INVESTIGATIONS: The King Assassination

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Window Fall. Ray was a bungling burglar. In his first known job, he dropped his savings-account passbook and Army discharge notice in the Los Angeles cafeteria he had broken into. Chased on foot by police after robbing a Chicago cab driver, he fell through the basement window of a house. In a dry-cleaner burglary in East Alton, he was surprised re-entering the place for more loot by cops who had noticed the window ajar. After stealing postal money orders in Illinois with a friend, he left a trail of poorly forged cashed orders and was caught. During two grocery-store stickups in St. Louis, he and accomplices scooped up about $2,000 from cash registers and passed up some $30,000 in locked safes. Arrested after the second stickup, he insisted on taking the stand in his own defense and was unable to offer a credible alibi. On March 17, 1960, at the age of 32, Ray was sentenced to 20 years in the Missouri state prison in Jefferson City. His accomplice got only seven years.

McMillan claims that Ray was a Nazi sympathizer who used to give the

"Heil Hitler" salute around his home (this was one reason he requested duty in Germany); that he was an anti-black racist; and that he developed an intense hatred for King. McMillan supports these claims with statements quoting Ray's relatives, criminal accomplices and fellow inmates. They may all be shaky sources, but they would seem to . have little reason to lie about Ray. McMillan quotes one of Ray's burglary accomplices, Walter Rife, for example, as saying: "Yeah, Jimmy was a little outraged about Negroes. He didn't care for them at all. Once he said, 'Well, we ought to kill them, kill them all.' "

Was Ray recruited by conspirators to kill King? According to McMillan, he was plotting the murder well before he escaped from prison by hiding in a large crate used to carry loaves of bread to a prison honor farm (this required an accomplice in the prison). Moreover, McMillan quotes the assassin's brother Jerry as saying that Ray telephoned him from Memphis on the morning of the murder and said he was going to get "the big nigger" the same day.

Ray has long claimed that he had met a mysterious Latin-looking man he knew only as "Raoul" in a Montreal bar after his escape. Raoul, Ray insisted, had planned the murder and given Ray money to buy a car and a rifle and to finance his travels. But Ray's brother Jerry told McMillan: "The whole thing about Raoul and running drugs from Canada was bullshit. He went to Canada the first time to look the place over, to see how to get out of the country."

Yet Jerry, a drifter for many of his 40 years and now a night watchman in northern Illinois, changed his story last week and told TIME in an interview that the mysterious Raoul was behind everything. Jerry insisted that his brother had been "set up" in the case and quoted Ray as telling him recently: "I've got witnesses to prove I was some place else when the shot was fired." Jerry now claims that he never talked to Ray on the day of the murder.