JAMES
EARL RAY
MARTIN
LUTHER KING, Jr. (MLK) HOMICIDE
JAMES EARL RAY wrote this letter in longhand about the MLK Homicide and his Guilty Plea NOVEMBER 1995. It has never been published before.
(Continued on next page)
(Continued from JAMES EARL RAY letter, page # 1)
PAGE # 2 of the JAMES EARL RAY letter.
TEXT OF LETTER
In respect to the MLK homicide, there was never a trial in the case. The government gained control of the attorney representing me, Percy Foreman.
Without going into a lot of details, Mr. Foreman maneuvered me into a plea of guilty after he had me sign numerous literary contracts, then signing all of the proceeds over to him under the guise he would use the money to finance a trial in the MLK case.
Foreman obtained
the plea via various threats: If I
didnt enter the plea, the government would probably try my brother Jerry, for
conspiring in the MLK shooting, that my father might be returned to an
From hindsight I could have, and should have, gotten physical with Foreman and thereby avoided the plea, but I didnt obviously.
Further, except for me, no one connected with the case wanted a trial: the prosecutor and judge, after the plea, informed the news media that they were concerned I may have been acquitted by a jury, while others, including Mrs. King were concerned that the FBI wiretaps of MLK would be aired at a trial. As for the wiretaps they along with hundreds of cubic feet of documents are still classified. But if there had been a trial, all the material could have been examined by counsel representing me.
As to responsibility for the MLK murder, I have contended in law suits that Cartha DeLoach was involved in the MLK murder, prior to the shooting, DeLoach played a major role in the FBI harassment of MLK. Then after MLKs death, DeLoach played a major role in investigating the case. He was also into politics. For instance, he was FBI liaison to President Johnson, for whom DeLoach carried out political assignments. DeLoach also met with N.A.A.C.P. executive director Roy Wilkens to decide ways to remove King from the national picture. -- see attachment.
The MLK case probably wont be resolved until the MLK murder records are unsealed.
Sincerely: James Earl Ray
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. and LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON meet over
coffee in the OVAL OFFICE of the WHITE HOUSE
Photograph by Yoichi Okamoto. This historic photograph was reproduced by photographer Robert McMahan, who did extensive research on the subject. The original is on display at the Lyndon Baines Johnson library.
DEXTER KING shakes hands with Inmate JAMES EARL RAY in the
Nashville, Tennessee Prison Conference Room
Dexter
King :
I want to ask for the record: Did you
kill
my father?
James
Earl Ray :
No, I didnt
no, no.
Dexter
King :
As awkward as it may seem, I believe you
and my family
believes you and we will do
everything in
our power to see you prevail.
INTRODUCTION
On
After
one of the most extensive international manhunts in the history of our criminal
justice system
James Earl Ray was apprehended in
He
agreed to a plea bargain deal and was sentenced to serve a term of 99 years in
prison. Days later he wrote to Judge W.
Preston Battle, who presided over his original hearing, and requested a new
trial. The judge was informed that he
would plead innocent.
James
Earl Ray inmate # 65477 had been incarcerated for over a quarter of a
century when I first wrote to him. My
name is Michael Gabriel and the year was 1994.
One
week later he sent a reply. I wrote a
second letter to see if he would do the same and I was hooked. Fast forward twelve months and by then I had a
stack of more than fifty letters that James had written to me.
During
the next year
the letters became phone calls and the phone calls became
visits. My first visit with James was in
Riverbend Prison
a maximum-security penitentiary in
On
Christmas 1996
James Earl Ray was taken by ambulance in a coma to the prison
ward of the
James
was transferred to the Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility Prison a
maximum-security penitentiary for convicts with a life-threatening or chronic
illness who require specialized medical treatment.
The
Liver Foundation advised him that exercise and a low-fat renal diet might
extend his life
until a donor organ could be found. His doctor said that he would die without a
liver transplant.
The
Dept. of Corrections defiantly refused to allow James to have access to the
health foods, vitamins or the nutritional supplements that he needed to
survive. They also restricted him from
using the gym to exercise.
I
discovered that any food items purchased from a prison vending machine by a
visitor
could be shared with an inmate.
That was just the break we needed.
Billy
Ray Sadler - inmate # 80513 ... a close friend of James Earl Ray obtained the
phone number of the person whose job it was to stock the vending machines. The prison dietician uses a brand that is 5%
juice. We wanted to replace them with
cans of 100% juice.
Inmates
are not permitted to use the vending machines
so I made a decision to move to
I
started a daily journal to document my time in
The
purpose of this book is not to convince you that James was innocent or
guilty. If you believe that James Earl
Ray was guilty
then you will agree that he paid a terrible price for his
crimes.
Slowly
dying of liver failure after spending thirty years in a penitentiary is as bad
as it gets.
If
you remain convinced that James Earl Ray was an innocent man
you would have
to agree that his last days on Earth were a Hellish nightmare and that a
terrible injustice was done.
One
day as we sat in his prison cell
I told James that because I had such a
strong admiration for Dr. King that I must be completely honest and tell
him. If I thought he was responsible for
his death
I would not be able to
associate with him.
That day never came
and I am proud to say
that James Earl Ray was my friend.
Author MICHAEL GABRIEL ©
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