In 1952, he served two years for the armed robbery of a taxi driver in Illinois. Indeed, compelling evidence including Rays fingerprints on the rifle that was later determined to be the murder weapon seemed to point to him. The U.S. Department of Justice found Jowers' claims were without merit and explained that he'd never been able to provide any support for later assertions about his involvement in King's death: When Jowers has confessed, he has contradicted himself on virtually every key point about the alleged conspiracy. [20] He told the store owners that he was going on a hunting trip with his brother. I think it was all planned.. Pepper said Dexter King asked Ray, Did you kill my father? and that Ray answered, No, I didnt. He said Dexter King told Ray, We will do everything in our power to see that justice prevails.. He continued to visit Ray until his death and presided over his funeral. [32][33], Airport officials noticed that Ray carried another passport under a second name. I found gaps in his movements that are mysterious and you just dont know who hes meeting with. What We Know About Why James Earl Ray Killed Martin Luther King Jr. Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills. [17], Arriving in Atlanta on March 24, 1968, Ray checked into a rooming house. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Those are about the only facts that arent in dispute. Digital "I believe you," Dexter responded and shook his hand. For both our family and the nation, Coretta King said after the verdict, we had to get involved, because the system did not work.. Blakey said recently he had tried to prove a conspiracy but could not. What are the disadvantages of shielding a thermometer? One is rudimentary research would confirm the claim's basics (i.e., the verdict in a wrongful death civil action did allow that "government agencies" participated in a conspiracy to assassinate Dr. King), leading readers to believe the entirety of the rumor was factual. [28] He stayed briefly in Lisbon, Portugal, and returned to London. [15], On March 5, 1968, Ray underwent a rhinoplasty, performed by physician Russell Hadley. Jowers stashed the rifle behind the bar and said it was later picked up by Raul and tossed in the Mississippi River. He at first fled to Canada but, unable to get on a ship and flee overseas, he returned to the U.S. and made his way to first Alabama, then Mexico, and later Los Angeles. Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the Lorraine Motel with King when he was shot there, agrees. For over 25 years following the assassination, James Earl Ray, his defenders, and others consistently referred to the man who allegedly framed Ray as Raoul. What was milliard fillmore's Nor have any of the conspiracy theories advanced in the last 30 years, including the Jowers and the Wilson allegations, survived critical examination. Ray was arrested at Londons Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968, a few weeks after the crime. However, any claim made by Ray about his guilt or innocence should be weighed against his strong incentive to be freed from prison (where he died in 1998). Our investigation of these most recent allegations, as well as several exhaustive previous official investigations, found no reliable evidence that Dr. King was killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray. Please try again later. Was James earl ray white? Ray hired Jack Kershaw as his new attorney, and Kershaw publicly argued and promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the assassination of King. You have reached your limit of 4 free articles. We were living in the period of assassinations,Young said. An avid newspaper reader, Ray passed his time reading The Atlanta Constitution. As Sides points out, it isnt surprising that members of Kings family and his fellow civil-rights leaders would have suspected that some larger government conspiracy to kill the minister must been at play. All Rights Reserved. Asked about the King familys suspicions, an FBI spokesman responded in a statement that the government has revisited the assassination four times: Findings from these reviews support the FBIs conclusion that James Earl Ray, acting alone, fired a rifle once, fatally wounding Dr. King on April 4, 1968, at the Lorraine Motel.. [18] He bought a map of the city. [16] On March 18, 1968, Ray left Los Angeles and began a cross-country drive to Atlanta, Georgia. [37] A year was added to Ray's previous sentence, increasing it to a full century. Rather, it appears that Jowers contrived and promoted a sensational story of a plot to kill Dr. King. No. As far as I knew, he was a common bandit who suddenly tried for his 15 minutes. The biggest notoriety he had was as an escape artist. Tennessee He also initially sought compensation for his story, and his friends and relatives acknowledge that he hoped to make money from his account. Who killed Bobby Kennedy? Jowers further maintained that Ray did not shoot Dr. King and that he did not believe Ray knowingly participated in the conspiracy. [9], Following his escape, Ray stayed on the move throughout the United States and Canada, going first to St. Louis and then onward to Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Birmingham, Alabama, where