The Conspiracy to Murder King, Part 3

Raoul and the Four Aliases

In the first part of this series, I tried to show that James Earl Ray was never allowed a trial. This was largely due to the fact that, for reasons unknown, Percy Foreman sold out his client. In part two, I tried to show that there was strong forensic evidence—dealing with fingerprints and ballistics-- to indicate that, if there had been a trial, Ray would have been acquitted. I want to begin Part 3 by going over an attempt to reopen the King case in criminal court that was thwarted at the point where the rifle tests would have been completed with finality.

William Pepper was a British barrister who knew Martin Luther King from the sixties. His photo essay entitled “The Children Of Vietnam” in Ramparts was part of the inspiration for King to speak out strongly against the war in Indochina. (Pepper, Orders to Kill, pp. 4-5). Pepper did not immediately enter the case but he followed the developments, especially the books produced by Harold Weisberg in 1971, Frame Up, and the volume co-written by Mark Lane with Dick Gregory in 1977, Code Name Zorro. The latter caused him to follow the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) inquiry. Like many others, he was disappointed with the results of that investigation. He decided to begin his own inquiry.

Pepper eventually signed a contract with Thames Television for a televised mock trial of Ray. It was produced by Jack Saltman and televised in America via HBO. Unlike the following televised mock trial in the JFK case featuring the late Vincent Bugliosi, this production really resembled a trial since, for one, it had a live defendant. Pepper won the case. And it was during his preparations that he got information about waitress Betty Spates. She said Ray was innocent and she knew that her boss, Loyd Jowers, was out in the back somehow involved in the murder. Jowers’ establishment, Jim’s Grill, was below the north wing of Bessie Brewers’s rooming house where, as we have seen, James Earl Ray had taken a room under an alias. (Pepper, p. 195)

This mock trial inspired Pepper to try and get a reopening of the King case in criminal court in Memphis. What followed was perhaps the most gripping and headline grabbing case of Tennessee jurisprudence since the Scopes trial. In retrospect, it is amazing that Pepper and Judge Joe Brown got as close to a reopening of the case as they did. This struggle went on through the summer, fall and into the winter of 1997. When Brown was on the verge of getting definitive rifle tests, the entire Tennessee legal establishment, and the MSM, rose up in fury against him and Pepper. The distinct parallels were with what happened to Jim Garrison and Richard Sprague in the JFK case. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 449-60) In a stunning series of events, Brown was taken off the case, and Pepper was dislodged from his position as defense counsel. This is how determined the Power Elite was to stop those conclusive rifle tests from getting into evidence. Since that would have allowed Brown to order a reopening of the King case.

This was all capped with the finality of James Earl Ray’s death on April 23, 1998. One of the reasons he passed away was because the governor of the state would not allow him to leave Tennessee for a liver transplant. (ibid, p. 460)

But the King family did not give up. They decided to sue in civil court, with the defendant being Jowers. The media avoidance behind this trial tells us all we need to know about the MSM and the assassinations of the sixties. The only American journalist who was in the court room each day was Jim Douglass, for Probe Magazine. In its earliest incarnation, Court TV was supposed to cover the trial. They pulled out, with all their equipment, a few days before. According to Douglass, the local newspaper reporter for the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Marc Perrusquia, would wait for him each day outside, since he apparently was not allowed to attend.

In retrospect, there was a reason for these MSM avoidance tactics. Off the previous mock trial, the Power Elite knew the King family would likely win its case—which they did. With the evidence from the trial , plus other revelations that have taken place—for example, the work of John Avery Emison—it is now possible to construct a schema which fits the evidence in the King case.

The Tennessee authorities say that, after taking one deadly shot, Ray threw his weapon down in front of Canipe’s novelty store—along with other incriminating items. He then escaped in his Mustang and drove 380 miles to Atlanta. He left the car in Atlanta. He then took a bus north, crossing into Canada. He somehow obtained a legitimate birth certificate of a Toronto policeman and used it to attain a passport. While waiting for that passport, he rented out two rooms. Once he had the passport, he flew to London and on to Lisbon, Portugal. On the return to London, he was arrested by Scotland Yard at Heathrow Airport.

As pointed out by both Philip Melanson and Emison, the strongest indication that there was a high level conspiracy was Ray’s access to four aliases: Paul Bridgeman, Eric Galt, Ramon Sneyd and John Willard. All four of these men lived within a five mile radius of each other in the suburbs of Toronto. At that time, Toronto had a population of almost 2.5 million. And there is no evidence of Ray ever being there prior to the King assassination. But that is not all. All of these men shared physical similarities to each other and with Ray. When one sees a comparison photographic panel it is a bit startling. (Philip Melanson,The Martin Luther King Assassination, p. 192)

As Emison notes, what makes this even odder is that Ray was using the Galt alias before the assassination. (Emison, p. 407) If he had never been to Toronto, how could he have known of the man? But further, the real Eric Galt had a top Canadian security clearance since his employer, Union Carbide, did classified work for the American military.

And as Emison points out, there is something even stranger about Ray’s use of the Galt alias. Prior to 1966 Galt penned his signature with his middle name—St. Vincent—initialed as “St. V.” He also used small circles as periods after the 2 abbreviations. Because the circles were not closed it made his middle name appear to be S-T-A-R-V-O.

