 Well, for the last few days it has been like a movie scenario unfolding in St. Louis, a story of intrigue and of spying and of secret meetings and of electronic surveillance. It is perhaps one of the most startling episodes yet in the investigation aimed at solving the riddle, did James Earl Ray really kill Dr. Martin Luther King? Today, a suburban blackjack man admitted that he had been spying on Jerry Ray, James Earl's brother since around the first of the year, supplying information to a man named Conrad Pete Bates, a committee member and former Madison County Sheriff's Deputy. The last face-to-face meeting between Bates and the informant, Oliver Patterson, was here at a North County Denny's Restaurant. Patterson in his van, Bates in a black-over-white automobile, these pictures taken yesterday by cameraman Al Amon. Among other things, Patterson had invited Jerry to be a house guest at his home at 12,350 Old Halls Ferry Road. There, Patterson says he Xeroxed, raised personal papers, made tape recordings which were picked up here by Bates on a three-time-a-week basis. Last night, Patterson went to the Marriott Hotel to meet with James Earl Ray's attorney Mark Lane and to make some of the disclosures. Patterson said he was disenchanted with his involvement and the fact that money promised him for his activities was never delivered. Lane told Patterson to inform Bates of that fact. Bates said not to worry that he would arrange for a New York Times reporter to tell Patterson's story and the committee's favor. An acquaintance of Patterson's, 19-year-old Susan Wadsworth, says she was used by Bates also. Here's Patterson. Hired by the assassination committee to find out what you can about Jerry Ray, is that a fair assessment as to your assignment? Yes. And it was your job to report back to them. Right. And you did that in what ways, through tape recordings? Through tape recordings, it was suggested that I use tape recordings. Everything was suggested. Nothing was over. You do this, you do that. It was well. If you want to tape a card, here's the tapes. Here's replacement tapes. Tapes were picked up and dropped off. Who was the messenger? Who did the picking? Comrade Bates. Wood River. Wood River? Right. Former Madison County Sheriff's Department. Right. And he'd come what, regularly, to your home? Two or three or four times a week, regularly. Would he stay long? I would say generally between the minimum a half an hour to up to three or four hours. And at that time Jerry, of course, was a Marietta. And there was nothing really going on. Things slowed down as every time Jerry comes to St. Louis, the meetings, the phone calls, etc., because Jerry might be at my house. What kind of things were they looking for? Was there any pattern to them? At first it seemed like they wanted to equate Jerry as being Raul. Number one, number two, the questions were did Jerry repeatedly, did Jerry ever say his brother pulled the trigger repeatedly? That question was asked every time. In fact, during most of the tape recordings of the conversations, Bates was listening on a monitor that I had set up and would write down instructions on what to ask. And they would point blank questions, which I didn't do, because you just don't do that. Did Pete indicate that this was his idea, or did he say it was coming from some other source? Most of the, every time the tapes would be mentioned or something else, he'd say as friends were, he'd clarify everything as friends. This is not the committee we're doing, this is friends, and he'd clarify it in that respect. This happened the same thing years before, and I kind of knew what that meant. Did they pay for this information? I was supposed to be paid and promises and promises and promises, and as of yesterday they were supposed to catch up with me and pay me a total of $900. Okay, alright, well what's going on? Well, I'll tell you about it when I meet you. What do you think? Can we hold off till tomorrow? Yeah. I mean meet today, but hold off on releasing the thing till tomorrow. One of the reasons is maximum impact. The Pope died about an hour ago, so you know. You're kidding. He's cutting into my air time? Yeah, that's right. You think he was Jewish? Yeah. Listen, give me about 20 minutes, half an hour, I'm out at the airport. Okay. How about meeting me, give me a place? Joe Joe? Yeah, fine. That's a recording of a conversation between Bates and Patterson in regards to setting up an interview in St. Louis yesterday with the New York Times, because they felt the Pope's death would minimize the impact the meeting was rescheduled for today. The Times flew in a reporter named Anthony Morrow. When Morrow was confronted by Lane instead of getting the story that he thought he was being provided, here's what happened. Mr. Morrow? Hi, my name is Mark Lane. I understand you sit down and present the committee. Are you running away from the big news story? No, no, don't push me. Don't push anybody, don't push anybody. You are pushing him, don't push anybody. I thought you're a news man. He was sent down