Did James Earl Ray really kill Martin Luther King or was he set up to take the fall?

Martin Luther King, Jr.

James Earl Ray

CASE DETAILS

On the evening before his death, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered one of his most stirring and prophetic speeches. Less than 24 hours later, Dr. King was dead, shot by an assassin’s bullet as he left his motel for dinner. His accused killer, James Earl Ray, pleaded guilty to the murder and the case was officially closed.

But just three days after his conviction, Ray recanted his guilty plea. He suddenly claimed that he was just a pawn in a conspiracy to kill Dr. King. Ray’s claims of innocence were dismissed and the case remained closed.

In 1976, a congressional committee of the U.S. House of Representatives determined that James Earl Ray was the lone assassin of Dr. King. But Walter Fauntroy, the chairman of the King Subcommittee, now believes that conclusion was wrong:

“When you look at a murder, you look at three things – who had the motive, the means and the opportunity. I’m not satisfied that James Earl Ray had a sufficient motive, that he had the means and certainly the opportunity to pull it off as it was done.”

Until his death in 1998, James Earl Ray maintained that he did not shoot Martin Luther King. The FBI stands by their original finding that Ray acted alone. But some researchers now say there is evidence that backs up Ray’s allegations of conspiracy.

Martin Luther King arrived in Memphis on April 3, 1968, the day before he was assassinated. King checked into the Lorraine Motel and began planning a march in support of striking city sanitation workers. King’s presence at the motel had been well publicized by the press.

Across the street from the motel was a rooming house. On April 4, just before 6:00 p.m., Williams Anschutz, a tenant of the rooming house, found the building’s communal bathroom locked. What follows is the official government account of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

Inside the bathroom, James Earl Ray, a career petty criminal, loaded a high-powered rifle and took aim at the Lorraine Motel and shot King. According to the government, James Earl Ray then raced into the room he had rented earlier that day. He wrapped the rifle, along with an overnight bag containing personal items, into a bedspread. In the hallway, he was seen by Charles Stephens, who lived in the room next to the bathroom.

As he was making his getaway, the government believes Ray was panicked by a police car and dropped his bundle in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company. A moment later, three witnesses inside the building saw a white car, possibly a Mustang, speed away.

Police were able to recover the rifle along with Ray’s personal items, but by the time they identified Ray, he had left the country.

Two months later, Ray was arrested in London as he tried to board a flight to Brussels.
James Earl Ray eventually pleaded guilty to the murder of Martin Luther King and was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Just three days after his conviction, Ray announced that he had been pressured into pleading guilty. He said he did not shoot King and was the victim of a conspiracy. He claimed he was a scapegoat and was set up by a mysterious figure named Raoul.

On the surface, James Earl Ray did not seem like the kind of criminal who would commit murder. According to Walter Fauntroy, former chairman of the King Subcommittee, Ray’s crimes were small-time holdups and robberies:

“I find it more difficult today to believe that James Earl Ray, acting alone, pulled off the crime of the century, was able to get out of Memphis, out of the country into Canada, to get three passports and to go all the way to Europe, without help.”

Almost a year before King was assassinated, Ray escaped from a state prison where he was serving a 20-year sentence for robbing a grocery store. He made his way to Montreal, and using the name Eric Starvo Galt, tried to get a phony ID. Ray said that it was here that he was approached by a shadowy character who called himself Raoul.

According to Jim Lesar, Ray’s former attorney, Ray said when they first met, Raoul was only looking for an accomplice in a smuggling scheme:

“Ray claimed that in exchange for Ray’s agreeing to perform certain tasks, evidently of a criminal nature, one; he was provided with money, and two; he was promised that at some point he would be given identification, a passport, something he needed to get out of the country.”

Ray said he was instructed to smuggle contraband into Detroit from Canada. Ray claimed he was then directed by Raoul to go to Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. William Pepper was another of Ray’s attorneys. He says Raoul was able to get Ray to do whatever he asked by dangling a carrot on string:

“What Raoul did from that point on was to keep James on a string, have him in various points and places, pay him bits of money, have him do various things and really, pretty much, keep him on a string so that he was available, as it turns out, for use any time that they want to use him, always with the promise of these travel documents.”

