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Speaker 3: So you now it is really why I should started
Speaker 3: real here Casscase dot claim right.
Speaker 2: Up the hill. It took months of reporting on this
Speaker 2: store before I had a good reason to return to
Speaker 2: Atlanta's West End, to the leafy neighborhood of bungalows and
Speaker 2: Victorian homes surrounding the mass hit the corner store and
Speaker 2: the park the side of the shootout on March sixteenth,
Speaker 2: two thousand. The community, the village, even founded and led
Speaker 2: by Imam Jamille A Lamine, with its own school, its
Speaker 2: own security force, even something like its own laws.
Speaker 3: Make a right right and we'll come back in the back,
Speaker 3: come out for what I did.
Speaker 2: It was this man, Rodney Brown who brought me back here.
Speaker 2: Rodney grew up in the West End and he was
Speaker 2: a teenager when crack cocaine hit in the eighties. So
Speaker 2: many people on his side of town got sucked into
Speaker 2: a zombie like existence, traded their spirit for the little
Speaker 2: white rocks, and Rodney he got sucked into the fast
Speaker 2: cash started dealing. He said he can make three or
Speaker 2: four thousand dollars a day when he started out, as
Speaker 2: long as he was willing to risk standing out on
Speaker 2: the corner. I remember those days. I was just a kid,
Speaker 2: but I saw how older relatives got caught up in
Speaker 2: and out of jail, on and off the streets. Drugs,
Speaker 2: guns and violence were cornerstones of the life. My parents
Speaker 2: steered me and my siblings clear of it. We even
Speaker 2: kept a distance from some relatives. And Mam Jimial was
Speaker 2: in the thick of it, though, and as a leader,
Speaker 2: he had little choice but to confront the problem head on.
Speaker 2: In time, he developed a reputation for a quote cleaning
Speaker 2: up the West End, making it a safe place to
Speaker 2: raise families, not just for Muslims in his community, but
Speaker 2: also others who lived nearby. Rodney witnessed some of that
Speaker 2: from his particular perspective.
Speaker 3: Did rad Hill was a maid to Trout this happen?
Speaker 3: This is what tim of got key you.
Speaker 2: Rodney was still a teenager when he bought his first
Speaker 2: eight K forty seven, so he saw some things more
Speaker 2: than his share of violence in his younger days. He
Speaker 2: might have had more acquaintances who were killed than I
Speaker 2: had friends in all of high school. Driving through the
Speaker 2: neighborhood with him, the specter of violence gave me a headache.
Speaker 2: We were surrounded by places where people who Rodney knew
Speaker 2: had been struck down. Back in the book, I told
Speaker 2: you I wasn't selling drug until.
Speaker 3: The girl got killed on the bridge, Tanya Natalia mine.
Speaker 3: He got killed on the bread. I just got got
Speaker 3: myself caught up in sound. I don't think they chopped
Speaker 3: him up back though, but I know they are. This
Speaker 3: is what they dunk about it at. This was black giants.
Speaker 3: This was black giant trap house. This way he sold
Speaker 3: his weight. He was right here, but he ain't get killed.
Speaker 3: He got killed back up though. I should have showed
Speaker 3: down that when I was up there.
Speaker 2: These killings happened in and around the part of the
Speaker 2: West End controlled by a man Jamil, the area he
Speaker 2: had supposedly cleaned up. It's the roughly six or seven
Speaker 2: mostly residential blocks, apartments and houses that surround the park.
Speaker 2: Just to the south of the park was the mas
Speaker 2: Jed and the man Jamil's corner store. That was Jamel's store.
Speaker 2: Exactly we turned and drove over the place where Deputy
Speaker 2: Kinchin and Deputy English were shot. The part of the
Speaker 2: street that was littered with shellcasings that.
Speaker 3: Night in two thousand. It's the mobs, this green and
Speaker 3: white one. That's the mobs. Jamil Alami stayed all these
Speaker 3: his house, each one of these houses. See all these
Speaker 3: this community mobs. I's see up in here. Ain't nobody
Speaker 3: never sold no drugs here.
Speaker 2: And Man Jamil hated drugs and drug dealing. So Rodney
Speaker 2: and the seasoned dealers in the West End they knew
Speaker 2: better than posting up on the corners next to the
Speaker 2: mass Jed, the park and the corner store, the spot
Speaker 2: where a mam gmial could be found most days, shooting hoops,
Speaker 2: tending to the store, or chilling outside at the picnic table.
Speaker 2: It was considered holy land. Instead, Rodney and the other dealers.
Speaker 2: They did their business on the edges of a mam
Speaker 2: Jamil's community. Still, somehow many of them ended up shot
Speaker 2: and dead. Rodney was one of the few who survived.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, before the shootout in March two thousand,
Speaker 2: dozens of people were allegedly murdered in the West End,
Speaker 2: dozens with little accountability. And it wasn't just the typical
Speaker 2: violence you might expect drug dealers to encounter. In my
Speaker 2: reporting of this story, so many people described for me
Speaker 2: the breezy way a mam gmial moved through the West End,
Speaker 2: how he seemed to carelessly float past his though catching
Speaker 2: the wind. But my question after hearing these stories was this.
Speaker 2: Did a mam Jamil rest control from the dope dealers
Speaker 2: with that kind of grace alone, or was there something else?
