James Earl Ray

See also: Ray (homonymy)

James Earl Ray , born the March 10th 1928, dead the April 23rd 1998 of a Hepatitis C, was condemned to 99 years of prison to have assassinated the April 4th 1968, with Memphis in the Tennessee, Pasteur Martin Luther King, prize winner of the Nobel Prize of Peace in 1964.

Born American parents, it was a Franc-tireur and a supposed segregationist militant.

Two months after the death of King, it is captured with the Aéroport of London Heathrow whereas it tried to leave the United Kingdom with a Canadian false passport in the name of Ramon George Sneyd. He had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary one year earlier. Having acknowledged the assassination on March 10th, 1969, it retracts three days afterwards. On the council of its lawyer Percy Foreman, Ray chooses to plead guilty in order to avoid the capital punishment. He is condemned to 99 years of prison.

Ray returns its lawyer, protesting that the culprits of the murder are a certain “Raoul” and his/her Johnny brother whom it met with Montreal in Canada. He tells moreover than “he had not drawn personally on King” but which he could “be partially responsible without the knowledge”, indicating a track of Conspiration. He then passes the remainder of his life to be vainly tempted to withdraw his judgment and to make reopen the lawsuit.

June 10th 1977, to have testified shortly after, before a commission of the Congress on the assassinations, which it had not killed King, it escapes with six others condemned from the penitentiary from Brushy Mountain to Tennessee. It is recaptured on June 13rd and turns over in prison.

In 1999, one year after the death of Ray, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther and the remainder of the King family gain a suit at law against Loyd Jowers and “other conspirators”. In December 1993, Jowers had appeared in the Prime Time Live of ABC News and had revealed details of a conspiracy implying the Mafia and the government to kill King. Jowers tells at the time it lawsuit to have received 100.000 dollars to organize the assassination of Martin Luther King. The jury of six blacks and six white consider Jowers guilty and mentions that “federal agencies were associated” with the plot of the assassination. At the conclusion of the lawsuit, the family of Martin Luther King does not believe that Ray has something to see with the assassination of this one.

In 2000, the Département of the Justice of the United States finishes an investigation into the revelations of Jowers, but does not find any proof which could show a conspiracy. The report/ratio of investigation recommends that there is no new research as long as new reliable facts would not be presented.

Random links: