WEBVTT - The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Part II 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:10.320 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:13.840 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:17.280 And this is part two of our two parter. I'm 0:00:17.320 --> 0:00:19.919 the assassination of Martin Luther King Junior. 0:00:20.520 --> 0:00:23.479 That's right where we locked off with Part one was 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:27.840 the funeral of Martin Luther King Junior. And we're going 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.040 to pick up now with the investigation and the manhunt. 0:00:30.800 --> 0:00:33.279 And while we're talking about that, we might as well 0:00:33.280 --> 0:00:37.159 go ahead and say it's still perhaps the largest manhunt 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.800 and FBI history, depending on who you ask, cost a 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.000 couple of million bucks in those dollars, thirty five hundred investigators. 0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:48.319 And it was all just a bit awkward because, as 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.600 we all know, or maybe some people don't know this, 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:55.200 but the FBI had been tracking Martin Luther King Junior 0:00:55.280 --> 0:00:59.000 since nineteen fifty six, so for twelve years under a 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:03.000 program called racial Matters, Racial matters. 0:01:02.880 --> 0:01:05.040 And then I don't think they meant like matters like 0:01:05.280 --> 0:01:06.240 race matters. 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:07.880 No, I think they meant the other way, like the 0:01:07.920 --> 0:01:08.640 matters of race. 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:09.240 Right. 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:12.880 And then in nineteen sixty three they started tapping his 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:17.679 bones under the Communist infiltration program and Jay Edgar Hoover 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:20.600 was still around at the time, because it seems like 0:01:20.640 --> 0:01:22.959 he was there for three hundred years. Yeah, and he 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.200 didn't like Martin Luther King Junior. He called the most 0:01:25.319 --> 0:01:28.800 notorious liar in the country publicly at a press conference 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:33.440 because King had been criticizing the FBI because they, you know, 0:01:33.480 --> 0:01:36.039 weren't protecting the civil rights of black Americans, and so. 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:37.200 Hoover didn't like the guy. 0:01:37.280 --> 0:01:40.360 Yet he was the guy kind of at the top 0:01:40.480 --> 0:01:42.000 of this huge investigation. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:47.520 I read Martin Luther King's cool response to Jaegar Hoover 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:52.400 calling the most notorious liar. Get bent, No, no, He 0:01:52.520 --> 0:01:57.320 said that Jayegar Hoover must be under tremendous pressure to 0:01:57.400 --> 0:02:00.840 have said such a thing. Was sympathetic. 0:02:01.120 --> 0:02:03.080 Jeez, let's talk about the high road man. 0:02:03.560 --> 0:02:04.480 Yeah for sure. 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:06.880 All right, So, the FBI gets a hold of that 0:02:07.160 --> 0:02:10.760 thirty out six rifle that was determined to be the 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:14.880 murder weapon. They couldn't actually conclusively link that bullet to 0:02:14.880 --> 0:02:18.360 the gun because the shell had been fragmented, but it 0:02:18.440 --> 0:02:22.240 was the same caliber, and everybody was like, come on, 0:02:22.480 --> 0:02:25.000 it's the gun. Can we all just agree to that? 0:02:25.520 --> 0:02:27.919 How many rifles do you guys? Have just laying around 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:28.919 in Memphis that day. 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.799 Yeah, dumped minutes after by a guy who sped away 0:02:31.840 --> 0:02:32.880 in a Mustang. 0:02:32.840 --> 0:02:35.800 Right hundreds of just one hundred feet or so away 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:40.880 from the murder scene. So yeah, they couldn't conclusively link 0:02:40.919 --> 0:02:43.600 that to the gun, but they were able to trace 0:02:43.639 --> 0:02:46.000 the serial number, and they traced it back to a 0:02:46.000 --> 0:02:51.120 sporting goods store in Birmingham, Alabama called Aeromarine Supply, and 0:02:51.720 --> 0:02:54.160 they confirmed that it had been purchased just a few 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:56.760 days before MLK was assassinated. 0:02:57.240 --> 0:03:01.600 Yeah, along with a scope and a gentleman who said 0:03:01.639 --> 0:03:03.840 that he was going hunting on a hunting trip with 0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:04.400 his brother. 0:03:05.600 --> 0:03:08.800 Okay, because yeah, you have to you have to be 0:03:08.919 --> 0:03:11.800 like that, that's believable, right, when you're buying a gun, 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:13.320 you gotta have a cover story. 