he stayed long enough to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang and get an Alabama drivers license. [1], In February 1935, Ray's father, known by the nickname Speedy, passed a bad check in Alton, Illinois, and then moved to Ewing, Missouri, where the family changed their name to Raynes to avoid law enforcement. Ray was a known criminal, on the lam after escaping a Missouri state prison when he committed the assassination, and had more than two dozen known aliases for himself before he was put behind bars again. Investigators announced that James Earl Ray, an escaped prisoner, had fatally shot King. James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 April 23, 1998) was an American fugitive convicted for assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April4, 1968. Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, something he'd spend the rest of his life trying to reverse, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Bradley Beal hits season high as Wizards fight to the finish in Atlanta, Caps trade away two more veterans, add young defenseman Rasmus Sandin, Commanders cut Carson Wentz and Bobby McCain, clearing cap space. A Shelby County jury heard more than 70 witnesses over 30 days, ruled that Jowers and unknown government entities were liable, and awarded the Kings $100. But there was no definitive evidence to prove the theory, and the Wallace supporters were dead by 1979. I dont believe James Earl Ray killed my father. Coretta King and Abernathy, aware of the FBI campaign, immediately suspected FBI involvement after Kings death. The Rays struggled to make ends meet, and as a consequence, the family moved several times during the early part of Ray's childhood. Youre going to kill somebody and then drop the gun right there? Ray claimed that he had given the gun to Raul, but only Rays fingerprints were on the gun. A package was abandoned close to the site that included a rifle and binoculars, both found with Ray's fingerprints. I don't know what his political affiliation was. What I DO know, is were he alive today, hed be wearing that Red Maggot Lobotomy cap and, be celeb Im satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt, Lawson said, that James Earl Ray neither pulled the trigger nor plotted to kill Martin Luther King.. President Lyndon B. Johnson sold them into the Democrat plantation stating, These Negroes, theyre getting pretty uppity these days and thats a problem for us since theyve got something now they never had before, the political pull to back up their uppitiness. By 1964, Democrats knew they were losing the battle against Black America. In 1955, he was convicted of mail fraud after stealing money orders in Hannibal, Missouri. Ballistics tests could not prove that the rifle dropped outside the boardinghouse, a Remington .30-06 Gamemaster, either did or didnt fire the fatal shot, because the gun did not create distinctive grooves on the bullet, as most guns do. Unfortunately, the jury who heard the case of King vs. Jowers (in which the King family was represented by James Earl Ray's former lawyer, William Pepper) returned a verdict in favor of the plaintiff, holding that Loyd Jowers had participated in a conspiracy to kill King, and that "governmental agencies" were party to the conspiracy: THE COURT: In answer to the question did Loyd Jowers participate in a conspiracy to do harm to Dr. Martin Luther King, your answer is yes. With Biden, Democrats had a friend whose policies oppressed Black America. That thank you got her censured by Democrats to silence her as she stated Democrats have ousted her from the Democrat Party and hinder her abilities to do her job. [13], He considered emigrating to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where a predominantly white minority regime had unilaterally assumed independence from the United Kingdom in 1965. James Earl Ray was a career criminal, starting as far back as a 1949 conviction for armed robbery. As such, he would not have been able to vote reg We found no reliable evidence to support Jowers' allegations that he conspired with others to shoot Dr. King from behind Jim's Grill. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. But they are unanimous on one key point: James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King. The paper reported King's planned return trip to Memphis, Tennessee, which was scheduled for 1st April, 1968. Im not saying he didnt have help, Campbell said. In 2000, the report authored by assistant attorney general Barry Kowalski found that Jowers had changed his story repeatedly and that neither he nor the ex-FBI agent were credible. The Republican Party fought the KKK with the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to stop their terror, which was opposed by Democrats. Martin Luther King, a Republican, fought against Democrats and racism with President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy, Democrats, wiretapping both King and his organizer, A. Phillip Randolph. Then Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jims Grill, began claiming publicly that he was involved in a conspiracy to kill King. A part of his life was shaped by tragedy. Hoover once told a group of reporters, on the record, that King was the most notorious liar in the country., You are done: A secret letter to Martin Luther King Jr. sheds light on FBIs malice. More to the point, however, Jowers (who didn't even testify) was the only named party in the civil suit brought by the King family, and the judgment awarded in that case was a paltry $100, widely described as a token award to mark the trial's outcome. In 2000, even after reviewing the results of the 1999 civil trial in Memphis, Kowalski concluded that Ray was guilty and that there was no government conspiracy. He is the one who sits in leadership and is the most powerful person of a country. [14] The notion of living in Rhodesia continued to appeal to Ray for several years afterwards, and it was his intended destination after King's assassination. