Knowledge Center: James Earl Ray (American Murderer Convicted Of The Assassination Of American Civil Rights Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

Thursday, March 10, 2011

James Earl Ray (American Murderer Convicted Of The Assassination Of American Civil Rights Activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.)

James Earl Ray
Mug shot of Ray taken in 1955
Born	March 10, 1928 Alton, Illinois, USA
Died	April 23, 1998 (aged 70) Nashville, Tennessee
Conviction(s)	Murder, prison escape, armed robbery, burglary
Penalty	99 years imprisonment (one year was added after his re-capture for a total of 100 years)
Status	deceased
Spouse	Anna Sandhu (divorced)
Parents	James Gerald Ray

James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 – April 23, 1998) was an American murderer convicted of the assassination of American civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. He was convicted on March 10, 1969 after entering a guilty plea to forgo a jury trial. If Ray had been found guilty by jury trial he would have been electrocuted.^[1] He was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. He later recanted his confession and tried unsuccessfully to gain a trial. He died in prison of hepatitis C.

Early life

James Earl Ray came from a poor family in Alton, Illinois, and left school at age fifteen. He joined the US Army at the close of World War II and served in Germany. He was convicted of his first crime, a burglary in California, in 1949.

In 1952 he served two years for armed robbery of a taxi driver in Illinois. In 1955, he was convicted of mail fraud. After an armed robbery in Missouri in 1959, Ray was sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses. He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 by hiding in a truck transporting bread from the prison bakery.^[2]

Following his escape, Ray stayed on the move, going first to St. Louis and then on to Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Birmingham. When he got to Alabama, Ray stayed long enough to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang and get an Alabama driver's license. He then drove to Mexico, stopping in Acapulco before settling down in Puerto Vallarta on October 19, 1967.^[3] While in Mexico, Ray, using the alias Eric Starvo Galt, attempted to establish himself as a porn director. Using mail-ordered equipment, he filmed and photographed local prostitutes.^[4] Frustrated with his results and jilted by the prostitute he had formed a relationship with, Ray left Mexico around November 16, 1967.^[5]

Ray arrived in Los Angeles on November 19. While in L.A., Ray attended a local bar tending school and took dance lessons.^[6] His chief interest, however, would be the George Wallace presidential campaign. Ray harbored a strong prejudice towards African Americans and was quickly drawn to Wallace's segregationist platform. He would spend much of his time in Los Angeles volunteering at the Wallace campaign headquarters in North Hollywood.^[7] He also developed an interest in Rhodesia, where Ian Smith's white supremacist regime was in power. He even wrote to the American-Southern Africa Council on December 28, 1967. In this letter, Ray stated, "My reason for writing is that I am considering immigrating to Rhodesia."^[8] The idea of living in Rhodesia stayed with Ray, and it would be his intended destination when he went on the run after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. One of his last acts in Los Angeles would be on March 5, 1968, when he had a rhinoplasty performed by Dr. Russell Hadley.^[9] On March 18, 1968 Ray began a cross-country drive to Atlanta, Georgia.^[10]

Arriving in Atlanta on March 24, Ray checked into a rooming house.^[11] He eventually bought a map of the city. FBI Agents would later find this map when they searched the room he was staying at in Atlanta. On the map, the locations of the church and residence of Martin Luther King Jr. were circled.^[12] Ray was soon on the road again and drove his Mustang to Birmingham, Alabama. There, on March 30, 1968, he bought a Remington Gamemaster 760 .30-06-caliber rifle and a box of 20 bullets from the Aeromarine Supply Company. He also bought a Redfield 2x7 scope, which he had mounted to the rifle. He told the store clerks that he was going on a hunting trip with his brother. Ray had continued using the Galt alias after Mexico, but when he made this purchase, he gave his name as Harvey Lowmeyer.^[13]

After buying the rifle and accessories, Ray drove back to Atlanta. An avid newspaper reader, Ray passed his time reading the Atlanta Constitution. The paper reported King's planned return trip to Memphis, Tennessee, which was scheduled for April 1, 1968. On April 2, 1968, Ray packed a bag and drove to Memphis.^[14]

Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Main article: Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Lorraine Motel, now known as the National Civil Rights Museum, where King was assassinated

Martin Luther King was shot and killed by a sniper on April 4, 1968, while standing on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

Capture and Trial

On June 8, 1968, a little more than two months after King's death, Ray was captured at London's Heathrow Airport while trying to leave the United Kingdom on a false Canadian passport. At check-in the ticket agent noticed the name on his passport was on a Royal Canadian Mounted Police watchlist. He was using the name of Ramon George Sneyd.^[15] At the airport, officials noticed that Ray carried another passport under a second name. The UK quickly extradited Ray to Tennessee, where he was charged with King's murder. He confessed to the crime on March 10, 1969, although he recanted this confession three days later. After pleading guilty he was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.^[16] Ray entered a guilty plea on the advice of his attorney, Percy Foreman, in order to avoid a potential trial conviction, which could have led to a sentence of death. The method of execution in Tennessee at the time would have been electrocution.

