MORE FLESH ON THE BONES
Who are these people—high and low
Who take it upon themselves to say
Who lives and dies, are allowed to grow
In their worlds of black and gray
They love their own, but others hate
From childhood on they follow rules
Put on them as though by fate
Nurtured by the culture’s school
In their domain they reign supreme
Denying any unwelcome foe
Who brings along a different theme
Such are they who encounter woe.
A critical witness came forward near the end of 2009 and agreed to be deposed. The extraordinarily long deposition was taken on December 10, 2009, in Memphis, Tennessee, pursuant to the Tennessee Rules of Civil Procedure and pursuant to Post Judgment Notice by the plaintiffs in the case of Coretta Scott King, et al., against Loyd Jowers et al. (See Appendix I, for the complete transcript of the deposition.)
The witness, Ronnie Lee Adkins, a.k.a. Ron Tyler, was deposed, with his counsel Stephen Toland present. As we shall see, it was Mr. Adkins’s testimony that unveiled the fatal connection of Hoover/Tolson, the Dixie Mafia, and the MPD and associated operatives in the assassination of Dr. King.
According to the deposition, Ronnie’s father was Russell Lee Adkins, the first of three sons. At an early age Russell became involved with the running of heavy land-moving equipment, part of a local good-old-boy network. This led to a job a running the Mallory depots, military bases owned by the federal government that were used as staging areas where equipment was stored for various wars, including World War II and the Korean War.
According to Ronnie, in the late 1930s or early 1940s, his father Russell became superintendent of one such plant on Jackson Avenue and eventually retired from that post to take a job at the city sanitation department running heavy equipment. He left the Mallory Depot around 1943 or 1944 and he went over to work for twenty years for the city of Memphis. Affiliated with the Engineering Division, he worked under Maynard Stiles.
His older half-brother, Russell Jr. (twenty years older), quit school to join the Marine Corps, where he remained for nearly thirty-four years and where he was assigned to the CID, the Central Intelligence Division, of the Marine Corps, from 1955 to 1956. Born around 1932, he died in 2002.
Ronnie said that Maynard Stiles, his father’s Public Works Department boss, often came out to their house and was close to his father, who retired in 1965 and died in July 1967.
As for Ron, he said that he was frequently in trouble in school, changed schools regularly, and liked to fight. He did not graduate and was greatly upset by his father’s death. He brought a pistol to school and fired some shots, ending up in juvenile court. He was allowed to join the marines. He served six years (1969 to 1975) and was assigned to the CID.
He said his father and associates were lifelong active Klan members and Masons. He sat in on meetings and recalled that his father said they would only have doctors who were Catholics because they would never tell about what was going on. It is for this reason that he only remembers Dr. Breen and Dr.Basil Bland taking care of their family, especially Breen, who was closest to them.
His father became a 32nd Degree Mason. The Klan and the Masons worked closely together. Ron said that his father took him to his first lynching when he was just six years old.
His father and grandfather got along well with Boss E. H. Crump, who ran Memphis. From the age of five until he was nine years old, his father took him along to meetings in the house and elsewhere. He would end up bringing coffee and doughnuts and sit around listening. He remembers John Wilder before he became Lieutenant Governor, attending along with Mayor Henry Loeb and Frank Liberto. Carlos Marcello and Clyde Tolson, FBI director Edgar Hoover’s deputy, also attended.
Despite his father’s modest position, he had an enormous ability to get things done behind the scenes. He was a “fixer.” This power clearly emanated from his positions in the Masons, the Klan and the Dixie Mafia.
According to Ronnie, the Klan and the Masons had different styles. The Klansmen were the heavies and the Masons were more subtle. Together they put Loeb into office.
Ron said his father developed a close relationship with O. Z. Evers, a local black leader, and gave him money to start a business. He also referred to Chester (Chess) Butler, a “master” killer used by his father. His father bought a house for Chess, his wife and children, Danny, and Linda.
Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s Deputy (whom Ronnie was told to call “Uncle Clyde” from the first time he came to visit them in the 1950s) flew into the old airport where the old National Guard planes were based.
A. Marcello came up for meetings. But, hell, so did Clyde Toleson. [Tolson’s name is spelled incorrectly in the transcript.]
Q. We’re going to talk about Toleson.
A. I was told you called him Uncle Clyde. From then on he was Uncle Clyde.
A. Another Clyde. When daddy said to call Toleson “Uncle Clyde,” I said, “Hell, we got an Uncle Clyde.” Of course, I didn’t say nothing. I thought well, all right.
Q. That’s another “Uncle Clyde”?
(Deposition of Tyler–Ronnie Lee Adkins Volume 1, December 10, 2009, 75–91)
Tolson was a substantial connection for his father. He provided his father with funds from Hoover for different actions, including local-area killings. (See Appendix J for photographs of Tolson with members of the Adkins family, including Ron as a child.)
