King assassination suspect arrested 1968
James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in
London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American
civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a sniper’s
bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at
the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was
found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine
Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports,
and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped
convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri
prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968,
a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he
had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the
time was relatively easy.
On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London
airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he
later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) was
at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white
minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a
Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in
order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in
prison.
Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming
he was innocent of King’s assassination and had been set up as a patsy
in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a mysterious man named
“Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning
enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he realized that he was to be the
fall guy for the King assassination and fled for Canada. Ray’s motion
was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the
next 29 years.
During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr.,
spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent
and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S.
government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds,
implicated circumstantially. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over
King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six
years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by
the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military
intelligence, who may have been called to watch over King after he
publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for
radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes
for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S.
government.
Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House
Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee,
district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Justice
Department. All of these investigations have ended with the same
conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King, Jr. The House
committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed,
involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence
definitively to prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of
evidence against him, such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and
admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4, Ray had a definite
motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and
friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill
King. Ray died in 1998.
(More Events on This Day in History)
-
American Revolution
- 1776 Patriots retreat from Battle of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec
-
Automotive
- 1948 First Porsche completed
-
Civil War
- 1862 Confederates score victory at the Battle of Cross Keys
-
Cold War
- 1949 FBI report names Hollywood figures as communists
-
Crime
- 1913 Forensic evidence captures a murderous father
- 1990 As Nasty As They Wanna Be causes store owner’s arrest
-
Disaster
- 2001 Tropical Storm Allison wreaks havoc
-
General Interest
- 1967 Israel attacks USS Liberty
- 1968 Robert Kennedy buried
- 1986 Waldheim elected Austrian president
- 632 Founder of Islam dies
-
Hollywood
- 1984 Ghostbusters released
-
Literary
- 1999 Hannibal by Thomas Harris hits bookstores
-
Music
- 1969 Brian Jones leaves the Stones
-
Old West
- 1874 Apache Chief Cochise dies
-
Presidential
- 1896 Cleveland asks for inquiry into number of “aliens” in federal employment
- 1945 Truman issues order regarding release of classified scientific information
-
Sports
- 1966 NFL and AFL announce merger
-
Vietnam War
- 1965 U.S. forces are available for ground support
- 1969 Nixon and Thieu meet at Midway
-
World War I
- 1917 British War Cabinet holds emergency meeting in London
-
World War II
- 1941 Allies invade Syria and Lebanon
- 1944 As British and American troops meet up at Normandy, Stalin rejoices
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