Speaker 2: When I looked into the killings all those folks who
Speaker 2: Rodney knew who died, what I learned was disturbing, far
Speaker 2: worse than I ever imagined. From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV,
Speaker 2: and iHeart podcasts, this is radical. I'm Mosey's Secret Episode
Speaker 2: seven Sacrifices. We learned about the murders and the thousands
Speaker 2: of pages of documents were received from the Fulton County
Speaker 2: DA's office. The stuff we got in response to our
Speaker 2: open records request. Reading those reports, what started out as
Speaker 2: a quest to get to the bottom of the shootout
Speaker 2: with the deputies and to figure out whether a Mam
Speaker 2: Jamil was really capable of that kind of violence, suddenly
Speaker 2: got this whole other layer because the documents described a
Speaker 2: man who allegedly was way more than capable, who was
Speaker 2: involved in a rash of killings in the West End
Speaker 2: way before the shootout, who used a mafioso like ruthlessness
Speaker 2: to get what he wanted. Figuring out whether the accusations
Speaker 2: had any merit had every bearing on understanding who a
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil was and just as importantly, who law enforcement
Speaker 2: thought he was in the period leading up to the shootout.
Speaker 2: The key document we got is called Synopsis of West
Speaker 2: End Homicides. It's just eleven pages long, a list mostly
Speaker 2: with quick summaries, dates and the names of victims, and
Speaker 2: the section at the top law enforcement connects a Mamjmil
Speaker 2: to see sixteen killings over about a decade nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: six to nineteen ninety seven. Most of the victims were
Speaker 2: drug dealers. Rodney knew many, if not all, the people
Speaker 2: who were killed, and we looked over the list with him.
Speaker 2: He's not in the streets anymore. He spent time in
Speaker 2: prison and started fresh. So part of what he felt
Speaker 2: was shocked at seeing the world he was so close
Speaker 2: to with more perspective. He struggled to make sense of
Speaker 2: the amount of killing.
Speaker 3: I guess when they started happening, it was normal to man.
Speaker 3: Think about you walk out the door and they have
Speaker 3: shot his dude face off. When they shot Tome and
Speaker 3: face off, and it was you know, it was always
Speaker 3: violand in the West then but they shot his face
Speaker 3: off a month not even a month later, shot n
Speaker 3: them times in the face. Then everybody on your neighborhood.
Speaker 2: You go to the globe, y'all killing there. Everybody.
Speaker 3: They thought we was killing the motherfucker.
Speaker 2: You know, we thought about it, so it was attached
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 3: Really they went or one for it because we won't over.
Speaker 2: The synopsis of the Weston Homicides portrays a man Jamil
Speaker 2: as some kind of kingpin heading up a group of
Speaker 2: brothers from the mass jed An inner circle who ran
Speaker 2: guns and extorted drug dealers, secretly killing the competition and
Speaker 2: anyone else who knew too much about what they were doing.
Speaker 2: Very strong allegations. In the earliest days of the West
Speaker 2: End mass Jed, a mam Jamil set up a security team.
Speaker 2: This I know it to be true. Nothing unusual there.
Speaker 2: Most mass Jeds have them. Brothers would walk people home
Speaker 2: from the mass Jed after prayer make sure nobody out
Speaker 2: on the street caused any trouble. But the West End
Speaker 2: seems to have taken their security further than most. A
Speaker 2: member of the mass Jed told me how once some
Speaker 2: guys started fighting during a basketball game at the park.
Speaker 2: It was the West End versus a different neighborhood. The
Speaker 2: outsiders left, but they were so pissed they came back
Speaker 2: with guns before they could do any home though the
Speaker 2: Muslim brothers fired. Even a mammaed Meal came out of
Speaker 2: his little shop and let loose. As the outsiders fled,
Speaker 2: they nearly flipped their car over, and when the cops
Speaker 2: came by afterwards asking if everything was all right, the
Speaker 2: Westend brothers said yeah, they had it under control. It
Speaker 2: was frontier justice and guns were critical. On any given
Speaker 2: day in the park, a good number of men had
Speaker 2: rifles hanging on straps under their thobes. At night, they
Speaker 2: rode around in cars or stood out on corners, also strapped,
Speaker 2: they could hold their own behind the trigger too. The
Speaker 2: brothers sometimes went to the shooting range together for target practice,
Speaker 2: and the Mamas Meal would often join, just like he
Speaker 2: used to in his earliest days in the movement. There
Speaker 2: were many many guns flowing through the West End in
Speaker 2: the late eighties and early nineties. Rodney he wasn't only
Speaker 2: dealing in cracking weed. He sold guns too.
Speaker 3: Yody who wanted guns in a lon did like they
Speaker 3: want weed in Lona. They came to the West End.
Speaker 3: They want a pistol. I said, okay, what kind won't.
Speaker 2: Rodney's gun supplier was right around the corner. He was
Speaker 2: buying from the Muslims.
Speaker 3: I had Muslim knock on my door in the middle
Speaker 3: of the night with boxes. Man, No, lie, I can't
Speaker 3: count them. I'm talking about guns, rifles. Yeah.
Speaker 2: In the early nineties, two brothers from the mass Jed
Speaker 2: were charged with running guns out of the storefront right
Speaker 2: next to a man Jimill's corner store. They bought the
Speaker 2: guns legally, but they were accused of selling them like
Speaker 2: they might have done to Rodney without keeping the right
Speaker 2: paperwork to track where they went. A federal agent testified
Speaker 2: that a handful of guns went to the mass Jed's
Speaker 2: security patrol, but more than two hundred were recovered in Philadelphia, Detroit,
Speaker 2: New Haven, and New York City over three years. The
Speaker 2: two accused men allegedly bought at least seventy three thousand
Speaker 2: dollars worth of firearms, and they probably weren't just being
Speaker 2: used for target practice. Many were Davis three eighties, a
Speaker 2: handgun with a reputation as a Saturday Night special because
Speaker 2: it's cheap and often used in crimes. At the gun
Speaker 2: running trial, a member of the Masjid and the security
Speaker 2: patrol testified for the prosecution. His name was Shahid ab
Speaker 2: duur Rahman. He was in prison at the time for
Speaker 2: shooting and killing a man. On the stand, he said
Speaker 2: he bought guns from the accused men and then sent
Speaker 2: them to New York, but he stopped short of saying
Speaker 2: that the defendants knowingly sold gun to criminals planning to
Speaker 2: commit crimes. Maybe that was because on the day he testified,
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil showed up the picture of menace he was
Speaker 2: wearing an all black thobe and a black turban and
Speaker 2: black charcoal around his eyes. If the FBI thought this
Speaker 2: dude Shahid might implicate the AmAm, they better think again.