here by the select committee to get a full story. We're going to give you the real story. Yes, we have the tapes of the conversations. Come on, Dan, we'll give you the real story. We'll give you the real story. You're not going to run the story, everybody else is going to run it. Why is the New York Times running for the truth? Because it's not the Tony story you had set up, is that it, Trump? We'll give you the truth. Well, if all of this was not incredible enough, let me assure you that there is more. We're going to pause here for a commercial break. But when we return, you'll hear Mark Lane report on a shocking offer made by a member of the United States Congress that, if accepted, could mean that James L. Ray would walk away a free man. That next, stay tuned. Welcome back. Now we are going to hear James L. Ray's attorney, Mark Lane, talk about an offer. It is an offer originally made on July the 22nd by a United States congressman named Hal Sawyer, who's a member of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the representative from Gerald Ford's old district in Michigan. On that date, I said 22nd, it's the July 21st, on July 21st at Brushy Mountain State Prison in Petros, Tennessee, Lane says that Sawyer offered Ray his freedom if he had only admit to killing King. Here's Lane. He said, well, I can arrange for commutation of sentence so that Mr. Ray can walk out of this prison if he just admits that he did it, says that he did it, and gives us a little corroboration. And then it was clear to me why he didn't want any tape recorders present. He asked me to put my tape recorder off before that conversation took place and nothing was being recorded secretly. Did it shock you when you heard that? You know, it shocked me. Dick Gregory, who I told, we were having this meeting with me and the members of the committee and I didn't understand why, I said, they're going to offer you a deal. I said, that's impossible. So I was really surprised even though Gregory had predicted this. And what I did was I asked the congressman Sawyer for his telephone number in Washington and he gave me his number in Washington until I could call him any time. And when he left, James said to me, you know, William Bradford, you know, he was working for the FBI recently, give us a better offer. Walk out of here. He's going to fix with the governor of Missouri as well. And he said, in addition, that he was offering me $220,000. This guy's offering us nothing. Did Congressman Sawyer ever offer any money? No, no money. It was not a very good deal. Just walking out for line. It reminded me of the Rosenberg case. Just say you did it and you'll be spared. And Ray looked at me in a funny way. He said, why don't you take his number? And I said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, you know I didn't do it. And I'm not going to ever say I did it. I just want to go to Washington and tell all the facts. I said, I just took his number so I can carry on this conversation to see if we can be able to get proof that he's made this offer because I think it's a very improper thing to do. And then I called Sawyer. And you know, one thing about telephone calls is it's very hard to make a sweep of electronic sweep of somebody's home when he's making a telephone call to determine whether or not he has a tape recording. I can just tell you that Sawyer made the same offer to me in two separate telephone conversations and I can prove it. Well we reached Congressman Sawyer this afternoon. Now he admitted making that offer and he said he had operated this way before as a prosecuting attorney in Michigan. He added, however, he was in no way interested in making a deal with Ray to admit that he acted alone that he was merely trying to get to the bottom of the assassination something would all like to do. We're going to change the pace a little bit and we're going to go to oblate large, right? Is that right? That's right. There. Introduce you to still another informant for the House Select Committee on Assassinations and we're going to get to that in a moment. But first I want to let you know that we've got another item to swap tonight. The swap is back and it's a litho stone. They call them printing stones I believe. It's rather handsome, isn't it? It's a litho stone that was used to print stationery for the Wagner Manufacturing Company. If you've got something interesting that you would like to trade for this litho stone, they're rare. You can't find many of these and they're a good find to be sure. You can call us right now at 9-6-9-6-6-6-6. If you've got something you want to swap, you just call that number and tell the operator what you have to swap and bring your item down and that fine-looking litho stone can be yours. Well, we have spent most of the evening and most of the day and further pursuit of the story that we broke yesterday, the story of a man named Oliver Patterson, a man who went public telling us how he spied on Jerry Ray, the brother of James O. Ray. Well, tonight a new development, the story of a young woman, 19 years