January 23, 2024 • 49 mins
New information leads Mosi to some truths about what really happened during the shootout, and he tries to find a way out of the darkness.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
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Speaker 3 (00:36):
Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Investigating what Really happened in the West End on the
nine of March sixteenth, two thousand.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
The whole scene frame I frame.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's been exhausting, but as a deadline approach to finish
reporting and to put this story out into the world,
I was starting to have a good sense of things,
of a man Jamil as someone who could have very
well shot those deputies, and of a West End community
that was far from peaceful.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
As I was turning over.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Various scenarios in my head, two questions kept popping up.
Was there really only one person shooting at the deputies?
And did the FBI have someone there at the scene
when everything went down. These were hard questions to answer
because so few eyewitnesses came forward after the shootout, and
none of the ones who talked had to clear unobstructed view.
(01:39):
We spoke to one Abdusamat Jahad, the kid being tutored
inside the mashed when the shooting started, but Abdusamat was
on the floor and in a closet during most of
the shootout. I was starting to think I'd gotten all
I could get, stopped imagining there could be anything new
around the corner. You've heard me say it a lot,
that there was more to the story than the official account.
(02:01):
I thought I'd reached the limits of more. But there
was another eyewitness, a man named Damien Gordon. In the
late nineties, Damien, a young entrepreneur, discovered there was money
to be made and renting on apartments to students attending
the historically black colleges near the West End. Late one night,
(02:23):
he was driving near the park when he saw brothers
from the Mashjit out on the corners. The security patrol
of Maam Jamil's mas jed.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Like he would have them out there keep the drug
dealers away from the park because they knew it don't
come to the park, So when I saw that, I
was like, all right, I can't save a spot for
girls to come stay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Damien ended up buying a house next to the mass
jed and renting it out to students. With deadlines and
the demands of making this podcast, we wavered a bit
on whether it was worth speaking to Damien. We had
read his story multiple times and all the documents were gathered,
So what else do we really need to know? So
we could we could jump to two thousand. What happened
(03:04):
that on that night you were doing some modeling?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Yeah, all right, So me and Stacy are coming to
the house.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Stacy is Damien's younger cousin, and he was with Demien
to help him move a bathtub into the house, but
the truck they were using got stuck in the mud.
When the gunfire started. Demian jumped from the truck to
see what was going on, but there were box trailers
parked in the fields next to the mastet, partially blocking
Damien's view. He couldn't see what was going on except
(03:33):
the deputy English was lying on the ground.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
And then as I'm walking further out, it just goes
off tumbling, tumbling, So I run grab I mean, I
know scared. I run grab my cousin, throw him on
my shoulder, and I run up into the house.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Then I run to the back of the house.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Demien looked out a window, but he was still far
away and he couldn't see everything. When the shootings, Damien
heard two car door slam and then he heard a
car speed away. The two door slams we had seen
Damien describe that in one of his statements to prosecutors.
It could mean a lot of things that not one,
but two people were shooting back at Deputy English and
(04:15):
Deputy Kenchin. Or it could just mean that one person
threw something in the back seat of their car before
they drove away. The two door slams were notable but
seemed pretty inconclusive. But when we finally interviewed Damien at
a club he owned in Atlanta, he told us something else.
He said he actually saw two people get into the
car before it drove away. That would put two people
(04:39):
in the black Mercedes fleeing the scene.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That wasn't in the documents.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
That was new.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Two people getting into the car. He was certain about it.
There were other inconsistencies in Damien's different tellings of what
happened that night, But this new information was too big
of a deal. We had to take it seriously. Damien
said he couldn't ide the people from the window where
he was watching, but he did seem to know something
else about who might have been there during the shootout,
(05:06):
something that he wasn't keen to share, so some other
people were there.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
It gets a little it gets a little deeper than that.
You know, we can't have that conversation. But you know
what I'm saying, But.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But what do you mean, Well, if you don't want
to have the conversation, then let's have it off off.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, we had to have that off books.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
You know it is there.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
Yeah, you need to turn it off, like you need to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Turn that off.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What Damian told us was off the record, and we'll
stay off the record. But Johnny and I left that
meeting kind of pumped. We were feeling hopeful that we
might actually get to the bottom of what happened the night.
Speaker 7 (05:46):
Of the shootout.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. This is Radical,
I'm Mostly Secret. Episode eight, The Legend of a Man
Jimmil Consider a black boy who came into this world
(06:32):
with a fiery nature in the nineteen forties Jim Crow
South racial oppression at every turn. Humiliations didn't put out
his light, They only made his fire burn hotter gave
him something he felt he should burn.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Consider that the child grew up to.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Be a trap Brown whose nickname made clear that he
had away with rhymes and words he could rouse the
brothers on the corner to follow him to the front
lines of the Black struggle, rifles in hand, firebombs in hand,
because the real way to defeat American violence, he told them,
was to harness violence yourself. Consider that this man was
(07:13):
viewed as such a threat by the US government, a
messiah to the oppressed at the height of the Black
Power movement, that federal agents scheme to take him down,
maybe even tried to kill him. But that in prison
he found religion. Islam changed his name to Jamil a
Lamin and started amaster it when he got out a
(07:33):
whole community, creating his own domain in the middle of
what he'd once sought to destroy, doing what he thought
had to be done to keep his community alive. Does
that have the ring of destiny? The feel of God's
guiding hand. It's easy to get tied up and not
philosophizing about how much power we really have over our lives.
(07:56):
But a man Jamil talked often about the will of
a law, a sense he had that his life was
maybe predetermined or out of his control, whether it was
destiny or something else. In the late nineties, the pressure
on a Mam Jamil from the world surrounding him was building.
The FBI appeared to intensify its surveillance, and periodic gun violence,
(08:21):
perpetrated often by members of his own community, was practically
at his doorstep. It was near the beginning of this
period the spring of nineteen ninety eight when a Maam
Jamil spoken in the event in Washington, d c.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
All praise is due to a Law who has created
man and has not left him, but indeed has given
him guidance as to that which is liked by the creator,
and he has commanded upon man struggle with consciousness and
awareness in his behalf.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It was a fundraiser held in a big hotel ballroom
to honor Quame Toure formerly Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of
Snick before h Rap Brown took over. Listening to a
Mam Jamil speak, you can still hear some rap. Maybe
a Mam Jimil's voice was lower and his pace slower,
but the rhythm and determination behind his words that was
(09:21):
the same. There must have been some ember still inside
of Ma'am Jamil, and I wonder was it being stoked
building into a flame, a fire by all the challenges
and pressure swirling around him at the time.
Speaker 8 (09:35):
Oppression is worse than the grave, he said. It is
better to live and fight for a noble cause than
to live and die slaves.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Muslims, he said, are commanded to remind themselves and those
around them that struggle is ongoing. But there is a
higher form of struggle, an internal struggle to raise one's
level of consciousness and awareness. Deal with yourself, Struggle with yourself,
and that will emanate to the world.
Speaker 8 (10:09):
If you can't beat yourself, you can't beat nobody else.
Everybody can fight, but everybody can't win.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We know so much more about him Man Jamil struggle
with the world with America's ills, that we know about
his struggle with himself. I wish I had been able
to learn more about his inner life. Was he fulfilled?
What brought him joy, what put him on edge. That's
why I've often wondered out loud what he was thinking,
how he was feeling during certain moments in the story.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
Struggle has not stopped. It didn't begin in the fifties
and end in the seventies. The movement sense of struggle
which has always visited struggle. It says at the anti
slavery movement, Marcus god Is movement, the Black power movement,
civil rights movement. They come and they go, but the
struggle is continuous until a loss from the law has
(11:00):
righted the wrong that has come about.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Even though a Maam Jamil had given so much, risked
so much, and his external struggle to improve the lives
of black people, I don't think he believed that Allah
had righted America's wrongs, And as the twentieth century came
to an end, he seemed to be struggling with what
he had wrought.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
In the West End.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I spoke to a man Pleman Elemine about this period
in a Maam Jamial's life. You might remember a man
Pleman from much earlier in the story. He's one of
the most prominent elders in Atlanta's African American Muslim community
in the late nineties. A man Pleman was a leader
of a massed across the city from the West End,
and he saw what he thought to be informant in
AmAm Jamil's mastered.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
I think even he would have been surprised or he
was surprised to see that people were close to him
were working for the government.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Grappling with suspicions about informants must have been exhausting for
a Mam Jamial. He was trying to create a welcoming
community where anyone could join the mass jed all while
law enforcement was working to get people close to him.
That kind of pressure takes a serious toll. History had
already shown that when a Ma'am Jamil's mother and sister
Karama's parents succumbed amid FBI harassment in the early seventies,
(12:24):
and there wasn't just surveillance coming down on a ma'am Jamil.
Remember Lowndes County in the Black belt of Alabama, where
a Maam Jamil went after the shootout. He had worked
there back in the sixties and then in the nineties
he helped establish a small Muslim community in the area.
