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Enjoy the episode

0:42

Campsite Media.

0:49

So you now it is really why I should started real

0:51

here Casscase dot claim

0:54

right.

0:54

Up the hill. It

0:58

took months of reporting on this store before

1:00

I had a good reason to return to Atlanta's

1:02

West End, to the leafy neighborhood

1:04

of bungalows and Victorian homes surrounding the

1:06

mass hit the corner store and the

1:08

park the side of the shootout on March

1:11

sixteenth, two thousand. The community,

1:13

the village, even founded and led

1:15

by Imam Jamille A Lamine, with its

1:18

own school, its own security force,

1:20

even something like its own laws.

1:22

Make a right right and we'll come back in the back,

1:25

come out for what I did.

1:28

It was this man, Rodney Brown who brought

1:31

me back here. Rodney

1:33

grew up in the West End and he was a teenager

1:35

when crack cocaine hit in the eighties. So

1:38

many people on his side of town got sucked into

1:40

a zombie like existence, traded

1:42

their spirit for the little white rocks, and

1:45

Rodney he got sucked into the

1:47

fast cash started dealing. He

1:50

said he can make three or four thousand dollars a day

1:52

when he started out, as long as he was willing

1:54

to risk standing out on the corner. I

1:57

remember those days. I

2:00

was just a kid, but I saw how

2:02

older relatives got caught up in

2:04

and out of jail, on and off

2:06

the streets. Drugs,

2:09

guns and violence were cornerstones of the life.

2:12

My parents steered me and my siblings clear of

2:14

it. We even kept a distance from some relatives.

2:18

And Mam Jimial was in the thick of it, though, and

2:20

as a leader, he had little choice

2:22

but to confront the problem head on. In

2:25

time, he developed a reputation for

2:27

a quote cleaning up the West End,

2:29

making it a safe place to raise families,

2:32

not just for Muslims in his community, but

2:34

also others who lived nearby. Rodney

2:37

witnessed some of that from his

2:40

particular perspective.

2:43

Did rad Hill was a maid to Trout this

2:45

happen? This is what tim of got key you.

2:48

Rodney was still a teenager when he bought his first

2:50

eight K forty seven, so

2:53

he saw some things more than his share

2:55

of violence in his younger

2:57

days. He might have had more acquaintances who were killed

2:59

than I had friends in all of high school. Driving

3:03

through the neighborhood with him, the specter of violence

3:06

gave me a headache. We were surrounded by

3:08

places where people who Rodney knew had been struck

3:10

down. Back in the book, I told

3:12

you I wasn't selling drug until.

3:14

The girl got killed on the bridge, Tanya

3:16

Natalia mine. He got

3:19

killed on the bread. I just got got

3:21

myself caught up in sound. I don't

3:23

think they chopped him up back though, but I know they are.

3:26

This is what they dunk about it at.

3:30

This was black giants. This was black giant

3:32

trap house. This way he sold

3:35

his weight. He

3:37

was right here, but he ain't get killed. He got killed

3:39

back up though. I should have showed down that when I was up

3:41

there.

3:43

These killings happened in and around the part of the West

3:46

End controlled by a man Jamil, the

3:48

area he had supposedly cleaned up.

3:54

It's the roughly six or seven mostly

3:56

residential blocks, apartments and

3:58

houses that surround the park. Just

4:02

to the south of the park was the mas Jed and

4:04

the man Jamil's corner store.

4:08

That was Jamel's store. Exactly we

4:15

turned and drove over the place where Deputy

4:17

Kinchin and Deputy English were shot. The

4:19

part of the street that was littered with shellcasings

4:21

that.

4:21

Night in two thousand. It's the mobs,

4:27

this green and white one. That's the mobs. Jamil

4:30

Alami stayed all

4:33

these his house, each one of these houses.

4:36

See all these this

4:39

community mobs. I's

4:43

see up in here. Ain't

4:45

nobody never sold no drugs here.

4:48

And Man Jamil hated drugs and drug

4:50

dealing. So Rodney and the seasoned

4:53

dealers in the West End they knew

4:55

better than posting up on the corners next to

4:57

the mass Jed, the park and the corner store,

5:00

the spot where a mam gmial could be found most days,

5:02

shooting hoops, tending to the store, or

5:05

chilling outside at the picnic table. It

5:07

was considered holy land. Instead,

5:10

Rodney and the other dealers. They did

5:12

their business on the edges of a mam Jamil's community.

5:15

Still, somehow many of them

5:17

ended up shot and dead. Rodney

5:21

was one of the few who survived.

5:24

In the nineties, before the shootout

5:26

in March two thousand, dozens

5:28

of people were allegedly murdered in the West End,

5:31

dozens with little accountability.

5:35

And it wasn't just the typical violence you might

5:37

expect drug dealers to encounter. In

5:41

my reporting of this story, so

5:43

many people described for me the breezy way

5:46

a mam gmial moved through the West End,

5:49

how he seemed to carelessly float past

5:52

his though catching the wind.

5:55

But my question after hearing these stories was

5:57

this. Did a mam

5:59

Jamil rest control from the dope dealers with

6:01

that kind of grace alone, or

6:03

was there something else? When

6:06

I looked into the killings all

6:09

those folks who Rodney knew who died, what

6:11

I learned was disturbing, far

6:14

worse than I ever imagined. From

6:18

Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV,

6:21

and iHeart podcasts, this

6:23

is radical. I'm Mosey's

6:26

Secret Episode

6:28

seven Sacrifices.

