"I Did Not Shoot King"

Ray gets his hearing, but a committee turns critical

For a decade, James Earl Ray has claimed that new evidence would nullify his own confession and prove his innocence of the murder of Martin Luther King--if only he could present it at a trial. For more than a year, staff members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations have hinted that they were developing evidence of a conspiracy to murder King. But when the imprisoned killer and the committee finally faced each other in a dramatic televised public hearing last week, Ray stood convicted as convincingly as ever of being the lone gunman who had stalked his prey across three Southern states and fired the fatal shot in Memphis on April 4,1968.

Ray's three-day appearance in a jammed House hearing room, guarded by 30 U.S. marshals, was nonetheless enlightening. Understandably jittery upon emerging from seclusion into the glare of Washington publicity, the scrawny ex-holdup man stumbled almost incoherently through a 90-minute statement that he had written himself. But as the more skeptical committee members questioned Ray, he turned out to be a patient, polite and cooperative, if unpersuasive witness. By contrast, his attorney, professional Conspiracy Theorist Mark Lane, loaded his frequent objections to the questioning with such sneering sarcasm that he angered even the most sympathetic members of the committee.

"I did not shoot Martin Luther King," Ray insisted in his statement. Instead of revealing new evidence of a plot to kill King, Ray stuck to his claim that he had been framed by an elusive stranger named Raoul, whom he had met in a Montreal bar after escaping from a prison in Jefferson City, Mo., on April 23, 1967. It was Raoul, Ray insisted, who asked him to buy a telescopic-sighted rifle in Birmingham and a pair of binoculars in Memphis--and it was Raoul who must have left them near the scene of the shooting, well marked with Ray's fingerprints.

At the time of the murder, Ray said, he was not even in the rooming house from which the shots were fired. Where was he? "I believe I was at a gas station," he said. "Or I may have been driving around in my car." Under questioning, Ray could not provide the name of the station where he said he had tried to get a leaky tire repaired, and he was unsure of its location. Although claiming to be innocent of the murder, he said he fled Memphis in his white Mustang when he saw unusual police activity near the rooming house shortly after the shooting. "As a fugitive, I tried to stay away from police," he explained with a wry smile.

Committee Chairman Louis Stokes, who had predicted that Ray would be killed by fellow conspirators during his escape from Brushy Mountain state prison in Tennessee last summer, now led the critical questioning of Ray. Why had he not tried harder to help his lawyers find Raoul? "I thought he would probably testify against me," said Ray. The answer fit Ray's contention that Raoul was a conspirator working with unknown others to kill King but let Ray take the punishment. Offering no evidence, Ray implied that Raoul may have been working with the FBI.

Ray offered various reasons for having pleaded guilty. He said one of his first attorneys, Percy Foreman, convinced him that he would face the death penalty if he went to trial; that both Foreman and Ray had a financial interest in keeping the public from hearing Ray's story until it was first told in a book by William Bradford Huie; and that Ray's father, who Ray said had escaped from prison in the 1920s, would probably be returned to prison if Ray fought the Government's indictment. According to Ray, Foreman said Ray's brother Jerry might also have been charged as a co-conspirator in the King slaying. The committee members poked small but significant holes in Ray's story. Ray insisted that when he left Los Angeles in March 1968, he had not decided to go to Atlanta, where King lived. The committee produced a change-of-address card mailed in Los Angeles asking that Ray's mail be forwarded to general delivery, Atlanta. Similarly, Ray claimed he was not pursuing King in Atlanta on April 1 of that year, but the committee introduced an Atlanta laundry slip for that date bearing the name of the alias Ray had been using. Another example: asked why only his fingerprints appeared on the rifle found near the Memphis rooming house after the murder, Ray contended that Raoul must have covered his own ringers with Band-Aids while inspecting the gun--but Ray admitted that he did not notice any such tapes on Raoul's hands at the time.

The most sensational disclosure by the committee, if true, was highly damaging to Ray. The committee read a staff interview with former Chief Inspector Alexander Eist of Scotland Yard, who had guarded Ray after his arrest in England. Eist said that in informal chats Ray had admitted killing King. He quoted Ray as saying, "I panicked [when he saw a police car near the Memphis rooming house] and I threw the gun away. It was the only mistake I made." Eist said Ray bragged of being able to make as much as "a half-million dollars" through television appearances and writing books about the slaying. But Eist's credibility came under assault from Lane, who said he had just learned that Eist had been dismissed from Scotland Yard and charged with perjury and bribery in a jewel-theft case. In fact, Eist was tried in 1976 on charges of perverting justice and conspiracy to commit corruption, but was acquitted.

The committee intends to recall Ray in November for further questioning. But so far the hearings showed that despite the years of controversy and investigation --this one cost roughly $4 million--there is no evidence linking Ray to a broader conspiracy to assassinate King.

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