55 years after the sentence, Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson will be definitively exonerated, the code names by which two of the condemned for the death of the leader of the anti-racist movement Malcolm X are known within the Nation of Islam.
Norman 3X, released from prison in 1985, is 83 years old today. Thomas 15X, after being released in 1987, died in 2009. The decision to exonerate them was made by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance who, after a 22-month investigation, admitted "serious mistakes" made by the investigators at the time and by FBI and NYPD investigators.
It was February 21, 1965 when three African Americans opened fire on the activist, at the time 39, who had just spoken in Harlem's Adubon Ballroom, killing him in front of his pregnant wife and three of his daughters.
For that crime the only one to plead guilty was Thomas Hagan, the African American who fired the fatal shots and was released from prison in 2010. But he himself had said that Norman 3X and Thomas 15X had nothing to do with it.
According to what emerged in the investigation of the Manhattan prosecutor, part of the evidence that would have led to the acquittal of two of the defendants was covered during the trial. Not only that, in the room that evening there were some undercover agents. Documents have also emerged that show that investigators were aware that day of the concrete risks run by the civil rights leader, with a phone call that reached a newspaper hours earlier in which it was said that that day he would be murdered.
The mystery still hovers over the Malcolm X crime. Maybe forever.
(Unioneonline / D)
