I had nothing to do with killing [Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.]. He was convinced that he would escape capture because of his intelligence and cunning, and he also believed that Governor of Alabama George Wallace would soon be elected to the presidency, so that Ray would only be confined in prison for a short time, pending a presidential pardon by Wallace. He spent much of his time in Los Angeles volunteering at the Wallace campaign headquarters in North Hollywood. The U.S. Justice Department concluded in June 2000 the "allegations originating with Loyd Jowers are not credible": After reviewing all available materials from prior official investigations and other sources, including the evidence from King v. Jowers, and after conducting a year and a half of original investigation, we have concluded that the allegations originating with Loyd Jowers and Donald Wilson are not credible. For example, he not only identified two different people as the assassin, but also most recently claimed that he saw the assassin and did not recognize him. I dont know, but Im not assuming anything, and Im not going to make up a conspiracy, which seems to be a popular thing these days. Then figure out what the total cost of the trip would be.? That doesnt mean there are no questions left. Biography and associated logos are trademarks of A+E Networksprotected in the US and other countries around the globe. That some Americans didnt trust and still dont trust the governments conclusion on Kings murder says a lot about what was going on in America in the 1960s and 70s, when the Vietnam War and Watergate torpedoed Americans trust in government. August 29, 1968 #286 One week on the list 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. [36] However, Ray spent the remainder of his life unsuccessfully attempting to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a jury trial. 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. In segregated D.C., few officials feared rioting. I Am a Man: The ugly Memphis sanitation workers strike that led to MLKs assassination, The King family has lauded Pepper repeatedly, and he was honored by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference for his unceasing commitment in the pursuit of justice., I think the people of this country are entitled to know the truth, Pepper said. James Lawson, a Memphis pastor and civil rights institution who helped mentor King, said he began visiting Ray in the Memphis jail in 1969 when Ray complained The family wasnt seeking money, just information. Frederick Rudolph Yokom. For reasons unknown, Memphis public works employees cut down the bushes and destroyed a possible crime scene the next morning. 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. Im certainly clear that there has been a conspiracy, from the government down to the mafia there had to be more than one person involved in all of this. A teacher walks into the Classroom and says If only Yesterday was Tomorrow Today would have been a Saturday Which Day did the Teacher make this Statement? Given the minor sum of money awarded, a jury would have little incentive to not find in favor of an account supported by both sides of a flawed case. Ray had continued using the Galt alias after his stint in Mexico, but when he made this purchase, he gave his name as Harvey Lowmeyer. Im in the car business. 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. Please attempt to sign up again. Louis. He can be emailed at mantecarepublicans@yahoo.com, Ceres a cleaner place now due to beefed up Code Enforcement staff, CUSD keeping watchful eye on declining student enrollment, City prepares for new digs for Public Works, Adamsville: Stanislaus County's short-lived & forgotten county seat, CUSD honors standout classified and confidential employees, Espinoza, Breshears represent Hawks at State, Tough draw for CHS girls in soccer playoffs, CV boys advance to Division-I semifinal round, CV grad Velasquez wraps up UC Davis soccer career, Theyre not getting away with it in Ceres. 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. We may earn commission from links on this page, but we only recommend products we back. 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.. "[45][46][47][48], Prompted by the King family's acceptance of some of the claims of conspiracy, United States Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a new investigation on August 26, 1998. 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. What are the disadvantages of shielding a thermometer? [43] [44], Coretta Scott King 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. 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. Ray was born in 1928 and grew up outside St. Louis. I want to make it clear that my family has no interest in retribution. [6] Ray left school at the age of 12. Ray moved around while on the lam, staying in Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico and Canada over the next year. At that point, Hardin He continued to visit Ray until his death and presided over his funeral. Was James The FBI had just caught James Earl Ray at Heathrow Airport in London. finds no conspiracy in King assassination", "Third Inquiry Affirms Others: Ray Alone Was King's Killer", "Autopsy confirms Ray died of liver failure". In a time of chaos, a breakout year for black athletes, At Folsom prison, Johnny Cash found his cause. At the same time, the misconduct of Hoover and the FBI was coming to light. Coretta King and Abernathy, aware of the FBI campaign, immediately suspected FBI involvement after Kings death. He left Toronto in late May on a flight to England. 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. Although the Justice Department officially claims James Earl Ray assassinated MLK, a civil suit later determined that a Memphis cop was involved in a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader. 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. Martin Luther King Jr. met Malcolm X just once. Name: James Earl Birth Year: 1928 Birth date: March 10, 1928 Birth State: Illinois Birth City: Alton Birth Country: United States Gender: Male Best Known For: James Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.. It didnt help that Rays story kept changing. 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 April 4, 1968. 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. Did the news media, led by Walter Cronkite, lose the war in Vietnam? [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. Georgia Democrat State Representative Vernon Jones also received backlash from Georgia Democrats for endorsing President Trump. Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com. [49], Before his death, Ray was transferred to the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville, a maximum-security prison with hospital facilities. Why did James Earl Ray have cancer? In court, Ray answered the standard series of questions about whether he was knowingly and voluntarily admitting he committed murder. It is a great victory for truth itself. 