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:16.600 Yeah, and under an alias, under the name Harvey Lomyer. 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:22.760 Right. So, two weeks after the killing, they figured out 0:03:22.800 --> 0:03:26.440 that the prints on the gun matched those of a 0:03:26.480 --> 0:03:30.280 guy named James Earl Ray. And at the time, James 0:03:30.400 --> 0:03:34.080 Orl Ray had been an escape convict from a state 0:03:34.120 --> 0:03:37.360 prison in Missouri for basically a year, he'd been on 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:40.760 the run. So now we had a suspect and we 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:43.600 had photos, and they started circulating it around to people 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:48.480 who had putatively interacted with James Orlray, including the guy 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:52.440 at the aeromarine supply store who sold him the gun. 0:03:53.000 --> 0:03:55.600 Yeah, so he was like, that's the guy. 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:59.920 There are witnesses we mentioned earlier in part one at 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:03.360 Bessie Brewer boarding house. They also looked at pictures and 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.360 they were like, yeah, that's the guy we saw running away. 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.520 And they went to the hotel clerk or the boarding 0:04:09.560 --> 0:04:11.560 house clerk and they said, yeah, this guy signed in. 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:15.160 That's him for sure, under the name John Willard. So 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:20.560 he had multiple aliases, and they that portable radio that 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.040 they found in the bundle had a scratched out ID 0:04:23.200 --> 0:04:25.560 number and they eventually figured out that that was his 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:30.360 his prison radio. It had his his inmate number on it. 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:32.880 So he escaped prison, was like, I'm taking my radio. 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:37.120 It seems pretty conclusive that James o'ray would have been 0:04:37.200 --> 0:04:40.480 the shooter, right, Yeah, So they issued an indictment for 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.400 his arrest for the murder of Martin Luther King Junior 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:47.119 on May seventh, a couple months after or Noah month 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:52.280 after MLK was murdered, and an international manhunt began I 0:04:52.279 --> 0:04:55.320 know the FBI was definitely concentrating on the United States, 0:04:55.560 --> 0:04:57.960 but they didn't rule out the possibility that he had 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:00.760 started to go abroad, and so they he issued it 0:05:00.920 --> 0:05:05.840 far and wide, a wanted poster with his data and 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:07.039 his photos on it. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:09.919 So the FBI started tracking his movements. 0:05:09.960 --> 0:05:13.920 He's got all these aliases in that year that he 0:05:14.000 --> 0:05:17.520 was on the LAMB. After the shooting, he was into 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:22.200 politics for a little while, supporting Alabama Governor George Wallace 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:25.960 his presidential campaign. He was in la for a little while, 0:05:26.120 --> 0:05:29.600 he took dance lessons, He went to Bartending School. He 0:05:29.640 --> 0:05:32.480 lived in Mexico for like a month or so, trying 0:05:32.480 --> 0:05:36.720 to become a pornography director under the name Eric Salvo Galt. 0:05:37.800 --> 0:05:41.200 That didn't work out, so he left Mexico came back 0:05:41.240 --> 0:05:43.640 to the States, and apparently in like the month or 0:05:43.720 --> 0:05:48.279 so before the assassination, he had been stalking King and 0:05:48.360 --> 0:05:50.159 had followed him from Atlanta to Memphis. 0:05:50.760 --> 0:05:55.480 Yeah, so it seemed like the month before he murdered 0:05:55.480 --> 0:05:58.520 Martin Luther King Junior. He suddenly got that idea in 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.080 his head because none of his movement suggested that he 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:05.640 had even focused on Martin Luther King at all up 0:06:05.640 --> 0:06:12.760 to that point. After the assassination, James ro'ray fled to Toronto. 0:06:13.000 --> 0:06:18.400 It's eventually where he landed first. Sorry, I'm sorry Toronto. