Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray, a 40-year-old escaped convict. Ray shot King from a bathroom window of a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was standing on the second-floor balcony
. Ray had a criminal history and had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967. After the assassination, Ray fled the country but was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968. He pleaded guilty to King's murder on March 10, 1969, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, where he remained until his death in 1998
. Although Ray confessed, he later recanted and claimed he was part of a conspiracy, but no conclusive evidence proved this. The King family and others have suggested a conspiracy involving government agencies and others, but official investigations have not substantiated these claims
. In summary, James Earl Ray is the person who killed Martin Luther King Jr., according to official records and his own guilty plea
