For more than 21 years numerous official and unofficial investigations have attempted to answer the myriad questions surrounding the assassination of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Though a small-time escaped convict named James Earl Ray is serving a 99-year sentence for the killing, federal authorities conceded in 1979 that there probably was some kind of conspiracy. No coconspirator has ever been caught, however, and for ten years after the assassination none was even sought. Ray pleaded guilty to the murder, but almost immediately after began protesting that he was innocent, claiming that he was framed by a mysterious figure named “Raoul” and that renegade federal agents were involved. No satisfactory motive for Ray to have shot King has ever been provided.
In late March 1968 Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to support a strike by the predominantly black garbage workers. Things began badly. On March 28 King led 6,000 protesters on what was supposed to be a peaceful march. But the march disintegrated into violence between police and demonstrators. A 17-year-old black youth was killed, and stores were looted. King returned to Memphis on April 3, intending to lead the workers on a second march, which he was determined would not turn violent.
Suspicions were not allayed when the alleged assassin was caught on June 8, 1968, at London’s Heathrow Airport. Ray, an escapee from the Missouri state penitentiary, had allegedly been on his way to Belgium and was traveling on a false passport. He was quickly extradited to the U.S. to stand trial. No other culprits were sought.
Ray replaced his first lawyer with the colorful Texas attorney Percy Foreman, a move he says today was a grave error. He says Foreman pressured him into pleading guilty and that he did so because he thought he would be able to dismiss his lawyer and receive a new trial. When he pleaded guilty in March 1969 in his official two-and-a-half-hour trial, Ray deviated slightly from the script and subtly indicated that there had been a conspiracy. He was sentenced by the court to 99 years in prison. Within three days he set about petitioning for a new trial, and has been petitioning ever since.
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One of Weisberg’s most powerful arguments concerns the crime scene. According to the official version of events, the assassin stood in a bathtub, took a single shot, ran from the bathroom into the bedroom, put his rifle back in its box, grabbed an assortment of personal items bundled in a blanket–leaving his fingerprints on the belongings but apparently not in the bathroom or bedroom–ran the length of the rooming house and down a flight of stairs, dumped the bundle and the rifle in the street, walked calmly to his waiting Mustang, and drove away. How, Weisberg wonders, could all of this have transpired within the one to two minutes it took uniformed police officers to reach the location?
By 1977, after the Church Committee investigation of U.S. intelligence agencies revealed that the CIA had been illegally involved in assassinations overseas and spying at home, public suspicion about the King and Kennedy assassinations had reached such a pitch that Congress was forced to form a committee to investigate.
Ray refuses to acknowledge any connection with Kimble.
This article is based on the reporting in Who Killed Martin Luther King?, a documentary made by Otmoor Productions of Oxfordshire, England, and commissioned by the British Broadcasting Corporation. It aired on the BBC in September of 1989. Produced by John Edginton, it will be broadcast here on the A & E network at 7 PM on March 18 and noon on March 24.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustrations/Will Northerner.
