Initial Convictions and First Escape From Prison
He was convicted of his first crime, a burglary in California, in 1949. In 1952 he served two years for armed robbery of a taxi driver in Illinois. In 1955, he was convicted of mail fraud after stealing money orders in Hannibal, Missouri, and then forging them to take a trip to Florida. He served three years at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary. In 1959 he was caught stealing $120 in an armed robbery of a St. Louis Kroger store. Ray was sentenced to twenty years in prison for repeated offenses. He escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1967 by hiding in a truck transporting bread from the prison bakery.
Read more about this topic: James Earl Ray
Famous quotes containing the words initial, convictions, escape and/or prison:
“Capital is a result of labor, and is used by labor to assist it in further production. Labor is the active and initial force, and labor is therefore the employer of capital.”
—Henry George (1839–1897)
“His mind was strong and clear, his will was unwavering, his convictions were uncompromising, his imagination was powerful enough to invest all plans of national policy with a poetic charm.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Girls, get an education and escape slavery.”
—Rena Rietveld Verduin, U.S. farm woman. As quoted in The Female Experience, ch. 45, by Gerda Lerner (1977)
“Anyone who has been to an English public school will always feel comparatively at home in prison. It is the people brought up in the gay intimacy of the slums ... who find prison so soul-destroying.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)