describes what it was like having dr. martin luther king, jr., as a father, the void left by his father s death and the murder of his grandmother. he also discusses of the electricity of dr. king and the strength he grew from his mother loretta scott king. this program originally aired in 2003. it s just under an hour. [applause] well, first of all, i want to say how happy i am to be here in pasadena and at roman s primarily because this is really my inaugural book-signing if you will. so hopefully you will feel as excited as i feel about the first part of my book tour. also, this is the very special time of year as we begin to reflect on my father s birth, his actual birthday being january the 15th and, of course, celebrating as a national holiday on the 20th next monday. so as we pause as the nation s pauses to reflect on these teachings, principles and life s work, i hope that we will all remember that the message he left for us is really truly rooted being our best
trier of fact from get to the bottom of this. overruled. and judge brown ruled in 1997 that they could retest the weapon. ballistics experts fired ray s weapon 18 times to see if they could get a match. the results were inconclusive. but farris says one of those experts privately told him something else. it was said to me that while no conclusions could be made, if they were pressed for a conclusion, they would err on the side of it not being the gun. ray never got a new trial. william pepper turned to the king family one last time. they filed a civil case against lloyd jowers and other unknown co-conspirators. all the evidence from the beginning to the end how martin king was killed and why he was killed and who coordinated the killing came out under oath. in less than an hour, the jury ruled that lloyd jowers, not james earl ray, was involved
there to work with the police first thing the next morning to clean that whole place up. 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. on the evening of the assassination, pepper says an employee went looking for jowers. and she hears this shot, boom. and she stops. and then she continues and she goes to the open door, all of a sudden she sees lloyd running toward her carrying this rifle, still smoking. pepper says lloyd jowers didn t actually shoot dr. king, he helped get rid of the gun as a favor to a mafia connection who came to see him. and gave him $100,000 and said, your place is going to be needed for the killing of that nigger, king. pepper believes the mafia was in cahoots with the federal government and local police who wanted king dead. jowers told him as much. it was planned in his place, there were logistical meetings there with police officers, and he was given a role to do in
four days after her husband s death. that leaves the uncertain story of jim s grill and its owner, lloyd jowers. he was usually drunk and, of course, that place was a hole in the wall. we made inspections back in them days. cockroaches everywhere. at the moment of the murder, there were 12 customers inside jim s grill. police came by and locked the door for three hours. they took names and questioned everyone before they left. not only did jowers tell police he saw nothing unusual, his customers said the same thing. that, to me, is the flaw in his testimony that you just can t get past because you then have to say all these other people are mistaken, and there s no basis to believe that they are. lloyd jowers told different stories to different people. first it was a black man who shot king. then later a memphis police captain, conveniently deceased. jowers did not testify in the civil case.