By nineteen ninety nine, a Maam Jamil had decided he
wanted the Western mass Jed and the Muslim community around
(12:45):
it to leave Atlanta and move to Lowndes County.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
He presented it to his community, Hey, we're going to
move to Alabama, and they said no.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So he was.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
Upset about that as well. Yeah, because they had never
said no to.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Anything for it.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
But they say, hey, man, we're not going to the country. Man,
we established here and we got the family, got business,
got this whatever. And they had had several meetings and
discussions about that, and he's not telling me that. I'm
getting it from some of his members and everything. Hey
we can't go to the country. We're at lanterns, you know.
(13:24):
And so he was. He was upset about that.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I wondered if he wanted to go there and start
over because the West End had become so infiltrated.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Well, it could be, but.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
I really think that, you know, the whole idea is
based in the Nation of Islam, that's based in Sunni Islam.
Is let's go back and if we're not going back
to Africa, let's go back somewhere. You know, in Nati Islam.
(14:03):
They lied to Bahama give US six six southern states,
and we'll do our own things.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That was part of that.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So all that's still in all of this African American Islam,
it's still there somewhere.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Let us get our separate land.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
And we'll do our own thing, you know. So I'm
thinking he's just saying, hey, we're gonna try it again.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Start off new, start off fresh, with.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Just us on acres of land. But nobody wanted to go.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And then also in nineteen ninety nine, and Ma'am Jamil
was arrested in copp County, a suburban county north of Atlanta.
This was the arrest that ultimately led to the warrant
the Deputy Kenchin and Deputy English had with them when
they came to arrest to ma'am Jamil.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
In March of two thousand, a.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Ma'am Jamil was driving a Ford Explorer with a dealer
license plate. A local police officer pulled him over. The
officers had and when he asked for license and registration,
a Maam Jamil's hands were shaking. The paperwork didn't check out.
The SUV had been reported stolen, according to the officer's
testimony in court, he ordered a Maam Jamil get out
(15:15):
of the vehicle and as he patted him down, he
found his wallet. Inside there was a police badge. The
officer asked to ma'am Jamil if he was a police officer,
and he said yes. It was an honorary bad from
the mayor of Whitehall in Lowndes County. Years later, these
charges would be thrown out as unconstitutional, but the officer
(15:35):
arrested to Mamajamil for operating a stolen vehicle and impersonating
a police officer, and man Pleman said that the second
charge for impersonating a police officer, that was the one
that really bothered at Maam Jamil.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
That's the last thing he would want to be doing
is playing like he's a policeman. And so I could
see him try to let this police officer know that
he's not just anybody, not just a African American who
you stopped and giving a ticket, that he's somebody.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
You know, it was out there that a man Jamil
was pretending to be something he despised, and even with
all his authority in the West End, he was powerless
to do anything about it, powerless to shift the narrative,
restore his reputation. I'm pretty powerless before any judge he
would face in a court of law. He's somebody, a man,
(16:29):
Pleman said, but only to a small number of people
who don't have much political power in the first place.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
A couple occasions that I saw him in the midst
of those things, he was very irritable and upset about
what was going on. And I had never seen him
like that before. You know, it was always hey, what
can I do for you? What do you need anything?
You know, there's always his demeanor that he was ready
(16:59):
to ass issue whatever you needed or whatever. But in
the bits of that, it was like, yeah, just complaining
about these people, these people, man, And you know, how
can anybody think that I want to be a police
be a policeman? You know, that's that's the last thing,
my man. I'm trying to show somebody I'm a police officer,
(17:21):
impersonate a police office.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I heard from other people that a Man Jamil's demeanor
changed during this time. People from the West End who
I trust but who didn't want to say it on
the record. They told me that they believe that man
Jamil shot those deputies, that something in him seemed to
have caught fire and then the Friday jun my services
at the mask. Yet he kept saying I'm gonna.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Get me one.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I'm gonna get me one, and no one knew what he.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Was talking about.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
After Damien Gordon, the man who owned the house next
to the mash Jed in the West End, told Johnny
and me that he saw two people get into the
car and drive off. After the shootout, we went to
speak with Abdusa mat Jahad, the seventeen year old who
was inside the mass Jed that night. Abdusa Matt told
me that a lawyer came and questioned him in the
months after the shootout, but that since then I was
(18:23):
the first person in all these years to really ask.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Him about it.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So, yeah, what we want to do is go over
that night, just kind of slow it down from the beginning,
figure out.
Speaker 7 (18:36):
What you remember, what you really remember, so.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
You are in the mask shit, Yeah, in the mass hit.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
After they had to been not the because no other prayer.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Was going on after that.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
After the Easterer prayer, the last prayer of the day
about remembers being tutored by a math.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Teacher who lived in the community.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
When they heard gunfire outside the tutor jumped on top
of a Dusamat. They laid motionless on the floor. I
tried to reach that tutor, but I didn't hear back
from him. When the gunfire stopped, a different man, not
the tutor, he dragged Abdussimat into a closet and told
him to stay there. That man his Muslim name was Nigell,
(19:26):
and Abdusamat told us that Nigell was carrying a gun.
Speaker 9 (19:30):
And it wasn't like a comer right, It was a
Stifer type rifle. It was a rifle that who were
used to kill a deer or snipe some kind of
hot power, hot collar of a rifle.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
While Abdusamat was still in the closet, he heard what
he thought was Nigeal leaving the mast Git. Then there
was more gunfire outside, and when it stopped, Abdusamat left
the closet and looked out the window. He saw Nigel
standing near Deputy English, who was lying in the field
next to the mass Jit bleeding. Abdusamat heard Nigel yell out, hey,
(20:05):
there's one over here, like he was.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Letting someone know. The English was lying there.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Abduso Ount isn't clear who Nigel was speaking to. It
could have been a man Jimial or other people from
the mass Jed, or it could have been someone in
law enforcement who was not one of the deputies but
had already arrived at the scene. But if Nigel was
yelling out to some cops, that would seemed to be
a death wish.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
He's standing there holding a high powered rifle. They didn't
even shoot him. Les stick them up.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
That is very silly, you get saying if you ran
if a shooting that happened, you ran out with a rifle,
you would be shot. That's his way.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It was black. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
After Abdusamat heard Nigell call out, he saw him come
back into the mass Jed and Nigel put his gun
away somewhere in the closet. Abdusamat thinks then Nigell was gone.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That was it. He disappeared. He never came back in
the mask ged he but before that he was a regular.
Speaker 10 (21:11):
Before that, he was a regular. He had just came
to the mean. Nobody really know much about him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Nigel had shown up in the Western community about three
years earlier. He took care of the mass Jed grounds
didn't have another job at the time, and he was
living in the masjed.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
That wasn't so unusual.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Men would sometimes stay there when they were passing through
or temporarily homeless. Abdusamat never got any weird vibe from Nigell,
but he said there was speculation in the community that
he was an informant. Abdusamat's dad, who's now deceased, he
was among those skeptical of Nigell.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Assuming Nigell was.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
There and he had a rifle with him, what did
he do after he put Abdusamat in the closet and
exited the masjed. It's possible, maybe even likely, that he
fired at day deputies. The kind of rifle that Abdusamat
described Nigel as carrying. It could have shot two two
three caliber rounds like the dozens found at the scene.
(22:11):
If Nigel did fire at the deputies, it could mean
that a maam Jimial wasn't responsible for the injury to
English or the death of Kenchin. A ma'am Jimil's lawyers
called Nigel to testify at the trial. He said he
was inside the mast jed with abdusamat At the time
of the shooting, and they laid on the floor until
all the shooting stopped. Then Nigil said he looked out
(22:33):
the window and saw English lying in the grass. While
Abdusamat was still inside. Nigil walked out and he ran
into two officers who had already arrived at the scene.
The officers asked if anybody was inside. During his testimony,
Nigel admitted he'd lie to the officers and said no
because he was trying to protect Abdusamat. The officers turned
(22:55):
around and didn't enter the mass jed. The story seems
odd to me. If Nigel was indeed an FBI informant,
the defense in the prosecution might not know. I read
through a congressional report about the FBI's use of murderers
as informants, which came out around the time of a
(23:16):
mam Jamil's trial. It said that federal agents had allowed
informants to perjure themselves, and that they kept evidence from
defendants and prosecutors and what the committee called to quote
ends justify the means approach. What if Nigel was both
a shooter and an informant, If in the dark of
night he came out firing before he could make out
(23:38):
what was really happening. How totally crazy would that be
that an informant was potentially involved in the murder of
a local law enforcement officer, that the end justify the means.
Pursuit of a mamm Jamil was so intense that law
enforcement ended up hurting itself in its efforts to get him.
