he said, if we don t have a peaceful march in memphis, we cannot go to washington. that very next day, friday, march 29th, james earl ray drove from atlanta back to birmingham. he found this ad in the local newspaper. ray s own words, again. we got the address of the eromarine supply out of the want ads section. i called there and they had a large supply of rifles. the store owner did not want to be interviewed, but pointed out where ray stood at the counter that day. i asked the salesman for a deer rifle, he showed me one, which i bought. but after ray left, he insisted the mystery man, raoul, told him to get a different rifle. i then called eromarine and told them it was the wrong kind of rifle. i think i told them my brother-in-law told me that. ray wrote brother-in-law in this account. but the salesman told the fbi that ray said, his brother.
bathroom window, would that be consistent with what you described? yes, it would. no question about it? not at all. could it have been fired from down below? there was an eyewitness. no, it could not have been fired from down below because you couldn t see the balcony from down below. the brush, he said, would have blocked the line of sight. in prosecutor campbell s office on the wall by his desk hangs this, james earl ray s death certificate. in 1998, at the age of 70. why do you keep this hanging in your office? did it feel like the chapter or the book had closed? when he died? well, really in many ways it had. for campbell, the final answer to whether ray was a lone gunman that day. if this was a big conspiracy, he would have been murdered shortly after this. he would have been taken out and buried somewhere and we would have never found him. the fact that he lived all these years tells me there wasn t a conspiracy. when we come back he wanted to get away.
ray on it when it was found outside the boardinghouse. the rifle, the one ray bought in birmingham, is on display today. upstairs in the rooming house, now part of the national civil rights museum run by beverly robertson. it s got a scope on the top. yes, he had a scope on it. i think he felt he needed a scope, but it was a very short distance. you didn t need to be a marksman or a sharpshooter to be able to hit the target. it was an easy shot. it was an easy shot. i bet you or i could have made that shot. across at the lorraine motel, witnesses had pointed to the back of the boardinghouse. so we went up there, got to the top of the steps and there was a little lady there, and she appeared to be deaf, dumb. she was doing like this. it was like she was shooting a rifle, and she pointed to the bathroom at the end of the hallway. in the bathroom, the police captain found the window open, its screen knocked out.
this. they said, i ve never been with nobody as bold as he is. he just walked in and put a gun on somebody just like it s an everyday thing. they say he didn t have no fear or nothing. ray was born in alton, illinois, and grew up dirt poor along the mississippi river in mark twain country. everybody just called him jimmy. nobody called him james. that came out when king got killed, they started calling him james earl ray. we just all called him jimmy. by his mid-20s ray was a two-bit gunman. this is ray on a hospital table shot by a chicago cop after the botched robbery of a taxi driver in 1952. ray went to prison for two years. then three more years in federal prison at leavenworth for stealing post office money orders. ray turned down a transfer to an honor farm. prison records say he did so because he didn t want to live in an integrated honor dorm.
in 1959, caught after a grocery holdup in st. louis, ray was declared a habitual criminal and sent to the missouri state prison for 20 years. you have a guy who wasn t very bright, wasn t a good criminal, wasn t the sharpest tack. he s smart, he s plenty smart, intelligent. smart enough, jerry said, not to get caught most of the time. they don t catch him on the other crimes, you know. so he had done a lot of things he got away with. almost eight years later in 1967, james earl ray escaped from prison by smuggling himself out in a bread truck. he headed for chicago taking a job as a dishwasher at the indian trail restaurant. then on a summer afternoon, downstate in alton, illinois, a bank robbery. john light was the chief of detectives. the witnesses said two people came in, masks like ladies stockings pulled over their head.