Speaker 2: Not long after the gun running case wrapped up, Ma'am
Speaker 2: Jamil got caught up in a case himself.
Speaker 4: He was once the leader of the Student Non Violent
Speaker 4: Coordinating Committee and part of the Black Power movement. Today,
Speaker 4: h Rap Brown is known as Jamil Abdullah a La
Speaker 4: Main and he appeared in court. He is charged with
Speaker 4: aggravated assault and weapons violations after allegedly shooting a man
Speaker 4: July twenty sixth.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety five, Atlanta police responded to a shooting
Speaker 2: at West End Park of a man named William Miles.
Speaker 2: One bullet entered and exited his leg without doing any
Speaker 2: permanent damage. The responding officer said, Myles I d'ed to
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil as the shooter. Then the next morning, AmAm
Speaker 2: Jamil and another brother from the mass Jed went to
Speaker 2: visit Miles at home. When an Atlanta police detective later
Speaker 2: interviewed Myles, he did not identify a man Jamil as
Speaker 2: the shooter, but a few days later that detective and
Speaker 2: some federal agents pulled a Mam Jamil over in his
Speaker 2: black Mercedes. They arrested him for aggravated assault and for
Speaker 2: carrying a forty five caliber pistol without a license. We
Speaker 2: found the recording of an interview a local television reporter
Speaker 2: did with a Man Jamil a few days later after
Speaker 2: he got out of jail on bond. He was in
Speaker 2: his early fifties at the time. During the interview, he's
Speaker 2: standing on the sidewalk outside his store wearing a black
Speaker 2: thoat and a black knitted coofee. He has a thin
Speaker 2: beard and oval glasses.
Speaker 5: Do you know William Miles only from reading the paper
Speaker 5: and seeing his name? You know this is my familiar
Speaker 5: being familiar with him through that you never met with him?
Speaker 2: And I went to his house. If he's the same
Speaker 2: person who was shot?
Speaker 5: I asked him, was it true that he was saying
Speaker 5: that a Muslim shot him? He said that he saw
Speaker 5: a tall person and the person had black on and
Speaker 5: the person who shut him, you know, was tall and.
Speaker 2: Had black on.
Speaker 6: Was it you to do?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 5: What to go see him, to talk to shot him?
Speaker 2: To shoot him?
Speaker 5: That's the allegation of police of made Well again. That's
Speaker 5: the thing that has to be determined in court.
Speaker 2: Man Then the reporter asked to Ma'am Jamil if he
Speaker 2: still thinks violence is as an American as cherry pie.
Speaker 5: I think it's evident, and I think that more people
Speaker 5: realize what was being said. And I've always advocated self defense.
Speaker 5: A loss is in the Qur'an tyranny and oppression is
Speaker 5: worse than slaw. To fight them wherever you may find him.
Speaker 5: So again, that whole sense of the right to self
Speaker 5: defense as a human is a platform we've always stood on.
Speaker 6: I guess then the obvious question is did you have
Speaker 6: a forty five automatic pistol on you as a means
Speaker 6: of self defense.
Speaker 5: That's a part of the case again that has to
Speaker 5: be litigated in court.
Speaker 2: Imam Jamil didn't seem to be denying he was involved,
Speaker 2: but William Miles, the victim of the shooting, he later
Speaker 2: suggested that he was actually pressured by the police to
Speaker 2: name a Maam Jamil as the shooter. Four national Islamic
Speaker 2: groups urge the Department of Justice to investigate the arrest.
Speaker 2: The charges were eventually dropped and the case went away.
Speaker 2: So not counting the incident with the sheriff's deputies. That's
Speaker 2: two shootings at the park that a Maam Jamil may
Speaker 2: have been involved in, the one after the basketball game
Speaker 2: and the shooting of William Miles. Nobody that we know
Speaker 2: of was seriously hurt, and the shootings could be described
Speaker 2: as part of protecting the community self defense in a way.
Speaker 2: Like a Maam Jimil told the reporter in that interview,
Speaker 2: it's a platform he's always stood on. But the a
Speaker 2: Maam killing all those drug dealers, or even ordering them killed,
Speaker 2: like the allegations we saw in the synopsis of Western homicides,
Speaker 2: that would be on a whole other level. I don't
Speaker 2: think a Mam Jmil was pulling the trigger in those murders,
Speaker 2: but he didn't know the man who did much of
Speaker 2: the killing, if not all of it, because he was
Speaker 2: a well respected member of the Master JD and the
Speaker 2: security patrol. Law enforcement knew this killer too, and not
Speaker 2: just because they were trying to catch him. No, they
Speaker 2: had a secret relationship with him, one that reveals just
Speaker 2: how far they'd go to take down a man Jamil.
Speaker 2: In the late eighties, when Ronnie got into the game
Speaker 2: and started dealing, he had his disposal in the West
Speaker 2: End to use the business school term a network. He
Speaker 2: grew up about a block from West End Park and
Speaker 2: the kids he played with, many of them were still around.
Speaker 2: That included Muslim kids too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I hung with the smoked weeds and smoked cigarettes
Speaker 3: and thrunk them. The ones that came to mind place
Speaker 3: to shoot pool. But they still went and prayed every Friday,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Just like Chris was just like all religions, all.
Speaker 3: Of them not good, all of them not bad. He's
Speaker 3: just like the ones that hung around me. Probably was
Speaker 3: the bad seeds. I was a bad seed. So and
Speaker 3: that's that's that relation.
