Thomas Hagan is the only person who confessed to the assassination of Malcolm X, the civil rights leader shot to death on February 21, 1965, at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. Then known as Talmadge X Hayer and later as Mujahid Abdul Halim, Hagan was a young Nation of Islam member from New Jersey who fired pistol rounds into Malcolm X as he lay wounded on the stage. He was caught at the scene, convicted with two other men in 1966, and later swore in affidavits that those two co-defendants were innocent and named the four accomplices who had actually been with him. He served 44 years in prison, was paroled in 2010, and his sworn account became the foundation for the 2021 exonerations of the two men wrongly convicted alongside him.
What Hagan Did at the Audubon Ballroom
Malcolm X was 39. He had broken with the Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, in 1964, a split that produced open hostility and death threats from his former associates. On the afternoon of February 21, 1965, he stepped to the lectern in front of a packed room, and the attack unfolded in a sequence built to pull his security away from him.
Two men in the audience staged a diversion. One shouted, “Get your hand off my pocket!” Another lit a strip of photographic film inside a rolled-up sock and threw the makeshift smoke bomb to the floor. As guards moved toward the disturbance, William Bradley, a Nation of Islam enforcer from Newark’s Mosque No. 25, charged the stage in a crouch and fired a sawed-off shotgun into Malcolm X’s chest at close range. Seven buckshot pellets tore into his torso; the main pellet punctured his aorta.
Hagan and a third gunman, Leon Davis, then rushed the stage and fired pistol rounds into Malcolm X on the floor. Hagan hit him in the ankle. Davis struck his thighs with 9-mm rounds. At least twenty shots were fired in all.
A bodyguard shot Hagan in the left leg as he tried to flee. Audience members caught him, kicked and stomped him, and held him until police took him into custody. Bradley and Davis escaped and were never apprehended. Hagan was the only shooter arrested at the scene, and he remains the only person to have admitted a role in the killing.
The 1966 Trial and Two Wrongful Convictions
Hagan was tried alongside Muhammad Abdul Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, and Khalil Islam, then known as Thomas 15X Johnson. Both were Nation of Islam members from the Bronx. All three were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life.
The case against Aziz and Islam was thin. No physical or forensic evidence tied them to the crime. Both testified they were at home during the shooting; Aziz produced medical records from Jacobi Hospital showing he had been treated that morning for leg injuries. On February 28, 1966, Hagan himself took the stand and told the jury that Aziz and Islam “had nothing to do with it.” The jury convicted all three anyway.
Hagan’s Affidavits Naming the Real Accomplices
In sworn affidavits filed in November 1977 and February 1978, Hagan named the men who had actually been with him: Leon Davis, Benjamin Thomas, William Bradley (who later took the name Al-Mustafa Shabazz), and a man he identified as “Wilbur or Kinly,” later reported as Wilbur McKinley. All four were Nation of Islam members from New Jersey. Thomas and Davis lived in Paterson; Bradley and Wilbur lived in Newark. Hagan placed himself and Davis in the front row, Bradley behind them, and Wilbur in the far back of the ballroom.
Attorney William Kunstler used the affidavit to try to reopen the case. Judge Harold Rothwax rejected the motion in 1978, ruling that Hagan had waited too long to identify his accomplices. None of the four men Hagan named were ever charged. Aziz was paroled in 1985 after twenty years in prison. Islam was released in 1987 after twenty-one years and died in 2009, still fighting to clear his name.
44 Years in Prison and Parole in 2010
Hagan served 44 years before being released on parole on April 27, 2010. He had appeared before the parole board as many as sixteen times, starting in 1984, before his request was approved. In a 2008 court filing, he described himself as having been “young and naive” at the time of the killing, acting on “impulse and loyalty to Elijah Muhammad.”
At his parole hearing, he told the board, “I have deep regrets about my participation in that. I don’t think it should ever have happened.” He said he could not “really describe my remiss and my remorse for my actions.” He explained that he had been “outraged” by Malcolm X’s split from the Nation of Islam and by the public criticisms Malcolm X had leveled at Elijah Muhammad. He also repeated that he and his co-conspirators had acted on their own and had not been directed by Nation of Islam leadership.
During his decades in prison, Hagan earned a master’s degree in sociology. His parole terms required him to maintain employment, support his children, observe a curfew, submit to random drug testing, and report to a parole officer. He said he had held the same fast-food restaurant job for seven years on work release and planned to become a substance abuse counselor. He remained a Muslim but was no longer affiliated with the Nation of Islam.
