>> the whole side of his right jaw was gone. >> i took a crushed cigarette out of his hand. he didn't want kids to see him smoke. and i took the package out of his pocket. i have them in my possession somewhere now. i have a handkerchief where i wiped much blood off -- off my hand. >> i couldn't feel a pulse beating. i knew that he was done gone. >> so he probably never even heard the shot. just ahead, the evidence left behind. >> i knew it was a rifle, it was a hunting-type rifle. >> and the doubts that remain. you don't think james earl ray acted alone? >> i don't think james earl ray acted. >> you don't think he pulled the trigger? >> i don't think he had anything to do with the killing.

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there was nothing nervous about him that last day in memphis. >> i'm not worried about anything! i'm not fearing any man! >> kapow! >> he probably never even heard the shot. >> this is the rifle that has the fingerprints of james earl ray on it. >> everyone wanted a guilty plea except me. >> in terms of whether something is true or not, because james earl ray said it, i would say it's a pure toss-up.

>> when a police team stopped for a rest break at this firehouse, patrolman gene douglas was left in a car outside to monitor the radio. >> i heard a noise, like a shot, well, it was more like a rifle. that's when everybody inside the firehouse started running out saying "king's been shot, king's been shot." >> douglas reached for his radio mike. >> we have information king has been shot at the lorraine. >> captain ray raced out of police headquarters heading to the scene. there, on south main street, he saw a bundle abandoned in the recessed doorway of a record store, right below the rooming house. the store owner told him two customers saw a man run by. >> there was two black gentlemen in there that had told him that

a white fellow had dropped it there, and then had gotten in a white mustang and drove off. >> the bundle was covered with a green bedspread, this one. >> i took the bedspread off and looked, and it was a gun box. and i took a pencil, and opened up the gun box and we could see a rifle. we knew it was a rifle, it was a hunting-type rifle. >> there's a weapon in front of 424, and the subject ran south on main street. >> the captain told a patrolman to guard the evidence. >> he had a pump shotgun and he brought it up to port arms like this and he got a very stern face on it and i said, don't let anybody see it. >> this is the rifle that had the fingerprints of james earl ray on it when it was found outside the boardinghouse. >> the rifle, the one ray bought in birmingham, is on display

today. upstairs in the rooming house, now part of the national civil rights museum run by beverly robertson. it's got a scope on the top. >> yes, he had a scope on it. i think he felt he needed a scope, but it was a very short distance. you didn't need to be a marksman or a sharpshooter to be able to hit the target. >> it was an easy shot. >> it was an easy shot. i bet you or i could have made that shot. >> across at the lorraine motel, witnesses had pointed to the back of the boardinghouse. >> so we went up there, got to the top of the steps and there was a little lady there, and she appeared to be deaf, dumb. she was doing like this. it was like she was shooting a rifle, and she pointed to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. >> in the bathroom, the police captain found the window open, its screen knocked out. >> you could see exactly to the motel where dr. king had been shot. >> he went to find the landlady.

>> i asked her who was renting this room, and she went and got a receipt book and gave me the name. and if i remember right, john willard or something like that. i went down to the car and put out a broadcast on john willard in a white mustang. >> information we have on the subject is a young white male well dressed, possibly in a late-model white mustang north on main street. >> it was already too late. the police dispatcher, vince hughes. >> main street was not cordoned off for probably two minutes. >> the first instinct had been to cordon off the lorraine hotel. most shootings involve arguments at close range, so police raced toward the victim, and precious time was lost. >> in the 25 years i spent on the police department, that was the only occasion i can remember where we had a sniper. >> murders committed by complete strangers are incredibly hard to

solve, unless the killer makes his own mistakes. not only did that rifle have ray's fingerprint on it and no one else's, this empty shell casing was in the gun. one shot had been fired. ray's fingerprint was also found on the binoculars he bought, on these beer cans in the same bundle. even that day's newspaper which told readers where king was staying. >> this was a radio that he had when he was in the penitentiary. >> this, too, was left in the doorway beneath the boardinghouse. >> his prison number, i believe, is scratched on here. >> ray's hair would link him to the bedspread. then there was this in the bundle. so this laundry tag from his shorts -- >> yes. >> -- was traced back to him? >> exactly, exactly. >> james earl ray would eventually admit almost everything, except killing king. his brother, jerry ray. >> he don't deny that he didn't rent the room.

