Chasing King's Killer

by James L. Swanson

  But by June 4, Ray was down to his last ten pounds sterling. Desperate times called for desperate measures. Wearing dark sunglasses as a disguise, he walked into a bank and, pointing a pistol at the teller, shoved forward a handwritten note demanding money. The teller handed over some cash, but then kicked over a metal box that made a loud bang. The sound startled everyone in the bank, including Ray. He fled immediately, chased by two of the bank tellers but managed to escape. However, he left behind an important clue: the note written in his own hand.

  That wasn’t the only evidence he left; the note bore an identifiable thumbprint.

  For all his trouble, the robbery only netted about the equivalent of $240—not nearly enough to finance a trip to Africa. And there was a bigger problem that Ray couldn’t yet know: When Canadian officials confirmed that Ray indeed had applied for a passport, they immediately went to the travel agency that had gotten it for him. When questioned, the agency revealed that Ray had bought a ticket to London, so Britain’s famed Scotland Yard was put on the case.

  Detectives discovered that Ray had flown from London to Portugal but had then come back to London. Without finding any trace of Ray having flown elsewhere, they concluded that Dr. King’s assassin was still on the loose in Britain.

  Meanwhile, in America, the two-month anniversary of King’s death also fell on June 4. Late that evening, after midnight on the West Coast, stunning news came out of California. Most Americans were already asleep when it was announced. In Washington, DC, and along the East Coast, it was already past 3:00 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. The majority of Americans did not hear the news until the morning of June 5, when they turned on their televisions, listened to their radios, or opened their newspapers, the three main ways people got the news in 1968.

  But it was not the good news that James Earl Ray had been found and captured. It was bad news.

  There had been another assassination.

  Senator Robert Kennedy had been shot.

  Kennedy was at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, at a political rally to celebrate his victory in the California Democratic presidential primary. The senator left the ballroom by a back exit and was led through the hotel’s pantry and kitchen. A man lurking there stepped forward and began firing wildly with a .22-caliber revolver, wounding several people, including Kennedy. The senator had been shot three times. Two of the wounds did not seem to be life-threatening.

  But the third wound was serious. Like his brother, President John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy had been shot in the brain. The parallels were eerie. Like Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy had been shot at a hotel. This, another tragedy, following the King assassination by only eight weeks, was a staggering blow almost too great for the nation to bear.

  Robert Kennedy died the next day, after midnight on June 6, about twenty-six hours after he was shot. Soon, Jackie Kennedy would put on another black suit, just like the one she had worn after her husband, President Kennedy, was slain in 1963. Soon she would attend another funeral. Americans asked themselves what kind of country theirs was becoming. And what tragedy might happen next?

  In London, in a time zone several hours ahead of the United States, James Earl Ray might have learned the news before most of the American people had gotten out of bed. This was not good news for Ray. Public outrage over the Kennedy assassination was sure to intensify the manhunt for him. It was time, Ray decided, to get out of England, and he knew exactly where he wanted to go.

  On June 7, Ray bought a one-way plane ticket from London to Brussels, Belgium, departing the next day. He wanted to make connections with the shadowy world of paramilitary mercenaries. From Brussels, he wanted to fly to Africa and work as a soldier for hire in a white-ruled English-speaking country like Rhodesia that would never deport him to the United States.

  If James Earl Ray had escaped to Africa, he might have vanished and never been captured.

  But Ray did not know a critical fact. Two days earlier, Scotland Yard had placed the name of Ramon George Sneyd—Ray’s alias—on a travel restriction list. Now immigration officials in every airport and seaport knew his name.

  And they were looking for him.

  Back in the United States, mourning continued. Full-color, machine-woven tapestries portraying John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy appeared in homes across America. The wall hanging was like an iconic religious triptych of America’s three recently martyred secular saints. Publishers issued magazine tributes to the three widows, Jacqueline Kennedy, Coretta Scott King, and Ethel Kennedy, depicting them on the front covers, united in sorrow. And fan makers created a new design featuring King and the two Kennedys, with the printed legend: FREEDOM FIGHTERS.

  Because Robert Kennedy had been a United States senator from New York State, his body was flown from Los Angeles to New York City for funeral ceremonies there. Then, on June 8, his coffin was placed aboard a special train that would carry him to the nation’s capital, for burial at Arlington National Cemetery beside his brother.

  On June 8, James Earl Ray caught a taxi to Heathrow Airport to make his 11:15 a.m. flight. After checking his bag at the ticket counter, he proceeded to the customs and immigration checkpoint. An official requested his passport. Ray removed it from his wallet. Upon inspection, everything seemed to be in order. The officer was about to wave him through when he spotted something strange: a second passport protruding from Ray’s wallet.

  “May I see the other one?” he asked. Ray explained that it was his first Canadian passport, which he had replaced because it had spelled his (assumed) name incorrectly. Ray’s story seemed to satisfy the officer. In just a few minutes, Ray would get on the plane and escape England. But at that moment, a Scotland Yard detective, Philip Birch, appeared and overheard the conversation. Ray looked familiar. But the officer did not know why. In fact, the Police Gazette, a newsletter for law officers, had published a photo of Ray.

