The previous posts summarize the common popular knowledge of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King assassination. James Ray, an escaped convict, purchased a rifle at a local sporting goods store, and shot Dr. King with it from the bathroom of Bessie Brewer’s rooming house. He subsequently boxed the gun and then wrapped it up with his other belongings before exiting the building onto Main Street. He dropped the incriminating bundle in front of Guy Canipe’s coin-slot repair shop, and sped away in a white Ford Mustang. Instead of spanning out to cover all available routes, the police concentrated their search efforts on the northern side of Memphis because they had received a tip from an anonymous CB radio operator. Meanwhile, Ray drove south through Mississippi and Alabama into Georgia, where he took a Greyhound bus to Toronto. From there, he traveled from Canada, to England, to Portugal and the back to England where British authorities arrested him for a gun possession charge. US authorities linked Ray and his aliases to the MLK assassination, and won expedition of Ray on that charge.
After arriving in Tennessee, Ray’s first attorney prepared an outrageous defense claiming a conspiracy involving communist Chinese agents and African American militants. At the same time, he strong-armed Ray into a rather complicated contract to sell his story to a noted author. Ray fired the first attorney, and hired an A-list mouthpiece from Dallas, who then spent little time on his client, leaving the actual handling of Ray’s case to a pair of court-ordered public defenders. This second attorney pressured Ray for over a month to plead guilty to avoid capital punishment. Ray reluctantly followed his lawyer’s advice, and plead guilty. A jury accepted the guilty plea without allocution, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison.
While the above makes for a tidy story, copious facts challenge the notion that Ray murdered Dr. King. Many of these facts are not in dispute. Some of them are given varying degrees of weight depending on one’s explanation of the crime. Others have become a source of hot debate.
What’s worse, the facts themselves prompt numerous questions of why Ray wanted King dead, or how he managed to pull off the assassination in the first place, let alone how he could escape one of the largest manhunts in living memory for two months, only to get caught by his own stupid blunder.
First off, we must ask if the shot was physically possible from the bathroom of the boarding house. If so, what kind of conditions would a shooter have faced in that location? We must also wonder if the gun Ray purchased was the same one used in the assassination attempt.
Then there are questions about Ray’s initial moments of flight. Why would he bundle up the rifle and all his other belongings in a blanket, only to drop everything on the sidewalk for all to see, especially since one item, namely his radio, could directly tie Ray to the gun? Why did all but one of the eyewitness accounts give a description of a man who did not resemble Ray. Why did the FBI and local police take Charles Stephens's description at face value when he couldn’t identify Ray in a photograph given to him by CBS news several days later? Why would authorities involuntarily commit one of these witnesses to a mental hospital for “psychotic depression,” and then leave her there for nine years? Why would the police take the CB call so seriously, especially since it sounded, well, rather hilariously far-fetched (not to mention suspicious) from the outset? That radio transmission becomes critical in that it allowed Ray to continue his escape, and subsequent international journey.
More basic questions pertain to Ray. We know he escaped from a penitentiary about a year before the assassination. How did he feed, clothe and shelter himself during this time? Where would he have found the money necessary to pay cash for a used but late-model Mustang, a highly prized automobile of that era? Ray also used a number of aliases since his escape. Where did these come from? And what was his motive? Many single-shooter proponents have offered conjecture as to what it was, but how reliable is this speculation? What did he hope to gain or achieve? More important, what crime did he think he was pleading guilty to?
We should have questions regarding his attorneys. Why did they take Ray’s case? Why did his first two lawyers maintain the contract between their client and writer W. Bradford Huie? How did he get subsequent representation, and why? What were the connections between these attorneys and other interests hostile to both Ray and Dr. King? Why would his second attorney attempt to sell the idea of a plea deal to the judge and prosecutor only weeks after taking on Ray as a client, especially since he professed his belief in Ray’s innocence when James hired him?
After all of that, we have questions that aren’t apparent in the master narrative, but nevertheless become clear when one looks below the surface. Who might have had a motive other than Ray? More important, who might have had a motive to kill Dr. King and the means to get away with it? If the killer didn’t shoot from the bathroom, from where might he have fired? What was Dr. King’s security like in Memphis on 4 April 1968? Were there any CIA or FBI people directly involved in the murder? If not a government conspiracy, but rather a private sector one, who would have fronted the money?
That inspires questions about Dr. King himself. What pressures did he face knowing that someone might have targeted him for assassination? Were all the people in his inner orbit actually loyal to him and each other? And curiously, why was the FBI so preoccupied with his personal life? Since many single-shooter advocates insist that certain allegations made regarding King's personal life are true, what relevance are these stories to the crime? And how likely are they to be true? What did Hoover and lesser special agents think about Dr. King? Would the CIA have something to gain by his death? And the spiritual beliefs and morals that fueled his political activities: could they have played a role in his death?
And then there’s a pretty interesting question: why wouldn’t authorities and single-shooter advocates take seriously the confession of one of the conspirators? Why would they shout down this and what appears to be other strands of decent evidence? And most important, why would a real jury in a real case make a finding on the assassination that so contradicted the authorities of that time and the House Select Committee on Assassinations?
And, of course, there are more questions down the road.
