Malcolm X Killer Is Freed on Parole

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: April 27, 2010

The only man to admit shooting Malcolm X was freed Tuesday on parole, 45 years after he helped assassinate the civil rights leader, New York State officials said. 

The man, Thomas Hagan, the last person still serving time in the 1965 killing, was freed from a Manhattan prison where he spent two days a week under a work-release program, said Linda Foglia, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Correctional Services. 

Mr. Hagan, 69, has said he was one of three people who shot Malcolm X as he began a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem on Feb. 21, 1965. But Mr. Hagan has said the two men convicted with him were not involved. They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s. No one else has ever been charged.

The assassins killed Malcolm X out of anger at his split with the leadership of the Nation of Islam, the black Muslim movement for which he had once served as chief spokesman, said Mr. Hagan, who was then known as Talmadge X Hayer. 

He has repeatedly expressed regret for his role in the assassination, which he described in a 2008 court filing as the deed of a young man who “acted out of rage on impulse and loyalty” to religious leaders.