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one was at the front door with a shotgun. the other, leaner individual went over the counters. this individual went from cage to cage and scooped up about 30 grand, total. >> most of the money was in $20 bills, an important fact as we'll soon hear. the gunmen got away, but near the cemetery where ray's mother was buried -- >> we found the shotgun partially burned, and the bib overalls with a stocking mask partially burned here. >> so who robbed the bank? >> i think james earl ray did. >> the very next day ray bought a used car and headed for canada. suddenly, he had enough money to buy a tailor-made suit and take a week's vacation at a resort. but he returned to his cheap room along the montreal waterfront trying to find a way to ship out to white-ruled areas of africa. ray's own words from 40 years
floor boarding house. the rear of the building looks out at the lorraine motel just across the street. ray managed to get this room, 5b, in the back. it is incredibly small. >> it is, indeed. and a little bit tacky, too. >> the boardinghouse is now part of the national civil rights museum at the lorraine motel. museum president, beverly robertson, showed me ray's room. one of the witnesses later said that this desk with a mirror that we can see there was actually in front of the window. >> it had been. he shifted that. he moved it. they say he moved it, because people on either side of the room heard noise during the course of the day. >> furniture dragging? >> furniture dragging, chairs moving. >> ray used a $20 bill to rent the room for the week, then left to buy these binoculars at a nearby sporting goods store. he paid with two more $20 bills. an eerie echo of the unsolved
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 mic. >> 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.
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
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,
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.
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. my dad has aor afib.brillation, he has the most common kind... ...it's not caused by a heart valve problem. dad, it says your afib puts you at 5 times greater risk of a stroke. that's why i take my warfarin every day. but it looks like maybe we should ask your doctor about pradaxa. in a clinical trial,
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 in the murder. a verdict embraced by all those
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
>> 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 >> it was the morning of robert