Wendell Scott, 30, was a member of a Nation of Islam mosque in Santa Barbara that Yusuf Ali Bey and his brother, Abdul Raab Muhammad, started in the mid-1960s. At the time, Bey was known as Joseph X Stephens and Muhammad went by Billy X Stephens.

Scott and his wife, Birdie Mae Scott, 33, were fatally shot in 1968 as they slept in their Santa Barbara apartment. Two weeks earlier, they were suspended from the mosque after Wendell Scott complained to Nation of Islam headquarters that he had been forced to burn two cars that belonged to the Stephens brothers’ mother so they could collect insurance money. Police focused on Billy X Stephens, who was the apartment building manager and the mosque’s minister, but he was never named as a suspect. No arrests were made and the murders remain unsolved.

The Stephens brothers moved to Oakland in 1968 , founding Your Black Muslim Bakery, and organizing another mosque with the Nation of Islam. But later, as tensions grew between the the new Oakland mosque and the established San Francisco mosque, Joseph X Stephens split from the Nation of Islam. He changed his name to Yusuf Ali Bey, taking the bakery with him.

In March 2008, Santa Barbara police reopened the Scott case because of similarities it bears with other cases in Oakland, including the killing of Chauncey Bailey, who was investigating the finances of Your Muslim Bakery. Police theorize in both cases that killings were carried out to silence critics of Yusef Ali Bey and his brother.