Only an understanding of the techniques and applications
of mind control could begin to bring meaning to the
fragmented ramblings of Jack Ruby.
On June 7, 1964, Jack Ruby was questioned in jail in
Dallas, Texas, by Earl Warren and Gerald Ford. In that
session Ruby continually pleaded for a lie-detector test or
for sodium pentothal. He desperately wanted to prove his
honesty so that Warren and the commission would know he
was telling the truth.
Said Ruby: "I would like to be able to get a lie-detector
test or truth serum of what motivated me to do what I did
at that particular time, and it seems as you get further into
something, even though you know what you did, it operates
against you somehow, brainwashes you, that you are
weak in what you want to tell the truth about, and what
you want to say which is the truth."
"As I started to trial," Ruby continued, "I don't know if
you realize my reasoning, how I happened to be involved—
I was carried away tremendously emotionally, and all the
tune I tried to ask Mr. Belli [Melvin Belli, Ruby's first
lawyer], I wanted to get up and say the truth regarding the
steps that led me to do what I have got involved in, but
since I have a spotty background in the nightclub business,
I should have been the last person to ever want to do some thing that I had been involved in. In other words, I was
carried away tremendously. You want to ask me questions?"
Warren asked Ruby to just "tell us what you want, and
then we will ask you some questions."
"Am I boring you?" Ruby replied.
He pleaded with Warren to be taken to Washington
where he could be questioned in safety. Possibly either his
control agent was in the room, or Ruby felt that he was, for
again and again he hinted to Warren that he had something
quite important to say but could not say it at that moment
in Dallas.
"Gentlemen, unless you get me to Washington, you can't
get a fair shake out of me. If you understand my way of
talking, you have to bring me to Washington to get the
tests. Do I sound dramatic? Off the beam?"
"No, you are speaking very, very rationally," Warren replied,
"and I am really surprised that you can remember as
much as you have remembered up to the present time. You
have given it to us in great detail."
Again Ruby pleaded with Warren: "Unless you can get
me to Washington, and I am not a crackpot, I have all my
senses—I don't want to evade any crime I am guilty of."
Then Ruby asked that the sheriff and the law enforcement
officers leave the room, and after they were gone he said,
"Gentlemen, if you want to hear any further testimony, you
will have to get me to Washington soon, because it has
something to do with you, Chief Warren. Do I sound sober
enough to tell you this?"
"Yes, go right ahead," Warren said.
"I would like to talk to you in private," Ruby told him.
Warren seemed to miss the import of Ruby's statement.
"You may do that when you finish your story. You may
tell me that phase of it."
"I bet you haven't had a witness like me in your whole
investigation, is that correct?" Ruby asked.
"There are many witnesses whose memory has not been
as good as yours. I tell you that honestly," Warren replied.
"My reluctance to talk," Ruby went on, "you haven't
had any witnesses in telling the story, in finding so many
problems."
"You have a greater problem than any witness we have
had," Warren retorted. "I have a lot of reasons for having those problems,"
Ruby explained. Then after another exchange about going
immediately to Washington, Ruby said, "Gentlemen, my
life is in danger here. Not with my guilty plea of execution.
Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this?"
Warren assured him that he did sound sober. "From the
moment I started my testimony, haven't I sounded as
though, with the exception of becoming emotional, haven't
I sounded as though I made sense, what I was speaking
about?" Ruby asked.
"You have indeed," Warren again assured him. "I understand
everything you have said. If I haven't, it is my
fault."
"Then I follow this up," Ruby blurted out. "I may not
live tomorrow to give any further testimony. The reason
why I add this to this, since you assure me that I have been
speaking sense, then I might be speaking sense by following
what I have said, and the only thing I want to get out to
the public, and I can't say it here, is, with authenticity,
with sincerity of the truth, of everything, and why my act
was committed, but it can't be said here.
"It can be said, it's got to be said amongst people of the
highest authority that would give me the benefit of the
doubt. And following that, immediately give me the liedetector
test after I do make the statement.
"Chairman Warren, if you felt that your life was in danger
at the moment, how would you feel? Wouldn't you be
reluctant to go on speaking, even though you request me to
do so?"
Warren again reassured Ruby that he was making perfect
sense. "I wish that our beloved President, Lyndon
Johnson, would have delved deeper into the situation, hear
me, not to accept just circumstantial facts about my guilt
or innocence, and would have questioned to find out the
truth about me before he relinquished certain powers to
these certain people . . . Consequently, a whole new form
of government is going to take over our country [emphasis
added], and I know I won't live to see you another time.
