Who Killed Martin Luther King?

• Position: Brief Article

Thirty-one years after a sniper's bullet killed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, a jury there has decided that King was the victim of a conspiracy rather than of a lone assassin.

In a civil suit brought by King's family, a jury ruled last month that retired Memphis cafe owner Loyd Jowers, as well as "others, including governmental agencies," had been part of a broader plot. The King family sued Jowers, who is now 73 and in failing health, for $100, hoping to use the case to prove their view that the Mafia, the FBI, and other powerful forces conspired to assassinate King. Jowers had owned a restaurant below the rooming house from which James Earl Ray said he shot and killed King. But Ray later recanted and hinted at a conspiracy. (Ray died in...