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As soon as King fell, an aide, believed to be Marrell McCullough, pointed to the bathroom window of Bessie Brewer's boarding house. The fingers of others followed him, as recorded in photographs of the assassination. (For more on McCullough, see Part 5, "Strange Goings-On at the Memphis P.D.")

From that window, or so the official story goes, a man named James Earl Ray allegedly fired the shot that killed King. Yet a number of questions and contradictions offer reason to doubt the official explanation. For instance:

-- James Earl Ray, not unlike his lone-nut cousin Lee Harvey Oswald, was a poor shot in the Army.

-- Ray was never convicted in a trial by a jury of his peers. He confessed to the crime under extremely adverse circumstances, but immediately recanted his confession and sought a new trial.

-- At Ray's evidentiary hearing, a former FBI ballistics expert testified that not even the most skilled gunman could have accurately fired a rifle in the manner claimed by the government prosecution. According to the expert, to effectively line up for such a shot, the butt of the rifle would have had to stick six inches into the wall. The prosecution countered that Ray had contorted himself into position around the bathtub in order to make the kill shot, which seems equally incredulous.

-- After the assassination, Wayne Chastain, a reporter at the Memphis Press Scimitar, came across an unpublished Associated Press photograph in the newspaper's files which was taken from the boarding house bathroom window, through which Ray allegedly shot King. The sniper's view was obscured by branches from trees growing between the boarding house and the Motel Lorraine. The City of Memphis ordered the sanitation department to cut those trees down shortly after the assassination, making it impossible to conclusively determine how the tree branches may have interfered in a shot fired from the boarding house bathroom.

-- The bullet recovered from King's body has not been adequately tested and has not been proven to match Ray's alleged murder weapon.

-- Only one witness claimed to have seen Ray leaving the boarding house bathroom, a man named Charles Stephens. According to two other sources, Stephens was extremely inebriated at the time. The first three descriptions Stephens gave didn't resemble Ray at all -- in fact, Stephens' first two descriptions of the alleged assassin were of a "nigger". Stephens admitted that he did not get a good look at the alleged assassin. It wasn't until the FBI paid ,000 in bar tabs for Stephens that he fingered Ray as the hit man.

-- Two other witnesses saw someone leaving the boarding house bathroom. One witness, Bessie Brewer, the owner of the boarding house, could not identify the individual and refused to identify Ray as the man she had rented a room to. The other witness, Stephens' common law wife Grace, said she did get a good look at him, and that it was definitely not James Earl Ray. Grace's drunken husband became the preferred witness. Grace was committed to a mental institution. According to her lawyer, C.M. Murphy, she was committed illegally, and after she was committed, the Memphis prosecutors removed her records from the hospital. After years of imprisonment under heavy sedation, Grace still refused to recant her story.

-- In addition to Brewer, two other witnesses at the boarding house insisted that the man who rented Ray's room looked nothing like James Earl Ray.

-- Less than two minutes after the fatal shot was fired, a bundle containing the 30.06 Remington rifle allegedly used in the assassination and some of Ray's belongings was conveniently found in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company next door to the boarding house. Ray would have had to fire the shot that killed King from his contorted position in the bathroom, exit the sniper's nest, go to his room to collect his belongings and wrap and tie it all in a bundle, leave his room, run down the stairs and out of the boarding house, stash the bundle next door, and then get away from the scene unnoticed -- all within two minutes!

-- A service station manager told an investigator for Ray's defense team that he saw Ray several blocks from the boarding house at the time of the shooting. He was stabbed soon after he started talking to the defense team.
  jAmEs eArL rAyS LaSt sTaNd James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is knocking on death's door with an appeal for justice.

Ray, who is suffering from severe cirrhosis of the liver, recently emerged from a coma after weeks of unconsciousness. Although his health has stabilized, without a liver transplant, he will probably die.

Ray is not on the national organ donor list, and strict hospital guidelines would probably prevent his access to a life-saving organ transplant operation. Unless a sympathetic donor designates Ray as the recipient, his chances of procuring the necessary organ are slim at best.

