King Relatives Urge Trial for James Earl Ray

Dexter King was 7 years old in 1968 when his father was killed by a sniper’s bullet. And for most of his life, he said Thursday, he has suspected that the truth about the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder had never been told.

Although the family has kept silent, its members have believed for 29 years that there was a conspiracy to kill King, and that forces of the government likely were involved, he said.

But now, with the convicted killer on his deathbed, the civil rights leader’s widow and four children urged for the first time Thursday that James Earl Ray be granted a trial.

“There are questions still surrounding this case and they need to be answered, and the only way to do that is through a court of law,” said Dexter King, who heads the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Ray, 68, is suffering from cirrhosis of the liver and has been hospitalized several times since Christmas. He is serving a 99-year sentence.

Standing with Dexter King at a press conference were his mother, Coretta Scott King, who stayed silent, his sisters Yolanda and Bernice, and brother Martin III. Although Dexter King did nearly all of the talking, he said, “The family is united in calling for the trial that never occurred. . . . I feel that the public has not been given the full truth.”

Ray was never tried for the murder because he confessed in 1969, several months after he had been arrested in England. But, even during his sentencing hearing, he seemed to take issue with the contention that he acted alone.

After both the district attorney and Ray’s own attorney, Percy Forman, assured the jury that there was no conspiracy, Ray interrupted the proceedings to say he didn’t agree. He wrote a letter seeking to change his plea three days later, but the judge died before acting on it.

Ray’s current attorney, William F. Pepper, contends that Ray was railroaded by a domineering lawyer to plead guilty. He praised the family’s decision to come forward now, just before a hearing scheduled next Thursday in Memphis that Pepper hopes might lead to a trial.

“It’s a dramatic change and certainly courageous of them,” he said. “I think it’s bound to have impact. This is the unified family of the victim saying, ‘We would like a trial so that some of the evidence can see the light of day.’ ”

Pepper will ask a judge for the right to conduct tests on the Remington rifle that police found on a sidewalk near the murder scene and which prosecutors contend was the murder weapon.

The scope of the rifle held one of Ray’s fingerprints, but Pepper claims the gun was planted to make it appear that Ray was the gunman.

He expressed pessimism Thursday about the outcome, however. Even if the judge allows the tests, Pepper said Ray probably would die before appeals are exhausted. Voicing his frustration, he said, “Let’s just get on with it and do it before the man dies.”

Shelby County prosecutors oppose testing the weapon or reopening the case.

“The guilty plea Ray is under has been examined seven times by other courts and affirmed every time,” said John Campbell, a Shelby County assistant district attorney. “He went into court and told the jury he was guilty. They convicted him.”

But Dexter King said he finds it unbelievable that Ray could have committed the crime and fled the country without help.

“Here’s a guy who was an escapee from prison at the time. He had only an eighth-grade education and few resources and yet he was able to travel to two countries,” King said. “How did he get a visa and a passport? How did he get to England and Portugal? . . . How did he get out of Memphis?”

Noting that King was surrounded by heavy security at all times and was under constant surveillance by the FBI, he questioned how a lone, unsophisticated gunman could have killed his father and escaped.

The family had not spoken out before because the issue is so painful and because they doubted that coming forward would make a difference, he said. The family decided to end its silence after receiving an indirect appeal from Ray’s brother.

King said he plans to attend the hearing next week in Memphis and hopes to meet with Ray, who has spent the last two months shuttling between a hospital and a state prison near Nashville.

“I would want to complete the circle spiritually,” King said. “For whatever reason, his life has been intertwined with my family’s life. . . . If he is innocent then he shouldn’t be in jail. If he’s guilty, then I would try to put myself in my father’s place. He would try to forgive this person.”

Pepper said King had not yet made a formal request to meet with Ray. He would arrange a meeting if possible, he said, adding that Ray’s health fluctuates. “It’s just that some days he doesn’t know what day of the week it is,” he said.

A number of King’s former associates have met with Ray over the years and now support his efforts to get a trial.

The U.S. House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the murder in 1978 and concluded that Ray was the triggerman. It left open the possibility, however, of other conspirators. Walter Fauntroy, who was chairman of the subcommittee that probed King’s murder, now says he believes Ray was framed.

In a book published in 1995, Pepper contends that Army intelligence agents conspired with organized crime forces to assassinate King. Although he says a civilian gunman pulled the trigger, he claims to have evidence that Army snipers were stationed nearby to act as backup.

The Army has denied doing anything illegal, but officials have acknowledged spying on King and other civil rights leaders. They defended spying on U.S. citizens, saying that the FBI, which rightfully should carry out spying missions within the U.S., had been inundated by the scope of civil unrest.

It has long been known that the FBI under Director J. Edgar Hoover tried to harass and discredit King. But Pepper and one of his military sources who agreed to be interviewed only if his name were not published contend that throughout the period of social unrest in the 1960s the Army also waged a secret campaign against dissidents.

The source, a former Green Beret who assisted in Pepper’s investigation, said the campaign sometimes included murder. “It was no big thing, really,” he said. “What we did was like a vocation--you get up, you go down, you kill people, you go home. You go to bed and you don’t think about it.”

Dexter King said he had deliberately stayed away from Pepper’s book and other theories about his father’s assassination until recently.

“I was not ready to deal with the assassination emotionally, so I deliberately did not read it,” he said. “Now I’m looking at it all because my antennae are up.”

He said he believes powerful forces in government and the “military-industrial complex” may have felt threatened by his father’s opposition to the Vietnam War and his efforts to unite the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement. “That may have contributed to his demise,” he said.

Former associates of his father approached the family “three or four years ago” with information that they said proved that Ray was not the killer, but the family chose not to get involved, hoping the associates would be able to successfully get the case reopened.

They supported a theory that Loyd Jowers, a retired Memphis restaurant owner with alleged Mafia ties, was involved in the assassination.

Jowers approached prosecutors in 1993 and said he acted as a middleman to hire the killer. He offered to tell all he knew in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Jowers went into hiding after officials refused to grant him immunity.

Pepper contends that Jowers either committed the murder himself or knows who pulled the trigger.

When King was killed, Ray was staying in a boardinghouse across the street from the Lorraine Motel and above Jowers’ restaurant. He claims he was instructed to rent a room there by a smuggler for whom he worked and whom he knew only as Raoul or Raul. Ray says he was away changing a flat tire when the shooting occurred.

He said he fled the country when he realized authorities were looking for a white man who matched his description.