Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, by James Earl Ray. Ray, a 40-year-old escaped convict, fired a single shot from a Remington Model 760 rifle from a bathroom window of a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was standing on the second- floor balcony
. Ray was arrested in London on June 8, 1968, extradited to the United States, pleaded guilty on March 10, 1969, and was sentenced to 99 years in prison
. Although Ray later recanted his confession and suggested a conspiracy, the official investigations concluded that he was the assassin
