- 645
- 10
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2009
[h2][/h2]
[h2]Killer of Malcolm X Granted Parole[/h2]By ANDY NEWMAN AND JOHN ELIGON
Associated Press/WCBS-TV Thomas Hagan struggling with officers after his arrest in 1965.
After being turned down for parole 16 times, Malcolm X’s only confessed assassin is about to gain his freedom.
Thomas Hagan has been held since moments after shots rang out in the Audubon Ballroom in 1965. He has been on work release for more than two decades, but he still spends two days a week locked up at the Lincoln Correctional Facility on West 110th Street in Manhattan.
On March 3, however, on his 17th try, Mr. Hagan was granted parole, the State Division of Parole said. His final release date is tentatively scheduled for April 28. The news was reported Thursday on The Village Voice’s Runnin’ Scared blog.
Mr. Hagan, who turned 69 in jail on Tuesday, was a militant member of the Nation of Islam on Feb. 21, 1965, when Malcolm X was shot while giving a speech at the Audubon, in Washington Heights. Mr. Hagan, then known as Talmadge X. Hayer, was captured by the crowd and shot at and beaten before being rescued by the police.
Two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz (then known as Norman 3X Butler) and Kahlil Islam (then Thomas 15X Johnson), were also charged with the murder. They maintained their innocence. Mr. Hagan did not, testifying at his trial in 1966 that he was responsible for the murder and that his co-defendants were innocent.
Associated Press/New York Daily News Mr. Hagan in an emergency room after being beaten by the crowd at the Audubon Ballroom.
All three men were sentenced to 20 years to life.
Mr. Hagan said in a 1977 affidavit that he and several accomplices (not Mr. Aziz or Mr. Islam) decided to kill Malcolm X because he was a “hypocrite