Speaker 2: I grew up with. How you gonna do?
Speaker 3: People say they just killed God men? One of us did?
Speaker 3: Why he knews since we was kids.
Speaker 2: Shaheed abduer Rothman was maybe the Muslim who Rodney came
Speaker 2: to know best in the West End. He had moved
Speaker 2: to Atlanta from New York, where he'd lived through shattering trauma.
Speaker 3: It was the Jamaicans that killed his mom. He stayed
Speaker 3: in the house for like four days with a dead body.
Speaker 2: When he was whole, he was really like a toxic
Speaker 2: of self. I think he stayed in there.
Speaker 3: He stayed in high with a dead by it like
Speaker 3: four days and was his mom.
Speaker 2: That's the story.
Speaker 3: Tell people, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Shahid's passed is pretty mysterious. Other than that, but his
Speaker 2: childhood seemed to have marked his destiny for darkness. Shahid
Speaker 2: said that when he moved to Atlanta at seventeen or eighteen,
Speaker 2: it was because he was flinging the aftermath of some shooting.
Speaker 2: He joined the Master and the security team, and over
Speaker 2: time built a reputation as a gentleman, a good Muslim,
Speaker 2: and a family man. But he was secretly or not
Speaker 2: so secretly, depending on whom you talk to, living a
Speaker 2: double life, and the security team was his cover. If
Speaker 2: most guys on the security patrol kept the defensive posture,
Speaker 2: standing guard in the neighborhood or escorting families to their
Speaker 2: houses at night, Shahid seemed to use his authority to
Speaker 2: shake down the streets, going out sometimes with younger guys,
Speaker 2: teenagers mostly, who went after drug dealers like they were cops,
Speaker 2: busting into trap houses and confiscating dope, and that response
Speaker 2: seemed to blow the lines between right and wrong. I
Speaker 2: heard how these guys got rid of the drugs they
Speaker 2: seized at first flushed them down the toilet, but after
Speaker 2: a while they realized they were throwing money away, And
Speaker 2: I wonder when dealers didn't back down what happened? Then
Speaker 2: I got like Shahid, who seemed to have developed a
Speaker 2: taste for blood. He thrived.
Speaker 3: With Shahi, everybody knew he was a dangerous person, and
Speaker 3: my friends said, hey, whatever you do, don't get in
Speaker 3: the call with that motherfucker, because they know you'd come
Speaker 3: at When murt came.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety, Shahied was involved in two killings. The
Speaker 2: victims were in that document we got the synopsis of
Speaker 2: Western homicides. Then about a year later, Shahied was involved
Speaker 2: in another killing. People began to suspect he was doing
Speaker 2: hit jobs, and to wonder who was calling the shots.
Speaker 2: Shahid became a leader of the patrol and became close
Speaker 2: to a man Jamil, but eventually he was charged with murder,
Speaker 2: and with Shahied off the streets, the violence in the
Speaker 2: West End seemed to taper off. Meanwhile, after Shahid got
Speaker 2: locked up, Rodney said he was doing well for himself.
Speaker 2: When things are really humming. He was moving hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars worth of drugs on a monthly basis.
Speaker 2: Rodney stayed in touch with Shaheed while Shahid was in prison,
Speaker 2: sent him weed. Shahid was his friend and Rodney, in
Speaker 2: his criminal way at the time, was generous like that.
Speaker 2: Around this time the FBI came offering Shahied some help too.
Speaker 2: We know that while Shahied was incarcerated, he met with
Speaker 2: an agent named Bill Gant. Not long after Shahid testified
Speaker 2: for the prosecution in the gun running case against two
Speaker 2: brothers from the weston mass Jed, when a man Jamil
Speaker 2: showed up in all black then likely in exchange for
Speaker 2: Shahid's cooperation, Gant the agent put in a word with
Speaker 2: the Georgia Parole Board and by nineteen ninety five, Shahied
Speaker 2: was back on the street and back in the mass Jed.
Speaker 2: He had done approximately four years for killing and this
Speaker 2: is when folks on the outside started wondering what the
Speaker 2: fuck is going on here. When Shahid got out, Rodney
Speaker 2: was surprised he didn't hear from him right away. I'm
Speaker 2: a man, I'm mother, I'm the man. He know that,
Speaker 2: he know he didn't her.
Speaker 3: I'm taking care of his motherfuck in prison. I'm sending
Speaker 3: weed to prison for free. Never ask for a penny.
Speaker 3: So why when you come speak to me? Why?
Speaker 2: And Ronnie didn't want to worry about Shahied walking up
Speaker 2: behind him on the street with a pistol or a shotgun.
Speaker 2: Rodney was starting to think Shahied was a rat his words,
Speaker 2: not mine. So after three months of waiting, Rodney got
Speaker 2: his address and stopped by.
Speaker 3: I knocked on the door.
Speaker 2: He looked at him.
Speaker 3: I fucking seeing it with me, opened the door. I said,
Speaker 3: what's up, man? How long you been out?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 2: He was like, I've been a few coming out. Come
Speaker 2: on in. Rodney asked Shahied straight up. How'd you get
Speaker 2: out of jail? Shahid told Rodney that the brothers in
Speaker 2: the mast and they wanted him back in the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: They said, look, why don't you testify against one of
Speaker 2: the accused in this gun running case so that you
Speaker 2: can get your time cut. Just don't implicate the big man,
Speaker 2: meaning a man Jimmy Rodney believed Shahied. But here's what's
Speaker 2: weird about that story from my perspective. Anyway, the brothers
Speaker 2: who Shahid testified against were members of the mass Jed
Speaker 2: since the earliest days founding members. Really, why let them
Speaker 2: take the fall so that Shahed, a much more dangerous
Speaker 2: man by all accounts, could come home. Why would the
Speaker 2: AmAm give that? The Okay people told me that Ammam
Speaker 2: Jamil would not block anyone from practicing their religion, that
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil was close with everyone, including Shahed, a spiritual adviser,
Speaker 2: always guiding people back to Islam. But that got messy.