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:24.680 I know that too, thanks Chuck. So at the time, apparently, 0:06:24.720 --> 0:06:29.719 if you were an American criminal in Canada, they were very, 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:32.919 very trusting at the time. They basically said, if you 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:35.920 swear that you're a Canadian citizen, you give us your name, 0:06:36.000 --> 0:06:39.240 we'll send you a passport. And that's what crooks would do. 0:06:39.279 --> 0:06:41.520 They would go to Canada when they were on the run. 0:06:41.960 --> 0:06:45.120 They would look up old newspapers at the library and 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:48.400 find birth announcements from about the same time that they 0:06:48.440 --> 0:06:51.640 were born, finding people who were their age, and they 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:54.240 would get their name. They would get their mother's maiden 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:58.000 name sometimes And apparently you didn't even need that. You 0:06:58.160 --> 0:07:00.680 just fill out this form, say your name, say yes, 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:03.880 I swear I'm a Canadian citizen, and mail off for 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:06.920 a passport which would be mailed back to you too sweet. 0:07:07.440 --> 0:07:12.320 And now you had a fraudulent, but official and legitimate 0:07:12.400 --> 0:07:14.760 passport that you could use to travel the world with 0:07:15.080 --> 0:07:16.480 under a new alias. 0:07:16.720 --> 0:07:20.600 Yeah, and this time his alias was because you know, 0:07:20.600 --> 0:07:22.040 it was a real dude. In fact, the guy was 0:07:22.080 --> 0:07:25.800 a cop. Pretty ironic. But his name was Raymond George. 0:07:26.680 --> 0:07:29.080 I guess sneid sn e y d. 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:32.560 I heard snaid from somebody. Want. I don't know if 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:33.440 that was definitive. 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:35.360 Okay, well it's good that we spelled it out because 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.160 that'll come into play in a minute here. But from 0:07:38.240 --> 0:07:41.520 Toronto he went to London. He was actually in London 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:43.960 a couple of times. He passed through London on his 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:47.360 way to Lisbon after that first flight from Canada. And 0:07:47.440 --> 0:07:49.680 he was going to Lisbon because he was hoping to 0:07:49.680 --> 0:07:54.200 go to Africa before the murder, and then afterward, his 0:07:54.560 --> 0:07:58.400 long term plan was to go to Rhodesia now Zimbabwe 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:03.320 because in nineteen sixty a five percent white minority there 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:08.400 had assumed independence from the UK and he was to 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:13.320 go to Rhodesia and I'm gonna integrate into this small 0:08:13.320 --> 0:08:15.480 white minority and become a paid mercenary. 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.240 Yeah. So, I mean he went to Lisbon hoping to 0:08:19.280 --> 0:08:24.160 secure passage to Africa, and while he was there, he's like, 0:08:24.200 --> 0:08:27.120 I got a great idea, surely that people are on 0:08:27.200 --> 0:08:29.480 my trail, that Feds are on my trail now, and 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:31.880 they might even know my alias, so I need a 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.000 new alias. I'm going to go to the Canadian consulate 0:08:35.040 --> 0:08:37.240 here in Lisbon. I'm going to tell them that they 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.640 misspelled my name on my passport. So he went there 0:08:40.760 --> 0:08:43.600 and he told the Canadian consulate there that his last 0:08:43.679 --> 0:08:46.320 name actually is spelled with an A, not a D. 0:08:47.080 --> 0:08:49.880 And they're like, okay, whatever, here's your new passport with 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:53.199 your last name spelled correctly. And he had a new alias, 0:08:54.000 --> 0:08:57.800 Ramon George Snee Yeah, instead of Snade. So there's one 0:08:57.880 --> 0:09:01.400 letter change. And apparently that's satisfied James Orlray that he 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:02.560 had a new alias. 0:09:02.640 --> 0:09:05.800 Now, yeah, we'll get to who Ray was a little bit. 0:09:05.880 --> 0:09:09.640 But the one takeaway from everything that I've read is 0:09:09.720 --> 0:09:11.479 he was not a very smart person. 0:09:11.559 --> 0:09:14.760 Not a criminal mastermind. He was no brain from Pinky 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:15.640 in the Brain No. 0:09:16.080 --> 0:09:19.120 Also, because he did not throw that first passport away 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:23.240 and that was would be his undoing. He like, like 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:25.840 we said, he could not secure that passage to Africa, 0:09:25.880 --> 0:09:28.440 so he went back to London to figure out what 0:09:28.480 --> 0:09:31.680 his next move was. He called a This is a 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:33.439 sort of a weird part of the story. He called 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.600 a reporter named Ian Colvin at the Daily Mail's foreign desk, 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:41.400 and I don't know if this guy had written articles 0:09:41.400 --> 0:09:42.880 about it mercenaries or something. 