opened their Hotel Theresa headquarters and sat in the room and would not make any
statements to reporters.
The New York Daily News came onto the newsstands with its cover page devoted to "Malcolm
X Murdered" over the photograph of him being borne away on the stretcher, and a sub-caption,
"Gunned Down at Rally." In Long Island, where she had been taken just after her father's murder,
six-year-old At-tallah carefully wrote a letter to him, "Dear Daddy, I love you so. O dear, O dear, I
wish you wasn't dead."
The body-still listed as "John Doe" because it had not yet been formally identified-had been
moved late Sunday to the New York City Medical Examiner's office at 520 First Avenue. The
autopsy confirmed that shotgun pellet wounds in the heart had killed Malcolm X. Chief Medical
Examiner Dr. Milton Helpern said that death followed the first sawed-off shotgun blast which
caused thirteen wounds in the heart and chest, and he said that .38 and .45 caliber bullet wounds
in the thighs and legs evidenced that Malcolm X had been shot at after he had fallen. Monday
morning the official identification was made at the Medical Examiner's office by Sister Betty, who
was accompanied by Percy Sutton, Malcolm X's Boston half-sister Mrs. Ella Collins, and Joseph
E. Hall, General Manager of the large Unity Funeral Home in Harlem. Leaving the Medical
Examiner's office at about noon to go and complete funeral arrangements, Sister Betty told
reporters, "No one believed what he said. They never took him seriously, even after the bombing
of our home they said he did it himself!"
At the Unity Funeral Home on the east side of Eighth Avenue between 126th and 127th Streets,
Sister Betty chose a six-foot-nine-inch bronze casket lined with egg-shell velvet. At her request,
the funeral would be delayed until the following Saturday, five days away. The funeral home's
manager Hall announced to the press that the body would be dressed in a business suit, and it
would be put on view under a glass shield from Tuesday through Friday, then the Saturday
services would be at a Harlem church.
Soon posted on the funeral home's directory was "El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz." In Brooklyn,
orthodox Moslem Sheik Al-Hajh Daoud Ahmed Faisal of the Islamic Mission of America said that
the delayed funeral services violated a Moslem practice that the sun should not set twice on a
believer's body, that the Koran prescribed burial inside twenty-four hours if possible, and Moslems
believed that when a body grows cold the soul leaves it and when the body is put into the earth it
comes alive again.In Chicago, where policemen were watching all bus depots, railways,
terminals, O'Hare Airport and highway entrances, Elijah Muhammad, under heavy guard in his
three-story mansion, said, "Malcolm died according to his preaching. He seems to have taken
weapons as his god. Therefore, we couldn't tolerate a man like that. He preached war. We preach
peace. We are permitted to fight if we are attacked-that's the Scripture, the Koran, and the Bible,
too. But we will never be the aggressor. I don't have the right to be frightened, because I was
chosen by Allah. If Allah gives me up to the hands of the wicked, I am satisfied. My life is in the
hands of Allah." The grounds outside the mansion were patrolled by both Chicago police and Fruit
of Islam bodyguards. More of both patrolled before the University of Islam high school, and the
offices of the newspaper Muhammad Speaks.
Malcolm X's lawyer, Assemblyman Percy Sutton, said that the police now had the names of those
whom Malcolm X had said planned to kill him. All over Harlem, reporters were interviewing
people, and microphones were being put before the mouths of the man-in-the-street. At police
precinct station houses, people being questioned were leaving by side entrances. Said Assistant
Chief Inspector Joseph Coyle, in charge of Manhattan North detectives, ".... a well-planned
conspiracy. We're doing a screening process of the four hundred people who were in the hall at
the time." Fifty detectives were on the case, he said, and he had been in touch with police in other
cities.