6:49

We learned about the murders and the thousands of

6:51

pages of documents were received from the Fulton

6:54

County DA's office. The

6:56

stuff we got in response to our open records

6:58

request. Reading

7:00

those reports, what started

7:02

out as a quest to get to the bottom of the shootout

7:04

with the deputies and to figure out

7:06

whether a Mam Jamil was really capable of that

7:09

kind of violence, suddenly

7:11

got this whole other layer because

7:14

the documents described a man who allegedly

7:16

was way more than capable, who

7:19

was involved in a rash of killings in the West End

7:21

way before the shootout, who

7:23

used a mafioso like ruthlessness to

7:25

get what he wanted. Figuring

7:29

out whether the accusations had any merit

7:31

had every bearing on understanding who a Maam Jamil

7:34

was and just as importantly,

7:36

who law enforcement thought he was in

7:39

the period leading up to the shootout. The

7:43

key document we got is called Synopsis

7:45

of West End Homicides. It's

7:48

just eleven pages long, a list

7:50

mostly with quick summaries,

7:52

dates and the names of victims,

7:56

and the section at the top law enforcement

7:58

connects a Mamjmil to see sixteen killings

8:00

over about a decade nineteen

8:02

eighty six to nineteen ninety seven. Most

8:06

of the victims were drug dealers. Rodney

8:09

knew many, if not all, the people who were killed,

8:12

and we looked over the list with him.

8:14

He's not in the streets anymore. He

8:17

spent time in prison and started fresh. So

8:19

part of what he felt was shocked at

8:21

seeing the world he was so close to with

8:24

more perspective. He struggled

8:26

to make sense of the amount of killing.

8:30

I guess when they started happening, it

8:32

was normal to man. Think

8:34

about you walk out the door and they have shot his

8:36

dude face off. When they shot Tome and face

8:38

off, and it was you know, it was always

8:41

violand in the West then but they

8:43

shot his face off a

8:45

month not even a month later, shot n

8:47

them times in the face. Then

8:50

everybody on your neighborhood.

8:51

You go to the globe, y'all killing there. Everybody.

8:53

They thought we was killing the motherfucker.

8:55

You know, we thought about it, so

8:58

it was attached to us.

8:59

Really they went or one for it because we won't

9:01

over.

9:04

The synopsis of the Weston Homicides portrays

9:06

a man Jamil as some kind of kingpin heading

9:09

up a group of brothers from the mass jed An inner

9:11

circle who ran guns and extorted

9:14

drug dealers, secretly killing

9:16

the competition and anyone else who knew too much

9:18

about what they were doing. Very

9:20

strong allegations. In

9:23

the earliest days of the West End mass Jed, a

9:26

mam Jamil set up a security team.

9:29

This I know it to be true. Nothing

9:31

unusual there. Most mass Jeds

9:33

have them. Brothers would walk people

9:35

home from the mass Jed after prayer make

9:37

sure nobody out on the street caused any trouble.

9:40

But the West End seems to have taken their security

9:43

further than most. A

9:45

member of the mass Jed told me how once some

9:47

guys started fighting during a basketball game

9:49

at the park. It was the West

9:52

End versus a different neighborhood. The

9:54

outsiders left, but they were so pissed

9:56

they came back with guns before

9:59

they could do any home though the Muslim brothers

10:01

fired. Even a mammaed Meal

10:03

came out of his little shop and let loose. As

10:06

the outsiders fled, they nearly flipped

10:09

their car over, and when the cops

10:11

came by afterwards asking if everything

10:13

was all right, the Westend brothers said

10:15

yeah, they had it under control. It

10:20

was frontier justice and guns were critical.

10:23

On any given day in the park, a good number

10:25

of men had rifles hanging on straps under their

10:27

thobes. At night, they

10:29

rode around in cars or stood out on corners,

10:32

also strapped, they could hold

10:34

their own behind the trigger too. The

10:37

brothers sometimes went to the shooting range together

10:39

for target practice, and

10:42

the Mamas Meal would often join, just

10:45

like he used to in his earliest days in the movement.

10:49

There were many many guns flowing through the

10:51

West End in the late eighties and

10:53

early nineties. Rodney he

10:55

wasn't only dealing in cracking weed. He

10:57

sold guns too.

11:00

Yody who wanted guns in a lon did

11:03

like they want weed in Lona. They came

11:05

to the West End. They want a pistol.

11:08

I said, okay, what kind won't.

11:11

Rodney's gun supplier was right around the corner.

11:14

He was buying from the Muslims.

11:17

I had Muslim knock on my door in the middle of the night

11:19

with boxes. Man, No,

11:22

lie, I can't count them. I'm talking about

11:24

guns, rifles. Yeah.

11:29

In the early nineties, two brothers

11:31

from the mass Jed were charged with running guns out of

11:33

the storefront right next to a man Jimill's

11:35

corner store. They bought the guns

11:37

legally, but they were accused of selling them

11:40

like they might have done to Rodney without

11:42

keeping the right paperwork to track where they went. A

11:45

federal agent testified that a handful of guns

11:48

went to the mass Jed's security patrol,

11:50

but more than two hundred were recovered in Philadelphia,

11:53

Detroit, New Haven, and New York

11:55

City over three years.

11:57

The two accused men allegedly bought at least seventy

11:59

three thousand dollars worth of firearms, and

12:02

they probably weren't just being used for target

12:04

practice. Many were Davis

12:06

three eighties, a handgun with a reputation

12:09

as a Saturday Night special because

12:11

it's cheap and often used in crimes. At

12:14

the gun running trial, a member of the

12:16

Masjid and the security patrol testified

12:19

for the prosecution. His

12:21

name was Shahid ab duur Rahman. He

12:24

was in prison at the time for shooting and killing

12:26

a man. On the stand,

12:28

he said he bought guns from the accused men and

12:31

then sent them to New York, but

12:34

he stopped short of saying that the defendants knowingly

12:37

sold gun to criminals planning to commit crimes.

