The Mammoth Book of Celebrity Murders (26 page)

In 1994 Ray filed the last of his several state petitions for post-conviction relief,
Ray v. Dutton
. In this last attempt he sought to win a new trial based on the claim that the 30.06
rifle found on South Main Street was not the weapon. Firearms testing carried out pursuant to this claim proved inconclusive and were never satisfactorily tested in court due to Ray’s
death.

In addition to the post-conviction relief effort taken up by Ray in 1994, his lawyer Dr Pepper also filed a false imprisonment civil suit claiming that Jowers and others had conspired to kill
King. That suit,
Ray
v.
Jowers
, was effectively dismissed in 1997.

To many it would appear to be illogical that an individual can make claims to his own culpability in a crime and yet this does not draw the attention of the law. However this is what happened to
Jowers, who admitted his own involvement, albeit changing his story on numerous occasions, but because he cannot provide evidence of his own guilt he will never be tried. On the other hand Ray, who
did initially admit to murder, was imprisoned without trial and cannot now appeal against the conviction, even though most of the evidence was circumstantial. The effect has been to polarize the
opposing camps. The law believes they have their man and do not want to open up the case or re-evaluate Ray’s involvement, even though the pressure through the media has been immense and the
public, the media and even King’s own family firmly believe that King died as a result of a conspiracy. The credibility of Jowers’ claims however must be questioned – he has been
inconsistent with his version of the events and even members of his own family believe he created his story with the idea that he could make good money out of the media. He never gave his
television version of events under oath and now never will – if there is any truth in anything that Jowers has claimed it is lost in the confusion of the various versions of events he has
given.

In a twist that the TV world might struggle to come up with, the convicted murderer is now actively defended by the family of the man he is convicted of killing. On 27 March 1997, the week after
Ray and Dextor King had held their historic meeting, Dextor appeared on the
Today Show
, opposite David Garrow, author of
The FBI and Martin Luther King
, during which the two argued
the case for and against, Dextor fighting all out to prove that Ray was not the man responsible for his father’s death. The pair met again just a few days later on CNN’s
Crossfire
programme, during which Dextor accused Garrow of being a spook, saying that he had evidence that Garrow was not an agent for the national security and intelligence services.

The media in all of its guises have served to ensure that the assassination of King has never left the public’s thoughts. It has also achieved the confusion of the nation, in that the
truth as initially described, and as seen to be achieved in court, has now been so severely questioned that over 50 per cent of Americans now believe that King died as a result of a high-level
conspiracy, just as they do for JFK and his brother RFK. Whatever the truth behind King’s assassination, the media have achieved with millions of people what the lawyers couldn’t
achieve with 12 people – the conviction that James Earl Ray was not responsible for the death of Martin Luther King.

James Earl Ray died at 10.36 CDT, on Thursday, 23 April 1998 at the Columbia Nashville Memorial Hospital; he was 70 years old. The cause of death was listed as being liver failure, despite never
being a drinker or a smoker. Anyone who hoped for a death-bed confession was sorely disappointed, for he just slipped away and with him went any hope of a final outcome. It is unlikely however that
his demise will halt the interest in this case, as the media will see to it that the debate continues.

The world of rap music has endured a tough reputation. Born out of the street gangs which inhabit the darker side of most American cities, gangster rap lyrics are hard hitting,
no-holds-barred reflections of life in the urban ghettos. Predominantly a black music culture, the words of the songs often refer to the realities of gang life and the hatred of the police, whose
activities at times seem to concentrate on those who live in the deprived black neighbourhoods. White commentators have decried the music as violent and provocative, likely to corrupt young minds.
The glorifying of gang life and the money-for-nothing attitude portrayed in the songs certainly presents a very negative picture for the millions of people who have bought and played this new
hard-nosed music.

Those stars who have made the music have become millionaires and have enjoyed all the trappings of their success. One of the biggest stars of this scene was Tupac Shakur who recorded under the
stage name of 2pac. During his recording career he sold millions of albums, some of which remained in America’s top sales charts for months at a time. Like many of the top rap stars to
emerge, Tupac’s beginnings were back in the ghettos and it is his own memories and experiences which have served his song writing so well. As with many of his contemporaries Tupac had not
only had a violent past, but he also lived with violence, or the risk of it, day to day. His fame and fortune did not buy him the respectability and safety one might expect – the world of
gangster rap meant always having to prove your own authenticity; it was he who coined the phrase “keep it real”. Given the violent nature of many of his records it would appear that no
matter how well off he became he couldn’t shake off his own gang roots and as such he put himself in the firing line from the countless thugs who inhabit the gangland streets of America. He
lived dangerously and died violently, not unlike the many poor teenagers who bought his records and listened to the words which talked of killing police officers, drug pushing, absent fathers and
the lack of respect for women. Many of the big stars of rap have had major problems with the law, but when it comes to living fast and dying young, Tupac Shakur was the James Dean of the 1990s.

Tupac Amaru Shakur, whose real name was Lesane Crooks, was born in inauspicious beginnings in New York City in 1971. His arrival in the world could not have been harsher, his mother Afeni Shakur
having been released from prison the month before he was born after serving time for her involvement with the militant black group, the Black Panthers. She had been held on bombing charges but was
acquitted and was released just in time to give birth. By the time Shakur was born his father had already left and remained absent for most of his life, emerging once again after his now famous son
had been shot for the first time. The earlier part of his life was spent in the Bronx, one of New York’s toughest neighbourhoods and one where gang life was rife. He eventually moved to
Baltimore where he found some enjoyment studying acting at the High School of the Performing Arts. It was here that he wrote his first attempt at a rap record, spurred on by the loss of a friend
who had been killed while playing with a gun. The loss brought out a different emotion in Shakur who now wrote of gun control and the problems of gun ownership. His attempts were sufficiently good
for him to win opportunities to perform the song on many occasions, and it was this first taste of the limelight that encouraged him to drop out of school and move to northern California.

