Martin Luther King was assassinated while standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. King was struck by a single .30-06 bullet fired from a Remington 760 Gamemaster. The bullet entered through his right cheek and broke his jaw, neck and several vertebrae. The bullet severed the jugular vein and several major arteries then travelled down his spinal cord before lodging in his shoulder.
Witnesses saw James Earl Ray fleeing from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel where he was renting a room. A package was dumped close to the site that included a rifle and binoculars with Ray's fingerprints on them. The rifle had been purchased by Ray under an alias six days before.
Ray was a criminal who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary the year before. He managed to get to Alabama where he bought a 1966 Ford Mustang and got an Alabama driver’s license. Then he went to Mexico where he tried to establish himself as a porn director. (He used the alias Eric Starvo Galt.) On November 19, 1967 he arrived in Los Angeles in where he attended a local bartending school and took dance lessons. He was very interested in the George Wallace presidential campaign there and spent much of his time as a Wallace volunteer. He disliked Blacks, liked Wallace's segregationist position and got interested in the apartheid government in Ian Smith's Rhodesia. (He actually wrote to the American-Southern Africa Council on December 28, 1967, stating, “My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia.”)
After shooting King, Ray got to Canada and flew to England where he was captured trying to get to Rhodesia with a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. On March 10, 1969, Ray entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He escaped prison once again but was recaptured.
After his conviction, Ray hired Jack Kershaw as his attorney, who promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the shooting. Ray said the shooting was the result of a conspiracy of an otherwise unidentified man named "Rauol". Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and convinced the committee to run ballistics tests — which ultimately proved inconclusive — that they felt would show that Ray had not fired the fatal shot. Kershaw claimed that the prison escape was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail. Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. The magazine said that the test results showed "that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone". Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview.
The King family sued several governmental agencies and the jury–six blacks and six whites—found that King had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police as well as federal agencies.
Ray sold his version of King's assassination and his own flight to William Bradford Huie. Huie investigated this story and discovered Ray sometimes lied. Ray told Huie he purposefully left the rifle with his fingerprints on it in plain sight because he wanted to become a famous criminal. Ray was convinced he was so smart that he would not be caught. He believed Governor of Alabama George Wallace would soon be elected President, and Ray would only be confined for a short time.
He spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a trial. He died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70.
The FBI was responsible for the investigation and, as with the Kennedys, many documents pertaining to this investigation remain classified, and are slated to remain secret until 2027, thus keeping at least doubt alive.
Witnesses saw James Earl Ray fleeing from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel where he was renting a room. A package was dumped close to the site that included a rifle and binoculars with Ray's fingerprints on them. The rifle had been purchased by Ray under an alias six days before.
Ray was a criminal who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary the year before. He managed to get to Alabama where he bought a 1966 Ford Mustang and got an Alabama driver’s license. Then he went to Mexico where he tried to establish himself as a porn director. (He used the alias Eric Starvo Galt.) On November 19, 1967 he arrived in Los Angeles in where he attended a local bartending school and took dance lessons. He was very interested in the George Wallace presidential campaign there and spent much of his time as a Wallace volunteer. He disliked Blacks, liked Wallace's segregationist position and got interested in the apartheid government in Ian Smith's Rhodesia. (He actually wrote to the American-Southern Africa Council on December 28, 1967, stating, “My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia.”)
After shooting King, Ray got to Canada and flew to England where he was captured trying to get to Rhodesia with a false Canadian passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. On March 10, 1969, Ray entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee State Penitentiary. He escaped prison once again but was recaptured.
After his conviction, Ray hired Jack Kershaw as his attorney, who promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the shooting. Ray said the shooting was the result of a conspiracy of an otherwise unidentified man named "Rauol". Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and convinced the committee to run ballistics tests — which ultimately proved inconclusive — that they felt would show that Ray had not fired the fatal shot. Kershaw claimed that the prison escape was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail. Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. The magazine said that the test results showed "that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone". Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview.
The King family sued several governmental agencies and the jury–six blacks and six whites—found that King had been the victim of assassination by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police as well as federal agencies.
Ray sold his version of King's assassination and his own flight to William Bradford Huie. Huie investigated this story and discovered Ray sometimes lied. Ray told Huie he purposefully left the rifle with his fingerprints on it in plain sight because he wanted to become a famous criminal. Ray was convinced he was so smart that he would not be caught. He believed Governor of Alabama George Wallace would soon be elected President, and Ray would only be confined for a short time.
He spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a trial. He died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70.
The FBI was responsible for the investigation and, as with the Kennedys, many documents pertaining to this investigation remain classified, and are slated to remain secret until 2027, thus keeping at least doubt alive.
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