FORWARD BY LARRY A. SNEED
(AUTHOR, “NO MORE SILENCE: AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY”.)
The political assassinations of the 1960s have fascinated readers and the general public for over 30 years. Somehow interest in the subject lingers with new publications appearing each year. Mel Ayton has previously written “The JFK Assassination: Dispelling The Myths” (2002) as his contribution to the very growing literature on the subject. He has also written “Questions of Controversy” (2001), an in-depth study of the Kennedy brothers. To this impressive record, Mr Ayton has now added his new study of the Martin Luther King assassination.
Though a review of the literature on the King assassination reveals far fewer publications than with the John F Kennedy assassination, still, over twenty-five well-publicised books have been published on the subject. As with the Kennedy assassination, the approach to each subject has been polarised; conspiracy or non-conspiracy. This, for many, has been what makes for interesting reading with all the political assassinations of the turbulent era of the 1960’s in the United States. In many cases people love to read murder mysteries. As a result, through the power of self-persuasion or persuasion from others, some have convinced themselves of conspiracies. They will tend to believe only what satisfies their own preconceived notions.
After reading most of the relevant sources on the subject, Mel Ayton, too, faced the dilemma, especially in light of the charges by many of King’s followers that a conspiracy existed. As the years progressed away from the event and toward the twenty-first century, stories began to appear in newspapers and on the television networks revealing ‘new eyewitnesses’ and destroying the credibility of others previously interviewed. Charges were made that James Earl Ray, the accused assassin, was innocent, as he had claimed for years, and that Ray was the victim of a government conspiracy, that military intelligence was involved. The King family accepted the concept of conspiracy to the point of openly acknowledging the innocence of Ray shortly before he died.
What insights does Mel Ayton offer which might shed new light on the assassination? Following on the heels of Gerald Posner’s research, Ayton has further researched the assassination by exploring the new theories and investigations which have emerged since Posner’s “Killing The Dream” appeared in 1998.
Ayton has used the previously-secret Scotland Yard files which reveal Ray’s criminal activities in London. He has also explored FBI memos and peculiarities of the 1999 conspiracy trial, as well as the Justice Department Report of 2000, and has delved into the enigmatic figures of Loyd Jowers and former FBI agent Don Wilson, each of whom added to the “conspiratorial plot”. Ayton, too, gives a more descriptive analysis of Ray’s character and personality by using the leading experts in the field of psychopathogy and he explores the possibility of others close to Ray having prior knowledge of the assassination.
With the pendulum swinging back and forth between conspiracy and non-conspiracy in the case, Mel Ayton has done a masterful job in refuting many of the conspiratorial claims by previous authors and has used, when concrete evidence is lacking, deductive reasoning to conclude that James Earl Ray really was the assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. Whatever your views on the subject Ayton has produced a work that cannot be ignored regarding one of the tragic events of the tragic decade of the 1960s.