Published March 25, 2012
By Hal Oakley
At age 14, “Jimmy” stole a
patron’s trousers from Big Marie’s brothel at Third and Vermont in Quincy. So
began the criminal life of James Earl Ray – confessed (later recanted) and
convicted assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a clergyman and the most
prominent African-American civil rights leader of the 20th century.
Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn. Ray
was arrested on June 8, 1968, in London for the killing, and in March 1969 he
pled guilty and was convicted. He spent most of the rest of his life professing
his innocence and promoting various conspiracy theories from a prison in
Nashville, Tenn.
The early years
The Quincy area figured prominently in Ray’s life.
Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton. His family moved to
Quincy in 1935 for a short time and then to a farm near Ewing, Mo., where the
family stayed until 1944. Ray attended the Ewing School through the eighth
grade, when he quit to go to work. After a few quick moves within Illinois, the
Rays returned to Quincy in about 1946. His paternal grandparents and several
aunts and uncles lived in Quincy throughout this time.
The Quincy Ray knew was riddled with gambling, prostitution,
liquor bootlegging and thuggery. Several of these brothels and bars lined First
through Third streets in Quincy. The extended Ray family lived in the two-block
area of Third and Fourth on Vermont. Ted Crowley, who lived across the street
from Ray’s grandparents, ran a bar and brothel and was a local godfather,
according to Ray.
Members of Ray’s extended Quincy family had criminal
backgrounds of their own. His grandfather, James Ray, had been a bootlegger in
the 1920s and, during the time Ray lived in Quincy, ran a bar at Fifth and
Broadway with gambling in the back room.
His father, George Ellis Ray, was also a bootlegger and
career criminal who spent two years of a 10-year sentence in the Iowa State
Prison at Fort Madison for stealing cows. He earned parole but left the state —
an automatic parole violation — because he had hated the prison experience and
feared reincarcerationin Iowa. As a result, he moved often to avoid being caught.
He also changed the family name frequently – Raynes, Rayns, and sometimes Ryan.
Earl Ray, an uncle, had a life long history of robbery,
assault and other crimes. He taught the Ray boys to be tough. Earl permitted
Ray to accompany him on his excursions in Quincy nightlife, introducing Ray to
Big Marie’s brothel, where Ray started running errands for the working girls.
One night he grabbed a patron’s belongings out of an open window. That ended
his job but launched his criminal life.
Another uncle, Frank Fuller, worked for the local mob,
collecting cash from slot machines in bars throughout town.
The Ray family had a hard life in Ewing and Quincy. According
to one of Ray’s schoolmates, the family’s home northeast of Ewing was a rather
sad-looking house that leaned to one side, was not weather tight, and had no
electricity or running water. The family struggled to keep itself clothed and
fed and, according to rumors then, used a stolen truck to get around.
Ray’s sister Margie, age six, was playing with matches and caught
her dress on fire. Despite her mother’s attempts to put out the fire, Margie
was badly burned and died a few days later.
In other respects, Ray’s early life was typical of
a young boy growing up in rural Northeast Missouri at the time. During
recess at school,the boys wrestled in the mud or dirt while the girls
played games or talked. Many of the boys wore no shoes. One schoolmate described
Ray as slight in stature and quiet but a decent wrestler for his size. George
Ray would take his boys fishing on the Fabius River on good days, but he was a
severe disciplinarian at home on bad days.
Off to join the U.S. Army
Ray joined the U.S. Army in 1946, but he was discharged in
1948 for disciplinary reasons. He returned to Quincy briefly and then left
first for Chicago and next for Los Angeles. It was there Ray was arrested and
first convicted of a crime – stealing office equipment. He spent four months in
prison from December 1949 through March 1950 and then slowly “hoboed” his way
back to Quincy by May 1950.
Soon he went back to Chicago where he was arrested and
convicted of robbery. He spent nearly four years in prisons in Joliet and then
Pontiac. In March 1954, he was released and returned once again to Quincy. He
noticed that the brothels were still active but the slot machines were gone.
Ray headed to Alton, where his mother had returned to live.
