Thomas Hagan

When Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, Manhattan, New York City, Hagan was shot in the leg by one of Malcolm X's bodyguards while attempting to flee from the building. Hampered by his bullet wound, Hagan was grabbed by several members of the crowd who witnessed the shooting and physically beaten before policemen arrived and arrested Hagan at the scene. He later confessed to the crime but said that Thomas Johnson (Khalil Islam) and Norman 3X Butler (Muhammad Abd Al-Aziz), two suspects who were arrested at a later point in time, were not involved in the assassination.[1]

Hagan stated in a 1977 affidavit that he had planned the assassination with four others (Johnson and Butler not being among them) to seek revenge for Malcolm X's public criticism of Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. He said that one of his accomplices distracted Malcolm X's bodyguards by starting an argument about having been pick-pocketed. When the bodyguards moved toward the diversion and away from Malcolm X, a man with a shotgun stepped up to him and shot him in the chest. After that, Hagan himself and another of his accomplices shot several rounds at Malcolm X with semi-automatic handguns.[1][4]

Hagan, Butler, and Johnson all received 20-years-to-life sentences in 1966. During his 45 years in jail, Hagan earned bachelor's and master's degrees; he filed 16 times for parole but was denied each time. Butler was paroled in 1985 and Johnson in 1987. From 1988, Hagan was in a work release program, which allowed him to seek work outside prison and required him to spend only two days a week in a minimum-security facility in Manhattan. The rest of the week, he was allowed to stay with his wife and children. Among other places, he worked at the Crown Heights Youth Collective, as a counselor at a homeless shelter on Wards Island, and in a fast-food restaurant. Hagan was granted parole in March 2010 and was released from prison at the end of April. He is still a practicing Muslim, but has left the Nation of Islam, no longer agreeing with their ideology, and has expressed "regrets and sorrow" for having shot Malcolm X.[1][2][3]

Hagan was portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito in the 1992 American biographical film Malcolm X.

• Peter Louis Goldman: The Death and Life of Malcolm X. University of Illinois Press 1979, ISBN 0-252-00774-3, pp. 273–274 (online copy, p. 273, at Google Books)