![]() Louis and then onward to Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, and Birmingham, Alabama, where he stayed long enough to buy a 1966 Ford Mustang and get an Alabama driver’s license. Post first escape įollowing his escape, Ray stayed on the move throughout the United States and Canada, going first to St. He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 by hiding in a truck transporting bread from the prison bakery. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses. In 1959, he was caught stealing $120 in an armed robbery of a Kroger store in St. For this, he was imprisoned for four years in the federal United States Penitentiary Leavenworth. In 1955, he was convicted of mail fraud after stealing money orders in Hannibal, Missouri. In 1952, he served two years for the armed robbery of a taxi driver in Illinois. ![]() Ray's first conviction for criminal activity, a burglary in California, came in 1949. Ray committed a variety of crimes prior to the murder of King. Initial convictions and first escape from prison Ray struggled to adapt to military life and was eventually discharged for ineptitude and lack of adaptability in 1948. Army at the close of World War II and served in Germany. His sister Marjorie died in a fire as a young child in 1933. James Earl Ray was the oldest of nine children, including John Larry Ray, Franklin Ray, Jerry William Ray, Melba Ray, Carol Ray Pepper, Suzan Ray, and Marjorie Ray. In February 1935, Ray's father, known by the nickname Speedy, passed a bad check in Alton, Illinois, and then moved to Ewing, Missouri, where the family changed their name to Raynes to avoid law enforcement. He had Irish, Scottish and Welsh ancestry and had a Catholic upbringing. Ray was born on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois, the son of Lucille Ray ( née Maher) and George Ellis Ray. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea-thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence-and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment. After this, Ray was on the run and was captured in the UK. ![]() at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. James Earl Ray (March 10, 1928 – April 23, 1998) was an American fugitive convicted for assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. Murder, prison escape, armed robbery, burglaryĩ9 years in prison (1 year was added after his re-capture for a total of 100 years) ![]()
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