Articles and Transcripts

Martin Luther King's Son Says: James Earl Ray Didn't Kill MLK! This article discusses the evidence of intelligence involvement in the life of James Earl Ray, and prominently amongst the journalists who followed this story.

The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King:
An Overview

Who Shot Martin Luther King, Jr.? (Transcript of an ABC News broadcast from March 22, 1998 )

A Chronology of James Earl Ray's Life (AP/CNN)

James Earl Ray Hospitalized Before Upcoming Hearing

Dexter King Continues His Long March

New Trial for Ray, or New Judge for Shelby County?

I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King's famous and compelling speech, given August 28, 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC.

Cartoon

The Official Story: James Earl Ray, Waiting in a Public Bathroom to Kill King

Recommended Books

Orders to Kill

By William Pepper, Esq. Originally published New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995. The 1998 rerelease has a new foreward by Dexter King.

By Harold Weisberg. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993. Originally published as Frame-up (New York : Outerbridge & Dienstfrey, 1971.)

By Mark Lane and Dick Gregory. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993. Originally published as Code Name Zorro. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1977.

By James Earl Ray. Washington, DC: National Press Books, 1992.

The Official Story

Martin Luther King was killed by a sniper on April 4, 1968, at 6:01 p.m. as he stepped onto the balcony outside the Motel Lorraine in Memphis, Tennessee. See

A small-time thief named James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King from the bathroom of the flophouse across from where King was staying. Allegedly, Ray balanced on the edge of a bathtub, rested his rifle on the window sill, and fired a single shot that with trained-sniper perfection entered King in the head. No witness saw Ray shoot, although one claimed he saw a man leaving the bathroom around that time. A bag was found in front of a store near the rooming house, and the bag had a rifle sticking out of it. The rifle bore James Earl Ray's fingerprints.

James Earl Ray confessed in court to the crime, and was sentenced to life instead of being given the death penalty due to that confession.

The Problems with the Official Story

• Ray's confession was forced upon him by his lawyer, who threatened Ray with the Death penalty.

• Ray claimed he had purchased the rifle for a man he knew only as "Raoul".

• The bullet from King's body was never matched to the gun, despite a retesting of the rifle in 1997.

• James Earl Ray was not a trained sniper, nor is there any evidence that he practiced with a gun.

• The man who supposedly identified Ray in the flophouse just after the shooting, Charles Stephens, was 1) too drunk to be able to make a solid identification and 2) repudiated his own identification when shown a picture of Ray on camera in a CBS special report. He denied the man in the picture (Ray) was the man he had seen at the flophouse. Stephen's uncooperative wife was put in a mental institution after disputing her husband's "ID" of Ray.

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James Earl Ray died in 1998. Ray's case had been getting a lot of attention from Judge Joe Brown's court in Memphis. The family of King has now publicly stated that they think Ray did not kill King. Coretta Scott King has asked President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno to form a "truth commission" patterned after the one in South Africa to encourage those with evidence to come forward without fear of prosecution.