0:09:43.040 --> 0:09:44.800 I don't know either, That's the only thing I can 0:09:44.840 --> 0:09:45.280 figure out. 0:09:45.280 --> 0:09:47.800 Because he called this random reporter and said, hey, you 0:09:47.840 --> 0:09:52.560 got any contacts for these mercenaries. Colvian was like, no, 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.120 but if you're I guess, if you're looking to get 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:58.959 into that kind of thing, check into Brussels, because that's 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.800 where he might have better luck. It's a very strange 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:03.960 little side part of this story, for sure. 0:10:04.000 --> 0:10:06.560 It really is. So James Earl Ray was like, thank you, 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:10.760 thank you much and starts booking a flight two Brussels 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:14.679 from London. And it was in London on his way 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:18.080 to Brussels that he finally got nabbed. But not because 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:22.360 somebody noticed his mugshot or wanted poster and saw that 0:10:22.440 --> 0:10:25.760 he was him, but because he had those two Canadian 0:10:25.760 --> 0:10:28.160 passports and he had him in the same wallet. 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:30.319 Yeah, two different names, yes. 0:10:30.240 --> 0:10:32.920 And the passport checker noticed that he had two passports 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:36.320 and asked him about it. And I guess a cop 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.559 was standing nearby and stepped over and was like, hey, 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:40.360 why don't you join us in the back room. We've 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.360 got some questions for you, and that was it for 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:48.959 Ramon George Snade Snea. Yeah, he was quickly identified as 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:52.439 James Rolray. He had a thirty eight caliber pistol tucked 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.640 in the back of his pants going to board a plane. 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.160 You could do that back then any metals detectors. 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:02.240 Yeah, as long as you didn't shoot it off because 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:06.760 you were excited during takeoff in the plane that they 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:07.800 didn't really care. 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:11.400 Yeah, So he was confirmed as James Lray. He was 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:15.040 taken into custody and on July nineteenth was flown back 0:11:15.600 --> 0:11:17.959 to the US to stand trial. And that seems like 0:11:18.080 --> 0:11:25.239 a great place for our first break. 0:11:51.320 --> 0:11:55.120 Okay, So James Arrol Ray's been taken into custody and 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.600 he's flown back to the United States on July nineteenth 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:03.480 to stand trial, and the whole world is watching. They 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:07.240 want to know why the man who assassinated Martin Luther 0:12:07.360 --> 0:12:11.640 King Junior, did that, Why he murdered MLK, What was 0:12:11.760 --> 0:12:14.640 the point, what was the reason. They also wanted to 0:12:14.679 --> 0:12:17.440 know if he had been working with other people, because 0:12:17.480 --> 0:12:21.560 from the outset people were the public was just openly 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:25.880 skeptical that there was some conspiracy that had resulted in 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:31.280 mlk's murder and the world got none of that because 0:12:31.960 --> 0:12:37.040 James o'ray pled guilty instead of going to trial. And 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:39.840 there was a paper reporting on the case who was 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:41.680 at this hearing where he played guilty and said that 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.760 it brought a shockingly swift ending to the case and 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:49.160 everybody was like, what just happened? And that was essentially 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:52.560 that there was no trial ever and there were no 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:56.000 facts presented, so it was just like, yep, I did 0:12:56.040 --> 0:12:58.040 it send me to jail? Yeah. 0:12:58.240 --> 0:13:02.040 His attorney at the time, Percy Foreman, said, well, you know, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:04.360 if you go to a jury trial, you're probably going 0:13:04.440 --> 0:13:09.000 to get a death sentence because of you know, because 0:13:09.040 --> 0:13:11.920 of the murder and its impact on the country. Basically 0:13:12.000 --> 0:13:15.040 like you're not going to avoid the electric chair. So 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:20.800 if you plead guilty, you can get the maximum life sentence, 0:13:21.320 --> 0:13:25.400 which is ninety nine years in prison in Tennessee. And 0:13:25.840 --> 0:13:30.160 he said that's probably the right route to take, so 0:13:30.240 --> 0:13:33.040 Ray took it. It was a two hour affair in court. 