King family holding firm to theory that assassin was framed
In the five decades since Martin Luther King Jr was shot dead by an assassin at age 39, his children have worked tirelessly to preserve his legacy, sometimes with sharply different views on how best to do that. But they are unanimous on one key point: James Earl Ray did not kill him.
For the King family and others in the US civil rights movement, the FBI’s obsession with King in the years leading up to his slaying in Memphis on April 4, 1968 – pervasive surveillance, a malicious disinformation campaign, and open denunciations by FBI director J Edgar Hoover – laid the groundwork for their belief that he was the target of a plot.
‘‘It pains my heart that James Earl Ray had to spend his life in prison paying for things he didn’t do,’’ said Bernice King, 55, the youngest of King’s four children and the executive director of the King Centre in Atlanta.
Until her own death in 2006, Coretta Scott King, who endured the FBI’s campaign to discredit her husband, was open in her belief that a conspiracy led to the assassination. Her family filed a civil lawsuit in 1999 to force more information into the public eye, and a Memphis jury ruled that the local, state and federal governments were liable for King’s death.
But nothing changed afterwards. No vast sums of money were awarded – the Kings had sought only US$100 – and Ray was not exonerated.
King’s two other surviving children, Dexter, 57, and Martin III, 60, fully agree that Ray was innocent. And their view of the case is shared by other respected black leaders.
Andrew Young, a former United Nations ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the Lorraine Motel with King when he was shot, agrees. ‘‘I would not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and that’s all that matters,’’ he said.
Even those who believe that Ray, who died in prison in 1998, killed King tend to think that he received assistance from someone, whether it was his two or the Mafia.
Because Ray suddenly pleaded guilty in 1969, less than a year after brothers or the FBI the shooting, there was no trial.
The largest government investigation theorised in 1979 that Ray committed the killing in the hope of collecting a US$50,000 bounty offered by supporters of thenpresidential candidate George Wallace in St Louis, where Ray’s brothers lived. But there was no definitive evidence to prove the theory.
John Campbell, who investigated the case for years in the Shelby County, Tennessee district attorney’s office, said Ray’s version of events ‘‘kept changing’’. His office issued a report in 1998 saying Ray was responsible.
‘‘I’m not saying he didn’t have help,’’ Campbell said. ‘‘But he didn’t have the FBI, the CIA, the Memphis police or the Mafia.’’
After Coretta King and her family pleaded with then-US President Bill Clinton in 1998 to reinvestigate the case, civil rights special counsel Barry Kowalski reviewed the newest conspiracy allegations. In 2000, he concluded in 2000 that Ray was guilty and that there was no government conspiracy.
Astride all this controversy for the last 40 years has been William Pepper, a New York lawyer and civil rights activist who knew and worked with King. Pepper first visited Ray in prison in 1978, became convinced of his innocence, and continued to investigate the case even after Ray died.
In recent years, Pepper has tracked down witnesses in Memphis who support his theory that Hoover used his longtime assistant, Clyde Tolson, to deliver cash to members of the Memphis underworld, and that those shadowy figures then hired a sharpshooting Memphis police officer, who fired the fatal shot.
‘‘I think the people of this country are entitled to know the truth,’’ Pepper said.