These are the things we were thinking about when we
(23:58):
started looking for Nigeal. I felt excited, to be honest
about the prospect of getting to the bottom of the
West End and the FBI secrets. Going under an underpass
here it looks like a decent neighborhood, at.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Least from where we were coming from. There is a
little bit of a transition happening.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Nigell is still alive, and my producer Johnny and I
found an address for his wife in Augusta, Georgia, a
few hours outside Atlanta. And Gill doesn't appear to be
practicing the slam anymore. And he's going by his giving
name again, George Wilson. I'll call him that from here
on out. Our plan was to knock on the door
(24:44):
and ask George Wilson what he remembers from the night
of the shootout.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
This was not the safest door.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Knock I've ever done. If this guy had shot a
cop and kept it secret for twenty years, I didn't
exactly expect him to invite me in for coffee, but
I hoped he was old, settled into domestic life, a
changed man. That's how he looted his Facebook photo, happy
and fat. I thought maybe we'd get an eruption of self.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Pity or shame, but not rage.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
When Johnny and I pulled up to the address, it
looked like army barracks at first, but it was actually
part of a public housing complex. The apartments were spread
out over a couple of blocks, one story side by side, duplexes,
red brick with black shingles. We parked in a lot
on the backside of the apartment we thought belonged to
Wilson's wife. There was laundry out on the line, a
(25:38):
good sign someone was home.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I'm going to approach with my friendliest face.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
We got out and walked around to the front, but
after getting a good look at the place, decided it
was too risky to even knock.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So we're back in the car now. There was a
sign on the door.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Handwritten on a piece of notebook paper that said this
means you don't knock, don't approach, no exceptions.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Smile your own camera, which is pretty clear, a pretty
clear sign that they don't want to see any strangers.
It makes me.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Wonder, I mean, who puts the signlight that on the door.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
We'd driven too far to turn right back around. Someone
had to come out sooner or later to get that
laundry drying on the line, So a stakeout seemed like
the best move. But we needed to grab a bite
to eat if we were going to sit in the
car for hours. After a quick lunch, When we pulled
back up on the complex, a woman was standing in
the front yard. I whipped the car around like iced
(27:09):
tea in a Law and Order episode or something. We
jumped out. Johnny kept his microphone in his bag, definitely
didn't want to freak anybody out. He recorded what happened
next on his phone, so the quality is barely good
enough to play for you. Oh, I'm so sorry, I've
met I don't know how to have. The woman was
(27:37):
George Wilson's wife. Her name is Darlene goes By d.
I told her rather nervously that we were looking for
George Wilson, who might know some things about a murder
that happened in Atlanta twenty years ago. She asked me
to repeat myself, and I got the words out again. Then,
without hearing anything more, she said, he's probably the one
who did it. Turn turned out Wilson wasn't happy in
(28:01):
fat and enjoying old age.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
She said he was in jail. He had been charged
with murder.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
One day in the winter of twenty twenty one, Dee
and her daughter, Wilson's stepdaughter, were watching television in their
home in Augusta. Wilson got upset with his wife or
for something he'd accused her of, and one of the
stepdaughters to leave the apartment, but Dee's daughters stuck around
to protect her.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Mom got between the two.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Actually, things got heeded, and he stabbed her in the chest,
killed her right there, a few feet from where we
were standing. She died in Dee's arms. D told us
that Wilson first lived in New York. He was sent
to Atlanta for prison, and he stuck around when he
got out. That must have been when he joined the
(28:51):
Master d d didn't know anything about Wilson being an informant,
but she said he did have aliases and other addresses
and that he was paranoid. Asked because she was talking
to and if she was working for someone and woke
up in the middle of the night saying, I didn't
do it. I didn't bother that lady. I didn't touch her.
Speaker 8 (29:13):
Okay, okay, what we're going to let you go?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Okay, thank you anything. D spoke to us for about
twenty minutes before we got back into the car. I'm
happy that we didn't knock on the door and he
was there, Like this dude seems kind of scary.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
Like clearly there's clearly clearly he's being haunted by things.
But if he was.
Speaker 11 (29:37):
Talking to the FBI, what a volatile person for them
to be involved with. I mean, it's the same as
it's the same as Shahid, What a volatile person for them.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
To be involved with?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
How are you feeling? I feel bad for that woman,
you know, Like that seemed awful. Like if we just
keep going on this, are we just going to get
to darker and darker shit.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Or what I mean?
Speaker 7 (30:06):
This is dark, This is a dark place. This is
the darkest that it's found like, I don't think that
was in our list of things that are possibly going
on no place. I mean, she was really sweet given everything.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah wow.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I wrote to George Wilson of the jail where he's
being held in Augusta, but I never heard anything back
since we met his wife that day. Wilson has been
convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Here's
what I believe happened. The night of the shootout in
the West End. The deputies pulled up in front of
(30:56):
Ma'am Jimiale's black Mercedes, and after a brief exchange of works,
he pulled a semi automatic rifle from under his throb
and letter rip. I know y'all going to get me
sooner or later, but I'm going to get me one.
You can believe that. That's what a Mam Jamil used
to say to cops in his days.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Is rat Brown.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
He wrote it in his autobiography, and those were the
words folks in the Weston mass she had heard him
saying in the days before the shootout, I'm going to
get me one. I believe that's how Mam Jamil thought
he was going to go out defending himself in his
community in a blaze of martyrdom, that he'd rather die
than go back to prison, that he'd given this messed
(31:38):
up world everything he had. I believe when Mam Jamil
shot those deputies, but by some miracle he survived. The
whole neighborhood could hear the gunfire. All the brothers who
went to the mass died, who ran toward action, not
(31:58):
away from it. Someone who wanted to protect the AmAm
appeared and started shooting two. This was the man that witnessed.
Damian Gordon saw from across the way the second person
to get in the black Mercedes.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Whoever it was loved.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
The Ymam and the AmAm loved him. They drove off together,
keeping what happened secret until this day. Meanwhile, before or
after they left, George Wilson Nigel at the time he
came out of the mass yard and started shooting two.
(32:33):
In the months I've been working on this podcast, I've
been in touch with AmAm Jamil's wife Karima, his son Kyrie,
and his leapellate lawyer. None of them agreed to an interview.
We sent each of them a list of questions, but
they didn't send us answers. When I wrote to a
Mam Jamil in prison, I never heard back. As far
(32:57):
as we know, the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit is
still reviewing the prosecution of a Mam Jamil, at least technically.
But the DA's office didn't respond to our questions either,
and its silence would seem to suggest that it hasn't
found enough evidence to overturn the conviction. I know a
lot of AmAm Jamil supporters will never believe he did it,
and I hear their arguments that Mam Jamil didn't have
(33:20):
gray eyes and a Mama Jamil hadn't been shot like
Deputy English said he had. There's not a reliable scientific
link between the bullets that killed Deputy Kenchin and the
guns found near Maam Jamil in the woods in Alabama.
There are circumstantial evidence that points to a potential conspiracy
to plant the weapons in the woods, including the lack
of fingerprints. Do I think I Maam Jamil got a
(33:42):
fair trial. I don't know, Probably not, but I can't
accept the innocent's arguments. We couldn't corroborate Otis Jackson's story.
He confessed under oath, but he's also recancet his confession
multiple times, and he's apparently told a version of events
that's implausible. Then there's the fact that a Maam Jamil's
(34:07):
Mercedes was shot up and found close to where he
was hiding out in Alabama, and the stuff that folks
heard him saying in the mass It it echoed an
old willingness to confront cops with violence. Some people in
the West End, people who were in the neighborhood that night,
they know what happened, but for lots of reasons, they've
kept quiet. I say all this with a prayer in
(34:30):
mind that a Maam Jamil used to recite when he
addressed the public. I ask a lot to guide my
heart and guide my tongue. I seek refuge in a
law from misleading and being misled, from betraying and being
betrayed into ignorance by others. To me, it's a prayer
that says I reached these conclusions humbly, and I'll add
(34:54):
for Muslims in Atlanta especially, they're my conclusions, not my family.
One of the reasons I don't feel comfortable keeping all
of this inside is that this story has shown me
how things tend to ripple. The violence of the shootout
didn't stop that night. George Wilson, the guy whose house
(35:17):
we staked out in Augusta, it apparently stuck with him
for the last twenty years, along with the other shit
like Rodham I bet, and a few years ago he exploded,
hurting people miles away from the mast did in the
West End. After investigating all the death and destruction, I
was starting to feel ripples from the violence myself, just
(35:40):
thinking about this stuff all the time, feeling it in
a way that people around me could feel.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I had had enough.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
And I needed to find a way to make it
all stop. During the long stretch it took to finish
this story, I became a father. A baby came into
(36:09):
this world, fell right into my hands. But amid all
the joy and learning and growth, dark thoughts would knock
around my head, images of people at their worst. I
was trying to get to know this new human being,
trying to make him smile or to just be attentive,
and George Wilson or the serial killer Shahid ab du
(36:31):
Ahman would pop into my head.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
It was not a good feeling.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
A new life, in contrast to some of the lives
that have come across in this story, you can't help
but wonder where did people go so wrong?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And how do you steer a kid clear of that?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
We know a man Jimil believed in fate, that maybe
his death to me was to be sacrificed in the
face of deep social problems. Some would have us believe
that a man Jamial is simply evil. Others, maybe the
most nihilist of all, would say, we simply live in
an ugly world without meaning, deal with it. But none
(37:18):
of those views are acceptable to me. When I was younger,
after I followed my family into the faith of Islam,
I realized that I'm totally free to reimagine what I
believe in to find my own path. Ever since then,
journalism has been one of the main ways I've explored
the world how I figured out what's what. But after
(37:41):
going as far as I could with journalism in this story,
with investigative reporting, I began to look for deeper meaning.