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:36.240 No one got the satisfaction of hearing any of the evidence. 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:39.800 It also meant he wouldn't be eligible for parole for 0:13:39.840 --> 0:13:42.880 thirty years, whereas if he had gotten a life sentence 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:44.640 and not the ninety nine. He could have gotten out 0:13:44.640 --> 0:13:48.480 in twelve and a half, but just three days after 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.719 he pleaded guilty, he recanted and tried for the rest 0:13:51.760 --> 0:13:54.600 of his life to get a new trial, tried to escape. 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.040 He did escape. In fact, if you listened to our 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.960 Barkley Marathon episode, he escaped success for three days in 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:04.319 nineteen seventy seven and was picked up in Brushy Mountain 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:06.960 where that race takes place. But he would eventually die 0:14:06.960 --> 0:14:10.120 in prison in nineteen ninety eight at the age of seventy, 0:14:10.679 --> 0:14:13.360 which would also been the year he was first eligible 0:14:13.400 --> 0:14:13.960 for parole. 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.959 Yes, and you said earlier that we were going to 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.880 talk a little bit about James Rolray in his criminal career. 0:14:21.120 --> 0:14:21.640 That's right. 0:14:22.560 --> 0:14:25.280 So he was born in Illinois, but mostly grew up 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:28.560 in Missouri, and he was the oldest of nine kids, 0:14:28.760 --> 0:14:32.720 and his family was impoverished. His father was a convict 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.600 himself who didn't work very often. His mother was, as 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:40.000 James Earlray put it, a woman of very limited intelligence, 0:14:40.080 --> 0:14:43.720 barely able to communicate, and she also drank very heavily. 0:14:44.760 --> 0:14:46.960 And there was a report card from grade school that 0:14:47.080 --> 0:14:50.720 said his attitude towards regulations was that he violates all 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:54.240 of them. This was him as a kid, and he 0:14:54.240 --> 0:14:56.920 didn't improve very much as an adult. He dropped out 0:14:56.920 --> 0:14:58.960 of high school at sixteen, worked for a while, and 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:00.080 then he joined the arm. 0:15:00.520 --> 0:15:03.040 Yeah, he joined the army. Yeah, he dropped out of 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.560 high school at sixteen. King was in college at fifteen. 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:10.280 To just contrast the two situations, and forty sixty he 0:15:10.400 --> 0:15:14.320 joined the army after being laid off from his civilian 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:19.000 job in the army. He was charged with drunkenness with 0:15:19.080 --> 0:15:22.640 breaking arrest. He served three months in the army clink 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.080 hard labor for that. He was discharged less than honorably 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:31.320 for quote ineptness and lack of adaptability to military service 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.000 in nineteen forty eight. So just a couple of years 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:37.280 in the army. And then was a drifter and a 0:15:37.280 --> 0:15:41.280 petty criminal who was in and out of jail over 0:15:41.360 --> 0:15:41.800 and over. 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:45.840 Yeah, and he was serving a twenty year sentence for 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.680 robbery in Missouri. He started at nineteen sixty when he 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.720 broke out in nineteen sixty seven and began that year 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.720 on the lamb that culminated in the assassination of MLK. 0:15:57.400 --> 0:15:59.960 Yeah, and you know, it was really a twenty year 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:04.120 prison sentence for everything because it was a pretty small 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.440 like robbery at Kroger that wouldn't have gotten a twenty year. 0:16:07.480 --> 0:16:10.080 But he had other armed robbery convictions, He had mail 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:14.720 fraud convictions and escape attempts, so it was like, hey, 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:16.360 we're just going to try and put you away for 0:16:16.400 --> 0:16:20.480 a while. And if you're curious how he escaped, he 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:23.720 hid in a bread delivery truck that was leaving the prison. 