Loyd Jowers ( November 20 , 1926May 20 , 2000 ) was the owner of Jim 's Grill , a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis , Tennessee , where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4 , 1968 . In 1993 , Jowers appeared on ABC 's '' Prime Time Live '' and related the details of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill King . According to Jowers , the alleged assassin , James Earl Ray , was a scapegoat , and was not the only person responsible for assassinating King . Instead , Jowers said that he hired Memphis police Lieutenant Earl Clark to fire the fatal shot . A Memphis civil trial in 1999 seemed to support this claim , but on June 9 , 2000 , the United States Department of Justice released a 150-page report rejecting allegations that there was a conspiracy to assassinate King
was assassinated
Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Loyd Jowers