I went back to a wise man, a man Pleman Elmine,
the peer of a Man Jamil, Islamic elder in Atlanta.
(38:02):
I asked him a question that I could hardly articulate.
It felt so abstract do we really have control over
our own destiny in the face of what can seem
like insurmountable forces operating in the world around us. I
was thinking about to what extent racial oppression in America
(38:23):
was responsible for the creation of a man Jamil and
of h Rap Brown, Like, does a person coming into
this world who to test those things? Can they really thrive?
Speaker 6 (38:36):
Majority of Muslims, you know, understand or believe that. And
it's it's correct in the sense that the will of
a law overrides everything.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I mean, the thing that comes off of Muslim's tongue
more than anything.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Else is in shadlah.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
And in the verse in Christ said, don't say you
will do anything without saying and inshall lah, because you
know the only way you're gonna be able to do
anything a lit has permitted.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Okay, But what.
Speaker 6 (39:06):
They overlook is that Allah has willed that we have choice,
and Allah has wield that we get the benefits or
the punishments for our choices. That's that's the will of
a law.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
A man pleman was saying that life is a series
of choices, and every choice changes our character, or is
a man cleman put it, Every choice moves our soul
closer to good or evil. We're in a constant state
of becoming and our destiny is not fixed, he said,
like some Muslims would have us believe, But it's tied
(39:47):
to our character, to our soul. The choices we make
determine what happens to us in this life. Me you
a man jamil anyone. A man Pleaman didn't want to
talk about the details of the shootout in the West End.
We agreed to that before our interview, but he did
(40:07):
talk about justice.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
Our deeds catch up with us. And sometimes people are
pretty miserable, but they are good people and they've done good.
Pretty soon the good deeds will catch up with them
and they'll be all right. But the same things. Sometimes
people have corrupt deeds and it might be might look
like everything's going good with him, but sooner or later
(40:32):
those deeds will track them down.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I could agree with a lot of what a Man
Pleman said, like I could relate on an instinctual level,
independent of theology or doctrine.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
We have power over our.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Lives, and in essence, what goes around comes around. Lots
of different life philosophies will tell you that, But that
still left me wanting. I didn't come all this way
to say that a man who went through things that
I never have, who was already being punished for his actions,
(41:11):
that he should have made better choices. I don't think
I was called to this story to leave it there.
I was still stuck on whether human beings could ever
break these cycles of violence, of American violence. How are
we supposed to stop these downward spirals, especially oppressed people
(41:32):
who are under attack. I believe that beneath everything else,
a man Jamil Hrap Brown. The man's intention was to
look out for his people, for his family and community.
Now that I'm a father, I can relate to that
more than ever. So I kept searching. I found a
(41:53):
clue in an unexpected place, Rodney Brown's book, Rodney the
former drug dealer in the Way, who knew Shahid ab
du Rahman and many of the people Shahid killed. I
went back to Rodney to talk to him. You have
this line in your book that you say a lot
(42:13):
of times, thoughts become things.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Thoughts become things.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 12 (42:20):
Your thoughts control everything around you. You're gonna get what
you're looking for, That's what you're thinking.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
About Rodney, over the course of his life, became aware
of power he has to control the world around him
with stories. If a man, Jermiale was ultimately battered and
knocked by the stories people told. Rodney learned something different.
But like when he was young, Rodney used to admire
this drug dealer named Willie, how cool he looked the
(42:48):
cars he drove.
Speaker 12 (42:50):
I just used to imagine myself doing the same thing,
and one day it came true, you know what I mean.
So I used to just picture it and dream about it,
picture it and dream about it, and bam, when I
should have been pitched myself. Being a lawyer or a doctor,
A kind of got a scroll power with bringing stuff
(43:11):
to life.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
I do.
Speaker 12 (43:13):
I'm gifted like that.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
But it took Rodney a long time to realize what
all that dreaming was doing. In prison, he started writing
his book about his life, about the violence he had
experienced and the people close to him who he had lost.
A psychologist had recommended it, said it would help him
to get everything out. It did help, and he's planning
to write another one. He's also working on a documentary
(43:37):
about the West End murders. Rodney doesn't have a perfect life.
He doesn't have it easy, nor has he been able
to totally set aside the shit that used to haunt
him like he still wonders whether he should have killed
Shahid ab du Rahman in the nineties, whether that would
(43:58):
have saved the lives of many of us friends in
the life of Deputy Kinchen too. But then he rains
that in tries to imagine something different. What's what's Rodney
doing in five years?
Speaker 12 (44:11):
Maybe I can help some kids and tell them some
of the stuff that you know to keep them going
the same road. And I done went man, because a
lot of them an' gonna end up like this. Look,
look I'm into my homeboys. Ain't gonna be sitting behind
on this. They said it's old with they already did,
and but a few people gonna make it out.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
And then Rodney turned things around on me. Maybe he
could tell that I had come to him for help
trying to get an answer.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
I want to know, what's what's your purpose?
Speaker 8 (44:38):
Y'all?
Speaker 12 (44:38):
Ever found what's your purpose gonna be?
Speaker 4 (44:40):
About this?
Speaker 2 (44:44):
You've heard me say often in the Mythology surrounding a
Man Jamil that when people believe in something, whether fact
or fiction. It has a way of becoming real. I
think there's a broader truth there too. It's a scary one,
but there's also a freedom, a freedom to imagine. I
(45:11):
imagine that Deputy Ricky Kenchin and all the folks who
lost their lives in the West End, that they're still
with us, quite present, but just off to the side,
watching the rest of our lives unfold like some kind
of drama, a passion play, and we're involved in a
much larger production as writers, actors, and directors about the consequences,
(45:37):
the merits, the usefulness of violence and Hubert Gerald Brown
rap and ma'am gimil He drew a tough role in
this show, a countercultural hero the likes of which we
seldom see, who reveals American violent for what it really is,
(46:00):
and through his own life, shows how wrong you can go.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
The Legend of a Man Jamil is a decade long drama.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
While the closing curtain, every character, me and you too,
realizes we are way bigger than we think we are.
We have more power than we think to change history.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
The folks who lost.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Their lives are waiting for us in the wings, waiting
for us to solve this problem. Just like a man
Jamil when he leaves this earth, We'll be rooting for
us from the audience.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
What's a stronger.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Weapon than an fourteen semi automatic rifle or a firebomb?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Storytelling the legend of a Maam Jamil.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Because shared stories change what we care about, what we're
willing to tolerate. Rodney said, it thoughts become things. There
are stories other than this one coming. I'm told AmAm
Jamil's son, Kyrie, is working on a documentary. A scholar
has said he's working on a biography about the man.
(47:09):
Rodney has this stuff and the works too investigative reporters,
true crime podcasters. There's way more to learn about the
FBI's role in all of this. But this story that
I've just told, I'm holding on to it, and if
my son ever asks me about violence in America, it's
(47:29):
the story I'm going to share with him. Radical is
(47:59):
a production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Radical was reported.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
And written by Johnny Coaffman and me Mossy Secret. Johnny
Coffin is our senior producer. Sheba Joseph is our associate producer.
Editing by Eric Benson, Johnny Coffin, Emily Martinez and Matt Cher.
Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch and Layla Dos.
(48:25):
Original music by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray of
Organized Noise. Sound design and mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording
by Ewan Leed Tremwen and Sheba Joseph. Campside Media's operations
team is Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Elijah Papes, Destiny Dingle,
(48:46):
and Sabina Merra. The executive producers at Campside Media are
Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For
Tenderfoot TV, executive producers.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Are Donald all Right and Payne Lindsay. The executive producers at.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
iHeart Podcasts are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with additional
support from Trevor Young. Special thanks to the Georgia First
Amendment Foundation. Emily Roberts, Christy Schwartz, Wendell Paris, Charles Rambo,
Deb Golden, Mark Picard, Aquille Secret, Cina Nicholson and Michael Jerman.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or their employees.
This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be
suitable for everyone listening to. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Radical is released every Tuesday and brought to you absolutely free,
but if you want to add free listening and early
access to next week's episode, subscribe to tenderfoot Plus. For
more information, check out tenderfootplus dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 4 (00:43):
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Investigating what Really happened in the West End on the
nine of March sixteenth, two thousand.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
The whole scene frame I frame.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
It's been exhausting, but as a deadline approach to finish
reporting and to put this story out into the world,
I was starting to have a good sense of things,
of a man Jamil as someone who could have very
well shot those deputies, and of a West End community
that was far from peaceful.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
As I was turning over.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Various scenarios in my head, two questions kept popping up.
Was there really only one person shooting at the deputies?
And did the FBI have someone there at the scene
when everything went down. These were hard questions to answer
because so few eyewitnesses came forward after the shootout, and
none of the ones who talked had to clear unobstructed view.