In 1955, Ray was convicted of stealing money orders from the
Kellerville Post Office and spent the next three years in the federal
penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. In late 1959 Ray was convicted
of robbing two grocery stores and was sentenced to 20 years in the Missouri
State Penitentiary at Jefferson City. Ray escaped from the penitentiary on
April 23, 1967, concealed in a box of bread in the back of a delivery truck.
After the escape, Ray made his way to St. Louis and then to
Chicago, where worked at a restaurant until June 24, 1967. Thereafter, he spent
approximately 12 days in Quincy in two hotels, one on the corner of Second and
Oak and the other on the corner of Third and Oak.
Ray later wrote that inflation had hit the brothels in
Quincy. The girls had raised their rates from $3 to $5, and Ray could not
afford their services. “So it was a slow week,” Ray wrote.
‘I always did like Quincy’
Asked by the U.S. House’s Select Committee on Assassinations
why he stayed in Quincy, Ray said, “I have no particular reason. I always did
like Quincy, Ill. I have lived there quite a bit, and I did intend to see my
aunt, but I didn’t. Many people I know had since died, since I have been in
prison. I think the only person I really knew, and I think probably saw me and
I talked to him several times, was a bar owner named Ted Crowley. Other than
that I can’t think of anyone that knew me. I know I inquired about several
people and they had died.”
In a sworn deposition, Crowley stated that he had known Ray
as a customer of his establishment – the Gem Tavern – in the 200 block of North
Fifth Street in Quincy. However, he emphatically denied seeing Ray after his April 1967 escape.
According to an uncorroborated local account from one of
Crowley’s acquaintances, Crowley was asked by federal investigators
whether he thought Ray could have assassinated Dr. King without accomplices.
Crowley responded that Ray was incapable of such a feat and he must have been a
pawn in a scheme orchestrated by others. Apparently, that was not the answer
the investigators wanted. Soon, Crowley was visited by IRS agents and state
liquor authorities, whose inquiries resulted in the Gem Tavern closing.
After his Quincy visit, Ray spent time in the St. Louis area.
One of the theories of how he financed his plot to assassinate Dr. King is that
he participated in the unsolved robbery of the Bank of Alton on July 13, 1967.
Two masked gunmen stole $27,230 from the bank.
Ray bought a Winchester rifle in Birmingham, Ala., on March
29, 1968, using the name Harvey Lowmeyer. Ray told the House Committee he got
the alias from a friend or criminal associate in Quincy. He later traded the
rifle for a higher caliber Remington rifle.
On April 3 and 4, 1968, Eric Galt, an alias Ray had used
before, was a guest in the New Rebel Motel in Memphis. Ray admitted being in
Memphis at the time. Dr. King was staying at the nearby Lorraine Motel. At
around 6 p.m. on April 4, Dr. King was shot while standing on a balcony at his
motel. Ray fled Memphis and led law enforcement agents on a two-month chase
until he was arrested in London’s Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968.
Ray died on April 23, 1998. His professed
innocence and promotion of various conspiracy theories drew the
attention and interest, though
not necessarily support, of prominent leaders of the civil rights movement and
African-American community.
They included Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, and the
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson. Jackson wrote the forward to Ray’s book, “Who Killed
Martin Luther King? – The True Story by the Alleged Assassin.”
Hal Oakley is a lawyer with Schmiedeskamp, Robertson, Neu
& Mitchell LLP and a civic volunteer. He has authored several legal
articles and edited, compiled and/or contributed to books and articles on local
history.
Sources:
Brown, Ron. “A turbulent youth haunted James Earl Ray.” Quincy Herald-Whig. February 16, 2003.
Conklin, Ellis E. “Did James Earl Ray act alone?” Minneapolis Star Tribune, April 9, 2008.
Local interviews with those who wish to remain anonymous.
Ray, James Earl. Who Killed Martin Luther King? – The True Story by the Alleged Assassin. 1992. Washington, D.C.: National Press Books, Inc., 1992.
Ray, Jerry and Tamara Carter. A Memoir of Injustice: By the Younger Brother of James Earl Ray, Alleged Assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. Walterville, OR: Trine Day, LLC, 2011.
Sides, Hampton. Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt in American History. New York: Anchor Books, 2011.
U.S. Congress. Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Volume 1. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1979.
