![]() ![]() Sections of pipe came together into a 12-foot ladder – a flimsy contraption that looked barely sturdy enough to hold up a cat but now swung into the air and hooked over the outside edge of the northeast wall, just at the spot where the wire ended. Sign Up: Get breaking news headlines in your inbox.įists flew. Hooks insisted his gaze strayed when someone near the basketball court threw a punch and a fight broke out – all scripted well in advance. Prison officials accused of Hooks of sneaking in newspapers to read on his shift. Hooks’ fellow guards blame him to this day for what happened next. Eyes darted toward the tower where Hooks sat. Sweaty, shaking hands yanked pieces of pipe from under shirts, out of waistbands, from behind the rocks and clumps of dirt where they’d lain for days, smuggled from the prison machine shop to wait for this moment. One by one, five men broke away from the basketball court, the softball diamond and the horseshoe stakes to cluster together in the shadow of the empty tower. ![]() ![]() His attorney of the hour, Jack Kershaw, held out hope the probe could lead to a new trial. Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations, visited Petros no fewer than four times to question Ray behind closed doors about what he claimed to know. Investigators for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, created by popular demand in the wake of Watergate and revelations of CIA and FBI misconduct to take a fresh look at the John F. Back in the spotlightīy spring 1977, the national spotlight turned on Ray again. “He probably hasn’t said 500 words to anyone since being returned here,” Warden Stonney Lane told reporters. Ray regained his privileged status and went to work in the laundry at Brushy, by all accounts a model inmate again. The prison at Petros - established in 1896 and built in the 1930s from stone in the shape of a Celtic cross – looked like a castle from the Dark Ages but offered fresh air and relative quiet in the shadow of the Cumberland mountains compared to the overcrowded, ill-maintained prison near downtown Nashville. View Gallery: James Earl Ray's escape from Brushy Mountain in June 1977 He might have made it if he’d waited just a few more weeks, when the steam plant would have shut down for the summer. Scalding temperatures that topped 400 degrees forced him back. But he threw away his model prisoner status that May, stung by disappointment over a denied appeal, when he used a stolen hacksaw, chisel and crowbar to punch a hole in his cell wall and jimmy his way into a steam tunnel that led to the outside. Ray might have qualified for parole in another 32 years - in time for his 74th birthday. … just another prisoner and am treated as one.” Aborted escapes … I write memos to my lawyer … I’m in bed and asleep by 8 every night. “I work six hours a day, seven days a week. “I do not cause trouble here,” Ray told him. He granted one interview, to News Sentinel reporter Willard Yarbrough in March 1971 – to “let people outside know that I wasn’t crazy.” The resulting “exclusive” boasted barely enough drama for a church bulletin. Ray stayed in bed with the blankets pulled over his head. James Earl Ray died in prison in 1998.Reporters and photographers periodically visited the prison. ![]() That review ended in 2000 with a finding that "no credible evidence" existed to support the claims of Jowers or the various other conspiracy theories. #JAMES EARL RAY FULL#King's son Dexter met with Ray in 1997 and publicly supported him, and the next year Attorney General Janet Reno ordered a full review of the case. #JAMES EARL RAY TRIAL#By the 1990s his continued requests for a new trial had gained fresh life a Memphis bar owner named Loyd Jowers even claimed that he participated in a plot to kill King. However, he soon tried to take back his guilty plea, claiming to be innocent. James Earl Ray pled guilty to the charge of murder in 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Ray, who had a record as a petty criminal and was an escapee from a Missouri prison, disappeared but was captured in England two months later and charged with killing King. King was killed while standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, and police determined that James Earl Ray had shot him with a rifle from the window of a rented room across the street. James Earl Ray is the man who shot and killed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. ![]()
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