An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King

by William F. Pepper

Overview

This definitive account of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination collects “an impressive array of testimony and evidence” to offer a new perspective on the conspiracy that changed the course of American history (Kirkus).

“We recommend this important book to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King’s assassination.” —Coretta Scott King

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was in Memphis to support a workers’ strike. As night fell, army snipers took up position; military officers surveilled the scene from a nearby roof; and their accomplice, restaurant-owner Loyd Jowers, was ready to remove the murder weapon. When the dust had settled, King had been shot and a cleanup operation was in motion—James Earl Ray was framed, the crime scene was destroyed, and witnesses were killed.

It would take William F. Pepper, attorney and friend of King, thirty years to get to the bottom of a conspiracy that changed the course of American history. In 1999, the King family, represented by the author, brought a civil action lawsuit against Loyd Jowers and other co-conspirators. Seventy witnesses set out the details of a plot that involved J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, Richard Helms and the CIA, the US military, the Memphis police, and organized crime. The jury took an hour to find for the King family.

Now fifty years after MLK’s execution, An Act of State demonstrates the bloody depths to which the US government will descend to repress a movement for change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786635990
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	03/27/2018
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	991,426
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

William F. Pepper is an English barrister and an American lawyer. He practices international human rights law from the United States and from London. He has represented governments and heads of state and is the author of four other books and numerous articles.

Table of Contents

Preface

Part 1

1 The beginning 4

The House Select Committee on Assassinations report 10

Relocation and more investigations 14

2 The television trial of James Earl Ray 17

3 The continuing investigation: Loyd Jowers's involvement 20

Breakthroughs, January-April 15 1994 29

4 New strands and connections 42

H. L. Hunt 42

James's last parole hearing 44

The Whitlock/Liberto story 45

The hedge 47

Art Baldwin's account 48

Another Marcello scenario 50

Louie Ward's account 51

5 Raul and the Grabows 53

6 The conspiracy deepens 62

Military organization 65

The Memphis mission 67

Eric S. Galt 77

7 New allies, revelations, and untimely deaths 82

James Earl Ray's terminal illness 82

Enter the King family 84

The last judicial proceedings 88

Loyd Jowers - continued 92

James dies 97

Post-mortem events 98

Don Wilson's materials 99

Part 2

8 The trial 107

The background 109

The local conspiracy 110

The crime scene 117

The murder weapon 119

Raul 121

The broader conspiracy 127

The cover-up 131

The defendant's prior admissions 137

Damages 139

The case for the defense 140

The closing arguments 146

The jury instructions 146

The verdict 147

The judgment 147

9 The aftermath and a post-trial summary 148

The media 148

The spins 149

New evidence 150

What we now know 155

10 A vision unto death and a truth beyond the grave 163

Non nobis solum nati sumas 167

Disciple and master 173

11 The state's case: the how and the why of the assassination 181

Why? 185

How? - according to the state and its publicists 186

The key issues 186

12 The United States Attorney General's report 218

Methodology 218

Loyd Jowers 220

The location of the shooter - the rooming house 226

The location of the murder weapon 228

The Liberto involvement 229

The involvement of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) 232

The allegations of Donald Wilson 237

The forensic examination of the documents 244

Raul 246

Conspiracy allegations emanating from the King v. Jowers and other unknown co-conspirators trial 250

Epilogue 262

Afterword 273

Appendices 289

Notes 311

Index 341

Editorial Reviews

William Pepper's An Act of State advances the argument that the assassination of King was, as the title suggests, the product of a national plot involving the highest levels of government, the military, state and federal law enforcement and organized crime. Pepper is in the odd position of having been both an associate of King's and one of James Earl Ray's defense attorneys. Pepper took Ray's case because he believed the convicted killer was a patsy, framed to cover the footprints of various commercial and political interests that stood to benefit from King's death. — William Jelani Cobb

