Godspeed." Likewise, this statement is attributed (without sourcing) to Limbaugh in 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America. Joseph Blakeney Brown Jr. (born July 5, 1947), known as Judge Joe Brown, is a former American lawyer and television personality. Jerry was returned to solitary in 1963 for making zip-guns, and a few days later I was put in B-Basement on suspicion of stabbing an inmate who'd volunteered to help the guards search the Tag Plant for the rest of the zip-guns, which were never found. (153) I wholeheartedly applaud the verdict of the jury and I feel that justice has been well served in their deliberations, she said. Ray replied that he did not commit the crime. . When prominent people die violently, they become martyrs in some peoples eyes, and there is a reluctance on their part even to consider anything that blemishes the heroic image they have formed of the individual. Such a conclusion must be drawn from a premise that the King family was willing to publicly, wrongfully, and unjustifiably vindicate Ray in order to accuse others simply to gain notoriety. However, the assessment of King got even worse. Ray left school when he was just fifteen due to his familys financial condition. On the night of the shooting, I had left the rifle with Raoul.. A mock trial of Ray in which he was represented by Dr. William Pepper was later telecast on TV to criticize the government for denying him the trial. When I tried to mail my review to The Star, the prison officials refused to allow it to leave the prison. The restaurant owner named Memphis Police . I went to Memphis to deliver a rifle to this man called Raoul, Ray told me. James Earl Ray knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily For example, if you worked in the laundry you could charge people to starch and iron their clothes. [13], Brown is twice divorced and has two sons from his first marriage.[14]. The House Assassinations Committee examining evidence in the killing of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Credit: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images). 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, John McAdams (The John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Center), Dr. King was killed by one shot fired from in front of him. Ray was also Stoner's bodyguard and chauffeur. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. In 1977, New Times magazine suggested that Jerry Ray and "Raoul" were one and the same. Brown apparently raised his voice and interrupted a magistrate judge while representing a woman seeking child support in Shelby County Juvenile Court. On the first one he'd fallen and stunned himself; on the second he'd hidden in a ceiling. Said Byrd: Yesterday, Mr. President, the Nation was given a preview of what may be in store for this city by the outrageous and despicable riot that Martin Luther King helped to bring about in Memphis, Tenn. [2] He earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Juris Doctor from UCLA School of Law. Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. In prison I knew men who would stab you to death over a carton of cigarettes, or for even a slight insult. Although Benny was eventually released from prison and returned to work for the engineering firm he'd been employed by at the time of his arrest in Canada, interest in him by then had died out, and the book was never published. Kershaw and Ray approached the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and got approval for the conduct of ballistics tests. Based on the results of a civil trial in 1999, Byrds speech would have almost necessarily have played an even more direct role if the verdict is to be accepted. Barely 48 hours later, on March 31st, Johnson would publicly announce that he would not seek reelection. Judge Horne began increasing the quantity of days Brown could be held in contempt after Brown continued disrupting the court. Months later, he recanted his confession, without effect. I occasionally rented magazines from Ray, but other inmates usually had a larger selection, and better quality magazines. 10 Disturbing and Unexplained Facts About James Earl Ray, MLK's Assassin. It wasn't until November 9, 1970--years after Ray escaped from Jefferson City--that inmates were allowed to purchase small black-and-white television sets, which they could keep in their cells. The Q64 bullet was a .30-06 caliber bullet of Remington-Peters manufacture. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Therefore, ironically, the society that King intended to bear the cost for his civil disobedience was to be ablack society. Simpson was found guilty of killing his wife Nicole and Ron Goldman - in a civil trial. [22] He was released from protective custody at the Shelby County Corrections Facility the morning of September 1, 2015. James Earl Ray was the assassin of American Baptist minister and civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray was born in on March 10, 1928 in a poor Irish-American family of Alton, Illinois, and was raised a Catholic. McMillans false scenarios portray Ray as a rabid racist in prison. Ray, who was on escape from a Missouri prison in 1968 claimed, however, that he had gone to a service station to get a tire repaired when the shot was fired. (In the period 1963-64, there were 550 serious assaults inside Jefferson City, including hundreds of stabbings, which is why Time magazine called it the "bloodiest 47 acres in America." Their goal was to cover all aspects of true crime: Read More, Contents Copyright 1998-2020 by Crime Magazine | J. Patrick O'Connor Editor | E-mail CrimeMagazine.com, Designed by Orman. Why did James Earl Ray have cancer? On January 26, 1976, Time magazine devoted four pages to the King assassination, drawing heavily on material from McMillan's book, which was scheduled for publication later that year: In 1963 and 1964 Martin Luther King was on TV almost every day, talking defiantly about how black people were going to get their rights, insisting that they would accept with nonviolence all the terrible violence that white people were inflicting on them, until the day of victory arrived, until they did overcome. An egregious example of shoddy workmanship is the book The Making of an Assassin by George McMillan. As noted, the committee concluded that James Earl Ray was the assassin of Dr. King. He was deemed not fit for military service due to the