Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me Vincent Dowd.

I'm taking you back to June 1968 and the arrest in London of James Earl Ray, the prime suspect in the assassination of the American

civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Dr King had been shot dead two months earlier in Memphis, Tennessee.

It's a crime that King has been shot at the Lorraine.

Okay, Tachton Advising King has been shot.

604.

You are to form a ring around the road. It's April the 4th, 1968.

Dr Martin Luther King, standing on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis has sustained a single and fatal bullet wound to the jaw and neck.

Dr Martin Luther King has been shot and wounded in Memphis, Tennessee this evening.

Police describe a young well-dressed medium-built white male driving a white

Mustang wounded possibly critically wounded Dr Martin Luther King at his motel room in the

downtown... The police decided the rifle shot had come from a window at the back

of Bessie Brewer's rooming house nearby. A guest at Brewers had later decided Willard had in fact been James Earl Ray, a small time criminal, though not everyone

accepts that. Ray later claimed that driving a Ford Mustang through Memphis, he was scared by reports on the radio

that police were looking for a man of his description as he explained years later

to the BBC. It was my intention to go to New Orleans but I heard a report on the radio that they were looking for a white Mustang and some type of shooting.

Then later on another report came on they mentioned Martin Luther King.

Frightened of arrest for something he said. Another report came on, they mentioned Martin Luther King.

Frightened of arrest for something he said he hadn't done,

he went on the run as far as Canada.

But he soon decided he needed to be somewhere further from Tennessee.

...