Birdie Mae Scott, date unknown. (Courtesy of family)

By A.C. Thompson and Thomas Peele, The Chauncey Bailey Project

- Birdie Mae Scott, 33 and Wendell Scott, 30. This couple, who lived in Santa Barbara, were followers of Yusuf Bey and his brother, Billy X Stephens. They were fatally shot in 1968 shortly after complaining to Nation of Islam officials about the brothers’ involvement in an alleged insurance scam. Last month Santa Barbara police reopened the case, saying they planned to question Stephens, who now lives in Oakland.

- Ronald Allen, 31. This man, who went by the Muslim name Rashid, was a member of the Bey organization who lived across the street from the group’s San Pablo Avenue compound. He was blasted repeatedly with a shotgun in 1982 near the Berkeley city dump. In sworn testimony given during a lawsuit case, an insider said Allen had stolen from the bakery just before he was killed.

- Waajid Aljawaad, 51. This former chief executive of the bakery disappeared in 2004 during a power struggle within the organization. His corpse was later found buried in the Oakland hills. Oakland police have said they believe bakery members were involved in the death.

*****

Story: Unsolved 1986 slaying tied to bakery

*****

- Odell Roberson Jr., 31. This man was killed in 2007 by fire from an AK-47 assault rifle. His family members think he may have been slain in retaliation for the 2005 murder of Antar Bey, who was killed by Roberson’s nephew during an attempted - and random - carjacking.

- Michael Wills, 36. Four days after Roberson was killed, Wills, a sous chef who lived near the bakery, was slain by rounds from the same AK-47, according to police. Oakland officers have publicly linked both killings to the Bey group, but so far haven’t been able to bring charges against anyone.

The late Yusuf Bey, owner of Your Black Muslim Bakery, in September 2002. (Oakland Tribune file photo)

By Thomas Peele, A.C. Thompson and Bob Butler, The Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — On a June night in 1986, police discovered a twice-shot, blood-smeared body spilling out of a red Ford van on Marshall Street in North Oakland.

Police identified the victim as Peter August Kaufman and, according to a brief news report from the time, figured robbery might be the motive. Nearly 22 years later, the killing remains unsolved.

Now, through interviews and documents — including a three-paragraph news account, a death certificate, coroner and police reports and court testimony — the Chauncey Bailey Project has uncovered a link between Kaufman’s killing and Yusuf Ali Bey, the late founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery and a fiery preacher who touted the virtues of aggression and called his enemies “devils.”

*****

Investigative report:

Audio: Bob Butler reports on the 22-year-old murder case.

List: Additional cases

*****

Kaufman’s death is the seventh slaying tied to the controversial religious leader and his followers over a 40-year period for which no arrests have been made, according to police reports and other records.

Two weeks ago, also in response to Bailey Project inquiries, Santa Barbara police reopened an investigation of a 1968 doublekilling linked to a mosque there, led by Yusuf Bey and his brother, Billy X Stephens, who later changed his name to Raab Muhammad and now lives in Oakland.

The bakery also has been implicated in an eighth killing, the Aug. 2 shooting death of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, who was working on stories about the bakery when he was killed. A bakery handyman has been charged with murdering Bailey.

The bakery link

The Chauncey Bailey Project discovered the bakery link to the Kaufman slaying by examining a passage from a deposition in a 2003 lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed against Bey, the bakery and Alameda County by a trio of women who’d been raised by the cleric and claimed he’d tormented and raped them while they were children.

Kaufman may have died for stumbling upon one of Yusuf Bey’s dark secrets, according to the deposition.

Days before he was shot, Kaufman walked into a bakery bathroom and discovered Bey raping a young boy, according to one woman’s testimony.

Within days, the man she identified in testimony only as Usman was “blasted” as he was “sitting in the passenger’s seat” of a friend’s van.

“I heard him say out of his own mouth that he walked into the restroom and saw Brother Bey sexually assaulting this young man,” testified the woman, who is identified in transcripts only as Jane Doe 1 because she’s a sexual abuse victim.

Kaufman tried to intervene, asking the preacher what he was doing, Jane Doe 1 testified.

She said Kaufman discussed Bey’s attack with his co-workers, telling them, “I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe what I seen with my own eyes,” she testified. The baker “was killed days following that conversation.”

She testified she heard that Bey’s son, Akbar Bey, who was 13 at the time, might have shot Kaufman.

Yusuf Bey died of cancer in 2003 while facing 27 felony charges for sexually assaulting minors; Akbar Bey was killed in 1994 in a dispute over $1,200 in marijuana.

Kaufman “was a really nice guy,” Jane Doe 1 said in a brief interview last week, adding that she can still “see his face. He was tall and kind of thin.”

The shooting

Oakland police documents show Kaufman was shot on the 6200 block of Marshall Street, about three blocks away from the bakery’s San Pablo Avenue headquarters.

The officer who found Kaufman noted that he’d fallen out of the “right door of the van.” Two bullets had ripped through his skull and torso, shredding his brain and puncturing his heart and right lung.

Kaufman, who was 32 at the time of his death, was born in Oakland but spent his youth in Louisiana. According to his death certificate, he lived at the bakery’s compound and had toiled as a baker for seven years.

His mother, who still lives in the Bay Area, said his killing “was very painful” to her. She asked not to be identified because she remains fearful of Bey’s followers and family.

