Best Known For: James Earl Ray is infamous for assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. Your answer to that one is also yes. Ray himself countered that he was not the only one involved in the crime. WebJack Kershaw. [17], Arriving in Atlanta on March 24, 1968, Ray checked into a rooming house. Check here if you would like to receive subscription offers and other promotions via email from TIME group companies. Ray was born in 1928 and grew up outside St. Louis. [18] He bought a map of the city. Some witnesses, including then-New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell, said they saw a man moving in the thick bushes behind Jims Grill, below the bathroom. 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. "I believe you," Dexter responded and shook his hand. Huie investigated this story and discovered that Ray lied about some details. No one saw the actual shot fired. Please try again later. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998. However, dont expect the Democrats to give in without a fight. Kings two other surviving children, Dexter, 57, and Martin III, 60, fully agree that Ray was innocent. Coretta King and Abernathy, aware of the FBI campaign, immediately suspected FBI involvement after Kings death. [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. 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. He died an hour later at St. Josephs Hospital. 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. He has claimed that while in Montreal he met a man named Raul, of varying physical descriptions over the years, who enlisted him in several small gunrunning schemes, and instructed him to buy a rifle in Birmingham, Ala. On the afternoon of April 4, Ray checked into a boardinghouse in Memphis, with a bar called Jims Grill on the first floor. Among those who could have been pardoned was James Earl Ray, who just a decade before had assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis. The two men parted ways. John Karl Kershaw (October 12, 1913 September 7, 2010) was an American attorney best known for challenging the official account of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, claiming that his client James Earl Ray was an unwitting participant in a ploy devised by a mystery man named Raul to kill the civil rights leader. A package was abandoned close to the site that included a rifle and binoculars, both found with Ray's fingerprints. Even those who believe that Ray, who died in prison in 1998, killed King tend to think that he received assistance from someone, whether it was his two brothers or the FBI or the mafia. He was constantly in and out of prison so he never voted. He was a segregationist but neither a Republican or a Democrat. In fact, he did not testify in King v. Jowers, despite the fact that he was the party being sued. In court, Ray answered the standard series of questions about whether he was knowingly and voluntarily admitting he committed murder. That claim prompted the family to push unsuccessfully for a new trial. Also at issue is the difference between Ray's guilty plea in 1969, which avoided his undergoing a criminal trial, and the case cited by the rumors, which was a civil trial heard in 1999. 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. He spent much of his time in Los Angeles volunteering at the Wallace campaign headquarters in North Hollywood. Ray was white and was quickly drawn to Wallace's segregationist platform. He was sentenced to 99 years at the State penitentiary. Until 1993, Jowers maintained in several public statements that he was merely serving customers in his tavern when Dr. King was shot. Magazines, Digital Historical figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. tend to be the subject of complicated conspiracy theories, particularly when they are vectors for widespread societal change. [28] He stayed briefly in Lisbon, Portugal, and returned to London. When considered in light of all other available relevant facts, the trial's evidence fails to establish the existence of any conspiracy to kill Dr. King. We were living in the period of assassinations,Young said. Republicans introduced the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to end slavery, give citizenship, and give Black America the right to vote. Is that your verdict? All Rights Reserved. After all, the FBI stalked King and his cohort in order to, as Sides puts it, ruin and smear the civil rights movement. The ugly reach of that campaign has only become clearer over the years. [37] A year was added to Ray's previous sentence, increasing it to a full century. Many leaders like Candace Owens in the black community have begun to spread the message of #Blexit, a movement that encourages Black America to leave the Democrat Party. The New York Times. Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.. An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. The photo still haunts us with what was lost. I think there was a major conspiracy to remove Doctor King from the American scene, said Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), a 78-year-old civil rights icon. [38] The tests ultimately proved inconclusive. Ray met Anna Sandhu in 1977. Two years later, his young sister Marjorie, died in a fire after playing with matches and accidentally catching herself on fire. With rates currently down to half that in 2018 (18%), these theories seem unlikely to go away any time soon. He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March. Jowers also reported that he hired a hit man to shoot Dr. King from behind Jim's Grill and received the murder weapon prior to the killing from someone with a name sounding like Raoul. [36] However, Ray spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a jury trial. Lincoln was assassinated by a Democrat, John Wilkes Booth in 1865. WebJames Earl Ray Escapes. Why did James Earl Ray have cancer? 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. Three decades of legal machinations never succeeded in reopening the case, but they revealed new details and led to new theories of how King might have been killed. Yellin, Emily. I found gaps in his movements that are mysterious and you just dont know who hes meeting with. 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.. Hoover was so angry, he had hate in his heart. 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. After Coretta King and her family pleaded with President Bill Clinton in 1998 to reinvestigate the case, Attorney General Janet Reno assigned civil rights special counsel Barry Kowalski, who previously prosecuted the Los Angeles police officers in the Rodney King beating, to review the newest conspiracy allegations. 9 December 1999. 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. [50], Ray died on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70, at the Columbia Memorial Hospital from complications related to kidney disease and liver failure caused by hepatitis C.[51] His brother, Jerry, told CNN that his brother did not want to be buried or have his final resting place in the United States because of the way the government had framed him for living. Consequently, Jowers has only confessed in circumstances where candor has not been required by law or where he has not been required to reconcile his prior inconsistencies. 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. