talking to this Communist, and even though this guy is not a Communist, he lied to us because he’s still talking to him.

So started to lose some government support there.

And then J.

Edgar Hoover in MLK had a very publicly antagonistic relationship.

So there’s a little LGBTQ story coming up here for you, Colleen.

Is it the lives?

No.

So he wants to gather some more embarrassing dirt, J.

Edgar Hoover on MLK.

He’s like, we got to get some blackmail material on him, and he needs attorney general approval to tap his phones.

And who’s the attorney general?

RFK.

That’s right.

And so now RFK is like, this was my buddy who lied to me.

So he’s kind of like in a position where maybe he’s like, you know, they wanted.

So what they told when they were pitching to RFK, like, we need your approval to tap him.

They were like, the reason we want to tap him is because we want to know, is the Communist Party trying to infiltrate the civil rights movement?

Is MLK being influenced by controversial characters?

So he doesn’t know that their whole plan is like, we just want to blackmail him.

This is what they’re, and he’s like, okay, he signs off on it.

Well, the FBI takes it further and bugs him.

So they quickly gather all this evidence of extramarital affairs.

Yeah.

And it is unclear if Coretta Scott knew about these affairs, like if there’s like a Jackie Kennedy situation where she’s like, no, it’s the other way.

And she was standing by her man or was this like all secretive behind her back.

So the FBI sends Coretta and MLK tapes of like that they’ve recorded of him with, with women and they include a note.

Yeah, they don’t teach you any of this in history class.

No, they don’t.

They include a note that says, wrong mom.

Here’s, this will be way more interesting in history class.

Yeah.

You are, well, I think that also kind of goes in general.

I don’t know that I think he is like a hero when he’s done so many good things, but this problem with a lot of our historical characters is that like, no one’s perfect.

Right.

No one’s infallible.

Yeah.

So I’m sure they’re like, we don’t want people to know about this because we don’t want to ruin like MLKs, but I would argue we’re canceling people from previous generations.

Anyway, the quote from FBI that came with these tapes that were sent to him are, you are a fraud to your own people.

You are a scab and a sellout.

You are a despicable human being and you will find yourself completely disgraced by what we have in our possession.

There’s only one thing left for you to do.

You know what it is.

You have just 34 days in which to do it.

You will never have another chance.

The world will know you for what you are.

You are a complete fraud and a great liability to all of us Negroes.

You are not a man of God, but a fraud, a liar, and a charlatan.

Oh my gosh.

You’re a disgrace to your race.

You can’t escape the destiny of being exposed.

You have 34 days to do the right thing.

You will never be able to do it.

There’s only one thing left for you to do.

You better take your life and we will tell the world with the dirt you’ve been hiding.

Don’t make us expose you.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, so how do you interpret that threat?

What do you think they want him to do?

They want him to kill himself.

That’s how a lot of people interpreted that.

Some people are like, oh no, they just wanted him to turn down his Nobel Peace Prize.

Well, I don’t know.

Reading that sounds like he’s like off yourself or for your beef.

Yeah.

Sounds like a pretty veiled threat to me.

Off yourself or we’ll off you for yourself.

Yep.

The FBI alleges that he’d had over 40 affairs.

He may have participated in orgies.

There’s also a witness to this is like a really sad story.

Here’s the deal with this story.

Apparently, all we have are reports from people who heard this, but the actual tapes remain classified, shocker until 2027.

I think people are hesitant to tell this story because again, they don’t want to ruin his reputation when we can’t even hear the evidence.

Just take it with a grain of salt as I tell you this allegation.

Apparently, January 5th, 1964 at the Willard Hotel in DC, y’all been there?

I don’t think so.

No.

Apparently, what they captured, the FBI captured is that Martin Luther King and a party of his friends checked into a hotel room that was already bugged by the FBI, and they were listening in a nearby room.

MLK Jr’s friend who was also a Baptist minister forcibly raped a woman who was one of the other minister’s parishioners, and that King, quote, looked on, laughed, and offered advice during the alleged rape.

What?

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Again, I think they’re saying that we have reports from people who reviewed this evidence, but as far as the actual audio tapes and the actual transcripts, they are sealed until 2027.

And so again, I think if this comes out, that’s going to be crazy.

But right now, I think people are…

It’s going to be devastating to his history.

