Brown has spoken about how his upbringing shaped his philosophy. James Earl Ray had traveled to Montreal while on the run, and claimed that he'd met a man named "Raoul" in Montreal, and that Raoul had furnished him with money, and eventually masterminded the King assassination-using Ray as the fall-guy. The Galileo Case Revisited | Beyond the Cover. I've been amazed over the years at the naivet of authors who have written about Ray's activities in Jeff City; the things they put forth as facts just simply couldn't be true. The date was November 9, 1963. period immediately preceding the assassination, James Earl Ray fled the scene of the crime immediately after the assassination, James Earl Ray's alibi for the time of the assassination, his story of "Raoul," In that speech, none other than Robert Byrd pointed to the Memphis riots and the violent consequences as a warning to Johnson not to allow the marches King was planning on Washington in the coming weeks. Ray was finally caught hiding in London in February 1968. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Ostensibly only a New York City attorney and businessman, Levison is, in fact, a shrewd, dedicated communist. Mr. Kershaw was a Tennessee lawyer who argued that James Earl Ray, convicted in the 1968 assassination of the Rev. He is a former Shelby County, Tennessee Criminal Court judge and a former arbiter of the arbitration-based reality court show Judge Joe Brown. Starting with his contribution to the presidential campaign of Wallace, Ray developed a strong animosity towards Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI paper then named another communist whose name is very familiar to those who have read articles about Kings communist connections in The New American, its predecessor magazine, American Opinion, and the monthly bulletins of The John Birch Society, the parent organization of both publications. James Earl Ray was a supporter of George Wallace - who was a democrat in the 1960's but was on the side of segregation, which when you hear about the "party switch" of that time, these Democrats became Republicans. bullet and also revealed the absence of nitrites (the presence of James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old convicted armed robber who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, Mo., on April 23, 1967, pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, in Shelby County (Tenn.) Criminal Court to the first degree murder of Dr. King. The facts tend to be the same, G. Robert Blakey, a law professor at Notre Dame University, told me on April 8, 1998 during an interview as I worked as a columnist for The Tennessean. While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Los Angeles was the site of Ray's first arrest, for burglary, in 1949, and he ended up serving 90 days in jail. the Democratic Party won the presidency. He is the one who sits in leadership and is the most powerful person of a country. ", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joe_Brown_(judge)&oldid=1134528878, This page was last edited on 19 January 2023, at 03:56. In the year 1959, he was caught stealing $120 from a Kroger Store in St. Louis. One week prior to Kings assassination on April 4, 1968 he had gone to Memphis to show support for local sanitation workers. This doesnt mean that Ray couldnt have received assistance. This is why I believe they steered FBI investigators toward convicts who really didn't know anything. The verdict did convict Loyd Jowers and "other parties known and unknown" for their parts in the vast US government conspiracy to assassinate King. I'll be out of here very shortly on a Petition for Habeas Corpus and I'll bring up all these problems and guess what, you might not be operating tomorrow. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. With it came a letter threatening King with public exposure if he didnt kill himself, and claiming that the sender had evidence of other affairs. No new evidence has been presented in the King killing since then. James Earl Ray was white. As President Ronal Reagan once wrote to former New Hampshire Governor Meldrim Thomson, who had sent a letter to Reagan urging the president not to sign the bill for a holiday honoring King, On the national holiday you mentioned, I have the reservations you have, but here the perception of too many people is based on an image, not reality. While taking dancing classes, he was attracted to the presidential campaign of George Wallace. Senator) that an investigation be conducted into the allegations. He decided to assassinate him to stop blacks from getting equal status to the whites. The jury awarded the money to the estate, deciding that Kings assassination had likely beenthe result of a conspiracy that involved Jowers, not Ray, as well as ''others, including governmental agencies.''. That was a bunch of baloney. James Earl Ray did it, case closed! The 20-page paper, which was classified as. Happy 300th Birthday, Richard Price! While attending law school, Brown worked as a substitute teacher. In the early 1990s, he started suggesting that the government might be behind the assassination. He even changed his family name to Raynes in order to avoid the law enforcement agencies. We got involved in several schemes, but our lack of mobility made it difficult to function. In March 2014, Brown was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, and charged with five counts of contempt of court and getting "verbally abusive" during a child support case overseen by Magistrate Harold Horne. In the year 1977, Ray escaped from the prison for the second time along with six other convicts from the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary located in Petros, Tennessee. [12], Brown is an Independent candidate for the 2023 Memphis mayoral election. During the four-week trial in Memphis, a 12-person jury heard testimony from over 70 witnesses; but not Jowers, who didnt testify because there were no criminal charges at stake. As one example, Dan Smoot, a former FBI agent, was a steadfast anti-Communist who became associated with The John Birch Society and wrote for the societys American Opinion and The Review Of The News magazines. Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. Doesnt the controversy between Galileo and the Catholic Church prove this? Declassified FBI Paper Reveals Communist Associates of Martin Luther King, UN Biodiversity Beijing-Wall Street Convergence. Ray, who was on escape from a Missouri prison in 1968 claimed, however, that he had gone to a service station to get a tire repaired when the shot was fired. Ireland. people lost faith in the political system. He is a male registered to vote in Wayne County, Michigan. James Earl Ray, an escaped American convict, is arrested in London, England, and charged with the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. On April 4,. "Excuse me, on what authority do you sit by the way? No vehicle traffic would have been allowed in or out until he was found. From the viewpoint of a man who served time with Ray in prison, then went on to become a journalist, and continued to follow the case, with some emphasis on Ray's mentality, how he escaped from prison, and why there is reason to believe white supremacists may have been behind King's murder. Ray was born in Alton, IL,in 1928, the son of working class Scots-Irish parents. