Pointing Toward a Plot

摘要

For years it's seemed the most clear-cut assassination of the 1960s: James Earl Ray, a racist ex-con, killed Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tenn., on April 4,1968. One year later, faced with apossible death sentence, Ray pleaded guilty before trial in exchange for life imprisonment. Within days he changed his mind, but the courts refused to grant him a trial. Aside from one brief jailbreak, Ray has spent the last 28 years in prison. Now 68, Ray is near death, suffering from liver disease—but he still wants a trial. In Ray's mind, prosecutors could not now prove'his guilt. And in an odd twist, a growing number of King's own relatives and former aides agree that Ray should now be given the hearing he knowingly refused in 1969— largely because they think there may have been a government conspiracy to kill King.