Author’s Note Written for This Edition
On April 23, 1998, three weeks after the publication of the hardcover book, James Earl Ray died in a Tennessee prison of liver failure at the age of 70. There was no death bed confession, no indication he was burdened by his conscience and had decided to free the King family and many concerned Americans from the web of deceit he had spun over the decades. Rather, Ray passed defiantly, protesting to the very end that he was merely a patsy in a convoluted conspiracy led by someone he knew only by the name Raoul. Ray also died with the satisfaction that during the last year of his life he had pulled one of the grandest cons of his long criminal career—he had duped the King family into publicly endorsing his innocence.
There was never any question that the Kings had their hearts in the right place as they searched for absolute answers in the assassination. In the years following the murder, they had learned the shocking details of J. Edgar Hoover’s obsessive war against Dr. King and were therefore legitimately suspicious that the government might have been involved in the killing. Into this setting entered Ray and his last lawyer, William Pepper, who presented the Kings with purported new witnesses and evidence, persuading them that the assassination was a massive plot that ran all the way up to Lyndon Johnson. This was a tragic turn of events since the Kings accepted the Ray team’s evidence without aggressively investigating it.
Once convinced of a gigantic conspiracy, they dug in their heels, and did not want to consider other answers. Although I sent copies of this book to several family members, they refused to read it. They boycotted shows on which I appeared. King family associates attacked me publicly while also refusing to read the book. While this book covers most of Ray’s “new” evidence in detail—and reveals it to be bogus—Coretta Scott King and her son, Dexter, instead asked President Clinton to establish a new, full inquiry into the case. To their disappointment, the Justice Department finally agreed to only a limited investigation.
While Ray’s death prompted the Kings to accelerate their effort at obtaining a new murder inquiry, the Ray brothers—Jerry and John—fell back to old habits and started to think of ways to profit from the turn of events. Jerry (who alternately referred to me in widely distributed letters as an “FBI pimp” or a “slimeball,” and once caused the police to be called at one of my book signings he disrupted in Memphis) bragged about an “explosive” book he intended to write. He also unsuccessfully lobbied the District Attorney General in Memphis to release to him the murder weapon and other personal items belonging to James, all of which could fetch high prices on the auction block. Although Jerry had spent some ten years working with the arch-racist and convicted church bomber, J.B. Stoner, and himself had written heatedly about “Nigger beasts,” he continued his calculated campaign to become an ally of the Kings. Not only did he brag about Dexter King’s embrace of him before James’s death, but at the memorial service for James, Jerry sat next to Isaac Farris, Jr., a nephew of Dr. King who represented the King family. “They are not a dumb family,” Jerry Ray told me. “They know what really happened.”
As for John Ray, who had remained silent for years about the assassination, he announced four months after James’s death that he would “solve the whole case” if the government gave him a “six-figure” payoff. Nobody took up his offer.
The results of the latest Justice Department investigation are not expected until sometime in 1999, and most observers, including this author, expect that none of the so-called new evidence will amount to anything substantive. This will leave the King family, and many others who share their opinions, unsatisfied.
However, if those convinced of a widespread plot are willing to approach this murder with an open mind, there can be closure. After thirty years, there is ample credible evidence to determine who shot Dr. King, and what the most likely reasons were for the murder. Two separate events took place in the late 1960s. On the one hand, the government waged an illegal war against Dr. King. Its purpose was to ruin his reputation and career and leave him without honor in his own community. At the same time, a racist named James Earl Ray, almost certainly motivated by the lure of big money, and possibly helped by a small conspiracy of like-minded bigots, moved toward killing King. I have little doubt that some government officials celebrated King’s death and would have pinned a medal on Ray. But my investigation shows the government was not behind Ray.
While it may not have pulled the trigger, the government did however, by such outrageous conduct, create an atmosphere where racists thought it was safe to shoot a black leader in the South and think they could get away with it. To that extent, the government bears moral responsibility for the death of Dr. King. But the ultimate responsibility—for the sake of justice and history—must be placed squarely on the man with blood on his hands, James Earl Ray. To say otherwise, in light of the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, is to let Ray have the final laugh, and to mock the great memory of Dr. King.