Of particular interest to this case is that he brought the money which was to be paid to Harold Swenson, the Warden of the Missouri State Prison, in Jefferson City, Missouri, in order for him to arrange for the escape of James in 1967. At Hoover’s request, James had been profiled as a potential scapegoat, although the nature of the crime was not revealed. Ron told us about this assignment because he was an actual observer. He saw the money being delivered by Tolson and then, at his father’s invitation, he rode to the prison where the money was paid to Swenson by his father. This took place in November or December of 1966. Ray (who was always kept in the dark about this arrangement) successfully escaped from prison on April 23, 1967, and then (with the wrong fingerprints released) was monitored, controlled, given the protected “Galt” identity, and moved around until the plans for the assassination and his use were finalized. I came to understand that this use of inmates was not an uncommon practice.
Hoover’s deputy, Tolson, came to visit four or five times a year for such purpose. Ron said that his father took some of the money and gave it to O. Z. Evers to pay some of their guys for particular jobs or information. O. Z. and Russell Sr. spoke roughly every other day. O. Z. provided information about the movements and according to Ron, the “comings and goings of Martin Luther King. This was in the early 1960.”
Ron said that O. Z. dispensed money to, among others, Solomon Jones, Jesse Jackson, and Billy Kyles. The money was paid for their obtaining and passing on information.
Tolson told his father that Jones, Jackson, and Kyles were also paid informants of the FBI, paid out of the Memphis office, but the money that came from Tolson was separate from the money they received from Holloman and the Memphis FBI Office. The Adkins money envelopes were wrapped up with rubber bands and paper with initials on it, “BK,” “JJ,” and so forth.
His father gave part of that money to Jesse Jackson, and he gave part of that money to Billy Kyles.
Q. (I continued)Now wait. Your father gave money to O. Z.?
A. My father gave money to O. Z. O. Z. distributed that money under my father’s instructions.
Q. So your father told O.Z. to give it to Jesse Jackson and Kyles?
A. How this worked was he would tell my father who needed money and what the money was going to be used for to gather what information.
Q. I see.
A. That money was given to Solomon Jones, Jesse Jackson, and Billy Kyles.
Q. Again, if we can get as close as we can to a time line here.
A. I am going to say.
Q. Jackson and Kyles, is that—
A. That’s going to be early 1960s.
Q. That would be in the early 1960s even?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Right. So Jackson and Kyles are being paid off by O. Z. following your father’s instructions to provide information on Martin King’s comings and goings, his movements?
A. Yes, sir. And besides that, daddy had so many connections—daddy had some good federal connections. This is something I hadn’t shared with you but I’ll share it with you today. We’re sharing today, right?
Q. Right.
A. Clyde Toleson told daddy that Billy Kyles, Jesse Jackson and Solomon Jones were all paid informants for the FBI, that they were being paid out of the Memphis office from—
(Ibid., 109–111)
FBI Special Agent Frank Holloman and others would come to their house every Sunday, as well as Carlos Marcello. For as long as Ron could remember, Carlos Marcello used to come to visit his father, bringing cigars. The local Mafia lieutenant, Frank Liberto, was also a frequent visitor.
Ron told us, providing supporting documentation (see Appendix L) about a trip his father made with Clyde Tolson in 1964—apparently this was one of a number of trips taken by the two. They left New York on May 27, 1964, for Southampton, England, via Le Havre in France, returning on September 16, 1964. Ron was twelve years old at that time.
A. Clyde—like I say, daddy said, HNIC, that was Hoover. I mean, daddy said, you know, he sent his sissy down here, he sent his faggot down here. That’s the old man. He said it the way he saw it. That’s all there was to it. I think Toleson was probably the closest guy to Hoover that dealt with daddy and I think that man in that picture.
(Ibid., 120)
Q. Ron, you’ve identified this as the ticket and brochure documentation of a trip from New York to Southampton via Le Havre and from Southampton back to New York, Le Havre departure, May 27, 1964, and return, September 16th, 1964.
A. Yes, sir.
Mr. Pepper: We’ll have that admitted.
(The above-mentioned documents were marked as Exhibits 19 and 20.)
Q. (Mr. Pepper) I’ll ask you, you were about twelve years old, and your dad took that trip alone with Mr. Toleson?
A. Uh-huh, with Clyde Toleson, Uncle Clyde.
Q. Do you know—Uncle Clyde. Do you know what the purpose of that trip was?
A. All I know is when daddy got back off that trip, he called Junior to the house. He called Junior, he called Russell Jr., he called Jim, Jim Ryan, he called Holly. Mr. Cohen was there.
Q. Okay. Now, he called this meeting when he got back from the trip?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What was the purpose of the meeting?
A. He said, “The coon had to go.”
Q. He said, “The coon had to go”?
A. He said, “The coon had to go.” That’s what he said in the meeting, “The coon has got to go.”
Q. When he said, “coon,” he was referring to?
A. Martin Luther King is the only one I know of. They called him the HNIC of the HNICs.
Q. Yeah.
A. He was referred to as the “coon.”
Q. And he had to go?
(Op. cit., 6–7, 9)
He said that when his father returned from that cruise, his father called Junior (Russell Junior), Jim Ryan, Holly, Mr. Cohen (an insurance salesman and high-ranking Mason), and Mr. Fiveash to his home for a meeting. Fiveash, he said, was close to Frank and Charles Liberto, as well as with other mob figures named Robillio, Sarno, Popiano, and Gangliano. Fiveash was close to his father for many years and also a liaison with the mob. He lived about six blocks away.
