Ray Promises To Spill Beans In A New Trial

James Earl Ray, promising much and revealing little in a prison interview, said Friday he would tell the true story of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination if he is granted a trial.

“Put me on the witness stand and you’ll find out what really, what really, what took place,” Ray said haltingly to talk show host Montel Williams.

Ray, who is 68 and suffering from terminal liver disease, appeared frail but alert as he gave the 15-minute interview from a wheelchair at a state prison hospital. It came a day after a judge’s decision that keeps alive his bid to take back his guilty plea and get a trial in the 1968 slaying.

Asked if he killed the civil rights leader, Ray responded, “No, no. I didn’t, didn’t do it.”

Williams plans to air the interview next Friday.

Ray’s brother, Jerry Ray, said Williams got the interview because he promised to help in the search for a liver transplant donor. But Williams denied that, and said that no money was exchanged either.

“He said that he appreciates the fact that now there are people outside of just himself who are asking for a trial,” Williams told reporters. “And he feels that if that happens, his exact words were, ‘I hope they open the grab bag.”’

Ray pleaded guilty a year after King’s slaying and was sentenced to 99 years in prison. But he almost immediately reversed himself and has been requesting a trial ever since.

Conspiracy theorists have long argued that Ray, a bungling, petty criminal, could not have pulled off the assassination alone. Many of the theories note that authorities have never proven that Ray’s gun was the murder weapon.