Yeah.

So I think people are kind of, they’re trying to kind of like keep it quiet now because we don’t have proof proof until 2027, and that would like ruin his entire reputation.

So apparently what happened is they have all of this stuff, they have all this evidence against him and they’re blackmailing him and he’s not doing what they want him to do.

So they go to the press and they’re like, they want to release all this evidence against him, but the press, they refused to publish it.

Different era then.

Way different era.

So press refused to publish it.

And again, a lot of this information I just gave you that we know about, that’s all just been declassified in the last couple of years.

So none of this evidence was known back in the day.

You mean, Megan?

Yeah.

In 50 years, it was all declassified?

Yeah.

In 50 years, it was all declassified.

And you’ll regret.

Yeah.

I wonder how, that could be also in next year’s drinking game, is every time, I was like, take a sip every Taylor Swift, take a shot every time we say, in 50 years, will all this be declassified?

In X77, all the surveillance, the actual tapes, the transcripts were sent to the National Archives and remain classified.

And in 2027, will be available to the public, unless they just push that back, you know?

What a year to be alive, 2027.

Yeah, well, let’s see if we make it.

Yeah.

Okay.

But now this gets into like, why was J.

Edgar Hoover so triggered by this?

And you know why, Kait?

Why do you think he was so triggered, Colleen?

Because he’s a racist, closet gay man.

Oh, I was going with racist card.

He had a close personal relationship with Clyde Tolson that many historians claim was romantic and or sexual in nature.

Oh my.

So J.

Edgar Hoover was notoriously private about his personal life.

He never had a relationship with a female.

He lived with his mom for most of his life, and he was very vocally anti-homosexual.

Self-loathing perhaps, you know?

It’s a fancy, I just wanted to do what they wanted to do, right?

And these people are all impacting their mission.

But on top of that, was he really triggered that MLK is seen as this representation of morality and he’s like this here that’s worshiped, and he’s out here having all these trysts, like he’s got all these girlfriends on the road, leaving his wife home with the four kids, and J.

Edgar Hoover’s like, I can’t even be me and love who I love in the open.

That’s the theory.

Okay.

I can get by that theory.

Did it contribute to his resentment?

Okay.

Interesting.

I also told you that I thought maybe there was some organized crime involvement.

The motive here is similar to JFKs in that, this is not JFK, they put the embargo on Cuba and it was impacting their business interests.

That’s the similar thought here, that his threats to organize poor people, his anti-capitalist rhetoric made him a threat to their business interests.

What does Kait always say?

What do you always say, Kait?

Fio the money.

Although I would argue that this is all a little bit convoluted because the power, I mean, you have to look at it from through the lens of somebody who’s white versus somebody who’s black.

You do have to look at that through the lens because in that time, he was arguing for equal rights.

And it’s like, oh yeah, he’s trying to go for the poor people.

And like, but maybe he was just being a voice for the, like, you know, black people that were low, lower, so he could not, like, set us like.

We know him for his civil rights movement, but he had sort of gone into this like anti-Vietnam War and like, let’s help the working class man.

Those were kind of like his hot topics at the moment that he died.

But Memphis had a significant organized crime presence during this period.

They also still have that.

Yeah.

There was this guy who was like a gopher for the mob, and he chauffeured two higher ups in organized crime to a meeting with the CIA in New York, where they were offered a million dollars to assassinate MLK Jr.

But they said, we don’t want to get involved.

But the point is that we have a witness who claims this offer was made.

So they can do it once.

They could do it again.

Follow me once.

Shame on me.

Yeah.

So James Earl Ray, as we mentioned earlier, was like, I met this guy named Raoul.

And these are all these things that happened with Raoul, right?

Well, kind of people now with the information we have, from the last couple of years that’s come out, and hopefully what’s going to be declassified in the next few years, is that Raoul himself maybe didn’t exist because no one was ever able to identify Raoul.

But maybe he was a composite.

Yeah, what?

You’re shocked, right?

No, that was an actual shock.

I wasn’t sarcastic at all.

Oh, I thought you were sarcastic.

No, I’m like, wait a second, Raoul didn’t exist.

He had never were able to find Raoul.

But they think that maybe this was like sort of a composite of multiple people that Ray had interacted with from the intelligence community.

That makes sense.

And he was just an informant.