(01:39):
We spoke to one Abdusamat Jahad, the kid being tutored
inside the mashed when the shooting started, but Abdusamat was
on the floor and in a closet during most of
the shootout. I was starting to think I'd gotten all
I could get, stopped imagining there could be anything new
around the corner. You've heard me say it a lot,
that there was more to the story than the official account.
(02:01):
I thought I'd reached the limits of more. But there
was another eyewitness, a man named Damien Gordon. In the
late nineties, Damien, a young entrepreneur, discovered there was money
to be made and renting on apartments to students attending
the historically black colleges near the West End. Late one night,
(02:23):
he was driving near the park when he saw brothers
from the Mashjit out on the corners. The security patrol
of Maam Jamil's mas jed.
Speaker 5 (02:30):
Like he would have them out there keep the drug
dealers away from the park because they knew it don't
come to the park, So when I saw that, I
was like, all right, I can't save a spot for
girls to come stay.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Damien ended up buying a house next to the mass
jed and renting it out to students. With deadlines and
the demands of making this podcast, we wavered a bit
on whether it was worth speaking to Damien. We had
read his story multiple times and all the documents were gathered,
So what else do we really need to know? So
we could we could jump to two thousand. What happened
(03:04):
that on that night you were doing some modeling?
Speaker 5 (03:08):
Yeah, all right, So me and Stacy are coming to
the house.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Stacy is Damien's younger cousin, and he was with Demien
to help him move a bathtub into the house, but
the truck they were using got stuck in the mud.
When the gunfire started. Demian jumped from the truck to
see what was going on, but there were box trailers
parked in the fields next to the mastet, partially blocking
Damien's view. He couldn't see what was going on except
(03:33):
the deputy English was lying on the ground.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
And then as I'm walking further out, it just goes
off tumbling, tumbling, So I run grab I mean, I
know scared. I run grab my cousin, throw him on
my shoulder, and I run up into the house.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Then I run to the back of the house.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Demien looked out a window, but he was still far
away and he couldn't see everything. When the shootings, Damien
heard two car door slam and then he heard a
car speed away. The two door slams we had seen
Damien describe that in one of his statements to prosecutors.
It could mean a lot of things that not one,
but two people were shooting back at Deputy English and
(04:15):
Deputy Kenchin. Or it could just mean that one person
threw something in the back seat of their car before
they drove away. The two door slams were notable but
seemed pretty inconclusive. But when we finally interviewed Damien at
a club he owned in Atlanta, he told us something else.
He said he actually saw two people get into the
car before it drove away. That would put two people
(04:39):
in the black Mercedes fleeing the scene.
Speaker 3 (04:41):
That wasn't in the documents.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
That was new.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Two people getting into the car. He was certain about it.
There were other inconsistencies in Damien's different tellings of what
happened that night, But this new information was too big
of a deal. We had to take it seriously. Damien
said he couldn't ide the people from the window where
he was watching, but he did seem to know something
else about who might have been there during the shootout,
(05:06):
something that he wasn't keen to share, so some other
people were there.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
It gets a little it gets a little deeper than that.
You know, we can't have that conversation. But you know
what I'm saying, But.
Speaker 2 (05:20):
But what do you mean, Well, if you don't want
to have the conversation, then let's have it off off.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Yeah, we had to have that off books.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
You know it is there.
Speaker 6 (05:27):
Yeah, you need to turn it off, like you need to.
Speaker 3 (05:29):
Turn that off.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
What Damian told us was off the record, and we'll
stay off the record. But Johnny and I left that
meeting kind of pumped. We were feeling hopeful that we
might actually get to the bottom of what happened the night.
Speaker 7 (05:46):
Of the shootout.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. This is Radical,
I'm Mostly Secret. Episode eight, The Legend of a Man
Jimmil Consider a black boy who came into this world
(06:32):
with a fiery nature in the nineteen forties Jim Crow
South racial oppression at every turn. Humiliations didn't put out
his light, They only made his fire burn hotter gave
him something he felt he should burn.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Consider that the child grew up to.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Be a trap Brown whose nickname made clear that he
had away with rhymes and words he could rouse the
brothers on the corner to follow him to the front
lines of the Black struggle, rifles in hand, firebombs in hand,
because the real way to defeat American violence, he told them,
was to harness violence yourself. Consider that this man was
(07:13):
viewed as such a threat by the US government, a
messiah to the oppressed at the height of the Black
Power movement, that federal agents scheme to take him down,
maybe even tried to kill him. But that in prison
he found religion. Islam changed his name to Jamil a
Lamin and started amaster it when he got out a
(07:33):
whole community, creating his own domain in the middle of
what he'd once sought to destroy, doing what he thought
had to be done to keep his community alive. Does
that have the ring of destiny? The feel of God's
guiding hand. It's easy to get tied up and not
philosophizing about how much power we really have over our lives.
(07:56):
But a man Jamil talked often about the will of
a law, a sense he had that his life was
maybe predetermined or out of his control, whether it was
destiny or something else. In the late nineties, the pressure
on a Mam Jamil from the world surrounding him was building.
The FBI appeared to intensify its surveillance, and periodic gun violence,
(08:21):
perpetrated often by members of his own community, was practically
at his doorstep. It was near the beginning of this
period the spring of nineteen ninety eight when a Maam
Jamil spoken in the event in Washington, d c.
Speaker 8 (08:41):
All praise is due to a Law who has created
man and has not left him, but indeed has given
him guidance as to that which is liked by the creator,
and he has commanded upon man struggle with consciousness and
awareness in his behalf.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It was a fundraiser held in a big hotel ballroom
to honor Quame Toure formerly Stokely Carmichael, the chairman of
Snick before h Rap Brown took over. Listening to a
Mam Jamil speak, you can still hear some rap. Maybe
a Mam Jimil's voice was lower and his pace slower,
but the rhythm and determination behind his words that was
(09:21):
the same. There must have been some ember still inside
of Ma'am Jamil, and I wonder was it being stoked
building into a flame, a fire by all the challenges
and pressure swirling around him at the time.
Speaker 8 (09:35):
Oppression is worse than the grave, he said. It is
better to live and fight for a noble cause than
to live and die slaves.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Muslims, he said, are commanded to remind themselves and those
around them that struggle is ongoing. But there is a
higher form of struggle, an internal struggle to raise one's
level of consciousness and awareness. Deal with yourself, Struggle with yourself,
and that will emanate to the world.
Speaker 8 (10:09):
If you can't beat yourself, you can't beat nobody else.
Everybody can fight, but everybody can't win.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
We know so much more about him Man Jamil struggle
with the world with America's ills, that we know about
his struggle with himself. I wish I had been able
to learn more about his inner life. Was he fulfilled?
What brought him joy, what put him on edge. That's
why I've often wondered out loud what he was thinking,
how he was feeling during certain moments in the story.
Speaker 8 (10:38):
Struggle has not stopped. It didn't begin in the fifties
and end in the seventies. The movement sense of struggle
which has always visited struggle. It says at the anti
slavery movement, Marcus god Is movement, the Black power movement,
civil rights movement. They come and they go, but the
struggle is continuous until a loss from the law has
(11:00):
righted the wrong that has come about.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Even though a Maam Jamil had given so much, risked
so much, and his external struggle to improve the lives
of black people, I don't think he believed that Allah
had righted America's wrongs, And as the twentieth century came
to an end, he seemed to be struggling with what
he had wrought.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
In the West End.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I spoke to a man Pleman Elemine about this period
in a Maam Jamial's life. You might remember a man
Pleman from much earlier in the story. He's one of
the most prominent elders in Atlanta's African American Muslim community
in the late nineties. A man Pleman was a leader
of a massed across the city from the West End,
and he saw what he thought to be informant in
AmAm Jamil's mastered.
Speaker 6 (11:46):
I think even he would have been surprised or he
was surprised to see that people were close to him
were working for the government.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Grappling with suspicions about informants must have been exhausting for
a Mam Jamial. He was trying to create a welcoming
community where anyone could join the mass jed all while
law enforcement was working to get people close to him.
That kind of pressure takes a serious toll. History had
already shown that when a Ma'am Jamil's mother and sister
Karama's parents succumbed amid FBI harassment in the early seventies,
(12:24):
and there wasn't just surveillance coming down on a ma'am Jamil.
Remember Lowndes County in the Black belt of Alabama, where
a Maam Jamil went after the shootout. He had worked
there back in the sixties and then in the nineties
he helped establish a small Muslim community in the area.
By nineteen ninety nine, a Maam Jamil had decided he
wanted the Western mass Jed and the Muslim community around
(12:45):
it to leave Atlanta and move to Lowndes County.
Speaker 6 (12:50):
He presented it to his community, Hey, we're going to
move to Alabama, and they said no.
Speaker 4 (12:57):
So he was.
Speaker 6 (12:58):
Upset about that as well. Yeah, because they had never
said no to.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
Anything for it.
