Wide Hunt For Suspect

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31660, 22 April 1968, Page 11

Wide Hunt For Suspect

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) WASHINGTON, April 21. An escaped convict, James Earl Ray, has been given an extraordinary emergency listing on the F.BJ.’s roster of the “10 Most Wanted Criminals,” intensifying the man hunt for the alleged assassin of Dr Martin Luther King. I Ray, who masqueraded as I Eric Starvo Galt at the time King was slain in Memphis, was placed on the list yesterday, even though there are 10 fugitives already on it. This has happened only once before in the history of the j“10 Most Wanted Criminals.” The F. 8.1. director, J. Edgar Hoover, decided to add Ray as an eleventh to ensure

the widest possible dissemination of the 40-year-old criminal’s picture and description to the police and the public. In addition, a special alert was set up in the Mexican border area in the event of Ray trying to flee the country. Mexican police officials were said to be looking for Ray on an unofficial basis. Ray, identified through a painstaking check of F. 8.1. fingerprint files, had been sought by police as an escaped convict for nearly a year. He broke out of Mis-

souri State Prison by hiding in a bread truck on April 23, 1967. The wanted man had been serving a 20-year sentence for armed robbery and for a while was confined in the maximum security ward of the State Hospital at Fulton. Ray has also served sentences in the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, the Illinois State prisons at Joliet and Pontiac, and in Los Angeles County Gaol. The F. 8.1. warned that he should be considered armed and extremely dangerous.