in this fbi interview, the seller said ray paid him in cash, mostly 20s. he paid that guy $2,000 in 20s, that would be a lot of money. there s another dot connected to the bank of alton. reporter: detective john light thinks that money came from the robbery. if so, enough to keep ray on the run for another year. $30,000 back in 1967 was a lot of money. but james earl ray claims the money came from the mysterious raoul. never a last name. he just called that name raoul. that s the only name they called him. ray got an alabama driver s license under his alias, eric starvo galt. he registered the mustang under the same name. with this new license plate and his new identity, ray left for mexico. this is james earl ray that fall in puerto vallarta where he spent much of his time with a prostitute. by mid-november, ray on the right moved on to los angeles and settled into a low-rent hotel on hollywood boulevard. he took dancing lessons and bar tending lessons, but perhaps mor
we never, never were able to evoke any kind of reaction from james earl ray one way or the other about dr. king or his life or otherwise. in july, in the middle of the night, ray was flown back to memphis in handcuffs. finally, next march, ray appeared in a memphis courtroom in a deal to avoid the death penalty. the judge asked him this you re accused of murder in the first degree charged in the indictment and are compromising and settling your case on an agreed punishment of 99 years in the state penitentiary. is this what you want to do? but only two weeks later from prison, ray would send a letter to the judge trying to undo that plea deal, opening the door to decades of doubt. still to come, a dramatic
i also thought i could establish i was at a service station during the time when martin luther king was shot. this is the only time james earl ray has ever testified publicly under oath. he described the mystery man he called raoul at a 1978 hearing of the house assassinations committee. he was approximately 35 to 40 years old, 5 9 with dark hair and a red tint, and he spoke with a slight spanish accent. john campbell was the final prosecutor who fought all of ray s appeals. he maintains the biggest problem with the raoul story was, it kept changing. why are you convinced there s no raoul? he started out as a red-haired french canadian. by the time we get into the late chapters of the story, it s raoul and he s from central america and he s a cia operative or gun-runner or god knows what. nobody was ever found to place a raoul with james earl ray in atlanta or birmingham or memphis. nobody ever sees raoul, other
william pepper says there were military intelligence officers on the roof of the fire station next door. according to him, they took one incredible photo. one of the guys, when the shot took place, took his camera and spanned it all the way around to the left into the bushes. and he caught the shooter lowering the rifle. and he said it was not james earl ray. all right? definitively. but pepper says he never saw those photos. he says he knew a guy who did, but pepper could never lay his hands on them. those bushes were in the backyard of jim s grill. jim s was a workingman s dive right below the rooming house. it was owned by the now deceased lloyd jowers. i had known lloyd. by then i had known him 20 years.
now, as a grown man, dexter looked ray in the eye and asked him the question. did you kill my father? no, no, i didn t. but like i say, sometimes these questions are difficult to answer. i want you to know that i believe you and my family believes you. and we are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail. thank you all for coming here this morning. the attorney who orchestrated this unlikely event is william pepper. as ray s lawyer, he saw an opening. and with the king family s blessing, pepper pushed for a new trial. make a statement, mr. ray. we re listening. ray, from day one, regretted his guilty plea, as he explained to the parole board in 1997. everyone wanted the guilty plea except me. for years, a number of dr.