Speaker 6 (13:03):
But they say, hey, man, we're not going to the country. Man,
we established here and we got the family, got business,
got this whatever. And they had had several meetings and
discussions about that, and he's not telling me that. I'm
getting it from some of his members and everything. Hey
we can't go to the country. We're at lanterns, you know.
(13:24):
And so he was. He was upset about that.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
I wondered if he wanted to go there and start
over because the West End had become so infiltrated.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Well, it could be, but.
Speaker 6 (13:42):
I really think that, you know, the whole idea is
based in the Nation of Islam, that's based in Sunni Islam.
Is let's go back and if we're not going back
to Africa, let's go back somewhere. You know, in Nati Islam.
(14:03):
They lied to Bahama give US six six southern states,
and we'll do our own things.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
That was part of that.
Speaker 6 (14:10):
So all that's still in all of this African American Islam,
it's still there somewhere.
Speaker 4 (14:16):
Let us get our separate land.
Speaker 6 (14:18):
And we'll do our own thing, you know. So I'm
thinking he's just saying, hey, we're gonna try it again.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Start off new, start off fresh, with.
Speaker 6 (14:28):
Just us on acres of land. But nobody wanted to go.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
And then also in nineteen ninety nine, and Ma'am Jamil
was arrested in copp County, a suburban county north of Atlanta.
This was the arrest that ultimately led to the warrant
the Deputy Kenchin and Deputy English had with them when
they came to arrest to ma'am Jamil.
Speaker 3 (14:50):
In March of two thousand, a.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Ma'am Jamil was driving a Ford Explorer with a dealer
license plate. A local police officer pulled him over. The
officers had and when he asked for license and registration,
a Maam Jamil's hands were shaking. The paperwork didn't check out.
The SUV had been reported stolen, according to the officer's
testimony in court, he ordered a Maam Jamil get out
(15:15):
of the vehicle and as he patted him down, he
found his wallet. Inside there was a police badge. The
officer asked to ma'am Jamil if he was a police officer,
and he said yes. It was an honorary bad from
the mayor of Whitehall in Lowndes County. Years later, these
charges would be thrown out as unconstitutional, but the officer
(15:35):
arrested to Mamajamil for operating a stolen vehicle and impersonating
a police officer, and man Pleman said that the second
charge for impersonating a police officer, that was the one
that really bothered at Maam Jamil.
Speaker 6 (15:49):
That's the last thing he would want to be doing
is playing like he's a policeman. And so I could
see him try to let this police officer know that
he's not just anybody, not just a African American who
you stopped and giving a ticket, that he's somebody.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
You know, it was out there that a man Jamil
was pretending to be something he despised, and even with
all his authority in the West End, he was powerless
to do anything about it, powerless to shift the narrative,
restore his reputation. I'm pretty powerless before any judge he
would face in a court of law. He's somebody, a man,
(16:29):
Pleman said, but only to a small number of people
who don't have much political power in the first place.
Speaker 6 (16:35):
A couple occasions that I saw him in the midst
of those things, he was very irritable and upset about
what was going on. And I had never seen him
like that before. You know, it was always hey, what
can I do for you? What do you need anything?
You know, there's always his demeanor that he was ready
(16:59):
to ass issue whatever you needed or whatever. But in
the bits of that, it was like, yeah, just complaining
about these people, these people, man, And you know, how
can anybody think that I want to be a police
be a policeman? You know, that's that's the last thing,
my man. I'm trying to show somebody I'm a police officer,
(17:21):
impersonate a police office.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I heard from other people that a Man Jamil's demeanor
changed during this time. People from the West End who
I trust but who didn't want to say it on
the record. They told me that they believe that man
Jamil shot those deputies, that something in him seemed to
have caught fire and then the Friday jun my services
at the mask. Yet he kept saying I'm gonna.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Get me one.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
I'm gonna get me one, and no one knew what he.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Was talking about.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
After Damien Gordon, the man who owned the house next
to the mash Jed in the West End, told Johnny
and me that he saw two people get into the
car and drive off. After the shootout, we went to
speak with Abdusa mat Jahad, the seventeen year old who
was inside the mass Jed that night. Abdusa Matt told
me that a lawyer came and questioned him in the
months after the shootout, but that since then I was
(18:23):
the first person in all these years to really ask.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Him about it.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
So, yeah, what we want to do is go over
that night, just kind of slow it down from the beginning,
figure out.
Speaker 7 (18:36):
What you remember, what you really remember, so.
Speaker 3 (18:41):
You are in the mask shit, Yeah, in the mass hit.
Speaker 9 (18:49):
After they had to been not the because no other prayer.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
Was going on after that.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
After the Easterer prayer, the last prayer of the day
about remembers being tutored by a math.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Teacher who lived in the community.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
When they heard gunfire outside the tutor jumped on top
of a Dusamat. They laid motionless on the floor. I
tried to reach that tutor, but I didn't hear back
from him. When the gunfire stopped, a different man, not
the tutor, he dragged Abdussimat into a closet and told
him to stay there. That man his Muslim name was Nigell,
(19:26):
and Abdusamat told us that Nigell was carrying a gun.
Speaker 9 (19:30):
And it wasn't like a comer right, It was a
Stifer type rifle. It was a rifle that who were
used to kill a deer or snipe some kind of
hot power, hot collar of a rifle.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
While Abdusamat was still in the closet, he heard what
he thought was Nigeal leaving the mast Git. Then there
was more gunfire outside, and when it stopped, Abdusamat left
the closet and looked out the window. He saw Nigel
standing near Deputy English, who was lying in the field
next to the mass Jit bleeding. Abdusamat heard Nigel yell out, hey,
(20:05):
there's one over here, like he was.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
Letting someone know. The English was lying there.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
Abduso Ount isn't clear who Nigel was speaking to. It
could have been a man Jimial or other people from
the mass Jed, or it could have been someone in
law enforcement who was not one of the deputies but
had already arrived at the scene. But if Nigel was
yelling out to some cops, that would seemed to be
a death wish.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
He's standing there holding a high powered rifle. They didn't
even shoot him. Les stick them up.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
That is very silly, you get saying if you ran
if a shooting that happened, you ran out with a rifle,
you would be shot. That's his way.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
It was black. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
After Abdusamat heard Nigell call out, he saw him come
back into the mass Jed and Nigel put his gun
away somewhere in the closet. Abdusamat thinks then Nigell was gone.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
That was it. He disappeared. He never came back in
the mask ged he but before that he was a regular.
Speaker 10 (21:11):
Before that, he was a regular. He had just came
to the mean. Nobody really know much about him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Nigel had shown up in the Western community about three
years earlier. He took care of the mass Jed grounds
didn't have another job at the time, and he was
living in the masjed.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
That wasn't so unusual.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Men would sometimes stay there when they were passing through
or temporarily homeless. Abdusamat never got any weird vibe from Nigell,
but he said there was speculation in the community that
he was an informant. Abdusamat's dad, who's now deceased, he
was among those skeptical of Nigell.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Assuming Nigell was.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
There and he had a rifle with him, what did
he do after he put Abdusamat in the closet and
exited the masjed. It's possible, maybe even likely, that he
fired at day deputies. The kind of rifle that Abdusamat
described Nigel as carrying. It could have shot two two
three caliber rounds like the dozens found at the scene.
(22:11):
If Nigel did fire at the deputies, it could mean
that a maam Jimial wasn't responsible for the injury to
English or the death of Kenchin. A ma'am Jimil's lawyers
called Nigel to testify at the trial. He said he
was inside the mast jed with abdusamat At the time
of the shooting, and they laid on the floor until
all the shooting stopped. Then Nigil said he looked out
(22:33):
the window and saw English lying in the grass. While
Abdusamat was still inside. Nigil walked out and he ran
into two officers who had already arrived at the scene.
The officers asked if anybody was inside. During his testimony,
Nigel admitted he'd lie to the officers and said no
because he was trying to protect Abdusamat. The officers turned
(22:55):
around and didn't enter the mass jed. The story seems
odd to me. If Nigel was indeed an FBI informant,
the defense in the prosecution might not know. I read
through a congressional report about the FBI's use of murderers
as informants, which came out around the time of a
(23:16):
mam Jamil's trial. It said that federal agents had allowed
informants to perjure themselves, and that they kept evidence from
defendants and prosecutors and what the committee called to quote
ends justify the means approach. What if Nigel was both
a shooter and an informant, If in the dark of
night he came out firing before he could make out
(23:38):
what was really happening. How totally crazy would that be
that an informant was potentially involved in the murder of
a local law enforcement officer, that the end justify the means.
Pursuit of a mamm Jamil was so intense that law
enforcement ended up hurting itself in its efforts to get him.
These are the things we were thinking about when we
(23:58):
started looking for Nigeal. I felt excited, to be honest
about the prospect of getting to the bottom of the
West End and the FBI secrets. Going under an underpass
here it looks like a decent neighborhood, at.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
Least from where we were coming from. There is a
little bit of a transition happening.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Nigell is still alive, and my producer Johnny and I
found an address for his wife in Augusta, Georgia, a
few hours outside Atlanta. And Gill doesn't appear to be
practicing the slam anymore. And he's going by his giving
name again, George Wilson. I'll call him that from here
on out. Our plan was to knock on the door
(24:44):
and ask George Wilson what he remembers from the night
of the shootout.