Do I sound sort of screwy in telling you these things?"
"No," Warren said, "I think that is what you believe or
you wouldn't tell it under oath."
"But it is a very serious situation," Ruby said, "I guess it
is too late to stop it, isn't it? Now maybe something can be saved. It may not be too late, whatever happens, if out
President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me . .
But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing,
"Right now, when I leave your presence now, I am the
only one that can bring out the truth to our President, who
believes in righteousness and justice. But he has been told,
I am certain, that I was part of a plot to assassinate the
President. I know your hands are tied; you are helpless."
Earl Warren said, "Mr. Ruby, I think I can say this to
you, that if he has been told any such thing, there is no
indication of any kind that he believes it."
When it became apparent that Warren did not realize
Ruby had intended to confess to being a part of the plot to
kill President Kennedy, Ruby exploded. "I am sorry, Chief
Justice Warren, I thought I would be very effective in telling
you what I have said here. But in all fairness to everyone,
maybe all I want to do is beg that if they found out I
was telling the truth, maybe they can succeed in what their
motives are, but maybe my people won't be tortured and
mutilated . . ."
Warren could find no meaning in Ruby's testimony. He
merely assured him that neither he nor his family would be
tortured or mutilated by anyone. "You may be sure of
that," the Chief Justice added.
"No," Ruby answered. "The only way you can do it is if
he knows the truth, that I am telling the truth, and why I
was down in that basement Sunday morning, and maybe
some sense of decency will come out and they can still fulfill
their plan, as I stated before, without my people going
through torture and mutilation."
Warren assured Ruby that the President would know everything
he had said. "But I won't be around, Chief Justice,"
Ruby said. "I won't be around to tell the President."
Then one of the aides asked the first intelligent question
of the day, "Who do you think is going to eliminate you,
Jack?"
Ruby replied, "I have been used for a purpose, and there
will be a certain tragic occurrence happening if you don't
take my testimony and somehow vindicate me so my people
don't suffer because of what I have done . . ."
Jack Ruby was subsequently given a polygraph test
which proved to be inconclusive due to high levels of stress. In 1965 syndicated columnist Dorothy Kilgallen interviewed
Ruby in bis Dallas cell. She was the only major
journalist allowed to interview him. She told a few friends
that from what Ruby had told her, she was able to obtain
evidence that would "blow the JFK case sky high." Within
a few days, Dorothy Kilgallen died of a massive overdose
of barbiturates combined with alcohol. Her apartment was
found in shambles. The transcripts of her interview with
Ruby were missing. Her death was ruled a suicide.
In early 1967 Ruby complained that he was being poisoned.
He was diagnosed as having cancer, but a few weeks
after complaining of being poisoned, he died not of the cancer,
but of a "stroke" similar to the one that had killed
David Ferrie.
Another deathbed confession supports what Jack Ruby
was trying to tell the Warren Commission. That confession
was made by Professor George de Mohrenschildt, a former
intelligence agent who was also a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.
De Mohrenschildt was born in 1911 in the Ukraine. Following
the revolution, in 1921 he and his parents fled Russia
for Poland. He attended a Polish military academy for a
year, and later, in 1938, received a doctorate in international
commerce. He emigrated to the United States soon
thereafter and, in 1949, became a citizen.
After becoming interested in the exploration and generation
of oil, de Mohrenschildt received his master's degree
in petroleum geology and petroleum engineering. Sometime
thereafter he became acquainted with right-wing oil magnate
H. L. Hunt. Although the basis of their relationship is
unknown, de Mohrenschildt, in a recent interview with
Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans, stated, "I knew Hunt,
now the late Mr. Hunt, intimately. For some twenty years I
was invited to his parties."
FBI disclosures in 1976 suggested that Lee Harvey
Oswald was also acquainted with Hunt. And de Mohrenschildt
knew Oswald. Apparently he had introduced himself
to Oswald after hearing about him through a Russianspeaking
group in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Marina Oswald told the Warren Commission: "Lee did
not have any close friends, but at least he had—here in
America—he had a great deal of respect for de Mohren schildt . . . he considered him to be smart, to be full of
joy of living, a very energetic and very sympathetic person
. . ."
