Thomas Peele - Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racisms Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Peele

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Peele, Thomas.
Killing the messenger: a story of radical faith, racisms backlash, and the assassination of a journalist / by Thomas Peele. 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Bailey, Chauncey, 19492007. 2. MurderCaliforniaOaklandCase studies. 3. Black MuslimsPress coverageCaliforniaOaklandCase studies. 4. CorruptionPress coverageCaliforniaOaklandCase studies.
I. Title.
HV6534.O23P55 2011
364.1523092dc23 2011029542

eISBN: 978-0-307-71757-3

Jacket design by Ben Gibson
Jacket photography by Karl Mondon

v3.1

For Mary Sayre Frazee

You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN , Adam Raised a Cain

This work spans periods of American history when Americans of African descent were commonly called Negroes, Colored, then Blacks, and eventually African Americans. I have attempted to stay true to the context of the time, using, as have other authors, the word Negro to describe African Americans during the Plessy v. Ferguson and civil rights eras. Colored and Black are used from the midsixties through the eighties, when the preferred phrase African American became more common. Much of this book is set in Oakland, California, home at one time to the Black Panthers. It is a city where the word Black remains in popular use to describe African Americans. In specific Oakland references, Black is used to describe people and events as late as 2011.

The slur nigger is never an easy word to write. I use it primarily in quoted dialogue, as I use the slur darkie, to fully illustrate the state of mind of the speaker.

The phrase Black Muslim is frequently employed in reference to followers of W. D. Fard and Elijah Muhammad. It is the phrase that the primary subjects of this book, Yusuf Ali Bey and his followers, use in self-description. Historically, it is used to describe members of the Nation of Islam through the mid-1970s, but it also describes Beys followers and descendants in the text through 2011. At no time should the reader interpret Black Muslim or Muslim in the text to refer to traditional followers of the Prophet Muhammad, who are referred to hereafter as Orthodox Muslims for clarity.

Numerous characters in this book are referred to by more than one name, largely because of their evolution through the Black Muslim faith. There are also numerous characters in this book with the surname Bey. For the sake of clarity, many are referred to on second reference by their first name or by their common name, which is sometimes a number.

To aid the reader, following are the full names of prominent characters along with their names commonly used in the text.

Yusuf Ali Bey, founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery: Joseph Stephens, Joseph X Stephens, and sometimes Daddy

Billy Stephens: Billy X Stephens and Billy and sometimes Abdul Rabb Muhammad

Theron Stephens: Theron

Farieda Bey: Farieda

Yusuf Ali Bey IV: Fourth and occasionally Bey IV

Yusuf Ali Bey V: Fifth

Antar Bey: Antar

Joshua Bey: Joshua

Akbar Bey: Akbar

Waajid Aljawwaad: Waajid Alaia Bey: Alaia

Saleem Bey: Saleem

Antoine Mackey: Mackey and occasionally Ali

Devaughndre Broussard: Broussard and occasionally Catfish

Robert Harris: Sometimes referred to as Karriem in

Elijah Muhammad: Elijah; sometimes referred to as Elijah Poole in

Malcolm X: Malcolm

W. D. Fard: Wallace D. Ford, Walli Fard, Wallace Davis-el, Master Wallace D. Fard Muhammad

I have given pseudonyms to several people who were victims of Yusuf Beys rapes and other abuses. Jane, Nancy, Timothy, Tammy, Alice, and Vincent are pseudonyms out of respect to the victims they represent. Tammy is referred to a few times by Yusuf Bey IV as Mommy. A woman kidnapped and tortured in 2007 by Yusuf Bey IV and others has been given the pseudonym JoAnne. The pseudonym Cheryl Davis has been given to a woman who worked at Your Black Muslim Bakery at the time of Chauncey Baileys murder.

On the morning of August 2, 2007, I drove my then-usual commute from an apartment, not far from the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in the city of Alameda, to a newsroom nearly twenty miles away in the East Bay suburbs. The route took me in and out of the city of Oakland through tunnelsthe first passing beneath a shipping channel, the second carving its way through cumbersome hills. Oakland was little more than the place I passed through to get anywhereto work, to pick up my wife at her job in San Francisco, to visit friends.

That bright, sunny morning seemed like just another day. I had moved to California seven years earlier and had only recently committed to staying longer, having just turned down a good newspaper job in New Jersey. That summer I was in the throes of finishing a graduate writing program, and my mind was stuck on a looming thesis deadline. The radio was off, and as I drove I dictated ideas into a little recorder about how to finish that tome. As I entered Oakland, I didnt know that a horrible murder had occurred an hour or so earlier just blocks awaya man had been gunned down on a busy city street by a masked killer.

I had worked for newspapers of various sizes since 1983, pulling myself upward from the traditional starting places of municipal-government and police beats, and now carried the somewhat overblown title of investigative reporter. I liked to dig, to get to the bottom of things, to find their roots, their causes. As sort of a subspecialty, I had also carved out a niche writing about the First Amendment, censorship, and press rights. People, I had come to believe, were often ignorant of journalists struggles to adequately serve them, the roadblocks we overcome, the daily fights to be watchdogs of the public interest. As I parked my car in the lot next to the long, flat, nearly windowless building that housed the Contra Costa Times, slung a bag over my shoulder, and grabbed my ubiquitous cup of black coffee, I had no idea that three booming reports of a shotgun in Oakland earlier that morning had signaled the convergence of many of my interests.

I walked into a newsroom in transition. The newspaper industry had not yet been rocked the way it would be a few years later, with massive layoffs and closures, but it was starting to tremble. The Contra Costa Times, once a part of the venerable Knight Ridder chain, had recently been put up for sale and bought by MediaNews, the same company that owned the nearby Oakland Tribune. A painful consolidation of news staffs that had competed for years was under way. Everyone, it seemed, was leery of losing their jobs.

As I entered, there was a commotion around the desks where the police reporters sat among an array of scanners and radios, a wall-mounted television dangling over their heads. Even to a skeptical veteran such as me, the buzz seemed different, a real story developing with a murmur of growing intensity about it.