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. For example, in an impromptu, recorded conversation with a state investigator, Jowers characterized a central feature of his story that someone besides Ray shot Dr. King with a rifle other than the one recovered at the crime scene as "bullshit." The man denied any involvement and cooperated with Justice Department investigators in 1999, who found work records showing he could not have traveled widely to meet Ray in 1967 and 68. The Democrats were furious at Lincoln and resisted Black America gaining political power. His body was cremated and his ashes were flown to Ireland, the home of his maternal family's ancestors. He left Toronto in late May on a flight to England. Most famously, in 1997 a dying Ray told Dexter King, his victims son, that he didnt do it. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame. In recent years,Pepper has tracked down witnesses in Memphis who support his theory of the case: that J. Edgar Hoover used his longtime assistant, Clyde Tolson, to deliver cash to members of the Memphis underworld, that those shadowy figures then hired a sharpshooting Memphis police officer, and that officer not Ray fired the fatal shot. James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old convicted armed robber who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., on April 23, 1967, pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, in Shelby County (Tenn.) Criminal Court to the first degree murder of Dr. King. U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, Martin Luther King Jr. Records Collection Act, King: A Filmed Record Montgomery to Memphis, The Witness: From the Balcony of Room 306, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, Joseph Schwantner: New Morning for the World; Nicolas Flagello: The Passion of Martin Luther King. He escaped from the prison in April 1967, and some believe he had help from prison authorities, as part of the opening stanza of the conspiracy. Is that your verdict? Democrats fought a bloody civil war against Lincoln and the Republicans plan to free Black America. He was sentenced to 99 years at the State penitentiary. Our thorough investigation, Kowalski said recently, just like four official investigations before it, found no credible or reliable evidence that Doctor King was killed by conspirators who framed James Earl Ray. Over the next several years, Ray embarked on a number of small crimes, serving various jail times. What Political Party was James Earl Ray part of? Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. [38] The tests ultimately proved inconclusive. Karen Whitsett, a black state senator from Michigan, simply said, Thank you to President Trump for saving her life through the treatment of hydroxychoroquine. Most black families lacked fathers with policies encouraging the breakdown of the family through welfare programs. The family wasnt seeking money, just information. Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.. However, Jowers had long asserted he had no involvement in the event before suddenly and bizarrely claiming, twenty-five years after the fact, he had been paid to hire a hit man to kill Martin Luther King. He spent many hours volunteering at the campaign headquarters in North [49], Before his death, Ray was transferred to the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville, a maximum-security prison with hospital facilities. According to the criminal justice system of the state of Tennessee, James Earl Ray fired the shot from the second-floor bathroom of the boardinghouse. The Justice Department also found the evidence presented in the civil trial to be lacking in credibility: The evidence introduced in King v. Jowers to support various conspiracy allegations consisted of either inaccurate and incomplete information or unsubstantiated conjecture, supplied most often by sources, many unnamed, who did not testify. He had entered a guilty plea on the advice of his attorney, Percy Foreman, to avoid the sentence of death by electrocution, which would have been a possible outcome of a jury trial. He insisted that a man he'd met in Canada, who went by the name of Raoul, had orchestrated the murder and ultimately shot King. Im in the car business. At that point, Hardin Those facts leave no surprise as to why a man such as Ray would murder a man whose lifes work was focused on racial equality. He had consistently denied any knowledge of the case for a quarter-century, but