Jane Doe 1 also testified that a man she identified as Robert Green, who also worked for the Bey organization, owned the van and was in the vehicle when Kaufman was shot.

The Chauncey Bailey Project couldn’t locate Green or find any more details about him.

Oakland police last month released two pages of a 1986 report on the crime, but refused to divulge any additional information, citing the open nature of the case.

Jane Doe 1’s statements are echoed by those of her sister, Jane Doe 2, who also testified about the killing of Kaufman.

“His name was Usman, and he was shot in a van,” she said in the depositions. “There was another guy who used to be at the bakery, as well. And them two was together, and all I know is that he got shot up in the van. And the other guy, he survived, but Usman didn’t.”

Jane Doe 2 portrayed Bey as a sinister, Mafia boss-like character who knew how to use violence — and threats of violence — to get his way, promising to kill her if she spoke to anyone about his sexual proclivities.

She said Bey told her, “If you tell anybody, you’ll be floating in the Bay, you and your family.”

A box-load of clues

The sexual abuse suit also named Alameda County as a defendant, claiming county social workers failed to protect the sisters, who were placed under the guardianship of one of Bey’s many Muslim-law wives.

The case was settled late last year with the county paying $188,888, while admitting no wrongdoing.

In January, after the case was settled — and nearly three years after the statements were given — the county’s top lawyer, Richard Winnie, delivered a box-load of the women’s testimony and other legal documents to the office of District Attorney Tom Orloff.

“I turned it over to the district attorney’s office and said, ‘There are some allegations in here you should pursue,’” Winnie said. “I’ve never heard what happened with the information.”

But O’Malley said this week that prosecutors didn’t know about the possible clues to the Kaufman homicide in the transcripts, and had never been alerted to them.

“We’re going through them right now to see if there’s anything that requires our attention,” O’Malley said, adding a call from the Chauncey Bailey Project was “the first we’ve heard of it.”

Attorney David Washington, who represented the sisters, said Monday he’s surprised homicide detectives have yet to contact his clients.

“I’m shocked,” Washington said. “I used to be a police officer. I’d want to follow every lead.”

His clients, he said, are willing to cooperate with police.

Cecily Burt, Josh Richman, Mary Fricker and Veronica Martinez contributed to this report. Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group and A.C. Thompson is an investigative reporter for New America Media. Bob Butler is a freelance reporter.

Kahlil Raheem, right in brown coat, and Yusuf Bey IV in back wearing sun glasses walk into Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland, Calif., Jan. 12, 2006, surrounded by body guards to enter not-guilty pleas to charges of vandalizing two Oakland liquor stores. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Contra Costa Times)

By Paul T. Rosynsky, Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — A member of Your Black Muslim Bakery charged with contempt of court for refusing to testify against fellow members in a torture and kidnapping case will remain free for at least another month.

Kahil Raheem was scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for his refusal to testify last week during a preliminary hearing, in which bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and three others are accused of using a fake police cruiser to kidnap two women last spring.

Raheem could have agreed Tuesday to testify in the case or face jail time for as long as the torture and kidnapping case remained in court.

Raheem did neither in open court.

Instead, after a more-than-hour-long backroom conversation between Raheem, his attorney Kristina Kliszewski and Deputy District Attorney Scott Patton, Patton asked for any sentence to be delayed until May 23 when the preliminary hearing on the torture-kidnapping case resumes.

It remained unclear if Raheem agreed during the conversation to testify at the trial.

Patton would only say that he is hopeful Raheem will testify when the preliminary hearing continues.

Kliszewski also declined to give specifics.

“We’re just still trying to figure it out,” she said. “At this point, we are just happy he is still out of custody.”

Although Raheem has already told police that Bey IV, 22, called him May 17 — the night of the alleged torture, he refused last week to verify that account on the witness stand.

Patton wants Raheem to testify about the phone call he received and about the filing of a false police report. Raheem told police that Bey IV ordered him to report Bey IV’s Chrysler 300 stolen after it was left at the scene of the crime.

In hopes of winning Raheem’s cooperation, Patton offered the bakery member limited immunity from any crimes allegedly committed in connection to the case, including accessory after the fact and filing a fake police report.

Kliszewski, however, has argued that any admitted association with the bakery by her client on the witness stand could open him up to any other criminal charges that are currently filed against the organization or could be filed in the future.

In addition, last week, Raheem outside of court said he did not want to testify against people he worked with and people he knew. He also said he was worried about who would care for his daughter should he refuse to testify and be sent to jail.

Raheem’s appearance in court Tuesday afternoon was followed by his appearance in the morning in a separate case, in which he and three other bakery members are charged with vandalizing a pair of West Oakland liquor stores two years ago.

In that case, which also involves Bey IV, bakery members are charged with hate crimes for trashing two liquor stores because they sold alcohol to African Americans.

The group appeared in court to have their trial date set, but the decision was delayed. The delay was caused because Bey IV’s attorney Lorna Brown was appointed to a separate case that could take up to nine months to complete.

The group is due back in court next week to see if schedules can be changed, or else Bey IV will need a new attorney.

Contact Paul Rosynsky at prosynsky@bayareanewsgroup.com or 510-208-6455.

Yusuf Bey (KGO-ABC7 News)

By Dan Noyes, Chauncey Bailey Project

The I-Team’s been working on tonight’s investigation with members of the Chauncey Bailey Project. Bailey was the editor of the Oakland Post who was probing Your Black Muslim Bakery’s finances, before he was gunned down on his way to work last August. Reporters from several organizations are picking up where Bailey left off, and we’re glad to help out.