Ray fired Foreman as his attorney and derisively called him "Percy Fourflusher," thereafter. Ray began claiming that a man he had met in Montreal, who used the alias "Raul", had been deeply involved. Instead he asserted that he did not "personally shoot Dr. King," but may have been, "partially responsible without knowing it," hinting at a conspiracy. This version of King's assassination and his fleeing Ray sold to William Bradford Huie. Huie investigated this story and discovered Ray sometimes lied. Ray told Huie he purposely left the rifle with his fingerprints on it behind in plain sight because he wanted to become a famous criminal. Ray was convinced he was so smart that he would not be caught.^[1] He believed Governor of Alabama, George Wallace, would soon be elected President and Ray would only be confined for a short time.^[1] He spent the remainder of his life attempting unsuccessfully to withdraw his guilty plea and secure a trial.

1977 Escape

On June 11, 1977, Ray made his second appearance on the FBI Most Wanted Fugitives list, this time as the 351st entry. He and six other convicts had escaped from Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tennessee on June 10, 1977. They were recaptured on June 13, three days later, and returned to prison.^[17] A year was added to Ray's previous sentence, to total 100 years.

Ray had hired Jack Kershaw as his attorney, who promoted Ray's claim that he was not responsible for the shooting, which was said to have been the result of a conspiracy of the otherwise unidentified man named "Raul". Kershaw and his client met with representatives of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and convinced the committee to run ballistics tests — which ultimately proved inconclusive — that would show that Ray had not fired the fatal shot.^[18] Kershaw claimed that the escape was additional proof that Ray had been involved in a conspiracy that had provided him with the outside assistance he would have needed to break out of jail. Kershaw convinced Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. The magazine said that the test results showed "that Ray did, in fact, kill Martin Luther King Jr. and that he did so alone". Ray fired Kershaw after discovering that the attorney had been paid $11,000 by the magazine in exchange for the interview and hired conspiracy theorist Mark Lane to provide him with legal representation.^[18]

Later developments

In 1997, King's son Dexter met with Ray, and publicly supported his efforts to obtain a retrial. Loyd Jowers, a restaurant owner in Memphis, was brought to civil court and sued as being part of a conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King. Jowers was found legally liable, and the King family accepted $100 in restitution, an amount chosen to show that they were not pursuing the case for financial gain.

Dr. William Pepper, a friend of King in the last year of his life, represented Ray in a televised mock trial in an attempt to get him the trial he never had. Pepper later represented the King family in a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers. The King family has since concluded that Ray did not have anything to do with the murder of Martin Luther King.^[19]

Death

Ray died in prison on April 23, 1998, at seventy years of age, from complications related to kidney disease and liver failure caused by Hepatitis C. He probably contracted the disease through a blood transfusion given after he sustained a stabbing while at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. Ray was survived by seven siblings. His brother Jerry Ray 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 has treated him." Ray was cremated and his ashes were flown to Ireland, the home of his family's ancestors.^[20]

Legacy

On January 19, 2002, a plaque in Lauderhill, Florida was unveiled in tribute to Martin Luther King's life. The text was supposed to read "Thank you James Earl Jones for keeping the dream alive." The name was instead that of James Earl Ray. The plaque was soon fixed.^[21]^[22]

References

"Autopsy confirms Ray died of liver failure". CNN (Nashville). 24 Apr. 1998. Retrieved 25 June 2008.
Borrell, Clive (28 June 1968). "Ramon Sneyd denies that he killed Dr King". The Times (London): p. 2. Retrieved 13 Jan. 2009.
"Chappaquiddick". 1969 Year in Review. United Press International.
"Complete Transcript of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination Conspiracy Trial". The King Center. Retrieved 7 July 2009.
Gribben, Mark. "James Earl Ray: The Man Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King". truTV Crime Library. truTV. Retrieved 25 June 2006.
"History of Knoxville Office". FBI. Archived from the original on 24 May 2008. Retrieved 25 June 2008.
Huie, William Bradford (1997). He Slew the Dreamer: My Search for the Truth About James Earl Ray and the Murder of Martin Luther King (Revised ed.). Montgomery: Black Belt Press. ISBN 978-1-579-66005-5.
"James Earl Ray: The Man Who Killed Dr. Martin Luther King". Crime Library. Retrieved 25 June 2008.
"James Gang". Snopes.com. 17 Jan. 2010. Retrieved 11 Aug. 2010.
Martin, Douglas (24 Sept. 2010). "Jack Kershaw Is Dead at 96; Challenged Conviction in King's Death". New York Times. Retrieved 25 Sept. 2010.
Petras, Kathryn; Petras, Ross (21 Oct. 2003). Unusually Stupid Americans: A Compendium of All-American Stupidity. Villard. ISBN 978-0-812-97082-1. Retrieved 11 Aug. 2010.
Sides, Hampton (2010). Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Hunt for His Assassin. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-52392-9.