Declassified FBI Paper Reveals Communist Associates of Martin Luther King, UN Biodiversity Beijing-Wall Street Convergence. In 1997, Kings son Dexter met Ray in prison and asked him whether he had killed his father. With it came a letter threatening King with public exposure if he didnt kill himself, and claiming that the sender had evidence of other affairs. Somehow, Ray managed to escape from prison on two different occasions. James Earl Ray could easily have placed complete faith in Stoner. Who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968? Judge Brown's lawyer filed an appeal, but the appeal was refused. Dexter King went so far as to name Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark as his fathers assassin. Westberg was the first to learn that the bread box wasn't searched. On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the citys firefighters. For years after Ray's capture there was a close association between Stoner and Jerry Ray, James Earl Ray's brother. Ray, who was on escape from a Missouri prison in 1968 claimed, however, that he had gone to a service station to get a tire repaired when the shot was fired. None. James Earl Ray had traveled to Montreal while on the run, and claimed that he'd met a man named "Raoul" in Montreal, and that Raoul had furnished him with money, and eventually masterminded the King assassination-using Ray as the fall-guy. Why did James Earl Ray have cancer? Christopher S. Bond (now U.S. Also available from Amazon, With the purpose of writing about true crime in an authoritative, fact-based manner, veteran journalists J. J. Maloney and J. Patrick OConnor launched Crime Magazine in November of 1998. James Earl Ray was a racist, but there was circumstantial evidence that a businessman in St. Louis had established a $50,000 bounty for King's death." . Ray watched it all on the cell-block TV at Jeff City. Ray had seven siblings. and condition of the Q64 bullet. A member of the Republican Party, White was first elected in District 12 in 2010, which then included Angelina, San Jacinto, Trinity, and Tyler counties.He left office on August 11, 2022. people lost faith in the political system. James Earl Ray, (born March 10, 1928, Alton, Illinois, U.S.died April 23, 1998, Nashville, Tennessee), American assassin of the African American civil-rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Although Benny was eventually released from prison and returned to work for the engineering firm he'd been employed by at the time of his arrest in Canada, interest in him by then had died out, and the book was never published. As President Ronal Reagan once wrote to former New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson, who had sent a letter to Reagan urging the president not to sign the bill for a holiday honoring King, On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. The damage to Dr. King's clothing, when tested microscopically He was first convicted for a burglary in California in the year 1949. The Revenge of George Wallace Ray fled from the scene immediately and could not be located immediately by the police. I'll be out of here very shortly on a Petition for Habeas Corpus and I'll bring up all these problems and guess what, you might not be operating tomorrow. The verdict in King vs. Jowers found a government conspiracy involving city, state, and federal agents complicit in the murder. Each day he would go to the state capital to work as a programmer. In order to hang onto your drugs, people had to know that you would kill them without hesitation. Whatever noble goals King proclaimed, the subversive company he chose to keep severely neutralizes any good he may have aspired to and creates serious doubts about the sincerity of his stated mission. On the first one he'd fallen and stunned himself; on the second he'd hidden in a ceiling. The Q2 rifle-had general class characteristics of six lands and The 20-page paper, which was classified as secret, was reviewed by the FBI/JFK Task Force in 1994, which denied the release of its contents. In my many discussions with people such as Laster, Westberg and Davis on the subject of escape--and how to avoid capture afterward--no one mentioned that method.). When I tried to mail my review to The Star, the prison officials refused to allow it to leave the prison. In order to hang onto your drugs, people had to know that you would kill them without hesitation. After this Ray was on the run and was captured in the UK. Godspeed." Likewise, this statement is attributed (without sourcing) to Limbaugh in 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America. Westberg was warned, and hurriedly got out of the box, which was then filled with bread. Such a conclusion must be drawn from a premise that the King family was willing to publicly, wrongfully, and unjustifiably vindicate Ray in order to accuse others simply to gain notoriety. With the release of this FBI document, however, it seems that the FBI and the JBS were on the same page regarding King. [6] It was during this time that Brown caught the attention of the producers of Judge Judy. But, having tried to escape from the maximum-security prison, we both had joined a small list of convicts who would be watched at all times by the guards. James Earl Jones. Ray was not married and details of his relationships with any women are not known. Jerry began to follow my lead, and that became a source of friction among me, Laster and Westberg. Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an extremist Black Nationalist organization, has conferred with King. The Ray brothers, however, are too unsophisticated to have pulled off the assassination of King, and Ray's subsequent escape to England. Laster made several more desperate attempts to escape, including one attempt to saw out of death row (during which a guard captain was blinded). Each day the prison's bakery would bake enough bread to feed not only the 2,300 men at Jeff City, but also the convicts housed at Church Farm and Renz Farm (two satellite honor farms, where most of the prison's food was grown and raised). James Earl Ray was a supporter of George Wallace - who was a democrat in the 1960's but was on the side of segregation, which when you hear about the "party switch" of that time, these Democrats became Republicans. Because of the 1959 incident, Jerry had so much heat on him that if the guards lost sight of him for even a few minutes, they panicked. But almost immediately after her husbands assassination, she suspected that the FBI, which had investigated the murder, was involved in it. He believed that King was a serious threat to the dominance of white people in the USA and wanted to stop him through any means. It is clear why tyrants wish to keep people from learning about Price and reading the powerful words he wrote defending freedom and Is Christianity the enemy of science? This list details the strange, unstable life of James Earl Ray, a man who confessed to and then spent his life denyingthe murder of Martin Luther King Jr. I occasionally rented magazines from Ray, but other inmates usually had a larger selection, and better quality magazines. In the year 1952, he served a two year prison sentence for the armed robbery of a cab driver. When, without warning, Ray was allowed to plead guilty and was sentenced to 99 years, without a public trial, millions of people suspected a cover-up. Levison has spent the major part of his life advancing communist interests. While taking dancing classes, he was attracted to the presidential campaign of George Wallace. Ireland. Some even said Ray was a racist, but he claimed to me that he was never hostile toward anyone. James Earl Ray was a racist, but there was circumstantial evidence that a businessman in St. Louis had established a $50,000 bounty for Kings death.. Kershaw made Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. Shortly before his seventh birthday, in 1935, his father passed a bad check and the Rays fled to Ewing, Missouri, where they changed their name to Raynes to avoid . He was unable to give me any specifics but just responded that "it was common knowledge.". Therefore, ironically, the society that King intended to bear the cost for his civil disobedience was to be ablack society. I went to Memphis to deliver a rifle to this man called Raoul, Ray told me. The President, Milteer said, would be shot "from an office building with a high-powered rifle," and a patsy would be picked up within hours . Two weeks later, after Kennedy had been slain in Dallas, Milteer told the same informant, "everything ran true to form," and the right wing was in the clear because Lee Harvey Oswald . There was, however, some question in our minds about Ray's coordination. James Earl Ray did it, case closed! In the year 1968, Ray underwent through a facial reconstruction surgery to hide his identity in Los Angeles. Spouse/Ex-: Anna Sandhu Ray (m. 19781993), siblings: Carol Pepper, Franklin Ray, Jerry Ray, John Larry Ray, Marjorie Ray, Melba Ray, Suzan Ray, place of death: Nashville, Tennessee, United States, See the events in life of James Earl Ray in Chronological Order, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/25196041/james-earl-ray, http://yourblackworld.net/2012/06/23/james-earl-rays-map-used-get-out-prison-being-sold-history-teacher/, https://www.ebay.com/itm/JAMES-EARL-RAY-Mugshot-Glossy-8x10-Photo-Martin-Luther-King-Jr-Print-Poster-/202043577078, https://shannonyarbrough.com/tag/james-earl-ray/, http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-james-earl-ray-the-yankee-who-shot-mlk-burning-in-hell-now. But it turned out that rather than discharging this key Red, he had transferred and promoted ODell