12:40

Maybe that was because on the day he testified, AmAm

12:42

Jamil showed up the picture of menace

12:46

he was wearing an all black thobe and a black

12:48

turban and black charcoal around

12:50

his eyes. If

12:53

the FBI thought this dude Shahid might implicate

12:55

the AmAm, they better think again.

13:00

Not long after the gun running case wrapped up,

13:03

Ma'am Jamil got caught up in a case himself.

13:07

He was once the leader of the Student Non

13:09

Violent Coordinating Committee and part of

13:11

the Black Power movement. Today,

13:13

h Rap Brown is known as Jamil Abdullah

13:16

a La Main and he appeared in court. He

13:18

is charged with aggravated assault and weapons

13:20

violations after allegedly shooting

13:23

a man July twenty sixth.

13:25

In nineteen ninety five, Atlanta police

13:27

responded to a shooting at West End Park of

13:29

a man named William Miles. One

13:32

bullet entered and exited his leg without doing

13:34

any permanent damage. The responding

13:36

officer said, Myles I d'ed to Maam Jamil

13:38

as the shooter. Then the

13:40

next morning, AmAm Jamil and another

13:42

brother from the mass Jed went to visit Miles

13:45

at home. When

13:47

an Atlanta police detective later interviewed Myles,

13:50

he did not identify a man Jamil as the

13:52

shooter, but a few days later that

13:54

detective and some federal agents pulled a Mam

13:56

Jamil over in his black Mercedes. They

13:59

arrested him for aggravated assault and for

14:01

carrying a forty five caliber pistol without

14:03

a license. We found the

14:05

recording of an interview a local television reporter

14:07

did with a Man Jamil a few days later after

14:10

he got out of jail on bond. He

14:12

was in his early fifties at the time. During

14:14

the interview, he's standing on the sidewalk outside

14:17

his store wearing a black thoat and a

14:19

black knitted coofee. He has a

14:21

thin beard and oval glasses.

14:23

Do you know William Miles only

14:26

from reading the paper and seeing his name?

14:29

You know this is my familiar being

14:32

familiar with him through that you never met with him?

14:34

And I went to his house. If he's the same person

14:36

who was shot?

14:38

I asked him, was

14:40

it true that he was saying that a Muslim shot him?

14:42

He said that he saw a tall

14:44

person and the

14:46

person had black on and

14:49

the person who shut him, you know, was tall

14:51

and.

14:51

Had black on.

14:52

Was it you to do?

14:53

Do?

14:54

What to go see him, to talk to shot him?

14:56

To shoot him?

14:58

That's the allegation of police of made Well

15:00

again. That's the thing that has to be determined

15:02

in court.

15:03

Man Then the reporter asked to Ma'am Jamil

15:05

if he still thinks violence is as an American

15:07

as cherry pie.

15:09

I think it's evident, and I think that more people

15:11

realize what was being

15:13

said. And I've always advocated self defense.

15:16

A loss is in the Qur'an tyranny

15:18

and oppression is worse than slaw. To fight them

15:20

wherever you may find him. So again,

15:22

that whole sense of the right to self defense

15:24

as a human is a platform we've always

15:26

stood on.

15:28

I guess then the obvious question is did

15:30

you have a forty five automatic pistol

15:32

on you as a means of self defense.

15:35

That's a part of the case again that has to be litigated

15:37

in court.

15:40

Imam Jamil didn't seem to be denying he was

15:42

involved, but William Miles,

15:44

the victim of the shooting, he later suggested

15:47

that he was actually pressured by the police to name a

15:49

Maam Jamil as the shooter. Four

15:51

national Islamic groups urge the Department of Justice

15:53

to investigate the arrest. The charges

15:56

were eventually dropped and the case went away.

16:00

So not counting the incident with the

16:02

sheriff's deputies. That's two shootings

16:04

at the park that a Maam Jamil may have been involved

16:07

in, the one after the basketball

16:09

game and the shooting of William Miles.

16:13

Nobody that we know of was seriously hurt, and

16:16

the shootings could be described as part of protecting

16:18

the community self defense

16:21

in a way. Like a Maam

16:23

Jimil told the reporter in that interview, it's

16:26

a platform he's always stood on. But

16:29

the a Maam killing all those drug dealers, or

16:32

even ordering them killed, like

16:34

the allegations we saw in the synopsis of Western

16:36

homicides, that

16:38

would be on a whole other level. I

16:42

don't think a Mam Jmil was pulling the trigger in those

16:45

murders, but he didn't know the man who

16:47

did much of the killing, if not all of it,

16:49

because he was a well respected member of the Master JD

16:51

and the security patrol. Law

16:54

enforcement knew this killer too, and

16:56

not just because they were trying to catch him.

16:59

No, they had a secret relationship

17:01

with him, one that reveals

17:04

just how far they'd go to take

17:06

down a man Jamil. In

17:20

the late eighties, when Ronnie got into the

17:22

game and started dealing, he had his

17:24

disposal in the West End to use the business

17:27

school term a network. He

17:29

grew up about a block from West End Park and

17:31

the kids he played with, many of them were

17:33

still around. That included Muslim

17:36

kids too.

17:37

Yeah. I hung with the smoked weeds

17:39

and smoked cigarettes and thrunk them.

17:42

The ones that came to mind place to shoot pool.

17:45

But they still went and prayed every Friday,

17:47

you know.

17:48

Just like Chris was just like

17:50

all religions, all.

17:51

Of them not good, all of them not bad.

17:53

He's just like the ones that hung around

17:55

me. Probably was the bad seeds. I

17:58

was a bad seed. So and

18:00

that's that's that relation.