It was the conclusion of the Warren Commission, after
extensive investigation, that de Mohrenschildt had exhibited
no signs of subversive or disloyal conduct. The Warren
Report stated: "Neither the FBI, CIA, nor any witness
contacted by the Commission has provided any information
linking de Mohrenschildt to subversive or extremist organi-.
zations. Nor has there been any evidence linking them in
any way with the assassination of President Kennedy."
It was subsequently revealed, however, that de Mohrenschildt
had indeed been associated with various intelligence
operations over the years. He was connected with French intelligence
during World War II and was also linked to the
CIA Bay of Pigs operation.
In late March, 1977, de Mohrenschildt's name was
brought before the newly formed House Select Committee
on Assassinations. Willem Oltmans told the committee that
de Mohrenschildt held the key to the Kennedy assassination;
that de Mohrenschildt had privately confessed to him
that prior to the assassination he was aware of a conspiracy
to murder the President in Dallas. According to Oltmans
de Mohrenschildt was about to have a book published
which would reveal the details of his knowledge of the assassination.
After Oltmans' testimony, a spokesman for the House
Committee on Assassinations said that the committee
would investigate his claims and would, if warranted, track
down de Mohrenschildt for questioning. He was located a
week later in Palm Beach, Florida, but he could not be
called to testify. George de Mohrenschildt was found dead,
the victim of a gunshot wound in the head. Local officials
termed his death a suicide.
Following de Mohrenschildt's death, his Dallas attorney)
Pat Russell, supported Oltmans' claims to the Commission.
He verified the fact that before his death, de Mohrenschildt
had insisted that persons other than Lee Harvey Oswald
had participated in the slaying of President Kennedy. The
attorney revealed that he had in his possession tapes, a
book-length manuscript, and a photograph which de Mohrenschildt
had turned over to him earlier. He said the tapes
consisted of ten reels of interviews with de Mohrenschildt bout the Kennedy assassination, which, he claimed, were
firsthand accounts of the late professor's recollections of
Oswald.
Russell said that although he did not know if the tapes or
the book contained any new evidence, the photograph
should be of particular interest to assassination investigators.
He claimed that although the photo was similar to a
well-known picture obtained by the Dallas police which
showed Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle and wearing a
pistol, what made the photograph interesting was that it
was autographed on the back by Oswald and dated May 4,
1963, approximately six months prior to the assassination.
After de Mohrenschildt's death Willem Oltmans released
a portion of his interview with the deceased. Oltmans described
him as "Oswald's most intimate friend," and, without
offering an explanation, said that he had been ultimate
with Oswald during "the years when Oswald's brain was
being programmed toward the murder of the century."
In the interview dated February 23, 1977, de Mohrenschildt
told Oltmans "In June, 1976, I completed a manuscript.
That's when disaster struck. You see, in that book I
played the devil's advocate. Without directly implicating
myself as an accomplice in the JFK assassination I still
mentioned a number of names, particularly of FBI and
CIA officials who apparently may not be exposed under
any circumstances. I was drugged surreptitiously. As a result
I was committed to a mental hospital. I was there eight
weeks and was given electric shocks and as a consequence
I sometimes forget certain details temporarily . . ."
De Mohrenschildt went on to say that as a result of the
drugs and shocks, he could take no more. "I tried to commit
suicide five times . . . One of these days I will put a
revolver to my head . . ."
According to Oltmans, de Mohrenschildt left Dallas in
the middle of the night on March 3, 1977, telling him, "I
don't want anybody to see me." Oltmans reported that at
that time de Mohrenschildt was in a state of panic, constantly
worried whether "they" would let him leave the
country. "He always felt watched and followed," Oltmans
said. "I really cannot see how somebody who does not have
anything to hide would develop such behavior."1
On the day he died, George de Mohrenschildt was being
interviewed by author Edward Jay Epstein for his book The Legend of Lee Harvey Oswald. They broke for lunch at
one o'clock and Epstein walked de Mohrenschildt to his
car. They were supposed to resume the interview at three
P.M., and when de Mohrenschildt didn't return, Epstein
called his room and heard a distraught maid tell him that
de Mohrenschildt had taken his own life. De Mohrenschildt's
daughter, Alexandra, told Epstein that she believes her
father took his own life after having had a post-hypnotic
suggestion triggered by a voice over the telephone in his
room.