Speaker 3 (24:49):
This was not the safest door.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Knock I've ever done. If this guy had shot a
cop and kept it secret for twenty years, I didn't
exactly expect him to invite me in for coffee, but
I hoped he was old, settled into domestic life, a
changed man. That's how he looted his Facebook photo, happy
and fat. I thought maybe we'd get an eruption of self.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Pity or shame, but not rage.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
When Johnny and I pulled up to the address, it
looked like army barracks at first, but it was actually
part of a public housing complex. The apartments were spread
out over a couple of blocks, one story side by side, duplexes,
red brick with black shingles. We parked in a lot
on the backside of the apartment we thought belonged to
Wilson's wife. There was laundry out on the line, a
(25:38):
good sign someone was home.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
I'm going to approach with my friendliest face.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
We got out and walked around to the front, but
after getting a good look at the place, decided it
was too risky to even knock.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
So we're back in the car now. There was a
sign on the door.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
Handwritten on a piece of notebook paper that said this
means you don't knock, don't approach, no exceptions.
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Smile your own camera, which is pretty clear, a pretty
clear sign that they don't want to see any strangers.
It makes me.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
Wonder, I mean, who puts the signlight that on the door.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
We'd driven too far to turn right back around. Someone
had to come out sooner or later to get that
laundry drying on the line, So a stakeout seemed like
the best move. But we needed to grab a bite
to eat if we were going to sit in the
car for hours. After a quick lunch, When we pulled
back up on the complex, a woman was standing in
the front yard. I whipped the car around like iced
(27:09):
tea in a Law and Order episode or something. We
jumped out. Johnny kept his microphone in his bag, definitely
didn't want to freak anybody out. He recorded what happened
next on his phone, so the quality is barely good
enough to play for you. Oh, I'm so sorry, I've
met I don't know how to have. The woman was
(27:37):
George Wilson's wife. Her name is Darlene goes By d.
I told her rather nervously that we were looking for
George Wilson, who might know some things about a murder
that happened in Atlanta twenty years ago. She asked me
to repeat myself, and I got the words out again. Then,
without hearing anything more, she said, he's probably the one
who did it. Turn turned out Wilson wasn't happy in
(28:01):
fat and enjoying old age.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
She said he was in jail. He had been charged
with murder.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
One day in the winter of twenty twenty one, Dee
and her daughter, Wilson's stepdaughter, were watching television in their
home in Augusta. Wilson got upset with his wife or
for something he'd accused her of, and one of the
stepdaughters to leave the apartment, but Dee's daughters stuck around
to protect her.
Speaker 3 (28:27):
Mom got between the two.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Actually, things got heeded, and he stabbed her in the chest,
killed her right there, a few feet from where we
were standing. She died in Dee's arms. D told us
that Wilson first lived in New York. He was sent
to Atlanta for prison, and he stuck around when he
got out. That must have been when he joined the
(28:51):
Master d d didn't know anything about Wilson being an informant,
but she said he did have aliases and other addresses
and that he was paranoid. Asked because she was talking
to and if she was working for someone and woke
up in the middle of the night saying, I didn't
do it. I didn't bother that lady. I didn't touch her.
Speaker 8 (29:13):
Okay, okay, what we're going to let you go?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
Okay, thank you anything. D spoke to us for about
twenty minutes before we got back into the car. I'm
happy that we didn't knock on the door and he
was there, Like this dude seems kind of scary.
Speaker 7 (29:30):
Like clearly there's clearly clearly he's being haunted by things.
But if he was.
Speaker 11 (29:37):
Talking to the FBI, what a volatile person for them
to be involved with. I mean, it's the same as
it's the same as Shahid, What a volatile person for them.
Speaker 4 (29:48):
To be involved with?
Speaker 7 (29:51):
How are you feeling? I feel bad for that woman,
you know, Like that seemed awful. Like if we just
keep going on this, are we just going to get
to darker and darker shit.
Speaker 3 (30:01):
Or what I mean?
Speaker 7 (30:06):
This is dark, This is a dark place. This is
the darkest that it's found like, I don't think that
was in our list of things that are possibly going
on no place. I mean, she was really sweet given everything.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
Yeah wow.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I wrote to George Wilson of the jail where he's
being held in Augusta, but I never heard anything back
since we met his wife that day. Wilson has been
convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Here's
what I believe happened. The night of the shootout in
the West End. The deputies pulled up in front of
(30:56):
Ma'am Jimiale's black Mercedes, and after a brief exchange of works,
he pulled a semi automatic rifle from under his throb
and letter rip. I know y'all going to get me
sooner or later, but I'm going to get me one.
You can believe that. That's what a Mam Jamil used
to say to cops in his days.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Is rat Brown.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
He wrote it in his autobiography, and those were the
words folks in the Weston mass she had heard him
saying in the days before the shootout, I'm going to
get me one. I believe that's how Mam Jamil thought
he was going to go out defending himself in his
community in a blaze of martyrdom, that he'd rather die
than go back to prison, that he'd given this messed
(31:38):
up world everything he had. I believe when Mam Jamil
shot those deputies, but by some miracle he survived. The
whole neighborhood could hear the gunfire. All the brothers who
went to the mass died, who ran toward action, not
(31:58):
away from it. Someone who wanted to protect the AmAm
appeared and started shooting two. This was the man that witnessed.
Damian Gordon saw from across the way the second person
to get in the black Mercedes.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Whoever it was loved.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
The Ymam and the AmAm loved him. They drove off together,
keeping what happened secret until this day. Meanwhile, before or
after they left, George Wilson Nigel at the time he
came out of the mass yard and started shooting two.
(32:33):
In the months I've been working on this podcast, I've
been in touch with AmAm Jamil's wife Karima, his son Kyrie,
and his leapellate lawyer. None of them agreed to an interview.
We sent each of them a list of questions, but
they didn't send us answers. When I wrote to a
Mam Jamil in prison, I never heard back. As far
(32:57):
as we know, the Fulton County Conviction Integrity Unit is
still reviewing the prosecution of a Mam Jamil, at least technically.
But the DA's office didn't respond to our questions either,
and its silence would seem to suggest that it hasn't
found enough evidence to overturn the conviction. I know a
lot of AmAm Jamil supporters will never believe he did it,
and I hear their arguments that Mam Jamil didn't have
(33:20):
gray eyes and a Mama Jamil hadn't been shot like
Deputy English said he had. There's not a reliable scientific
link between the bullets that killed Deputy Kenchin and the
guns found near Maam Jamil in the woods in Alabama.
There are circumstantial evidence that points to a potential conspiracy
to plant the weapons in the woods, including the lack
of fingerprints. Do I think I Maam Jamil got a
(33:42):
fair trial. I don't know, Probably not, but I can't
accept the innocent's arguments. We couldn't corroborate Otis Jackson's story.
He confessed under oath, but he's also recancet his confession
multiple times, and he's apparently told a version of events
that's implausible. Then there's the fact that a Maam Jamil's
(34:07):
Mercedes was shot up and found close to where he
was hiding out in Alabama, and the stuff that folks
heard him saying in the mass It it echoed an
old willingness to confront cops with violence. Some people in
the West End, people who were in the neighborhood that night,
they know what happened, but for lots of reasons, they've
kept quiet. I say all this with a prayer in
(34:30):
mind that a Maam Jamil used to recite when he
addressed the public. I ask a lot to guide my
heart and guide my tongue. I seek refuge in a
law from misleading and being misled, from betraying and being
betrayed into ignorance by others. To me, it's a prayer
that says I reached these conclusions humbly, and I'll add
(34:54):
for Muslims in Atlanta especially, they're my conclusions, not my family.
One of the reasons I don't feel comfortable keeping all
of this inside is that this story has shown me
how things tend to ripple. The violence of the shootout
didn't stop that night. George Wilson, the guy whose house
(35:17):
we staked out in Augusta, it apparently stuck with him
for the last twenty years, along with the other shit
like Rodham I bet, and a few years ago he exploded,
hurting people miles away from the mast did in the
West End. After investigating all the death and destruction, I
was starting to feel ripples from the violence myself, just
(35:40):
thinking about this stuff all the time, feeling it in
a way that people around me could feel.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
I had had enough.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
And I needed to find a way to make it
all stop. During the long stretch it took to finish
this story, I became a father. A baby came into
(36:09):
this world, fell right into my hands. But amid all
the joy and learning and growth, dark thoughts would knock
around my head, images of people at their worst. I
was trying to get to know this new human being,
trying to make him smile or to just be attentive,
and George Wilson or the serial killer Shahid ab du
(36:31):
Ahman would pop into my head.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
It was not a good feeling.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
A new life, in contrast to some of the lives
that have come across in this story, you can't help
but wonder where did people go so wrong?