he don't deny he didn't buy the gun. the only thing he denies is that he was in that room. >> the only thing he denies is that he shot dr. king. >> that's the only thing he didn't do. >> jerry ray says before the shot was fired, his brother drove the mustang away to try to get a spare tire fixed. no witnesses have said yes, he came in to get the spare tire fixed. yes, i saw that man. we were too busy, we couldn't take him, but he was here. nobody. there's not one witness who has talked about a man coming in to get a spare tire fixed. >> i don't know for sure. i don't know if nobody admitted that he was in there or not. >> when you talk about the bundle, your brother's fingerprints are on it, there are binoculars in there, his underwear. >> beer cans. i think a couple beer cans. >> the green blanket that he 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. u 8

dan rather reporting for cbs news from new york. the reverend martin luther king jr. was shot to death by an assassin late today as he stood on a balcony in memphis, tennessee. >> fires are burning in many sections of the negro ghetto -- >> rioting erupted in more than 100 cities across the nation that night, and through the weekend. >> even as dusk approached, weary firemen ran from blaze to blaze, often braving snipers' bullets to put out the fire. at least one was wounded trying by a sniper. >> fire bombings, looting, sniper fire. >> smoke wreathed the capitol dome. and there was smoke around the washington monument. >> in the nation's capital, more than 7,000 people were arrested. federal troops occupied the city for more than a week. not long after dawn, the day after the murder, james earl ray

parked his white mustang in a low-income housing project in atlanta and headed for the bus station. within 48 hours of king's death, ray had reached toronto, canada. he rented a room in an immigrant area near downtown. james earl ray wrote -- >> the woman couldn't speak hardly any english. the man not much better. i never gave a name as they never asked me for one. >> ray read through old newspapers for birth announcements and chose this one from 1932, ramon sneyd. ray, posing as a government official, phoned the real sneyd. >> he told me he never had a passport, so i decided to get a passport in his name as his picture would not be on file at the passport office. >> the fbi thought at first king's murder was a conspiracy. harvey lowmyer bought the rifle, john willard rented the room. eric galt drove the mustang. when the fingerprints and the strands of hair showed they were the same man, the fbi issued

this warrant for eric starvo galt. then, sifting thousands of records, the fbi matched those fingerprints with an escaped con from missouri, james earl ray. it began a nationwide manhunt for ray. the next day, ray left toronto for montreal, trying to get on a ship to africa. he failed. when he returned to toronto, the passport was waiting at a travel agency. >> when i went in the next day to pick it up, i found out the name was spelled wrong. s-n-e-y-a instead of s-n-e-y-d. >> early in may, ray boarded a plane to london, then flew on to lisbon, portugal, staying at this hotel for less than $2 a night. ray wrote -- >> i spent most of my time trying to get on a ship to angola. >> why was he trying to get to angola, rhodesia? >> well, where he was mainly wanting to get to was a place that didn't have no extradition treaty with the united states. >> arthur hanes, his first lawyer. >> he had signed on to be a crewman on a portuguese freighter.

had it made, had it made. overslept the day the ship sailed and he found himself in lisbon with no job and no money. >> ray may have told hanes that, but what he wrote was different. he said he couldn't get a visa in time. what about oversleeping? >> in terms of whether something is true or not because james earl ray said it, i would say it's a pure toss-up. >> ray went to the canadian embassy in lisbon to get a new passport with sneyd spelled correctly, then returned to london. within two weeks, canadian authorities matched this photo on the sneyd pass poured application with james earl ray, a palm print like this one on other paperwork confirmed the identification. an alert went out worldwide. ray was running out of time and money.

in a london suburb, a gunman walked into this bank and fled with some $200 in british pounds. a thumbprint on the hold-up note turned out to be ray's. that next night, half a world away in los angeles, another assassination that would tear at the nation's fabric. the death of robert f. kennedy. >> would a doctor come right here? >> john lewis was waiting for kennedy to come back upstairs to his hotel room. >> it was too much. i broke down and cried. >> it was a lot of loss back to back. >> 40 years later, it is too much. and i felt then that the assassination of dr. king and robert kennedy, something had died in all of us.

>> with his bank robbery money, ray was making one last effort to reach white areas of africa. >> i finally contacted a newspaper reporter who said the mercenaries had an office in brussels, belgium. i then bought a ticket to brussels. >> with this ticket in hand, and both passports, ray went to the london airport on saturday, june 8th. >> i went to the boarding zone, i was told by one officer that he wanted to ask me a few questions. >> the officer recognized the names on ray's two passports were on a watch list. ♪ hallelujah ♪ hallelujah hallelujah >> it was the morning of robert kennedy's funeral when the news broke. james earl ray, accused killer of martin luther king jr., had been arrested in london. >> this is a picture of my dad and me. >> ray wanted arthur hanes and

his son arthur jr. as lawyers because they won an acquittal of ku klux klansmen for killing a civil rights volunteer outside selma. the younger hanes, now a retired judge, describes ray this way. >> nebbish, always was. that was my impression of him throughout, that he was -- he was the invisible man. >> but try to ask him a hard question -- >> he would act as if he were someone trying to think of an answer. criminals, cons will do that. we never had any real confidence in the truthfulness of what he said. >> the one thing ray would not discuss, even with his lawyers, was the murder of martin luther king. >> 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 denial. >> did you kill my father? >> no, i didn't.

