At approximately 6 pm Eastern Standard Time on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., one of America's great moral leaders was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The largest manhunt in FBI history eventually resulted in the capture of James Earl Ray, a career criminal who had escaped from prison in April 1967. Ray entered a guilty plea and confessed his guilt before a judge, but immediately following his conviction, he recanted his confession and insisted on his innocence until his death in 1998.
For decades, Americans debated issues of the crime, with a new congressional investigation in the 1970s concluding that Ray was guilty but part of a larger conspiracy. Using new data, interviews, and data–mining techniques, we are closer than ever to an accurate accounting of how Dr. King died and, most importantly, why he was killed.
