Today in 1968, James Earl Ray is arrested in London and charged with killing Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4th, King was fatally wounded in Memphis while standing on a balcony outside his motel. That same evening, a Remington hunting rifle was found on the ground about one block from the motel. Over the next few weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all pointed to a single suspect. James Earl Ray, who had escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967, was the suspected killer.
In May of 1968, a massive hunt for ray began across the country. However, the FBI eventually determined ray had obtained a Canadian passport under a false name, and fled. On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators found and arrested Ray in a London airport. ray confessed that his plan was to get on a flight to Belgium and later reach Rhodesia ( now called Zimbabwe). Standing before a Memphis judge, Ray pleaded guilty to avoid the electric chair. Three days later, Ray changed his plea stating that he had been hired by another man. The man went by “Raoul”, approaching ray in 1967 to join a gunrunning enterprise.
During the 1990s, King’s wife and children all spoke in support of the conspiracy story. The assassination case was reexamined over the years, and each time the same ending found Ray as the killer. It is possible that a small conspiracy may have occurred, but no where close to the scale of the mysterious “Raoul”.
