James Earl Ray was an escaped convict. He fled the city of Memphis on April 4, 1968.
During the next five weeks he travelled to Canada, England and Portugal — he was a
man on the run. On June 8, 1968, Ray was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport and sent
back to the United States. There, he was accused of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr.
For the next eight months Ray was locked in a specially-designed jail cell. The cell was
lit 24 hours a day and guards were present around the clock. Closed-circuit TV cameras
watched him constantly. Several microphones secretly recorded the sounds he made.
Ray's lawyers put pressure on him to plead guilty. But Ray wanted a trial. He insisted
that he did not shoot King. He said that he had been "set up" by a mysterious
man named Raoul.
Desperate and under enormous mental stress, Ray finally pleaded guilty. On March 10, 1969,
he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Three days later he took back his guilty plea and
insisted on a trial. But he has remained in prison since and still protests his innocence.
Ten years later the world had forgotten about James Earl Ray. Although he had never been
brought to trial, he had confessed to the crime — so the case was closed.
But in 1979, a special committee (the House Select Committee on Assassinations) was
investigating the deaths of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Late that year they
published their findings. The committee reported that both John F. Kennedy and Dr. King
had "probably" been killed as the result of a conspiracies!
The committee confirmed what most Americans privately believed — that two of their
most popular leaders had been assassinated as the result sinister plots.
The committee gave their findings to the United States Department of Justice. Since then,
very little has been done.
But in 1997, James Earl Ray was in the news again. It was reported that he was seriously
ill and did not have long to live. Several black leaders in the United States asked Ray to
tell all he knew before he died — for the sake history.
This finally led to a face to face meeting between Ray and Dr. King's son, Dexter King.
The two met in a prison hospital in Nashville, Tennessee.
During the meeting James Earl Ray said to King's son : "I had nothing to do with
shooting your father."
And when Dexter King asked Ray straight-out if he killed the civil rights leader, Ray
said: "No, I didn't,".
"I believe you," King said, "and my family believes you."
The King family now believes that giving Ray a trial is the only way they'll know the
truth about Dr. King's death.
"This has been an especially painful issue for the family for some time," said
family spokesman Phillip Jones speaking to CNN.
"They are trying to heal. In calling for a new trial, the family is very interested
in seeing justice."
Dexter King, who is 36, told Ray that it was important for him and his family to reach out
firsthand.
Once again he confrontred Ray with a direct question,
"I want to ask for the record" he said, "did you kill my father?"
"No, I didn't," Ray replied.
The two men spoke before cameras and radio microphones for about 20 minutes. Then, the
hospital room was cleared and they spoke privately.
The meeting between the son of the late civil rights leader and his accused assassin has
focused new attention on events 30 years ago.
It is still unknown where Ray got the $ 25,000 he spent while travelling between April 4
and June 8, 1968. The question has always been asked as to who financed him? And Ray,
(like fellow "lone-nut" Lee Harvey Oswald) was a poor shot in the Army.
The fact remains that Ray has never been found guilty by a jury. He confessed to the crime
under
extreme pressure and under threat of the death penalty. However, the only witness who
claimed to have seen Ray leaving the scene of the shooting (a man named Charles Stephens)
was drunk at the time!
The first descriptions Stephens gave didn't match Ray at all. He admitted that he did not
get a good look at the assassin. However, after the FBI paid $30,000 in bar debts for
Stephens he identified Ray as the hit man.
Although he is serving time for the crime, Ray denies that he personally killed King.
However, he says that he may have been partly responsible. He claims he was involved in a
gun-running operation by a mysterious man with CIA and Mafia contacts named
"Raoul." According to Ray, Raoul then set him up to look like the assassin.
Many strange things happened in and around Memphis on April 4, 1968. Critics of the
Memphis police department say that the King case was handled with the efficiency of the
Keystone Cops. In fact, so many strange things were going on, that some have suggested
that elements of the Memphis police department and/or the city government didn't want to
catch King's assassin(s) at all.
Shortly before the killing, King's police protection was reduced from eight officers to
two officers. And that was in spite of more than fifty death threats against the civil
rights leader. A few hours before the shooting, a black officer named Edward Redditt was
sent home because of a threat against his life.
That left Dr. King with a single policeman to protect him.
Most shocking of all, however, is the FBI's involvement with Martin Luther King. The 1979
investigation found that the FBI had been "aggressively hounding" Dr. King.
Their top-cop, J. Edgar Hoover, believed King to be the "most dangerous man in
America". It is no secret that Hoover wanted King
removed from the national scene. And with the assassination on April 4, 1968 he got his
wish.
When the news of King's death reached the FBI office in Atlanta there was cheering.
"They finally got the SOB!..." someone shouted. A strange reaction from
America's top cops. Or was it?
In July 1997, a Memphis judge said that that tests on bullets fired from Ray's rifle did
not match those that killed King. Since then, the calls for Ray to go on trial have
grown.But James Earl Ray did not live long enough to get his day in court.
Truth and justice are what Dr. Martin Luther King was all about. An honest effort to find
the truth about his death would be a fitting tribute to him. It would also allow his
family, and the United States, to close one of the saddest chapters in American history.
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