[[ from Reuters News - Posted on JFK Place on 3-28-97 ]]

Friday March 28  8:02 AM EST

King's Son Thinks James Earl Ray Innocent

	    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (Reuter) - The son of slain civil rights
leader Martin Luther King Jr. left his first meeting with James
Earl Ray convinced that his father's confessed assassin was
innocent.

	    "I just want to ask you for the record, did you kill my
father?" Dexter King asked the frail, 69-year-old Ray.

	    "No, no, no, I didn't, no," Ray responded, to which King
replied: "I want you to know that I believe you and my family
believes you and we are going to do everything in our power to
try and make sure that justice will prevail."

	    The two men met and shook hands for the first time in a
conference room at the Lois DeBerry Special Needs Facility in
Nashville, where the ailing Ray has been held off and on since
suffering near-fatal liver failure over the past three months.

	    Ray, wearing a faded blue prison outfit and trembling
slightly, entered the room in a wheelchair but insisted on
moving to a chair opposite King.

	    " know this is a difficult period for you. We want to
bring what has occurred in the dark into the light," King told
Ray, who is serving a 99-year prison sentence for the murder.

	    After spending a few minutes together in front of cameras
and jail guards, the two men met in private for 20 minutes.

	    King later told reporters that he had not expected to coax
telling details about his father's assassination nor a death-bed
confession from Ray.

	    "I was very sensitive to the fact that this was an awkward
situation, but I've always believed in going directly to the
source," King said. "I was also concerned about how he felt.
The man is dealing with terminal illness."
	    King said he and Ray briefly discussed the prevailing theory
among conspiracists that Ray was "an unknowing patsy" for
government-led plotters. Among the motives cited for killing
King were his growing opposition to the Vietnam War.

	    King said Ray told him he feared being viewed as a con
artist who had drawn the King family into the controversy.

	    "I did not run to get involved in this, it came to me,"
King said of his family's quixotic support for his father's
confessed killer.

	    "There are many ironies in this case, but in some strange
way, our destinies are entwined. We are working together for a
common goal, which is to achieve a trial," King said.

	    "Having met with James Earl Ray, I believe and my family
believes this man is innocent. This visit has long been
anticipated. This visit for me was a spiritual experience."

	    King and his mother, Coretta Scott King, testified last
month on Ray's behalf at a Memphis court hearing in which Ray's
lawyers took the first step in securing a trial. Ray has
persistently argued that his confession was coerced by his
lawyers so as to avoid the death penalty, and that the real
killer was an arms smuggler he had met named "Raoul."

	    A Tennessee criminal appeals court panel was considering
whether to drop a 1994 stay in Ray's case and grant a request to
retest the rifle and the remnants of the fatal bullet with a
sophisticated electron microscope.

	    Several examinations of the rifle markings never
conclusively proved it fired the bullet into King's face, but a
1978 congressional investigation concluded Ray, a petty criminal
with a history of incompetence, acted alone.

	    Fueling the conspiracy theories have been questions about
how Ray managed to elude an extensive law enforcement dragnet
and travel to Europe after the slaying, disclosures about FBI
covert probes of King's activities, and the unseen documents
from the original investigations sealed from public view.

	    Meanwhile, Ray and his family have sought publicity in the
hope of securing a liver transplant, without which Ray will die
before the end of the year, according to his doctors.

	    Ray's younger brother, Jerry, said outside the prison that a
Tennessee convict named Joe Trevino, who was scheduled to be
executed on May 6, had offered to donate his liver to Ray, who
is not on an organ-transplant waiting list.

	    In his halting conversation with King, Ray suggested that a
committee be formed to review records in the case, many of which
are under seal until well into the next century.

	    "I had nothing to do with shooting your father, but you'll
have to make your own evaluation on that," Ray said.

	    Until this year the King family had avoided getting involved
in Ray's repeated appeals, a decision that Dexter King said he
regretted.