THE MYSTERIES OF JAMES EARL RAY

By Jack E. White

What does James Earl Ray really know about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.? The question arises with new urgency because Ray, 68--who pleaded guilty to the murder, got sentenced without a trial to 99 years in prison and then recanted his confession--is in failing health. Over the years he has dropped mysterious hints that King's murder was a conspiracy. Unless he talks soon, whatever information he has will go with him to his grave. That's why King's family last week joined Ray's long-standing campaign to have his day in court. A trial could happen if Ray's lawyer, William Pepper, can persuade a Tennessee court later this month to approve ballistics tests on the high-powered rifle Ray is believed to have used--and prove it's not the murder weapon. As King's son Dexter, who heads the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change in Atlanta, declares, "I don't think a trial--if he's granted a trial--will give us unequivocal truth. But at least in regard to new evidence, we'll know more than we do now." True, but does it take a trial for Ray to start talking?

I've never been one for conspiracy theories, but the King murder is one case that needs reopening. The official story put together by the FBI--that Ray acted alone--is just too flaky. I've never understood how a bumbling petty crook like Ray, who was once nabbed by police as he re-entered the window of a business he had just robbed to steal a few more items, could singlehandedly evade a police dragnet in Memphis, Tennessee, drive a conspicuous white Mustang all the way to Atlanta, then get out of the country and journey as far as Portugal before finally being apprehended in London. He had to have had help--if not with the killing itself, then surely with the getaway. It most likely came from white racist groups, not the FBI or CIA, as the more outlandish conspiracy theorists claim.

Moreover, despite protestations by the FBI about the thoroughness of its investigation, the probe was hasty and incomplete, overlooking evidence that more than one killer was involved. For example, Earl Caldwell, then a reporter for the New York Times, was in his room on the first floor of the Lorraine Motel when the shot rang out. He ran out and saw a man crouching near the edge of a weed-covered embankment at the foot of the flophouse from which the FBI contends Ray fired the fatal shot. This shadowy figure, Caldwell says, seemed to be focusing his attention on the balcony where King's aides were hovering around the fallen civil rights leader. Caldwell lost track of him in the confusion. His account is in line with the story told by Harold ("Cornbread") Carter, who was drinking wine in a cardboard shelter near the flophouse when the killing occurred. Carter claimed a white man with a rifle walked right past him to the foot of the embankment--precisely where Caldwell spotted a crouching figure--and fired at the motel. Yet the FBI never interviewed Caldwell and wrote off Carter's tale as a drunken fantasy.

Ozell Sutton was one of three agents from the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Justice Department who were at the motel that evening. Sutton's roommate at the Lorraine was another CRS agent, James Laue, who rushed from their room onto the balcony with the towel that Ralph David Abernathy used to cushion King's head. According to Sutton, he was never questioned by the FBI and, to the best of his knowledge, neither was Laue, who has since died. Neither of them saw anything, says Sutton, but he's troubled by the fact that the FBI never tried to find out if they might have. In fact, only a few hours after the shooting FBI agents were spreading the word that King's killer had been a single gunman acting alone. Roger Wilkins, then head of the crs, recalls that when he and Attorney General Ramsey Clark were flying to Memphis from Washington the day after the killing, FBI Assistant Director Cartha D. ("Deke") DeLoach "was pushing us hard" on the FBI's lone-gunman theory. How the agency could have been so sure of that so soon is a mystery.

There's no way to know if James Earl Ray can shed any more light on this riddle. He's not exactly a reliable witness. Last week his brother Jerry told the New York Times that a new trial is needed so that James Earl can "clear his name." That's not what Jerry told investigative reporter George McMillan, author of The Making of an Assassin: The Life of James Earl Ray, 21 years ago. According to McMillan, Jerry told him that on the morning of the murder, his brother telephoned him and said he was going to get "the big nigger" that very same day. Like his brother, Jerry later changed his story and claimed James Earl was the fall guy in a plot led by a mystery man named Raoul.

With so many big questions unanswered, James Earl Ray shouldn't wait for a new trial to reveal whatever he knows. Encroaching mortality should be incentive enough. If he has anything to say, he should say it now, while he still can.