So one of the inspirations for him, they think, is Rico Kimball.

He was a mobster who alleges he worked at the CIA in the MLK and JFK assassinations.

Though he says he was manipulated into helping and he didn’t know he was helping.

He claims he was involved and that James Earl Ray did not have a partner, but he was a Patsy.

James Earl Ray is like, I don’t know this guy, but that’s the allegation.

Well, I mean, did you see in the way those people can disguise themselves?

It’s wild.

Well, or they’re talking about experts who believe this Patsy theory and those of conspiracy.

It’s like he probably has limited information and what he does know would only make him look worse in the public side.

Like that’s how you would set up a Patsy is like if we actually like, yeah, if they tell their story, it’s just we’ve set it up in such a way that it’s just going to make them look worse.

Yeah.

So he was probably like, again, if this was really a huge conspiracy caused by the CIA, the FBI and organized crime, then of course they’re going to have manipulated him in such a way that he can’t really defend himself.

They’re going to have been thinking five steps ahead.

Right?

So I mentioned Jim’s Grill.

That was the grill that was like right there that he went in.

That’s where the drunk guy was served beer.

The witness.

Yeah.

And that’s where they stepped out and they found all these belong.

Right.

That bag.

Yep.

So prior to the assassination, Jim’s Grill was used as a planning spot.

Now, the owner, Lloyd Jowers, told this story privately for decades before he finally did an ABC interview about it.

He did fail lie detector test, but ABC still aired it because they found his story to be credible and unwavering.

So he claims that Frank Liberto, who was a known mafia member, brought $100,000 to the restaurant as well as a rifle and turned them, excuse me, and turned them over to James Clark, who was a police officer.

Well, the police were involved.

Liberto assured Lloyd that there was a setup man, a patsy lined up to take the blame.

It’s important to note that multiple individuals have reported that Liberto admitted his involvement to them over the last several decades, and a separate witness reported that one hour prior to the assassination, he was shopping at Liberto’s produce store and overheard him on the phone saying, quote, shoot the son of a bitch when he comes on the balcony.

Wow.

And as I mentioned earlier, we also know that he had a first floor reservation, and when he came in, they were like, oh, it’s been changed to a second floor reservation, but no one knows, we to this day don’t know who changed that reservation.

What?

Yeah, that’s insane.

And so people think now that the actual shooting site was likely not that rooming house, but the bushes outside the rooming house.

And again, Kate can post a picture to Instagram of this.

But a witness who is with MLK, his chauffeur, says that he turned around after the shots were fired, and he saw a sniper with a white sheet in the bushes.

That this guy took the sheet off himself.

He was a white man.

He jumped down a wall and joined the mob of random people who had come out to see what was happening.

This is his version of events at 7.05 that night at the hospital.

So the first version is probably the most accurate.

This is like not a story he just came out with.

This is like the night of, he’s like, I saw this guy in the bushes.

He was covered with a white sheet.

It was a white dude.

And he got away by kind of like merging with the crowd.

It’s a great way to get away.

Yeah, he says, to this day, he has never been interviewed by government or law enforcement about what he saw.

Whoa.

Now, multiple documentaries report that the actual shooting was done by two officers.

Clark was the spotter and Strouser the shooter.

A janitor at the local shooting range reported obsessive practicing with the fire department issued rifle by Strouser prior to the assassination.

Strouser wears a size 13 shoe and there were size 13 shoe prints in the bushes at the alleged alternate shooting site.

What?

Uh-huh.

And then there’s another witness, Buddy Butler.

He was a taxi driver.

And so he was in the parking lot of the motel right when the shooting happened.

He was out of his car.

He was loading luggage for another passenger into the trunk.

And he saw a man right after the shooting running and getting into a police car.

And the driver of the police car was Detective Clark.

He even radioed his dispatcher to say, quote, I think they got the guy.

I saw him get into the police car, end quote.

So he’s like, oh, they captured the guy who shot MLK Jr.

But now people theorize these two cops are responsible.

He was questioned throughout the week by police.

He was to come in and make a statement.

But guess what?

He is found dead under the Memphis Arkansas Bridge.

Have you been thrown from a moving vehicle?

What?

Yeah.

I’m shocked.

In the chaos afterwards, there was a false radio call of a police car chase in pursuit of a white Mustang.