Ron said that the of day meeting his father began by saying, “The coon has got to go.”
Late in the day, a radio announcer named Eddie Bond, who was to coordinate a kind of public relations campaign for what they called “the cause,” arrived to the meeting.
The Dr. King action, for this Dixie Mafia/Adkins/Hoover MPD group, really began in earnest in 1964. Meetings were held at the Berclair Baptist Church (prayer meetings), the Masonic Temple (the goat pen) and at the house at 558 Storz Street. During this time, his father had meetings with Mayor Henry Loeb and Sam Chambers, who was Loeb’s successor after the first term. Ron would bring coffee and doughnuts. These meetings eventually (by late 1967 and early 1968) focused on how to get the garbage workers “pissed off.”
He described the focus on bringing Dr. King to Memphis where the hit could be handled. Tolson said they wanted it handled in Memphis where his father (Russell Sr.) could oversee it.
A. They were talking about how they were going to disrupt the city. The plan was to disrupt the city because they was going to get King to the city because Toleson said that they wanted it handled in Memphis where daddy and them could handle it, where specifically daddy and them could handle it. The word that came down. Apparently the word come down from Hoover. That was his boss. I don’t think Clyde was doing that on his own.
Q. So they were working on a plan to disrupt the city through a—
A. So they could bring the—daddy called them the instigators. So daddy could bring the investigators down there so the workers would get King to town, is what it all boiled down to, and by getting him to town, then they could take care of him. I think they started—I think was going to try to kill him at the temple right outside the temple before the next day. I’m not sure that that was going to happen, but I think that was going to be a plan before he got popped the next day. So that would have been the 3rd. He got killed on the 4th, wasn’t it?
Q. Right.
A. So that would have been the 3rd?
Q. The thrust of most of these meetings you are talking about had to do with the sanitation workers?
A. Control of how it went down.
Q. And getting them into effectively—goading them into a strike?
A. Yes, sir. Which would bring help from the NAACP and bring help—I say the NAACP. That’s what they said. I’ve got some tape. Well, they are not on tapes, but we put them on CD, the records and stuff that they would play at these meetings and stuff, and one of them is called “The Flight of the 409.”
Q. This seems to be a note from Toleson and I think you have a handwriting expert—
Mr. Toland: That’s correct.
Q. (Mr. Pepper) This is one of the ones being analyzed by the handwriting expert. What does that note say?
A. I don’t know.
Q. Can you read it to us? Do you want to use this?
A. Yes. This is the one “Make it happen in Memphis.”
Q. There is an “R” at the top of it?
A. Yes, sir. This was made out to daddy. This would have been to daddy, “Make it happen in Memphis so—so we can control it.”
Q. (Mr. Pepper) So we can control it’?
A. You’ve got it there.
Q. It has been written out.
A. That’s what it says. That is signed by “CAT.”
Q. This is a better copy.
Mr. Toland: Why don’t you admit that one. That’s a better copy. A dollar a copy—
Q. (Mr. Pepper) Take a look at that.
A. I’ve got this one. Take your eye piece back. “Make it happen in Memphis so we can control it, CAT.” And “CAT” was Clyde Toleson.
(Ibid., 34–35, 37)
He said that a list, called a “Personal Prayer List” of Tolson and Hoover’s, had been carried and signed by Tolson (“CAT”—see Appendix K) and given to his father in the mid-1950s after Kennedy broke away from Senator Joseph McCarthy. At the bottom of the list, “Russell,” Ron’s Father, is advised that Senator McCarthy was a good friend who could be “useful” to them. The names, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin King, seemed to constitute a strange wish list, not least since Senator McCarthy died in 1957. Ron was unsure of the date when Tolson delivered it (though autumn of 1956 appears to be the most likely time) and secondly, because the Kennedys had been close to McCarthy. But, in fact, Bob Kennedy only worked for McCarthy’s witch hunting committee for six months and resigned as a result of his discomfort with the committee’s tactics. He almost came to blows with Roy Cohn, the Chief Counsel, and eventually condemned the practices.
In addition, Jack Kennedy eventually condemned the Senator’s actions, and the two had a terminal falling out, though he was in hospital at the time of the Senate’s censure vote. Hence, Hoover, who was McCarthy’s principal ally in government and his main source of information on those individuals being investigated, developed an intense hostility for both Kennedys. It was also at this time that Dr. King was emerging as a formidable, dissenting black civil-rights leader, which brought him into Hoover’s sights. The Prayer List, prepared around that time before McCarthy’s death, appears to be the result of this animosity. In all likelihood, Hoover identified and targeted the three potential leaders who could eventually challenge his domain.
