Chasing King's Killer: The Hunt for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Assassin

On April 16, Ray went to a travel agency to purchase a ticket to London. There, he learned that he didn’t need a Canadian birth certificate, just a sworn statement attesting to his birth in Canada. The agent helpfully explained how to gather the paperwork and told Ray he could pick up his passport and ticket to London in a couple of weeks at the start of May. 

Meanwhile, the FBI was continuing to uncover Ray’s life in California. They tracked down the bartending school he attended and found his graduation picture. Ray’s trick of closing his eyes did make him harder to identify, so an artist at the FBI painted eyes onto the image. While agents continued their efforts to match the fingerprints found in Memphis, the FBI issued an arrest warrant for Ray’s alias, Eric Starvo Galt, and published Wanted posters using Ray’s photo from his bartending course. Then, after days of comparing thousands of fingerprints by hand, the FBI found a match and identified King’s assassin as the escaped convict James Earl Ray. 

The FBI quickly released two more Wanted posters, this time with Ray’s real name. Although identifying the culprit was a huge achievement, the FBI still didn’t know where Ray was. Previous assassins in the United States, including the murderers of four presidents, had been caught very quickly. Swanson notes that King’s murder was just “as high profile as the assassination of any American president” (214), and the public was getting impatient with the delay in catching Ray.

Meanwhile, Ray was still in Canada. When his face appeared on a popular show called “The FBI,” he knew it was time to leave. Ray wanted to fly to Africa but could not afford the roundtrip ticket he needed to travel. Normally, Ray would have staged a robbery to raise the extra money, but he didn’t want police attention, so he bought a ticket to London instead, which turned out to be a misstep.

Ray landed at Heathrow Airport on May 7 and immediately flew to Portugal, where he hoped to sail to Angola and become a mercenary. However, he needed a visa to board the ship, which would take seven days to process. Low on cash, Ray returned to London, renting a small room on the city’s outskirts. He had no clear plan, and his money was running out. He stayed in during the day, afraid of being recognized, and went out for food and supplies at night. Finally, desperate for cash, Ray tried to rob a jewelry store on May 27. However, the couple who owned it attacked Ray and set off the store’s alarm. 

Back in the States, the FBI learned that Ray had visited Canada briefly after escaping prison and asked the Canadian government to see if Ray had applied for a Canadian passport. Officials had to search more than 200,000 applications, but one officer finally noticed a picture resembling Ray.

By the beginning of June, the FBI had learned much about James Earl Ray, but the American public was eager for justice and was losing patience with the FBI’s investigation. Some even began to suspect that King’s murder had been part of a conspiracy. However, the discovery of Ray’s passport application led the FBI to learn about his plane ticket to London. They contacted the officers of Scotland Yard, who continued the search for Ray in London. 

Back in London, Ray was out of money and had no choice but to try another robbery. He entered a bank with his pistol and passed a note to the teller demanding money. The teller passed him the cash but also knocked over a box that made a loud sound. Ray fled with $240, leaving behind the note with his handwriting and a single, identifiable thumbprint. 

On June 4, two months had passed since King’s assassination, and another tragedy hit the United States. Late that night, Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated at a hotel in Los Angeles where he had been celebrating his victory in the California presidential primary. Kennedy was rushed to the hospital, where he died just after midnight on June 6. Swanson describes the tragedy as “a staggering blow almost too great for the nation to bear” (220). Full-color tapestries were woven and sold showing John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, like “an iconic religious triptych of America’s three recently martyred secular saints” (222).

When Ray learned about Kennedy’s assassination, he knew the FBI would be looking for him even harder and decided to leave London immediately. He booked a flight to Brussels, from where he intended to fly to Africa. However, since the FBI had discovered his Canadian passport, they had warned the British police to look for someone called Ramon George Sneyd. When Ray arrived at the airport on June 8, everything went smoothly at first. However, just before the immigration officer let him through, he noticed a second passport sticking out of Ray’s wallet. Ray explained that the second passport was his original one, which had been changed because of a spelling error. The officer was going to let Ray go a second time, but then a Scotland Yard detective stopped him. He thought Ray looked familiar, but he wasn’t sure why.