Ray said that in Birmingham, Raoul gave him $2,000 and told him to buy a car. Seven months before the assassination, Ray did buy a white 1966 Mustang. Over the next several months, Ray said his smuggling jobs with Raoul took him to Mexico, Los Angeles, and then Atlanta. In Atlanta, just five days before the assassination, Raoul gave him his next job. According to Dr. William Pepper, Ray’s attorney, it involved firearms:

“The next bit of activity they were going to be involved with had to do with selling guns. And the scenario that he developed was one which involved the purchase of, sort of, sample weapons and that he, Raoul, would show to these gun runners.”

Following Raoul’s instructions, Ray said he drove to a gun shop in Birmingham where he purchased a .243 caliber rifle with a telescopic sight. Jim Lesar, Ray’s former attorney, described Ray as a novice with firearms:

“The evidence from the people who witnessed the purchase of the rifle in Birmingham is that he didn’t know the first thing about rifles. So he didn’t have the kind of familiarity with firearms that you would expect of somebody who was going to murder someone.”

Ray said Raoul told him to exchange the weapon the next day, giving him specific instructions on what to buy: a Remington model, 760 Gamemaster, pump action.

Ray claimed he gave the Remington rifle to Raoul at a motel in Memphis on April 3rd, the day before the assassination. Ray said that was the last time he saw the rifle, the same one the government concluded was used to kill Martin Luther King.

On April 4, 1968, the day of Martin Luther King’s assassination, James Earl Ray claimed he met Raoul at a local coffee shop. Ray said Raoul told him to go to the rooming house upstairs, rent a room, then await instructions. The boarding house was on Main Street, next door to the Canipe Amusement Company, where the rifle would later be found. The back windows of the boarding house faced Mulberry Street and the Lorraine Motel, where Dr. King was staying.

At 4 p.m., Ray rented a room using an alias, John Willard. Raoul had instructed Ray to bring along an overnight bag so he wouldn’t look suspicious and told him to leave the Mustang parked nearby. What happened over the next hour, no one knows for sure. Ray himself has changed his story several times, but he was always clear that he left the boarding house at around 5 p.m. and never returned.

Ray said that just before 6 p.m., he drove the Mustang to a local service station. Ray claimed that at 6:01, the very moment King was shot, he was driving from the gas station back to the rooming house, unaware of what had happened. Ray’s attorney, Dr. William Pepper, explained why Ray was seen fleeing the scene:

“As he got to the corner of Calhoun and South Main, he saw already that there were police barricades and policemen everywhere. The state makes a great deal out of the fact that James fled the scene, you know. But James was, one must remember, a fugitive. He was on the run and he was certainly not going to hang around wherever he saw police.”

Did James Earl Ray target Dr. King from the window of the rooming house? Dr. William Pepper said it’s unlikely, citing Ray’s apparent lack of skill with firearms:

“In the Army he was trained on an M-1 and he was at the lowest level of ability. The idea of loading by hand a single shot into that 30-ought-six and gambling everything on that one shot makes no sense whatsoever.”

Retired FBI Agent Joe Hester disagreed:

“You have to bear in mind that from the window of the rooming house to the balcony where Dr. King was killed was less than a hundred yards. With the telescopic sight at such a short distance, almost anyone in the world could’ve killed Dr. King. It really required no great marksmanship whatsoever.”

The official version says that when Ray ran from his room in the boarding house, he was seen by another tenant, Charles Stevens. Jim Lesar says Stevens was a shoddy witness:

“From all accounts, Stephens was so dead drunk that there’s no way of relying upon his testimony about the shot.”

G. Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, downplayed Stevens’ role in the investigation:

“In fact, we did not rely on him for eyewitness identification. What we did rely on him for is having sufficient senses to be aware of a loud noise down the hall and in the bathroom and to open the door and see somebody run by.”

