Loyd Jowers (November 20, 1926[1] – May 20, 2000) was an American restaurateur and the owner of Jim's Grill, a restaurant near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968.

[2] In 1993, Jowers appeared on the ABC News program Prime Time Live and claimed to be part of an alleged conspiracy involving the Mafia and the U.S. government to kill King.

[3] In a 1993 episode of ABC's Primetime Live, Jowers told reporter Sam Donaldson that he hired someone to kill King as a favor to a friend in the mafia, produce merchant Frank Liberto.

[6] According to The Washington Post, Pepper had "for years claimed the assassination was the result of a vast conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA and the Army, organized crime and various state and local officials.

"[11] Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist who wrote the book Killing the Dream in which he makes the case that Ray was the killer, said after the verdict: "It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis.

[3] 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, including the findings of the Memphis civil court jury.

[3] The DOJ considered suggestions by the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979 and the district attorney of Shelby County, Tennessee in 1998 that Ray's brothers may have been co-conspirators and stated that they "found insufficient evidentiary leads remaining after 30 years to justify further investigation.