The story tonight is based on sworn testimony from one of the women who used to live with Bey. Jane Doe Number One says Yusuf Bey, who founded the bakery, first molested her when she was eight; that the sexual assaults became regular when she was ten and Bey became her guardian. She became pregnant at age 13 with the first of three children by Bey. In her deposition, Jane Doe Number One described overhearing a conversation by a bakery worker, in which he described walking in on Yusuf Bey molesting a young boy. The worker told others in the bakery, and a few days later, he was shot to death on an Oakland street corner. The accusation – Yusuf Bey ordered the worker killed because he had witnessed the molestation.

Reading and viewing Jane Doe Number One’s deposition, the amount of detail she gives is remarkable. She provides the name of the young boy who was molested, the names of his parents, the circumstances of the worker’s death, who was driving the van at the time. The bakery worker was shot while sitting in the van’s passenger seat, just three blocks from the bakery. What’s even more remarkable is that police have never

Jane Doe #1 shows a photograph of the young boy she says, Yusuf Bey molested. (KGO-ABC7 News)

Some surprising numbers:
The Chauncey Bailey Project has confirmed through interviews, birth certificates, sworn depositions and other records in Alameda and surrounding counties that Yusuf Bey had at least 42 children with 14 women and girls. Further, lead reporters A.C. Thompson and Thomas Peele have linked at least seven unsolved murders to the Bey family and Your Black Muslim Bakery. We look forward to assisting the Chauncey Bailey Project in the weeks and months to come.

Dan Noyes is the chief investigative reporter for KGO’s ABC7 News I-Team.

Oakland police work at the scene where Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey was shot dead, at the corner of 14th and Alice streets, on August 2, 2007. (D. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune)

By Tim Reiterman, Los Angeles Times

OAKLAND — – When a masked man fired three shotgun blasts into Chauncey Bailey in August as the newspaper editor walked to work, the slaying sent a powerful tremor through Bay Area journalism circles.

Mary Fricker, a longtime business reporter for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, was about a year into retirement when she got word.

Lisa Pickoff-White was driving cross-country to start her journalism studies at UC Berkeley.

And Bob Butler, a member of the National Assn. of Black Journalists’ board, was freelancing after nearly three decades of reporting for radio stations.

All later joined the Chauncey Bailey Project — a collaboration of dozens of journalists from newspapers, broadcast stations, universities and nonprofit groups who came together with a shared determination to not let the black community newspaper editor’s slaying stop his work.

At the time of his death, Bailey had been looking into Your Black Muslim Bakery, a politically connected group that once epitomized black economic empowerment in Oakland but has been buffeted by financial problems, infighting and allegations of sexual abuse and violence.

Police believe that Bailey was killed over his coverage of the bakery, and project members have probed deeply into the organization’s history. Recently, the project reported that its inquiries had prompted Santa Barbara police to reopen an investigation into the unsolved 1968 slayings of a couple who belonged to a mosque that was a forerunner of the bakery.

The Bailey Project is believed to be the first broad-based effort in more than 30 years to pursue the work of a journalist killed in this country, according to the nonprofit Committee to Protect Journalists.

“You have to let the community know you can’t kill a story by killing a reporter. You’re going to bring the press down on you like gangbusters,” said Fricker, who has been working on the project four days a week while living in a bedroom above a friend’s garage.

Although Bailey received one of U.S. journalism’s most prestigious awards after his death, he was working outside the mainstream when he was killed. And the 57-year-old editor of the Oakland Post — a free weekly with a circulation of 50,000 — did not fit neatly into the mold of a classic investigative reporter. He had been fired two years earlier from the Oakland Tribune for undisclosed ethical lapses.

Still, colleagues say Bailey, notebook constantly in hand, passionately covered his home turf. Though they say he had an in-your-face manner that put off some city officials, he could blend sensitivity with outrage, as he did in an article in the San Francisco-based Sun Reporter newspaper, lamenting Oakland’s black-on-black homicide toll in 2002 and profiling a 19-year-old who was shot on Bailey’s own block.

“Chauncey was very well known; he was synonymous with Oakland,” said Tribune Managing Editor Martin Reynolds, who was Bailey’s editor and friend. “Some liked him and some not. Some thought he was a crackpot, and some people liked what he did. He was a great guy who brought great value to the Tribune.”

 Your Black Muslim Bakery was also very well known in this rough-edged port city of about 400,000 residents. Housed in a red brick building, the bakery sold pies and breads through outlets around Northern California. It hired young people and former convicts who needed a break. Its charismatic founder, Yusuf Ali Bey, once ran for mayor and was a fixture in Oakland until he died of cancer in 2003 while facing rape charges.

After his death, factions of his extended family wrestled for control of the bakery’s enterprises. Now Bailey’s slaying stands as the latest violence allegedly linked to the bakery. Police say 20-year-old bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard confessed that he killed Bailey over his coverage of the organization, which is not part of the Nation of Islam.

A judge ordered him to stand trial even after Broussard recanted, with his attorney saying the bakery’s current leader, Yusuf Bey IV, had pressured Broussard to take the fall. Bey, who is charged with kidnapping and torturing a woman in an unrelated incident, has denied involvement in Bailey’s death.

