Word: rays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ended last week the escape of the admitted killer of Martin Luther King Jr., 54½ hours after he went over the 14ft. wall of Brushy Mountain state prison with six other convicts. All were run down and seized, the last 31 hours after Ray. And Ray's capture-out in the rugged hills, on his own, just as local officials had predicted from the start-deflated speculation that the assassin had escaped from Brushy Mountain, a maximum-security fortress set down in the wilderness, with outside help...
...Ray's flight had revived rumors that the small-time criminal was part of a conspiracy that climaxed with the murder on April 4,1968, of the nation's most celebrated civil rights leader. Much of that renewed speculation came from Black Leaders Ralph Abernathy and Jesse Jackson and members of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Said Louis Stokes, chairman of the committee: "My real concern is whether Ray was lured into this escape and, if so, whether for the purpose of killing him to stop him from talking...
Traditional Break. With Ray back in a cell, Stokes admitted, "There now appears to be no evidence of outside conspiratorial help." Ray has already talked to committee investigators for 25½hours. Stokes had said he wanted to put him on the stand to question him about Raoul, the mystery man in the prisoner's story (and perhaps imagination) who, Ray has claimed, drew him into the King assassination plot. But such a scene, with Ray on camera and all the conspiracy buffs waiting for remarks to support their theories, is "way down the line," said Stokes...
Initially, Brushy Mountain Warden Stonney Lane suspected that some of the prison's employees had helped Ray break out. But by last week he too had changed his mind. He felt that none of his men had aided Ray and the others, although he believed some of the prison personnel might have been careless. Last Thursday Guard Floyd Hooks, 38, was dismissed for "negligence on duty"; he had been in the manned watchtower nearest the point of the escape. Said Lane, "This was a traditional break, and they ran just like other prisoners...
...Garrison went back to prison to get two bloodhounds. At 11 p.m. he and some others captured Hill, Ray's baby-faced cellmate, by a burned-out cabin. The dogs then led the guards to the New River, where Ray had hoped to lose his pursuers. For a time, he succeeded, running upstream for about 600 yds. Looking for the trail, Sammy Joe Chapman and Johnny Newburg headed upriver with two fresh dogs: Sandy and Little Red, a pair of 14-month-old females. The hounds quickly picked up Ray's trail. In a fury, they took...