ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, January 19, 1997 TAG: 9701210011
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: MEMPHIS, TENN.
SOURCE: PETER S. CANELLOS THE BOSTON GLOBE
The Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated, is still decorated in the Day-Glo aquas of April 4, 1968, frozen in time like the clocks from Hiroshima that register the precise moment that disaster struck.
King's room is kept exactly as he left it, with a newspaper tossed on the bed and a room-service tray balanced on the night table. Placards reveal a minute-by-minute account of his activities, from his last phone call to his parents to his joshing with aides about the ugly cut of Jesse Jackson's turtleneck.
But there is no mention of James Earl Ray, the backwoods thief who was convicted of King's murder. The motel, now home of the National Civil Rights Museum, traces the movements of ``the assassin'' as though his identity were still a mystery.
``A lot of local people don't believe Ray did it, which is why they don't say anything about it here,'' explained Thomas Parker, a retiree who volunteers as a guide at the Lorraine. ``They think it was a conspiracy.''
Talk of a conspiracy to kill King is bubbling up to a froth these days, as Ray, now 68 and suffering from chronic liver disease, fights for his life. He lapsed into a coma last month, but has vowed to summon every ounce of strength to stay alive until a court hearing on Feb. 20, when his lawyer will argue that new evidence casts doubt on his guilt. Last week, his attorney said Ray needed a liver transplant to survive.
Ray's fight to clear his name would be of little interest were it not for the surprising endorsements of so many people who were in King's inner circle.
Alarmed by reports of Ray's coma, members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference began organizing a pilgrimage last month to pray at his bedside. Convinced that Ray was not the sole killer but rather a stooge for the real plotters, they planned to implore him to provide any scrap of information that might unlock the secret of who murdered their leader.
Ray was too sick to receive them, but the SCLC and many others of King's former associates continue to back Ray's bid for a new hearing.
In their minds, King, like the Kennedy brothers, was too big a figure to have been struck down by a vagabond criminal. Dramatic logic requires a more powerful killer. Elemental forces had been unleashed by the political hurricanes of the '60s; both the FBI and the Army were monitoring King's every move.
But if the desire for a greater reckoning in the King assassination arises from a 1960s craving for social justice, it draws its power from the forces of the 1990s, mistrust of the government and a yearning to unravel the conspiracies that bind American history.
William Pepper, Ray's latest attorney, offers up a theory of the assassination replete with Mafia dons, informants with code names, former Green Berets hiding out in Mexico, shadowy Pentagon contacts and a mastermind named Raul.
Far-fetched as it may seem, Pepper, who worked with King in the anti-war movement, insists the pieces fit and he will reveal the identity of Raul. While skeptical of some of Ray's assertions, many of King's followers eagerly await the unmasking, like visitors to a seance.
``Very few of us in the inner circle of Dr. King's organization felt James Earl Ray was the mastermind behind the assassination of Dr. King,'' says The Rev. E. Randel T. Osburn, now national administrator of the SCLC. ``We as the followers of Martin Luther King are still left to deal daily with his message, his words, his voice. What we fear more than anything is this man may be the key to shedding some light on what really happened. If he dies, we will be left forever with no chance of putting it to rest.''
Martin Luther King was this country's Gandhi. His use of nonviolent tactics during bus boycotts and lunch counter sit-ins transformed the position of blacks in American society.
But by the time he arrived in Memphis in 1968, King was enmeshed in more complex battles. He had taken a stronger stand against the Vietnam War, which stamped him as a more dangerously subversive figure in the minds of white conservatives. His hold on blacks, too, was loosening, as radical leaders caught the ears of the younger generation.
King flew to Memphis on April 3 to support black sanitation workers who were on strike. On the night of April 3, King addressed his followers at a Masonic Temple, delivering what proved to be his valedictory address, rife with premonitions of death.
``I have seen the promised land,'' he declared, as thunder roared and rain scratched against the windows. ``I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.''
The next evening a bullet ripped through his throat as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Within a day, riots broke out in most major cities.
The FBI announced it had discovered a rifle and other items purported to belong to the killer; a fingerprint check traced them to James Earl Ray, a fugitive from a Missouri prison. A month later, British officials arrested Ray trying to board a plane at London's Heathrow Airport.
In the days following the assassination, many people assumed King had been the victim of a carefully calculated plot. But at the trial, Ray's attorney declared the 39-year-old fugitive had acted alone, and would plead guilty.
The prosecutor summarized the evidence: Ray's fingerprints were on the murder weapon; Ray purchased the rifle; Ray rented the room from which the shot was fired; and Ray visited places that corresponded to King's schedule. The motive, prosecutors said, was hatred of blacks. Ray and one of his brothers allegedly had been involved in Alabama Gov. George Wallace's segregationist American Independence Party.
By pleading guilty, Ray obtained a sentence of 99 years, rather than death. But within three days of his sentencing, Ray began to backtrack, insisting he wasn't guilty. The Washington Post headlined its story, ``Ray Alone Still Talks of Plot.''
