For years the family of the Rev Martin Luther King has believed that his killing was the result of a conspiracy and not simply the act of lone gunman James Earl Ray. Now a Florida pastor has claimed that his late father, Henry Clay Wilson, was responsible with three others for the murder 34 years ago.
The claim is being investigated by the FBI, which says the Rev Ronald Denton (61), a pastor in the New Covenant Church in Gainesville, Florida, decided to announce his claim to the press before approaching them.
Mr Denton told a press conference in Gainesville this week he had wanted to get a 34-year-old secret off his chest. "My dad told me James Earl Ray had nothing to do with the shooting other than to buy a rifle for them," said Mr Wilson, also a siding contractor. "My dad was the one who shot Dr King," he said, but he produced no other evidence to substantiate the claim. His father's two co-conspirators are also dead, he said.
Mr Wilson said his father "believed Dr King was a communist and was trying to cause an uprising" and that the killing was not racially motivated, although he admitted his father, who died 12 years ago, had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan and had been involved in Klan-inspired shootings and beatings.
He said that as a young man he had attended some of the meetings of the conspirators, at his father's request. He had long agonised about coming forward but felt safer to do so now all the parties were dead. And he claimed to reporters that the murder weapon was at the bottom of the St John's River in Jacksonville.
