THE PAIN of Martin Luther King's murder and the dignity of his life and work are only mocked 29 years after his death to direct suspicion onto yet another monstrous and imaginary government conspiracy.
It's made more painful, even embarrassing to the memory of King, that his widow and surviving children are parties to the farce, seemingly unable or unwilling to believe King's real assassin was a career petty criminal, a thief, a con man, a liar, an outspoken racist and ultimately a killer.So wretched a man, such human refuse as James Earl Ray, the King family and the claque of career conspiratorial theorists now surrounding them all suggest, could not have brought down the world's most famous civil rights leader, the loved and respected martyr to world peace and racial healing.
As it was claimed in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and other killings, the claque, with the King family now alongside, insists it must have been powerful plotters inside the U.S. government who conspired to kill King.
A core belief attaching to the King murder conspiracy is that the civil rights leader was not shot to death in Memphis on April 4, 1968, in a racist attack by a prison escapee and social outcast but killed by a murderous conspiracy of industrialists, militarists and anti-communists angry at King's op-po-si-tion to the war in Vietnam.
Just as it was and still is in the Kennedy assassination - where the conspiracy claque saw the same plotters in 1963, then concerned that the president might turn against U.S. involvement in Vietnam - the King assassination conspiracy is not only unproved but so far-fetched as to pick up a momentum of oddball belief: so crazy it must be true.
The return of a bizarre accusation that hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of Americans had to have been involved in a conspiracy to kill an American leader is made only more bizarre by members of the King family, not just joining the conspiracy chorus but reaching out to Ray, touching and soothing him as a victim.
The latest event on the trail of a King assassination conspiracy was a prison visit with Ray by one of King's sons, Dexter, who, in a painfully simple-minded interview asked Ray, "Did you kill my father?" Ray answered, "No . . . I had nothing to do with shooting your father."
Later, Dexter King said: "Having met with James Earl Ray, I believe and my family believes this man is innocent . . . This visit for me was a spiritual experience." The young King said he and Ray discussed how Ray had been victimized as "an unknowing patsy" in an enormous murder plot hatched inside the government.
It was, of course, the "unknowing patsy" - Ray - who was traced back to his rented room overlooking the King murder scene and whose fingerprints were found on the rifle investigators agreed was the murder weapon, a gun purchased by Ray less than a month before the killing. And Ray was also linked to a bundle found with the abandoned rifle, which contained, among other personal effects, a transistor radio on which was etched Ray's prison identification number.
Ray escaped trial and a possible death sentence in 1969 when, on the advice of his attorney, the famed criminal defense lawyer, Percy Foreman, he pleaded guilty to the King murder. Sentenced to life in prison, he has resorted to repeated claims he was coerced to plead guilty and he's asked for a trial to prove his innocence.
Ray's chief lawyer now is William F. Pepper, a conspiracy buff who's written a book on his theory of a government plot to kill King. He's asking for a new electronic test of the mangled bullet that killed King.
Whatever the outcome of such a test, if there is such a test, nothing in it would quiet conspiracy theorists. Sadly the family of Martin Luther King has joined in the mischief.