The last days of George de Mohrenschildt sound strikingly
similar to those of the victims of mind control. Could
it have been that when drugs and "electric shock" failed to
erase his memory, the final solution was prescribed? Or
was he programmed to self-destruct? On April 4, 1968, Nobel laureate Dr. Martin Luther
King was murdered on a second-floor balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Half of the sixthousand-
man FBI force was assigned to the task of bringing
the killer to justice.
The FBI should have had an easy job. There was an
abundance of evidence left behind on the second floor of a
rooming house a block from the Lorraine Motel. There
were fingerprints on the window ledge of a bathroom next
to a room which had been rented to an "Eric S. Galt." On
the sidewalk in front of the house was a weapon, a highpowered
rifle with telescopic sight. Neighbors said they had
seen a white Mustang roar away moments after the shooting.
Nevertheless, the killer got away.
A ham radio operator broadcasting from a fixed station
posed as a CB operator in a mobile unit. He broadcast a
convincing account of a high-speed chase between a white
Mustang and a blue Pontiac. He reported that the two cars
Were shooting at each other. While police concentrated
their search in the area described by the ham operator, the
white Mustang they were seeking sped away from Mem-
Phis in the other direction. The ham operator's actions
were explained away by authorities as a hoax. Within a few
days local police and federal authorities forgot the incident.
While the use of a high-powered ham radio on the elevenmeter
CB band and the broadcasting of false emergency
information are two clear violations of the Federal Com "prankster" are not known.
The FBI soon discovered that the fingerprints left at the
scene of the crime belonged to the man who had rented the
room, Eric S. Gait. Through a computer search they later
found that Galt's real name was James Earl Ray.
The day after Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in
Los Angeles, James Earl Ray was captured in London. He
was apprehended by British customs inspectors while attempting
to leave the country on a passport issued to a
Canadian constable.
Ray was quickly extradited to Tennessee for trial. The
lengthy search and investigation, billed as "the most complete
manhunt in history," was followed by one of the shortest
trials in history. On March 10, 1969, less than one
year after the assassination, Ray had his day in court, literally.
By most standards his was not a trial but a deal. The
deal had been arranged by Ray's attorneys, who had urged
him to plead guilty so that he would get ninety-nine years
instead of the death penalty.
Under Tennessee law, even if a defendant enters a guilty
plea, a jury is required to attend the plea and to "ratify"
the plea and the sentence. In a courtroom sealed by the
tightest possible security, twelve jurors heard the prosecutor,
State Attorney General Phil Canale, explain to Ray his
rights to a trial by jury. They heard Ray plead guilty to
murder in exchange for the ninety-nine-year sentence. They
heard prosecutor Canale say that, as required by law, he
would outline the evidence which would have been presented
had the case gone to formal trial. Canale then asked
the jury if they each could sit as jurors and accept the
guilty plea from the defendant. They nodded in unison.
Canale told the jury: " . . . There have been rumors
going all around—perhaps some of you have heard them—
that Mr. James Earl Ray was a dupe in this thing, or a fall
guy or a member of a conspiracy to kill Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr.
"I want to state to you, as your Attorney General, that
we have no proof other than that Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr., was killed by James Earl Ray, and James Earl Ray
alone, not in concert with anyone else. Our office has examined
over five thousand printed pages of investigation
work done by local police, by national police organizations, examined over three hundred physical bits of evidence
physical exhibits. Three men in my office, Mr. Dwyer, Mr.
Beasly and Mr. John Carlisle, the Chief Investigator of the
Attorney General's Office. . . have traveled thousands of
miles all over this country and to many cities in foreign
countries on this investigation, our own independent investigation,
and I just state to you frankly that we have no
evidence that there was any conspiracy involved in this. . ."
The state had not charged Ray with conspiracy; it had
charged him with murder in the first degree. Nevertheless
the prosecutor felt compelled to deny that Ray had collaborators.*
Stranger still was the reaction of defense attorney Percy
Foreman, a man who had never lost a case, to the remarks
of the prosecuting attorney. As soon as Canale had finished
issuing his disclaimer of conspiracy, Foreman rose and
faced the jury. "It is an honor to appear in this Court for
this case. I never expected or had any idea when I entered
this case that I would be able to accomplish anything except
perhaps save the defendant's life . . . It took me a
month to convince myself of that fact which the Attorney
General of these United States, and J. Edgar Hoover of the
Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last July, that
is, what Mr. Canale has told you—that there was not a
conspiracy."
Just as the jury was that I haven't agreed to in the past," Ray answered, making
sure he didn't blow the deal.