Ron indicated that Frank Holloman, even before he became Chief of Police and Fire, was involved. He had been the Special Agent in Charge of the Memphis FBI office before becoming the administrator of Hoover’s Office in DC. He regularly had lengthy meetings with Clyde Tolson, and was helping with various jobs ordered by Hoover/Tolson in the Memphis area. Notes were occasionally left for Tolson at the Mayor’s brother’s house.
Q. (Mr. Pepper) This is addressed “To Frank.” Which “Frank” is this addressed to?
Mr. Toland: Frank Holloman?
Q. (Mr. Pepper) You think it was Holloman?
A. I think it was. Yeah, for sure it was Holloman. It says “Frank met with Cat at Lehigh. Got orders to stop NAACP workers at crematory, Art.” I know about this note. That was to Frank Holloman.
The above-mentioned document was marked Exhibit 28.
Q. (Mr. Pepper) When would this have been written? In other words, was he head of police and fire at that point?
A. That was probably—that was either real close to Christmas of 1966 or first part of 1967.
Q. At that point in time he was not yet head of police and fire in Memphis.
A. Uh-huh. He had just retired from the feds.
Q. But what was he doing? Was he still out of the Bureau or was he in the office in Memphis?
A. I don’t know.
The Witness: Roy, when did he leave out of the office?
Q. (Mr. Pepper) He was with Hoover for about eight years.
Mr. Johnson: I think he was in Washington or Virginia. He was third in command in the office of operations.
(Ibid., 40–41)
Ron said that Maynard Stiles, who was part of Adkins’s inner circle, also was delivered a note from his father asking him to attend a “prayer meeting” at 5:30 p.m. It indicated that Marcello would be there. Stiles was clearly present at a number of sessions and quite close to Russell Adkins.
Stiles had testified in both the HBO and the King civil trials. In both instances he recounted how in his official capacity with the Sanitation Department, he sent a team to clean up the area—the crime scene—behind the rooming house at the request of the MPD.
In any event he was on the list Ron recited, under oath, of all those whom he personally knew and saw in attendance at the preliminary planning sessions for the assassination. The list included the following who had different jobs: Clyde Tolson, his father, Russell Adkins Sr., Frank Liberto, Chess Butler, Frank Holloman, Henry Loeb, Earl Clark, Jim Ryan, Louis Michaud (who owned a liquor ), Mr. Long, Mr. Holly, Maynard Stiles, Loyd Jowers, Jim Lannom, Tommy Smith (an inspector with the Memphis Police Department), two Tennessee Highway Patrol officers from the Summer Avenue Highway Patrol Identification Bureau, Russell Adkins Jr., Little Holly, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Fiveash, E. B. Bowen, and Ron himself.
The principal players who were the most involved, according to Ron, were O. Z. Evers, Holly, Frank Holloman, Frank Liberto, Henry Loeb, Sam Chambers, Chess Butler, and Jim Ryan. Stiles was not in this group.
According to Ron, Russell Jr. seemed troubled by the fact that their father used the words “nigger” and “coon,” but he agreed that there was a chance to use the “Feds”—Hoover and Tolson—to bring benefits to the community, but he heeded that, “… if you get into bed with those snakes … you got to snuggle up to work with them.” He knew the “Feds” were using him. He knew they were getting him to work with the Libertos and the likes of Holloman, but he thought he could still accomplish necessary things for his community. He also said that his father was “tight” with John Wilder, the Lieutenant Governor, who was one of Liberto’s lawyers and confidants.
When their father died in 1967, according to Ron, his brother Russell Jr. took over the assassination planning with Holloman. The Mayor’s job was to promote the sanitation workers’ strike.
Q. All right. Now, we’re into 1968. The sanitation workers’ strike hits.
A. Yes. Daddy is dead.
Q. Your father is dead?
A. Right.
Q. Who is taking over the—
A. Russell Jr. and Holloman.
Q. So Russell Jr. and Frank Holloman are running the assassination effort?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. What was done, to the best of your knowledge, to provoke the sanitation workers’ strike and anger to the level that it rose where it became a very serious, crippling strike in Memphis?
(Ibid., 72)
At one point, O. Z. Evers fell out of favor. Ron did not know why, but they began to talk about putting him down. Ron saw no justification for it. Then his stature rose and he was accepted again. They killed two sanitation workers, by plan—swallowed up in a garbage truck packing mishap—in order to heighten tension and, ostensibly, to induce Dr. King to come to Memphis.
Ron said that at a meeting at Berclair Baptist Church, two weeks before Martin was killed, he heard Frank Holloman say, “We’ve got to get on with this, we’ve just got to get on with it.” It became clear to him that Junior was not running the show, but rather it was Holloman who was in charge.
(For the avoidance of doubt I am asking the questions throughout the deposition.)
Q. Then you had a crisis where one or two sanitations workers were killed—
A. No. there was one of them.
Q. In the truck itself?
A. They squashed them in the truck.
Q. How did that happen? Do you know how that happened?
A. Somebody pulled the hammer, pulled the lever on the truck and mashed them up in there. They were up in there trying to get out of the rain is what they was doing.
