In Black America; To Live Or Maybe Not, with Gary Revel

From the University of Texas at Austin, K-U-T Radio, this is In Black America. We said it was a conspiracy, now they didn't go as far as I'd be as they found that it was probably a conspiracy, and I'm not always saying it was a conspiracy, but it was that James Earl Ray had no part in it. He was just a cog in the wheel, he was just one of us, and even when he's a bad building, he told me he wasn't feeling guilty to kill him, don't you think? And he didn't object it in court to the charges against him, and still he never got a trial, they just railroaded him and sent him to prison for 99 days, something he didn't do. Well, I'm seven years old, I can be dead next week. So, what I got to lose, you know, and it's just the truth, I was there, I'm the one who investigates, you know, I mean, not all these other people, you know, they write

books about it, but they just write these books based on their research and for the other people to see. I'm the real face, I'm the one who actually did it and found out the truth, and the truth says James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King. Gary Rebel, former special investigator and author of to live, or maybe not, a Gary Rebel memoir. In 1977, Rebel in association with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, lost his own investigation for the unbornest truth about Dr. King's assassination. In his book, he take readers of the Jabrushy Mountain Prison where he met and became a personal confidant to the accused assassin James Earl Ray. From there, he followed the clues wherever they led, including Memphis, Tennessee, New Orleans, Louisiana, Miami, Florida, and other underscores locations. More than 30 years after his investigation into Dr. King's death, he continues to sign the light of truth into the darkest halls of injustice, and find he can't quit until the world knows what he uncovered. What he discovered is now being

developed into a feature-length, molten picture. I'm Johnny Ohmson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, to live or maybe not with Gary Rebel in Black America. So about the third or fourth night of that reunion revival, I was in a black church there in Nashville, and after the service, the pastor, he kind of knew me, you know, did kids saw me, but now nobody knew about what was going through my mind about, you know, investigating the accused assassination. I didn't mention that to nobody. But on this position, now he came back and said, Gary said, God wants me to tell you something. And I said, all right, what is it? And he said, God said to tell you, quit playing around in the shallow water and get on out there where it's deep. Well, only God and me knew what he would have been talking about. But right away, I knew, I said, OK, all right, OK, thank you for asking. I'll see you later. But that's the night that I said, OK, I'm going to have

to do this. So then I made arrangements to meet with James Earl Ray, because in my mind, I could not investigate that killing without knowing James Earl Ray. In 2006, Gary Rebel found his name and been printed in a book published by the U.S. government It was a transcript of a meeting the House Select Committee on Assassinations held with James Earl Ray at Brushy Mountain Prison in Tennessee. He had been told that his work as an investigator on the case would not be disclosed that his name would never be released until he released it or gave the government permission to do so. The book was a transcript of the case of the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It was published in 1979 or sometime thereafter. In his book to live or maybe not, Rebel offer a behind-the-scenes look at the dramatic, yet terrifying walls of the infamous Brushy Mountain Prison of East Tennessee, where he walked and talked with the much written about the alleged assassin

of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. James Earl Ray. It all began in January 1977 in the long hours of Jack Kershaw in Nashville, Tennessee, where he was asked to investigate the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, recently in Black America's smoke with Gary Rebel. Okay, well, there was a bar as the road goes down. He then entered the beach. I was right inside. Some people remember and said, yeah, I know what it was. That bar would let us drink, you know, like he was in the Navy, we were in the Vietnam War, and they were one of the few bars that would let us drink if we were underage. You know, they think of what they might be dead in two months. So, you know, you'll let them have a drink before they go to Vietnam. So, I would go there, something to have a drink. I would drink it. Well, sometimes I drink, but then I drink, kind of, and then I drink Irish whiskey, usually if I drink. So I was there one night, walked in into the bathroom, asked for a drink, and the bartender said, there's two gentlemen back there that want to talk to you. It just so happened that