  “I say, old fellow,” Birch asked, “would you mind stepping over here for a moment? I’d like to have a word with you.” Ray protested that his plane was leaving soon, but Birch promised it would not take long. He and two officers escorted Ray to a police office at the airport. Then Birch caught Ray by surprise and asked, “Would you mind if I searched you?”

  Ray was in danger now. A search would reveal that he carried a pistol in his pants pocket. This was Ray’s last chance to put up a fight before the police discovered the weapon. He would have to pull out the pistol and try to shoot his way out of the airport. But he did not resist and submitted to the search.

  “Why are you carrying this gun?” Birch demanded. “Well,” Ray answered, “I am going to Africa, I thought I might need it. You know how things are there.” Two other investigators arrived and asked if he had a permit to possess the pistol. Ray admitted he did not, and was duly arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm. He was taken back to London, where he was fingerprinted and locked in a cell at Scotland Yard. He would not make his flight to Brussels after all.

  Later that afternoon, after further investigation, Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Butler confronted Ray. “We have very good reason to believe that you are not a Canadian citizen, but an American.” Ray admitted the truth: “Oh, well, yes I am.” Butler continued: “I now believe your name is not Sneyd, but James Earl Ray, also known as Eric Starvo Galt …” He added that Ray was wanted in the United States for murder. At that moment, Ray broke down completely. “Oh, God,” he said weakly, “I feel so trapped.”

  Butler cautioned Ray that anything he said could be used against him, to which Ray replied, “Yes, I shouldn’t say anything more now. I can’t think right.”

  On June 8, in America, television coverage of the Kennedy funeral events was interrupted by a special bulletin from faraway London. The news was electrifying.

  James Earl Ray had been captured. The manhunt for Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassin was over!

  Extradition proceedings—a court action to return a suspect to the jurisdiction where
he allegedly committed a crime—lasted several weeks and delayed Ray’s return to the United States. It wasn’t until July 18 that Ray was handed over to FBI agents in London and flown back to America aboard a military aircraft. Ray was brought back to Memphis, the scene of his crime, on July 19. It had been an odyssey of a little more than one hundred and six days from King’s assassination to Ray’s extradition from England. It had been a fifteen-month journey from the date of Ray’s escape from prison in April 1967 to his capture and return to Memphis in July 1968.

  So the manhunt was over. But the mystery was not. James Earl Ray refused to confess. He wanted to go to trial, and he sought representation by F. Lee Bailey, the most famous defense attorney at that time, who specialized in high-profile criminal and murder cases. Ray expected—with the help of first-rate lawyering—to be acquitted, believing that no white jury in the South would ever convict him. Ray deluded himself into believing that many Americans would treat him as a hero, and that once he had been acquitted he could make money from his infamy. Americans wanted a trial, too, not because they wished to see Ray go free but because it would provide a relief when all the facts of the crime were revealed. But Bailey wanted nothing to do with Ray, and the rejection surprised him.

  Ray involved himself with a series of publicity-seeking lawyers who conducted lackluster investigations, did inadequate pretrial preparation, and pursued crazy and unethical schemes to make money from book deals and magazine articles about Ray. They seemed more interested in what Ray could do for them than what they could do for him.

  Amid this chaos and circus-like atmosphere, Ray eventually pled guilty because he wanted to avoid the death penalty. There would be no trial. He was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. The American people and the national news media were stunned. It was not, they argued, in the public interest for this case to end without a trial. How else could all the facts of the King assassination ever be made known, except by a comprehensive investigation and a public prosecution in open court?

  In this vacuum, conspiracy theories abounded. This was similar to what had happened five years earlier, after the assassination of President Kennedy. These theories blamed King’s murder on everyone from J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, to other government entities, to the Ku Klux Klan and white racists. One of King’s associates claimed that there was no way a “ten-cent white man” could pull off the murder of a “million-dollar black man” on his own. Someone, he argued, had to have helped or guided Ray.

  The conspiracy question has several elements. Some theorists argue that another assassin, not James Earl Ray, fired the shot that killed Martin Luther King. But no evidence of this has ever been found, while compelling evidence exists to prove that it was Ray. Other conspiracy advocates, conceding that Ray was the gunman, claim that he was a hired assassin paid by conspirators who had offered a reward to anyone who killed King. But no evidence of this has ever been found. Later, Ray had second thoughts and tried to retract his plea, claiming that he was only a pawn or puppet of the real killers. Ray claimed that a mysterious man who went by the name Raoul organized the murder, but such a man could never be located or even identified, and strong evidence suggests that he was just a lie that Ray invented in an attempt to exonerate himself.

  If Ray was a lone wolf who really planned the assassination by himself, did he receive help from conspirators after the fact, from persons unknown who helped him while he was on the run? Ray’s long and far-flung escape raised questions. How did he do it? How did he get so far? How did Martin Luther King’s assassin stay on the run for two months? How did he escape the United States? Where did he get money to travel and obtain a fraudulent passport? How did he get all the way to England?

