James Earl Ray, the petty criminal who confessed to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr., then recanted and spent decades seeking a trial, died April 23, 1998, of liver failure. He was 70.
Ray was pronounced dead at 11:36 a.m. EDT at Columbia Nashville Memorial Hospital, a statement from the Tennessee Department of Correction said.
Ray, who was serving a 99-year prison sentence for the 1968 slaying, suffered from kidney and liver failure and had been hospitalized repeatedly since late 1996.
Until his death, Ray argued his guilty plea had been coerced and fought in vain for a new trial. In this effort, Ray won the unlikely support of the King family, led by King's son Dexter Scott King, who came to believe Ray was not involved in the assassination plot.
