ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 28, 1997 TAG: 9703280063
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NASHVILLE, TENN.
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
``My family believes you,'' said Dexter King, who was 7 when his father was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., in 1968.
A gaunt and frail James Earl Ray looked the son of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the eyes Thursday and said: ``I had nothing to do with shooting your father.''
Dexter King responded, ``I believe you.''
The extraordinary meeting in a state prison hospital was the first ever between the two men and also marked the first time the King family has publicly backed Ray's claim of innocence.
Ray, 69, was brought to the meeting room in a wheelchair, and at times mumbled and rambled. King, 36, sat just three feet away, listening patiently and speaking softly to a man dying of liver disease.
``My family believes you,'' said King, who was 7 when his father was assassinated in 1968. ``We are going to do everything in our power to try and make sure that justice will prevail.''
The family had already joined the call for a trial for Ray, saying that's the only way they'll know the truth about King's death.
King was shot as he stood on a hotel balcony in Memphis, where he had arrived to help direct a sanitation workers' strike. Ray pleaded guilty to the slaying a year later and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, avoiding a possible death sentence. He recanted a few days later and has been proclaiming his innocence ever since.
Ray got up from his wheelchair to shake hands for the meeting before a roomful of reporters. The moment was made more eerie by King's striking resemblance to his late father.
After 25 minutes, the reporters were ushered out and the two continued to talk privately.
``There's something about looking another person in the eyes and asking them a question, spiritually speaking, to get a feel first hand,'' King said.
The question: ``Did you kill my father?'' Ray's answer: ``No, no, I didn't. No.''
Ray said the case has been clouded over the years with misinformation and ``the only thing that should be relevant is the facts of the case.''
``Maybe you can come to conclusions. I think it could be done today,'' he said. ``I don't think it could be done 30 years ago.''
King told reporters his family had always felt the truth of the civil rights leader's assassination was being suppressed, but didn't want to deal with it.
It was Ray's deteriorating health and the urging of the inmate's family that persuaded King to look into the evidence collected by Ray's attorney.
Ray contends the rifle found at the murder scene with his fingerprints on it was put there by conspirators trying to frame him. Ray said he brought the rifle to Memphis on instructions from a shadowy gun runner he knew only as Raoul. Authorities have never established that Raoul existed.
``I guess in some strange way our destinies - that of my father's and that of yourself - somehow got tied up together, and we still don't feel as a family that we have all of the questions answered,'' King said.
King said afterward he felt the meeting completed a spiritual circle.
``It was a very moving moment,'' he said, ``because I felt where he was coming from.''
LENGTH: Medium: 69 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Dexter King, son of the Rev. Martinby CNBLuther King Jr., says goodbye to James Earl Ray on Thursday. color.