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:27.480 I heard that too. Yeah, you would have found me 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:29.720 eating loaves of bread too, with. 0:16:29.640 --> 0:16:31.720 Your little portable radio prison radio. 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:36.480 Just snaffing my fingers with a mouthful of bread. So 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:41.720 his criminal history, just because your lifetime criminal doesn't mean 0:16:41.760 --> 0:16:44.440 you're good at it. Yeah, And James Earl Ray is 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.520 an excellent example of that time. Magazine described him back 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:52.160 in nineteen seventy seven as a bungling, petty gunman and 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.520 burglar whose life of crime has mostly been one fizzle 0:16:55.640 --> 0:16:59.200 after another. And they weren't lying because some of his 0:16:59.240 --> 0:17:01.360 greatest hits that they went on to site was that 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:07.400 at one crime scene he dropped identification, He dropped his ID. Yeah, 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:12.960 one hold up in a neighborhood he got lost drive 0:17:13.440 --> 0:17:16.240 as he was making his getaway, ended up back driving 0:17:16.320 --> 0:17:19.439 back into the neighborhood where he just robbed somebody and 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.160 was caught by the police who'd arrived on the scene 0:17:22.200 --> 0:17:22.600 by then. 0:17:23.280 --> 0:17:25.600 Yeah, who are apparently surprised. I imagine they were like, 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:26.800 oh wait a minute. 0:17:26.680 --> 0:17:27.640 Is that him coming back? 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:29.440 Get a load of this guy. 0:17:30.280 --> 0:17:35.520 Another time he came back to re rob a place 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:39.160 he had already robbed, re entered the window to get 0:17:39.200 --> 0:17:39.840 more stuff. 0:17:40.320 --> 0:17:43.200 That is a no, no, that is crime. One oh one. 0:17:43.680 --> 0:17:46.120 Yeah, like, get out of there. I'm not a criminal, 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:47.200 but I would get out of there. 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:50.320 So even when he was in London too, when he 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:55.280 was on the run after assassinating MLK, he carried out 0:17:55.480 --> 0:17:57.959 not one, but two bungle robberies. 0:17:58.080 --> 0:17:58.720 It's crazy. 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.800 One was a bank and he managed to only get 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:03.880 one hundred pounds from a bank. 0:18:04.280 --> 0:18:04.720 Yeah. 0:18:04.840 --> 0:18:08.040 The other was a jewelry store. He got nothing because 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:10.600 the owner knocked the gun out of his hand and 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:13.080 pressed the alarm. So James Lreay ran away. 0:18:13.560 --> 0:18:16.320 And these are Londoners, they're not used to knocking guns 0:18:16.320 --> 0:18:18.159 out of hands, and this guy still managed to do it. 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:19.399 That's right, you know. 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.240 Yeah, he just was not a very good criminal, even 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:24.159 though he tried it over and over again, and he 0:18:24.240 --> 0:18:26.840 was successful. I mean, like he did successfully rob people 0:18:26.880 --> 0:18:29.040 and break into places and all that. But if you 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.440 put it all together, he didn't have like a violent 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:36.120 criminal rap sheet. He was just kind of this petty criminal. 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.160 That's how he supported himself in life as a criminal 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:43.720 who went from that to murdering one of the most 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:50.359 important Americans in history in one single action, seemingly overnight. 0:18:50.880 --> 0:18:54.320 And a lot of people say that just doesn't add up. 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:58.800 Yeah, and you know, we don't lend our show than 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:03.199 ourselves to conspira. We're not conspiracy minded generally, but you 0:19:03.240 --> 0:19:07.200 don't have to be to look at this and say 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.359 he probably didn't act alone. It just doesn't add up, 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:13.800 Like you said, So, there have been congressional committees over 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:17.120 the years. They have been family members of Martin Luther 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:20.600 King Junior that said, yeah, this was this was part 0:19:20.640 --> 0:19:25.120 of a conspiracy. There's never been any solid agreement on 0:19:25.359 --> 0:19:27.439 what kind of conspiracy and who else was behind it. 