Today, Explained - Who killed Malcolm X?

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Nearly 60 years after the assassination of Malcolm X, some of the men wrongly put in prison for killing him are finally being redeemed. Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, from the documentary series "Who Killed Malcolm X?", explains whether the true killers will ever be brought to justice. Today’s show was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey, fact-checked by Haleema Shah and Laura Bullard, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. On Tuesday, a man named Muhammad Abdul Aziz filed a lawsuit against New York State. He's seeking at least $20 million in damages after being, quote, unjustly branded as a convicted murderer. The man he was unjustly accused of murdering? Malcolm X. Now, if you're like, Malcolm X, wasn't he assassinated like almost 60 years ago?

Yes, but there have been a lot of developments lately, including this year. And a guy named Abdur Rahman Muhammad. I'm a historian and a journalist. Has kind of been right in the middle of them. There's been a renewed interest generated in this history as a result of a groundbreaking documentary that came out in the fall of 2019 called Who Killed Malcolm X? Malcolm's death never sat right with me. The investigation was a failure.

Asking who's guilty is a dangerous question to ask. What is the real story? It's in the history book. Leave it there. Leave it alone. And unlike previous documentaries in years going by, this particular documentary actually answered that question, pointing to an actual person. Yes, that is something that has been floating around that Al Mustafa Shabazz, known as William Bradley, was the shotgun man that took Malcolm out. And I think it's because of that documentary that folks are talking about this again.

And what's important here is that in addition to pointing to an actual person, it also pointed to some wrongful convictions. Well, that's exactly right. The documentary caused the district attorney of Manhattan, Cyrus Vance Jr., to reinvestigate the assassination of Malcolm X to completely open up the file once again. Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam always maintained their innocence in the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X. Now, after 55 years, their convictions will be vacated after a two-year investigation led by the Manhattan District Attorney found prosecutors, the FBI, and police withheld

critical information that should have cleared their names. And a month ago, almost to the day, they're exonerated. I apologize on behalf of our nation's law enforcement for this decades-long injustice, which has eroded public faith and institutions that are designed to guarantee equal protection of the law. I know you're very close to this story between the wrongful convictions, the exonerations, now this lawsuit this week. What does this story sort of tell us more broadly about our criminal justice system and about this country? Well, it tells us that it's far too easy to convict a black person in America in the criminal justice system. Barry Sheck, who was one of the attorneys for these recently exonerated men, said,

This has been an exoneration in plain sight for decades, meaning that if anyone really cared about black men and incarceration, it was clear to anyone, you know, that these men were innocent and should have been not only exonerated, you know, decades ago, but in fact should have never been arrested in the first place. Well, let's go back to when they were arrested. Let's go back to February 1965. What was going on in the days before Malcolm X's assassination? He was receiving numerous death threats on the morning of February 14th, 1965. His home was firebombed in Queens. We had received several threats that his life was in danger and everyone took it lightly and said that he was talking out of his mind, that it didn't happen. And the police

and the press, when the house was bombed, they were very unfair to us, saying that my husband had bombed his own house, which was very ridiculous. It was common knowledge that he was being hounded and hunted by members of the Nation of Islam in every city he went to speak. So his life was under threat. And there was peril around every corner for Malcolm X at that time. And the handwriting was on the wall of what was going to happen. And for people who don't know the history, why was the Nation of Islam after Malcolm X? Malcolm X was the former spokesman for the Nation of Islam. He was a beloved figure in the Nation of Islam until he wasn't. Malcolm had lust for power,

a lust for television and the press, until he would do anything to get himself out in the open. He began to see the contradictions in the movement, the kind of moral failings of the leader Elijah Muhammad, who was presented to the following as something of a prophet or messenger of God, a divine figure. And Malcolm began to expose some of the contradictions in his life, his numerous affairs with young secretaries and the babies that he was siring by these secretaries. And this scandalized the nation and it scandalized Elijah Muhammad. And it put Malcolm in the mold of a Benedict Arnold, of a hypocrite. And in fact, they called him the chief hypocrite. This was actually a call for death.

