On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed, sparking an intense manhunt for his assassin, James Earl Ray. In order to attempt to locate the murderer, the FBI conducted interviews with almost 100 inmates he’d been locked up with for previous crimes. While not all of the stories are believable, the most credible ones describe Ray as a violent racist. He was also involved in dealing drugs in prison, as well as using them himself.
Getting contraband was something of a skill of Ray’s. “He was a peddler at Jeff City, all right,” fellow inmate Raymond Curtis told the author George McMillan in 1975 (via Time). “I’ve seen him work on a plan as long as 30 days to get a dozen eggs halfway across the prison yard. He stole many a case of eggs in his time, sold them for $1 a dozen, $30 a case … Sometimes we made raisin jack, sometimes homemade beer. Ray supplied the yeast because he could get it in the bakery, where he worked …”
Another inmate remembered Ray as a hypochondriac who worried about heart palpitations and took lots of pills. Not everyone disliked Ray, though. One former prisoner, whom the reporter calls Mr. Curtis, was interviewed before Ray was finally captured in London on June 8. The man said, “[Ray] was a likable sort of person. He did no foolish conversations, and when he talked about something he was serious about it …” (via Hezakya Newz & Films).
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