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. But a restaurant owner from Memphis was brought to the civil court in the year 1999 for being a part of the murder conspiracy. In the 1950s, Ray became notorious as a petty criminal, and by the end of the decade he was a failed pornographer who had served some jail time and successfully completed a prison escape. Whatever noble goals King proclaimed, the subversive company he chose to keep severely neutralizes any good he may have aspired to and creates serious doubts about the sincerity of his stated mission. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law, and it was first recognized three years later. Manhunt in the mountains: James Earl Ray and the Brushy Mountain Prison breakout of 1977, How The Tennessean covered Martin Luther King Jr.'s death in its pages, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Kershaw made Ray to take a polygraph test as part of an interview with Playboy. Read More:People died for your right to vote. There was one week in 1968 when much happened. [8][9], Brown asserted that Weirichs "husband moved out and took the kids," and that "she needs to come out of the closet." So Westberg, who was assigned to work in the kitchen at that time, figured a man could get in the bread box, have a tray of bread placed on top of him, and pass right out of the prison (the box also had a lid over the top tray of bread). It is clear why tyrants wish to keep people from learning about Price and reading the powerful words he wrote defending freedom and Is Christianity the enemy of science? It contained a pair of binoculars, a newspaper with a story about King staying at the Lorraine Motel, and a .30-06 Remington Gamemaster that had fired one shot. Jerry began to follow my lead, and that became a source of friction among me, Laster and Westberg. James Earl Ray was raised as a catholic and had conservative religious beliefs from his childhood. While he was still in Los Angeles, Ray had the desire to immigrate to Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe) where a white minority regime declared independence from England in the year 1965. The prosecutors have enough efficient evidence in establishing guilt against James Earl Ray concerning the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. First, James Earl Ray was in close enough vicinity of the Lorraine Hotel to successfully fire a clear shot to kill Dr. King from only a block away. The other people involved in this conspiracy, Jowers said, included Memphis police officers, a Mafia member and the infamous Raoul. The scandal was so bad it led to the downfall of Warden Nash, who then shot himself.). Findings on Martin Luther King, Jr. Brown later worked for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. January 30, 1961. One day he walked away, and it was rumored he took $5,000 of state money with him. Ray spent the rest of his life in prison and suffered with kidney and liver ailments in his last years. That investigation declassified scores of memos detailing the bureaus abusive behavior, but did not reveal any evidence that the FBI had formally plotted his death. Brown was sentenced to five days in jail,[7][15] but was later released on his own recognizance. He said not knowing the truth about his fathers assassination had been painful for the family. James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to assassinating King, was renting a room above Jower's establishment and was allegedly an unwitting scapegoat. Rays father forged a check and hence had to shift his family to Ewing, Missouri to escape enforcement authorities. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Later, though, he claimed he left the prints to gain international notoriety. Brown apparently raised his voice and interrupted a magistrate judge while representing a woman seeking child support in Shelby County Juvenile Court. If this self-seeking rabble-rouser is allowed to go through with his plans here, Washington may well be treated to the same kind of violence, destruction, looting, and bloodshed.1. According to Harding, King had already severely angered Johnson by delivering that speech, which could have made Johnson quite receptive to Byrds sentiment. It would later be learned that Ray's classification card contained erroneous fingerprints, which were initially distributed nationally. On July 19, he returned to U.S. and the following March he pleaded guilty to murdering King. Laster made several more desperate attempts to escape, including one attempt to saw out of death row (during which a guard captain was blinded). the result of a conspiracy that involved Jowers, not Ray, as well as ''others, including governmental agencies. [17] In audio obtained by WREG[18] and an available transcript on eonline.com,[19] Brown can be heard arguing that the judge didn't have the authority to sit on the bench. Westberg, in turn, liked James Earl Ray. Never afraid to share his political views, Grammer is known for his conservative values. What would it have taken for the Goldmans and the Browns to have believed Orenthals story that he was innocent? The box was picked up, and Ray successfully escaped on April 23, 1967. and other allegedly exculpatory evidence are not worthy of belief. By that time I was classified as incorrigible. He escaped from the prison hiding in a truck that was transporting bread from the prison bakery. [3], After graduating from law school, Brown moved to Memphis, Tennessee to work as an attorney for the Legal Services Corporation. But even if Ray had help, the evidence strongly pointed to him pulling the trigger. He was found to be legally liable and a sum of $100 was accepted by Kings family in restitution. It's a seductive thought. James Earl Ray. He is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity. His first prison break happened in 1967, when he escaped the Missouri State Penitentiary on a bread truck before fleeing to Canada. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). But, having tried to escape from the maximum-security prison, we both had joined a small list of convicts who would be watched at all times by the guards. There is an important flaw in that logic as well; the defendant was only sued for $100, which he was ordered to pay. King vs. Loyd Jowers and conspirators unknown. Among the first to rear his head in Ray's defense was J.B. Stoner, a lawyer who was also head of the National State's Rights Party (and who would later be charged with the bombing of a Birmingham church in which several children died). I occasionally rented magazines from Ray, but other inmates usually had a larger selection, and better quality magazines. There were those who joked about Ray, because of the nature of his attempted escapes. We had no contact, however, since he was on the other side of the building. He was first convicted for a burglary in California in the year 1949. That year, Kings son Dexter Scott King visited Ray in prison to draw attention to the familys push to appeal his case. James Earl Jones. To believe that the King family was motivated exclusively by publicity, one must believe that all of its members were involved in selling out the truth of their loved ones assassination for three figures. We knew that anytime you try to escape from a maximum-security prison you run the risk of being shot. 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