WHO REALLY KILLED MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.? HIS FAMILY SAYS THE WRONG MAN WENT TO PRISON

King, flanked by Jesse Jackson and Ralph Abernathy, at the Lorraine Motel the day before he was killed.                (Associated Press)

Fifty years ago, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The murder of the civil-rights advocate at age 39 rocked a country where memories of the slayings of John F. Kennedy and Malcolm X remained fresh. And just months later, Robert F. Kennedy would be gunned down in Los Angeles.

King’s murder fueled decades of conspiracy theories and allegations of a government coverup from those who believe James Earl Ray, the man who initially confessed, couldn’t have acted alone. The doubts had echoes of those that surround JFK’s killing to this day: Was Ray a lone gunman on a self-propelled mission? Or the unfortunate patsy in a massive conspiracy?

Five decades later, according to some of those closest to the case—including King’s own family—the question of exactly what happened on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel that April 4 has still not been definitively answered.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s mission in Memphis

King was in Memphis to support the city’s striking sanitation workers ahead of a march he was planning in Washington on behalf of poor Americans. He delivered what was to be his final speech at the Mason Temple Church in Memphis on April 3, the night before he was killed, with words that eerily foreshadowed his death:

Just after 6pm the next day, King was hit in the neck by a single bullet at the Lorraine, where he was known to stay when visiting the city. He was pronounced dead at St. Joseph’s Hospital about an hour later.

James Earl Ray’s capture and confession

Fingerprints on a rifle, scope, and pair of binoculars found near the scene, as well as in the bathroom of a boarding house across the street from the Lorraine—from which police believed the shot had been fired—matched a single suspect: James Earl Ray.

Ray was a low-level criminal on the run after escaping from a Missouri prison in 1967 while serving time for a holdup. Many of the basic facts lined up: Ray had purchased a Remington .30-06 Gamemaster rifle (the same make and model used to kill King) in Birmingham, Alabama six days prior, and had been renting a room in the Memphis boarding house under an alias at the time of the murder.

An international manhunt led to his arrest in London at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968. Ten months later, Ray pleaded guilty to assassinating King to avoid the death penalty. He signed a detailed confession.

Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison and because of the guilty plea, no testimony ever was heard in court. (Ray and seven other inmates escaped from prison for three days in June 1977. He received an additional year on his sentence)……

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