Assassin free after dramatic jailbreak

Press, 13 June 1977, Page 8

Assassin free after dramatic jailbreak

NZPA Petros, Tennessee James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Dr Martin Luther King, remained at large yesterday, but the F. 8.1. said that it was, confident Ray and three: other escaped convicts were ' stiil somewhere in the East! Tennessee mountains, possi-i bly within a few miles of j the prison they escaped from 24 hours earlier. Rav broke out of the'maximum security Brushy. Mountain prison with five, other convicts in a hail of gunfire on Friday, and fled into the mountains of northeast Tennessee. Two of the escapers have already been recaptured, but there were indications that tl a others may have hopped freight trains. Seven convicts launched the escape at the rear wall, when a tall, wooded ridge looms over the fortress-like prison. Guards in the towers

opened up with shotguns and rifles, and shot one of ithe convicts off the wall. He ■ was taken to hospital : suffering from minor ’ wounds. Hundreds of prison ’[guards, state police, and city ■and county officers, using 'bloodhounds and helicopers, i searched the heavily-forested l a n d rattlesnake-infested 'mountains for traces of the men throughout the weekend, but a recert drought [was making it hard for the dogs to find and follow a ■scent. , Ray, who is 49, broke out ■of Brushy Mountain on his i third try, a little more than .[eight years after he pleaded guilty and took a 99-year isentence for the murder of ;Dr King in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. |! Dr King was felled by a J single shot as he stood on >’the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. An inij tensive manhunt soon fo-

s cased on Ray, then a fugi-' f tive from the Missouri State a I Prison. He was arrested at 1 London’s Heathrow Airport r on .June 5. ; On .March 10, 1969, Ray ijentered a guilty plea and /'was sentenced to 99 years, j,There was no testimony. i , I Ray’s efforts for a new i trial were rejected by one i'court after another, although e; there were many unex-; - plained facets to the case —| tisuch as where he got the e I money to flee to Europe a after the killing. The assassination of the t ; Nobel Peace Prize-winner s touched off rioting and burnj ing across the United States, j State officials have disr counted theories of a f conspiracy to set Ray up to - be killed. In Washington, President J [Carter has asked the Attdrg ney-General (.Mr Griftin Bell) . to keep him informed of all -i developments in the case.