To call someone a hypocrite at that time in the Nation of Islam was really to call for his death. He committed the unforgivable sin of scandalizing his teacher and leader, Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm is the victim of his own preaching. He preached violence and so he become the victim of it. Okay, so tell me what happens the day of his own preaching. He preached violence, and so he became the victim of it. Okay, so tell me what happens the day of his death. The day of his death, he was staying in a hotel in Midtown, Manhattan. He was taken to the Audubon Ballroom, where he was obviously very irascible,

uncomfortable, nervous, kind of cantankerous even. He went backstage, he sat down, he kept asking about the guests, because a number of his guests had canceled. This was a big day for him. He was going to be revealing his program for the Organization of Afro-American Unity. However, none of his guests were showing up, so he was very angry about that. He kept getting up from his seat, walking to the curtain and looking on the other side of the curtain, looking at the audience, and he was overheard to say,

you know, I shouldn't go out there today. I shouldn't go out there today. He kept saying that. His assistant minister was warming up the crowd, a man by the name of Benjamin 2X Kareem. About 400 people arrayed in very simple folding seats out there at the Audubon ballroom. And Minister Benjamin said to the audience, I bring to you Minister Malcolm X, a man who

would give his life for you. Malcolm walked to the rostrum. He gave the audience the greeting, the Islamic greeting, As-salamu alaykum. The audience said, Wa-alaykum-salam. And at that very moment, someone in the back of the hall said, get your hand out my pocket. And it created quite a raucous whereby the audience turned to see what was going on. This person took a smoke bomb, hurled it to the floor. It was just a complete raucous and in that moment of misdirection a very big man kind of brawny walked up to the stage and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun

from underneath his coat about 15 feet away and he blasted it straight at Malcolm's chest and just completely felled him to the stage. His body was supine. It just fell back. It didn't even have time to buckle. It just fell right back and his head hit the stage with a loud thump. The crowd started screaming and going berserk. And at that moment, two other shooters stood up from the front row, one firing a Luger and the other a.45, and emptied their guns into Malcolm's body on the stage, and they all ran out.

He had a small pulse, but slowly the pulse disappeared, and he passed away on the stage there. What does the investigation into the assassination of Malcolm X look like? To me, it doesn't look like it was that serious, that detailed, that meticulous. It was wrapped up in a couple hours. And later that evening, in that very ballroom, there was a dance that was held about seven o'clock that night. I'm sorry. In the same place Malcolm X was assassinated, they held a dance a few hours later? Right there in the Autobahn ballroom, in the very spot where he was assassinated, there was a dance around seven o'clock that evening. There really wasn't much physical evidence, to be quite honest with you. And this is what makes this case so problematic. The convictions of the assassins in 1966, all three of them was based on eyewitness testimony.

There was no physical evidence whatsoever linking them to the crime. They arrested at the scene a man named Talmadge Heyer. He was shot in the leg as he was fleeing by one of Malcolm's security detail. About five days later, Muhammad Abdulaziz, who at that time was known as Norman 3X Butler, he was arrested at his home in the Bronx. And then on March 3rd, Khalil Islam, known at that time as Thomas 15X Johnson, he was arrested at his home. They weren't even at the scene. They were identified by who we'd like to know. And that is some of the questions that we still like to get some answers to. Very soon after the assassination, police had a working theory that it was obviously more than one person.

I mean, just from the shell casings that they found. Uh-huh. So they, from the very beginning, were working with the theory that it was at least three up to five assassins that were involved in this. So they knew it just couldn't be Talmadge Hayer. So there had to be more arrests. So then, you know, the question becomes, you know, who were the other people involved? And at that time, they said that it was Muhammad Abdulaziz and Khalil Islam, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, who they arrested at their home days later, a week or more later. What are they charged with, the three of them? First-degree murder for the assassination of Malcolm X. And what did the

three of them plea? They all pled not guilty initially. And during the trial, when it became clear that they all three were going to be convicted, the true assassin, Talmadge Heyer, took the stand and he confessed. And even during the trial, I had stated myself that Norman Butler and Thomas Johnson were not involved in the killing of Malcolm X. And I would like to see the brothers exonerated. He thought in the beginning of the trial that his two co-defendants would be cut loose, that it would be obvious to anyone that they had nothing to do with it. He knew his role. He did not know these men. And when it became frightfully clear to all three of them that they were getting ready to get sent down the river, that they were going to get convicted, then his conscience compelled him to take the stand and admit his guilt and make some type of Hail Mary attempt to clear these men. But the jury, for whatever reason, didn't believe him.

And they were all three convicted. This is a hasty investigation. One of the defendants admits his guilt and tries to, on the spot, sort of exonerate his co-defendants. It doesn't work. All three of them go to prison. Are there efforts to reopen this investigation in the years that follow. Talmadge Hayer changed his name to Mujahid Abdul Halim. He starts to practice what is called Orthodox Islam or Sunni Islam and had a spiritual and emotional crisis. He had a breakdown in prison because he had killed this great man, and he would have to live with that for the rest of his life. I can't change what has been done. I can only say that I am deeply sorry for my participation

in this. And I know there'll be people who can never forgive me, but I pray. And in my prayers, I pray five times a day, and I ask Almighty God, Allah can never forgive me. But I pray, and in my prayers, I pray five times a day, and I ask Almighty God, Allah, to forgive me. He will go into history as an infamous personality who did this heinous crime against all of black America, and he couldn't live with himself. So he started doing television interviews where he was clearing Muhammad and Khalil Islam.

