Who Killed MLK?

On what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King's 78th birthday, we ask the question: Who killed him and was his murder a conspiracy?

The answers: James Earl Ray and yes.

Much like BaT's belief that Lee Harvey Oswald was an actor in the assassination of President John Kennedy, we say that Ray -- despite his frequent denials after once confessing -- did indeed pull the trigger that fateful day in Memphis. But, like our theory with Oswald, he did not act alone or at least not without some help. (We believe that Oswald killed Kennedy, with funding from the Cuban government.)

So who conspired with Oswald? The mob? The government? A racist cabal?

Answer: Just what the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations alluded to in 1979 ... that a racist group placed a bounty of $50,000 on King's head, and Ray saw easy money in killing a man he hated anyway. You can read more here on the committee's findings.

The King family has, in the last decade, publicly stated that they believe Ray wasn't the killer. As with JFK's assassination, no one wants to believe someone so insignificant as James Earl Ray could have such a profound impact on a historical figure like Martin Luther King Jr. But Ray was no patsy, as the dying old man tried to play in his final years.

He was a career criminal who ran in some very seedy circles. He had a history of escape and eluding capture. He was a known racist. Patsy? Hardly. He was a willing participant in the murder of a great man. As with Oswald, he was funded by outside sources -- and as with Oswald, those people were never brought to justice.

Many of them may be alive today, just like this man. James Earl Ray fired the deadly shot. Sometimes in this world, the smallest people have the largest influence. He was one of those people.