William Pepper questioned Stevens’ motives:

“What you have to realize about Charlie Stevens is that he was looking for a reward. He was trying to get the $100,000 reward that had been put up for anyone who could identify the slayer of Dr. King.”

The government report said that Ray ran by the Canipe Amusement Company and dropped his weapon in a panic. But is it believable that any killer, no matter how panicked, would drop a bundle of personal items that could so easily identify him? Ray’s former attorney, Jim Lesar, had serious doubts:

“It strikes many people, myself included, that that looks like a set up, that somebody else gathered that evidence up and planted it there.”

A dusting of the rooming house turned up a number of fingerprints which were never identified. Former FBI agent Joe Hester said that wasn’t unusual:

“I’ve worked any number of cases where you don’t find fingerprints when you think you should. You may find a lot of smudges and smears, but you won’t find a fingerprint that, in itself, is complete enough to make a positive identification.”

The abandoned rifle was found to have two fingerprints belonging to James Earl Ray.
But for some reason, the FBI never conducted a swab test to determine if the rifle had been fired. Retired FBI Agent Joe Hester explained why:

“My recollection is that it had a spent shell that was in the chamber, so common sense would tell you that someone had fired that rifle.”

The FBI also could not match the bullet which killed King with the rifle. All they could say was that the bullet was consistent with that type of rifle. Jim Lesar responds:

“The fact that the bullet markings are consistent with having been from the rifle means absolutely nothing. It was also consistent with several million other rifles of the same kind.”

Former House Select Committee Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey summed up the case against James Earl Ray:

“Ray bought the rifle. The rifle was used to shoot King. He fled the scene. His fingerprints were on it. His explanations for an alibi, his flight, all don’t hold water.”

Even for those who believe Ray’s story, there is still one nagging question: if James Earl Ray is innocent, why would he plead guilty? Ray claimed that he was coerced by his attorney, who wanted exclusive publishing rights to his story. If Ray had testified in court, his allegations of conspiracy would have become public domain.

The most important element of Ray’s conspiracy story was the man who called himself Raoul. Retired FBI Agent Joe Hester says the agency never found any proof that Raoul actually existed:

“In our investigation to identify Ray and to find out what he did and where and when, we turned up nothing to indicate that there was either a Raoul or any other conspirator involved in this crime.”

Former defense investigator Harold Weisberg has reviewed 60,000 pages of FBI documents on the King assassination. He says he found references to a mysterious individual named J.C. Hardin:

“When I was going through the files of the Los Angeles FBI office, I found where a man who used the name of J. C. Hardin had called Jimmy from Atlanta. When Jimmy didn’t return the call, so far as we know, Hardin then went out to California and he met with Jimmy. This is a confirmed story in the FBI’s records.”

Is it possible that J.C. Hardin, who visited Ray three weeks before the assassination, was the mysterious Raoul? In 1968, the FBI pursued the lead long enough to create a sketch of J.C. Hardin. It was based on a description given by the manager of the St. Francis Hotel. But after James Earl Ray was arrested, the FBI dropped their investigation of Hardin. Congressman Walter Fauntroy, former chairman of the King Subcommittee, said the name Hardin never came up during the hearings:

“We knew nothing about Hardin. I’d like to find Mr. Hardin. That may lead us to a different conclusion.”

James Earl Ray refused to say whether J.C. Hardin and Raoul were the same person.
In 1998, Ray died of liver failure, taking the true story of his involvement in the King assassination to his grave. But the speculation continues…

Dr. William Pepper:

“There’s no way that James Earl Ray is a lone assassin. James Earl Ray is the classic patsy.”

G. Robert Blakey:

“Will we ever know? The answer is no. We won’t know because the FBI in 1968 didn’t conduct an adequate conspiracy investigation. And that’s one of the tragedies in Dr. King’s death. He did not get in his death an investigation commensurate with the dignity of his life. Had he gotten it, many of the unanswered questions about his death would have answers today.”

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Watch this case now on Amazon Prime in season five with Robert Stack and in season one with Dennis Farina. Also available on YouTube with Dennis Farina. Various seasons available now on Hulu.

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