How Hagan’s Testimony Led to the 2021 Exonerations
The exonerations of Aziz and Islam began with renewed public attention to the case. The Netflix series Who Killed Malcolm X?, which premiered in February 2020, featured the years-long investigation of historian and journalist Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, who in 2010 had published findings identifying William Bradley as the man with the shotgun. The series prompted the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, then led by Cyrus Vance Jr., to formally reopen the case in January 2020 in collaboration with the Innocence Project and civil rights attorney David Shanies.
The 22-month reinvestigation found what Vance would describe as “serious, unacceptable violations of law and the public trust.” An FBI report from February 22, 1965, described the likely killers as having been “imported to NYC” and gave a description of the shotgun-wielder that did not match Khalil Islam, who was light-skinned and of average build. A separate FBI file on William X. Bradley from September 28, 1965, described him as a “dark-skinned and stocky” Nation of Islam strongman and former Marine Corps machine gunner, matching eyewitness accounts. The FBI and NYPD had records showing that witnesses against Aziz and Islam had failed to identify them, and that at least one key prosecution witness was an FBI informant whose status was never disclosed. FBI records also corroborated Aziz’s claim that he was home recovering from a leg injury on the day of the murder. Prosecutors had never told the defense that undercover NYPD officers were present in the ballroom during the assassination.
On November 18, 2021, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office moved to vacate the convictions. The next day, the New York Supreme Court dismissed the charges against both men. Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project called the case “one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice that I have ever seen.”1ABC News. Men Found Guilty of Malcolm X Assassination Expected to Have Convictions Thrown Out Muhammad Aziz, then 84, lived to see his name cleared. Khalil Islam had died twelve years earlier.
In 2022, New York City and New York State agreed to pay a combined $36 million to settle lawsuits over the wrongful convictions, with $26 million from the city and $10 million from the state, divided equally between Aziz and Islam’s estate.2PBS NewsHour. Men Exonerated in Malcolm X’s Murder to Receive $36 Million in Settlements
The Men Hagan Named Were Never Charged
Despite Hagan’s sworn identification of his four accomplices, none were ever prosecuted. William Bradley, whom historians and Hagan alike identified as the man who fired the fatal shotgun blast, lived in Newark’s South Ward for decades under the name Al-Mustafa Shabazz. When historian Manning Marable’s Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention named Bradley as the “chief assassin” in 2011, Bradley was 72.3NJ.com. In New Book, Historian Alleges Newark Man Killed Malcolm X Through his attorney, he categorically denied any involvement. New Jersey Department of Corrections records confirmed his identity and showed he had served prison time for threatening to kill three people, with a release date of February 1998.4Religion News Service. Man Denies That He Killed Malcolm X The FBI’s 1963 file identifying him as a Nation of Islam strongman and former Marine Corps machine gunner never produced questioning in connection with the assassination. Bradley died in 2019.5Amsterdam News. Revealing Malcolm X’s True Assassins
Leon Davis, Benjamin Thomas, and Wilbur McKinley are also believed to be deceased. None were ever formally charged.5Amsterdam News. Revealing Malcolm X’s True Assassins
Who Ordered the Killing Remains Unresolved
Hagan has consistently described the assassination as rooted in outrage over Malcolm X’s departure from the Nation of Islam and his public criticism of Elijah Muhammad. At his parole hearing, he testified that he and his co-conspirators acted on their own, not on orders from NOI leadership. The pattern of evidence complicates that account. All of the gunmen and conspirators Hagan identified came from Mosque No. 25 in Newark, and multiple scholars have concluded that the plot originated within that mosque’s enforcement apparatus.
In his 1978 affidavit, Hagan described the group but said he could not identify who, if anyone, in the NOI hierarchy had ordered the killing. The Manhattan DA’s 2021 reinvestigation did not offer an alternative theory of the crime or definitively identify perpetrators beyond what historians had already established, and it was similarly unable to identify a specific individual described in recent scholarship as having received orders from leadership to carry out the assassination.6The New York Times. Malcolm X Convictions Malcolm X’s family has long accused Louis Farrakhan of playing a role, an allegation he has denied. During Malcolm X’s final months, Louis X, as Farrakhan was then known, had advocated for Malcolm X’s death in the Nation of Islam newspaper Muhammad Speaks.
Whether the assassination was a freelance act of zealotry inside Mosque No. 25 or a directed operation is the enduring question the case has never officially answered. Hagan’s confession, his identification of the men who were with him, and his insistence that two innocent men were convicted in his place remain the most detailed firsthand account of the killing on the record.