Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Season Six: Holiday Episode 12 (2025)
26 Plays35 minutes ago
This podcast was made possible by www.labrottiecreations.com Check out their merchandise and specifically their fun pop pet art custom pieces made from photos of your very own pets. Use the promo code CRIMEXS for 20% off a fun, brightly colored, happy piece of art of your own pet at their site.
Music in this episode was licensed for True Crime XS. Our theme song is No Scars from slip.fm
You can reach us at our website truecrimexs.com and you can leave us a voice message at 252-365-5593. Find us most anywhere with @truecrimexs
Thanks for listening. Please like and subscribe if you want to hear more and you can come over to patreon.com/truecrimexs and check out what we’ve got going on there if you’d like to donate to fund future True Crime XS road trip investigations and FOIA requests. We also have some merchandise up at Teepublic http://tee.pub/lic/mZUXW1MOYxM
Sources:
Various News Sources Mentioned by Name
Ad Information:
New Era Caps: https://zen.ai/dWeCYLHxxANOaZ6NcKocEw
Liquid IV: Link: https://zen.ai/45lYmDnWl1Z3cR66LBX5mA
Zencastr: Link: https://zen.ai/SFkD99OGWGNz_plc2c_Yaw
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Content Warning
00:00:00
Speaker
The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Podcast Introduction and 1990s Theme
00:00:50
Speaker
This is True Crime XS.
00:00:58
Speaker
So with these holiday episodes, some of them get really long. Some of them are not as long. I do try to mix up the timeframes. um I just noticed like this morning while i was sitting, kind of going through all of this, that quite a bit of what I put together Happens in the ninety s And I don't really know why I did that or how I did that.
00:01:22
Speaker
But I found that interesting. ah The next couple of episodes, we're going to vary from that a little bit. But like, yeah, there's still some 90s episodes in here. This one's kind of the holiday time of year. And it's it's interesting because with this one, used the New York Times as a source.
00:01:41
Speaker
And then when I sat down and like went back through everything, um trying to like put the episode in order in terms of what I had been sourcing the...
00:01:53
Speaker
articles and stuff from, like it put everything behind a paywall. It had never done that to me with the ah archive, but I guess it is what it is. um i still had most of them like pulled to the side.
Freddy's Fashion Mart and Historical Context
00:02:06
Speaker
So ah that's helpful.
00:02:10
Speaker
This is an odd one though. Had you ever heard of First of all, had you heard of this location? Like the the names here, like Freddy's Fashion Mart? No, I hadn't heard of Freddy's Fashion Mart.
00:02:24
Speaker
I believe i probably i was aware of this maybe in the news when it around when it happened. Gotcha. But I didn't know much about it, and I didn't take, like it would have been a passing thing, like just yeah on the news or whatever. I didn't know as much as I know about it now.
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, so a couple things are going on in this story. To give you like some backstory, I guess, we have a black Pentecostal church that is on 125th Street across from the Apollo Theater.
00:03:04
Speaker
And this church is the United House of Prayer, which it sort of has like an interesting history itself. A lot of interesting stories about the bishops that have sort of been in charge of this church over the years.
00:03:21
Speaker
If you... like really want to go down a rabbit hole for this one. In my opinion, like the house of prayer itself, the United house of prayer is the rabbit hole to go down. They're not like super true crime oriented. They're just interesting stories. I will say um,
00:03:38
Speaker
There was a point in time where the United House in Prayer down in North Carolina was linked to a super spreader event during COVID.
COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories and United House of Prayer
00:03:48
Speaker
And it had like a huge number of people that were involved.
00:03:53
Speaker
And it spread it to multiple states. And there was a conspiracy theory, like on social media, that like some of the variants popping up in October, November, December of 2020. So like right in the peak of the pandemic.
00:04:10
Speaker
were tied to this United House of Prayer holy convocation event. And the allegations in the conspiracy theory were that's how some of the variants that weren't found in some states before were suddenly found in like multiple states all at one time. And then the way the conspiracy built online, and I say conspiracy because I think it's largely unfounded,
00:04:37
Speaker
The idea was all these people that went to church, like around Halloween, it's before Halloween, then went and like got other people sick who went to Thanksgiving and got other people sick who then went to Christmas and got other people sick.
00:04:54
Speaker
Well, I don't know that that's necessary. I mean, I understand the concept there. And there were a lot of situations where that happened on smaller scales, right? Right. Where people were sprouting. I mean, that was the whole thing about the pandemic, right?
00:05:08
Speaker
Right. It was going from here to there and everywhere and everybody ending up with the same thing. Yeah. You know, it's funny. um One of the other episodes we talked about the Honolulu, the Sand Island. Yeah. I was like, it's unfortunate we didn't have something like that in place for COVID.