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. Fifty years later, some questions linger about why exactly the civil rights leader was targeted and whether the shooter acted alone. "I believe you," Dexter responded and shook his hand. [18] He bought a map of the city. Instead, our sole concern has been that the full truth of the assassination has been revealed and adjudicated in a court of law. 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. FBI agents later found this map when they searched the room in which he was staying. 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. 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. Astride all this controversy for the last 40 years has been William Pepper, a New York lawyer and civil rights activist who knew and worked with King. Whether youre a lifelong resident of D.C. or you just moved here, weve got you covered. What We Know About Why James Earl Ray Killed Martin Luther King Jr. Long Waits, Short Appointments, Huge Bills. The original mug shot of James Earl Ray included with the memo from the FBI to the Belleville News-Democrat. In 1949 he left for Los Angeles, where in October of that year police arrested him for robbing a cafe. Jones responded, Turn the lights off, I have left the plantation., According to Biden and those Democrats who cannot enslave Black Americans anymore, You aint black., Frank Aquila is president of the San Joaquin Stanislaus Conservative Patriots and author of the book, Sarah Palin Out of Nowhere. 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.. Top of Page Cities were burning. Who killed Martin Luther King Jr.? In 1997, Dexter King went with Pepper to meet Ray in prison, and was photographed shaking Rays hand. 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. 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. Ray dismissed Foreman as his attorney and thereafter derisively called him "Percy Fourflusher." 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. He was trying to depart the United Kingdom for Angola, Rhodesia, or apartheid South Africa[30] using the falsified Canadian passport. The Republican Party fought the KKK with the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 to stop their terror, which was opposed by Democrats. Furthermore, the Justice Department's investigation determined no physical evidence whatsoever supported Jowers' multiple and conflicting accounts of his involvement in King's assassination, and Jowers stood to profit from his assertions: It was not until 1993, during a meeting with the producer of a televised mock trial of James Earl Ray, that Jowers first publicly disclosed the details of the alleged plot, including the names of the purported assassin and other co-conspirators. An avid newspaper reader, Ray passed his time reading The Atlanta Constitution. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles. As well, the gravity of the trial's supposed conclusion, when contrasted with the relatively little public discussion of that addendum to King's life, has lent credence to the belief the trial in question and its outcome were deliberately omitted from the news. The Rhodesian government expressed its disapproval. In fact, he did not testify in King v. Jowers, despite the fact that he was the party being sued. 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. James 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 t Investigators announced that James Earl Ray, an escaped prisoner, had fatally shot 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. Was James earl ray white? * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. King was murdered in Memphis on April 4, 1968, and the FBI seized the car the following day in Atlanta. There were things in Memphis that were suspicious and raised questions in my mind, Lawson said. 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. 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. According to Pew, the percentage of Americans who said they could trust the federal government to do the right thing nearly always or most of the time went from an all-time high of 77% in 1964 to 36% by the end of the 1970s. His sister Marjorie died in a fire as a young child in 1933. This article was published more than4 years ago. The screen from the bathroom window was found on the ground below. James Earl Ray is infamous for assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. [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. After Byrd, the racist recruiter for the KKK died in 2010, Biden did his eulogy and praised the former Grand Kleagle as his mentor and dear friend.. According to Wikipedia: James Earl Rays chief interest was the George Wallace [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace ] Democratic presiden Loyd Jowers was a Memphis restaurant owner who inserted himself into the narrative about King's death in the course of a 1993 television interview during which he claimed to have been party to a larger conspiracy to assassinate King. Two years later, his young sister Marjorie, died in a fire after playing with matches and accidentally catching herself on fire. At the age of 16, Ray left his parents and returned to Alton, where he moved in with his grandmother and landed work in the dye room of the International Shoe Tannery. He defended Ray in a mock trial on HBO in 1993 (Ray was found not guilty), and filed and tried the Memphis civil suit that found the government liable for Kings death. They want to hold onto their plantation and if anyone from Black America balks, they will put that black person back in their chains. In March 1960 Ray started a 20-year sentence for the crimes. James Earl Ray died in 1998. In fact, credible evidence contradicting his allegations, as well as material inconsistencies among his accounts and his own repudiations of them, demonstrate that Jowers has not been truthful. Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998. [29] Ray was then arrested at London Heathrow Airport attempting to leave the United Kingdom for Brussels. On July 19, he returned to U.S. and the following March he pleaded guilty to murdering King. James Earl Ray was a racist and quickly drawn to Wallaces segregationist platform. With rates currently down to half that in 2018 (18%), these theories seem unlikely to go away any time soon. The paper reported King's planned return trip to Memphis, Tennessee, which was scheduled for 1st April, 1968. 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." We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right,contact us! [52], Ten years later, Ray's other brother, John Larry Ray, co-authored a book with Lyndon Barsten titled Truth At Last: The Untold Story Behind James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.[39]. After getting laid off in 1945, Ray enlisted in the Army, eventually getting stationed in West Germany. The magazine reported that the test results showed "Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone." Lawson assisted Pepper and the King family over the years in their investigation, during which Dexter King and Andrew Young participated in interviews with witnesses. Could James Brown keep Boston from erupt That stain of bloodshed: After Kings assassination, RFK calmed an angry Fifty years after Kings assassination, promise and pain on the avenue that For one musician, D.C. was the place for black entertainers. 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