Again, he filed affidavits with the famous attorney William Kunstler. He named his four accomplices, his co-conspirators. However, it never went anywhere. There was a judge, a New York judge named Harold Rothwax, who ruled that this was insufficient to reopen the case. And the whole thing just went away again. Abdur Rahman Muhammad on who really did kill Malcolm X in a minute on Today Explained. Thank you. designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend. With Ramp, you're able to issue cards to every employee with limits and restrictions

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. All right, Mr. Mohamed, before we broke for the break, you said that despite one of Malcolm X's murderers taking responsibility, clearing these two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Khalil Islam, a New York judge says, tough, not enough to reopen the case. That's decades ago. Eventually, the Manhattan DA does reinvestigate the case. Is it to figure out who really murdered Malcolm X or just to exonerate these two men? That's all it was, was an examination of the integrity of this conviction. It was done under the auspices of the Conviction Integrity Program. And all it looked at was exculpatory material. It doesn't posit a full-blown theory of who was responsible. It only examined the question of, were these two men responsible? And it concluded that they did not receive justice. So the Manhattan DA's investigation doesn't tell us any more about who may have been involved in this assassination, along with Talmadge Heyer,

who admitted he did it. But your documentary, Who Killed Malcolm X, does make some more assertions. Well, yes, it does. So it's a very detailed recounting. They say he is a Negro male, age 28, six feet, two inches, 200 pounds, heavy build, right? Well, it comes to find out that Leon Forex Amir turned out to be an FBI informant. And at the time of Malcolm's funeral, he did an investigation, and it does point to William X. Bradley of Newark, New Jersey. That is something that has been floating around, that Al Mustafa Shabazz, known as William Bradley, was the shotgun man that took Malcolm out. He was a lieutenant in that community. He was the lieutenant of the mosque. And this is actually in the FBI documents. I got my hands on the FBI's file on William Bradley.

And there it was in black and white. This particular source advised that William Bradley was an officer at Mohammed's Mosque 25 and serving as a lieutenant of the FOI. Here it is clearly. The FBI knew that Bradley as a lieutenant of the FOI. Here it is clearly. The FBI knew that Bradley was a lieutenant in the mosque. So that was one of the more striking revelations that I saw. I knew that Leon 4X Amir had provided this information to the FBI. In fact, we show that in our series, Who Killed Malcolm X? But I did not know that he was actually an informant for the FBI and that, you know, he pointed directly to Newark and that by the summer of 1965, they knew that the shotgun assassin came from the Newark Moss number 25. They knew what he looked like. They had a photograph of him. And they never revealed his identity to either the prosecution or the defense team. But in August of 1965, months before the trial began, this lead about the shotgun assassin being a dark-skinned lieutenant from Newark was considered RUC, referred upon completion.

Basically, that's it. Closed it out. For no apparent reason. Didn't let the New York City Police Department know. So is there a chance that the additional men who may have participated in this assassination will be brought to justice one day? Are they still alive? They are not. They are not. Sadly and unfortunately, they are all gone right now. Okay, so there'll never be true justice for Malcolm X or his family.

What about for the men who were exonerated, Khalil Islam and Muhammad Abdulaziz? I don't believe they both even lived to see themselves exonerated, right? One did and one did not. Muhammad Abdulaziz, who is today 83 years old, the effects and the fallout from the conviction was catastrophic on his family. When I left him, the oldest was five. And when I returned in 1985, they were all grown, had children and were living their own lives and didn't particularly want to hear anything that I had to say. So I essentially don't know my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, or my great-great-grandchildren. I got some of all the roles, and I don't know them. And even though he was released after 20 years,

he still had to live with the stigma of being the killer of this great leader and the paranoia that comes with that realization, you know what I mean? That you always have to look over your shoulder, looking out for that street justice that might be delivered to you because you are perceived as being, you know, the murderer of Malcolm X. But fortunately, he was able to live long enough to see this day. And he was in the courtroom. While I do not need this court, these prosecutors or a piece of paper tell me I'm innocent. I am very glad that my family, my friends, and the attorneys who have worked and supported me over these years are finally saying the truth that we have all known, officially recognized. However, Khalil Islam, who was known at that time as Thomas 15X Johnson, sadly he passed away in 2009 trying to clear his name. And it was a very grim picture at the end of his life for me i kept a secret identity i had to pretend like i was you know there was no sharing

