Categories: uncategorized
Date: 08 July 2008 13:10:28
Today I found out something interesting that I'd never known before. It regards the arrest of James Earl Ray, the assassin of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
I knew that he had been arrested at Heathrow trying to flee to Rhodesia, a month after his killed Dr King. What I din't know is what had happened earlier in his stay in London. It turns out that he had tried to rob, at gunpoint, a jewellers in Paddington.
Maurice and Billie Isaacs owned Treasures at Paddington Jewellers and in May 1968 a gunman entered the shop, produced a gun, and demanded that they handed over the goodies. Unfortunately for the gunman they resisted and managed to fend him off. The papers hailed them as heroes for what they did.
When Earl Ray was arrested at Heathrow the following month they agreed not to press charges, in order to speed up his extradition to the US. Yet the story doesn't end there.
10 years later a convoy of black limos arrived at their shop and the were whisked away to Washington. Earl Ray had been implicated in the deaths of President John F Kennedy, in 1963, and his brother Robert, in 1968 - though he was found to have had no involvement. It was only at this point that they realised that they were involved in something much bigger than an attempted robbery.
Earl Ray pleaded guilty and was convicted of Martin Luther King's death. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Yet, despite purchasing the rifle a few days earlier and his fingerprints being found on the rifle and ammunition he later pleaded that he was innocent of the crime.
The reason that this story came to later is because the jewellers is closing this month, after 80 years. These little things are often overlooked and make an impression when they are finally revealed.
History Today:
1709 : Csar Peter The Great defeats, and effectively destroys, the Swedish Empire at Poltava, Ukraine.
1838 : Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, a pioneer of airships and Heavy Metal music, is born. "And she's buying a stairway to heaven".
1839 : John D. Rockefeller, oil magnet, philanthropist and monopolist is born.
1853 : US warships arrive at Edo, capital of the closed country of Japan, to demand that it opens for trade. I bet they regret that now that the Japanese do everything way better than they do.
1892 : Fingerprints found at a murder scene in Buenos Aires lead to the first conviction based on fingerprint evidence.
1994 : The "Eternal President" of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, dies. Three years of official mourning are declared. Maybe he didn't believe the evidence that nothing lasts forever - except God.