James Earl Ray, the oldest of seven children, grew up poor in Quincy, Ill. ``We were just a normal, average family like anybody else,'' explained Ray's brother, Jerry, now 61. ``If this happened to any other family in the U.S., they'd dig up something.''
In the case of the Rays, what emerged was a predilection for petty crimes. James Ray's father and two of his brothers had criminal records. Ray himself was a prison escapee. His glasses, slight build and bland features seemed to camouflage a kind of nervous energy. Even after being convicted of King's assassination, Ray managed to fashion a ladder and escape for several weeks.
Still, there was little to suggest that he harbored the lone-wolf passions of an assassin. He wasn't an outcast. He wasn't mentally ill. He wasn't openly racist like Byron De La Beckwith, the self-described white supremacist who killed Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
By Ray's account, he was a dupe. While hiding out in Montreal, he said, he met a man named Raul, who offered him cash to run errands for a gun-smuggling syndicate. One of Ray's assignments was to buy the gun used to kill King. Raul also instructed Ray to rent a room under an assumed name at a lodging house overlooking the Lorraine Motel.
Jerry Ray contends his brother never intended to plead guilty, but his attorney warned him the evidence was very strong, and that he would almost surely get the electric chair.
``The position James was in was worse that the prisoners at the Nuremberg trials were in,'' Jerry Ray declared in a recent interview.
Prosecutors maintain that, over the years, Ray's blame-it-on-Raul story has become a lure for conspiracy theorists. At one time, it attracted Mark Lane, the weaver of conspiracies about President John F. Kennedy's assassination. Ray's attorney, Pepper, laid out his ideas in a book titled ``Orders to Kill.'' Pepper says that director Oliver Stone has tried to secure the book rights for two years. Pepper won't sell, he says, because he doesn't want the case to become a Hollywood sideshow.
For Ray to get a new trial, he must show that new scientific methods prove his innocence. Pepper plans to argue that state-of-the-art ballistics tests cast doubt on whether Ray's rifle fired the shot that killed King.
John Campbell, the assistant district attorney who will argue the case against Ray, says, ``We've looked into everything they've provided, and as of right now, we haven't been able to put together anything that says Ray is not guilty. It's mostly technology that's been around for a long time. I don't see anything new.''
Pepper acknowledges the scientific evidence is merely a legal lever to reopen the case, after which he will present his conspiracy evidence. A new witness, a Houston woman named Glenda Grabow, provides the name of a man known as Raul who allegedly bragged to her about killing King. Pepper purports to link this Raul to a gun-smuggling operation run by New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who allegedly was known to cooperate with the FBI.
While Pepper believes a ``civilian assassin,'' probably Raul himself, murdered King, he contends that Green Beret sharpshooters were also at the Lorraine that day. Pepper says his investigator, Steve Tompkins, interviewed two former Green Berets in Mexico who confirmed they had their weapons trained on the motel.
``I know who Raul is,'' Pepper declared, like the detective in a British mystery story itching to put the story together in front of all the characters. ``I know where he is. I know his phone number. I know his street address.''
Amid the relics of the civil rights era collected at the Lorraine Motel, from Rosa Parks' bus seat to a tape of Marian Anderson singing at the Lincoln Memorial, there is a palpable air of loss. Each visitor is shadowed by the realization that such unity and purposefulness never again coalesced after King's death.
The same aura of sadness surrounds those who support the conspiracy theories.
``He had a prophetic vision,'' Pepper said of King. ``His loss to the country was greater than either Kennedy, because he wasn't replaced. When they got him, all the air went out of the movement for social justice.''
The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who, as delegate to Congress from Washington headed the House inquiry into King's death in the late 1970s, said he is convinced Ray was not the shooter because he simply wasn't powerful enough to strike down King and flee to England without some assistance.
``In the '60s, we lost three of the brightest, most courageous young men this country has ever produced,'' Fauntroy said. ``It's important for people to question whether the same explanation for all three murders is credible - that is, that in all three instances one man, acting alone, would take them out.''
Pepper and Fauntroy, like the SCLC, want to preserve the spirit of the 1960s and to vindicate King's work by showing just how many powerful people wanted him dead. And yet, they insist, their beliefs in conspiracies aren't wishful but real.
In the 29 years since King's death, the public has learned that the FBI bugged his rooms, that U.S. Army surveillance teams tracked his movements, that a Green Beret unit was in Memphis on the day of the assassination, that the elderly owner of a bar near the Lorraine Motel declared on television that he was part of the conspiracy to murder King.
With each revelation, the Ray brothers nodded grimly in assent. This is the shadowy world that James Earl Ray said he knew in 1968, coming into true relief at last.
Prosecutors contend each revelation is distinct and in no way indicative of a conspiracy. James Earl Ray is not so sure. About three weeks ago he authorized his brother to keep him on life support until his last legal option expires. He figures he has nothing to lose; after all, his life is already frozen in the 1960s.
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