in 1997, dr. king s youngest son, dexter, thanked the man who pleaded guilty to murdering his father. dexter was just 7 when he lost his dad. 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
than apparently ray. that s another problem. it s almost like the 6-foot tall bunny. he can see him but nobody else can. even lawyer william pepper concedes no, we never found anybody to place raoul, who placed james in raoul s presence or raoul in james presence. we were never able to do that. i asked ray s brother jerry about that. there s no one ever who said, oh, yeah, i saw them meeting, or i saw them walking down the street together, or i saw him driving james car. yeah. none of that. you probably won t. you probably won t. isn t that strange? no, no. them guys are professionals. they know what they re doing. they know how to cover their tracks. reverend king s closest aide, andrew young. i think there was a determination in very high places that our movement had to be stopped. in his mind, a multilayered conspiracy. it certainly went as far as the fbi.
rooted in racism. a lot of people didn t want king in memphis. they felt it was a distraction. well, i was one of those that felt that we needed to stick with the poor people s campaign. king overruled his staff and flew to memphis to speak to an overflow crowd on the night of march 18th. if one black person is down, we are all down. he was talking, man, he would set you on fire. then we got greedy. what about coming back and leading a march? a snowstorm postponed the march planned for the end of the week. king headed for middle alabama instead. that friday night, march 22nd, driving east from los angeles, james earl ray stopped here at this motel in selma, alabama. he registered as eric galt. the motel was just past the edmund pettus bridge, where three years earlier state troopers had attacked civil
and the memphis police. and the u.s. military. no, says the prosecutor. it s an open secret that the government can t keep secrets. how could they have kept this quiet for 40 years? if there was this big operation in place, everybody kept quiet, and i just don t believe that s possible. strange situations, as in this photo, have fed suspicions for years. see the man at the bottom bending over dr. king? he s an undercover cop working for memphis police captain jule ray. he s down there with dr. king. he said he had dr. king s head in his lap. that s him there holding him. he s merrill mccullough, an army veteran assigned to infiltrate a black power group for the police. he had just driven up to the lorraine when the shot was fired. mccullough said he ran up to the balcony to attempt first aid. i never did see mccullough again. i understand he got recruited by a federal agency, but i don t
admitted bringing up to the room. yes. who would have had access to all those things? the guy that called himself raoul that was in the room. because james wasn t in the room. but no one saw this man called raoul with ray. and within minutes of the shooting, james earl ray had driven his white mustang out of memphis into the darkness of night. information we have on the subject is a young, white male, well dressed, possibly in a late-model white mustang, went north on main street, 610. next, ray on the run. trying to reach white-ruled areas in africa. [ male announcer ] this is the story of the little room