Gun bundle left behind at MLK's assassination
(Commercial Appeal/Landov)Later, Ray claimed that somebody else had left behind the bundle so as to incriminate him. In fact, one witness, Guy Canipe, said the package was actually dropped in the doorway to his store about ten minutes before the shot was fired. Makes a little more sense, doesnt it? Another witness, Olivia Catling, saw a fellow in a checkered shirt running out of the alley beside a building across from the Lorraine soon after the killing, who went screaming off in a green 65 Chevy. Ray, though, fled the scene in a white Mustang.

Judge Joe Brown, the first judge on the King familys civil case, spent two years examining technical questions about the murder weapon, and said that 67% of the bullets from my tests did not match the Ray rifle. When he called for more tests, he was taken off the case for showing bias by a Tennessee appeals court. What youve got in terms of the physical evidence relative to ballistics is frightening, he said later. First, its not the right type of rifle. Its never been sighted in. Its the wrong kind of scope. With a 30.06, it makes a particularly difficult shot firing at a downward trajectory in that circumstance. Above all, according to Brown, metallurgical analysis excludes the bullet taken from the body of Dr. King as coming from the cartridge case they say was fired in that rifle.

The actual sniper seems to have fired from behind some tall shrubs facing the second-floor motel balcony. A Memphis newspaper reporter named Wayne Chastain had arrived at the scene within ten minutes. He was told by two witnesses, Kings chauffeur and a lawyer, that the shot came from those bushes. Andrew Young told the FBI that he heard a sound like a firecracker come from the bushes above the retaining wall across the street from the motel.  [Watch Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura on truTV]

By the next morning, according to the Reverend James Orange, an associate of Kings, The bushes were gone. The authorities were said to be cleaning up the area. Why in all these cases does the government come in and make the most cardinal error you possibly couldand that is, disturb the crime site! When theres a violent crime, theyre not supposed to do that! Its one of the first procedures any cop is taught, basic Police 101. So who gives the order to do this? Dont any of them sit and wonder, Why are we not doing this according to the book, but instead breaking a cardinal rule of police work? But when theres an assassination, all local and state laws go out the window, and authority comes down from above about whats to happen. Isnt that the fox guarding the chicken house? The feds doing all the investigating and questioning just reeks of potential abuse.