Malcolm X’s family has released a letter it says was written by a deceased New York cop claiming the NYPD and FBI were behind the 1965 Harlem assassination of the civil-rights activist.
Malcolm X was gunned down at the Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan a year after breaking ranks with the Nation of Islam. Three members of the black separatism group were convicted in the shooting. On Saturday, some of Malcolm X’s daughters released a letter attributed to a former undercover NYPD officer, Raymond Wood, at the site of the former hotel on 165th Street.
The family members were joined by Reggie Wood, a cousin of the late officer. In the letter, Raymond Wood allegedly wrote that NYPD supervisors pressured him into luring two members of Malcolm X’s security details into committing crimes that led to their arrests in the days before the activist was slain.
The letter said the arrests provided the chance for lax door security at the hotel ballroom and were part of a conspiracy between federal investigators and New York police to have Malcolm killed. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said last year that his office would reopen the case to investigate the long-held contentions by some historians and scholars that the wrong suspects were arrested for the slaying.
In the wake of the letter, Vance’s office released a statement saying its “review of this matter is active and ongoing. The NYPD said it is cooperating with the prosecutor’s effort. Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s daughter, said she had always lived with uncertainty around the circumstances of her father’s death.