Speaker 3 (36:51):
And how do you steer a kid clear of that?
Speaker 2 (36:55):
We know a man Jimil believed in fate, that maybe
his death to me was to be sacrificed in the
face of deep social problems. Some would have us believe
that a man Jamial is simply evil. Others, maybe the
most nihilist of all, would say, we simply live in
an ugly world without meaning, deal with it. But none
(37:18):
of those views are acceptable to me. When I was younger,
after I followed my family into the faith of Islam,
I realized that I'm totally free to reimagine what I
believe in to find my own path. Ever since then,
journalism has been one of the main ways I've explored
the world how I figured out what's what. But after
(37:41):
going as far as I could with journalism in this story,
with investigative reporting, I began to look for deeper meaning.
I went back to a wise man, a man Pleman Elmine,
the peer of a Man Jamil, Islamic elder in Atlanta.
(38:02):
I asked him a question that I could hardly articulate.
It felt so abstract do we really have control over
our own destiny in the face of what can seem
like insurmountable forces operating in the world around us. I
was thinking about to what extent racial oppression in America
(38:23):
was responsible for the creation of a man Jamil and
of h Rap Brown, Like, does a person coming into
this world who to test those things? Can they really thrive?
Speaker 6 (38:36):
Majority of Muslims, you know, understand or believe that. And
it's it's correct in the sense that the will of
a law overrides everything.
Speaker 4 (38:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
I mean, the thing that comes off of Muslim's tongue
more than anything.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
Else is in shadlah.
Speaker 6 (38:56):
And in the verse in Christ said, don't say you
will do anything without saying and inshall lah, because you
know the only way you're gonna be able to do
anything a lit has permitted.
Speaker 4 (39:05):
Okay, But what.
Speaker 6 (39:06):
They overlook is that Allah has willed that we have choice,
and Allah has wield that we get the benefits or
the punishments for our choices. That's that's the will of
a law.
Speaker 2 (39:25):
A man pleman was saying that life is a series
of choices, and every choice changes our character, or is
a man cleman put it, Every choice moves our soul
closer to good or evil. We're in a constant state
of becoming and our destiny is not fixed, he said,
like some Muslims would have us believe, But it's tied
(39:47):
to our character, to our soul. The choices we make
determine what happens to us in this life. Me you
a man jamil anyone. A man Pleaman didn't want to
talk about the details of the shootout in the West End.
We agreed to that before our interview, but he did
(40:07):
talk about justice.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
Our deeds catch up with us. And sometimes people are
pretty miserable, but they are good people and they've done good.
Pretty soon the good deeds will catch up with them
and they'll be all right. But the same things. Sometimes
people have corrupt deeds and it might be might look
like everything's going good with him, but sooner or later
(40:32):
those deeds will track them down.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I could agree with a lot of what a Man
Pleman said, like I could relate on an instinctual level,
independent of theology or doctrine.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
We have power over our.
Speaker 2 (40:51):
Lives, and in essence, what goes around comes around. Lots
of different life philosophies will tell you that, But that
still left me wanting. I didn't come all this way
to say that a man who went through things that
I never have, who was already being punished for his actions,
(41:11):
that he should have made better choices. I don't think
I was called to this story to leave it there.
I was still stuck on whether human beings could ever
break these cycles of violence, of American violence. How are
we supposed to stop these downward spirals, especially oppressed people
(41:32):
who are under attack. I believe that beneath everything else,
a man Jamil Hrap Brown. The man's intention was to
look out for his people, for his family and community.
Now that I'm a father, I can relate to that
more than ever. So I kept searching. I found a
(41:53):
clue in an unexpected place, Rodney Brown's book, Rodney the
former drug dealer in the Way, who knew Shahid ab
du Rahman and many of the people Shahid killed. I
went back to Rodney to talk to him. You have
this line in your book that you say a lot
(42:13):
of times, thoughts become things.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Thoughts become things.
Speaker 4 (42:18):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 12 (42:20):
Your thoughts control everything around you. You're gonna get what
you're looking for, That's what you're thinking.
Speaker 2 (42:25):
About Rodney, over the course of his life, became aware
of power he has to control the world around him
with stories. If a man, Jermiale was ultimately battered and
knocked by the stories people told. Rodney learned something different.
But like when he was young, Rodney used to admire
this drug dealer named Willie, how cool he looked the
(42:48):
cars he drove.
Speaker 12 (42:50):
I just used to imagine myself doing the same thing,
and one day it came true, you know what I mean.
So I used to just picture it and dream about it,
picture it and dream about it, and bam, when I
should have been pitched myself. Being a lawyer or a doctor,
A kind of got a scroll power with bringing stuff
(43:11):
to life.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
I do.
Speaker 12 (43:13):
I'm gifted like that.
Speaker 2 (43:15):
But it took Rodney a long time to realize what
all that dreaming was doing. In prison, he started writing
his book about his life, about the violence he had
experienced and the people close to him who he had lost.
A psychologist had recommended it, said it would help him
to get everything out. It did help, and he's planning
to write another one. He's also working on a documentary
(43:37):
about the West End murders. Rodney doesn't have a perfect life.
He doesn't have it easy, nor has he been able
to totally set aside the shit that used to haunt
him like he still wonders whether he should have killed
Shahid ab du Rahman in the nineties, whether that would
(43:58):
have saved the lives of many of us friends in
the life of Deputy Kinchen too. But then he rains
that in tries to imagine something different. What's what's Rodney
doing in five years?
Speaker 12 (44:11):
Maybe I can help some kids and tell them some
of the stuff that you know to keep them going
the same road. And I done went man, because a
lot of them an' gonna end up like this. Look,
look I'm into my homeboys. Ain't gonna be sitting behind
on this. They said it's old with they already did,
and but a few people gonna make it out.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
And then Rodney turned things around on me. Maybe he
could tell that I had come to him for help
trying to get an answer.
Speaker 3 (44:36):
I want to know, what's what's your purpose?
Speaker 8 (44:38):
Y'all?
Speaker 12 (44:38):
Ever found what's your purpose gonna be?
Speaker 4 (44:40):
About this?
Speaker 2 (44:44):
You've heard me say often in the Mythology surrounding a
Man Jamil that when people believe in something, whether fact
or fiction. It has a way of becoming real. I
think there's a broader truth there too. It's a scary one,
but there's also a freedom, a freedom to imagine. I
(45:11):
imagine that Deputy Ricky Kenchin and all the folks who
lost their lives in the West End, that they're still
with us, quite present, but just off to the side,
watching the rest of our lives unfold like some kind
of drama, a passion play, and we're involved in a
much larger production as writers, actors, and directors about the consequences,
(45:37):
the merits, the usefulness of violence and Hubert Gerald Brown
rap and ma'am gimil He drew a tough role in
this show, a countercultural hero the likes of which we
seldom see, who reveals American violent for what it really is,
(46:00):
and through his own life, shows how wrong you can go.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
The Legend of a Man Jamil is a decade long drama.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
While the closing curtain, every character, me and you too,
realizes we are way bigger than we think we are.
We have more power than we think to change history.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
The folks who lost.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Their lives are waiting for us in the wings, waiting
for us to solve this problem. Just like a man
Jamil when he leaves this earth, We'll be rooting for
us from the audience.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
What's a stronger.
Speaker 2 (46:37):
Weapon than an fourteen semi automatic rifle or a firebomb?
Speaker 3 (46:42):
Storytelling the legend of a Maam Jamil.
Speaker 2 (46:48):
Because shared stories change what we care about, what we're
willing to tolerate. Rodney said, it thoughts become things. There
are stories other than this one coming. I'm told AmAm
Jamil's son, Kyrie, is working on a documentary. A scholar
has said he's working on a biography about the man.
(47:09):
Rodney has this stuff and the works too investigative reporters,
true crime podcasters. There's way more to learn about the
FBI's role in all of this. But this story that
I've just told, I'm holding on to it, and if
my son ever asks me about violence in America, it's
(47:29):
the story I'm going to share with him. Radical is
(47:59):
a production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (48:04):
Radical was reported.
Speaker 2 (48:05):
And written by Johnny Coaffman and me Mossy Secret. Johnny
Coffin is our senior producer. Sheba Joseph is our associate producer.
Editing by Eric Benson, Johnny Coffin, Emily Martinez and Matt Cher.
Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch and Layla Dos.
(48:25):
Original music by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray of
Organized Noise. Sound design and mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording
by Ewan Leed Tremwen and Sheba Joseph. Campside Media's operations
team is Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Elijah Papes, Destiny Dingle,
(48:46):
and Sabina Merra. The executive producers at Campside Media are
Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For
Tenderfoot TV, executive producers.
Speaker 3 (48:59):
Are Donald all Right and Payne Lindsay. The executive producers at.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
iHeart Podcasts are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with additional
support from Trevor Young. Special thanks to the Georgia First
Amendment Foundation. Emily Roberts, Christy Schwartz, Wendell Paris, Charles Rambo,
Deb Golden, Mark Picard, Aquille Secret, Cina Nicholson and Michael Jerman.
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