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