I got kind of a schedule and they knew when I was coming, you know. So I looked back, I saw two men in suit and pies, setting with kind of like their backs against the wall, or angled against the wall, and then they had, I could see some folders, some vanilla folders on the table, and there was an empty chair in front, which would have been facing them. And today, what I can tell you, when people will ask, well, what do they look like? I can tell you that they are the examples of men in black. They look, well, now we would say, if we ever met with men in black, they would, they look like that. So I go back and sit down, you know, I'll say hi on the sit down, and they begin to tell me my life story. And they know more about me than I knew myself. They, they, you know, they talk about my two brothers, Kenneth Rebels. And here's an interesting little point to this,

Benny C. Rebels. Now, oldest brother had an S on his name, R-E-D-E-L-S. Me and my brother and my sister, all of his Rebels, no S. Okay, they knew he was my brother even though he had an S on his name, see? So they knew things like that, see that nobody would know if they hadn't really, you know, researched and investigated the matter. So they were for real, you know, I knew they were for real. And ultimately, I ended up being volunteer to do some very special work for my government. My government would really be proud of me and all of that stuff, you know, you'll serve your country, you'll do things for your country, nobody else would do or what would want to do. And I mean, I felt, you know, it was my dream come true, you know, to do stuff like that. I want, you know, I was ready to get into the fight. From, from that night on, then they asked me to take a course in Naval

Intelligence. I did that. They started, you know, giving me some training on the right way to script somebody's ropes and, you know, stuff like that. Then I finished Naval Intelligence and then I was studying nuclear physics. But even during that time, I was already working on the secret operations. And that's, see, if you really know this, you know, the whole story, you understand why I would end up investigating the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. I understand. Before we get to that, I want to ask you, you refused to say a recording contract with Capital Records. I, I refused to record it in Capital Records. And I was offered a contract with them. As soon as I went, I got out of the Megan 69, and on the honor of this charge, and I went right to Hollywood because I've been one of those clubs that we operated in. I was singing one night and the fellow came up and gave me his card

and said, when you get out, come see me. You know, they knew I was going to get out. So after I served a little over two years, I got an honorable discharge because of the work that I had been doing and stuff. And I went to Hollywood. And within about a month, I was in Capital Records recordings. And that's, that's, I think I touched, I touched on that in the book, too. But I actually ended up turning them down and saying, thank you. I understand. So how did you happen to come to be a special investigator in the assassination of Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.? Well, that happened in Nashville, Tennessee. I had needs. I left Hollywood. I went to Florida, went to New York City, for example, while on the long island, and I went down to business in Harlem one night. I sang in a couple of clubs up there. One night I was in Harlem in a club and I called my girlfriend in Hollywood. And she said, I told her, I said, I'm in New York City because she grew up in New York City. So, and she said, well, yeah, and I told her, she said, you get your

little southern ass out of it. She said, you're going to get killed. I guess because I had a southern accent, you know, she figured I'm not going to be well. But I was always at home. I didn't have any trouble. But from there, I went, I went to Memphis, Tennessee. I worked with Juddy Phillips, Judd Phillips, Jr. Now his dad Juddson Phillips and Sam Phillips, they own son records. They started Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jenny Lewis, several R&B singers. They helped make a career. And Juddy was my manager. He'd become my manager in Hollywood. So, I was in Memphis of course, recording with them. I found that Sam Phillips was through Juddy. Now, Sam Phillips would play a part in my investigation later on. So all of this got the setting, all this up. Then I ended up in Nashville, Tennessee, working

with what was called Sure Fire Music first. That was Loretta Lynn's company. I worked with them for a while. Then they went to work at their service station that they owned. The Wilbur Brothers owned a service station called Music Road Shield. Now the reason I went to work at the service station is they wanted me to sign an exclusive songwriting agreement and give me a kind of a draw. You know, pay me so much a week. But the amount they wanted to pay me, I had a wife, but then I had a wife in the child. And the amount they wanted to pay me wasn't really enough. So, that's why I went to work for Music Road Shield. When I was working at Music Road Shield, I would sometimes pump gas for an attorney named Jack Kershaw. Now, I didn't know who he really was and his wife Mary. I didn't know who they were until one day she told me she said, Jack, and I want you to come to dinner tonight. Now, I'd already started working for A.C.F. Rose. Back in A.C.F. Rose was the number one country music publisher in the world. So, I've already signed a song with them. So,

