James Earl Ray
"“Lone nut”" James Earl Ray (patsy) | |
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Born | March 10, 1928 Alton, Illinois, United States |
Died | April 23, 1998 (Age 70) Nashville, Tennessee, United States |
Parents | James Gerald Ray Lucille Ray |
Spouse | Anna Sandhu |
Criminal convictions | • Murder • prison escape • armed robbery • burglary |
Supposed perpetrator of | MLK/Assassination |
Charged by the US government for the killing of Martin Luther King. He died in jail having never had a trial. |
James Earl Ray was a convict allowed to escape from prison so he could be used as a patsy for the MLK assassination. His handler, 'Raoul', directed him to lay a trail of evidence which was used to frame him. He plead guilty to the assassination and spent the rest of his life imprisoned.
Official narrative
Ray was a "lone nut" assassin of Martin Luther King. After the assassination on April 4, 1968, he fled north to Toronto, Ontario, where he hid out for a month and acquired a Canadian passport under the false name of Ramon George Sneyd. He was captured at Heathrow Airport, London on June 8, 1968. On March 10, 1969, he entered a guilty plea, after advice from his lawyer, Bernard Fensterwald[citation needed], to avoid a jury trial and accompanying risk of a death sentence. Three days later, he had changed his mind, but was not permitted to change his plea. He spent the rest of his life in incarceration, unsuccessfully seeking a trial.
Problems
The US government never had to present evidence of his guilt, since no trial was held.
In 1993, Loyd Jowers, owner of a restaurant (Jim's Grill) near the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was assassinated, confessed on live TV to involvement in the assassination of Martin Luther King. He stated that there was a conspiracy to kill King, and that James Earl Ray was a patsy not involved in the assassination. In 1998, the family of Martin Luther King filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Jowers and "other unknown co-conspirators" for the murder of King. A unanimous decision on December 8, 1999 by a Memphis jury found Jowers and other "governmental agencies" had plotted to kill King. Only a single reporter was sent from the US commercially-controlled media (Memphis TV reporter, Wendell Stacy).