When Ray appeared to be near death, some civil rights activists requested that Ray make a bedside confession to MLK's killing. Yet others continue to staunchly back Ray's lawyer, William F. Pepper, who in recent years has made a great deal of headway in uncovering the truth about the assassination, building a documented case for Ray's innocence -- and digging up a conspiratorial trail leading deep into the halls of power.

On February 20, the state court in Memphis will hear Ray's request for new scientific tests on his 30.06 Remington rifle, which the FBI identified as the murder weapon under controversial circumstances. Although the weapon bears Ray's fingerprints, it also bears other sets of prints which were never identified. Depending on the outcome, these tests could open the way to an appeal, 27 years into a 99-year sentence that Ray will never live to serve out.

Skeptics of Ray's claims of innocence often point to his guilty plea in court as proof that he murdered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the story behind Ray's plea is a bit more complicated than that.

After his extradition from Britain, Ray was confined for eight months in a specially-designed jail cell which was brightly lit 24 hours a day. Guards were present around the clock. Closed-circuit TV cameras monitored him constantly, with multiple microphones providing audio surveillance.

Under these extraordinary conditions, with his physical and mental state deteriorating, Ray's attorney, Art Hanes, kept him under continuous pressure to enter a guilty plea. Yet Ray, who claimed he was a patsy in a larger conspiracy, insisted on a trial.

At the time, author William Bradford Huie was paying Hanes for information and leads for his upcoming book on James Earl Ray, entitled "He Slew the Dreamer." According to James Earl's brother Jerry Ray, a trial would put much of this information in the public domain, lowering the value of Huie's book -- hence, the pressure from Hanes for a guilty plea.

Jerry Ray advised James Earl to dump Hanes and contact Percy Foreman, an Texas criminal defense lawyer known as the "Texas Tiger" for his aggressiveness. Ray didn't like the idea, but Richard J. Ryan, the Memphis lawyer they contacted, said the case was out of his league.

So Ray contacted Foreman, and Foreman took his case. Although he promised not to contact any authors until after the trial, Foreman also entered into a contractual obligation with Huie. A few weeks later, he paid a visit to Ray's former attorney, Art Hanes. Shortly thereafter, on February 13, 1969, Foreman reversed his trial strategy and delivered Ray a letter advising him to plead guilty, with a list of reasons why he should comply.

Ray would have nothing to do with it. He insisted on a trial. Foreman relentlessly insisted that Ray plead guilty, threatening Ray by saying that if the case went to trial, he couldn't guarantee his best efforts as defense counsel. Ray knew the judge wouldn't appoint a new counsel so close to his trial date. Fearing that Foreman would throw the trial if he pled innocent, Ray pled guilty as an act of desperation, intending to ditch Foreman immediately and retract his plea.

On March 10, 1969, after refuting the idea that there was no conspiracy behind MLK's death, James Earl Ray pled guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Three days later he hired attorney Ryan and filed a motion to vacate his plea and obtain a trial. On March 31, 1969, as Judge Preston Battle was considering this motion, he literally dropped dead from a heart attack. He was found with his head lying on the papers Ray had filed with the court.

Under these extraordinary circumstances, the motion should have been automatically granted, according to Tennessee law at the time. Yet it was refused, and every petition for relief that Ray has filed since then has been denied.

There has been no justice for Ray in this case, and there certainly has been no justice for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose murderers have walked away from his assassination with impunity. As researcher Dave Emory said, "[When] you will not show any substantive interest in who did the killing... it's grotesque. I think it's really grotesque to name a holiday after somebody, celebrate a holiday after somebody, when you can't, you won't, look into someone's murder."

sHoOtEr iN tHe ShrUbBeRy?

If Ray did not shoot King from the boarding house bathroom window, where did the shot come from?

One witness sitting in front of the bank of trees -- the same trees that would have blocked Ray's view from his alleged sniper's nest -- said he heard a rifle fire directly behind him at ground level, not from the boarding house.

Other witnesses also reported hearing the shot from ground level. Two people at the fire station nearby reported that a boy ran in and told them a similar story, but he left before police could question him.