I went to dinner with Jack and Mary Kershaw. And he was a fairly well-known controversial type of a lawyer in Nashville. We struck up a friendship and basically we became partners. We started working on things. We did some electronic stuff. We actually helped put together the very first video game. That little ton of things that bounces the balls back and forth. I helped design and read that very first one of those because of my electronic experience here in the Navy. It gave me the ability to do that. But later on in 1977, we went office one day. I had a desk across from Jack. He wasn't a law firm type of guy. He had his own office. He owned his own office. And it was by a little creek there in South Nashville. It was really, you know, quite nice, nice, quite place. And I was one day he walked over to me and he had some disclapal clippings about the King assassination. And he had his something that James O'Rea had signed. We trained him as an attorney. He'd become James

O'Rea's attorney. And then he said, I want you to put some of your experience to work. Some of you in the Navy experienced your covert operations experience. And I said, how's that? He said, we're great. But I want you to investigate the assassination of Martin as a King Jr. Well, I didn't really jump at that. It didn't. It sounded like it was kind of a dangerous situation to get into that. And I just kind of said, well, you know, let me think about it. So for a few days, I just, I couldn't make up my minds. Then we, our church, I was going to study what was called a rolling revival. We had church every night, but in different churches. I got a one church one night, another church next night, another church. And so about the third or fourth night of that rolling revival, I was in a black church there in Nashville. And after the service, the pastor, he kind of knew that, you know, he had kids saw me. But now, nobody knew about what was going

through my mind about, you know, investigating the King assassination. I didn't mention that to nobody. But on this position, now, he came back and said, yeah, he said, God wants me to tell you something. And I said, all right. What is it? And he said, God said to tell you, quit playing around in the shallow water and get on out there where it's deep. Well, only God and me knew what he would have been talking about. But, but right away, I knew, okay. All right. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, pastor. I'll see you later. But that's the night that I said, okay, I'm going to have to do this. So then I made a ring just to meet with James Earl Ray, because in my mind, I could not investigate that killing without knowing James Earl Ray. I had to look him in there. I had to shake his hand. I had to find out in my heart and mind if this guy was a killer or not. What did you put it up? Well, I went to brushing mountain prisons. And the brushing mountain prison is a man. It is a big stone, gothic looking, scary building, just looking at it is

scary. I went up and I spent spent the day with James and went, we had even had lunch together. But in that day, and I told him when I first sat down when I said, look, I want you to tell me your story. But this is off the record. I'll never repeat it. And you can be honest with me. You can tell me anything. We talked about him being in the military, and they have people operating on a need to know basis and all that. So we understood each of it. You know, we kind of, kind of, and we're a little bit about the criminal lifestyle because other things, the investigations I've done and stuff. And, you know, and being, you know, living in, in the Florida, in a bar situation and stuff like that. So we kind of, you know, hit it off. I got what I told him, Jim, as a matter of fact, that's probably Jim and I talked to him. So I said, Jim is just, you know, just tell me in your own words what happens. And so he told me the whole story. Some about his younger life, how he and how he was helped escape from Jefferson City prisons and helped him. And he got to,

he was finally sent to the Annette Dream bar in Montreal, Canada. And it was there where he met E. Howard Hunt and Luchin Sardis. Now, E. Howard Hunt, he was, he was a CIA operative. He ran a fascination teams. He had people killed in foreign countries. Now, they, he was not supposed to operate. It's not that it's a guess of all from the CIA to operate within the United States of America. But, you know, they play, they get, they get to play by their own rules. So they operate whether they want to. And then Luchin Sardis, he was the head of the Canadian mafia. He was part of the Italian. He was from Corsica, I think. And he was, he was a mob boss. He was like a godfather, but he was running the Canadian operations. And the drug dealing, you know, across the border between US and Canada, gun running, all that, all that stuff, you know, prostitution. They ran all of that stuff. But they put,

