James Earl Ray fled to London after he shot Martin Luther King

Sunday Express, 9 June 1968

Somehow I had managed to live until yesterday without learning that James Earl Ray, the man who assassinated Martin Luther King in 1968, fled to London after his crime and was arrested there by the Metropolitan Police. Thanks to Rob Tyers for enlightening me in the middle of a thread on pubs called The Green Man.

There's a comprehensive Wikipedia article on the assassination, and BBC News has published one about Ray's journey to London. the people he met and the crimes he committed before his arrest.

You should read those for the full story, but in essence Ray fled to Canada after the shooting. There he obtained the birth certificate of a Canadian citizen, which he used to obtain a false passport, and then flew to Lisbon via Heathrow.

He had hoped to go on from Lisbon by sea to an African country that had no extradition treaty with the US. This plan came to nothing, so he flew back to London.

There he stayed at a couple of cheap hotels, but his money was running out. He tried an armed robbery at a jeweller's shop, only to flee when an alarm was set off, and then held up the TSB in Earls Court Road. He came away with only £100, which wasn't much to show for a bank robbery even in 1968.

It was enough to buy him a ticket to Brussels, but an immigration officer at Heathrow noticed that he had two passports. The police were notified and Ray was arrested – the British police knew by then the assumed name he had been travelling under.

Ray died in prison in the US in 1998 at the age of 70.