Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray. Ray, an escaped convict from the Missouri State Penitentiary, fired a single shot from a Remington Model 760 rifle from a rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, where King was standing on the balcony on April 4, 1968

. After the shooting, Ray fled but was arrested on June 8, 1968, at London's Heathrow Airport. He pleaded guilty to the murder in March 1969 and was sentenced to 99 years in prison

. There have been allegations and beliefs by King’s family and others that the assassination involved a conspiracy including the U.S. government and other parties, but official investigations by the FBI and the Department of Justice have not substantiated these claims