now he alleged the gunman was a Memphis police officer who fired from the bushes behind the grill, then handed Jowers the murder weapon. Then figure out what the total cost of the trip would be.? With rates currently down to half that in 2018 (18%), these theories seem unlikely to go away any time soon. Ray died while that campaign was ongoing, but though the King family did win $100 in a 1999 wrongful death suit after the man charged as being part of a conspiracy didnt show up to the trial an official inquiry reiterated that the evidence against Ray was overwhelming and that there was no credibility to various theories that anyone else had been involved. That doesnt mean there are no questions left. Questions and speculation may always surround the assassination of Dr. King and other national tragedies. Since his television appearance, Jowers and his attorney have given additional statements about the assassination to the media, the King family, Ray's defenders, law enforcement personnel, relatives, friends, and courts. Recordings and photos of King having sex with women other than his wife were offered to reporters and government officials, often by Hoover himself, and sent to King associates. Your membership is the foundation of our sustainability and resilience. He then grabbed some belongings in a blanket, stashed the rifle in it, left the building and dropped the bundle in the doorway of a nearby building. It didnt help that Rays story kept changing. There is abundant evidence, Coretta King said after the verdict, of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband. The jury found the mafia and various government agencies were deeply involved in the assassination. [12] His chief interest, however, was the George Wallace presidential campaign. Biden sought support from follow segregationists in the fight against desegregated busing. "I had nothing to do with killing your father," Ray said. No one saw the actual shot fired. Among those who could have been pardoned was James Earl Ray, who just a decade before had assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. He drove away in a white Ford Mustang before the area was barricaded, went to Atlanta and then to Canada and England before being arrested in July 1968. He had Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry and had a Catholic upbringing. It pains my heart, said Bernice King, 55, the youngest of Martin Luther Kings four children and the executive director of the King Center in Atlanta, that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didnt do.. He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March. 1995 - 2023 by Snopes Media Group Inc. Two years later, his young sister Marjorie, died in a fire after playing with matches and accidentally catching herself on fire. No I didn't." Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? Its still a mystery to me, Bernice King said. This verdict is not only a great victory for my family, but also a great victory for America. Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. v. CBS, Inc. Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), African American founding fathers of the United States, Statue of Martin Luther King Jr. (Pueblo, Colorado), Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, San Francisco. Findings by federal authorities and the House Select Committee on Assassinations are confident about some things. [8] He was sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses. But Rays sudden guilty plea stopped all official investigations. No vast sums of money were awarded (the Kings sought only $100), and Ray was not exonerated. Ray then fired Kershaw after discovering the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview and instead hired attorney Mark Lane to provide him with legal representation. Recy Taylors gang rape was horrific. Democrats, Biden still trying to enslave Black America. Huie investigated this story and discovered that Ray lied about some details. There, on March 30, 1968, he bought a Remington Model 760 Gamemaster .30-06-caliber rifle and a box of 20 cartridges from the Aeromarine Supply Company. [26][27] He picked up his belongings and fled north to Canada, arriving in Toronto three days later, where he hid for over a month and acquired a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd. As noted in the New York Times' report of the verdict, the one-sided presentation of the case allowed for no other result: John Campbell, an assistant district attorney in Memphis, who was not part of the civil proceedings but was part of the criminal case against Mr. Ray, said, "I'm not surprised by the verdict. His family believes James Earl Ray was f Arnold Hirsch, influential historian of urban segregation, dies at 69. Is this who we now are? There was a huge amount of evidence presented in Memphis that didnt see the light of day in a public forum, says Hampton Sides, an expert on this topic and author of Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin. Whatever the exact details were that led him to Memphis in April 1968, Ray rented a room at a rooming house under the name Eric Starvo Galt, near the Lorraine Motel, where King was staying. 