Canale added that although he had no eyewitness and the evidence against Ray was largely circumstantial, he doesn't buy the conspiracy theory. ``I think he acted alone,'' he said, noting that the FBI had found Ray's fingerprint on the rifle discarded by the gunman near the scene of the crime. However, supporters of Ray's story say his fingerprint was on the rifle because he had purchased it. They also note that, while Ray is a lifelong non-smoker, Viceroy cigarette butts were found in the rooming house bathroom and in his car ashtray, and that two sizes of clothing were found in his trunk. Ray said the fact that Raoul often used his car may explain the butts in the ashtray and clothes in the trunk. ``As for cigarettes in the bathroom I can't say because I was never in that bathroom,'' he said. ``My prints were never found in there, you know.'' Then there were the two white Mustangs. The late Guy Canipe, whose amusement company was located next door to the flophouse, told investigators he saw a fleeing man ditch a rifle and a small overnight bag in front of his store and then drive away in a white Mustang, one of two that had been parked in front of the store that afternoon. He described the man as having dark hair and a beard. Ray, who was captured in London two months after King's death, says the fact that the gunman ditched the rifle and his bag _ which Ray says he had left in his room when he went to get the tire fixed _ shows somebody was trying to frame him. ``Why would I have dumped my stuff there for the police to find when all I had to do was put it in the car and drive away?'' he asked. After two years of hearings, ending in 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations couldn't answer that question. The committee issued a report saying Ray probably had been part of a larger conspiracy. But while the committee couldn't say who else had participated in the plot, it did exonerate the CIA and FBI, both of which had conducted extensive illegal surveillance and smear campaigns against King throughout the 1960s. Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was known to have hated King. FBI agents testified that no evidence could be found of conspiracies involving the Mafia, Ku Klux Klan or foreign communists. Some of King's friends, however, still feel that letting Hoover's FBI investigate King's assassination was like letting a hungry fox guard a henhouse. ``I have no proof but I feel in my heart that the government, probably the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, and perhaps the CIA, were involved,'' says the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, who was with King when he died in a Memphis hospital an hour after the shooting. ``It's just a pity but, given the way things were back then, we'll probably never know the whole truth about one of the greatest tragedies of our time.''