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:30.320 And we're not going to get into the nitty gritty 0:19:30.359 --> 0:19:32.080 of all the there's a lot of there's a lot 0:19:32.119 --> 0:19:35.320 of discounted stuff and stuff that rabbit holes. 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:36.520 He shouldn't even go down. 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:38.960 Yeah, So we're not going to get into those, but 0:19:39.080 --> 0:19:42.840 we are going to talk about the legit idea of 0:19:42.880 --> 0:19:46.720 a conspiracy and who could have been involved, like for real? 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:50.199 Yeah, because again, how did this petty criminal plan an 0:19:50.240 --> 0:19:55.000 assassination that he successfully carried out and then also panic 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.280 in a panic like dropped us the murder weapon and 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.800 ran off in a place where it be found within 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.240 a minute or two. Where did he get the funding 0:20:04.440 --> 0:20:07.600 that he would need to support himself for a year 0:20:07.680 --> 0:20:11.359 on the lamb and then to travel abroad to flee 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.480 after the assassination. These are just a few of the 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:18.280 questions people have come up with, and the obvious solution 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.840 is that he had help in some way, shape or form. 0:20:22.240 --> 0:20:24.879 But another really big question that I think that a 0:20:24.880 --> 0:20:28.480 lot of people overlook is why, like why did he 0:20:28.840 --> 0:20:32.400 murder Martin Luther King Junior. He wasn't known as a fanatic. 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:35.800 He was a racist, and like we said, he supported 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:40.200 George Wallace for his segregationists presidential bid, but he wasn't 0:20:40.359 --> 0:20:43.320 He wasn't like a fanatic, and also like he didn't 0:20:43.359 --> 0:20:47.280 have any particularly deep emotions one way or another for MLK. 0:20:47.960 --> 0:20:51.240 He just was his murderer. And it just does not 0:20:51.560 --> 0:20:52.720 make a lot of sense. 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:57.439 Yeah, So after he retracted that confession, just days after 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:01.199 his conviction, he started saying, I was set up, and 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:01.840 I was set. 0:21:01.680 --> 0:21:02.760 Up by a guy named Raoul. 0:21:03.480 --> 0:21:06.720 So supposedly he had a lot of interactions with this 0:21:06.880 --> 0:21:09.679 Rol guy, but he went from describing him as a 0:21:09.760 --> 0:21:13.000 Latino with blonde hair to a French Canadian with red hair. 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:17.120 Nobody ever witnessed him with anyone that looked like either 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:19.840 one of those people. A lot of people think there 0:21:19.920 --> 0:21:23.080 is no Raoul at all, but he still could have 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:24.960 had help, you know, from someone else. 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:30.320 Yeah. So you mentioned congressional committees that concluded that there 0:21:30.440 --> 0:21:34.280 was some sort of conspiracy. One of them was House 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:38.360 Select Committee on Assassinations in nineteen seventy eight. They said 0:21:38.359 --> 0:21:41.280 that there was a likelihood of conspiracy in the assassination 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:45.040 of doctor King, but they didn't think it like Raoul 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:48.200 was involved or anything like that. It was much more 0:21:48.320 --> 0:21:52.000 pedestrian and mundane, and in my opinion then much more 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:55.680 likely as far as the conspiracy theories go. But they 0:21:55.960 --> 0:22:01.680 put it on two prominent but shady Saint Louis's I'm 0:22:01.680 --> 0:22:03.840 pretty sure that's what you call people from Saint Louis. 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:07.800 One was a former stockbroker who became a motel owner. 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:10.320 His name was John R. Kaufman. The other was a 0:22:10.359 --> 0:22:14.040 patent lawyer in town named John H. Sutherland, and both 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:16.520 of them were dead by the time the committee hearings 0:22:16.520 --> 0:22:22.040 were held in nineteen seventy eight, but they supposedly put 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:27.240 a bounty on mlk's head, and James E. O'ray, whose 0:22:27.240 --> 0:22:29.800 brother was a tavern owner in Saint Louis at the time, 0:22:30.160 --> 0:22:32.719