  These questions all have answers.

  Based on extensive physical evidence and eyewitness testimony, there is no doubt that James Earl Ray was the assassin. Only one man could have fired the shot from the bathroom of the rooming house on Main Street. It was Ray, and he is the man who killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  It was James Earl Ray who bought the rifle. It was Ray who checked into the New Rebel Motel on the night of April 3, 1968. It was Ray who checked into the rooming house opposite the Lorraine Motel on April 4. It was Ray who left behind evidence and fingerprints, all pointing to him. It was Ray’s white Mustang seen fleeing the scene of the crime and found later containing additional evidence. It was Ray who fled to Canada and forged a passport. And it was Ray who fled to Europe and was captured in London, precisely because he did not have the money to escape to Africa.

  There is no evidence that it was anyone else but James Earl Ray who assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr.

  But why did Ray do it? The answer to that question remains a frustrating mystery.

  It seems obvious that James Earl Ray did not escape from prison in April 1967 in order to kill Martin Luther King, Jr. For almost a year after Ray’s breakout, he did nothing to show that he had the slightest interest in murdering anyone, including King. He did not behave like a would-be assassin—he did not stalk King immediately, buy a rifle earlier, or move to the South right away. None of Ray’s activities show evidence that he was obsessed with Martin Luther King or planned to harm him.

  Was it for fame? For all of his life, Ray had been the kind of man who preferred to live in the shadows. He craved anonymity, not attention. It was out of character for him to seek notoriety. On the other hand, some evidence suggests that, in the end he wanted to leave his mark by doing something “big” in his hitherto insignificant life.

  Was it for ideological reasons? Ray was a racist and white supremacist, like millions of other Americans at that time, but were those reasons enough for him to uproot his life in California and travel across the country to kill a man? Ray was a loner and had never been a joiner. He had never been a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a racial agitator. He had never participated in public protests against blacks, never shown up to harass civil rights demonstrators, and had never burned a cross or thrown a rock.

  It might have been about money.

  One of Ray’s brothers once said that James never did anything if it wasn’t for money. Ray’s life of low-end crime supports that view. For several years prior to the assassination, rumors had circulated through the South that wealthy racists in various states had placed cash bounties on Martin Luther King, Jr., and were willing to pay big money—even fifty or one hundred thousand dollars—to the man who killed him. It is hard to believe that Ray assassinated King for a cause. But for money? That seems possible. Money was James Earl Ray’s cause. Was Ray after one of those rumored rewards? Did he actually seek out and make contact with someone who had offered one?

  It is impossible to know, and Ray never said.

  In August 1968, the pop singer Dion released a song that seemed to encapsulate the trauma that the American people had suffered. Written by Dick Holler and sung by Dion, the single, titled “Abraham, Martin and John,” referenced the murdered leaders Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Robert Kennedy.

  The first verse invoked Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865; the second verse the assassination of John Kennedy on November 22, 1963; and the third verse the April 4 assassination of Martin Luther King, just four months earlier. As the lyrics went:

  Anybody here seen my old friend Martin?

  Can you tell me where he’s gone?

  He freed lotta people but it seems the good they die young.

  I just looked around and he’s gone.

  The final verse honored Robert Kennedy, who had been shot only weeks earlier. The song became an instant hit and reached number four on the U.S. pop singles chart. In late summer and early fall 1968, it seemed impossible to turn on the radio without hearing “Abraham, Martin and John.” The lyrics resonated with an America in mourning, but also with a country looking to move forward from such tragedies. As one verse predicted:

  Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?

  Didn’t they
try to find some good for you and me?

  And we’ll be free.

  Some day soon, it’s gonna be one day.

  It was one of those songs that defined a moment in time and captured the mood of a nation. Even today, when someone who remembers the King assassination hears that song, the emotions come flooding back. Later, it was awarded a Recording Industry Association of America gold record for selling more than one million copies.

  The nation mourned and the seasons passed. Summer turned to fall, and American casualties in the Vietnam War continued to rise. And after Richard Nixon won the November presidential election, 1968 drew to a close. It had been an incredible year of unrest, violence, and uncertainty. There was the surprise Tet Offensive in Vietnam, public protests, chaos in the streets, assassinations, riots, and cities in flames. There had been death, inconsolable sadness, and tears. It had been one of the most tumultuous years in American history.

  Americans looked to the heavens to transcend the chaos of what was happening on Earth. On December 21, 1968, NASA launched Apollo 8, the first manned mission to orbit the moon.

  As they circled sixty miles above the lunar surface, the astronauts aboard Apollo 8 witnessed what no humans had ever seen, the entire planet Earth from space, and then they took one of the most iconic photographs in the history of space exploration: “Earthrise,” a striking color image of mankind’s home planet rising above the horizon of the moon. One of the Apollo astronauts marveled that Earth looked like “a jewel hanging in the blackness of space.” On Christmas Eve, as Apollo 8 orbited the moon, the crew—Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders—took turns reading aloud the first ten verses from the Old Testament book of Genesis, and a radio transmitted their voices 235,000 miles back to Earth.