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N0KFQ > TODAY 08.06.12 19:10l 76 Lines 3751 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 23470_KB0WSA
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Subj: Today in History - Jun 8
Path: IZ3LSV<IW0QNL<JH4XSY<JE7YGF<VE3UIL<N0KFQ<KB0WSA
Sent: 120608/1741Z 23470@KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.50
Jun 8, 1968:
King assassination suspect arrested
James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in
London, England, and charged with the assassination of African
American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.
On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, King was fatally wounded by a
sniper's bullet while standing on the balcony outside his
second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a
Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a
rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next
several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on
the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James
Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in
April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a
massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that
he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which
at the time was relatively easy.
On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London
airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual
goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia (now
called Zimbabwe) was at the time ruled by an oppressive and
internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited
to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March
1969 and pleaded guilty to King's murder in order to avoid the
electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.
Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea,
claiming he was innocent of King's assassination and had been set
up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967, a
mysterious man named "Raoul" had approached him and recruited him
into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he
realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King
assassination and fled for Canada. Ray's motion was denied, as
were his dozens of other requests for a trial during the next 29
years.
During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King,
Jr., spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him
innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy
involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities
were, in conspiracists' minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI
director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was
under communist influence. For the last six years of his life,
King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI.
Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military
intelligence, who may have been called to watch over King after
he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by
calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including
guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new
friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.
Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the
House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County,
Tennessee, district attorney's office, and three times by the
U.S. Justice Department. All of these investigations have ended
with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther
King, Jr. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level
conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices
to Ray, but uncovered no evidence definitively to prove this
theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him, such
as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and admitted presence at
the rooming house on April 4, Ray had a definite motive in
assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends,
he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill
King. Ray died in 1998.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ KB0WSA.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: n0kfq@winlink.org
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