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. Site contains certain content that is owned A&E Television Networks, LLC. Frederick Rudolph Yokom. Unbeknownst to Ray, however, a death sentence would have been commuted as unconstitutional under the de facto moratorium in place since 1967 and following Furman v. Georgia. James Earl Ray began a record of scrapes, big and small, with the law serving terms in Joliet and Pontiac prisons in Illinois and Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary in Kansas. His body was cremated and his ashes were flown to Ireland, the home of his maternal family's ancestors. Then figure out what the total cost of the trip would be.? Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of King on March 10, 1969. He was charged with drunkenness and breaking arrest, before getting discharged for ineptness and lack of adaptability in 1948. Most black families lacked fathers with policies encouraging the breakdown of the family through welfare programs. Democrats, Biden still trying to enslave Black America. 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. Pepper wrote three books outlining the conspiracy, most recently The Plot to Kill King in 2016, which were largely ignored by the media. We found no reliable evidence to support Jowers' allegations that he conspired with others to shoot Dr. King from behind Jim's Grill. During a rainstorm on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers in Memphis lost their lives when the trucks compactor They were recaptured on June 13. Three days after pleading guilty he recanted his confession, and for the next 28 years maintained his innocence, but by then it was too late. He has spoken around the world to anyone who will listen, including recently at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel, where King was killed. On June 10, 1977, Ray and six other convicts escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, San Jose, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Earl_Ray&oldid=1142126272, American people who died in prison custody, People extradited from the United Kingdom to the United States, Prisoners who died in Tennessee detention, United States Army personnel of World War II, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, All Wikipedia articles written in American English, Pages using infobox person with multiple parents, Articles with unsourced statements from May 2022, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 99 years in prison (1 year was added after his re-capture for a total of 100 years), This page was last edited on 28 February 2023, at 17:21. You come up with a better outcome, with evidence to support it, Ill support your theory. He remains adamant that Ray was the gunman but likely had help that should have been investigated in 1968 and was not. No vast sums of money were awarded (the Kings sought only $100), and Ray was not exonerated. In 1935 the family suddenly left Alton and relocated to Ewing, Missouri, after police had started looking for Ray's father on a forgery charge. The mock trial jury finally acquitted Ray. [32][33], Airport officials noticed that Ray carried another passport under a second name. Joe Biden recently stated to Black America if you arent voting for me, you aint black. This arrogant comment is a reflection of how Biden and the Democrat Party feel about Black America. If the King family wanted a rubber stamp of their own view of the facts, they got it.". 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. After Johnson successfully maneuvered Black America into the Democrat plantation, they became a strong voting bloc just as a young Joe Biden joined the U.S. Senate in 1973. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors did not seek the death penalty and Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison. In the mid-1990s, Ray's defenders changed the spelling to "R-A-U-L" when they believed that a man living in New York state, whose first name is Raul, was the Raoul described by Ray. [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. If the FBI or CIA was involved, they had destroyed the documentation of it by 1979, he said. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband. 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. At the time, it was said to be the FBI's most expensive and biggest investigation in its history. [39][40][41] William Pepper, a friend of King during the last year of his life, represented Ray in a mock trial televised by HBO in an attempt to grant him the trial he never received. His claim was that the assassination was the result of a conspiracy of the otherwise unidentified man named "Raul who was a blond Cuban. Whitsett responded, Im not going to be silenced and has since sued the Michigan Democrat Party. James Earl Ray, the man who confessed to killing Martin Luther King Jr. later recanted and insisted he was set up by a man named "Raul." More Memphis witnesses came forward, including a former girlfriend of Jowers, who said she saw him with the rifle shortly after the gunshot rang out, and saw him break it down and place it in the bar. Biden sought support from follow segregationists in the fight against desegregated busing. Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois, the son of Lucille Ray (ne Maher) and George Ellis Ray. Toward the end of his life, Ray, whose sentence had been extended to 100 years after he escaped from prison in 1977, had the support of an unexpected ally: the King family. 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. Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and convinced the committee to conduct ballistics tests that they believed would prove Ray had not fired the fatal shot. Ray, who was feeble and sick from hepatitis C, was asked by King about his involvement in the assassination. Then Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jims Grill, began claiming publicly that he was involved in a conspiracy to kill King. Whether youre a lifelong resident of D.C. or you just moved here, weve got you covered. [7], Ray committed a variety of crimes prior to the murder of King. I dont believe James Earl Ray killed my father. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. 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 paid $8.50 for a weeks stay. 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. WebJames Earl Ray deceased in prison; was a U.S. prisoner, and a British prisoner, apprehended June 8, White was arrested after a citizen recognized him from an article in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat newspaper. Then, at 6:01 p.m., she will lead a bell-ringing at the exact moment of the shooting, 39 times for every year of her fathers life, certain that the person who killed him has never been caught. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our. After getting laid off in 1945, Ray enlisted in the Army, eventually getting stationed in West Germany. James Earl Ray died in 1998. Even the reference of aint is racist as to say those in Black America are not educated. According to Wikipedia: James Earl Rays chief interest was the George Wallace [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace ] Democratic presiden An FBI 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. Inspired by the failed jail break by James Earl Ray, the man convicted for the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King and serving a 99-year sentence, In addition to his segregationist beliefs, he also saw a big payday, some historians have said, in killing Black leaders like H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael and, of course, King. [20] He told the store owners that he was going on a hunting trip with his brother. Another is the shaky foundation on which the conspiracy theory rests is a matter of some nuance. finds no conspiracy in King assassination", "Third Inquiry Affirms Others: Ray Alone Was King's Killer", "Autopsy confirms Ray died of liver failure". 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