18:02

I grew up with. How you gonna do?

18:03

People say they just killed God men?

18:05

One of us did? Why he knews since we

18:07

was kids.

18:09

Shaheed abduer Rothman was maybe the Muslim

18:11

who Rodney came to know best in the West End.

18:14

He had moved to Atlanta from New York, where

18:16

he'd lived through shattering trauma.

18:19

It was the Jamaicans that killed his

18:21

mom. He stayed in the house

18:23

for like four days with a dead body.

18:26

When he was whole, he was

18:28

really like a toxic of self. I

18:30

think he stayed in there.

18:31

He stayed in high with a dead by it like four

18:33

days and was his mom.

18:35

That's the story.

18:36

Tell people, you know what I'm saying.

18:39

Shahid's passed is pretty mysterious. Other than

18:41

that, but his childhood seemed

18:43

to have marked his destiny for darkness.

18:45

Shahid said that when he moved to Atlanta at seventeen

18:48

or eighteen, it was because he was flinging

18:50

the aftermath of some shooting. He

18:53

joined the Master and the security team, and

18:55

over time built a reputation as a gentleman,

18:58

a good Muslim, and a family man. But

19:00

he was secretly or not so secretly,

19:03

depending on whom you talk to, living a

19:05

double life, and the security team

19:07

was his cover. If

19:09

most guys on the security patrol kept the defensive

19:12

posture, standing guard in the neighborhood

19:14

or escorting families to their houses at night, Shahid

19:17

seemed to use his authority to shake down the streets,

19:20

going out sometimes with younger guys, teenagers

19:23

mostly, who went after drug dealers

19:25

like they were cops, busting into trap houses

19:27

and confiscating dope, and

19:30

that response seemed to blow the lines

19:32

between right and wrong. I

19:34

heard how these guys got rid of the drugs they

19:36

seized at first flushed them down

19:38

the toilet, but after a while they

19:41

realized they were throwing money away, And

19:43

I wonder when dealers didn't

19:45

back down what happened? Then I

19:48

got like Shahid, who seemed to have developed

19:50

a taste for blood. He thrived.

19:54

With Shahi, everybody knew

19:56

he was a dangerous person, and my

19:58

friends said, hey, whatever you do,

20:01

don't get in the call with that motherfucker, because

20:04

they know you'd come at When murt came.

20:08

In nineteen ninety, Shahied was involved

20:10

in two killings. The victims

20:12

were in that document we got the synopsis

20:14

of Western homicides. Then

20:17

about a year later, Shahied was involved

20:19

in another killing. People

20:21

began to suspect he was doing hit jobs, and

20:24

to wonder who was calling the shots. Shahid

20:27

became a leader of the patrol and became

20:30

close to a man Jamil, but

20:32

eventually he was charged with murder, and

20:35

with Shahied off the streets, the violence

20:38

in the West End seemed to taper off. Meanwhile,

20:42

after Shahid got locked up, Rodney said

20:45

he was doing well for himself. When things

20:47

are really humming. He was moving hundreds

20:49

of thousands of dollars worth of drugs on a monthly basis.

20:52

Rodney stayed in touch with Shaheed while Shahid was

20:54

in prison, sent him weed. Shahid

20:57

was his friend and Rodney, in his criminal

20:59

way at the time, was generous like that.

21:04

Around this time the FBI came

21:06

offering Shahied some help too. We

21:08

know that while Shahied was incarcerated, he

21:10

met with an agent named Bill Gant. Not

21:13

long after Shahid testified for

21:15

the prosecution in the gun running case

21:17

against two brothers from the weston mass Jed, when

21:20

a man Jamil showed up in all black then

21:24

likely in exchange for Shahid's cooperation, Gant

21:28

the agent put in a word with the Georgia

21:30

Parole Board and by nineteen

21:33

ninety five, Shahied was back on

21:35

the street and back in the

21:37

mass Jed. He had

21:39

done approximately four years for killing

21:42

and this is when folks on the outside started wondering

21:45

what the fuck is going on here. When

21:47

Shahid got out, Rodney was surprised

21:50

he didn't hear from him right away. I'm

21:52

a man, I'm mother, I'm the man. He

21:56

know that, he know he

21:58

didn't her.

21:58

I'm taking care of his motherfuck in prison. I'm

22:01

sending weed to prison for

22:04

free. Never

22:06

ask for a penny. So

22:08

why when you come speak to me? Why?

22:15

And Ronnie didn't want to worry about Shahied walking

22:17

up behind him on the street with a pistol or a shotgun.

22:21

Rodney was starting to think Shahied was a rat

22:23

his words, not mine. So after

22:25

three months of waiting, Rodney got

22:28

his address and stopped by.

22:30

I knocked on the door.

22:30

He looked at him.

22:31

I fucking seeing it with me, opened the door.

22:33

I said, what's up, man? How

22:36

long you been out?

22:37

You know?

22:37

He was like, I've been a few coming out. Come

22:39

on in. Rodney asked Shahied

22:41

straight up. How'd you get out of

22:43

jail? Shahid told

22:45

Rodney that the brothers in the mast and they

22:47

wanted him back in the neighborhood. They

22:50

said, look, why don't you testify

22:52

against one of the accused in this gun running case

22:54

so that you can get your time cut. Just

22:56

don't implicate the big man, meaning

22:59

a man Jimmy Rodney

23:01

believed Shahied. But

23:04

here's what's weird about that story from

23:07

my perspective. Anyway, the

23:09

brothers who Shahid testified against were members

23:11

of the mass Jed since the earliest days founding

23:14

members. Really, why let

23:16

them take the fall so that Shahed, a

23:19

much more dangerous man by all accounts,

23:21

could come home. Why would the

23:23

AmAm give that? The Okay

23:25

people told me that Ammam Jamil would not block

23:27

anyone from practicing their religion, that AmAm

23:30

Jamil was close with everyone, including

23:32

Shahed, a spiritual adviser,

23:34

always guiding people back to Islam. But

23:37

that got messy. Soon

23:39

after Shahid got out of prison in March of

23:41

nineteen ninety five, he killed a man

23:44

in April. There was another body later

23:47

that year two more. Shahid

23:49

was linked to at least eight killings just in the

23:51

West End before the end of nineteen ninety five.