In the last three decades, 13 journalists have been killed in this country, according to Frank Smyth of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Bailey, father of a teenage boy, was the first since 1993. The Bailey Project has produced numerous stories about the bakery, some concerning the arrest record of its leader, its bankruptcy filing and real estate dealings, and the police response to past incidents involving members.

Although more high-tech and multimedia-oriented, the effort is reminiscent of the Arizona Project after the 1976 killing of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, whose car was blown up in Phoenix.

Investigative Reporters and Editors sponsored a probe by reporters from across the country that yielded a 23-part series on Arizona corruption.

“The idea was to buy an insurance policy on the life of every reporter who goes to expose wrongdoing,” recalled retired Pulitzer Prize-winning Newsday reporter Bob Greene, the Arizona Project’s director. “There are times we should pool our efforts to achieve great good.”

The Bailey Project was launched by New America Media, an association of 700 ethnic media groups that Bailey helped found, and by the Maynard Institute, where he once attended a summer program for minority journalists.

Those signing on to the project came not just from the Tribune and its sister papers but from an alternative weekly, an investigative reporting nonprofit, a local public television station and Bay Area journalism programs.

The project is financed by more than $150,000 raised from media organizations and in-kind labor contributions. The core reporting team works out of the Tribune newsroom in a high-rise near the Oakland Coliseum.

One of the project’s few full-time reporters is Thomas Peele of the Contra Costa Times, who was a teenager delivering newspapers on Long Island when the Arizona Project was underway.

“Chauncey got shot, and the immediate reaction among reporters was . . . this is another Don Bolles, and something should be done,” said Peele, who told his editors he wanted to be part of any Bailey Project.

At the newly assembled team’s first meeting, reporters were told to check their egos at the door. Cooperation was paramount.

“In this case, we’re sharing what we do with other people,” said Fricker, the retired business writer. “Normally, we’re competitive.”

Robert Rosenthal, former managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, was between jobs when he was asked to help guide the eclectic group and now heads the Center for Investigative Reporting.

“You had people going in multiple directions,” he recalled. “It’s running more smoothly now.”

The day after Bailey’s memorial, Neil Henry, new interim dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, visited Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb at the newspaper’s offices.

“We talked about students providing content to his newspaper because of the huge vacancy left by Chauncey’s passing,” Henry said.

Student volunteers were soon writing stories for the Post. Students were also sent to government offices to retrieve property records and court files for the Bailey Project.

Pickoff-White, 25, had done political reporting in Washington but had never seen a real estate transaction. Yet she came to love the paper chase.

“You spend hours working . . . and every once in a while you would find this document, or someone next to you would,” she said. “A nugget.” She is now working with other students and New America Media on a documentary about Bailey.

Before Bailey died, he was looking into financial upheaval and alleged violence and police corruption surrounding the bakery, according to Cobb of the Post. But Cobb held Bailey’s first story because he said it had inadequate sourcing and balance.

Since Bailey’s slaying, Cobb said, his advertising has declined and he has been unable to replace Bailey.

“I can’t get an editor,” said Cobb, who himself received police protection after an apparent death threat. “One guy said he would do it for $60,000, but he wanted a $500,000 life insurance policy. You talk about hazard pay. . . .”

Last month, the Bailey Project won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award for crime reporting. In February, Bailey posthumously received a George Polk Award for local reporting — an honor named after a war correspondent killed 60 years ago while doing his job.

Bailey “is snickering right now, with a great smile,” said his former editor, Reynolds. “He would get a kick out of all the attention being paid to his legacy.”

Kahlil Raheem, right, and Yusuf Bey IV, left, enter pleas in Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland, Calif., Jan. 12, 2006, to charges of vandalizing two Oakland liquor stores. (Dan Rosenstrauch/Contra Costa Times)

Rahem refuses to testify in preliminary hearing

By Paul T. Rosynsky, Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — Kahlil Rahem, a member of Your Black Muslim Bakery who is already a suspect in a pair of liquor store vandalism operations allegedly organized by the now-defunct bakery three years ago, was charged Friday with contempt of court for refusing to testify in a kidnapping and torture case against fellow bakery members.

Rahem, 27, refused to answer questions from Deputy District Attorney Scott Patton, who called the bakery associate to the stand as a hostile witness. Rahem allegedly helped bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and bakery member Tamon Halfin escape from the scene of the torture of a woman in May.

He also filed a false police report saying that Bey IV’s Chrysler 300, which was left at the scene of the crime, had been stolen, authorities have said.

Although Rahem has already told police that Bey IV called him the night of the torture and asked for a ride from the corner of Bancroft Avenue and Havenscourt Boulevard, he refused Friday to verify that account on the witness stand.

Patton wanted Rahem to testify about the phone call he received and about the filing of a false police report during a preliminary hearing in which Patton is trying to convince a judge there is enough evidence against bakery members for a jury trial.

The members, including Bey IV, 22; Halfin, 21; Yusuf Bey V, 21; and Richard Lewis, 23, are charged with a host of crimes including kidnapping and torture. Police said the members used a fake police cruiser to pull over two women on Interstate 580 and then took them to an abandoned house on Avenal Avenue where they beat one of the women.

The bakery members believed at least one of the women had a stash of money and Bey IV had told others the cash was needed to keep the bakery running, authorities have said.

They all face life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The fifth bakery member charged, Joshua Bey, 19, agreed to a plea deal that will put him in prison for three years. In exchange, Joshua Bey agreed to testify against fellow bakery members.