Mind you, I can’t answer some of these questions with any degree of confidence. Many, however, are quite answerable, and yield considerable insight as to how and why someone assassinated Dr. King. We just have to roll up our sleeves and dig in a bit.
Perhaps some elbow grease would help too.
___________
* If you don’t recognize the cultural reference, it’s from “Boy and Chair,” a recurring segment of the popular 1970s children’s television program The Electric Company, starring Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman. Comedians Bill Cosby and Joan Rivers were also frequent contributors to the show.
After arriving in Tennessee, Ray’s first attorney prepared an outrageous defense claiming a conspiracy involving communist Chinese agents and African American militants. At the same time, he strong-armed Ray into a rather complicated contract to sell his story to a noted author. Ray fired the first attorney, and hired an A-list mouthpiece from Dallas, who then spent little time on his client, leaving the actual handling of Ray’s case to a pair of court-ordered public defenders. This second attorney pressured Ray for over a month to plead guilty to avoid capital punishment. Ray reluctantly followed his lawyer’s advice, and plead guilty. A jury accepted the guilty plea without allocution, and the judge sentenced him to life in prison.
While the above makes for a tidy story, copious facts challenge the notion that Ray murdered Dr. King. Many of these facts are not in dispute. Some of them are given varying degrees of weight depending on one’s explanation of the crime. Others have become a source of hot debate.
What’s worse, the facts themselves prompt numerous questions of why Ray wanted King dead, or how he managed to pull off the assassination in the first place, let alone how he could escape one of the largest manhunts in living memory for two months, only to get caught by his own stupid blunder.
First off, we must ask if the shot was physically possible from the bathroom of the boarding house. If so, what kind of conditions would a shooter have faced in that location? We must also wonder if the gun Ray purchased was the same one used in the assassination attempt.
Then there are questions about Ray’s initial moments of flight. Why would he bundle up the rifle and all his other belongings in a blanket, only to drop everything on the sidewalk for all to see, especially since one item, namely his radio, could directly tie Ray to the gun? Why did all but one of the eyewitness accounts give a description of a man who did not resemble Ray. Why did the FBI and local police take Charles Stephens's description at face value when he couldn’t identify Ray in a photograph given to him by CBS news several days later? Why would authorities involuntarily commit one of these witnesses to a mental hospital for “psychotic depression,” and then leave her there for nine years? Why would the police take the CB call so seriously, especially since it sounded, well, rather hilariously far-fetched (not to mention suspicious) from the outset? That radio transmission becomes critical in that it allowed Ray to continue his escape, and subsequent international journey.
More basic questions pertain to Ray. We know he escaped from a penitentiary about a year before the assassination. How did he feed, clothe and shelter himself during this time? Where would he have found the money necessary to pay cash for a used but late-model Mustang, a highly prized automobile of that era? Ray also used a number of aliases since his escape. Where did these come from? And what was his motive? Many single-shooter proponents have offered conjecture as to what it was, but how reliable is this speculation? What did he hope to gain or achieve? More important, what crime did he think he was pleading guilty to?
We should have questions regarding his attorneys. Why did they take Ray’s case? Why did his first two lawyers maintain the contract between their client and writer W. Bradford Huie? How did he get subsequent representation, and why? What were the connections between these attorneys and other interests hostile to both Ray and Dr. King? Why would his second attorney attempt to sell the idea of a plea deal to the judge and prosecutor only weeks after taking on Ray as a client, especially since he professed his belief in Ray’s innocence when James hired him?
After all of that, we have questions that aren’t apparent in the master narrative, but nevertheless become clear when one looks below the surface. Who might have had a motive other than Ray? More important, who might have had a motive to kill Dr. King and the means to get away with it? If the killer didn’t shoot from the bathroom, from where might he have fired? What was Dr. King’s security like in Memphis on 4 April 1968? Were there any CIA or FBI people directly involved in the murder? If not a government conspiracy, but rather a private sector one, who would have fronted the money?
That inspires questions about Dr. King himself. What pressures did he face knowing that someone might have targeted him for assassination? Were all the people in his inner orbit actually loyal to him and each other? And curiously, why was the FBI so preoccupied with his personal life? Since many single-shooter advocates insist that certain allegations made regarding King's personal life are true, what relevance are these stories to the crime? And how likely are they to be true? What did Hoover and lesser special agents think about Dr. King? Would the CIA have something to gain by his death? And the spiritual beliefs and morals that fueled his political activities: could they have played a role in his death?
And then there’s a pretty interesting question: why wouldn’t authorities and single-shooter advocates take seriously the confession of one of the conspirators? Why would they shout down this and what appears to be other strands of decent evidence? And most important, why would a real jury in a real case make a finding on the assassination that so contradicted the authorities of that time and the House Select Committee on Assassinations?
And, of course, there are more questions down the road.
Mind you, I can’t answer some of these questions with any degree of confidence. Many, however, are quite answerable, and yield considerable insight as to how and why someone assassinated Dr. King. We just have to roll up our sleeves and dig in a bit.
Perhaps some elbow grease would help too.
___________
* If you don’t recognize the cultural reference, it’s from “Boy and Chair,” a recurring segment of the popular 1970s children’s television program The Electric Company, starring Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman. Comedians Bill Cosby and Joan Rivers were also frequent contributors to the show.