James Earl Ray murdered Dr. Martin Luther King with a single rifle shot fired across a Memphis street on April 4, 1968. He was arrested in London two months later and confessed to the crime, ducking trial and almost certain execution. He immediately recanted, claimed coersion, and spent the next 30 years trying to turn himself from villian to victim, from the criminal who robbed the world of a great leader to the patsy of some shadowy Raoul.

Now he is dead, yet this failed career criminal continues to do harm, this bungler so inept the Army deemed him unfit for even the most menial duty mocks us still. Ray is gone, but the stench of conspriracy he created lingers.

Sadly, this con man who never got away with anything in life is pulling it off in death. His vague allegations that he was framed in a vast and shadowy government plot to silence the voice of freedom and justice are gaining acceptance. Sadder still, the particular targets of this evil nonsense are members of Dr. King’s own family.

Widow Coretta and son Dexter backed Ray’s plea for a trial in the last years of his life. Now they are pressing for a federal inquiry. Oliver Stone — the same Oliver Stone who pinned the JFK assasination on Castro, the Mafia, LBJ or Nixon (take your pick) — is talking major motion picture.

Ray was not denied a trial. He pleaded guilty to avoid a trial, to avoid facing evidence that put him in the window opposite Dr. King’s and that put the murder weapon in his hands. To avoid the electric chair.

There already has been a federal inquiry. A House committee in 1979 examined the case and determined there was a plot. Not a plot involving J. Edgar Hoover and renegade FBI agents, but a plot hatched by St. Louis-based white supremacists who put a $50,000 bounty of Dr. King’s head.

Ray committed this crime as an escapee from a Missouri prison. He knew who harbored him, he knew who gave him the rifle, he knew who provided him with the documents and the airfare to flee the county. He knew and refused to tell. After all, why dish out a tawdry tale of mere racism when the public hungers for a cabal at the highest level of government? Ray is not the first criminal/con man to pull the stunt of obstructing justice and then claiming he was denied the same, but he certainly is one of its best practicioners.

The assassination of Dr. King deserves a renewed and full investigation — an investigation that, to the greatest extent possible after three decades, identifies, prosecutes and convicts the white supremacists responsible. The nation needs the truth. What it’s likely to get, unfortunately, is another big-budget cinematic fairy tale.