Ray, James Earl (1928– )

US assassin believed to have shot and killed Martin Luther King, Jr, in 1968. In 1969 he was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Although few doubted he had fired the fatal shot, many questioned whether he acted alone, and in December 1999 a civil lawsuit brought by King's family to a circuit court in Memphis, Tennessee, found that the assassination was the work of mobsters and ‘several government agencies’.

Born in Alton, Illinois, he served in the US Army 1946–48 and was in prison for armed robbery from 1960 until his escape in 1967.