But nobody has ever been able to identify who was on that caller that existed.

So the theories are like, was this a distractor?

Creepy JFK Association is that an abandoned white Mustang with Georgia plates contained a torn paper that said Raul, and had the telephone number to a Jack Ruby nightclub.

Again, as a reminder, Jack Ruby is the mobster nightclub owner who shot Lee Harvey Oswald, who was alleged to have shot JFK, and he’s all in this fake conspiracy.

So why is this guy have the number to one of his nightclubs?

I mean, this all sounds like because MLK, JFK, RFK, they’re all kind of involved.

Yeah.

This is a huge conspiracy and I believe it.

Yeah.

Once we do.

Yeah.

We’ve had a lot of assassinations lately.

I mean, we have covered, I meant our podcast has covered a lot of assassinations lately.

Interestingly, Clark, one of the shooters, alleged police officer shooters, his wife was having an affair with Lloyd, who was the owner of that restaurant.

And she was his alibi.

But then later, years later, she recanted and said, when she saw him after the assassination, his knees were muddy as though he had been kneeling in brush.

Oh, that’s suspicious.

And then Rico, that mobster we mentioned earlier, claims that he flew James Earl Ray to Canada afterward and helped him with his identities, which was kind of the theory that like, how did this guy get out of jail?

And then how did he have all these false identities that were so good?

He must have had some help.

Yeah.

So after Lloyd Jowers alleged that he was involved in a government conspiracy, along with the mafia to assassinate MLK, the King family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against him.

The lawsuit was designed to expose a cover up and investigate the conspiracy in greater detail.

The jury concluded that Lloyd Jowers was guilty of involvement in the assassination and that, quote, others, including government agencies, were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Dr.

King, end quote.

So again, the official story that’s still out there is that James Earl Ray did this, but we have a civil case that has said, yeah, the government was involved, the Lloyd Jowers was involved.

So, I mean, that’s always crazy to me, the way you can have these two different.

There’s too many layers.

Yeah.

Like, it’s not clean.

We’ll always talk about how broken our healthcare system is.

There’s so much brokenness in the judiciary.

You have system too.

Yeah.

A lot of miscarriages of justice.

Yes.

So Janet Reno, we all know her, right?

She’s US.

Attorney General.

Do we know her, Colleen?

No.

She famously, she’s responsible for the whole Clinton impeachment.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

So after this civil case came out, she did order the assassination to be looked at again, and the US.

Supreme Court found no evidence of a conspiracy.

They rejected the civil case findings.

And in 1998, James Earl Ray died at the age of 70 from hepatic cirrhosis, and he was never able to clear his name.

You know what?

I honestly, I pictured him, somebody who looked like he’d be in liver failure this whole time.

I’m like, he’s probably like this scrawny dude that’s just like round.

Big belly and a rosy nose.

Yeah.

And just some varicose veins in his face, you know.

So, I mean, are we all in agreement?

Yeah.

This definitely happened.

I’m like covering it up 100 percent.

Or it doesn’t even sound like they’re trying that hard to cover it up.

I don’t think, again, they cover everything up in the moment when people care.

And then, and then they’re kind of like, whatever.

Because, again, none of us know about this.

We didn’t hear about this in school.

We don’t know about this.

And it’s just like, yep, if you just, like, you know, let enough time go by, then no one cares.

Right.

Just gloss over it.

Yeah.

There are aliens, but no one cares.

But you all probably would have cared if in the 70s, when we told you all we’re crazy, but like, you know, right.

It was real.

All right.

Well, that is wild, Megan.

Yeah.

Interesting about, you know, for the most part, all the great things MLK did.

So let’s all think about that while he while we’re celebrating our three day week, while you’ve just been a high day weekend.

And yeah, hopefully again, we get some declassified information eventually and get to see what actually happened.

Yeah.

Justice for James Earl Ray, Justice for MLK Jr.

Yeah, justice for Lee Harvey Oswald.

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Kait, what should the people do?

Yeah, this is what I want you to do right now.

Take out your phone and text three people that you think would really like this episode.

If they have any interest in MLK or just think assassinations are interesting, or even if they’re really big JFK fans, JFK assassination fans, this is something that ties in together.

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And thank you so much for listening.

Well, thanks for joining us.

Yeah.

And we’ll see you next Tuesday.