Talmadge Hayer (Thomas Hagan) was convicted of assassinating civil rights leader Malcolm X. The 1965 assassination is being reexamined in the new Netflix documentary, Who Killed Malcolm X?
The documentary raises serious questions about the murder investigation, especially involving two men who were convicted as being Hayer’s co-actors but maintained their innocence.
Where is Talmadge Hayer AKA Thomas Hagan today? Hayer is now a free man. Hayer, the only man who admitted to the murder, was released from prison in 2010, according to CNN. At the time of the murder, Hagan went by the name Talmadge X Hayer. As the documentary shows, he was shot in the leg during the assassination attempt and captured at the scene. He’s also used the name Mujahid Abdul Halim. Over the years, he has implicated four other men as his accomplices, but they’ve never been charged or arrested for the crime.
Here’s what you need to know:
Hayer Was Paroled in 2010 But Was Already Out on Work Release
New York Dept. of Corrections records.
In 2010, CNN reported that Hayer, now called Thomas Hagan, had been paroled. He “walked out of the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility at 11 a.m. The facility is located at the intersection of West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard,” the cable news network wrote.
He was already on a work-release program since 1992 that allowed him to live at home with his Brooklyn-based family for most of the week, CNN reported, adding that he hoped to become a substance abuse counselor. The New York Times reported that he was previously turned down for parole 16 times before finally being granted release.
“I have deep regrets about my participation in that,” he told the parole board of Malcolm X’s murder, according to CNN. “I don’t think it should ever have happened.” Prison records confirm his release. He confessed to firing shots that hit Malcolm X.
Circa 1962: American political activist and radical civil rights leader, Malcolm X (1925 – 1965) standing at a podium during a rally of African-American Muslims held in a Washington, DC arena. He is wearing a formal jacket and a white bow-tie.
In 2008, the New York Post reported that Hayer was working in a fast-food restaurant, describing him then as a “slight-framed 66-year-old sports spectacles and a neatly trimmed gray mustache. He wears a baseball cap low when he’s out in public and speaks softly, barely above a whisper.” He was married with kids. He was, at the time of the shooting, a “militant” Nation of Islam member and 23 years old, The Post reported.
In 2008, he told the Post that he was not a Nation of Islam member anymore (although he remained a Muslim), saying, “It wasn’t really a correct ideology. There are a lot of misconceptions.” He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in prison, The Post reported. He has also worked as a homeless shelter counselor.
According to the ABAJournal, Hayer has long maintained that the other two men convicted in the assassination were innocent. They are Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Kahlil Islam, otherwise known as Thomas 15X Johnson and Norman 3X Butler.
Hayer filed an affidavit in 1978 saying that four other members of a New Jersey Nation of Islam mosque helped him commit the assassination but the case was not reopened, according to ABAJournal. However, in the wake of the Netflix documentary, the Manhattan DA’s office is doing a preliminary review of the convictions in the case.
He also partially named the four men in what are called the “Hayer Affidavits.” The book Malcolm X, African American Revolutionary, claims that Hayer said he didn’t know who gave the ultimate order. You can read a Hayer Affidavit here.
The documentary builds on the Hayer affidavit; for years, researchers have accused William Bradley (now called Al-Mustafa Shabazz) of being the suspect who fired a shotgun at the scene, killing Malcolm X. In 2015, the New York Post called Bradley a then “76-year-old ex-con” who “lives in a gated two-story home in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Newark.” In 2010, he appeared in a campaign video for Newark Mayor Cory Booker.
“It’s an accusation,” he said to the Post. “They never spoke to me. They just accused me of something I didn’t do.”
In 2015, the Post described Hayer/Hagan as “now living a quiet life in Brooklyn.” An old LinkedIn page says that from 1992 through 2003 he “assisted professional staff of a public social service agency dealing with the homeless population.”
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