old. It was too frightened to talk, now telling us how she too was used by an agent of the House Select Committee on Assassinations to obtain information from Jerry Ray. Her name is Susan Wadsworth and today, breaking her veil of silence and reaction from black activist Dick Gregory is the subject of tonight's obel at large. Susan, a former McClure North High School student, acquaintance of Oliver Patterson, stuck closely yesterday to James O. Ray's attorney, Mark Lane. She said nothing through the whole series of hectic events. She was indeed a woman of mystery, admitting only that she was a friend of Patterson's. For a month, starting in mid-June, she lived with Patterson in his home in the 1,200 block of Old Hall's Ferry, where Jerry Ray was also a house guest. It was here that she met House Committee investigator Conrad Pete Bates, who's a Sergeant with the Madison County Sheriff's Office. She says she put her to work almost immediately and I ask her about why she agreed. I was told that Pete was working for the Select Committee on Assassination, that it's, you know, for the government and I don't have to, but they wanted me to. It would be a patriotic thing to do. Yeah. So I did it. I thought it was the best thing to do. He told me to take Jerry out to dinner and asking me certain questions. Write him down, memorize him, and then destroy the paper. These were questions that Pete was giving you? Yes. These questions were, Pete was telling me over the telephone. I wrote the questions down, I memorized them, and threw them away. What kind of question, how many questions were there? Three or four, very simple to the point, questions Pete instructed me to act like a naive 19-year-old, curious, right out of high school, and I should be fine. The questions were, did your brother kill Martin Luther King? Who was Raul? Is there a Raul? Very simple questions. I asked Jerry these questions, reported back to Pete. Now, was there any other time that you supplied him with tapes or anything of that nature? No, I did not. I saw Oliver give Pete tapes. I saw Oliver taping the phone calls. On one occasion I saw Pete monitoring the calls. I saw the transactions of Oliver giving him tapes and Pete returning brand new tapes, and to continue taping upon. Did the debates ever threaten you or say that what you're doing shouldn't be discussed with anybody? Yes, on June 11th, when Jerry Ray came into town, he was back from 9.30 that evening when he called Oliver's house. Oliver could not come to the phone, he then called back about an hour later. That was the first time I'd ever talked to Jerry Ray. After the phone call, Oliver contacted Pete in Wood River, told him Jerry was in town. They talked for a while, Oliver got off the phone and told me that if I ever said anything about the taping of phone calls, if I said anything about anything that goes on in that house, Oliver would kill me. Besides Attorney Mark Lane, few people have worked as diligently on the King case as comedian Dick Gregory, a self-styled black activist who will search for the truth in this matter all over the world. He thinks the fact that people like Susan and Patterson are coming forward as a vital step in solving the crime. I ask him if the disclosure surprised him. Well, you know, under the Freedom of Information Act, I have an FBI document where Hoover told the Chicago office to read a speech that I'd made attacking the mafia, then get in touch with Locostru Nostra and let them know about my attacks on them. So when you get the head of the FBI in 1968, when most folks thought he'd sit at the right hand of God, would say to the history of the Chicago office to get in touch with the mafia and tell them that Dick Gregory is saying bad things about him, nothing surprises me anymore. But I think the beauty is, I think, you know, the Dick Gregory's and the Mark Lane's that will not save this nation. I think when the masses of the American people wake up to what is going on, not until then will we turn it around. Oliver Patterson's disclosure is a significant step. I think very, very significant, almost as much significant as breaking the conspiracy on who killed King and Kennedy because there's a lot of people that would believe the FBI now that say they don't do these things no more, that we have, you know, a new type of mandate and it still goes on. Well, in both cases, Oliver Patterson and Susan Wadsworth say that Jerry Ray was the target of the spying operations. Now, if you follow this case closely, you'll notice that Jerry Ray has not yet commented. That is because he is in Washington, D.C. this week with a friend of his, Rhonda Gibson, who dated Jerry during the time of the assassination. She was visited three different times by Agent Bates and it's ironic that she should be called to testify at the very time when Bates himself is appearing before his committee colleagues, who now, it would appear, are more intent on investigating themselves than anyone else. That's all a little large for tonight. We'll be back with more news beat for you shortly.