Q. They were working in the rain. They were trying to get out of the rain.
A. Right.
Q. And somebody—was it Jim Ryan?
A. No, I think it was Holly.
Q. You think it was Holly?
A. I think it was.
Q. Pulled the hammer and killed them deliberately?
A. Yes, sir, they was killed in the back of that truck. They was mashed up in there with that roller bar.
Q. Was it done with knowledge that they were in there?
A. Was their intent.
Q. Was their intent?
A. He knew they was in there when he did it.
Q. He knew. Why did he do it?
A. He didn’t tell me, Pepper. I don’t know. You are asking me the sixty-four dollar question. Was it black; was it part of the guys causing trouble? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Q. Was it something that they were trying to do to create more tension in order to bring Martin King in?
A. I believe so. We’ve all talked about that. We think that was the ticket that absolutely brought him in that caused his death. We think that’s the straw that broke the camel’s back right there, because that’s when Frank said, you know, we’ve got to get on with this, we’ve just got to get on with it.
Q. Frank Holloman?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Did you hear him say that?
A. I heard that at Berclair Baptist church in a meeting.
Q. Do you remember when that meeting was?
A. That was probably less than two weeks before they killed him.
Q. Less than two weeks before?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. So that would have been around the 21st, 22nd of March?
A. Somewhere this March, yes.
Q. He came in around that time, actually, then he went back.
A. Right.
Q. And he came in again to lead a March on the 28th.
A. They were set to kill him out there on Lamar Avenue. He stayed at a little old hotel out there called the Rebel Inn or some shit like that.
Q. He stayed at the Holiday Inn.
A. The Holiday Inn or something.
Q. He stayed at a Holiday Inn out there upon occasion.
A. They was going to pop him out there if that’s where he stayed. He didn’t show there. He went some other joint. They lost him, apparently. I know that O. Z. was having to—I know there was a frantic over the phone. I know he called my mama, even, and was trying to get ahold of Junior because he couldn’t get ahold of Junior. Junior was drunk at Robillio’s barbecue place. I think Junior was having a hard time dealing with this at this time because he actually wasn’t running the show, and I, it was actually Holloman running the show, and it was kind of like Junior was back where daddy had him while daddy had him, and Junior didn’t like that.
Q. So Holloman had sort of moved into—
A. He was part of the stick then. He was the point man then. Yeah, I think Junior had a problem with it, yeah.
(Ibid., 80–83)
Ron stated (under oath) that when Dr. King returned to Memphis on April 3, Jesse Jackson was instructed to arrange for the room change from the lower protected room 202, to the balcony room 306. Ron said that O. Z. called Jesse and told him to arrange the change of room. When asked how he knew this, he said that his mother called O. Z. “on Junior’s instructions” and got O. Z. to act. O. Z. then called Walter Bailey, who owned the motel, and told him that Jesse was coming to see him, and “… Jesse went down there and talked to the man and, or his wife Lurlee … and had him move Martin and Ralph up to 306.”
Ron said that Frank Holloman had given the instructions to Junior who in turn passed them to his mother, who called O. Z. He said his mom sent him to the garage to get his daddy’s phonebook and bring it in the house because she had to reach O. Z. Ron said he brought in the phone book and she called O. Z. while standing “… right beside her when she made the call.” She told O. Z. she needed to talk to him right away. He said he would call her back. She sat down in a chair and waited. When he called she said they needed to get Dr. King moved and they needed to get hold of Jesse or someone to get it done. They considered Solomon Jones but decided they couldn’t trust him so he got Jackson to do it.
Q. (Mr. Pepper) He is supposed to stay in Room 202. Somehow that room gets changed—
A. Right.
Q. And he gets moved up to 306.
A. Right. Jesse Jackson did that.
Q. Tell us what you know about how that happened, how that one got changed?
A. O.Z. called him and told him to move him outside, move him up and move him out, put him on the corner if you can. The man that owned the hotel, O. Z. contacted him.
Q. Walter Bailey?
A. Right. O. Z. contacted him and said that Jesse was coming to see him. Jesse went down there and talked to the man. I wasn’t there when it happened, but he talked to the man. It was a little while after that before I got there, but he went in there and he talked to the man and moved him up and moved him into, what was it—
Q. 306.
A. 306.
Q. Now, how do you know that O. Z. told Jesse to do this?
A. Because O. Z. called my mama and got instructions to do it.
Q. So O. Z. called your mother?
A. Right.
Q. And how did your mother give him instructions?
A. Because Frank Holloman had given it to Junior—I’m going to cut to the chase. Frank Holloman had given it to Junior, and Junior give it to mama.
Q. So Junior used your mother as the point person for that information?
A. No. Frank Holloman called Junior or Frank Holloman told Junior—I think Junior was with him then. Frank told Junior that they needed to get some stuff done. He said we can get O. Z. to do it; we just need to get mama to call him. O. Z. didn’t talk to a lot of people after that. When daddy went down, I mean, he helped and he did everything he could, and he did what Junior and them asked, but mama had more stroke with him than anybody did.
Q. So Junior told your mother when O. Z. calls—
A. No.
Q. How did—
A. Get ahold of O. Z.
Q. He told your mother to get ahold of O. Z.
A. If you will, get ahold of O. Z. It was him and mama on the phone. Mama just told me that she had to get hold of O. Z., get the phone book.
