Today, February 21th, 2015, marks the 50th year of the murder of Malcolm X (El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz), and disgracefully his chief assassin, now known to the world as William Bradley (aka Al-Mustafa Shabazz), walks the streets of Newark, N.J. a free man. Many people are looking for answers which explain this appalling affront to justice and the legacy of Malcolm X. There is a simple answer; a collective failure on all our part to care enough about justice for Malcolm, and failing to demand the government track down and prosecute his killers decades ago. But that is now water under the bridge, it is not too late.
Ultimately responsibility rests squarely with the government, which even at this late hour refuses to release tens of thousands of documents related to the assassination of Malcolm X. Many people are understandably incensed at the very notion of William Bradley (Al-Mustafa Shabazz) strolling around town in his Mercedes-Benz and living in his beautiful gated home, but there is something we CAN do.
It must be remembered that there is no statute of limitations on murder! Right now our communities must channel their fury into the mobilization of petition drives and direct action to pressure the New York County District Attorney, Cyrus Vance, Jr. to reopen the investigation and ultimately arrest Bradley. This is what must be done, scholars and historians will sort the details out later.
Alvin Sykes, the man leading the effort to get William Bradley indicted and convicted for the murder of Malcolm X
The drumbeat to bring William Bradley to justice has only just begun. Although we face an uphill battle, as this NY Times article makes clear, nevertheless I feel confident that we as a nation will put this man in jail.
The death of Malcolm X, shot dead at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan in 1965, never inflamed
the public imagination in the same way the assassinations of John F. Kennedy
and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did. But scholars have long believed
that a bungled investigation resulted in the imprisonment of the innocent and
allowed some of those responsible to go free. Over the decades, efforts to
reopen the case have failed.
Now a best-selling biography has helped to renew calls for a full investigation. But
this time they may well gain traction because the legal environment has
changed: prosecutors in the South have demonstrated that it is possible to
pursue and win cases that are decades old and, as a byproduct, they have made
the failures of the police in the civil rights era abundantly clear.
At the same time, news has emerged that the man long suspected of having fired the
shot that killed Malcolm X but who was never arrested is living in Newark under
a different name.
“Time is running out; these guys are very old,” said Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, a graduate student at Howard University who first published the identity of
the Newark man on his blog and was a source for the biography’s
author, Manning Marable. “I wanted justice to be done, and I knew that Dr.
Marable wanted justice to be done.”
Dr. Marable, a historian at Columbia University, died days before the
publication of the book, “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention.”
The effort to reopen the case has attracted the attention of the
nation’s most persistent advocate of civil rights-era justice, Alvin Sykes of
Kansas City, Mo. Mr. Sykes was instrumental in the reopening of the
investigation into the killing of Emmett Till in Mississippi in 1955 and in
persuading Congress to allocate millions of dollars to the investigation of
civil rights cold cases. Mr. Sykes has asked both the Justice Department and, this
week, the New York State attorney general “to conduct the most comprehensive
and credible search by the government for the truth concerning Malcolm X’s
assassination.”
After two weeks since the release of Manning Marable’s biography of Malcolm X, the calls for the case to be reopened have now begun.
Mary Sanchez
The Kansas City Star
“The full force of the blast perforated the chest, cutting into ‘the thoracic cavity, the left lung, pericardium, heart, aorta, right lung.'”
Medically, this is how Malcolm X died, according to the new book “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention,” by Manning Marable.
But who fired the shotgun?
The last of Malcolm X’s three convicted assassins was paroled last year, which might seem like odd timing for questions about guilt.
But Marable’s painstakingly researched book contends some of the wrong men did time for the killing. It’s indisputable that there were several shooters.
Marable, who died days before his book’s release last week, believed a man who was never charged fired the fatal shot. And he also believed that one man who served time wasn’t even at the New York ballroom where Malcolm X died.
It’s likely the dogged pursuits of Kansas City-based legal sleuth Alvin Sykes will be involved if anything new is proved about the conspiracy-laden 1965 murder.
Sykes is responsible for a federal bill that created a unit in the Department of Justice to prosecute old civil rights era murders.
He’s requesting the Malcolm X case be reviewed and/or investigated.
Sykes enjoys tracking splinters of information as much as he covets time to ferret out arcane pieces of legal language. I’ve known him for 20 years.
Never once has he cited a federal code, a court citation, a snippet of newly unearthed evidence that I couldn’t verify.
Marable’s work includes new interviews, source documents and theories long bantered about, but never fully denied or proved. Malcolm X’s death has long been shrouded by the dealings of that era: informants, infighting among black militants, power struggles within the Nation of Islam and allegations of lackluster handling of the initial investigation.
Sykes is already at work contacting Department of Justice officials, combing legal sources to see how jurisdiction can be established and tapping networks to connect with Malcolm X’s children for their support in pressing the new leads.
The work will also help Sykes continue questioning how the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act is being implemented. It was a huge achievement when he got it passed in 2008. But that’s a moot point if more cases aren’t carefully chosen for attention and then pursued fully.
Those who argue it’s best to leave the past dead and buried tend to discount how unsolved murders — or clouded cases such as this — chase the living through the descendants of the murdered, the accused, the never fully exonerated.
Rarely are these old civil rights cases as simplistic as people wish to believe. Their nuances often challenge how we’d like to recount history.
And sometimes, it seems the truth simply won’t let itself be known until a proper amount of time has passed.
