There is no doubt that James Earl Ray shot and killed Martin Luther King, Jr. The more puzzling questions are what motivated him, and whether he acted alone or as part of a conspiracy. As for motivation in something as complex as a political murder, the shooter is often driven by several different factors, with no single one predominating. For instance, when Oswald killed John Kennedy, his radical political beliefs were part of the reason he shot at the president, but his primary incentive appears to have been his desire for glory, the almost psychotic craving of a nobody to suddenly become someone. With Ray, there is some of that same yearning for fame and acknowledgment, at least among his criminal peers—as seen in his oft-stated belief, even wish, that the FBI would place him on its ten most-wanted list. Certainly killing King would accomplish that in an instant. Ray relished that newfound notoriety, even taking the risk, while on the run, of visiting a local bar in Toronto in order to watch the popular television program The F.B.I. on the night he was placed at the top of the Bureau’s most-wanted list. After his arrest, he constantly asked the policemen assigned to guard him about the publicity over the case and how he was portrayed in the press.
But fame alone does not explain why Ray killed King. Another reason was likely his demeaning and dismissive view of blacks. There are prominent incidents in Ray’s life—from his refusal to be transferred to an integrated honor farm while in prison, to his bar fights with black sailors while in Mexico, to his repeated attempts to flee to segregationist Rhodesia after killing King—that demonstrate that he is a committed racist. His racism alone would have made it easier for him to murder Martin Luther King, Jr. After all, to Ray he would only be killing a black man in the South. Racists like him would think he was heroic. King was a troublemaker, thought Ray, and no one worthwhile would miss him.
However, his desire for notoriety, even combined with his racism, does not provide a complete and satisfactory answer to why he went to Mrs. Brewer’s rooming house on April 4, 1968. Since Ray was a career criminal, driven primarily by the desire to make money, it would seem that he had to believe there was a profit in killing King. Ray’s love of quick money, mixed with the racism with which he was raised, was a combustible blend in the volatile political and social climate of the late 1960s.
That he was driven primarily by money does not necessarily mean that he was hired to commit the crime. He might well have learned about a bounty on King, especially the $50,000 offer from St. Louis, and thought he could collect it by committing the murder.
Although Ray had previously bragged to other convicts, and to his brothers, that he might one day kill King, he does not appear to have become serious about those threats until after his December 1967 trip to New Orleans. Following his return to Los Angeles, he took certain actions—having plastic surgery and sending out photos of himself that might create confusion in case of a large manhunt—that appear to be precautions a professional criminal would undertake in preparing for a major crime.
As for a conspiracy, there are several persuasive arguments against Ray’s having been brought into an elaborate plot. The crime did not take place for another three and a half months after his visit to New Orleans, during which Ray returned to a leisurely lifestyle in Los Angeles; no plotter could afford to let him in on such a high-profile crime months in advance of the operation. Also, while some conspiracists have speculated that racist Southern businessmen contracted with the New Orleans mob to kill King, it would be an unprecedented assignment for organized crime. Professor Robert Blakey, the Select Committee’s chief counsel, as well as the author of the key crime-fighting tool against the mob, RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act), told the author, “It would not at all be a characteristic of the mob. Except for the CIA/mob effort on Castro, I know of no single instance in which they ever took an assignment from outsiders to kill someone else. It’s not what they do. They are a parasite on the body politic and they do not survive by killing the hand that feeds it. Marcello was clearly a racist, but he would not take the assignment because it was not what he did for business, and it involved far too many potential risks.”
There is also the perplexing question of why anyone with a substantial contract on King would hire Ray, a person who had no reputation for killing, and had never demonstrated he had the capability or nerve to carry out such an assignment. A professional hit man would surely have been hired.
However, if the St. Louis offer of $50,000 to kill King became known to John and Jerry Ray—which, despite their adamant denials, appears possible—a plan to collect the bounty could have been set in motion. A New Orleans rendezvous could have been a chance for one of the brothers to pass the idea on to James. Fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money, and certainly worth considering, even if they were not ready to commit murder.
If there was ultimately a conspiracy behind King’s death, a crude family plot seems more likely than a sophisticated operation involving the mafia or some government agency. That James Earl Ray has lived thirty years after the murder is persuasive evidence that professional conspirators were not involved, since if they had been, they would have disposed of him. They could never be safe so long as Ray lived, and he would have little incentive not to turn them in to authorities in order to win his own coveted freedom. However, if the conspirators included family members—a charge that all Ray’s relatives have persistently denied—then he would have an incentive to stay silent. The special bond among the Rays would prevent James from turning in the only people he ever trusted.
The ultimate answers, of course, reside with Ray. He has not helped resolve the crime’s mysteries but instead has relished adding confusion and controversy by maintaining steadfast silence on some matters while giving often changing stories about others. He obviously wants to take his secrets to the grave. But he has failed. Whether he acted with the foreknowledge or assistance of his brothers, or whether he was offered money before the murder or merely had heard about an offer and acted on his own, James Earl Ray is the reason that Martin Luther King, Jr., is dead. A four-time loser looking for a big score killed the dreamer, and put himself in the history books.