23:54

Shahed, Rodney said, would

23:57

brag about what he was doing.

24:00

He's a serious killer.

24:01

I'm telling you he got the kill.

24:03

He gonna start some beef and it ain't gonna

24:05

be he gonna make up or reading to kill the

24:07

mother fuck.

24:10

You might remember sister Jamila Jahad from

24:12

the first episode of the podcast. She

24:15

converted to Islam, took the Shahada

24:17

from my Mam Jamil, and raised her family

24:19

in the West End. Sister Jamila

24:21

ran a construction company and she was having

24:23

problems with an employee or a contractor

24:26

someone she was working with. Anyway,

24:28

one day, Shahi came up to hurt

24:30

the message.

24:32

He said to me, you

24:34

won't need to take care of them, you know, for

24:36

not not doing something, to paying you or something

24:39

like that.

24:39

I said, no, what you're talking about?

24:42

But do you take care of how?

24:43

You know?

24:44

But I had no idea.

24:48

Who you know, who he had become.

24:49

That's how he approached you.

24:51

Yeah, but he was a part you know, his

24:53

friend were working for me?

24:56

And now do you know what? You know what he meant when he said

24:58

that.

24:58

Yeah, I'm thinking.

25:01

Murder in a minute, you know, I think

25:04

that's what he was thinking too.

25:06

And I said, no, what's you talking about? What

25:09

your clients on, what you're doing.

25:14

It was so casual how Shahid asked her if

25:16

he should take somebody out. There's

25:18

no doubt in my mind that wasn't the first time that he

25:21

asked that question to a remember of the mass did.

25:23

And there's little doubt in my mind that after all the years

25:25

he spent in the community, that at least a few

25:27

people said yes. Why

25:30

else would god fearing, family loving folks

25:32

keep a guy like him around if not for

25:34

skeletons, literally skeletons,

25:37

what's worse And I'm sorry

25:39

to drop this bombshell on you. Shahik

25:42

was grooming the more troubled boys in the community

25:44

to become killers, letting them

25:46

touch his guns at first, then taking them out

25:48

shooting, and then out on hits. I

25:51

talked to one of these guys. It took him

25:53

decades to get his life on track. For

25:55

the life of me, I can't understand how a person like

25:57

Shaheed could fly under the radar in such a small commute

26:00

unity. AmAm

26:03

Jamil would ultimately pay a price because

26:06

after Shahid got out of prison and returned to

26:08

the community, he was on the federal payroll

26:11

as an FBI and foreman. I

26:13

don't know how anyone could be surprised by that.

26:16

Everyone knew Shahid had already cooperated

26:18

once, but he was secretly helping

26:20

the FED to build another case. In

26:30

the nineties, long before September

26:32

eleventh, the FBI was targeting

26:35

alleged Muslim extremists.

26:38

There was a surveillance operation named Vulgar

26:40

Betrayal. We

26:43

know from the documents obtained by Karema Alamin,

26:45

a Mam Jamil's wife, that the

26:47

FBI suspected A Maam Jamil was some kind of

26:50

terrorists or maybe supporting

26:52

Islamic terrorists abroad. One

26:55

report describes as Maam Jamil as a leader of a

26:57

network of master JITs with international

27:00

connections that are basically fronts

27:02

for criminal activity. It's

27:04

true that AmAm Jamil had some relationships

27:06

with Muslims abroad, but was

27:08

he a terrorist. We've seen zero

27:11

evidence of that. Meanwhile,

27:15

people in the West End were still losing their lives,

27:18

people right there in a Maam Jamil's neighborhood.

27:21

From what we can see in the documents, the

27:23

FBI wasn't so concerned about that. Shahidz

27:30

Handler was the FBI agent Bill

27:32

Gant, who appeared to surveil

27:34

A Maam Jamil in the mass Jed for most of the nineties.

27:38

We don't know much about Gan except

27:40

that he started to work for the FBI in the late eighties

27:43

and he allegedly got into it once with one of his supervisors

27:46

for pursuing a Mam Jamil even after

27:48

he'd been ordered to stop while

27:51

he was under oath. Gant set

27:53

his role in the investigation of a man Jamil and the

27:55

mass jed ended at the beginning of ninety five,

27:58

but months later, in the summer of ninety

28:00

five, he helped arrest of Maam Jamil

28:03

after he was accused of shooting that man in West End

28:05

Park William Miles, and

28:07

then a year later in ninety

28:10

six. This was after Shahied was connected

28:12

to at least three killings over the previous year

28:14

and a half. Gant said he had

28:16

contact with Shahied once a week, and

28:19

he had seen him in person two weeks earlier.

28:22

Gant was meeting with a killer on the regular. Atlanta

28:26

police were looking into all the bodies piling up

28:28

in the West End, and Shahid seemed

28:30

to be telling the cops that people other than himself

28:33

were involved, possibly even

28:35

saying that a Maam Jamil was calling the shots. By

28:40

around ninety six, local police knew

28:42

that Shahied was at least connected to multiple killings.