Joshua Bey completed his testimony Friday morning, after which P

atton called Rahem to the stand. Patton offered Rahem immunity from any crimes he committed in connection to the kidnapping and torture case, which could have included accessory after the fact and fili

ng a fake police report.

But Rahem continued his refusal to testify, prompting Alameda County Superior Court Judge Eric Labowitz to find Rahem in contempt of court.

Rahem is due back in court Tuesday, when he must decide to testify or face jail time until after both the preliminary and jury trial have concluded.

Rahem said outside of court he did not want to testify against people he worked with and people he knew. In addition, his attorney, Kristina Kliszewski, argued in court that any questions her client answers could open him up to criminal charges in other cases against the bakery.

In response, Labowitz said Rahem would be forced to answer only questions directly related to his actions after he received the phone call from Bey IV.

Patton then asked Rahem if he remembered receiving a phone call from Bey IV on May 17, 2007.

“I won’t answer that question,” he said.

According to Patton, Rahem told police he picked up Bey IV and Halfin in East Oakland the night of May 17. He drove them back to bakery headquarters on San Pablo Avenue and then was ordered to go back to the house to search for the Chrysler 300, Patton said.

Rahem previously told authorities that upon his arrival at the house he quickly left because the house was surrounded by police cars.

The next day, Rahem told police he had been ordered by Bey IV to call police and report the car stolen, Patton said.

Patton said Rahem’s testimony is not crucial to the case but important because it corroborated the testimony of Joshua Bey.

“‘Crucial’ is probably a stronger word than what I would use,” he said outside of court. “But it is important.”

The preliminary hearing continued at the Wiley Manuel Courthouse Thursday, April 3, 2008. Judge Eric Labowitz heard testimony from Joshua Bey sitting with his attorney, David Washington(left) as (l- r) Prosecutor, Scott Patten, Tamon Halfin, Attorney David Kelvin and Yusef Bey V listen in. (sketches by Joan Lynch)

Ex-employee speaks in kidnapping, torture case

By Paul Rosynsky, Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — A member of Your Black Muslim Bakery who took a deal to testify against fellow members in a kidnapping and torture case said Thursday that he did not believe leader Yusuf Bey IV planned the crime, because it was not a smoothly run operation.

“‘Cause it was not like the movies,” Joshua Bey, 19, said in explaining why he did not think Bey IV, 22, planned the event. “Most of the kidnapping you see on TV was nothing like what we were doing.”

Joshua Bey is testifying for the prosecution in the case, which includes charges of torture and kidnapping against four members of the bakery — Bey IV; Yusuf Bey V, 21; Tamon Halfin, 21; and Richard Lewis, 23.

In exchange for his testimony, Joshua Bey will be sentenced to just three years in prison, instead of facing life in prison — the sentence facing the other four defendants.

Joshua Bey was on the stand Thursday at the continuation of a preliminary hearing, after which a judge will decide if there’s enough evidence to proceed to a jury trial. He is expected to continue testimony today.

Joshua Bey’s decision to flip sides and take a deal shocked the courtroom — including the defense attorneys — when the move was announced in February by Deputy District Attorney Scott Patton.

At the time, the scene was tense as the defendants shouted at Joshua Bey and bailiffs filled the courtroom.

The scene was much more relaxed Thursday.

Extra bailiffs were on hand, but most everyone appeared more at ease. At times, Joshua Bey laughed on the stand and talked back to defense attorneys who were questioning him.

Joshua Bey laughed at David Kelvin, defense attorney for Bey V, and questioned the attorney about relevance after he asked whether Joshua Bey was violating Muslim food rules when he ate at McDonald’s.

“What’s this got to do with anything?” Joshua Bey asked, laughing.

Bey IV also joined in the laughter, quipping that he was not going to hurt anyone as a bailiff took off a handcuff.

“I’m not going to hurt nobody, I’m a baker,” Bey IV said.

Joshua Bey’s testimony also did not have the same impact it had in February when he described the incident and placed all the defendants at the scene.

Instead, the questions and answers were focused more on the bakery’s operations and the specific instructions Joshua Bey remembered receiving.

Joshua Bey said he remembered Bey IV telling him to collect money from a woman. Joshua Bey said he didn’t know how to get around East Oakland, so he brought Halfin along.

Joshua Bey testified he was surprised later that night of May 17, when he saw Bey IV driving past him and Halfin on Interstate 580 in a fake police cruiser.

The defendants are accused of kidnapping and torturing two women in May. According to police and Joshua Bey’s previous testimony, the members used a fake police cruiser to pull over two women on Interstate 580.

They then allegedly took the women to an abandoned house in East Oakland and tortured one of them in hopes of getting money.

They were eventually arrested because they left cell phones and cars at the scene of the crime.

Joshua Bey’s testimony also revealed details about the bakery’s operation. He said no one at the bakery received regular paychecks, and some members had set schedules to work for the bakery’s security company. He said he had been baking goods for the business since he was 2 years old.

Joshua Bey also spoke briefly about why he decided to take the plea deal.

He said he was not lying in an attempt to save himself and said he took the deal because he was being charged for something he did not do.

“I’m doing it because I wish I wasn’t in this position,” he said. “I mean I didn’t do anything.”

And he said he was confused that Bey IV would place him in this predicament.

“I always felt that IV would never put me through this situation,” Joshua Bey said. “He never had before.”