Speaker 2: Soon after Shahid got out of prison in March of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety five, he killed a man in April. There
Speaker 2: was another body later that year two more. Shahid was
Speaker 2: linked to at least eight killings just in the West
Speaker 2: End before the end of nineteen ninety five. Shahed, Rodney said,
Speaker 2: would brag about what he was doing.
Speaker 3: He's a serious killer.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you he got the kill.
Speaker 3: He gonna start some beef and it ain't gonna be
Speaker 3: he gonna make up or reading to kill the mother fuck.
Speaker 2: You might remember sister Jamila Jahad from the first episode
Speaker 2: of the podcast. She converted to Islam, took the Shahada
Speaker 2: from my Mam Jamil, and raised her family in the
Speaker 2: West End. Sister Jamila ran a construction company and she
Speaker 2: was having problems with an employee or a contractor someone
Speaker 2: she was working with. Anyway, one day, Shahi came up
Speaker 2: to hurt the message.
Speaker 3: He said to me, you won't need to take care
Speaker 3: of them, you know, for not not doing something, to
Speaker 3: paying you or something like that.
Speaker 2: I said, no, what you're talking about?
Speaker 6: But do you take care of how?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: But I had no idea.
Speaker 3: Who you know, who he had become.
Speaker 2: That's how he approached you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he was a part you know, his friend
Speaker 3: were working for me?
Speaker 2: And now do you know what? You know what he
Speaker 2: meant when he said that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking.
Speaker 2: Murder in a minute, you know, I think that's what
Speaker 2: he was thinking too.
Speaker 3: And I said, no, what's you talking about? What your
Speaker 3: clients on, what you're doing.
Speaker 2: It was so casual how Shahid asked her if he
Speaker 2: should take somebody out. There's no doubt in my mind
Speaker 2: that wasn't the first time that he asked that question
Speaker 2: to a remember of the mass did. And there's little
Speaker 2: doubt in my mind that after all the years he
Speaker 2: spent in the community, that at least a few people
Speaker 2: said yes. Why else would god fearing, family loving folks
Speaker 2: keep a guy like him around if not for skeletons,
Speaker 2: literally skeletons, what's worse And I'm sorry to drop this
Speaker 2: bombshell on you. Shahik was grooming the more troubled boys
Speaker 2: in the community to become killers, letting them touch his
Speaker 2: guns at first, then taking them out shooting, and then
Speaker 2: out on hits. I talked to one of these guys.
Speaker 2: It took him decades to get his life on track.
Speaker 2: For the life of me, I can't understand how a
Speaker 2: person like Shaheed could fly under the radar in such
Speaker 2: a small commute unity. AmAm Jamil would ultimately pay a
Speaker 2: price because after Shahid got out of prison and returned
Speaker 2: to the community, he was on the federal payroll as
Speaker 2: an FBI and foreman. I don't know how anyone could
Speaker 2: be surprised by that. Everyone knew Shahid had already cooperated once,
Speaker 2: but he was secretly helping the FED to build another case.
Speaker 2: In the nineties, long before September eleventh, the FBI was
Speaker 2: targeting alleged Muslim extremists. There was a surveillance operation named
Speaker 2: Vulgar Betrayal. We know from the documents obtained by Karema Alamin,
Speaker 2: a Mam Jamil's wife, that the FBI suspected A Maam
Speaker 2: Jamil was some kind of terrorists or maybe supporting Islamic
Speaker 2: terrorists abroad. One report describes as Maam Jamil as a
Speaker 2: leader of a network of master JITs with international connections
Speaker 2: that are basically fronts for criminal activity. It's true that
Speaker 2: AmAm Jamil had some relationships with Muslims abroad, but was
Speaker 2: he a terrorist. We've seen zero evidence of that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: people in the West End were still losing their lives,
Speaker 2: people right there in a Maam Jamil's neighborhood. From what
Speaker 2: we can see in the documents, the FBI wasn't so
Speaker 2: concerned about that. Shahidz Handler was the FBI agent Bill Gant,
Speaker 2: who appeared to surveil A Maam Jamil in the mass
Speaker 2: Jed for most of the nineties. We don't know much
Speaker 2: about Gan except that he started to work for the
Speaker 2: FBI in the late eighties and he allegedly got into
Speaker 2: it once with one of his supervisors for pursuing a
Speaker 2: Mam Jamil even after he'd been ordered to stop while
Speaker 2: he was under oath. Gant set his role in the
Speaker 2: investigation of a man Jamil and the mass jed ended
Speaker 2: at the beginning of ninety five, but months later, in
Speaker 2: the summer of ninety five, he helped arrest of Maam
Speaker 2: Jamil after he was accused of shooting that man in
Speaker 2: West End Park William Miles, and then a year later
Speaker 2: in ninety six. This was after Shahied was connected to
Speaker 2: at least three killings over the previous year and a half.
Speaker 2: Gant said he had contact with Shahied once a week,
Speaker 2: and he had seen him in person two weeks earlier.
Speaker 2: Gant was meeting with a killer on the regular. Atlanta
Speaker 2: police were looking into all the bodies piling up in
Speaker 2: the West End, and Shahid seemed to be telling the
Speaker 2: cops that people other than himself were involved, possibly even
Speaker 2: saying that a Maam Jamil was calling the shots. By
Speaker 2: around ninety six, local police knew that Shahied was at
Speaker 2: least connected to multiple killings. A detective in the Atlanta
Speaker 2: Police Department was investigating, and he brought in Gant for
Speaker 2: an interview. The detective wrote up a summary afterward. He
Speaker 2: said that Gant appeared nervous. He did not volunteer information
Speaker 2: unless specifically asked in investigand how much he was paying Shahied,
Speaker 2: but Gan wouldn't say. When Gan asked which murders were
Speaker 2: linked to Shahied, the detective said, all the homicides in
Speaker 2: the West End area. Here's Rodney Brown again.
