In a five-minute period, Ray got the rifle which was wrapped in a bedspread, went down the hall to the shared bathroom, goes in and locks the door. It is not known what Ray did in the two hours in between, but at about 5:55 p.m., using the binoculars he had just purchased, Ray spotted King on the balcony of the Lorraine. He signed in using the name John Willard.Īround 4 p.m., Ray left the hotel and bought a pair of binoculars. He paid Bessie Brewer $8.50 in advance for a week’s rent. It faces the parking lot, and beyond the parking lot, the Lorraine. He declined that room and was given instead a second-story room on the back of the building.
The next morning, Ray read in the Memphis Commercial that King was staying at the Lorraine Hotel.Īround 3 p.m., Ray left the New Rebel Motel and checked into a rooming house across a parking lot from the Lorraine Hotel. on April 3, 1968, Ray, arriving at the New Rebel Motor Hotel in Whitehaven, Tennessee, used the name Eric S. Ray would later tell his lawyer that as he got near Corinth, Mississippi, he pulled the white Mustang off a stretch of abandoned road and tested the. On April 2, Ray packed a bag and his newly-purchased rifle and drove to Memphis. He returned to Atlanta after purchasing the rifle and it was there that he heard news reports that King would be going to Memphis to support sanitation workers in their fight for better pay and safer working conditions. Someone who worked at the store would remember Ray saying he was going hunting with his brother. 30-06-caliber rifle - the Model 760 “Gamemaster” - a Redfield 2x-7x rifle scope and a box of ammunition from the Aeromarine Supply company. There, giving the name of Harvey Lowmeyer, Ray would purchase a Remington. Ray was in Atlanta only two days before he left for a trip to Birmingham. After King was killed, the FBI would find the map on which Ray had circled the locations of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the headquarters of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the civil rights leader's home on Sunset Avenue in Vine City. Ray arrived in Atlanta on March 18, checked into a rooming house on 14th Street near Peachtree, and purchased a map of the city. Two weeks later he would leave L.A., headed for Atlanta. On March 5, 1968, he had surgery on his nose. He volunteered to work on the presidential campaign of Alabama Gov. Ray went to Los Angeles that fall and worked odd jobs through the winter. When he realizes he has no skill in film work, he leaves Mexico around Nov. He went by the name Eric Stravo Galt and took up a career as a pornographic film editor. Once in Mexico, Ray decided on another line of work.
19, 1967 - five months before he would head to Memphis. After a short stay, he left Acapulco and drove back north to Puerto Vallarta on Oct. He left Birmingham in the Mustang and headed to Acapulco, Mexico.
#JAMES EARL RAY LICENSE#
In Birmingham, he got an Alabama driver’s license and purchased a white 1966 Ford Mustang. Louis and Chicago and then to Toronto and Montreal before heading to Birmingham, Alabama. Ray would be on the run after his escape from prison in Missouri. It was his third attempt at escape from the prison.
On April 23, 1967, Ray escaped the Missouri State Penitentiary by hiding in a truck that transported bread from the prison bakery. While he was a marginal thief at best, Ray did seem to have a talent for escaping incarceration - at least for periods of time. Officials at that prison would be the first to learn that Ray was not one to meekly accept time locked up in a jail cell. In 1960, an armed robbery netted Ray a 20-year-sentence in the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City. In 1952, he was sentenced to two years for armed robbery in Chicago in 1955, he was sentenced to four years in a Leavenworth, Kansas, prison for robbing a post office. The arrest in California marked the beginning of Ray’s string of incarcerations across the country. By December of 1949, he was in jail, serving a three-month sentence for burglary. Ray took a job at a Chicago rubber company in 1948 and stayed there for several months before heading to California. He was court-martialed for drunkenness and given a general discharge for "ineptness and lack of adaptability." Army in the days following World War II and was stationed in Germany.
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