Joshua Bey said that the way the crime occurred and the way Bey IV ordered him to lie to police made it look like he was more involved in the operation than he was.

“I didn’t know what was going on, and I got all mixed up in it,” he said. “It made it look like I did a lot of stuff when all I did was drive.”

Contact Paul Rosynsky at prosynsky@bayareanewsgroup.com or 510-208-6455.

A television photographer records some of the items from the defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery that were auctioned off Tuesday, March 25, 2008, in Oakland, including portraits of bakery founder Yusuf Bey Sr. and Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. (D. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune)

Trustee auctions final bakery items for $285.

By Cecily Burt, Chauncey Bailey Project

OAKLAND — A former worker and two anonymous members of Yusuf Ali Bey’s vast family empire were the only bidders vying for the meager remnants of the bankrupt Your Black Muslim Bakery — 11 large, faded and grease-splattered photographs that used to hang from the walls.

Tevis Thompson, the trustee appointed by a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge, conducted the auction Tuesday and collected $285 total for the mostly poster-sized prints — two of the late bakery patriarch and one of his father Theron Stephens wearing a bow tie and kneading dough in the bakery’s early days. There also was a large canvas painting of the late Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam.

*****

Video: Few takers for last Bey posters and photos

Video: David Stevenson reports on auction of Your Black Muslim Bakery items

*****

A

An unidentified member of the Bey family carries a large photograph of Yusuf Bey, Sr. into the back of her SUV. ID. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune)

Murray Muhammad, 51, a former bakery worker who has an educational and cultural resource center in downtown Oakland, paid $150 for six of the large prints, once outbidding a Bey family member for a large facial portrait of Elijah Muhammad.

He said he wanted the mementos because they reminded him of all the good the bakery and “Brother Bey” did for him and “thousands” like him, by putting out a hand when he most needed it and giving him a spiritual foundation.

“Twenty years ago I was homeless, I had only the clothes on my back,” he said. “(They) said, ‘Brother, are you looking for work?’ They gave me a job, they paid me, they fed me, they got me back on my feet. I stayed here 2 1/2 years.”

Murray Muhammad’s memories are very different from the picture many now have of the bakery and its late founder Yusuf Bey, who died while facing charges of raping young girls who worked for him. The bakery institution’s legacy, once held up as a model for promoting African-American self-reliance, is now linked with murder and violence. Bakery associate Devaughndre Broussard has been charged in the Aug. 2 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey.

Murray Muhammad of San Francisco, who said he lived with the Bey family and worked at Your Black Muslim Bakery for two years in the 1980s, walks to his car with several pieces of artwork from the defunct bakery. (D. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune).

Yusuf Bey IV, the bakery’s last CEO, sits in jail, charged with torturing and kidnapping of two women in May, vandalizing two West Oakland liquor stores in November 2005 and an assault in San Francisco in 2006. Several other Bey associates also are charged in those crimes.

The bakery enterprise spiraled into financial ruin after the 2003 death of patriarch Yusuf Bey and the unsolved murder of his hand-picked successor Waajid Aljawwaad in 2004. Bakery CEO Antar Bey, Yusuf Bey’s son, was fatally shot in 2005 during an attempted carjacking, and another top lieutenant, John Bey, was shot and wounded at his home that year.

Bey IV declared bankruptcy in late 2006 and the court ordered the business liquidated in August 2007. The heavily indebted bakery building on San Pablo Avenue and a two-story home that abuts the back of the lot were sold for $1.2 million to satisfy the IRS and other secured creditors.

A limited liability company purchased the property and is renovating the bakery building to become the home of Vital Life Services, a community nonprofit serving people with AIDS.

The court has not yet ruled on whether other properties worth $2.28 million that were gifted to Daulet Bey, one of Yusuf Bey’s wives, prior to the bankruptcy must be returned and sold to satisfy creditors.

Oakland police work at the scene where Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey was shot dead, at the corner of 14th and Alice streets, on August 2, 2007. (D. Ross Cameron/The Oakland Tribune)

Staff reports, Chauncey Bailey Project

The Chauncey Bailey Project, a consortium of news organizations investigating the August slaying of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, has won a prestigious award from the journalism organization Investigative Reporters and Editors.

The project won the Tom Renner Award, honoring outstanding reporting covering organized crime or other criminal acts, IRE announced Tuesday.

“This coalition of Bay Area journalists delved into questionable real estate deals and contracts involving the owners of Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland,” IRE said in a statement. “The reporters raised questions about the thoroughness of a police investigation into the group before Bailey’s murder.

“They probed the interrogation and confession of Bailey’s alleged killer,” the statement said. “And they carried on the work that Bailey intended to pursue before his death. These stories would have been difficult to pursue under any circumstances, but it took extreme dedication to get at the truth following the assassination of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey.”

The Bailey Project journalists cited in the award are Bay Area News Group-East Bay staff writers Cecily Burt, Harry Harris, Angela Hill, Thomas Peele, Josh Richman and Paul T. Rosynsky; A.C. Thompson of New America Media; G.W. Schulz of the San Francisco Bay Guardian; and freelance reporters Mary Fricker and Bob Butler.

The award “is a tribute not only to the work of the project but to Chauncey Bailey,” said Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting and the Bailey Project’s executive editor. “This unique collaboration of journalists from diverse backgrounds and news organizations was not always easy, but the stories and their credibility will stand the test of time.

“This is about hard work commitment and passion - instincts and values that all journalists understand,” he said.

