Justice Department: King assassination was not a conspiracy

Report follows 18-month investigation

June 9, 2000
Web posted at: 11:07 p.m. EDT (0307 GMT)

In this story: Wilson's allegations Jowers' story Report follows four previous investigations RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A fifth investigation into the 1968 assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has determined again that the killing was not a conspiracy, the Justice Department said Friday.

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The 18-month Justice Department investigation was prompted by allegations from two men, former FBI agent Donald Wilson and former cafe owner Loyd Jowers, who said they had evidence of a possible conspiracy to frame James Earl Ray for King's assassination.

Ray originally confessed to shooting and killing King outside a Memphis, Tennessee, motel and was serving a 99-year sentence when he died in prison in 1998. Three days after pleading guilty, Ray recanted his confession, saying a mysterious man named Raoul, and later Raul, had framed him.

"Neither the Jowers nor the Wilson allegations are substantiated or credible," the Justice Department report said.

In 1998, Wilson said he had been concealing evidence in the case for 30 years. Wilson claimed to have found papers in Ray's abandoned car in Atlanta that suggested a conspiracy.

Before refusing to cooperate with the Justice inquiry and spurning an offer of immunity, Wilson turned over a portion of a page said to have been torn from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory and a piece of paper with handwritten names and numbers. Both papers had the name "Raul" written on them.

Justice investigators said Wilson "had given materially inconsistent accounts." He later claimed to have found but did not produce three other documents, including one with the FBI's Atlanta telephone number. Wilson "gave contradictory stories about ... whether and which documents were allegedly later stolen from him," the report said.

Justice investigators also said they had found no substantiation and "significant, independent evidence to contradict key aspects of (Wilson's) accounts."

In 1993, Jowers, who owned a tavern across the street from the motel where King was shot, said a produce dealer involved with the Mafia gave him $100,000 to hire an assassin and assured him Memphis police would not be around. Jowers, who died last month, claimed someone whose name sounded like Raoul gave him a gun and that the assassin fired from behind Jowers' bar, not from a rooming house window above it where Ray had stayed.

Justice investigators said Jowers told this story only once under oath and later repudiated that version. In many retellings, "He has contradicted himself on virtually every key point," the report said. "There is no corroborating physical evidence. ... (But) there is evidence to contradict important elements of Jowers' allegations," including the fact that investigators found no footprints in the muddy ground behind the bar after the shooting.

"We will conduct no further investigation of the Jowers allegations, the Wilson allegations, or any other allegations related to the assassination unless and until reliable substantiating facts are presented. At this time we are aware of no information to warrant any further investigation of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.," the Justice Department said.

Prodded in part by the King family's own embrace of some of these theories, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the new probe August 26, 1998, even though the assassination had previously been studied by two Justice Department investigations, a U.S. House committee and the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney's office.

Last December, a civil court jury in Memphis ruled in favor of the King family, which had sued Jowers for wrongful death. That jury concluded that Jowers and "others, including government agencies" conspired to assassinate King.

The new Justice Department probe rejected those findings as well, although King's son Dexter had said after the civil verdict: "We know what happened. This is the period at the end of the sentence."

Justice Department Correspondent Pierre Thomas and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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