The Washington Post

Forget everything you think you know, Pepper insists. James Earl Ray did not pull the trigger. The journalist-turned-lawyer's previous title, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr., was more a prelude to this title than the final word. Twenty years after James Earl Ray was convicted, Pepper set out to clear him; in the process, he brought to light reams of evidence that were ignored in the original trial. The key to his case is Loyd Jowers, a bar owner who claims to have disposed of the murder weapon at the request of a local mob figure. Partially on the strength of the Orders to Kill material, Pepper won the support of King's wife and children, who brought Jowers and "unknown co-conspirators" to trial in a civil wrongful death suit in 1999. Dozens of witnesses contributed to a forceful, detailed case that accused the FBI, the CIA, the U.S. military, the Memphis police, and local and national organized crime leaders. After only an hour of deliberation, the jury found for the King family. The accusers, led by Pepper, cried vindication and fully expected to be at the center of one of the biggest news stories of the century. But the trial and the verdict barely registered in the media. Appalled by the silence that followed, Pepper remained determined to bring the details of his exhaustive probe and subsequent civil case to the public, and the result is this exacting book, dense with evidence and analysis of the murder. Pepper sets the tone by recalling the state of civil unrest in this country during the late 1960s and why King's radical activism was such a threat to government and corporate leaders. Simply put, Pepper claims those in power were scared to death of the mass mobilization King's Poor People's Campaign might have inspired. Pepper gradually introduces the vast cast of characters in a dizzying murder conspiracy that winds from a Memphis bar through the shadows of organized crime to the far reaches of national government. He carefully maps each player's place and role in the tangled web and doggedly tries to stick to a straightforward narrative. The number of unanswered questions complicates those efforts, but does not cloud the evidence that Ray was not the shooter. Pepper attempts nothing less than a rewrite of history, and a spurring of further investigation. While his moralizing epilogue on the deterioration of democracy is distracting, it is heartfelt, and honors Pepper's commitment to King's legacy. (Jan. 20) Forecast: With a release timed to coincide with King's birthday and with Black History Month, this embargoed book will find its way onto display tables and hook browsers. Reviews in political weeklies that reassess the trial and evidence could lead to further print coverage, as could the Trent Lott scandal aftermath. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

According to the author, James Earl Ray was neither a racist nor a violent man capable of murdering Martin Luther King. Instead, Ray, who later recanted his admission of guilt, was merely a patsy in a complex plot that included the U.S. government, the Tennessee state government, the Memphis police department, and the U.S. Army working with the Mafia. Pepper (Orders To Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King) served as James Earl Ray's attorney at the time of Ray's death in 1998. The Ray case, reopened in 1999 at the request of the King family, ended in a verdict that recognized a conspiracy beyond Ray but did not conclude that Ray was innocent. Pepper does present some plausible scenarios of the King assassination and its aftermath that he bases on the testimony of many witnesses, but his writing is repetitive and mired in turgid detail. Much of the book is a polemic against Gerald Posner's Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., which makes the case for Ray as the lone gunman. Libraries that own Posner may want to add Pepper's account for balance. Readers will have to choose which theory they believe, with no middle ground found in either book.-Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Twp. Lib., King of Prussia, PA Copyright 2003 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Pepper, a lawyer and longtime investigator into the King shooting, musters copious evidence pointing to James Earl Ray's not having acted alone. In the almost 35 years since King was assassinated, Pepper has gathered an impressive array of testimony and evidence that, to even determined skeptics, throws major doubt over the state's case against Ray. There is, most obviously, the verdict against Loyd Jowers in the wrongful-death civil suit brought by the King family. Then there is the avalanche of material-so much that it can tangle itself into a mare's nest in Pepper's rush to get it all down-from the circumstantial to the blatant, implicating the FBI, the intelligence services, and organized crime. And there are all the failures of the state to follow through on any number of leads that may have led to greater understanding of events. Pepper draws all of this information into his presentation, sometimes more and sometimes less cogently, yet the result is to show that something smells rotten in the state's case. Had Pepper stopped there, he would have made his point to fence-sitters. Unfortunately, he feels the need to square the King case with the evils of the "transnational corporate masters" who run the country through the military and the media-"responsible for broadcasting mind-numbing commercialization, and causing the dumbing down of viewers who are constantly exposed to the standardization of thought"-in a screed so aggressively and sanctimoniously trite that even readers who agree with the basic premise will instinctively recoil. In these polemics, Pepper is at his most inconsistent: "The silence from media organizations was deafening," he says of the Jowers verdict, thoughsuggesting later that it was a "mighty Wurlitzer" at "full volume." This tumble from passion to rant hurts Pepper, but the fundamental injustice of the handling of the King assassination survives his missteps.

Kirkus Reviews

We recommend this important book to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King’s assassination.”
—Coretta Scott King

“Passionate, disturbing, and well-researched.”
—Booklist

“Within the first chapter, An Act of State presents enough circumstantial evidence to raise questions about Ray’s involvement as the sole assassin.”
—Washington Post

“Pepper has gathered an impressive array of testimony and evidence that, even to determined skeptics, throws a major doubt over the state’s case against James Earl Ray.”
—Kirkus

“No one has done more than Dr William F. Pepper to keep alive the quest for truth concerning the violent death of Martin Luther King.”
—Ramsey Clark, US Attorney General, 1967–69

From the Publisher