28:45

A detective in the Atlanta Police Department was investigating,

28:48

and he brought in Gant for an interview. The

28:51

detective wrote up a summary afterward. He

28:54

said that Gant appeared nervous. He did

28:56

not volunteer information unless specifically

28:58

asked in investigand

29:00

how much he was paying Shahied, but Gan

29:03

wouldn't say. When Gan asked

29:05

which murders were linked to Shahied, the detective

29:07

said, all the homicides

29:09

in the West End area. Here's

29:12

Rodney Brown again.

29:17

L beyond agent. The agent

29:20

knew, maybe found out

29:22

later on, but he had to find out that boy was

29:24

killing people.

29:25

He had to.

29:26

If you investigating Jamil, and I mean the West

29:29

End and all these boys coming up dead from

29:31

the West End, what the fuck while we're

29:33

investigate Now we say,

29:36

okay, this guy got killed. This guy, Now

29:38

the next question who killed

29:40

him? So that would have led him back

29:42

to Shahid, Right, come

29:45

on, man, that is just no, none of it

29:47

really makes sense.

29:48

What if Shahied's telling them that Jamil is the one

29:50

who's doing it, do you think they would believe.

29:52

That that Jamil

29:54

is committing to.

29:55

Miss Jamila is ordering it. And so this

29:57

is you talk about how Shahid's playing

29:59

everybody. Maybe he was playing them too, and

30:02

he was.

30:03

That's a good fact. He deathinitely was

30:05

telling him that. But still of

30:08

them or how many of us would

30:10

they want.

30:11

To sacrifice to bust it?

30:14

It ain't like they're selling bricks, man, We're

30:16

dealing with people's bodies. They

30:18

want a drug deal?

30:21

How many of us, Rodney asked, would

30:23

they be willing to sacrifice to bust

30:25

a man? Jamil to

30:28

me, all this clearly says

30:31

some human lives were dispensable in whatever

30:33

grand calculation the FEDS were making. Black

30:36

lives troubled lives.

30:40

At the time of the shootout involving the Fulton County

30:42

Sheriff's deputies in March of two thousand, Shahid

30:45

was in prison on a parole violation. After

30:48

he got out, he kept killing. In

30:54

March of two thousand and two, he shot

30:56

someone in the back of the head and killed them. Then

30:59

he killed another person later that year and

31:01

the next year he was involved in at least

31:03

two more murders. In

31:06

two thousand and four, narcotics

31:08

detectives targeting a drug house found Shahed

31:10

with guns and drugs. They arrested

31:12

him with him off the streets.

31:15

Another man from the West End told law enforcement about

31:17

at least one murder he knew Shahid was responsible

31:19

for. An Atlanta police detective

31:21

went to interview Shahed, and

31:24

Shahid started confessing. By

31:26

our count he was involved in killing

31:28

at least eleven people, but

31:30

he allegedly killed many more. There

31:33

was a story about his confession in Atlanta's biggest

31:36

newspaper, the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

31:39

It had the following line, Police

31:42

believed the death toll may be as high as fifty

31:45

fifty bodies. Rodney

31:47

thinks the number is even higher. Shahid

31:51

is now serving a life sentence in prison. Finally,

31:55

he tried to appeal his conviction, arguing

31:57

that the recorded confession shouldn't be admissible,

32:00

but the Georgia Supreme Court rejected his appeal.

32:03

We couldn't get an interview with Shahied, but

32:05

we got this recording that someone made of him.

32:09

When you look at that article, like I don't have

32:11

to deal with that article a lot of times.

32:12

You know, I'm saying he's in here.

32:14

You got some niggas want to say I'm a rat. You know

32:16

that. Ain't that Ain't that ain't delayed when you want

32:18

to be having any prison, know what I mean.

32:20

In the recording, Shahid doesn't deny

32:22

that he killed anyone. He suggests

32:24

that he confessed to make a point, basically

32:27

to brag about how many murders he committed. Shahid

32:31

was mad at the man who snitched on him to get a deal.

32:33

I'm gonna keep awading with you, I said.

32:34

I look, so y'all, let y'all

32:37

don't even lock these niggas up about one murder.

32:39

I tell you what I think

32:42

about twenty murders? Do you let the niggas out

32:44

for one body?

32:47

That?

32:47

Basically, Shahid said, if

32:50

you left this other guy off because he gave you information

32:52

on one murder, I'll show you I

32:55

can give you information on way more than just

32:57

one murder.

32:58

When he comes to the west hand, man, I look at it like

33:01

split up with your man.

33:02

It's like, you know, ain't

33:05

nobody perfect?

33:05

Bro?

33:06

You don't We all got skeletons

33:08

When.

33:09

It comes to the west end, Shahid said,

33:12

we all got skeletons. This

33:16

one guy played a huge part in who a mam Jamil

33:18

came to be. In the eyes of local and federal law enforcement

33:22

built him up into parts mobster and terrorists.

33:25

It's impossible for me to separate fact from fiction

33:27

here or again to really

33:29

know why mam Jamil kept a guy like Shaheed around.

33:33

But shouldn't there have been limits to a man Jamil's

33:35

policy of keeping the mass shed open for anyone

33:37

to practice is slam Limit's

33:39

far short of turning a blind eye to a serial

33:41

killer. From where

33:43

I stand, keeping Shahid around

33:45

was either a severe miscalculation on the Mam Jamil's

33:48

part, or he was

33:50

okay with the violence, maybe even

33:52

endorsed it. I

33:55

do know that a Mam Jamil traded on fear.

33:58

Many people in the West End were scared of him.

34:00

That's part of the way he brought the neighborhood under control.

