Malcolm X Killer Is Freed on Parole

The only man ever to admit shooting Malcolm X has been freed on parole, 45 years after he helped assassinate the civil rights leader in New York City.
    
State Department of Correctional Services spokeswoman Linda Foglia says Thomas Hagan was freed Tuesday.  He had previously been turned down for parole 16 times.
     
The 69-year-old Hagan was the last man still serving time in the 1965 killing, and had been on work release for more than two decades and spends two days a week in jail. He and two others were convicted of murder, but Hagan has said the others were not involved. They maintained their innocence and were paroled in the 1980s.
    
Hagan was a militant member of the Nation of Islam on Feb. 21, 1965, when Malcolm X was shot while giving a speech at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. Mr. Hagan, then known as Talmadge X. Hayer, was captured by the crowd and shot at and beaten before being rescued and arrested by police.

Hagan, who earned a master's degree in prison, apparently spends free time when not in jail with his family in Sunset Park and working in a fast food restaurant, the New York Post reported in 2008.