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Monday April 7 6:46 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuter) - The son of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. says the man his father's confessed assassin has named as King's real killer, an arms smuggler named "Raoul," had been located.
Dexter King met last week with James Earl Ray, who is serving a 99-year prison sentence for the 1968 murder, and said he was convinced the 69-year-old Ray was innocent.
Ray initially confessed to the murder but later recanted, saying his confession was coerced by his lawyers to avoid the death penalty. He said the real killer was "Raoul."
King, speaking on CNN's "Crossfire Sunday" program, said there was "very compelling evidence that should be brought before a court of law."
He said the man Ray had identified as his father's killer had been located, and there were at least three witnesses who had corroborated that Ray was not the shooter.
King declined to identify "Raoul" or reveal his location "for fear of his safety ... (or) that he might leave before being brought to justice."
He said the proper place for presentation of Raoul's identity and other new evidence was a courtroom.
Asked whether his family had signed a movie deal on his father's life with filmmaker Oliver Stone, King said Stone was interested in doing a film about his father's life and the family was considering several possibilities.
He also accused King biographer David Garrow, appearing on the same program, of being a government agent working to prevent the truth about the King assassination from coming out.
"Mr. Garrow, I've been told -- and I am now more than ever convinced -- is an agent for the national security and intelligence forces to distort the truth in this case," King said, adding his belief that Garrow was upset because he was passed over to edit his father's paper.
Garrow said it was "very sad and very embarassing for the King family to be in a position where it's saying things like that" and that the accusation didn't "merit any substantive response."
Ray, who is at Lois DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville, is said to be near death after suffering near-fatal liver failure over the past three months.
Wednesday May 14 10:02 AM EDT
KINGSTON, R.I. (Reuter) - A team of scientists at the University of Rhode Island was scheduled to begin Wednesday testing the rifle allegedly used by James Earl Ray to kill civil rights leader Martin Luther King.
Ray, who is ill and has been incarcerated since he pleaded guilty in the case, has recanted his confession to killing King in 1968. He is hoping the tests will raise enough doubt that he receive a trial.
Ray's lawyer William Pepper said his client "simply wants an honest answer."
In the spring of 1968 the 39-year-old King, the very soul and voice of the American civil rights movement at an epochal time in the struggle for black equality, had come to Memphis to spearhead a protest by striking sanitation workers.
Ray, who had escaped from a Missouri prison the year before, came to the southern river city as well, taking a room at a shabby boarding house overlooking King's motel.
As King prepared to go out for dinner in the early evening of April 4, 1968, a single rifle shot caught him in the face as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel, cutting his spinal cord. He was pronounced dead within an hour.
The shot came from a second-floor bathroom window off the room where Ray had been staying. Nearby, police found a Remington rifle with a high-powered telescopic sight. Ray's fingerprints were on the weapon.
Ray was tracked to Atlanta, Toronto, London, Portugal and finally back to London, where he was arrested by Scotland Yard detectives on June 8 following a bank robbery that netted him only a little over $200.
He confessed to the slaying. That spared him a trial and a possible death penalty but resulted in a 99-year prison sentence.
Thursday May 15 1:19 AM EDT
SOUTH KINGSTON, R.I. (Reuter) - A team of three scientists test-fired a rifle Wednesday in an attempt to determine if it was the gun that killed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
"I felt a strong sense of history," George Reich, one of the criminologists, said after firing the Remington 30.06 rifle into a 900-gallon water tank housed in a converted garage on the University of Rhode Island campus.
The three were hired by lawyers for James Earl Ray, who recanted his confession to the 1968 assassination of King and hopes the ballistics tests can win him a new trial.
Ray's fingerprints were found on the high-powered rifle, but it was never proven to be the murder weapon. Prior tests in 1968 and 1978 were inconclusive.
Reich, of the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory in Long Island, New York, fired the first two copper-jacketed bullets into the water-filled tank and was immediately drenched.
His colleagues, URI criminologist Robert Hathaway and firearms expert Marshall Robinson, each fired two more rounds, as a sheriff's deputy, defense lawyers and journalists looked on. The testing was to continue until 18 rounds had been fired, the scientists said.
The weapon, kept in an evidence locker in the Shelby County Clerk's office in Memphis, Tenn., for most of the past 29 years, was amazingly clean, the researchers said.
The test bullets and a bullet pulled from King's body will be sent to a Pennsylvania laboratory, where they will be examined under a high-powered electronic microscope.
"There very well could be a better chance of observing this under the new technology," Hathaway told reporters. "And here again, it's just an option. Let's take science one step further and see if yes or no, there is something that can be done."
Under Tennessee law, a closed case may be re-opened if there is a reasonable possibility that technology not available at the time of the crime could prove a person's innocence.
But it is uncertain whether Ray will ever get his day in court. The 69-year-old drifter and small-time crook is seriously ill with liver disease.