His pursuit of stardom began in earnest when he auditioned for the band Digital Underground and managed to join them as a member of the road crew. They eventually gave him the opportunity to
record with them and he performed on a number of their releases. With a recording now under his belt he struck out on his own and in 1991 released an album called
2pacalypse Now
which
managed to sell half a million copies and contained two singles hits. His lyrics had become more aggressive and he wrote of the darker side of human life, unwed teenage mothers and his emerging
trouble with the law. Later that year he engaged in a $10 million lawsuit against the Oakland Police Department, stating that he had been assaulted by the police as they tried to arrest him for
jaywalking.

His own experience with the police and those who he called friends was that they were always trying to pin something on them. The lyrics to a number of his songs pertained to killing police
officers, but always within the context of self-defence. However his lyrics obtained some degree of notoriety in early 1992 when a Texas state trooper was shot and killed by a teenager who had been
listening to
2pacalypse Now
. Dan Quayle, Vice President of the US at the time, demanded that the album be withdrawn from sale, but Interscope, the label who had released the album, refused
– for a gangster rapper the exposure couldn’t have been better and soon Shakur was rising up the charts.

At about this time Tupac’s acting career was also beginning to blossom, having previously played the violent bishop in Ernest Dickerson’s film
Juice
. In 1993 he played
opposite Janet Jackson in the film
Poetic Justice
as well as releasing the multi-million selling album
Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z
, which contained more messages of violence.

By this stage Shakur had become the focus of the media who vilified his work as encouraging the worst type of behaviour and which portrayed negative images of women, a fact not lost on the jury
who indicted him in 1993 on charges of sodomizing a female fan. The fan had claimed that Shakur and a number of his associates had sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan hotel suite, a charge which
earned him a prison stretch.

During the trial Shakur endured the first of his many violent encounters – while entering a recording studio he was using he was shot twice and robbed of $40,000 worth of jewellery.
Although he survived the ordeal he was sentenced to serve four and a half years for the sex attack, with the potential of early release for good behaviour. The shooting of Shakur was widely
reported and the press had a field day linking the attack to his violent songs, exposing the star as a shady character who, although successful, still had links to the seedier characters who lived
a life of criminality, a claim that could never be entirely justified, even though he was at the time serving a sentence for sexual assault, which many thought a reflection of his low opinion of
women.

In 1994 Shakur appealed against his sentence and was released on $1.4 million bail, the money being posted by Death Row Records, his new recording label and the one with whom he would enjoy
great success. The enigmatic owner of Death Row Records was Marion “Suge” Knight, another man with a gangland reputation who also looked after other famous rappers such as Snoop Doggy
Dog amongst others. Knight had built the label to its $100 million position and had dreams of it becoming the Motown of the 1990s, an opportunity lost when his main star finally lost his life.

On his release from prison in 1995 Shakur concluded the album he had started before his prison stretch, adding one of the songs he had written while in jail.
Me Against the World
, another
album concentrating on ghetto violence, entered the Billboard album chart at number one and managed to sell over two million copies. Now rich and infamous, Shakur started acting like the moneyed
gangster rapper he always wanted to be. His sales success was anchored in the fans’ belief that Shakur was the real McCoy, a fact that Shakur was intent on proving and his public behaviour
became more aggressive.

Straight off the back of his latest album success Shakur immediately started working on his next album. No one could describe Shakur as anything other than totally committed as he worked night
and day perfecting his particular brand of hip-hop. His next release reflected the new Shakur – opulent and flash, enjoying the things in life his money could now buy him.
All Eyez on
Me
sold nearly 2.5 million copies and again was a number one hit, the first double album of its type to do so. This time the songs saw Shakur flaunting his new wealth; fast cars, night clubs
and loose women were now the lyrics of the day.

It was around this time that Shakur and the CEO of Death Row Records, Marion Knight, started to feel the competition that was being exerted by other rap stars recording on other labels. The
competition would often flare up with threats of violence being made and comments of a derogatory nature in the general media. Most of the rap stars had a similar background in that before their
musical success they had come from a strictly poor background, and like Shakur, still had that street-fighting mentality that no amount of money could eradicate. The stars formed their own gangs
mainly around their label and cultivated relationships with other celebrities with a reputation. Shakur and Knight were both friends with the boxer Mike Tyson, who as well as having a fearsome
reputation within the ring, had a bad-man image out of it. Tyson had written Shakur an uplifting letter while he was languishing in jail on sex charges. Reciprocating, Shakur wrote Tyson a song
which he played as his walkout music for his title fight against Peter McNeeley in August 1995.

It would be Mike Tyson who would be one of the last men to see Shakur on the evening of his death, as he went to watch his latest title fight against Bruce Seldon. Excited at seeing the boxing
match and of being able to be seen publicly with Tyson, Shakur and his entourage arrived in Las Vegas at 2.30 p.m. on Saturday, 7 September 1995. Shakur and Tyson were later due at a night club
called Club 662, where they were to promote the negative side of gang life. The queue at the club was already growing at the door in preparation for the arrival of the stars who were to attend.

Tyson fights were a grand affair and tended to attract a lot of stars from the world of rap; his bad-boy image seemed to fit in well with the theme they promote. The fight was due to commence at
8 p.m. and so Shakur and his party arrived around 7.30 to ensure they were all seated in time. As usual the atmosphere was electric in anticipation of Iron Mike’s performance.