Did You Kill Dr. King?

Q. Did you know Martin Luther King personally?

A. No, sir.

Q. Have you any kind of grudge against him?

A. No, sir.

Q. Did you kill Dr. King?

A. No, sir.

Thus, in an unsworn statement, the man whom the U.S. Government claims is James Earl Ray battled last week in London against extradition to face a murder charge in Tennessee. "Some of the [Government] testimony is false," he stated in a high-pitched Southern-accented voice. Ramon George Sneyd objected in particular to a British detective's testimony that when he was arrested on June 8 he blurted: "Oh God! I feel so trapped!"

"Single Hand." Because he had refused the oath, British law shielded him from crossexamination: a bodyguard of Scotland Yard plainclothesmen flanked him during a six-minute appearance in the witness box at London's Bow Street Magistrates' Court. Then Barrister David Calcutt, acting for the U.S., presented circumstantial evidence against the man whom U.S. authorities identified as Ray. For 90 minutes, Calcutt read into the record depositions and affidavits pointing to him as the rifleman who pulled the trigger in a second-floor bathroom of a shabby Memphis rooming house to kill King.

For the first time, the U.S. revealed a witness who recognized Ray from FBI photographs as resembling a man he spotted in the rooming house during the afternoon of April 4. Charles Quitman Stephens, 46, in an apartment next to the bathroom, heard the shot. "I went out and saw a man running," Stephens said in an affidavit. "Although I didn't get a long look, I think it was the same man I saw earlier."

An FBI fingerprint expert testified that there were at least eleven points of similarity between the prints belonging to. Ray and those of the man held in London as Ramon George Sneyd. Ray's prints, said FBI Agent George Bonebrake, were on a rifle and telescopic sight abandoned in a store doorway near the shooting and also on binoculars wrapped with the weapon. Affidavits from merchants in Montgomery, Ala., and Birmingham pointed to Ray as the man who had purchased the binoculars, rifle and sight. "The tragic death of Dr. King was the working of the single hand of this man," declared Calcutt, pointing to the prisoner's dock.

Defense attorneys are seeking a loophole in the 1931 extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain that bars surrendering persons accused of political crimes. And while the U.S. expects to wind up its case against Ray this week even if an extradition order is granted, appeals could delay his return for weeks.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.