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i'm don lemon. here are your headlines this hour. the south korean government says it believes north korea may launch another missile this week, and this test launch could be as early as wednesday. the u.s. and south korea have

been watching the movement of two missiles to north korea's west post. the missiles are widely to be medium-range missiles, with the range of 2500 miles. 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.

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 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.

king's closest aides and friends had voiced doubts about the case both then -- >> i think the government rushed to judgment. >> i've always felt that james earl ray didn't act alone. >> and now. >> i don't think james earl ray acted. >> you don't think he pulled the trigger? >> i don't think he was anywhere near. >> william pepper first met james earl ray in 1978 when he went to visit him in prison. pepper came away from that meeting certain of one thing. >> it was pretty clear that he was not the shooter. >> had there not been a guilty plea, there might have been two huge holes in the prosecutor's case. first, ballistics experts could not match this bullet, which killed dr. king, with the rifle ray bought. the bullet was badly mangled upon impact and the markings made by the rifle barrel when the gun was fired fell short of scientific certainty. second, two men living in the

boardinghouse could not identify the man they saw running from the bathroom after the sound of the shot. he held a hand to his face. the government's case places the shooter in the bathroom. but police had one witness at the time who did see someone else. solomon jones, king's driver that day, says he saw a man with a white hood over his head in the bushes across the street from the lorraine hotel. the next day something strange happened at the crime scene. the bushes you see here were cut back. >> i questioned the guy who was the head of the public works department, who ordered you to cut down the bush? he said, i was ordered immediately to get a team down 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 terms of the gun being out there, taking the gun, eventually turning it over. to raoul. >> again, the mysterious raoul. james earl ray had always insisted a man named raoul, or someone else, must have left ray's belongings behind to frame him. >> i think i was taken advantage of, i was the -- some people use a different

word, they use duped and all this stuff. >> in 1997, cnn's larry king asked james earl ray about this. >> what were you doing with the rifle that day? >> i'd been part of a project with a guy named raoul for about eight or nine months. >> smuggling? >> the rifle was supposed to be at this place for more of these projects in mexico and some type of arms deal. >> there's no question that raoul existed and does exist. >> armed with so much information, pepper wrote a book. >> it was me who first read william pepper's book and actually brought him to meet my family where we dialogued. >> isaac farris, dr. king's nephew and the head of the king center, says that book and that dialogue persuaded the king family to get involved. >> i feel that my family, mr. ray and the american people have

been unjustly denied the due process that is the birthright of every citizen. birthrite of everything citizens. >> we came very close to getting a real trial for james, because there was a black judge called joe brown. >> i would object to the entire line of questioning. >> we're trying to get the facts. >> 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 in the murder. a verdict embraced by all those who believe the true killer has yet to be caught. next, the cia factor. >> he said he had dr. king's head in his lap. that's him holding him. >> and why prosecutors still

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i also felt 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 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, >> 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 jewel 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 know which one. i heard secret service. >> no, not the secret service. mccullough finished his career with the central intelligence agency. however, the cia said mccullough did not join the agency until six years after the assassination. the justice department later said mccullough had passed a lie detector test, clearing him of any involvement in the murder. when we look closer at conspiracy scenarios like the military spies on the firehouse roof, cracks begin to show. >> they were not up there when dr. king was shot. because i carried them up there and brought them down. they came back down and that was the last of them. >> fire captain wheaton originally said he took the agents to the roof on the morning of the murder. now he thinks it was not even that particular day. >> no, i think it was probably two days, a couple days before the assassination.

>> look at this photo taken just seconds after the gunshot. it shows police rushing out of the firehouse. you can see the roof. there's no one up there. so if the army intelligence agents were not on the roof at the fatal moment, then there could be no photograph of a shooter in the bushes, despite what pepper wants to believe. we have seen the army intelligence unit's records on what it did do in memphis. those files say the first photos the agents took were not until coretta scott king led a memorial march in memphis. 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. of course, that place was a hole in the wall, 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. his own lawyer put up little resistance and the jury never had a chance to hear the