Sponsors of the project, which is ongoing, include New America Media in San Francisco; the Robert Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland; the Bay Area Association of Black Journalists; the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, and the journalism program at San Francisco State University.

Students from both programs have contributed to the Bailey Project.

Other participating news organizations include KQED public radio and KTVU television.

The Knight Foundation, The Society of Professional Journalists, The Newspaper Guild and the National Association of Black Journalists have provided grants to fund the project.

For more information on the Bailey Project, contact Dori J. Maynard of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education at (510) 684-3071.

Santa Barbara police Lt. Amando Martel said Thursday his department will take another look at the 1968 slaying of Birdie Mae and Wendell Scott in light of newly discovered similarities to the Aug. 2 murder of Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey. (Bob Butler/Chauncey Bailey Project)

By Bob Butler and Thomas Peele, Chauncey Bailey Project

SANTA BARBARA — Police here, responding to inquiries by The Chauncey Bailey Project, have reopened an investigation into the unsolved 1968 shooting deaths of a couple affiliated with a mosque that was the forerunner to Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Detectives could arrive in Oakland as early as this week to question Abdul Raab Muhammad, 71, formerly known as Billy X Stephens. He is the brother of late Your Black Muslim Bakery patriarch Yusuf Ali Bey, who was born Joseph H. Stephens.

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Audio:  Police reopen 1968 slaying investigation

Audio: Police: Chauncey Bailey murder similar to 40-year-old slaying

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In the mid-1960s, the brothers converted to Islam in this seaside city 90 miles north of Los Angeles and founded a now-defunct mosque, planting the seeds of what eventually became the Bey organization, its Oakland bakery and a culture of African-American defiance and self-reliance.

But just as those aspects of the bakery began in Southern California, so too did allegations of intimidation and crimes ranging from fraud to murder.

On Aug. 17, 1968, two members of the Santa Barbara mosque, Birdie Mae Scott, 33, and her husband, Wendell Scott, 30, were slain with a .30-30 rifle as they slept in an apartment they shared with her two children, ages 13 and 10.

Though he was never named as a suspect, records show the police investigation at the time focused largely on Billy X Stephens, who was the organization’s top leader as minister.  Joseph Stephens served as its secretary.

No arrests were made in the case. Police reports were copied to microfilm, archived and remained untouched for decades. Nearly 200 pages of documents about the Scott killings released by Santa Barbara police to the Chauncey Bailey Project show that detectives in 1968 focused on internal mosque disputes as the motive in the Scott killings. Wendell Scott, according to police documents, had written a letter to Nation of Islam leaders in Chicago complaining that he had been forced to burn two cars belonging to the Stephens brothers’ mother so insurance money could be collected.

Billy Stephens learned of the letter and suspended the Scotts from the mosque, the documents said. The couple was killed weeks later.

Documents also show similarities to the Aug. 2 killing of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey, who was investigating the bakery’s finances and internal disputes. A former handyman at the bakery has been arrested and charged with murder in connection with the shooting. The handyman, Devaughndre Broussard, 20, told authorities he shot Bailey because he wanted to be a “good soldier” for bakery leaders; he has since recanted that confession.

In both the Scott and Bailey cases, police have theorized the slayings were carried out to silence critics of the Stephens/Bey family and their organizations.

Another look

Santa Barbara police said they will investigate the Scott killing again.

This building, photographed last week, was one of several locations of Santa Barbara’s Muhammad’s Mosque of Islam in the 1960s. The upstairs were also used as living quarters. (Bob Butler/Chauncey Bailey Project)

“There has been some recent information from some cases up in Oakland that have some similarities,” said Santa Barbara police Lt. Amando Martel. Detectives will “see maybe if there are any connections with the case in Oakland and the one here in 1968.”

Billy X Stephens, in a telephone interview from his home in Oakland, denied last week having anything to do with the double slaying in Santa Barbara.

“I didn’t do it. I don’t know who did it, nor did I know beforehand that it was going to happen,” he said. “I don’t have anything to hide.”

He said the shooting had nothing to do with the mosque and that “outsiders” committed the crime.

In their 1968 reports, Santa Barbara police wrote they suspected Wendell Scott was targeted because of his complaints about Billy and Joseph Stephens.

Police noted that Birdie Scott’s brother, Toby Jackson, told them Wendell Scott was “trying to drop out” of the organization.

“In those days … the only way you left the Black Muslims was feet first, because you were privy to information that may have involved possible criminal activity,” said retired Santa Barbara Officer Keene Grand, who worked on the case.

In investigating the Scotts’ killing, police found a pattern of intimidation and fear within the mosque’s members. The mosque was a closed group that resolved its own problems and had little contact with outsiders, especially police, records show.

“There were a lot of discussions and rumors (in 1968) of the potential of a connection (between the killings and) the mosque and some of (its) leaders,” Martel said. “People were reluctant to talk.”

Detectives also ran into a tangle of family intrigue — Birdie Scott was the sister of Billy X Stephens’ former wife, Mary.

Documents show that detectives believed Mary Stephens, who still lives in Santa Barbara, may have known more about the killings than she said at the time.

In a brief telephone interview last week, Mary Stephens said she would welcome justice for her late sister but declined to discuss the slaying.

“It’s been 40 years and I’ve put it out my mind and I don’t want to put my mind back on it,” she said.

Five weeks after the killings, Billy and Mary Stephens married for a second time.

