>>> From The Assassination of Malcolm X (third edition) by George Breitman, Herman Porter, and Baxter Smith (Pathfinder Press, 1991):

Certain things seem agreed upon by everybody: The Organization of Afro-American Unity had scheduled a rally on Sunday afternoon, February 21, at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem. This was one week after Malcolm's home was fire-bombed and he and his family narrowly escaped injury or death. People entering the rally were not searched. On the other hand, they were all scrutinized by OAAU aides as they entered the hall.

Malcolm had just begun to speak when two men began a scuffle deliberately designed to distract the attention of Malcolm's guards. Three men rushed toward Malcolm, opening fire and wounding him mortally; they then ran out of the ballroom, pursued by several of Malcolm's supporters.

Police said that one of the three, identified later as Talmadge Hayer, twenty-two, of Paterson, New Jersey, had received a bullet in the leg by the time he got to the exit of the building. The police also alleged that he had been wounded by Reuben Francis, a Malcolm guard. Hayer was seized outside the building by the people pursuing him. So was another man. The people began to beat and kick Hayer and the second man. Police arrived and rescued the two being beaten, taking them away from the crowd. The third man got away. He got away because the crowd did not catch him. Hayer and the second man also would have got away if the crowd hadn't caught and held them until the police showed up.

Now let us turn to the New York Herald Tribune dated Monday, February 22 [1965]. This is a morning paper, which means that the first edition of the paper dated Monday actually appeared Sunday evening, a few hours after the killing. The top headline in the first (city) edition reads: "Malcolm X Slain by Gunmen as 400 in Ballroom Watch." The subhead, over the lead article by Jimmy Breslin, reads: "Police Rescue Two Suspects."

Breslin's story in this edition reports that Hayer was "taken to Bellevue Prison Ward and was sealed off by a dozen policemen. The other suspect was taken to the Wadsworth Avenue precinct, where the city's top policemen immediately converged and began one of the heaviest homicide investigations this city has ever seen."

Next we turn to a later (late city) edition of the same paper for the same day. The top headline is unchanged. But the subhead is different. This time it reads, "Police Rescue One Suspect." The "second" suspect has dropped not only out of the headline, but out of Breslin's story too. Nothing about his being caught and beaten by the crowd, nothing about his being rescued by the police, nothing about his being taken to the Wadsworth station, nothing about the city's top police converging on that station. Not only does he disappear from Breslin's story in the late city edition, but he disappears from the Herald Tribune altogether from that date to this.

Perhaps the whole thing never happened? Perhaps Breslin, in the heat of the moment, had in his first story reported a mere rumor as a fact, and, being unable to verify it, decided not to repeat it in later editions?

But there are three morning papers in New York, and in their first editions they all said it happened.

For example, let us examine the first (city) edition of the New York Times for February 22. The subhead is very clear: "Police Hold Two for Questioning." From the Times's city edition, we even learn the name of the cop who captured the "second" man. It is Patrolman Thomas Hoy, who is quoted as saying he had "grabbed a suspect" being chased by some people.

But when we turn to the late city edition of the same Times, printed only a few hours later, we find that its subhead, too, has changed. It now reads: "One Is Held in Killing." But the story hasn't yet been changed altogether. Patrolman Hoy still remains in the story , and so does the "second" man who has dropped out of the subhead. In fact, the story has more about Hoy than it had in the city edition.

This time the Times reports: "'As I brought him to the front of the ballroom, the crowd began beating me and the suspect,' Patrolman Hoy said. He said he put this man--not otherwise identified later for newsmen--into a police car to be taken to the Wadsworth Avenue station." Then Hoy's captive disappears from the Times as completely and as permanently as he did from the Herald Tribune, and from all the other daily papers. But there cannot be any doubt in the mind of anyone reading the accounts I have cited that a second man was captured and taken away by the police.

Who was he?

Why did the press lose interest in him so suddenly, at a time that it was filling its pages with all kinds of material about the murder, including the silliest trivialities and wildest rumors?

[text copyright 1976, 1991 Pathfinder Press]

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