Foreman tried to explain. "I think that what he said is
that he doesn't agree that Ramsey Clark is right, or that J.
Edgar Hoover is right. I didn't argue that as evidence in
this case, I simply stated that, underwriting the statement
of General Canale [sic] that they had made the same statement.
You are not required to agree with it all."
The judge wanted nothing to sidetrack the smooth proceedings.
"You still . . . your answers to these questions
that I asked you would still be the same? Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir," Ray answered.
And so the proceedings continued with Canale's presentation
of a report of what would have been the evidence
had this been a real trial.
After hearing from eyewitnesses that Dr. King had been
killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, Canale called
experts from the Memphis Police Department and the FBI
to testify on how they had accumulated physical evidence
that linked Ray to the scene of the crime.
In the boarding house room that Ray (a/k/a Eric Starvo
Galt) had rented, the FBI and police found a green bedspread,
a pair of pliers and a hammer, some shaving articles,
binoculars, beer cans, a newspaper, a T-shirt, shorts, a
transistor radio, and two leather straps for binoculars. The
testimony established that the white Mustang was found in
Atlanta, Georgia. It had a sticker on it that indicated it had
crossed the border into Mexico. The pliers had been obtained
in Los Angeles, California, as had the T-shirt and
shorts. In the bathroom from where the shot was supposed
to have been fired, the investigators found scuff marks in
the bottom of the tub. They found the window of the bathroom
opened and the screen forced off.
"This [window] sill was ordered removed, was cut away
and was subsequently sent to the FBI for comparison,"
Canale said, "and the proof would show through expert testimony
that the markings on this sill were consistent with
the machine markings as reflected on the barrel of the
30-06 rifle which has heretofore been introduced to you."
If this were a trial Canale said, eyewitnesses would be
called to testify that Ray had purchased the rifle in Birmingham,
Alabama, that he'd stayed at a motel in that city
and had checked out on the nineteenth of December and had returned to Los Angeles. Also Dr. Russel C. Hadley of
Hollywood, California, would be called by the state to testify
that "in his capacity as a plastic surgeon, he did perform
an operation on the nose of the defendant under the
name of Eric Galt on March 5, 1968."
Canale placed in evidence a photo he said was of James
Earl Ray, a photo of a graduating class from the International
School of Bartending.
Other evidence Canale said would have been presented
in a trial was the expert testimony of FBI fingerprint analyst
George Bornebreke. The fingerprint expert would testify
that he found "a print of sufficient clarity on the rifle
. . . another print of sufficient clarity for identification on
the scope mounted on the rifle . . . a print on one of the
Schlitz beer cans . . . a print on the binoculars . . . a print
on the front page of the April 4th issue of the Memphis
Commercial Appeal. . ." and "prints of sufficient clarity"
on maps of Atlanta, Birmingham, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana,
California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico, all of
which, it could be proved, were the fingerprints of James
Earl Ray.
The entire presentation of the case took just under three
hours. There was a recess for lunch, after which Ray was
ordered jailed for ninety-nine years.
As soon as Ray began to serve his sentence he renewed
his protestations of innocence and began working for a new
trial. He fired attorneys Percy Foreman and Arthur Hanes,
alleging that he had not had a fair trial. He said that he'd
been "set up to take the rap" for a crime he didn't commit.
At Ray's hearing on a new trial, he stated, under oath, "I
Personally did not shoot Dr. King, but I may have been
partly responsible without knowing it."
If Ray's psychological profile made him a likely victim
for anyone who might need a fall guy in a murder, he was
equally well suited to be a victim of mind control. The
crimes for which he had previously been tried and convicted
were all robberies in which no one was harmed.
They were all remarkable for one thing—the chase that followed.
Each time Ray committed a crime he left a trail of evidence.
Each time he left the scene in either a footrace or a
hair-raising car chase, with outraged citizens or police or
both in hot pursuit. In each crime, Ray behaved like a little boy who'd just stolen money from his father's pockets and
was then daring him to catch and punish him. He was from
a deprived family, the eldest of eight children. Many individuals
who were once emotionally deprived children learn
to seek negative attention since positive attention was unavailable
to them in their formative years. James Earl Ray
fit that pattern. In the opinion of a psychologist he may
have committed his daring daylight robberies not out of a
need for money, but out of a subconscious desire to receive
love.
The only evidence which cast light on Ray's possible motive
for the assassination was an eyewitness report that he
had spoken passionately of his hatred of blacks in a Los
Angeles bar.