King's chauffeur, as well as some of his aides who were standing on the balcony with King, all testified that King appeared to have been lifted physically off the ground. This is inconsistent with a shot from the boarding house bathroom, but consistent with a shot originating from the ground below the boarding house window.

It is possible that Ray, like his lone-nut cousin Oswald, had a doppleganger. Ray allegedly escaped in a white Mustang, but several witnesses reported seeing two white Mustangs on the street on April 4.

People in the neighborhood said Ray "stood out" in the seedy area because he wore a suit. The driver of the other Mustang might have been a man in a similar suit seen several times eating at Jim's Grill near the Motel Lorraine. This mystery man became known as the "eggs and sausages" man, because he started showing up shortly before the assassination and always ordered eggs and sausages.

On April 4, 1968, the "eggs and sausages" man ate his usual fare, paid his tab and left the cafe. A few minutes later, King lay dying. Police picked up the "eggs and sausages" man for questioning after diners at the cafe reported what had happened, but he was never booked on suspicion of being involved with King's death.

In March, 1994, Betty Spates, a former employee of Jim's Grill, signed an affidavit stating that restaurant owner Lloyd Jowers "came running through the back door" carrying a rifle just moments after the assassination. He then placed the rifle, broken down into its component pieces, in the trunk of his car. Jowers purportedly told Spates he would kill her if she ever told anyone what she'd seen.

Although he is serving time for the crime, Ray denies that he personally killed King. However, he says that he may have been partly, but unwittingly, responsible. He claims he was duped into a gun-running scheme by a mysterious man with CIA and mafia contacts named "Raoul." The gun-running scheme enabled Raoul to manipulate Ray into position as the conspiracy's patsy.

Ray was not apprehended until June 8, after traveling from Memphis to Toronto to London to Portugal and back to London, where he was arrested at Heathrow Airport while en route to Belgium. While taking his tour of Canada and Europe, Ray spent ,000, even though he had no known source of income.

So who was the trigger man? Researcher Philip Melanson suggests that "Raoul" may actually be a man named Jules Ricco Kimble, currently serving two life sentences for racketeering and murder. Kimble, an associate of the Ku Klux Klan and New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, claims that he knew James Earl Ray and that he took part in a conspiracy to assassinate King.

According to Kimble, Ray was a patsy, and the real assassins were a team of seven men from the CIA, three disguised as Memphis police, one of whom shot King from below the boarding house bathroom window.

Regardless of whether Kimble's story is true, witnesses heard a shot from ground level at the same location as the alleged CIA sniper, and the only witness who placed Ray at the boarding house bathroom window at the time of the murder was Charles Stephens, an alcoholic who, according to another witness, was "peeing in some bushes" when the fatal shot rang out
  mArTiN LuThEr kiNg-tHe PeAcFuL tHrEaT
In 1968, America was feeling the heat of civil unrest, much of which was a reaction to the civil rights movement. The idea of blacks being brought into racial parity with whites sent shockwaves through the corridors of power and through society at large.

At the eye of this hurricane of turmoil was a man named Martin Luther King, Jr., who preached non-violent civil disobedience as a means of opening the way for blacks to obtain the rights and liberties guaranteed to all citizens of the United States.

A charismatic and passionate leader, King was an effective communicator and motivator, and by 1968, he was winning the hearts and minds more and more Americans on both sides of the color line. His efforts successfully merged the anti-Vietnam war movement and the civil rights movement, and the awful reality of the black situation in America could no longer be hidden behind the white curtain.

On March 28, 1968, King led a march through Memphis, Tennessee which, like all his marches, was intended to have been peaceful and non-violent. But thanks to a gang of agents provocateur called "The Invaders," the march disintegrated into rioting and looting.

King barely escaped the March 28 debacle unharmed, and swore to return to Memphis and "conduct this demonstration properly -- with no violence." The date for the new march was set at April 4, 1968. This time, King would not survive his fateful trip to Memphis.

tHe FBI aNd tHe dEaTh oF MLK

The FBI had targeted King for surveillance, harassment and sabotage just as they had done to Malcolm X and countless other black activists during the civil rights struggle.