Q. Your mother told you this is what happened?
A. Right. Go out to garage, get daddy’s phone book and bring it in here. I said, all right.
Q. So you brought the phone book in with O. Z.’s number in it?
A. I brought his phone book in which had hundreds of numbers in it.
Q. Yeah. She called O. Z.?
A. Yeah.
Q. You were present during the call?
A. I was standing right beside her.
Q. You were standing beside her when she made the call?
A. Right.
Q. What did she say to Jackson?
A. She told—no, she didn’t talk to Jackson. She talked to O. Z. Evers.
Q. What did she say to him?
A. She told O. Z. she needed to talk to him and was he where he could talk. She said, This is Mae, Ms. Russell. He asked her if he could call her back. Apparently someday was there or whatever. She said, “Yeah, I’ll be waiting for your call, but I need to talk you to right away.” She sat down in the chair where—we had a chair that had looked like a school desk kind of like that had a phone thing on it, and I sat down, in the dining room chair, I turned the chair around to the table and sat down in the chair about as far as from you to me away from my mama and we sat there and waited for the phone to ring. The phone rang and it was O. Z. O. Z. said, “Ms. Mae, what can I do for you?” That’s what mama said he said. Mama told him that they needed to get ahold of Jesse or somebody and get him moved, would it be possible to get Jones to get it done. They didn’t trust Jones to get it done. So—he didn’t trust Jones to do it. So he got Jackson to do it. That’s all I know. I know that he got Jesse Jackson to get him moved or he told Jesse Jackson to move him, you know. The reason why I think that he didn’t—because this came up later on after, it may have been even been a year or two after, and I brought it up to mama.
(Ibid., 86–91)
Years later, when he asked his mother what the problem was with Jones, she said that Jackson (which was subsequently confirmed by Junior) was paying for everything. He was in charge of the money.
Ron said he did not know about any role that Abernathy might have played, but I always wondered why Ralph justified the move to room 306 by falsely saying that they had always stayed in that room, when in fact they had never had used that room overnight.
The Reverend Billy Kyles was instructed to get Dr. King out of room 306 at precisely 6:00 p.m. Ron said that his mother also told him that O. Z. told Kyles to get Dr. King out of the room at 6:00 p.m. Jesse was also supposed to be out there but he got “chicken shit” and went down to the parking area. His control of the money explains how he had the authority to force the Invaders out of the motel before the assassination. If, in fact he was controlling the SCLC money and paid for their rooms, he would have had the power to do so.
Ron recalled his brother Junior and Frank Liberto driving around and looking for the best shot around Jim’s Grill. They finally decided on the brush area behind it.
He said he heard Holloman tell Junior, “It has to be done right away. It has to be done right away; shoot him in the head.” Then, three days later, sixteen-year-old Ron heard Holloman tell Junior, “Shoot the son of a bitch in the mouth. I want the son-of-a-bitch shot; shoot the son-of-a-bitch in the mouth.”
A. I heard the conversation “shoot the son–of-a-bitch in the mouth.” I heard Frank Holloman tell Russell Jr., “I want the son-of-a-bitch shot, shoot the son-of-a-bitch in the mouth.’ I heard—
Q. You heard Holloman say that?
A. Yeah. In another conversation before that I heard Frank Liberto tell Junior, “It has got to be done right away; it has got to be done right away; shoot him in the head.”
Q. What is the timing of these two conversations?
A. That was probably three days ahead of that.
Q. Three days—the Holloman conversation three days?
A. After Frank’s—after Liberto’s conversation, Holloman’s conversation was after that.
Q. Holloman’s conversation was after Liberto. Liberto was three days before?
A. And I’m pretty close on that.
Q. All right.
A. Probably three days.
Q. Let me back you up a bit. Your mother and Junior, what did they exactly say about the awareness of Jones, Jackson, and Kyles? What did they specifically say that you recall?
A. In separate conversations and with all three of us sitting outside on the swing together—well, Junior was sitting on a Number 10 washtub that was turned over, and mama was in the glider, and we talked about it. And mama said, well, that went just like it was planned to be done. It was done just like it was planned to be done. It went the way it was supposed to go. Mama said, “Well, thank God for O. Z.”
(Ibid., 106–108)
A. If it just wounded him, it was already arranged that before Dr. King left here, that he was to go to St. Joseph’s Hospital down the street. He never was going to make it out of that emergency room alive if he was wounded.
Q. Why?
A. Well, they was going to put him to sleep.
Q. Who was going to do that?
A. I figured Dr. Bland was going to do it. You are going to want to know the particulars about that, aren’t you?
Q. Was he on duty?
A. Breen was close. He was right across the driveway at his office.
Q. How do you know this? Did Junior tell you this? Is this something you learned later on?
A. No. I know that because—because he was right here when I was right here, and I knew what his job was to be because Junior and Mother had already told me if he made it through—they was not going to let him go to John Gaston, because John Gaston was the hospital they preferred taking him to. They were the ones that saw most of the gunshots and stabbings, which is now the Elvis Presley Trauma Center. Back then it was John Gaston. They was not going I let him go that route. They were going to take him to St. Joe’s. So Bland’s office is right here. St. Joe is sitting right here right across the parking lot. He wasn’t going to leave out of there. They already had it planned.