Let the historical record forever reflect that the man pictured above,William Bradley 72 (approx.)(known today as Mustafa Shabazz) is the sawed-off shotgun assassin of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz). He is the man who fired the first and deadliest shot which ripped through the chest of the powerful Black leader on that cold 21st day of February, 1965. Time has caught up with him, and he can no longer lurk in the shadows waiting for his eventual end without having his dastardly deed made known. Mr. Bradley must now face the historical music in the land of the living. Then how ironic is it that “Willie” Bradley appears in a recent public safety campaign commercial for Mayor Cory Booker. The killer appears at 8 seconds. Download it on “Real Player Plus”, because we don’t think it is going to be up very long.
In light of the recent outrage over the parole of Talmadge Hayer(aka Thomas Hagen), the only one of the five real assassins to be tried and convicted for the murder of Malcolm X, and the fact that other media outlets had gotten hold of our research and were planning to break this story, it was decided by myself and a committee of eminent scholars to publish it now. The five assassins came out of the Nation of Islam Mosque number 25 in Newark (now Masjid Ali Muslim) located at 257 S. Orange Ave, and are Benjamin Thomas, Leon Davis, Wilbur Mckinley, Talmadge Hayer, and William Bradley. It was Bradley who was especially chosen by Thomas, the ring’s leader, to handle the sawed-off owing to his infamous reputation on the streets of Newark, N.J. as a “stick up man” and bank robber, the city where he still lives today “hidden in plain sight”. He can be found on almost any given day, a large grandfatherly type figure, at the First Class Championship Development Center, a gym located at 936 Bergen Street which is owned and operated by his wife, long time activist Carolyne Kelley-Shabazz. She has her own interesting story. A one time supporter and intimate acquaintance of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, she emerged later to become one of the most well-connected cronies of former Mayor and convicted felon, Sharpe James. In addition to the gym she owns quite a bit of real estate, providing for herself and her husband – the killer of Malcolm X – a very comfortable standard of living. Are you outraged yet?
Because no film footage of the assassination is known to exist (an audio does exist), the best we can do is rely on Spike Lee’s extraordinary cinematic depiction of it, if only to gain a sense of William Bradley’s brutality and viciousness. Sources close to this story say that Lee took great pains to ensure the actors playing the assassins actually resemble them. The close up shot of the Bradley character appears 15 seconds in, and then the rest of the tragic scene plays out.
Listen to the newly paroled other killer, Talmadge Hayer, describe in detail how he, Bradley, and the other three goons snuffed out the life of a man described by Ossie Davis as our “Black shinning prince”.
William Bradley Calmly Walked Away
For the first time in history we are revealing perhaps the most closely held secret in the Black Muslim community of Newark, one which William Bradley certainly thought he would take to his grave. That secret being that Bradley literally walked away from the murder in plain sight of policemen, which was captured on film by an unknown cameraman and has appeared in scores of documentaries! In the following clip, which almost all of us have seen at least once, Bradley is seen acting like he wants to join the attack on Talmadge Hayer, who is being dragged away by the police. He enters the scene at 33 seconds wearing a long black coat with what looks to be a newspaper sticking out of his pocket. He disappears for a few seconds and then calmly walks across the frame at 43 seconds closing his coat. And he has walked away now for the last 45 years.
Although his name has been in the public domain now for well over three decades, ever since 1977 when Hayer filed his affidavit with famed lawyer William Kuntsler naming his accomplishes, nevertheless a face has never been attached to the name. Historian and member of the committee researching this story, Zak Kondo, published a marvelous book two decades ago on the assassination of Malcolm X, wherein he explored quite a bit of biographical material on the five assassins. Spike Lee even named the five killers in the credits of his movie. But in all of these years none of them, including “Willie” Bradley, has ever filed a libel suit. And for good reason – they would lose. That would not only expose them to being charged with the murder, but even more frightening, having their images – their faces – plastered before the world. And while this article only identifies Bradley, more will be coming out on the others in time. The only one known to be deceased is Benjamin Thomas, who took a .44 – caliber to the face at point-blank range in a domestic dispute in Florida in 1986.
Keeping his face out of the public for all these many years, along with changing his name, has allowed him to blend in with normal people and even accept a civic award or two. Our sources told us that just last month Willie Bradley received some type of citation from Mayor Cory Booker’s office. We also learned that this past winter, Bradley received an “Old Timers” award from the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame for his high school baseball talents. And now he feels comfortable enough in his old age and anonymity to appear in a campaign aid for Booker. Incredible!
But our research has convinced us that someone is protecting Bradley. Although he is a very dangerous multiple felon, no mug shot at all exists in his criminal record (which we have). Also, when you plug his name into the New Jersey State Convicted Felon Registry, nothing comes back for William Bradley or a Mustafa Shabazz of his age. We also learned that in 1968, just three years after he cut down brother Malcolm, he committed a bank heist is Jersey with two other men, yet they went to prison AND BRADLEY DID NOT! Whats more, there is no explanation for why he was allowed to go free either. Was this his “get out of jail free card” for assassinating Malcolm X? We need answers to these questions. When we questioned our sources about these strange things their answer was very blunt, “Bradley has been working for the ‘Feds'”. What connection if any did Bradley have with J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)? Our government needs to open up the books and come clean on this assassination.
What You Can Do
Obviously we cannot go into any detail about how we obtained this very sensitive information, that would almost certainly put people’s lives in danger. We have been researching this for many years now and are absolutely positive that Bradley is who we say he is. As far as the government is concerned this is a closed case, but closed cases can be re-opened with sufficient public outrage. Perhaps now that we have an African-American President and Attorney General, the people can start demanding some answers for why these men have been permitted to remain on the streets. This is an affront to decent society and an outrage. It is also the last unfinished business of the Civil Rights Era. You can direct your calls and letters to;
A Singular Voice 