![]() Ray's life outside the Army proved even less stable. He was charged with drunkenness and breaking arrest, before getting discharged for ineptness and lack of adaptability in 1948. But he found it difficult to adapt to the military's strict codes of conduct. Two years later, his young sister Marjorie, died in a fire after playing with matches and accidentally catching herself on fire.Īt the age of 16, Ray left his parents and returned to Alton, where he moved in with his grandmother and landed work in the dye room of the International Shoe Tannery.Īfter getting laid off in 1945, Ray enlisted in the Army, eventually getting stationed in West Germany. In 1935 the family suddenly left Alton and relocated to Ewing, Missouri, after police had started looking for Ray's father on a forgery charge. The Rays struggled to make ends meet, and as a consequence, the family moved several times during the early part of Ray's childhood.Ī part of his life was shaped by tragedy. ![]() ![]() Early Yearsīorn on March 10, 1928, in Alton, Illinois, was the eldest of George and Lucille Ray's nine children. ![]() He shot and killed King in Memphis on April 4, 1968, confessing to the crime the following March. ![]() A confirmed racist and small-time criminal, James Earl Ray began plotting the assassination of revered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. ![]()
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