The Byers Bounty Revisited: Russell Byers’ Final Claim That Could Reshape the MLK Assassination Story

On Oct. 11, Russell Byers died in Creve Coeur, Missouri, at 94. A lifelong criminal—convicted by reputation more than by prison record—Byers achieved national notoriety in the late 1970s by claiming he had been offered $50,000 to arrange the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., a claim that became known as the “Byers Bounty.” A recent recorded conversation with Byers before his death raises fresh questions about when he first disclosed the offer and whether that disclosure connects far-right St. Louis networks to King’s assassination.

Byers’ criminal résumé included car theft, art theft from the Saint Louis Art Museum, threats and other illicit dealings. Yet it was the allegation that a well-connected local lawyer and a network of reactionary backers solicited him to arrange a hit on King that drew congressional attention. The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated that claim in the late 1970s and treated the Byers Bounty as one of the more plausible leads suggesting a possible conspiracy beyond a lone gunman.

What Byers said then — and later

At his HSCA testimony in 1978, Byers recounted a late-1966 or early-1967 meeting in which John Kauffman, owner of the Bluff Acres Motel in Imperial, Missouri, introduced him to John Sutherland, a prosperous patent attorney. Byers described Sutherland wearing overalls and a Confederate cap and a living room filled with Confederate paraphernalia. According to Byers, Sutherland offered $50,000 either for Byers to kill King or to arrange for King’s death. Byers said he declined and later testified he told only three people about the offer—and did so after King’s April 4, 1968, assassination.

Those three, Byers said, were two attorneys (Murray Randall and Lawrence Weenick) and, vaguely, a 1973 informant. Randall, who waived privilege for the HSCA, said Byers did not tell him about the bounty until 1973. The existence of a 1973 informant report describing the offer in detail—filed in Byers’ FBI file but not forwarded to Washington—provoked new scrutiny when it was discovered and later delivered to the HSCA by FBI Director William Webster in 1978.

Why timing matters

If Byers told someone about the bounty before April 1968, that person could have been the missing link that connected Sutherland and Kauffman to James Earl Ray—turning the assassination from a lone act into a conspiracy involving St. Louis networks. If, as Byers originally testified, he disclosed the offer only after the killing, that link is far weaker.

The HSCA used a "link analysis" to propose four potential paths by which knowledge of the Byers Bounty might have reached Ray in the Missouri State Penitentiary. Investigators focused heavily on the Grapevine Tavern in south St. Louis — a dive frequented by right-wing criminals and owned by John Ray, James Earl Ray’s brother — as a likely node in those possible chains of communication.

Newly recounted claim and corroboration

This summer, following a recent release of FBI records, I located and interviewed Byers at age 93. In taped pre-interview conversations, Byers repeated much of his HSCA testimony about Sutherland and Kauffman but contradicted his earlier sworn statement about timing. He said he immediately told an antique-dealer friend on Maryland Avenue—whom he identified as an FBI informant—about the Sutherland offer "five minutes after" leaving Kauffman’s house, not years later. Byers insisted the informant reported the conversation to the FBI at once and blamed the bureau’s inaction for King’s death.

That claim gains circumstantial traction from a May 8, 1968, memo from the Birmingham FBI office reporting that a former cellmate of Ray told the FBI Ray planned to "make big money" and that "the businessmen’s association has offered one hundred thousand dollars for killing Martin Luther King." The phrasing echoes Sutherland’s alleged description of backers as a businessmen’s association or secret Southern organization and suggests the idea of a bounty was circulating inside or near the penitentiary milieu before the assassination.

Complications and unanswered questions

Byers’ late-life claim is complicated by inconsistencies in his recollections and by his age. Some details he offered sounded muddled, yet other facts he related—such as being represented by James Hamilton, an assistant chief counsel to the Watergate Committee who became Byers’ HSCA attorney—checked out. The 1973 informant report, the May 1968 cellmate memo, the HSCA’s sealed investigatory files, and Byers’ taped interview together create a web of leads that remains partially hidden from public view.

Thousands of pages of HSCA depositions, closed-session testimony and investigative interviews remain sealed, potentially until 2027. Those materials include interviews with the unnamed 1973 informant and testimonies from members of the Ray family and others close to the case. Without them, evaluating the strength of circumstantial assertions connecting Byers to a broader conspiracy is difficult.

What should happen now

Given the high stakes—both historically and for the King family—there is a strong public interest in the expedited release of all sealed HSCA and related FBI materials. If Byers lied under oath about the timing of his disclosures, or if the FBI failed to act on an early, credible report implicating conspirators, the nation deserves to see the full record so historians, investigators and the public can judge the evidence. Until the sealed files are opened, the Byers Bounty will remain a tantalizing and unresolved thread in the story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.