The man convicted of shooting King's mother was
Marcus Wayne Chenault.
His emotional affect following the murder was unusual. Grinning, he asked if he had hit anyone.[260] He had reportedly been dropped off at the church by people he knew in Ohio.[261] While at Ohio State University, he
was part of a group known as "the Troop,"
run by a Black minister and gun collector who used the name Rabbi Emmanuel Israel.
This man, described in the press as a "mentor" for Chenault, left the area immediately after the shooting.[262]
In the same period, Rabbi Hill traveled from Ohio to Guyana and set up Hilltown, using similar aliases, and preaching the same message of a "black Hebrew elite."[263]
Chenault confided to SCLC leaders that he was one of many killers who were working to assassinate a long list of Black leadership. The names he said were on this list coincided with similar "death lists" distributed by the KKK, and linked to the COINTELPRO operations in the 60s.[264]
The real backgrounds and identities of Marcus Wayne Chenault and Rabbi Hill may never be discovered. [265]
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
MLK witness declared mentally insane, govt tries to send her to jonestown
Grace Walden Stephens, had been a witness in the King murder.[238]
She was living at the time in Memphis in a rooming house across from the hotel when Martin Luther King was shot.[239]
The official version of events had Ray located in the common bathroom of the rooming house, and claimed he used a rifle to murder King from that window.[240] Grace Stephens did, indeed, see a man run from the bathroom, past her door and down to the street below.[241] A rifle, later linked circumstantially to James Earl Ray, was found inside a bundle at the base of the rooming house stairs, and identified as the murder weapon.[242]
But Grace, who saw the man clearly, refused to identify him as Ray
when shown photographs by the FBI.[243] Her testimony was never introduced at the trial. The FBI relied, instead, on the word of her common law husband, Charles Stephens, who was drunk and unconscious at the time of the incident.[244] Her persistence in
saying that it was not James Earl Ray was used at her mental competency hearings as evidence against her, and she disappeared into the psychiatric system.
[245]
Grace Walden Stephens took up residence in Memphis with Lane, her custodian, and Terri Buford, a key Temple member who had returned to the U.S. before the killings to live with Lane.[246] While arranging for her to testify before the Select Committee on Ray's behalf, Lane and Buford were plotting another fate for Grace Stephens. Notes from Buford to Jones, found in the aftermath of the killings,
discussed arrangements with Lane to move Grace Stephens to Jonestown.[247]
The problem that remained was lack of a passport, but Buford suggested either getting a passport on the black market, or using the passport of former Temple member Maxine Swaney.[248] Swaney, dead for nearly 2-1/2 years since her departure from the Ukiah camp, was in no position to argue and Jones apparently kept her passport with him.[249] Whether Grace ever arrived at Jonestown is unclear.
She was living at the time in Memphis in a rooming house across from the hotel when Martin Luther King was shot.[239]
The official version of events had Ray located in the common bathroom of the rooming house, and claimed he used a rifle to murder King from that window.[240] Grace Stephens did, indeed, see a man run from the bathroom, past her door and down to the street below.[241] A rifle, later linked circumstantially to James Earl Ray, was found inside a bundle at the base of the rooming house stairs, and identified as the murder weapon.[242]
But Grace, who saw the man clearly, refused to identify him as Ray
when shown photographs by the FBI.[243] Her testimony was never introduced at the trial. The FBI relied, instead, on the word of her common law husband, Charles Stephens, who was drunk and unconscious at the time of the incident.[244] Her persistence in
saying that it was not James Earl Ray was used at her mental competency hearings as evidence against her, and she disappeared into the psychiatric system.
[245]
Grace Walden Stephens took up residence in Memphis with Lane, her custodian, and Terri Buford, a key Temple member who had returned to the U.S. before the killings to live with Lane.[246] While arranging for her to testify before the Select Committee on Ray's behalf, Lane and Buford were plotting another fate for Grace Stephens. Notes from Buford to Jones, found in the aftermath of the killings,
discussed arrangements with Lane to move Grace Stephens to Jonestown.[247]
The problem that remained was lack of a passport, but Buford suggested either getting a passport on the black market, or using the passport of former Temple member Maxine Swaney.[248] Swaney, dead for nearly 2-1/2 years since her departure from the Ukiah camp, was in no position to argue and Jones apparently kept her passport with him.[249] Whether Grace ever arrived at Jonestown is unclear.
