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Killing the Dream
Gerald Posner
Random House, $25
Review by Jonathan D. Austin
April 27, 1998
Web posted at: 3:51 p.m. EST (2051 GMT)(CNN) -- With the title of his own book, James Earl Ray asked a question that has teased historians, law enforcement and the leaders of America's civil rights movement. The title? "Who Killed Martin Luther King Jr?"
"Killing the Dream", a heavily researched and well-written examination of the facts by author Gerald Posner, strives to lay the question to rest, much to the chagrin of a cadre of conspiracy buffs.
Posner succeeds.
Who killed the preeminent civil rights leader of the 20th century? Posner says there is no doubt that James Earl Ray did it. Why? For a variety of reasons, he argues. For fame, yes. But the author, who also put together the award-winning book "Case Closed" to examine the assassination of John Kennedy, provides strong evidence of a variety of reasons for Ray's action. He says the evidence shows:
Ray was a committed racist, Ray wanted to be remembered as a hero by racists in the South, Ray had heard of a $50,000 'bounty' on King's head, offered by other affirmed racists. But if a conspiracy led to King's murder, Posner offers compelling information that it was likely "a crude family plot" more than a vast and sophisticated operation involving the mafia or some government agency.
"Killing the Dream" delves deep into the life of James Earl Ray, showing the stifling poverty and abject lack of education that molded his family.
Posner There were no family values in the Ray household; school was unimportant, morals were nonexistent. In fact, 'family' came to be represented by a skewed idea that brothers supported one another in crime.
Using details from hundreds of interviews, Posner shows Ray through the eyes of his childhood neighbors, the police who arrested him numerous times, his fellow criminals, his family, and the drug users who relied on Ray as their provider. Posner shines a glaring light onto the life of a career criminal who often shared with others his long-held belief that Martin Luther King Jr. should die at the hands of an assassin.
But what of the varied claims Ray made soon after he pleaded guilty? What about Raoul, the elusive mastermind who Ray said set him up to take the fall?
All bunk, Posner argues, because Ray would do anything to escape blame for the many crimes he committed. Consider the details of a Los Angeles arrest in 1949 after Ray was caught burglarizing the office of a restaurant. Ray initially escaped, but only after a struggle in which he inadvertently dropped his identification papers.
BEGINNINGS Read the first chapter of "Killing the Dream" Ray first said the identification papers he left at the scene of the crime were stolen. Days later he changed the story, to say that he had been there, but had only entered the building to eat at the restaurant. Years later Ray changed his tale again, writing in his first book that he may have been drugged by a woman and left to sleep in the hallway of the building.
All of this in defense of a burglary where an assistant manager at the restaurant walked in and caught Ray red-handed.
There was "a remarkable, if misplaced, self-confidence on Ray's part that he could always concoct a story after his arrest that would set him free," Posner writes, involving "a rather remarkable story that placed him at the scene but only as an innocent victim of circumstance."
Posner's book repeatedly and convincingly argues that James Earl Ray was a "pathological liar." He provides damning details of a lifetime of always trying to weasel out of responsibility for his actions.
"James Earl Ray is the reason Martin Luther King Jr. is dead," Posner writes. "A four-time loser looking for a big score killed the dreamer, and put himself in the history books."
Jonathan D. Austin is editor of CNN Interactive Books.
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