Q. So if he was wounded, you said they would have it set up that he would be hit in the—killed in the—
A. The doctor would, right.
(Ibid., 133–135)
In separate conversations with his mother and Junior, Ron recalled his mother saying that it happened just as it was planned to have happened, his mother adding, “… thank God for O. Z.”
Ron said that they kept a rifle in a closet, which was one of five or six that Tolson had ordered from Oregon in 1964, and which he and his father picked up.
Ron said that on April 4, he carried a rifle into town wrapped on the back of his Honda bike and gave it to Junior, who was standing behind the billboard in the lot next to the Jim’s Grill lot (behind Canipe’s). Jowers was also there. Junior told him to ride around and stop on Mulberry near the fire station. The Adkins’ family hit man, Chess Butler, who was supposed to be present as backup, did not show up.
As Ron rode around, at one point he noticed MPD Lieutenant Tommy Smith parked on Main Street a couple of blocks away, just waiting.
He was sitting on his Honda on Mulberry Street when the shot was fired, and from there he saw a man jump down over the wall. He said he clearly recognized him as Earl Clark. He said Clark ran north up Mulberry Street and got into a green 1965 four-door Chevrolet Impala. He followed Clark, who in turn followed a Memphis police car. On his way, Ron also noticed a cab driver in the driveway of the motel and a black guy with a “shitload of bags” trying to leave in the cab.
He saw Marrell McCullough (whom he saw Junior and Frank Holloman talking to the day before) run up to the balcony to check for signs of life.
Ron believed that his brother was the shooter, but only because he later told him in boast that he was. His brother, though, might well have told him that to protect him and that really he didn’t know who fired the fatal shots. Ron knew that Jowers was there with Clark and the shooter.
He speculated that following the shooting of Dr. King, his brother gave the gun to Clark, who gave it to Jowers, who took it inside. He also speculated that his brother ran back through the vacant lot between the rooming house and fire station, out to Main Street, turned right, and got into the Mustang, which was parked south of Jim’s Grill and Canipe’s store, before driving away.
Other evidence (including from Jowers himself) confirms that Jowers took the gun inside his kitchen and broke it down in front of Betty Spates. However, there is no support for the position that someone coming from behind the building drove off in the Mustang. To the contrary, it appears clear that the person who carried and dropped a bundle of evidence in Canipe’s doorway, including the rifle James bought in Birmingham, was the same man who drove off in the Mustang.
Ron was told by one of the family crew, Jim Ryan, that the rifle was taken from Jowers, brought to the crematory, and there it was destroyed. Ron said his mother photographed the destruction (see Appendix M) and sent the photos to Mayor Loeb.
He recalls seeing a car with a white top heading north on Mulberry Street, stopping briefly around the driveway when Dr. King was hit and then driving on. That would appear to have been Ernestine Campbell.
Ron contended that “Buddy,” the taxi driver, parked in the motel parking lot, and was killed that evening by Chess Butler, either on Highway 51 or 55. Ron said he heard Chess say that he killed him. Ron said he was in the Butler home in Linda’s room with Chess’s son Danny on the floor between the two of them. In the next room he saw Chess’s wife Mildred and Chess standing near a table drinking whiskey.
Q. All right. Now, what happened to that taxi driver? Because we have taken statements from—
A. The taxi driver I was told was killed either on Highway 51 or Highway 55 by Chess Butler.
Q. How do you know Chess Butler did that?
A. I heard Chess say he killed him. But that was in Chess’s house when he was telling Mildred and my mother that he took him.
Q. Where you in the house at the time that—
A. I was in the bedroom sitting on the end of the bed. Linda Butler was sitting on the left side of the bed. I was sitting in the middle. Danny Butler was sitting on the right side of the bed. The door was close as from here to here from where I’m sitting because Linda was sitting here. The door opened out that way, and I could see Mildred, the back of Mildred, Mama was sitting right there and Chess was standing up at the end of the table taking a drink of whiskey.
Q. Was that the same evening?
A. It was the day he killed him. It was that night.
Q. That night?
A. Yeah. Yeah, it was after the shooting.
Q. When you went to Chess’s house and were at that house and heard him speaking, what did you actually hear him say?
A. I heard him say that he took care of the cab driver.
Q. Who told him to do that? Do you know?
A. I’m going to say it is either going to be Holloman or Russell Jr. or Clark, one or the other.
(Ibid., 152–154)
Ron said the cab driver was a problem, and he heard Chess say that he took care of him. His instructions came from Holloman, Junior, or possibly Clark; he did not know for certain. He said that afterward, Clark was concerned because he thought the driver saw him after he came down from the wall and turned to him face him, and therefore could have identified him.
Ron did not know the details of the killing of the cab driver. He said that Chess said he dumped the body off on the side of the road south of Brooks. According to Ron, Chess was good with a knife.
