In 1968, a St. Louis criminal named Russell Byers found himself in the middle of a conspiracy to kill Martin Luther King. Before his death earlier this year, Byers spoke to St. Louis native and filmmaker Nina Gilden Seavey about the moment he was offered $50,000. He also revealed something he never told the FBI during its official investigations in the 1970s: that he had discussed the bounty before King’s death. Seavey talks about the significance of that timing, details in recently unsealed FBI files, and why she maintains the “Byers Bounty” is a real conspiracy rather than a conspiracy theory. (Correction: James Earl Ray died in 1998. A previous version of this episode stated incorrectly that he is alive.)
St. Louis on the Air