17, 1968, FBI headquarters Murkin file 44-38861", "Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr", "Why assassin James Earl Ray returned to Toronto", "Ramon Sneyd denies that he killed Dr King", "Log Cabin Democrat: King assassin Ray dies after lifelong legal fight 4/24/98", "1969: Martin Luther King's killer gets life", "Federal Bureau of Investigation History of Knoxville Office", "Jack Kershaw Is Dead at 96; Challenged Conviction in King's Death", "Dr. King's Son Says Family Believes Ray Is Innocent", "Ray Acquitted In Mock Trial 25 Years After King Slaying", "Memphis Jury Sees Conspiracy in Martin Luther King's Killing", "Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. In 1959, he was caught stealing $120 in an armed robbery of a Kroger store in St. He died an hour later at St. Josephs Hospital. James Earl Ray was a racist and quickly drawn to Wallaces segregationist platform. In 1977, James Earl Ray, who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in the town of Petros in Morgan County, Tennessee. (Video: The Washington Post). Wednesday marks 50 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on the second-floor balcony near his room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where he had been supporting black sanitation workers on strike for better pay and working conditions. I believe thats exactly what happened, said Martin King III. Why did James Earl Ray have cancer? Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of King on March 10, 1969. He did not claim any involvement in the assassination or significant knowledge about it. On April 4, 1968, Ray stood in the bathtub of the bathroom, balanced his rifle on a window ledge and shot King as the civil rights leader was standing on a balcony outside of his motel room. According to Jowers, a Memphis produce dealer, who was involved with the Mafia, gave him $100,000 to hire an assassin and assured him that the police would not be at the scene of the shooting. His family believes James Earl Ray was framed. WebJames Earl Ray was a supporter of George Wallace - who was a democrat in the 1960s but was on the side of segregation, which when you hear about the party switch of that time, And so after 50 years, the King assassination seems destined to remain mired in controversy, the subject of infinite debate over whether Ray was a lone gunman inspired by racism, a hired assassin aided by secret government forces, or simply a patsy manipulated to kill a civil rights hero. The Republican Party was formed in 1854 as an anti-slavery party with Abraham Lincoln as their first president. For the King family and others in the civil rights movement, the FBIs obsession with King in the years leading up to his slaying in Memphis on April 4, 1968 pervasive surveillance, a malicious disinformation campaign and open denunciations by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover laid the groundwork for their belief that he was the target of a plot. I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations. James Earl Ray died in 1998. Conspiracies have long gripped the American imagination, from JFKs assassination in 1963 to Deputy White House Counsel Vince Fosters suicidein 1993 to Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Richs slayingin 2016. Claim: The U.S. government was sued and found culpable for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., but the news media refused to report it. Jowers, however, has never made his conspiracy claims under oath. In the U.S. Senate, Democrat Majority Leader, Robert KKK Byrd, was a former Grand Kleagle, a recruiter, for the KKK and opposed every policy benefiting Black America. The one time Jowers did testify under oath about his allegations in an earlier civil suit, Ray v. Jowers, he repudiated them. The Democrat Party and Biden are no longer slave owners to Black America as they have a right to make an independent and educated decision. Ray was given a 20-year sentence at MSP. I had nothing to do with killing [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]. Jowers also abandoned his initial allegation that he received $100,000 with which he hired a hit man to kill Dr. King, claiming instead that he merely held the money for the conspirators. The largest government investigation, led by the House Select Committee on Assassinations under chief counsel Robert Blakey, theorized in 1979 that Ray committed the killing in the hope of collecting a $50,000 bounty offered by supporters of then-presidential candidate George Wallace in St. Louis, where Rays brothers lived. In March 1960 Ray started a 20-year sentence for the crimes. Convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. (19281998), Speeches, writings, movements, and protests, Initial convictions and first escape from prison, Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories, Interview with James Earl Ray by John Auble, United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, "James Earl Ray, 70, Killer of Dr. King, Dies in Nashville", "The assassin's brother: John Larry Ray marks time in Quincy, still trying to set the record straight", "James Earl Ray: The Man Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King, chapter 3", "Report of laboratory, FBI headquarters to Memphis, Apr. 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