Police reports note that several people told detectives the couple remarried because Billy X Stephens believed Mary could not be forced to testify against him if she were his wife. The couple divorced again in 1976.

The early investigation

Much of the investigation in 1968 focused on Billy X Stephens and a phone call he made to police the night of the shooting — a call that other mosque members told police was in direct violation of Stephens’ stringent policy against bringing outsiders into mosque affairs, according to police reports.

Stephens, however, said no such policy existed.

“There was no rule about not calling the police,” he said last week. “You wouldn’t do it if it was a family disturbance. Any time I hear a gunshot I call the police.”

Documents show that Stephens phoned police at 2:30 a.m. Aug. 17, 1968, but didn’t report hearing gunshots from the Scotts’ apartment, which was directly above his in a shoebox-shaped complex Stephens managed just yards from U.S. Highway 101.

Stephens “said he just finished a business phone call and had gone to bed and was just in ‘twilight’ sleep when he heard what sounded like a door slam,” a detective wrote.

Birdie Mae Scott, date unknown. (Courtesy of family)

Stephens told police he called the Scotts’ phone several times to inquire about their welfare and became worried when no one answered, records show.

Police found the Scotts’ apartment door kicked in and the couple dead in their bed. Each was shot twice. The children in the next room were unharmed.

Police began an aggressive canvas of the neighborhood at dawn. At least six people interviewed said they’d heard four gunshots roughly 20 minutes before Stephens’ call to police, the reports said.

One man, who lived about 75 yards away, told detectives the shots came during the climactic scene of a movie he was watching on television.

The detectives contacted the Los Angeles television station that broadcast the movie and found the scene the man described aired about 2:10 a.m.

Other people who lived nearby told police they also heard the shots, followed by a more dull, cracking sound, and police speculated that the gunman may have entered the apartment with a key and kicked in the door when leaving to make it look as if entry was forced, according to documents.

Police noted that Stephens managed the apartment complex.

Stephens said he never heard any shots and suggested the killer used a rifle with a silencer attached.

“I didn’t hear any shots,” he told the Chauncey Bailey Project. “I heard them rumbling down the stairs.”

There is no reference in the police reports to Stephens telling police he heard anyone on the stairs.

When detectives confronted Stephens with the time discrepancy and other questions, he became angry and refused their request to take a lie detector test, according to reports.

Last week, Stephens said he didn’t take the lie detector test because a woman phoned him anonymously and told him police would use the results to arrest him.

“They were trying to build a case against me,” he said.

Another person named in police reports in 1968 was a former U.S. Army soldier named Ermond Givens. He is a retired school janitor, now 70, who changed his name to Ali Omar and lives in Alameda. He served as the mosque’s lieutenant and was responsible for what he described in a recent interview as “training the Muslim soldier.”

In an interview at his Alameda home, Omar first said there were never any problems at the Santa Barbara mosque during his tenure there. When reminded of the double killing, he remembered that police had never solved the case but said he knew little about it.

Police reports show that a woman named Ida Hamilton, who was also a member of the

Ali Omar, March 2008. (Bob Butler/Chauncey Bailey Project)

Omar said last week he had no information about the shooting.

Birdie Scott’s daughter, Audrey Hazelwood, who was 13 the night of the killing and in the next bedroom, cannot recall hearing the fatal shots. She said her family deserves to know who killed her mother and stepfather.

“Of course we do,” said Hazelwood, now 53 and living in Santa Barbara. “My (late grandmother) always said that she would live to see the day” when the case would be investigated again. “But I guess it’ll be in my lifetime.”

Investigation hits dead end

Police continued to investigate through the end of 1968, documents show, but hit a dead end when .30-30 shell casings found in the Scotts’ bedroom didn’t have any fingerprints on them. In the days before DNA testing, police were left with little physical evidence.

Martel, the Santa Barbara police lieutenant, said any breaks in the case will have to come from someone with knowledge of it who talks to detectives.

Detectives, he said, will question people in both Santa Barbara and Oakland, where the Stephens brothers moved in 1970 with orders from Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad to open another mosque.

A year later, the brothers split — Billy X became Abdul Raab Muhammad and stayed with the Nation of Islam. He served as a minister in the organization for 44 years and is now living in Oakland.

Joseph Stephens took the name Yusuf Bey and broke away from the Nation of Islam. He started his own organization, which became Your Black Muslim Bakery and served as a center of empowerment and employment for African Americans in Oakland. It was one of the few places where ex-convicts could find work.

Cracks in the bakery’s respectability began to appear in 1994 when four of its associates were charged with assaulting and torturing a man over a real estate deal.

Bey died in 2003 while awaiting trial on statutory rape charges, and the bakery soon descended into chaos.

Yusuf Bey’s hand-picked successor, Waajid Aliawwaad, 51, soon disappeared and was found five months later in a shallow grave. Another of Bey’s proteges left town after several men opened fire on him as he left his house for work.

Police suspected other members of the organization were involved in both crimes, which remain unsolved, largely because police have found no one willing to provide them with information, a decades-long pattern of silence that apparently began in Santa Barbara.

Bob Butler is a freelance journalist. Thomas Peele is an investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group. Contact Butler at bobbutler7@comcast.net and Peele at tpeele@bayareanewsgroup.com. Bob Butler produced this story as a 2007-08 fellow of the George Washington Williams Fellowship, a program sponsored by New Voices in Independent Journalism.