James Earl Ray Born: 1928 Died: 1998

James Earl Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Ill. The Ray family moved a few miles from Alton to Bowling Green, Mo., in 1930, and 5 years later they moved to near Ewing, Mo., where Ray received his elementary school education.

At age 16, Ray moved back to Alton, where he lived with his grandmother. He worked in the dye room of the International Shoe Tannery in nearby East Hartford, Ill. He was laid off in December 1945 and, 6 weeks later, enlisted in the Army. He was stationed in West Germany where he was charged with drunkenness and breaking arrest. Ray was discharged for ineptness and lack of adaptability for service in December 1948.

After his discharge, Ray returned to stay with his grandmother in Alton, Ill., and embarked on a life of odd jobs and jail sentences. He worked for the Dryden Rubber Co. in Chicago until he was laid off in September 1949, and then left for Los Angeles, Calif. On October 11, he was arrested for robbing a cafe and was sentenced to 90 days imprisonment.

Upon his release from jail in Los Angeles in the spring of 1950, he traveled back to Illinois, where he worked until May 1952. During this time he attempted to earn his high school diploma at night. He robbed a cab driver of $11.90 on May 6, 1952. He was found guilty of robbery and incarcerated at the State penitentiary at Joliet and later at the State prison farm in Pontiac until his release on March 12, 1954.

Ray then moved to Quincy, Ill. On March 7, 1955, Ray and an accomplice, Walter Rife, broke into the Kellersville, Ill., post office and stole 66 postal money orders as well as a validating stamp. The two men fled to Miami, Fla., but were arrested in Missouri on their return. Ray pleaded guilty to the robbery and, on July 1, 1955, was sentenced to 45 months at the Federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kans.

Ray was paroled from Leavenworth in early 1959. He robbed two grocery stores in St. Louis, Mo. and one in Alton during the summer and fall of 1959. He was eventually captured and tried for the St. Louis robbery in December 1959. On March 17, 1960, he began serving a 20-year sentence at the Missouri State Penitentiary. Ray tried to escape November 1961 and again in March 1966. Following the second attempt, he was examined at the State hospital in Fulton, Mo, and determined capable of standing trial for escape.

On April 23, 1967, Ray did escape from the Missouri State Penitentiary. Over the following 11 1/2-month period, he traveled extensively in North America, residing in such cities as Chicago, Montreal, Birmingham, Los Angeles, and Atlanta. On the afternoon of April 1968, posing as John Willard, Ray rented a room at a Memphis roominghouse near the Lorraine Motel. That day, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated as he stood on the second-floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel.

On May 7, 1968, the Shelby County Criminal Court named James Earl Ray in an indictment for the first-degree murder of Dr. King. An international manhunt culminated with Ray's capture at Heathrow Airport in London, England, on June 8, 1968. Following extradition proceedings in England, Ray was returned to the United States on July 19, 1968. Ray pleaded guilty to the murder of Dr. King on March 10, 1969. Judge W. Preston Battle sentenced him to 99 years in the penitentiary.

Within three days Ray had recanted his confession and claimed that the actual crime was commited by a figure named "Raul had been responsible for the shooting.  Many believed this to be true, including Dr. King's family.  The courts did not believe Ray's alibi and he was never granted a secone trial.  Further investigations by the King family and associates as well as Congressional hearings did little to clarify matters.

Ray spent the rest of his life in Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary.  His sentence was extended after Ray participated in a failed escape attempt with five other inmates.  Although badly wounded by a stabbing attack while in prison Ray lived on to reach the age of seventy.  He died of liver disease in 1998 swearing until the end that he was innocent of the murder.