Murder victim Chauncey Bailey; other victims of the same killers not shown: Odell Roberson, 31, black, and Michael Wills, 36, white. Yusuf Bey IV ordered the murder of Roberson, because the latter was the uncle of the man who had murdered Bey’s brother, and the actual killer wasn’t handy. Bey ordered his hitmen to murder Wills, simply because he was white.
[Re: “Your Muslim Bakery Trial: Laughter about Revenge Killings, and Killing ‘White Devils’; Chauncey Bailey Shooter Laughed at Killings.”]
By David in TN
Today I received a book on this case I had ordered, Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism's Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist. As the subtitle indicates, there are a lot of PC bromides in the book, but it has a lot of information.
The author, Thomas Peele, is an "investigative journalist." To his credit, Peele has a chapter on the NOI Zebra murders, and links them to the much less well known "East Bay killings," which you have referenced. The Muslim group in Oakland, California were involved in the latter, and maybe the former.
In 1974, Chauncey Baily was working for a small black newspaper in the Bay area, and suspected the NOI was responsible before the arrests.
Bailey had a checkered career as a journalist and was editor of a free weekly paper in Oakland. "Yusuf Bey IV" ordered Bailey killed to stop an article on the NOI "Bakery."
The piece was only 500 words, single-source, with no attribution. Killing Bailey brought down Bey IV. The local politicians and media weren't interested until Bailey was murdered.
Broussard and Mackey were both sentenced to life in prison (until parole).
Nation of Islam killer Antoine Mackey
Thomas Peele's chapter on the early 70's Zebra Killings in San Francisco and others in California is short, but useful. Yusuf Bey, who set himself up as a sort of emperor in Oakland for over 30 years was according to Peele, the instigator of the "far less known" so-called East Bay Killings.
ReplyDeletePeele wrote "Bey, newly independent from the Nation of Islam, might not have committed any killings himself, but he was an enabler and protector of those who did. Your Black Muslim Bakery-like the moving company headquarters where the San Francisco killers were based-was a perfect place to plot slayings."
There was a series of "seemingly random" murders in the East Bay (Oakland and Berkeley) starting in August 1970.
"None of the East Bay killings-thirty in all-would ever be solved."
The gunmen in Oakland and Berkeley were more clever than the ones in San Francisco. They picked more out of the way places and weren't seen by witnesses. In San Francisco there were witnesses who described the killers, as well as several survivors.
The only perpetrators ever caught, tried, and convicted. were the Zebra killers in San Francisco, along with Russell Lang and Larry Pratt in Sacramento.
Both Lang and Pratt, who were convicted in the Sacramento case and sentenced to "life imprisonment," were paroled a few years ago.