Consider three
taxi drivers involved.
One of the most important witnesses to MLK's murder was a taxi driver named Paul Butler who had just pulled up to the Lorraine Motel.
He saw the shooter jump into a police car.
He radioed it in to his dispatcher.
Later that day another taxi driver saw him being questioned by Memphis police at the airport.
The next day he was dead.
...still looking for the long version, here's the short version in William Pepper's closing arguments against Jowers in 1999...
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/mlk_conspiracy.htm
......
The cover-up activities in this case, ladies and gentlemen, range from murder to press manipulation and distortion, with bribery in between. Murder, unfortunately in our view, and from the evidence that you have heard here, credible sources, is that a taxi driver who pulled into the Lorraine Motel maybe six minutes before the killing or so, shortly before the killing, a Yellow Cab taxi driver who pulled into that drive and who was standing at the rear of his car loading the trunk of the car with the baggage, the luggage, of someone that was leaving, unfortunately for him, immediately after the shooting he saw the shooting and then turned to look at the other side of the road and saw a man come down out of the bushes and run up the street and get into a waiting Memphis Police Department traffic car which sped away.
When he reported this to his dispatcher, he thought the police had the assassin because he was in a police car going away. Well, this man, as you've heard, was questioned by the police a couple of times that week. He was to give a statement the next day.
He didn't give a statement, did he? No, his body was found off the Memphis-Arkansas Bridge supposedly thrown out of a speeding car. Now, when we tried to find death certificates for this man, we couldn't, either in Arkansas or in Tennessee . There is no death record at all. We found his phone number with that of his wife listed in 1967, 1966 and 1967, Betty and Paul Butler. This is all in evidence. The Polk Directory pages are there for you to look at. In 1968 it is Betty, brackets, widow, WID, of Paul, Betty widow, 1968 and 1969 she a widow. Paul Butler was her deceased husband. He was, for him, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
.....
Two other
taxi drivers, James McCraw and William Hamblin, told of how the real murder weapon was handled by Jowers-
From Jim Douglass-
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKconExp.html.....
William Hamblin testified not about the rifle thrown down in the Canipe doorway but rather the smoking rifle Loyd Jowers said he received at his back door from Earl Clark right after the shooting. Hamblin recounted a story he was told many times by his friend James McCraw, who had died.
James McCraw is already well-known to researchers as the taxi driver who arrived at the rooming house to pick up Charlie Stephens shortly before 6:00 p.m. on April 4. In a deposition read earlier to the jury, McCraw said he found Stephens in his room lying on his bed too drunk to get up, so McCraw turned out the light and left without him -- minutes before Stephens, according to the State, identified Ray in profile passing down the hall from the bathroom. McCraw also said the bathroom door next to Stephen's room was standing wide open, and there was no one in the bathroom -- where again, according to the State, Ray was then balancing on the tub, about to squeeze the trigger.
William Hamblin told the jury that he and fellow cab-driver McCraw were close friends for about 25 years. Hamblin said he probably heard McCraw tell the same rifle story 50 times, but only when McCraw had been drinking and had his defenses down.
In that story, McCraw said that Loyd Jowers had given him the rifle right after the shooting. According to Hamblin, "Jowers told him to get the [rifle] and get it out of here now. [McCraw] said that he grabbed his beer and snatched it out. He had the rifle rolled up in an oil cloth, and he leapt out the door and did away with it." McCraw told Hamblin he threw the rifle off a bridge into the Mississippi River.
Hamblin said McCraw never revealed publicly what he knew of the rifle because, like Jowers, he was afraid of being indicted: "He really wanted to come out with it, but he was involved in it. And he couldn't really tell the truth."
William Pepper accepted Hamblin's testimony about McCraw's disposal of the rifle over Jowers's claim to Dexter King that he gave the rifle to Raul. Pepper said in his closing argument that the actual murder weapon had been lying "at the bottom of the Mississippi River for over thirty-one years."
.....
1976 meme-reversal, just before the HSCA begins-
1978-82 tv sit-com during the HSCA-
...
No, carnies scare me, too.
me?