Perhaps because of the confusion, Galt stopped signing his name like this after 1965. But yet, Ray used the pre-1966 middle name of Starvo! (Emison, p. 414) In 1965 Ray was in prison. He did not escape until 1967. Yet he used the outdated version of the man’s name. I should add: Galt eventually switched over to the simpler, Eric S. Galt. So did Ray. ( Melanson, p. 36)

Further, both Galt and Ray had scars on their right palm and above the left eyebrow. (Emison, p. 408). In other words, it would be quite easy to use Galt’s identity by just switching pictures with his papers.

Ramon George Sneyd was a long time Toronto policeman. In April of 1968 James Earl Ray--on his first time in the city--got a copy of Sneyd’s birth certificate. He then used that to apply for a Canadian passport--in Sneyd’s name with Ray’s picture on the application. (Emison, p. 408)

While waiting for the passport, Ray rented two different rooming house addresses in the space of about eight days. At each address, Ray had a visitor call for him. (Again, recall that Ray had never been to Toronto before.). But further, each caller used one of Ray’s aliases on their visits, ones which he had just begun to use and under which he had rented the rooms. (Emison, p. 424)

On April 25^th, someone came to visit Ray while Ray was using the alias of Bridgeman. His landlady described the man as short and slight. She also said he held up a white envelope with the name of Bridgeman typed on the envelope. Ray was not around at the time. (ibid) Now, the use of the white envelope with that name on it, is quite interesting. Because it was necessary for Ray to retrieve the passport as soon as he could. But apparently he did not have the funds to do so. As we shall see, this is what the two visits seem to be about.

A few days later, at a different address, another man appeared. He was not at all like the first man. This man was much bigger--the landlady called him fat. At the door he asked Mrs. Loo if Mr. Sneyd was there. (Please note, these are two different people who both know Ray by his differing aliases that are calling for him.) When told of the visitor, Ray did not ask Mrs. Loo to just relay a message, or for her to handle any package or mail. These are things Ray should have done since he was on the lam from a massive FBI manhunt; after all, he could have been arrested. But he didn’t do either. He came out of his room and met the man at the door. They spoke briefly and the man gave Ray a white envelope.

That same afternoon, Ray went to the travel agency to pay for a round trip ticket to London; he then picked up the passport that had been ready for a week. (Emison, p. 425)

The Toronto police knew that they could not tell this simple story. It was too suspicious, especially when combined with the previous visitor. So they had the second visitor say that he had found a lost job application for Ray and was returning it. For more than one reason, this is not credible. First, why would the uneducated Ray be looking for a job when he needed to get out of Toronto to Europe as soon as possible? Did he plan on saving up for the 340 dollar round trip ticket he ordered? Second, the messenger said that Sneyd’s name and address were typed on the envelope; yet Ray had no typewriter and no access to one. Third, if this innocent explanation was true, why was the man fearful for his life when author Philip Melanson located him? That state of mind would be much more logical if he was delivering funds to Ray, which is what Ray was reacting to that afternoon. (Emison, pp. 425-26)

After going through the myriad mysteries of these Canadian aliases, John Avery Emison does not buy the idea that they were simply accidental and Ray came up with them himself by searching through old newspapers. Emison dismisses that idea. He believes that it was James Earl Ray’s handler, Raoul, who gave him the aliases.

The idea put forth by those who advocate for the official story is that Raoul did not really exist and that Ray made him up. That theorem does not hold water today. Why? First, there was the interview that James Douglass did with Donald Wilson. Wilson was a 25 year old FBI agent at the time of the King murder serving in the Atlanta office. He was the first person to be sent to retrieve Ray’s abandoned Mustang in an Atlanta parking lot. In the car he found two pieces of note paper with the name Raoul on them. (It is at times denoted as Raul.) It is important to understand that Wilson had no idea who that person was when he discovered his name twice in an envelope that fell out of the car. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 484)

In a video-taped interview played at the civil trial, Sidney Carthew, a British merchant seaman said that he had met Raoul in Montreal in 1967. Raoul had offered to sell him guns. He believed that the man the gunrunner was with fit the description of Ray. This perfectly fits into the story Ray was telling for decades. (Ibid, p. 501)

Third, as Emison cogently points out, the last 15 months of his life were the most prosperous James Earl Ray ever had. Prior to that Ray had little money. When he escaped from prison he bussed tables and washed dishes in Chicago for a few weeks. But when he came back from Canada in the summer of 1967 and visited Chicago, things had changed. He was buying his brothers steaks, whiskey and call girls. (Emison, p. 493) And that’s just for starters. The dishwasher was now able to purchase and register a white Mustang, obtain an Alabama driver’s license, take bartending and dance lessons, travel to Mexico, rent a room in Los Angeles and, while there, he got plastic surgery on his nose. (Emison, p. 406; Pepper, p. 74)

There is no other logical way to explain this written, eyewitness and circumstantial evidence. These were paid for by the missions he performed for Raoul. We will now see how that figure fits into the conspiracy.