Most of this spying and subterfuge was carried out under COINTELPRO, the FBI's Counterintelligence Program. Legendary FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, America's least attractive drag queen, once described King as "the most dangerous man in America, and a moral degenerate."

A few months before the assassination, Hoover distributed an internal memo at the FBI calling for King's "removal from the national scene." In April, Hoover approved the plan which led to King's switch to the Motel Lorraine.

One documented COINTELPRO caper involved surveillance of King's alleged "sexual escapades." The tapes of these supposed escapades were later used in an attempt to blackmail King into committing suicide. Your tax dollars at work.

Cartha Deloach, the man in charge of the FBI's surveillance and harassment of King, was also put in charge of the investigation which indicted James Earl Ray and concluded that he acted as a lone nut.

The Memphis city official who ordered the relocation of the two black firemen and black police officer Edward Redditt on the day of the assassination was an ex-FBI agent and former associate of Hoover.

Frank Holloman, the Memphis Public Safety Director who had military guests on the afternoon of April 4, was a retired 25-year veteran of the FBI, who worked as head of the Memphis field office from 1959 to 1964. He had also served as J. Edgar Hoover's appointments secretary and was in charge of personnel in Hoover's office.

After the assassination, using taxpayer money, the FBI footed ,000 in bar tabs for Charles Stephens. (Them's 1968 dollars, too.) Floating in a sea of booze, Stephens changed his original descriptions of the assassin from an anonymous black man to James Earl Ray.

Was the FBI directly involved in King's assassination? They certainly dedicated a lot of manpower towards surveilling and harassing the man. Entire books have been written about the FBI's obsession with King.

It is quite likely that the FBI was involved with the cover-up -- and possibly the execution -- of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Suffice it to say that in 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there was a 95% probability that King was killed by a conspiracy. However, the House Select Committee also concluded that "James Ray fired one shot at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; the shot killed King."

After the House Select Committee released its Final Report in 1979, Committee Chairman Louis Stokes (D-Ohio) and Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey ordered that all of the committee's backup records, documents, unpublished transcripts, and investigative data be locked up for fifty years -- only to be released long after the witnesses and assassins are all dead.

In light of the masses of information which have developed regarding the King assassination, the "official" story just doesn't hold together. But exactly who pulled the trigger on the man who dreamed that one day his children would live in a nation where they would be judged by the content of their character, and not the color of their skin?

We may never know the answer to that question. And we can thank the FBI, at least in part, for that.
  tHe moTeL LoRrAine Local newspapers mocked King when he announced he was coming back to Memphis for a second round. Among other snipes and barbs, the local press criticized him for staying at a white-owned Holiday Inn, instead of the Motel Lorraine, which was black-owned.

According to researcher Michael Newton, the editorials criticizing King quoted directly from an FBI press release, which was distributed to "friendly press contacts" in Memphis under a plan approved by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover.

Hoping to avoid further antagonistic press in wake of the disastrous March 28 demonstration, King's camp switched his accommodations to a room at the Motel Lorraine, where he died on April 4.

From a security standpoint, changing King's lodging to this particular motel was a bad mistake. The Motel Lorraine was located in a fairly seedy part of town. The day before King arrived, someone claiming to be an advance security man dropped by the Lorraine Hotel and changed King's reservation from a ground-floor room to a second-floor balcony room, saying, "Dr. King always likes to have a room on the second floor overlooking the swimming pool." (It is worth noting that King's brother was later drowned under suspicious circumstances in the swimming pool at his home.) Questioned later, none of King's associates were aware of an "advance man," and his description didn't match any of King's friends or associates.

Switching rooms eliminated any trace of security that the location might have had. The new room was in the rear of the building, the balcony wide open to sniper fire with no cover whatsoever.

At 6:01 p.m., on April 4, 1968, King stepped out of his motel room on his way to get dinner. He leaned over the railing to speak to his chauffeur. A moment later, a single shot from a high-powered rifle blasted out, and King fell to the concrete balcony, where he lay dying.

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The Assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, taped lecture by Dave Emory. Available from Archives on Audio, P.O. Box 170023, San Francisco, CA 94117, 415/346-1840.