Killing King

February 15, 2018
A labyrinthine investigation into conspirators linked to James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.Investigative researchers Wexler and Hancock (co-authors: Shadow Warfare: The History of America's Undeclared Wars, 2014, etc.) dive deeply into an unsavory American underground in which the determination to destroy King ran deeper than commonly remembered. "The solution to King's murder is simple," they write. "The same kind of racists who had been trying to kill King for years had finally succeeded that April 4." Regarding Ray, they note "his role is only one strand in the overall web." Assembling a chronological narrative, the authors examine an alliance between the violent White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and wealthy businessmen, which offered a bounty on King's life dating to at least 1964; word spread in Southern prisons, where Ray would learn of it. Ray is portrayed as a money-hungry career criminal, leading to speculation that he pre-empted a larger conspiracy or overstepped his role. Wexler and Hancock suggest that this racist network, reeling from the passage of civil rights legislation, saw King's death as key to starting a full-scale race war, inspired by the ascendance of Christian Identity, a religion combining anti-black racism with anti-Semitism, and by violent fringe political groups such as the National States' Rights Party. The authors claim these factors have been underexamined, arguing that adherents "viewed King as an agent of the Satanic-Jewish conspiracy." While Klansmen ramped up a campaign of violence around 1967, King "shifted his priorities to issues of social and economic justice," lessening his support among mainstream Americans and black radicals questioning nonviolence. As for Ray, the authors meticulously reconstruct his wanderings before King's murder, showing a hapless fugitive rather than a committed terrorist: "Events in Memphis do not suggest a well-planned conspiracy, certainly not if Ray was the designated shooter." Their account is clear, though reliant on supposition and a dizzying cast of unsavory characters.A fascinating and disturbing look at complexities underlying a shameful historical epoch.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 5, 2018
Researchers Wexler (America’s Secret Jihad) and Hancock (Shadow Warfare) bolster their contention that the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was the product of a conspiracy, in agreement with the 1979 findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. The authors conclude there were at least nine such attempts over a decade, and the “solution to King’s murder is simple the same kind of racists who had been trying to kill King for years had finally succeeded.” Their evidence comes in part from extensive interviews with Donald Nissen, an ex-con who, in 1967, reported to the FBI that he had been approached by a fellow prisoner at Leavenworth Prison about sharing a bounty of $100,000 for helping to kill King. The authors also link King’s murder to the 1964 murder of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner; they believe both were orchestrated by the Ku Klux Klan. While it may be overly optimistic to hope, as the authors do, for a reopening of the case by federal authorities 50 years after the assassination, they credibly argue that the many unanswered questions remaining would warrant such a step. This book provides an eye-opening, well-researched new perspective on King’s murder.

March 1, 2018
History has recorded that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968. What isn't as well documented is the serpentine conspiracy that led to that murder. At its height, it was a nationwide network of planners and sponsors, a cabal of right-wing activists, Ku Klux Klan kingpins, and Dixie Mafia bigwigs. It involved criminals on parole and convicts behind bars, terrorists hiding beneath the veneer of respectable businessmen and suburban housewives. All were motivated by bigotry and greed, for there was a bounty on Dr. King's head, enough to lure Ray, who was less racial ideologue than two-bit grifter. In this intricately woven, impressively researched, and painstakingly delineated analysis, investigative researchers Wexler and Hancock place King's assassination and its investigation by a sometimes woefully inept FBI within the racial and cultural mores of the time. Published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's death, this elaborately documented examination of one of the defining crimes of the twentieth century brings new light to a dark period in the nation's history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)