The man who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. was no criminal mastermind. This episode traces the erratic, contradictory life of James Earl Ray, a habitual petty criminal whose record was a continuous loop of bungled burglaries, robberies, and fraud before April 4, 1968.

We follow Ray from a childhood on the run and a military discharge for ineptitude, through a prison escape hidden in a bread truck, a bizarre fugitive year, and the meticulous stalking that ended in Memphis, to a global flight that finally collapsed at Heathrow Airport.

• A 20-year sentence for a 120 dollar armed robbery at a St. Louis grocery store
• His strange fugitive detours: a nose job, dance lessons, and bartending school
• Volunteering for George Wallace's campaign and dreaming of emigrating to Rhodesia
• Dropping the rifle covered in hi ...