The only man to admit to assassinating Malcolm X walked free yesterday after serving 44 years.
Thomas Hagan, 69, was paroled from the minimum-security Lincoln Correctional Facility at West 110th Street near Malcolm X Boulevard where he spent two days a week as part of a work release program.
Since 1992 he spent five days a week working at a job and sleeping at a state approved residence with his wife in Brooklyn, according to reports.
He was one of three men convicted of gunning down the black civil rights leader.
“I have deep regrets about my participation in that,” Hagan told a parole board last month. He had been denied full parole at least 14 times before.
Two other men, who had denied involvement, were paroled in the 1980s.
On Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X, who was in a bitter split with the Nation of Islam, had just begun a speech to a crowd of 400 in the Audubon Ballroom on Broadway and West 165th Street when a man yelled that someone had stuck their hand in his pocket.
With the crowd distracted, Hagan, a Nation of Islam member, stepped forward and shot Malcolm X in the chest with a shotgun. Two others fired at him with handguns. He was killed in front of his wife, Betty Shabazz, and four children.