to a higher post within Kings Southern Christian Leadership Conference. According to Harding, King had already severely angered Johnson by delivering that speech, which could have made Johnson quite receptive to Byrds sentiment. In the 1960s John Larry Ray (another brother) owned a tavern in St. Louis, and that tavern was an unofficial headquarters for the Wallace for President campaign. As with most cases, the answer is yes. James Earl Ray (born 1965) is listed at 42036 Queen Anne Ct Northville, Mi 48167 and has no known political party affiliation. Meanwhile, William Bradford Huie, gathering information for his book, They Slew The Dreamer, had taken an interest in George Ben Edmondson. In June 1977 Ray escaped from Brushy Mountain (Tennessee) Prison and remained at large for 54 hours before being recaptured in a massive manhunt. His prints were found all over the hotel room in Memphis where the shots that killed King were thought to have come from, and they covered the murder weapon -a Remington hunting rifle he purchased in Birmingham, AL. He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 23, 1967; and in Memphis, Tennessee, nearly a year later, on April 4, 1968, from a window of a neighbouring rooming house, he shot King, who was standing on the balcony of a motel room. Manhunt in the mountains: James Earl Ray and the Brushy Mountain Prison breakout of 1977, How The Tennessean covered Martin Luther King Jr.'s death in its pages, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. His body was cremated and his ashes were flown to the land of his forefathers, viz. [22] He was released from protective custody at the Shelby County Corrections Facility the morning of September 1, 2015. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. McMillans false scenarios portray Ray as a rabid racist in prison. Although it is possible to live in the same prison with someone for 10 years and never speak to him, it is still an intimate atmosphere. Thorpe Menn, then book editor of The Star, sent it to me to review. It got so that the very sight of King would galvanize Ray. This claim got some support from the 1978 special congressional committee which opined that Ray might not have acted alone in the assassination as it required meticulous planning. On March 28th, riots took place in Memphis and King was present; on March 29th, Democrat Senator Byrd threw down the gauntlet with Democrat president Lyndon Baines Johnson by delivering a fiery speech on the Senate Floor intended to get the president to stop Kings march; Johnson announced on March 31st that he would not seek reelection; a bullet would take the life of King days later on April 4th, one year to the day after delivering what many viewed as an incendiary speech at the time. Martin Luther King Jr., and there should be no question about that fact. He was sentenced to 99 years at the State penitentiary. Brown claimed that the sentence was excessive, and that he should have only been fined; Dan Michael, the Shelby County Juvenile Court chief magistrate that found Brown in contempt, responded that "This is not Hollywood. . He also founded his own white supremacist party. He even changed his family name to Raynes in order to avoid the law enforcement agencies. No vehicle traffic would have been allowed in or out until he was found. The explanation is much simpler. While some speculate this was an attempt to hide his identity before killing King, others point to Ray's lack of care about disguising himself in other elements of the assassination plot. It was even rumored that on the second attempt he'd gotten tired of hiding out, and had deliberately set off an alarm so he could get caught and get something to eat. Top of Page Some of the books written about the assassination describe him as a major drug dealer in Jefferson City, which is ludicrous. 15. Ray told me several times, and I have it on tape, that he bought the rifle that was used in the King slaying. Just before Ray's escape from Jeff City he was visited by his brother. If you saw the movie Boyz n the Hood, that was the way I grew up. The bread box would have to pass through the truck tunnel, where all incoming and outgoing vehicles were searched. A mock trial of Ray in which he was represented by Dr. William Pepper was later telecast on TV to criticize the government for denying him the trial. [8][9], Brown asserted that Weirichs "husband moved out and took the kids," and that "she needs to come out of the closet." You tend to know a great deal about people you've never met. As a former judge here, we have a rule in the 30th Judicial Districtit says every single Magistrate Referee has to be unanimously approved by every Circuit, Chancery, and Criminal Court Judge. They laid out the evidence before he entered his plea, and he said, OK. 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