Martin Luther King Jr. assassination conspiracy theories

Conspiracy theories about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a prominent leader of the civil rights movement, relate to different accounts of the incident that took place on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Although his guilty plea eliminated the possibility of a trial before a jury, within days, Ray had recanted and claimed his confession was forced.

In 1999, a mixed-race jury at a Memphis civil suit reached a unanimous verdict that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy involving the U.S. government, a person named Raoul, among others.

"[2][3] Martin Luther King Jr. arrived in Memphis, Tennessee to support a strike by black sanitation workers in April 1968.

On April 4, one day after delivering his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech, King was assassinated on the balcony outside room 306 at the Lorraine Motel.

He related what he saw to the police that night, "I could see a person in the thicket on the west side of Mulberry with his back to me, looked like he had a hood over his head.

[12] On the afternoon of April 4, Ray checked into a boarding house in Memphis, with a bar called Jim's Grill on the first floor.

"[2] On April 24, Ray obtained a Canadian passport and purchased plane tickets from Toronto to London, where he was apprehended by the FBI on June 8.

[10] During his short sentencing trial, Ray "leapt to his feet" when the prosecution and his defense lawyer, Percy Foreman, agreed that there was no conspiracy.

Ray's cremated remains were distributed in Ireland because he did not want his final resting place to be in the United States due to "the way the government [had] treated him".

He discussed the theory from his book Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King Jr.

This theory held that a hit team from the 20th Special Forces Group was to kill King if a police sharpshooter failed.

According to an affidavit filed by James Earl Ray's attorneys, unique barrel markings could not be found on the killing bullet.

[10] King expressed his anger towards the FBI in 1964, declaring that it was "completely ineffectual in resolving the continued mayhem and brutality inflicted upon the Negro in the deep South".

[25] Other FBI documents claimed, "King has been described within the Communist Party USA as a true, genuine Marxist-Leninist 'from the top of his head to the tips of his toes".

[33] Despite popular belief that it was intended to convince King to commit suicide, it remains unclear what the intention of a letter which the FBI mailed to King shortly before he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize was, with the full letter, which was made public in 2014, suggesting that the FBI preferred "older leaders" in the civil right movement such as Roy Wilkins.

When the police asked where King was staying, Reverend James Lawson replied, "We have not fully made up our minds."

Shortly after midday, Detective Redditt received a threatening phone call from a woman, telling him that "he was doing the Black people wrong".

Redditt was told that threats had been made on his life and that his family must stay at a local motel under an assumed name.

The Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband ... Mr Ray was set up to take the blame.

"[2] Andrew Young, the former U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor who was at the Lorraine Motel with King when he was assassinated, shares that sentiment: "I would not accept the fact that James Earl Ray pulled the trigger, and that's all that matters.

I'm satisfied beyond a shadow of a doubt that James Earl Ray neither pulled the trigger nor plotted to kill Martin Luther King.

They asserted that it was most likely a conspiracy by southern white supremacist groups, and that Ray was only acting due to a bounty on King's head.

[37] Jowers ran a coffee shop on the first floor of the rooming house from which King was allegedly shot by Ray.

Jowers had remained silent for twenty-five years after King's assassination, but he only produced his confession after Ray's HBO mock trial.

Jowers testified that Ray was only a scapegoat and that Memphis police officer Earl Clark actually fired the fatal shots.

[15] The mixed-race jury that heard the case took only one hour of deliberations to reach a unanimous verdict: that King was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy.

[40] His wife Coretta King said after the verdict, "There is abundant evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband."

It also concluded there was no proof Frank Liberto belonged to the mafia and that, in its opinion, the witnesses that supported Jowers were not credible or contradictory.

[41] Gerald Posner, an investigative journalist who wrote the book Killing the Dream, in which he makes the case that Ray was the killer, said after the verdict: "It distresses me greatly that the legal system was used in such a callous and farcical manner in Memphis.