April 4, 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was killed by a single bullet as he stood on the second floor balcony outside his hotel room in Memphis.1 The shot came from high on his right, not on a horizontal trajectory from the rooming house behind the hotel of the alleged assassin, James Earl Ray. Ray, a mediocre shot, would have needed to stand on the edge of the common bathroom tub to see out the window, and a wall (since conveniently removed) would have kept him from aligning the rifle. Ballistics, forensics, and medical evidence all rule him out. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there had been a conspiracy, with Ray as the patsy.
Critical researchers have argued that the federal government, especially FBI or perhaps CIA, carried out the assassination