um, Giants are arrayed to work for them. And they would, you know, they would pay them, they would give them money and tell him where to do them, what to do. And they, they mentored him basically. And, um, kept him moving around the country. They sent him to Mexico. He did some working Mexico for them with a Los Angeles. But he only went where they told him to go for the most part. So what evidence did you uncovered to convince you that he didn't do it? Well, uh, there's a whole lot to that too. And, uh, probably the most important, not only talking to Carlos Marcella, who was the mob boss for New Orleans. He lived in New Orleans. And other people like Willie Green, you know, people in, in Memphis who were there when the killing took place, the burta who was like the mob produce guy there. He was the connection with them. Uh, but it just so happened when I started investigating the case and I went to Memphis, it just so happened that knowing Sam Phillips and, you

know, in the son records, people was an asset because I was able to talk to people and learn things that most folks wouldn't have been able to learn. And one of those things that I learned was like the burta, Frank LaBurta, he ran the produce company there. So his, his legal front was that he delivered produce, you know, the restaurants and stores and stuff like that. You know, the farmers would bring them to him and then he would take them to the stores. And then there was another company there called a, uh, Connipes, an amusement company. And they ran the jickbox operation. They would take the records to the jickbox. You know, years before they had, you know, those companies did slot machines because it was illegal to do slot machines anymore. So they did pink home. And what's really interesting, what became interesting to me later on was I remembered how when I grew up, the jickbox that we had, the man who came in service to jickbox works for Carlos Marcelo. And, and

it turned out, now I did, you know, I'd heard the name, but I had no idea how it would connect later on in my life. My stepdad was a stripper. And he ended up working on a stripper boat that was owned by Carlos Marcelo. So Carlos had stripper boats and stripping operations. He had the amusement company that service jickboxes and promoted records and stuff like that. Now, now these guys like Carlos Marcelo back then, he can make, he can make a hit record. He can make somebody a star within a week. And how they did it, the knobs, the mafia owns over half of all jickboxes in the country. You know, they owned the amusement companies that service the jickboxes. So if they decided they wanted a record to be a hit, they all they had to do was have ever jickboxes they owned, put that record in it. They would buy it. In one week, it would go to number one on the charts. And see, I had been learning all these things. So when I went to Memphis, I was able to talk to

Liberto. Now, he was the guy. There was a, see what's his name? There was a fella. And this was a black man. I forget his name now. Now, see, I'm just talking to y'all to talk with my head. I don't have nothing before me. I don't have any notes or anything. I'm just telling you what I remember. But there was a black man who bought produce from Liberto or what's sometimes taking produce one of the other. And he was there in the office on April 4, 1968. The day Martin Luther King was shot. And he heard Liberto on the phone say, no, I don't know. Well, I'll say, you know, I'll say S.O.B. But he heard something different. But he said, just shoot the S.O.B. standing on the balcony. Okay. What that was about was he was talking to E. Howard Hunt. E. Howard Hunt was the team leader, you know, he was running the assassination. Well, E. Howard Hunt had had prod him and said, hey, James Earl Ray is not here. Now, the plan was for them to catch James Earl Ray

right there in the roomy house after the shot was fired. And the evidence was going to be the gun and his, you know, the personal, the personal belonging he had with him. Well, James Earl Ray walked in there because about half an hour to the court sometime before Rowe was the, there was the code name for E. Howard Hunt. Rowe had sent James to the service station. He said, don't fill up the car with gas and come right back. Well, you write about that and I guess you interview Willie Green? Yeah, I talked to Willie Green for a while. And what was his story? Well, he was, that's what we get into. When James went to the service station to get gas, he also wanted to get his, perfect. He told me. And so he was, he had talked to Willie. He got the, I don't even know if he got the gas or not, but he said he went to the, to the, to the phone. If they had phone this fact, you know, people make their phone calls. And he calls, Mark Carlos Marcella.