A few years' after Ray's sentencing, other evidence came
to light which suggested that the FBI had a stronger motivation
to kill Martin Luther King than Ray had. On November
19, 1975, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
made public the fact that the FBI had sent a
compromising tape recording with an anonymous letter to
Dr. King in late 1964 in a crude attempt to blackmail him
into silence. Dr. King had thought the tape and letter were
an effort to drive him to suicide.
King received the package thirty-four days before he was
to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. The tape was allegedly of
a sexual encounter of Dr. King and a young woman. It was
accompanied by an unsigned note that read, "King there is
only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You
have just thirty-four days in which to do it. (This exact
number has been selected for a specific reason.) It has definite
practical significance. You are done. There is but one
way out for you."
A month after Dr. King received his copy of the tape, a
duplicate was sent to his wife. Mrs. King said publicly that
she and her husband had listened to the tape together and
had concluded that it had nothing on it that would discredit
King.
The Senate subcommittee said that at about the same
time Mrs. King had received her copy of the tape, a copy
was submitted to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Accompanying
that tape was a memorandum written by the FBI
Chief of Counter-intelligence William Sullivan. The memo suggested that the FBI discredit King by "knocking him off
his pedestal."
The Senate committee disclosed further that the FBI had
kept tabs on Dr. King for six years prior to his death. It
had instituted sixteen different wiretap operations and had
planted eight room bugs in its attempts to catch him in
some compromising situation which could be used for
blackmail or public discreditation. The shocked Senate select
committee members discovered that the taps and bugs
had produced "thousands of hours of tapes."
In addition, it was discovered that Hoover had ordered
some of his men to rewrite reports that had originally indicated
King was not a threat to the country. Those officials
who were ordered to change their reports readily did so,
the committee said, because they feared for their jobs.
After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence made
these facts known, Mrs. Coretta King said what she had
feared to say before. She said she believed that her husband
had been killed by a government conspiracy.
"The way he was documented and followed around by
Hoover and the CIA, when he was abroad, it [his assassination]
would have to have been attached to the forces of
our government that felt he was a threat to the system as it
existed," said Mrs. King.
A few days after Mrs. King issued that statement, Maryland
private investigator Harold Weisberg used the Freedom
of Information Act to obtain previously classified FBI
reports. These reports revealed that directly contrary to
claims made by Canale at Ray's "trial," the FBI had been
unable to find any physical evidence that a rifle had been
fired from the window in Ray's rooming house, either on
the weapon or in the room from which the assassin had
allegedly fired. This was a crucial discovery, in that it was
the rifle alone which linked Ray to the killing.
If the rifle was not fired from the second-story room,
then, no matter how Ray's fingerprints got on the weapon,
reasonable doubt existed that Ray was the assassin. No ballistics
evidence links the rifle to the bullets in King's body,
The FBI's evidence, which was kept secret, had all the
while pointed to the conclusion that the rifle could have
been planted in front of the rooming house to implicate
Ray while the real assassin had fired from a location outside
the rooming house. A few months after Weisberg's find, Newsday published
a copyrighted story reporting that a top law-enforcement
official in Memphis had removed one particular black detective
who had been assigned to protect Dr. King just
hours before he was assassinated. The Newsday article suggested
that Detective Ed Redditt had been pulled from his
post because he had developed a contingency plan to apprehend
any assassin who might make an attempt on
King's life. Redditt's plan was to seal off a four-block area
in the event a shot was fired.
Earlier the same week, Newsday had revealed that the
Memphis Police Department had assigned "provocateurs"
to protect King. The paper charged that men who had previously
participated in anti-King riots were "protecting" the
civil rights leader at the moment he was shot.
The activities of James Earl Ray during the year preceding
the assassination could be interpreted to suggest the
possibility that Ray was a patsy in the mold of Oswald. Ray
had been to Mexico, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, places
which had figured prominently in the activities of Oswald
and the others who were indicted by Jim Garrison.
Facts which were not presented at Ray's quick "trial"
included the following: Ray had escaped from prison, one
year before the King assassination. Evidence indicated that
he had been helped by someone in his escape. During the
year he was "on the lam," he received an estimated $12,-
000 from a source he identified only as "Raoul." He had
no difficulty in obtaining a car and several complete sets of
identification. Each set belonged to a living individual,
something an intelligence agent would prefer if he were to
set up a false identity. Ray had no difficulty traveling all
over the United States, Canada, and Mexico with his fake
papers.
