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Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. Martin Luther Kingâs lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on 4 April 1968. From the start, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leaderâs death. Over time many Americans became convinced the government investigations covered up the truth about the alleged assassin. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. However, Mel Ayton believe the answers to the many intriguing questions about Ray and how conspiracy ideas flourished can now be fully understood. Missing from the wild speculations over the past fifty-two years has been a thorough investigation of the character of Kingâs assassin. Additionally, the author examines exactly how the conspiracy notions came about and the falsehoods that led to their promulgation. The Man Who Killed Martin Luther King is the first full account of the life of James Earl Ray based on scores of interviews provided to government and non-government investigators and from the FBIâs and Scotland Yardâs files plus the recently released Tennessee Department of Corrections prison record on Ray. Most importantly, the testimony of Anna Sandhu has often been ignored by writers but her story is crucial in gaining an understanding of Rayâs deceptive ways. A courtroom artist, who, after listening to Rayâs story, later married him. Also missing from accounts of the alleged âconspiracyâ is the story told to this author by Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Deputy Warden Rolland H. Cisson, which decisively renders Rayâs claims of innocence to be bogus. In the short-lived freedom he acquired after escaping from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967, following being sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses, he traveled to Los Angeles and decided to seek notoriety as the one who would stalk and kill Dr. King, who he had come to hate vehemently. From the time of Kingâs murder, the reader will follow Ray to solitary confinement in a Nashville prison. Then, six years later, on 10 June 1977, James Earl Ray again escaped from prison, this time with five others. Ray was the last to be recaptured, having survived only on wheatgerm. Finally, the book relays Rayâs stabbing by several black inmates, then his resulting diagnosis with Hepatitis C, which caused his death twelve years later, in 1998. |
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