His, his contact was Carlos Marcella's office at the Town and Country Motel in New Orleans. That's where he would call him. And he told Carlos, he said, I look up, I'm getting uneasy about this thing. He said, I'm supposed to be working for you. And, you know, and this, these guys here. And they said, we're going to do a, you know, a gun buy. And I've got this 30 out six. I don't see how we're going to, you know, sell a lot of 30 out of four apples to this South American country that, you know, central South American country, it was supposed to, he said, to me, it just don't make any sense. And Carlos Marcella said, you get your ass back to that reading house. He said, that's where you're supposed to be. You're not supposed to be calling me. Well, Jimmy's, you know, following orders, okay. So he gets in the car and he heads back. And as he's getting to the corner where he would turn right and then ride again to go back to the rooming house, Brewers Rooming House, a policeman was on the corner and he had blocked that road. And the emotion

didn't go the other way. Well, Jimmy went the other way. And so, you know, he just, he had your head back to Atlanta. That's where he was basing with Atlanta, Georgia. And on the way, he heard on the radio, the Martin Luther King had been shot and killed. And he told me he said, that's when he put two and two together and realized he had been set up to take the fall for killing Martin Luther King. Now, what happened when, when, when, when the Burto told Role just shoot the SOB standing on the balcony, they had already set up that King was going to be called out to the balcony at six o'clock. So, shortly after six o'clock, Jimmy, Martin Luther King was out on the balcony and he got shot and killed. Now, the team that killed him, that was, what happened was Hunt left the bathroom, Charlie Stevens, who was in that room that the door was open. He saw the guy who came out of the bathroom and he passed by his door. And he told, you know, the newspaper artist about

it and they do a picture. And then Charlie told Bill Stout, and you can get that recording. Bill Stout was a CBS newsman. He talked to Charlie Stevens a day or two after. And he showed in the picture that the FBI said that he had identified his James R.A. Okay, that was the story of the FBI was getting that Charlie Stevens had identified James R.A. So, Bill Stout showed him that in its own tape, Charlie Stevens said, no, I did, that was not James R.A. that I saw. And then that, that rifle that Ray had bought that had one of his prints on it, they took that and James R.A.'s belonging, since he was not there, see? They took him just threw it out on the street there in front of the connive amusement companies, which was an affiliate of Mark Carlos Marcello. So, they took it in front of the amusement company that will be found. Now, I've talked to 200 or more than 200 criminals in prisons all over the country. And not one of them will tell you that they will do a job and then throw

their weapon and their personal belongings out on the street for the cops to find after they did. But, just don't happen. So, that's screwy to start with. The case thus makes no sense at all. And then, of course, James R.A. was hit, went back to Atlanta, then they moved into Canada and eventually sent him to, you know, to London and Portugal and all of that. But the fact, their evidence was very weak. As a matter of fact, they knew if they went to trial without a real witness identifying way of being on the scene and without a murder weapon that they could really prove. And they haven't peed into this day. Even when I was in 77 when I was investigating Jack and I, you know, had them do another test on the rifles. And it's been shot probably a hundred times. The bullets are all trying to match the bullet that killed King. They took it out of his body and not once as that bullet ever matched a bullet that came out of that rifle. So they have no murder weapons. Mr. Rubin, before we run out of time, what conclusion did the House select committee on

assassination come to? We said it was a conspiracy. Now, they didn't go as far as I did. Okay. They found that it was probably a conspiracy. And I not only say it was a conspiracy, but it was that James Gore had no part in it. He was, he was just a cog in the wheel. He just one of them. And even when he, he cried guilty, he told me he wasn't feeling guilty to kill him, Dr. King. And he even a jacket in court to the, to the charges against him. And still he never got a trial. They just railroaded him and sent him to prison for 99 days. Something he didn't do. So why are you speaking out about this now? Well, I'm 72 years old. I could be dead next week. So what I got to lose, you know, and it's just the truth. I was there. I'm going to investigate it. I mean, I, all these other people, you know, they write books about it and stuff, but they just write books based on their research or what other people did. I'm the real thing. I'm the one who actually did it and found out the truth. And the

proof is Jerry's already did not kill Martin Luther King. Gary Rebel, former special investigator and author of to live or maybe not a Gary Rebel memoir. If you have questions, comments or suggestions after future in black America programs, email us at in black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radios they can, you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Also, you can listen to a special collection of in black America programs at American Archive of Public Broadcasting. That's American Archives dot O R G. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary. Those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez. I'm John L. Hanson Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again

next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs KUT radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard Austin, Texas 78712. That's in black America CDs KUT radio 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard Austin, Texas 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.