of who my father was at all you know i never discussed it i have friends today they're looking at me and they're in shock the psychological and the financial tolls that it took on him just wore him down. And it was very, very sad at the end for him. And Khalil Islam can't sue New York State, but Abdul Aziz Mohammed now is for $20 million. And I read that his lawyers plan to file a $40 million civil rights lawsuit if they can't come to an agreement in 90 days so this 83 year old man isn't wasting any time but all that money if he gets it at all won't buy him back a life lost and it just feels like this tragic irony that these black men's lives were thrown away without evidence for the assassination of a civil rights leader and why you know we we may never know why the question is why that's exactly right

one injustice and the murder of malcolm x now leads to this other injustice of two innocent men going to prison who they knew were innocent. The man alleged to have carried the shotgun, Khalil Islam, looks nothing like the real shotgun assassin, you know, looks nothing like him at all. Okay. And that's even reflected in the FBI's own documents, own files, own reports that were filed the very next day, February 22nd, the next day of the assassination. assassin look like? A description of him from head to toe, and resembled nothing of Thomas 15X Johnson or Khalil Islam. So I think that's the most important question I think needs to be answered. And I don't know if it will ever be answered, to be quite honest with you. And Malcolm X, he wasn't exactly universally beloved in life. A lot of people wanted him dead. And when he died at the hands of his former associates, the press said, you know, a man who called for violence died by violence.

But it feels like since then, the world has come to view him differently. Why is that? Well, because he was a sincere man. Malcolm X was not afraid to re-examine his positions and to correct his positions when he felt that he was wrong, which is a very fine quality to have as a human being, but especially as a leader, to be able to say, I was sincerely wrong. I was wrong about that. And I think that that is a quality that is missing in so much of today's leadership. And he spoke to the affairs of the world in a way that made him ahead of his time. He spoke to Vietnam way before it was politically expedient to speak about Vietnam, long before, you know, Muhammad Ali stepped out there

and condemned the war in Vietnam. Malcolm stepped out there and condemned the war in Vietnam. If we tell you that Negroes are being hung on the tree or being shot down illegally, unjustly, and those Negroes should do something to protect themselves, you say you're advocating violence. The white man is tricking you. He's trapping you. He doesn't call it violence when he lands troops in South Vietnam. I'm pleased, pleased, pleased. in you. He doesn't call it violence when he lands troops in South Vietnam. He doesn't call it violence when he lands troops in Berlin. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he didn't say get non-violent. He said, praise the Lord, but pass the ammunition.

He talked about colonial Africa and the liberation of Africa. Not only is it necessary for the Afro-Americans in the United States to be organized, but it's also necessary for the Afro-Americans in the Caribbean or the Afro-Cubans, the Afro-Brazilians. And so he has been written into the pages of history for that foresight and for that prescient vision that he had. The police are able to use the press to make the white public think that 90 percent or 99 percent of the Negroes in the Negro community are criminals. And once the white public is convinced that most of the Negro community is a criminal element, then this automatically paves the way for the police to move into the Negro community, exercising Gestapo tactics, stopping any black man who is on the sidewalk,

whether he is guilty or whether he is innocent, whether he is well-dressed or whether he is poorly dressed, whether he is educated or whether he is dumb, whether he's a Christian or whether he's a Muslim, as long as he is black and a member of the Negro community, the white public thinks that the white policeman is justified in going in there and trampling on that man's civil rights and on that man's human rights. Abdur Rahman Muhammad is a historian, an independent journalist, and an all-around authority

on the life and legacy of Malcolm X. You can watch his investigation into the assassination on Netflix. The series is called Who Killed Malcolm X? The film was directed by Rachel Dretzen and Phil Burleson. Thanks to each of them for letting us use excerpts of the series on today's show, which was produced by Hadi Mawagdi, edited by Matthew Collette, engineered by Paul Mounsey,

and fact-checked by Halima Shah and Laura Bullard. The rest of the team at Today Explained includes Will Reed, Miles Bryan, and Victoria Chamberlain. Lots of help this week from Christian Ayala and Jillian Weinberger. Amina Alsadi is our supervising producer. Liz Kelly Nelson is the veep of Vox Audio. We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld, too. Al Saadi is our supervising producer. Liz Kelly Nelson is the veep of Vox Audio.

We use music from Breakmaster Cylinder and Noam Hassenfeld too. I'm Sean Ramos for him. Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thank you.