The brother of MLK drowned in his own pool, MLK's mother shot by mind control assasin during church service
Famed as the place where Martin Luther King Jr. preached, Atlanta's Ebenezer Baptist Church attracts many visitors. No one paid much attention when a short, chunky black man wearing a tan suit and thick glasses slipped into a seat a few feet from the organ.
Mrs. Martin Luther King Sr., 69, wife of the pastor and mother of the slain civil rights leader, was playing. As the 500 worshipers bowed their heads for the Lord's Prayer, Marcus Wayne Chenault, 23, opened fire with two revolvers.
"I'm tired of all this!" he screamed.
"I'm taking over!" And he sprayed bullets wildly until both guns were empty.
He wounded three people, two of them —Mrs. King and Deacon Edward Boykin, 69—fatally.
"Nice Boy." Martin Luther King Sr., 74, was just entering the red brick church as his wife was shot. When he asked Chenault why he did it, the youth replied: "Because she was a Christian and all Christians are my enemies." The next day Chenault declared that his real name was "Servant Jacob." "I am a Hebrew," he said. "I was sent here on a purpose and it's partly accomplished."
Seeking the meaning of these remarks in Chenault's character and past, investigators found confusion and paradox. In the bluegrass country of Winchester, Ky., where he was raised, people remembered Wayne Chenault as quiet, easygoing and studious, a "nice boy" who had a newspaper route and attended Baptist church regularly with his devout parents. Later in Dayton, Ohio, where his father is now a chemical plant security guard, he was known as a clean-cut teen-ager who stayed out of trouble and was "always making people laugh."
After he entered Ohio State University in 1970, Chenault began to change. Recently he had come to be regarded as an oddball and a loner who had few friends and fewer dates. He was a junior majoring in education when he dropped out last December and began venting his increasingly eccentric views through a blaring loudspeaker propped in his second-floor window near the campus in Columbus. Until last week, however, no one took seriously his amplified boast that he was "the baddest ______________mother on the block."
Chenault's religious beliefs appeared to be a confused amalgam largely of his own devising. Said a Columbus neighbor, Denise Underwood, 20: "One week he was eating this because he wanted to be a Jew; then one week he wouldn't eat this because he wanted to be a Muslim." The core of his murky philosophy was hatred of Christianity. Probably central to his motivation was his sense of inadequacy and need for attention. Only two weeks before the killings he told a friend that he would soon "be all over the newspapers."
In Cincinnati last week law officers found a onetime bowling-alley maintenance man named Stephen Holiman, 68, who claimed to be Chenault's spiritual mentor. Holiman, a black, has devised a curbstone theology which holds that God is black, the ancient Israelites were black, and that today's blacks descend from the Old Testament's Jacob. He took credit for introducing Chenault to these ideas, as well as to his belief that black ministers are "liars" who rob their followers of "millions of dollars a year." In Chenault's Columbus apartment, police found a list of ten black churchmen and civil rights leaders, headed by Martin Luther King Sr. Not seeing him in church, Chenault may have picked King's wife as a substitute target. (Police also intend to question Chenault about the unsolved killings of two black ministers in Dayton in the past two months.)
Final Farewell. Death brought Alberta Christine Williams King more public attention than she had ever received in her lifetime. A shy woman, "Mama" King, or "Bunch" as her husband affectionately called her, stayed quietly in the background, but many friends called her the hidden force behind her crusading son and husband. "She sounded no trumpets to call attention to her greatness," said the Rev. L.V. Booth of Cincinnati's Zion Baptist Church at her funeral.