The detective surprised Ray by asking to search him. Ray had a pistol hidden in his pocket and considered shooting his way out and fleeing. Instead, he agreed to the search. When the detective found the gun, Ray explained that he was going to Africa and “might need it.” Since he had no permit for the weapon, he was arrested and returned to London. In jail, he was fingerprinted and exposed as James Earl Ray. 

Back in the United States, the coverage of Robert Kennedy’s funeral was interrupted by the news that King’s assassin had been apprehended. Arranging Ray’s return to the States took several weeks. Once back in Memphis, Ray refused to confess. He tried to secure a lawyer famous for representing high-profile criminals, thinking he would be safe if tried by an all-white jury. However, the lawyer refused the case. Finally, frightened of the death penalty, Ray pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. 

The public was “stunned,” demanding a trial so all the facts of the murder would come to light. In the absence of a trial, many conspiracy theories developed. Some argued that Ray was not the assassin, while others suggested someone had paid him to commit the crime. Ray himself claimed that he was paid off at one point, but evidence suggested that he worked alone. 

There was no question that Ray was the one who had killed King, and there was no evidence that anyone else was involved in the crime. His ultimate motive for assassinating King “remains a frustrating mystery” (230). For almost a year after he escaped from prison, Ray showed no interest in murdering King. It’s unlikely he committed the crime for fame, as Ray generally “craved anonymity, not attention” (230). Although Ray was a racist and white supremacist, he had never publicly opposed the civil rights movement. Ray was most motivated by money, and there were “wealthy racists” who were rumored to offer substantial cash rewards to anyone who would kill King. However, there is no evidence that Ray ever contacted any such person.

1968 was a traumatic year for the American people. In August of that year, the pop singer Dion released a song called “Abraham, Martin, and John,” referring to the assassinated American leaders. The song “defined a moment in time and captured the mood of a nation” (234) with verses about Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy. 

1968 was “one of the most tumultuous years in American history” (234), yet it ended on a “melancholy note of consolation and hope” (236) as NASA successfully launched the first manned mission to orbit the moon. On Christmas Eve, the crew took turns reading aloud from the Old Testament’s Book of Genesis while their voices were transmitted back to Earth. The wonder of space and human achievement helped unite Americans to “overcome some of the real pain and suffering on Earth” (236). Nevertheless, the question of how the country would move on from King’s death remained.

Swanson addresses the nearly 50 years between King’s assassination and the publication of Chasing King’s Killer. Although many of the issues King fought passionately for in the civil rights movement, like ending racial segregation, have been resolved, other issues persist, and new injustices have come to light. Issues of economic and employment disparity continue, and debate over voter ID laws and racially-motivated shootings reveal the persistent racism in American society. However, King “would have been amazed and delighted” (208) by the election of President Barack Obama in 2008.

Swanson describes three important memorials in Washington, DC: one to Abraham Lincoln, one to John F. Kennedy, and one to King. All three men were assassinated, but their legacies and visions for the United States endure.

Swanson recounts the fate of the text’s other key figures. In 1969, Robert F. Kennedy’s reputation was damaged when his role in wiretapping King was revealed. J. Edgar Hoover passed away in 1972 after serving as the director of the FBI since its inception in 1935. President Lyndon B. Johnson died of a heart attack in 1973. In 1974, King’s mother, Alberta, was tragically murdered by a gunman at Ebenezer Baptist Church. 

James Earl Ray spent the rest of his life in prison. He tried to escape several times and succeeded once, but was captured again just a few days later. Ray constantly changed his story about the assassination, even coming to deny that he killed King. These lies convinced King’s family and one of his sons even visited Ray in prison. Ray died behind bars in 1998.

Ralph Abernathy continued to dedicate himself to Civil Rights work and died in 1990. King’s wife, Coretta, also continued to further her husband’s legacy with Civil Rights activism. She never remarried and passed away in 2006. 

Izola Ware Curry, who had almost succeeded at assassinating King with a letter opener in 1958, lived until 2015. She was 98 years old, frail, and forgotten in a nursing home in the Bronx. However, “she had outlived them all” (245).

Despite his short life, Martin Luther King changed the course of American history. He is widely regarded “as a great hero of our time” (247), and it is impossible to know what the United States might look like today if King had been allowed to continue his work. King believed that the American people would reach “the Promised Land,” and now he might question, “Where do we go from here? How long will it take?” (247).