34:03

How he cleaned it up one

34:09

of the accusations in the

34:11

synopsis of Western homicides I

34:14

haven't told you about yet. It's

34:16

a case that could be helpful in determining where

34:18

Shahid's stories end and

34:20

the Maam Jamil's own actions begin. The

34:24

very first victim listed in the dossier was a

34:26

man whose name was Clive Hunter, though

34:29

he also went by a Muslim name. Clive

34:32

served prison time with the Maam Jamil in New York.

34:35

By some accounts, he taught a man Jamil slam

34:37

after he converted, and a Maam

34:39

Jamil pledged loyalty to him,

34:42

and Mam Jamil left prison first moved

34:45

to Atlanta and established the Weston MASSTJD.

34:49

When Clive got out later, he figured

34:51

that Maschd was his to take over since

34:53

a Maam Jamil had pledged loyalty. Long

34:56

story short, A rivalry developed

34:58

that ended in nineteen eighty when Clive

35:01

was shot to death by assailants who were never

35:03

identified. Some

35:05

folks in the community thought of Maam Jimiale was behind

35:07

it, and this was before Shahid

35:09

ever got to town. It

35:12

places a body at the

35:14

foundation of everything

35:16

that came afterward. These

35:25

are the names of the people in the West End who lost their

35:27

lives, the ones we know about

35:30

Kennedy Keller, Clive

35:33

Hunter, James Farrell,

35:37

Tommy Jones, Quantavius

35:40

Kelly, Carlon Wilson,

35:43

Jamie Lee, James, Sammy

35:46

Lee Sawyer, Roderick

35:48

Fulton, Damon

35:50

Brown, Clarence

35:53

Poon, Andre

35:55

Lane, Jacqueline

35:57

Johnson, Marlins,

36:01

Antonio Wyatt, James,

36:04

Gary Jones, Cornelius,

36:07

James Nelson, Perry

36:09

Miller, Tommy

36:12

Warren, Corey

36:14

Dunn, Corey

36:16

Whitehead, Shannon

36:18

Frasier, and Calvin

36:21

Battle. Many

36:26

people Rodney knew from the West End were killed

36:28

over about a decade, most

36:31

of them by Shahid ab du Rahman, a

36:33

man who was paid by the federal government. Remember,

36:36

someone in the Atlanta Police Department said Shahid

36:39

may have killed as many as fifty people. That

36:42

would rank him along the top three most prolific

36:44

known serial killers in modern American history.

36:49

Rodney has become obsessed with all these cases.

36:52

He wrote a book from the West End

36:54

to Loyal Pakistan. He called it about

36:56

Muslims moving into the neighborhood, and

36:59

he's about to publish the sequel, looking more

37:01

closely at Shahida. He's working

37:03

on a documentary too. But the

37:05

murder that Rodney seems to think about the most is the

37:07

one of his partner, Lee Sawyer.

37:12

Me and Lee was like brothers, the

37:14

best of brothers.

37:16

Yeah, we was.

37:17

Lee was a wild guy. He was a guy. H

37:21

He's the hardest guy. He wasn't he wasn't afraid of

37:23

anything, and that's kind of dangerous,

37:25

you know. But he was the coolest person,

37:28

give you anything, real good

37:30

host, a ladies

37:32

man, you know,

37:35

you get him mad. He was just he he

37:38

could beat you to death with his hand. He

37:41

was that type of guy. But he

37:43

was everybody. If you ask anybody else,

37:45

they'll say he was a night always smile.

37:48

That's how I say. He was always big

37:50

smile.

37:52

Lee's mom visits Rodney sometimes.

37:55

And with her she

37:57

she ain't never gonna recover from it.

38:00

There are mothers and fathers and children

38:03

connected to all the people killed in the West End, and

38:06

Rodney thinks about them.

38:07

People that was in charge. They need

38:09

an answer to these people. The victim

38:12

they need answer to. It's a victim impact behind

38:14

this. They need some answers man,

38:16

because it is too much. It's

38:19

just it's so much, and you know, I'm just stretching

38:22

the surface on this man.

38:24

Maybe most of all, Rodney

38:26

wants more attention on the whole mess.

38:29

That ain't news. I

38:33

think it's ridiculous. I I

38:35

just look at it like every day, like if

38:37

this ain't world news, what

38:40

is what we're watching now?

38:42

You know, we

38:45

tried our best to put Rodney's questions in

38:47

our questions to the people in charge. I'll

38:50

start at the bottom. The Atlanta

38:53

detective who investigated some of the killings

38:55

in the mid nineties, he did an agree

38:57

to an interview. Really,

39:00

it seems like he did his best to make something happen

39:02

with these cases. He interviewed the FBI

39:04

agent Agan, and he took the evidence

39:07

he had to prosecutors.

39:09

I did have presented to me a collection

39:12

of investigations into these deaths.

39:14

When Robert McBurney, the prosecutor,

39:17

was with the Fulton County DA, he

39:19

reviewed some materials about the killing of drug dealers

39:21

in the West End. It was years

39:23

before he was assigned to a man Jamial's murder trial.

39:27

Some leads and theories

39:29

as to how they might be connected and who might

39:32

connect them, but it never got

39:34

to the level where I or anyone

39:36

I talked with, was comfortable saying, that's

39:39

a case we could bring get past

39:41

a grand jury.

39:42

That's less difficult.

39:43

But ultimately, were we confident

39:45

that we could prove something beyond a reasonable

39:48

doubt. If you don't have that confidence, you

39:50

really shouldn't then say, great, we're going to indict

39:52

you. Anyway, there was nothing.

39:54

There was zero on the forensic side. But

39:57

there were people who

39:59

said things, but not necessarily people who would

40:01

come to court to say these things.