For Martin Luther King Sr., it was the third time in six years that he said a final farewell to a member of his family. A little more than a year after Martin Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, King's younger son, the Rev. A.D. Williams King, drowned in a swimming pool. "I'm not gonna quit and I'm not gonna be stopped," said "Daddy" King at the funeral. "We've got to carry on." Then, as he gazed at his wife's white casket he added softly, "So, Bunch, I'm coming on up home. I'll be home almost any time now."
Mrs. Martin Luther King Sr., 69, wife of the pastor and mother of the slain civil rights leader, was playing. As the 500 worshipers bowed their heads for the Lord's Prayer, Marcus Wayne Chenault, 23, opened fire with two revolvers.
"I'm tired of all this!" he screamed.
"I'm taking over!" And he sprayed bullets wildly until both guns were empty.
He wounded three people, two of them —Mrs. King and Deacon Edward Boykin, 69—fatally.
"Nice Boy." Martin Luther King Sr., 74, was just entering the red brick church as his wife was shot. When he asked Chenault why he did it, the youth replied: "Because she was a Christian and all Christians are my enemies." The next day Chenault declared that his real name was "Servant Jacob." "I am a Hebrew," he said. "I was sent here on a purpose and it's partly accomplished."
Seeking the meaning of these remarks in Chenault's character and past, investigators found confusion and paradox. In the bluegrass country of Winchester, Ky., where he was raised, people remembered Wayne Chenault as quiet, easygoing and studious, a "nice boy" who had a newspaper route and attended Baptist church regularly with his devout parents. Later in Dayton, Ohio, where his father is now a chemical plant security guard, he was known as a clean-cut teen-ager who stayed out of trouble and was "always making people laugh."
After he entered Ohio State University in 1970, Chenault began to change. Recently he had come to be regarded as an oddball and a loner who had few friends and fewer dates. He was a junior majoring in education when he dropped out last December and began venting his increasingly eccentric views through a blaring loudspeaker propped in his second-floor window near the campus in Columbus. Until last week, however, no one took seriously his amplified boast that he was "the baddest ______________mother on the block."
Chenault's religious beliefs appeared to be a confused amalgam largely of his own devising. Said a Columbus neighbor, Denise Underwood, 20: "One week he was eating this because he wanted to be a Jew; then one week he wouldn't eat this because he wanted to be a Muslim." The core of his murky philosophy was hatred of Christianity. Probably central to his motivation was his sense of inadequacy and need for attention. Only two weeks before the killings he told a friend that he would soon "be all over the newspapers."
In Cincinnati last week law officers found a onetime bowling-alley maintenance man named Stephen Holiman, 68, who claimed to be Chenault's spiritual mentor. Holiman, a black, has devised a curbstone theology which holds that God is black, the ancient Israelites were black, and that today's blacks descend from the Old Testament's Jacob. He took credit for introducing Chenault to these ideas, as well as to his belief that black ministers are "liars" who rob their followers of "millions of dollars a year." In Chenault's Columbus apartment, police found a list of ten black churchmen and civil rights leaders, headed by Martin Luther King Sr. Not seeing him in church, Chenault may have picked King's wife as a substitute target. (Police also intend to question Chenault about the unsolved killings of two black ministers in Dayton in the past two months.)
Final Farewell. Death brought Alberta Christine Williams King more public attention than she had ever received in her lifetime. A shy woman, "Mama" King, or "Bunch" as her husband affectionately called her, stayed quietly in the background, but many friends called her the hidden force behind her crusading son and husband. "She sounded no trumpets to call attention to her greatness," said the Rev. L.V. Booth of Cincinnati's Zion Baptist Church at her funeral.
For Martin Luther King Sr., it was the third time in six years that he said a final farewell to a member of his family. A little more than a year after Martin Jr. was assassinated in Memphis in 1968, King's younger son, the Rev. A.D. Williams King, drowned in a swimming pool. "I'm not gonna quit and I'm not gonna be stopped," said "Daddy" King at the funeral. "We've got to carry on." Then, as he gazed at his wife's white casket he added softly, "So, Bunch, I'm coming on up home. I'll be home almost any time now."
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