After the shooting, they met in a building that used to be the police gas station. He said when he got there; Earl was present, as was Sam. In fact, they were all in attendance except for Jim, who came later, as did Holly.
Ron asserted that the Mustang that James drove was parked further south on Main Street, and that the one his brother drove was parked closer to the Grill. From what we can piece together, it appears that the reverse was true. James’s Mustang was parked close to the door by the Grill and was well observed by witnesses (Hendrix and Reed). The second Mustang seen by the Hurleys was parked further south just below Canipe’s. Ron said he saw it after it was driven to the Quonset Hut where they met, and then later at the county penal farm.
He was told that the officer who sat with Lieutenant Tommy Smith was the man who dropped the bundle in front Canipe’s. The report, however, would appear to be refuted by the fact that the bundle contained the various bits and pieces, including the throw-down gun, which James had left on the bed in his rented room in the rooming house. There is little doubt someone in the group was working out of that room (and observed by another roomer)—possibly Raul or, more likely, Junior. Based on what Ron later observed, that man took the planted evidence downstairs, dropped it in Canipe’s doorway, and then quickly drove away in the second Mustang parked just south of the building. At one point, Canipe indicated to James’s lawyer, Art Hanes, that the bundle was dropped even before the shot.
Since James was in the first Mustang, and Ron saw a Mustang at the Quonset Hut meeting and later at the penal farm, it is very possible that it was Junior, and not Raul, who dropped the bundle and took off in the second Mustang.
Ron states that he believes that Maynard Stiles was ordered to send the clean-up team to the site the next morning in order for any incriminating evidence to be collected. The evidence included a shell casing that supposedly came from the rifle, a 742 Remington, which he was told they lost. This makes no sense since Betty Spates said Jowers broke down the murder rifle in front of her and tried to flush the shell down the toilet in the kitchen.
Ron also said that the rifle he delivered had no scope, whereas it was clear from other testimony about the practice/testing of the murder gun that it had a scope. This can only mean that the rifle Ron delivered to his brother was a backup gun and in the event was not used.
The next morning, he said, they all met at Henry’s (Mayor Loeb’s) brother’s house. In attendance at that meeting was Henry Loeb, Junior, Holloman, Chess, Mildred (Chess’s wife), Linda (Chess’s daughter), MPD Captain Ansarra, Sam Chambers, and Jim Ryan.
He recalls taking a letter from an MPD officer the following morning addressed to his mother from Henry Loeb, which thanked her for her message. According to Junior, she had called him to tell him that the gun was buried, and then sent on the photographs.
Tolson came back to Memphis a “few days” after the assassination. He went to see Holloman, Russell Jr. and his military friends, two good old country boys. He went to the meeting with Henry and Holloman. He said Marcello also came to town to meet over at the South Street Market with “Frank” Liberto.
Q. If we can move towards the end. Did you attend any meetings, be present at any meetings, when Toleson came in after the assassination?
A. No.
Q No? How long was it before he came back in again?
A. Let’s see. Probably about three times after that.
Q. A month?
A. Ten times at the max.
Q. How much later, the first time he came back in? A month later, two months later?
A. After daddy died?
Q. No, after the assassination.
A. After Martin was killed?
Q. Yeah.
A. A few days.
Q. He came back in a few days?
A. Yeah. It wasn’t long, because he came in and he went to—he went and met with Holloman. I’m going to say this was probably a week after that. The reason why I know that is because that’s what Junior and them was waiting around for. They didn’t leave out until after he come back to Memphis.
(Ibid., 180–181)
At one point in our deposition, Ron said, “… there is a lot of shit I don’t know!”
Immediately following the shooting of Dr. King, Olivia Catling stated that she saw a man wearing a hat running out of the alley and getting into the green Chevrolet and that it traveled down Huling and turned left to go north on Mulberry. She said she saw a man come out of that alley, run around the back of that car and get in. The man made a left turn on Mulberry and crossed Talbot to Vance.
Somehow, and there is much speculation on this point, the rifle went from the shooter to Jowers and eventually to Holly, who buried it. Jowers showed it to McCraw the next day, so it was not as immediate as Ron believed. When I reminded Ron about Olivia Catling’s observations, he linked up the statement that there was a green 1965 Chevrolet parked just below the alley on Huling. He confirmed that it was there as part of the escape, but states that it was running when Clark got into it.
Ron said that Clark got in the front passenger side of a car on the west side of Mulberry and followed a Memphis Police Department call down Huling to Second Street. This had to be a different car from the one observed by Olivia. Ron also testified that he remembered that, while in the bushes, Clark had a pillowcase covering his head.
When asked if he had ever heard the name of Frank Strausser, he said he had heard that name mentioned several times. He said the name came from Holloman and Junior but he did not know, or was not allowed to know, any details. He said he could not remember anything that was said about him.
He had said that Clyde Tolson went out to Oregon to arrange for some weapons to be sent to Memphis. It would appear that one of them was the one used by Strausser as he prepared for the job on April 3 and 4, 1968.