lack of discipline. Yet given the way the bureau had treated her and her family, her suspicion of the FBI and its conclusions about her husbands killer came from a very reasonable place, says John McMillian, a history professor at Georgia State University. King still tried to hide ODell in his organization until July, 1963, when he accepted ODells resignation. As King put it, ODells release was not because of connections between ODell and the CPUSA but because of the emotional public response. Judge Brown's lawyer filed an appeal, but the appeal was refused. James Earl Jones. That investigation declassified scores of memos detailing the bureaus abusive behavior, but did not reveal any evidence that the FBI had formally plotted his death. Born in a poor family, Ray had a difficult childhood as his father could not support his family. He paid for a nose job in cash. Jimmy Carter, in full James Earl Carter, Jr., (born October 1, 1924, Plains, Georgia, U.S.), 39th president of the United States (1977-81), who served as the country's chief executive during a time of serious problems at home and abroad. Most of my friends were people I'd known in reform school, or people I'd met through them. But a restaurant owner from Memphis was brought to the civil court in the year 1999 for being a part of the murder conspiracy. Even after Ray died in 1998 from complications caused by hepatitis C, the family continued to assert there was, as Coretta King said in 1999, overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.. Who assassinated Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968? Also, after he moved to St. Louis he lived in south St. Louis, an area known for its racism. All three bore the fingerprints of an escaped convict named James Earl Ray. 15. Ray fled to Toronto, secured a Canadian passport through a travel agency, flew to London (May 5), then to Lisbon (May 7? Whether anybody helped him indirectly has yet to be determined. King vs. Loyd Jowers and conspirators unknown. He filmed local prostitutes during their work hours in pursuit of his cinematographic dream, but he eventually left Puerto Vallarta after being jilted by his girlfriend who, coincidentally, was also one of the prostitutes he filmed. Wait Who? There are records of Ray receiving plastic surgery in Los Angeles about a month before Kings murder in Memphis. The paper quotes Kings statement explaining his strategy: To dislocate the function of a city without destroying it can be more effective than a riot, because it can be longer lasting, costly to society, and not wantonly destructive., Kings admission that the strategy he planned for Washington, D.C, would be costly to society is startling in view of a fact noted in The Urban Institute report, Our Changing City, which observed: 1950 also marked the start of the white exodus to the suburbs. I first met Benny Edmondson at the Algoa Reformatory in 1956, where he was teaching typing at the school. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty pleathus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentenceand was sentenced to . He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 23, 1967; and in Memphis, Tennessee, nearly a year later, on April 4, 1968, from a window of a neighbouring rooming house, he shot King, who was standing on the balcony of a motel room. James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 - April 23, 1998) was an American fugitive convicted for assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. 1-86-NARA-NARA or 1-866-272-6272, The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, John McAdams (The John F. Kennedy Assassination Information Center), Evidence of Ray's contact with his brothers, 1967-68, Motive with respect to John and Jerry Ray, The backgrounds of Kauffmann and Sutherland, How to File a FOIA Request for Archival Records. [16] Brown surrendered to the Shelby County Sheriff on August 27, 2015, to serve his five-day sentence at the Shelby County Corrections Facility in Memphis. The verdict in King vs. Jowers found a government conspiracy involving city, state, and federal agents complicit in the murder. For some 50 years, the federal government has maintained that James Earl Ray was the gunman who assassinated King that day. Unfortunately, the scene described by McMillan could not have happened. Charley McCracken, a friend from the St. Louis City Jail, pointed him out to me in H-Hall, where the newly arriving convicts at the maximum-security penitentiary were oriented. Some people had trouble, for example, believing Ray had arranged his international escape all by himself, since he had a track record of getting caught for more minor crimes. On June 8 he was apprehended by London police at Heathrow Airport as he was about to embark for Brussels; the FBI had established him as the prime suspect almost immediately after the assassination. He shot. Under the sub-head Communist Exposed, the paper went on to reveal more about ODell: King was forced to get rid of Hunter Pitts ODell in October, 1962, when several newspaper articles exposed ODells connection with SCLC and his communist affiliations. UN Pushing New Age Spirituality on Schoolchildren, Arizona Poised to Make Pledge of Allegiance Mandatory in Schools. King said he liked the idea. Dexter King went so far as to name Memphis Police Department Officer, Lt. Earl Clark as his fathers assassin. Back in Memphis, Ray pleaded guilty, forfeiting a trial, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Its not clear when Coretta Scott King, widow of King, began to believe in Rays innocence. Brown has spoken about how his upbringing shaped his philosophy. No one else I knew did either. Westberg was the first to learn that the bread box wasn't searched. He said that another person he met in Canada by the name Raoul was the actual person who plotted the murder and ultimately pulled the trigger. But a check by United Press International found him still employed by Kings organization. The prison officials knew that Ray's escape, and involvement in the King assassination, would forever blemish their professional records as penologists. The other people involved in this conspiracy, Jowers said, included Memphis police officers, a Mafia member and the infamous Raoul. Warren writes from Texas and can be reached at wmass@thenewamerican.com. Later in life his pleas for a trial were encouraged by some civil-rights leaders, notably the King family.