NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- The state's coroner confirmed
Friday that assassin James Earl Ray died of liver failure
caused by a chronic hepatitis infection.
But the autopsy of Martin Luther King Jr.'s confessed
killer was not able to determine how Ray contracted
hepatitis, as his family had hoped.
"Since there are several different types of hepatitis and
each one can be contracted in various ways, it would be an
exhaustive list of possibilities at this point," medical
examiner Bruce Levy said.
A blood transfusion Ray was given in 1981 after being
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stabbed in prison remains a possibility, although there are
others, Levy said.
A doctor who represented the convict's family at the
autopsy said Ray probably would have been able to live had
he gotten a liver transplant. Tennessee officials refused
to grant Ray a furlough for the operation.
"This is a very good candidate for a liver transplant,
and a liver transplant I think would definitely have given
him life for who knows how many years," Dr. Cyril Wecht
said.
Ray died Thursday at the age of 70 in a Nashville
hospital after having been in failing health for some time.
He was serving 99 years in prison for killing King in
Memphis in 1968.
He recanted his guilty plea three days after making it,
claiming he was forced into it by greedy lawyers.
Prosecutors said Ray pleaded guilty because he knew the
evidence would prove his guilt at trial and he did not want
to risk getting sentenced to the death penalty.
Ray had been seeking a new trial for 29 years, and even
received support from members of the King family who
claimed the government may have been involved in the
assassination.