Speaker 3: L beyond agent. The agent knew, maybe found out later on,
Speaker 3: but he had to find out that boy was killing people.
Speaker 2: He had to.
Speaker 3: If you investigating Jamil, and I mean the West End
Speaker 3: and all these boys coming up dead from the West End,
Speaker 3: what the fuck while we're investigate Now we say, okay,
Speaker 3: this guy got killed. This guy, Now the next question
Speaker 3: who killed him? So that would have led him back
Speaker 3: to Shahid, Right, come on, man, that is just no,
Speaker 3: none of it really makes sense.
Speaker 2: What if Shahied's telling them that Jamil is the one
Speaker 2: who's doing it, do you think they would believe.
Speaker 3: That that Jamil is committing to.
Speaker 2: Miss Jamila is ordering it. And so this is you
Speaker 2: talk about how Shahid's playing everybody. Maybe he was playing
Speaker 2: them too, and he was.
Speaker 3: That's a good fact. He deathinitely was telling him that.
Speaker 3: But still of them or how many of us would
Speaker 3: they want.
Speaker 2: To sacrifice to bust it?
Speaker 3: It ain't like they're selling bricks, man, We're dealing with
Speaker 3: people's bodies. They want a drug deal?
Speaker 2: How many of us, Rodney asked, would they be willing
Speaker 2: to sacrifice to bust a man? Jamil to me, all
Speaker 2: this clearly says some human lives were dispensable in whatever
Speaker 2: grand calculation the FEDS were making. Black lives troubled lives.
Speaker 2: At the time of the shootout involving the Fulton County
Speaker 2: Sheriff's deputies in March of two thousand, Shahid was in
Speaker 2: prison on a parole violation. After he got out, he
Speaker 2: kept killing. In March of two thousand and two, he
Speaker 2: shot someone in the back of the head and killed them.
Speaker 2: Then he killed another person later that year and the
Speaker 2: next year he was involved in at least two more murders.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and four, narcotics detectives targeting a drug
Speaker 2: house found Shahed with guns and drugs. They arrested him
Speaker 2: with him off the streets. Another man from the West
Speaker 2: End told law enforcement about at least one murder he
Speaker 2: knew Shahid was responsible for. An Atlanta police detective went
Speaker 2: to interview Shahed, and Shahid started confessing. By our count
Speaker 2: he was involved in killing at least eleven people, but
Speaker 2: he allegedly killed many more. There was a story about
Speaker 2: his confession in Atlanta's biggest newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Speaker 2: It had the following line, Police believed the death toll
Speaker 2: may be as high as fifty fifty bodies. Rodney thinks
Speaker 2: the number is even higher. Shahid is now serving a
Speaker 2: life sentence in prison. Finally, he tried to appeal his conviction,
Speaker 2: arguing that the recorded confession shouldn't be admissible, but the
Speaker 2: Georgia Supreme Court rejected his appeal. We couldn't get an
Speaker 2: interview with Shahied, but we got this recording that someone
Speaker 2: made of him.
Speaker 3: When you look at that article, like I don't have
Speaker 3: to deal with that article a lot of times.
Speaker 5: You know, I'm saying he's in here.
Speaker 3: You got some niggas want to say I'm a rat.
Speaker 3: You know that. Ain't that Ain't that ain't delayed when
Speaker 3: you want to be having any prison, know what I mean.
Speaker 2: In the recording, Shahid doesn't deny that he killed anyone.
Speaker 2: He suggests that he confessed to make a point, basically
Speaker 2: to brag about how many murders he committed. Shahid was
Speaker 2: mad at the man who snitched on him to get
Speaker 2: a deal. I'm gonna keep awading with you, I said.
Speaker 3: I look, so y'all, let y'all don't even lock these
Speaker 3: niggas up about one murder.
Speaker 5: I tell you what I think about twenty murders? Do
Speaker 5: you let the niggas out for one body?
Speaker 1: That?
Speaker 2: Basically, Shahid said, if you left this other guy off
Speaker 2: because he gave you information on one murder, I'll show
Speaker 2: you I can give you information on way more than
Speaker 2: just one murder.
Speaker 3: When he comes to the west hand, man, I look
Speaker 3: at it like split up with your man.
Speaker 5: It's like, you know, ain't nobody perfect?
Speaker 4: Bro?
Speaker 6: You don't We all got skeletons When.
Speaker 2: It comes to the west end, Shahid said, we all
Speaker 2: got skeletons. This one guy played a huge part in
Speaker 2: who a mam Jamil came to be. In the eyes
Speaker 2: of local and federal law enforcement built him up into
Speaker 2: parts mobster and terrorists. It's impossible for me to separate
Speaker 2: fact from fiction here or again to really know why
Speaker 2: mam Jamil kept a guy like Shaheed around. But shouldn't
Speaker 2: there have been limits to a man Jamil's policy of
Speaker 2: keeping the mass shed open for anyone to practice is
Speaker 2: slam Limit's far short of turning a blind eye to
Speaker 2: a serial killer. From where I stand, keeping Shahid around
Speaker 2: was either a severe miscalculation on the Mam Jamil's part,
Speaker 2: or he was okay with the violence, maybe even endorsed it.
Speaker 2: I do know that a Mam Jamil traded on fear.
Speaker 2: Many people in the West End were scared of him.
Speaker 2: That's part of the way he brought the neighborhood under control.
