ray, james earl

April, 1967: a prison escape. James Earl Ray, nondescript thief and con man, drifts through the South, into Mexico, and then Los Angeles, where he is galvanized by George Wallace's racist presidential campaign. February, 1968: a Memphis garbage strike. Martin Luther King joins the sanitation workers' cause, but their march turns violent. King vows to return to Memphis in April. Historian Sides follows Ray and King as they crisscross the country, one stalking the other, until the drifter catches up with his prey. Against the backdrop of the resulting nationwide riots and King's funeral, Sides gives us a cross-cut narrative of the assassin's flight and the 65-day search that led investigators to Canada, Portugal, and England--a massive manhunt led by Hoover's FBI.

William Pepper, attorney and friend to Martin Luther King, describes his investigation into King's 1968 assassination and claims that King was the victim of a conspiracy involving the FBI, CIA, the military, organized crime, and the Memphis police, and discusses the 1999 wrongful death suit won by the King family.