Letters - Martin Luther King Correction

LETTERS

Martin Luther King Correction

(Ed. note-The SUN reprinted this article in our October 8, 1974 issue. The article originally appeared in the Boston Phoenix. We would like to apologize to the Phoenix for not asking official permission to reprint this article before it appeared.)

CORRECTION

Since my article on the Martin Luther King assassination appeared (Phoenix, Sept. 24) I have received a correction from Wayne Chastain, the Memphis reporter who has been investigating the case and is writing a book on it. The man James Earl Ray knew as "Raoul" is not Jack Armstrong (Ray confirmed this last May) nor was Armstrong among the three tramps photographed at Dealey Plaza in Dallas after the John F. Kennedy assassination, though Raoul may well be one of them.

Armstrong, however, is believed to have been involved in the King killing. He may have been performing the mission of a decoy, dragging false clues across the trail; this theory is supported by the claims he made to lawyer Russel X. Thompson that he had inside knowledge that the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia were involved. In his talks with Thompson (and two ministers), Armstrong used the false names of Benavides and Bonnevecche. He apparently knew the details of how the assassination was carried out, and has been identified from photos as the suspicious character in the cafe under the rooming house from which King was allegedly shot.

Chastain feels that the man Ray calls Raoul, and who Ray says did the shooting is "John Willard," the third man who was with Ray and Armstrong in the rooming house. John Willard was the name used by the man who rented Ray's room. Ray says-possibly to protect Willard-that he himself rented the room, but the woman who did the renting does not identify Ray as this man.

---Alan M. MacRobert