Speaker 2: How he cleaned it up one of the accusations in
Speaker 2: the synopsis of Western homicides I haven't told you about yet.
Speaker 2: It's a case that could be helpful in determining where
Speaker 2: Shahid's stories end and the Maam Jamil's own actions begin.
Speaker 2: The very first victim listed in the dossier was a
Speaker 2: man whose name was Clive Hunter, though he also went
Speaker 2: by a Muslim name. Clive served prison time with the
Speaker 2: Maam Jamil in New York. By some accounts, he taught
Speaker 2: a man Jamil slam after he converted, and a Maam
Speaker 2: Jamil pledged loyalty to him, and Mam Jamil left prison
Speaker 2: first moved to Atlanta and established the Weston MASSTJD. When
Speaker 2: Clive got out later, he figured that Maschd was his
Speaker 2: to take over since a Maam Jamil had pledged loyalty.
Speaker 2: Long story short, A rivalry developed that ended in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty when Clive was shot to death by assailants who
Speaker 2: were never identified. Some folks in the community thought of
Speaker 2: Maam Jimiale was behind it, and this was before Shahid
Speaker 2: ever got to town. It places a body at the
Speaker 2: foundation of everything that came afterward. These are the names
Speaker 2: of the people in the West End who lost their lives,
Speaker 2: the ones we know about Kennedy Keller, Clive Hunter, James Farrell,
Speaker 2: Tommy Jones, Quantavius Kelly, Carlon Wilson, Jamie Lee, James, Sammy
Speaker 2: Lee Sawyer, Roderick Fulton, Damon Brown, Clarence Poon, Andre Lane,
Speaker 2: Jacqueline Johnson, Marlins, Antonio Wyatt, James, Gary Jones, Cornelius, James Nelson,
Speaker 2: Perry Miller, Tommy Warren, Corey Dunn, Corey Whitehead, Shannon Frasier,
Speaker 2: and Calvin Battle. Many people Rodney knew from the West
Speaker 2: End were killed over about a decade, most of them
Speaker 2: by Shahid ab du Rahman, a man who was paid
Speaker 2: by the federal government. Remember, someone in the Atlanta Police
Speaker 2: Department said Shahid may have killed as many as fifty people.
Speaker 2: That would rank him along the top three most prolific
Speaker 2: known serial killers in modern American history. Rodney has become
Speaker 2: obsessed with all these cases. He wrote a book from
Speaker 2: the West End to Loyal Pakistan. He called it about
Speaker 2: Muslims moving into the neighborhood, and he's about to publish
Speaker 2: the sequel, looking more closely at Shahida. He's working on
Speaker 2: a documentary too. But the murder that Rodney seems to
Speaker 2: think about the most is the one of his partner,
Speaker 2: Lee Sawyer.
Speaker 3: Me and Lee was like brothers, the best of brothers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we was.
Speaker 3: Lee was a wild guy. He was a guy. H
Speaker 3: He's the hardest guy. He wasn't he wasn't afraid of anything,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of dangerous, you know. But he was
Speaker 3: the coolest person, give you anything, real good host, a
Speaker 3: ladies man, you know, you get him mad. He was
Speaker 3: just he he could beat you to death with his hand.
Speaker 3: He was that type of guy. But he was everybody.
Speaker 3: If you ask anybody else, they'll say he was a
Speaker 3: night always smile. That's how I say. He was always
Speaker 3: big smile.
Speaker 2: Lee's mom visits Rodney sometimes.
Speaker 3: And with her she she ain't never gonna recover from it.
Speaker 2: There are mothers and fathers and children connected to all
Speaker 2: the people killed in the West End, and Rodney thinks
Speaker 2: about them.
Speaker 3: People that was in charge. They need an answer to
Speaker 3: these people. The victim they need answer to. It's a
Speaker 3: victim impact behind this. They need some answers man, because
Speaker 3: it is too much. It's just it's so much, and
Speaker 3: you know, I'm just stretching the surface on this man.
Speaker 2: Maybe most of all, Rodney wants more attention on the
Speaker 2: whole mess.
Speaker 3: That ain't news. I think it's ridiculous. I I just
Speaker 3: look at it like every day, like if this ain't
Speaker 3: world news, what is what we're watching now?
Speaker 2: You know, we tried our best to put Rodney's questions
Speaker 2: in our questions to the people in charge. I'll start
Speaker 2: at the bottom. The Atlanta detective who investigated some of
Speaker 2: the killings in the mid nineties, he did an agree
Speaker 2: to an interview. Really, it seems like he did his
Speaker 2: best to make something happen with these cases. He interviewed
Speaker 2: the FBI agent Agan, and he took the evidence he
Speaker 2: had to prosecutors.
Speaker 6: I did have presented to me a collection of investigations
Speaker 6: into these deaths.
Speaker 2: When Robert McBurney, the prosecutor, was with the Fulton County DA,
Speaker 2: he reviewed some materials about the killing of drug dealers
Speaker 2: in the West End. It was years before he was
Speaker 2: assigned to a man Jamial's murder trial.
Speaker 6: Some leads and theories as to how they might be
Speaker 6: connected and who might connect them, but it never got
Speaker 6: to the level where I or anyone I talked with,
Speaker 6: was comfortable saying, that's a case we could bring get
Speaker 6: past a grand jury.
Speaker 2: That's less difficult.
Speaker 6: But ultimately, were we confident that we could prove something
Speaker 6: beyond a reasonable doubt. If you don't have that confidence,
Speaker 6: you really shouldn't then say, great, we're going to indict you. Anyway,
Speaker 6: there was nothing. There was zero on the forensic side.
Speaker 6: But there were people who said things, but not necessarily
Speaker 6: people who would come to court to say these things.
Speaker 2: Maybe Shahid was good at killing people and not getting caught.