prosecution's case. a sham trial, in campbell's mind. >> a lot of evidence, and i put evidence in quotes, that was presented there was basically third, fourth, fifth-hand hearsay. >> as for anyone seeing a shooter behind jim's grill -- >> you have one individual that claims he saw something in the bushes. but when he was interrogated, that story just didn't hold up. >> no one in king's inner circle saw anyone over there. that's what they told police the first night, and we got the same answers 40 years later. did you see anyone? >> no. >> not a soul? >> i did not. >> medical examiner dr. jerry francisco performed the autopsy that night. >> dr. king was killed by a gunshot wound to the head and neck. >> standing where martin luther king fell, he explained. >> the bullet entered at this location of the jaw, passing through the jaw, through the neck, ending up in the back at this location where my thumb's located. >> 40 years ago, dr. francisco went up on the same balcony to

plot the path of the shot. the bullet came obviously this direction. what happened? >> came from right to left and above downward. >> so a bullet fired from that bathroom window, would that be consistent with what you described? >> yes, it would. >> no question about it? >> not at all. >> could it have been fired from down below? in 1998, at the age of 70. why do you keep this hanging in your office? did it feel like the chapter or the book had closed? when he died? >> well, really in many ways it had. >> for campbell, the final answer to whether ray was a lone gunman that day. >> if this was a big conspiracy, he would have been murdered shortly after this. he would have been taken out and buried somewhere and we would have never found him. the fact that he lived all these years tells me there wasn't a conspiracy.

when we come back -- >> he wanted to get away. >> the one mistake that caught a killer. >> and he dropped that bundle. had it not been a policeman or anybody there, he would have been gone. ;;;?ñ?ñw?w?8ñ

?>> no. >> not a soul? >> i did not. >> medical examiner dr. jerry francisco performed the autopsy that night. >> dr. king was killed by a gunshot wound to the head and neck. >> standing where martin luther king fell, he explained.

east told the house hearing this in 1978. >> i recall he said to me that he had seen a policeman or a police vehicle and panicked and had thrown the gun away, and that his fingerprints would obviously be found on this weapon. >> it the false. >> as soon as he heard this, ray denied it. >> i never discussed the case with any english policeman. so all the statements in there are inaccurate. >> but the panic story is plausible. there was a memphis policeman outside, near the doorway. patrolman gene douglas left to man the radio in his squad car. >> we have information that king has been shot at the lorraine. >> douglas called in that first alert.

then he got out of the patrol car. >> i came out here and started running down this way. >> okay. so you start running down this way. why this way? >> when i heard the shot, i couldn't tell exactly, you know, where it was coming from. i didn't see any other place that it could have come from. >> see the older green mustang parked by the lamp post on this day just as we're walking by? that's where james earl ray's mustang was parked that evening. did you see anything? >> i didn't see anybody or any cars moving or anything at that time. >> this is the corner where he dropped bundle, right? >> right. >> because the doorway is set back from the sidewalk, anyone there would have been hidden from the officer's view. where do you think he stopped approximately running? >> i would say probably about this far. >> so what is that, 20, 30 feet? >> uh-huh. >> douglas turned back when

other officers called to him. he never saw ray or anyone else hiding in the doorway. yet had that bundle not been left behind, james earl ray might never have been identified or caught. >> if it hadn't been the fact that he came out of that building not knowing there was a policeman at that fire station, and when he did it and he come running out with that bundle, and, you know, i do know from years of experience, criminals, they know what they've done. nobody else does. but it's on their mind what they just did. so when he saw the policeman, he knew he had just shot somebody and he wanted to get away. and he dropped that bundle and had there not been a policeman or anybody there, he would have been gone. >> instead, james earl ray would spend the rest of his life in prison. he never quit fighting to reverse his guilty plea and never gave up trying to escape once again. >> every time he got ready to escape, he would write me a code letter.

>> what would a code letter look like? >> code letter is you read every seventh word. if he underlined his name twice, that means read every seventh word. >> see the signature with the two lines underneath it? now read every seventh word. >> place to bury articles. >> this is a letter james sent jerry before he did escape from the tennessee state prison in 1977. he also smuggled out a wish list of what to bury, cigarettes, boots, ponchos, whiskey. what was the whiskey for? >> just to keep warm while he was out there. >> seven inmates went over the back wall. >> jerry hid a bag of supplies in the woods but james couldn't find it. >> he told me if i hadn't dropped that bag, they would have never caught me. >> instead james earl ray was captured in just three days. his last days of freedom ever. in the spring of 1998, james, now 70, was in a coma from liver disease.

jerry gave the doctor the nod to turn off the life support system. >> he had me the executor of his will, and i had a doctor named rau, r-a-u. >> in his last moment, that name may have been as close as james earl ray ever came to the mysterious raoul. 40 years later, it's still hard to believe that such a towering man of his time had his life ended by someone who was barely more than just a petty criminal. we're often reluctant to recognize that great tragedy can arise from small and twisted minds. but that's what we believe happened to dr. martin luther king y, leaving all of america, black and white, with an everlasting loss.