40:04

Maybe Shahid was good at killing people and not

40:06

getting caught. That seems

40:08

legit, And it's not mcburnie's

40:11

job or the job of other prosecutors

40:13

to gather evidence for a case. Still

40:17

McBurnie or other prosecutors

40:19

the DA, maybe they could have pushed

40:21

for more attention within law enforcement on these murders.

40:24

We know there were meetings, but we don't

40:26

see any evidence of an elevated level of

40:28

concern like you might expect for a potential

40:31

serial killer on the loose. On

40:34

the federal side of things, let's

40:37

consider the biggest potential allegation against

40:39

AmAm Jamil during the nineties, that

40:41

he was an the Islamic terrorist. Again,

40:44

to be clear here, we know that AmAm Jamil

40:47

has some connections with Muslim leaders abroad, but

40:49

we have seen no evidence of any terrorist

40:51

activity. But for argument's

40:53

sake, let's say the FBI knew something

40:56

that we don't know. Maybe that would

40:58

in their minds justifies I'm

41:00

going to say radical steps by the federal

41:03

government, like using a murderer as an

41:05

informant. Maybe they would consider

41:07

it worth it to allow some harm in order to prevent

41:09

even greater harm, like a big terrorist

41:11

attack or something. But

41:14

when I asked Bernie about this, who

41:16

by the way, was hired as a federal prosecutor after

41:18

AmAm Dmil's trial, he

41:20

said, building a case based on information from a guy

41:23

like Shaheed u dur Rahman, it

41:25

would have been shoddy police work.

41:28

This was an area and a

41:30

climate and a community where

41:33

it advanced people's interests

41:35

to say they were involved or they weren't. They did

41:37

these things and they didn't. But the

41:39

scenario you described would be yet

41:41

another reason why I think it

41:44

didn't make sense to if

41:46

that's going to be your source of information. Is like one

41:48

of these mob cases where yeah, I killed twenty people,

41:50

but let me tell you who the real bad guy is. Well,

41:53

what do you mean the fact.

41:55

That you pulled the trigger?

41:56

Who where's your credibility? Even if

41:58

your answer is well, but did it on the

42:00

direction of so and so, I

42:04

do know that federal agents

42:07

would not be permitted to continue

42:09

to use a source if

42:11

that source engaged in unauthorized

42:14

activity, and certainly killing someone would

42:16

be unauthorized. And certainly, had

42:18

there been any evidence that he did these things,

42:20

not only would he be pursued

42:22

and prosecuted, but there would have been

42:25

no more relationship between him

42:27

and his handlers.

42:29

Right. But in either case, if he

42:31

did these things while on informant, that would be

42:33

a violation of some sort.

42:36

Oh, I'd agree, it's a violation of the law.

42:38

He's a murderer, and.

42:42

I am confident that if a

42:44

federal handler had any

42:47

inkling that abdur Rockman

42:49

was doing anything along the lines of what

42:52

you're describing and what he's describing, that

42:54

would have been the end of it for Abdurachman. He'd

42:56

be off the streets and in custody.

43:00

So baced on mcburnie's criteria

43:03

here, I think it's fair to say the

43:05

FBI messed up, maybe

43:07

even broke its own rules for the

43:09

law in the years after

43:12

Gant helped Shahid get out of prison, he

43:14

should have known that Shahied was killing people. Sure,

43:18

maybe it was more of a problem for Atlanta police

43:20

to handle. It was their jurisdiction. Maybe

43:23

this is an issue of failed oversight in communication,

43:26

but we know Gant was at least still close to an investigation

43:29

of a man, Jamil. How could

43:31

all these killings in the same neighborhood not come up?

43:38

Hi looking for a mister Gant. Yeah,

43:41

my name is Mostly's secret. I'm here with Johnny

43:44

Coffin. We're producers working on a podcast

43:47

about Jamille Alami.

43:52

Okay, are

43:55

you familiar with him?

44:01

All we got from Gant through the door of his apartment

44:03

was a not interested and a thank

44:05

you. We left him a letter,

44:07

but we never heard back. We

44:09

also emailed the FBI a list of questions.

44:12

Nothing back from them either. Despite

44:14

all the death and destruction, the

44:17

FBI still didn't make a case against a man Jamil,

44:20

but the bureau persisted in the West End even

44:22

after Shahid was locked up in the late nineties.

44:25

They had other informants there and they

44:27

were surveilling the mass right up to the time of

44:29

the shootout, and so

44:31

it seems possible on the night of March sixteen to

44:33

two thousand, someone with the FBI,

44:36

maybe an informant, maybe an agent,

44:39

would end up with blood on their hands too.

44:50

He was very irritable

44:53

and upset about what was going

44:55

on, and I had never

44:57

seen him like that before

45:03

that on the next and final

45:05

episode of Radical. Radical

45:18

is a production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot

45:20

TV, and iHeart Podcasts. Radical

45:23

was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and

45:25

me Mossey's Secret Johnny

45:28

Kaufman is our senior producer. Sheba

45:30

Joseph is our associate producer. Editing

45:33

by Eric Benson. Johnny Kaufman, Emily

45:35

Martinez and Matt Cher. Fact

45:38

checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kayln Lynch

45:41

and Layla Dos. Original music

45:43

by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray

45:45

of Organized Noise. Sound design

45:47

and mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording

45:49

by Ewan Le trem Ewen and Sheba Joseph.

45:53

Campside Media's operations team is

45:55

Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Alijah

45:58

Papes, Destiny Dingle, and Sabina

46:00

Mera. The executive

46:02

producers at Campside Media are Josh

46:04

Dean Vanessa, Gregoriatis,

46:07

Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For

46:10

Tenderfoot TV, executive producers

46:12

are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay. The

46:15

executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are

46:17

Matt Frederick and Alex Williams, with

46:20

additional support from Trevor Young,