Speaker 2: That seems legit, And it's not mcburnie's job or the
Speaker 2: job of other prosecutors to gather evidence for a case.
Speaker 2: Still McBurnie or other prosecutors the DA, maybe they could
Speaker 2: have pushed for more attention within law enforcement on these murders.
Speaker 2: We know there were meetings, but we don't see any
Speaker 2: evidence of an elevated level of concern like you might
Speaker 2: expect for a potential serial killer on the loose. On
Speaker 2: the federal side of things, let's consider the biggest potential
Speaker 2: allegation against AmAm Jamil during the nineties, that he was
Speaker 2: an the Islamic terrorist. Again, to be clear here, we
Speaker 2: know that AmAm Jamil has some connections with Muslim leaders abroad,
Speaker 2: but we have seen no evidence of any terrorist activity.
Speaker 2: But for argument's sake, let's say the FBI knew something
Speaker 2: that we don't know. Maybe that would in their minds
Speaker 2: justifies I'm going to say radical steps by the federal government,
Speaker 2: like using a murderer as an informant. Maybe they would
Speaker 2: consider it worth it to allow some harm in order
Speaker 2: to prevent even greater harm, like a big terrorist attack
Speaker 2: or something. But when I asked Bernie about this, who
Speaker 2: by the way, was hired as a federal prosecutor after
Speaker 2: AmAm Dmil's trial, he said, building a case based on
Speaker 2: information from a guy like Shaheed u dur Rahman, it
Speaker 2: would have been shoddy police work.
Speaker 6: This was an area and a climate and a community
Speaker 6: where it advanced people's interests to say they were involved
Speaker 6: or they weren't. They did these things and they didn't.
Speaker 6: But the scenario you described would be yet another reason
Speaker 6: why I think it didn't make sense to if that's
Speaker 6: going to be your source of information. Is like one
Speaker 6: of these mob cases where yeah, I killed twenty people,
Speaker 6: but let me tell you who the real bad guy is. Well,
Speaker 6: what do you mean the fact.
Speaker 2: That you pulled the trigger?
Speaker 6: Who where's your credibility? Even if your answer is well,
Speaker 6: but did it on the direction of so and so,
Speaker 6: I do know that federal agents would not be permitted
Speaker 6: to continue to use a source if that source engaged
Speaker 6: in unauthorized activity, and certainly killing someone would be unauthorized.
Speaker 6: And certainly, had there been any evidence that he did
Speaker 6: these things, not only would he be pursued and prosecuted,
Speaker 6: but there would have been no more relationship between him
Speaker 6: and his handlers.
Speaker 2: Right. But in either case, if he did these things
Speaker 2: while on informant, that would be a violation of some sort.
Speaker 6: Oh, I'd agree, it's a violation of the law.
Speaker 2: He's a murderer, and.
Speaker 6: I am confident that if a federal handler had any
Speaker 6: inkling that abdur Rockman was doing anything along the lines
Speaker 6: of what you're describing and what he's describing, that would
Speaker 6: have been the end of it for Abdurachman. He'd be
Speaker 6: off the streets and in custody.
Speaker 2: So baced on mcburnie's criteria here, I think it's fair
Speaker 2: to say the FBI messed up, maybe even broke its
Speaker 2: own rules for the law in the years after Gant
Speaker 2: helped Shahid get out of prison, he should have known
Speaker 2: that Shahied was killing people. Sure, maybe it was more
Speaker 2: of a problem for Atlanta police to handle. It was
Speaker 2: their jurisdiction. Maybe this is an issue of failed oversight
Speaker 2: in communication, but we know Gant was at least still
Speaker 2: close to an investigation of a man, Jamil. How could
Speaker 2: all these killings in the same neighborhood not come up?
Speaker 2: Hi looking for a mister Gant. Yeah, my name is
Speaker 2: Mostly's secret. I'm here with Johnny Coffin. We're producers working
Speaker 2: on a podcast about Jamille Alami.
Speaker 4: Okay, are you familiar with him?
Speaker 2: All we got from Gant through the door of his
Speaker 2: apartment was a not interested and a thank you. We
Speaker 2: left him a letter, but we never heard back. We
Speaker 2: also emailed the FBI a list of questions. Nothing back
Speaker 2: from them either. Despite all the death and destruction, the
Speaker 2: FBI still didn't make a case against a man Jamil,
Speaker 2: but the bureau persisted in the West End even after
Speaker 2: Shahid was locked up in the late nineties. They had
Speaker 2: other informants there and they were surveilling the mass right
Speaker 2: up to the time of the shootout, and so it
Speaker 2: seems possible on the night of March sixteen to two thousand,
Speaker 2: someone with the FBI, maybe an informant, maybe an agent,
Speaker 2: would end up with blood on their hands too. He
Speaker 2: was very irritable and upset about what was going on,
Speaker 2: and I had never seen him like that before that
Speaker 2: on the next and final episode of Radical. Radical is
Speaker 2: a production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: Radical was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and me
Speaker 2: Mossey's Secret Johnny Kaufman is our senior producer. Sheba Joseph
Speaker 2: is our associate producer. Editing by Eric Benson. Johnny Kaufman,
Speaker 2: Emily Martinez and Matt Cher. Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz,
Speaker 2: Kayln Lynch and Layla Dos. Original music by Kyle Murdoch
Speaker 2: and by Ray Murray of Organized Noise. Sound design and
Speaker 2: mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording by Ewan Le trem Ewen
Speaker 2: and Sheba Joseph. Campside Media's operations team is Doug Slaywan,
Speaker 2: Ashley Warren, Alijah Papes, Destiny Dingle, and Sabina Mera. The
Speaker 2: executive producers at Campside Media are Josh Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis,
Speaker 2: Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For Tenderfoot TV, executive producers
Speaker 2: are Donald Albright 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,