The contradictory history of Ray's activities in Los Angeles
led private investigators to consider, as they had in
the Oswald case, that there may have been two James Earl
Rays. One, the James Earl Ray who had been in prison,
was a painfully shy fellow who seldom opened his mouth
and hardly ever raised his voice. Fellow inmates found they
had a hard time describing him, since he maintained such a
low profile. He had been raised dirt-poor, had never graduated
from a school of any kind, and there is no record of his ever having expressed a political idea about anyone. In
Los Angeles, the "other" James Earl Ray was described as
an outgoing fellow. He enrolled in and graduated from bartending
school; he became involved in an altercation with a
girl in a bar who objected to his making slurs about the
black race; he was very conscientious about his appearance
and was an impeccable dresser, who even wore expensive
alligator shoes; and he was a right-wing politician who conspicuously
campaigned for George Wallace.
One other bit of evidence gives unity to the contradictions—
Ray had been hypnotized while in Los Angeles.
It was not mentioned in Ray's "trial," but at the time of
his arrest in London, he had in his possession three books
on hypnotism: Self-Hypnotism: The Technique and Its
Use in Daily Living by Leslie M. LeCron, How to Cash In
on Your Hidden Memory Power by William D. Hersey,
and Psychocybernetics by Dr. Maxwell Maltz. Ray had
told William Bradford Huie, "I took a course in hypnosis
while in L.A. I had read a lot about it in prison on how it
was used in dentistry and medicine."
On November 27, 1967, Ray appeared in the office of
Dr. Mark Freeman, a psychologist who practiced in Beverly
Hills. Dr. Freeman remembered that Ray, who'd given
his real name, asked to be hypnotized because he wanted to
sleep better and remember things better.
"This fellow really wanted to improve his mind," Dr.
Freeman said. "He had an awe of learning. He had a bent
for reading. He didn't fight hypnosis. He learned something."
Dr. Freeman told George McMillan, author of The
Making of an Assassin, "You've got to keep in mind that I
get a lot of angry people around here. A lot of people who
come to me want to teach me how to do it. I get a lot of
rough stuff around here. I mean psychotic, that stuff. But I
couldn't pick up on any of that with Ray. He made a favorable
impression on me. He was a good pupil. I'd show him
how to go under, and pretty soon he'd be lying on the
couch on his back and start talking. I taught him eye fixation,
bodily relaxation, how to open himself to suggestion. I
gave him lots of positive feelings of confidence."
It may have been that Freeman found Ray so suggestible
because he had been hypnotized before. His contact with
freeman and other hypnotists (he told Huie he'd been to as many as eight) may have been prompted by an unconscious
urge to undo what had already been done to him—a
hypnotically induced split personality, one which was programmed
to kill upon command, or merely one which was
programmed to run away, following his normal pattern,
but this time on command. It's easy to program someone to
do under posthypnotic cue what he normally does. And it's
a lot easier to program a patsy than it is to program a hit
man. The circumstances of Robert Kennedy's death are well
known. On June 5, 1968, at 12:15 A.M., Sen. Robert Kennedy
was shot in the pantry of the Ambassador Hotel in
Los Angeles. Karl Uecker grabbed the gun, a .22 caliber
Iver-Johnson revolver. It was smoking in the hand of Sirban
Beshara Sirhan, a Palestinian refugee.
The Los Angeles police immediately took Sirhan into
custody. At first they appeared to be taking every precaution
so that they wouldn't make the same mistakes the Dallas
police had. They taped every interrogation session with
the suspect and kept him under surveillance through a
closed-circuit TV camera in his cell. They took every measure
to protect the life of this man, the second "lone nut" to
gun down a Kennedy.
Trying to avoid anything which would be an infringement
on the rights of the alleged assassin, the police carefully
informed Sirhan of his legal rights before trying to
interrogate him.
Through the first hours of questioning, Sirhan chose to
remain silent. For some time, no one knew who the curlyhaired,
swarthy man in custody was.
It wasn't until the police found a truck in the parking lot
of the hotel, and traced it to Sirhan Beshara Sirhan, that
they were certain of his identity. Police immediately went
to his house and searched his bedroom. On the floor next
to Sirhan's bed was a large spiral notebook. On the desk
was another notebook. There was a third small notebook, a
good deal of occult literature, a brochure advertising

There are no comments to this entry.