Doubts about James Earl Ray, Dr. Martin Luther King's lone assassin, arose almost immediately after the civil rights leader was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on 4 April 1968. From the start, his aides voiced suspicions that a conspiracy was responsible for their leader's death. Over time many Americans became convinced the government investigations covered up the truth about the alleged assassin. Exactly what led Ray to kill King continues to be a source of debate, as does his role in the murder. However, Mel Ayton believe the answers to the many intriguing questions about Ray and how conspiracy ideas flourished can now be fully understood. Missing from the wild speculations over the past fifty-two years has been a thorough investigation of the character of King's assassin. Additionally, the author examines exactly how the conspiracy notions came about and the falsehoods that led to their promulgation. The Man Who Killed Martin Luther King is the first full account of the life of James Earl Ray based on scores of interviews provided to government and non-government investigators and from the FBI's and Scotland Yard's files plus the recently released Tennessee Department of Corrections prison record on Ray. Most importantly, the testimony of Anna Sandhu has often been ignored by writers but her story is crucial in gaining an understanding of Ray's deceptive ways. A courtroom artist, who, after listening to Ray's story, later married him. Also missing from accounts of the alleged 'conspiracy' is the story told to this author by Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary Deputy Warden Rolland H. Cisson, which decisively renders Ray's claims of innocence to be bogus. In the short-lived freedom he acquired after escaping from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967, following being sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offences, he travelled to Los Angeles and decided to seek notoriety as the one who would stalk and kill Dr. King, who he had come to hate vehemently. From the time of King's murder, the reader will follow Ray to solitary confinement in a Nashville prison. Then, six years later, on 10 June 1977, James Earl Ray again escaped from prison, this time with five others. Ray was the last to be recaptured, having survived only on wheatgerm. Finally, the book relays Ray's stabbing by several black inmates, then his resulting diagnosis with Hepatitis C, which caused his death twelve years later, in 1998. AUTHOR: Mel Ayton has a master's degree in history from Durham University and is a former US Fulbright Teacher, deputy principal and college lecturer. He is the author of numerous books and articles and has worked as a historical consultant for the BBC, NBC News, National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Times Channel. Ayton's books and articles have received praise from numerous media outlets including Fox News, USA Today, The New York Post and Israel's Haaretz newspaper as well as UK newspapers including The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Daily Express. His book, The Forgotten Terrorist - Sirhan Sirhan and the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, was acclaimed by Harvard Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz who wrote a Foreword to the second edition of the book published in 2019.