00:05:27
Speaker
Because that's, I mean, really what happened was it just spread. i heard a little bit about what you're talking about with the conspiracy. I don't know if it's true. It doesn't matter, right? Yeah. At this point. Right. So so this this church has been around since 1919. According to the most recent like church information I could find, they have 137 houses and places, a few of them are called places, of worship in 29 states.
00:05:57
Speaker
And it's believed they have currently more than 50,000 members. The national headquarters is in Washington, D.C. on M Street. ah They run soul food restaurants that serve like the local communities. They hold various types of marching parades.
00:06:17
Speaker
They are noted for having street baptisms. ah Sometimes those are performed by fire hose and fire hydrant. And they're also known for their shout bands, which is a kind of fast paced gospel music that usually has like a lot of dancing going on with it.
00:06:35
Speaker
um It's sort of what people pick. when they choose to depict most religion related to black Americans in television shows and movies for some reason, it does not expand across like a lot of denominations, but that's what, you know, that's what we see because of,
00:06:55
Speaker
how people choose to depict different things, kind of like with the snake handler being the depictions of churches in the South for a long time. um it's interesting that that becomes like sort of a cornerstone of all of this.
Roland James Smith Jr. and Harlem Tensions
00:07:08
Speaker
Uh, and for his part, the gentleman that's involved in this, his name is Roland James Smith Jr. Somehow he ends up with ah murderpedia page, but,
00:07:23
Speaker
I would say that's a little more complex. So according to today's story, Friday, December the 8th at around 10, 10, 15 a.m., Roland James Smith Jr., who's 51 years old, and he's been a resident of Harlem, New York, at least for 30 years. He also has a criminal record that goes back 30 years.
00:07:48
Speaker
He walks into a little place called Freddy's Fashion Mark. it's ah It's on West 125th Street at 272. He pulls out a gun.
00:07:58
Speaker
He orders all of the black customers to get out. And he pours paint thinner on several bins of clothing. So the story that breaks out sort of after the fact is that Roland James Smith Jr. is this overzealous black activist. And that's what the New York Times is going to
Protests and Al Sharpton's Role
00:08:24
Speaker
tell you. That's what the San Francisco Chronicle is going to tell you.
00:08:29
Speaker
What's interesting about Freddie's Fashion Mart is that it's across the street from Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.
00:08:38
Speaker
The story was that the clothing store owner, Freddy's Fashion Mart, they were going to be planning an expansion.
00:08:50
Speaker
And they were going to evict this little store called the Record Shack. So the Record Shack was owned by a South African named Sekulu Shange.
00:09:05
Speaker
Now, While that's the story that they run with back in the 90s, the truth was the United House of Prayer owned this retail property.
00:09:22
Speaker
And Freddy's Fashion Mart was owned by Fred Harari. who was a jewish tenant but he's a jewish tenantt of the black pentecostal church fred Harari becomes the focus of protests and al Sharpton gets involved.
00:09:43
Speaker
Do you know who Al Sharpton is? Of course. So for those of you who may not be completely familiar with him, Al Sharpton's a media personality. He starts out as a civil rights and social justice warrior.
00:09:56
Speaker
He used to be a Baptist minister. He's been a radio talk show host. He is the founder of the National Action Network, which is a civil rights organization. he has shown up on tickets to run for president.
00:10:11
Speaker
He has been accused over the years of making anti-Semitic and racially insensitive remarks. He has also been accused of inciting incidents of violence.
Tawana Brawley Case and Racial Tensions
00:10:23
Speaker
In 1987, he was highly active in he was highly active In publicizing the story of Tawana Visenia Brawley, who is a black woman from New York, she gained notoriety in November of 1987 when she was 15 years old when she accused four white men of kidnapping and raping her over a four-day period.
00:10:49
Speaker
Have you heard this story before? yes Okay. So... the The way this all goes down is she goes missing out of Wappingers Falls up in New York.
00:11:01
Speaker
And this is November 28th, 1987. So this is like the holiday times. This is Thanksgiving, Christmas times. She's found after having been missing for four days. She has racial slurs written all over her body. She is covered in feces.
00:11:17
Speaker
The feces come from this dog, who's owned by a resident of the building where she'd been found. She tells this story, and the story gets national attention because of, like, sort of the shocking sensationalism of it all.
00:11:33
Speaker
She accuses police officers and a prosecuting attorney of having been involved in this crime. She's very young. So Al Sharpton, along with Vernon Mason and Alton Maddox, they bring this girl and shove her out in the spotlight.
00:11:50
Speaker
And over the course of the next year, she is going to be like held up as like the difference between white people and black people and white victims and black victims.
00:12:03
Speaker
And a grand jury is going to find the following year, 1988, that she had not been the victim of a sexual assault. And they felt like she had created the appearance of the attack herself.
00:12:18
Speaker
So... the people that she accused end up suing her and Al Sharpton and Alan Maddox and ah Vernon Mason for defamation.
00:12:30
Speaker
And they're successful. It's a huge deal. a lot of big names got involved with this story because of the way Sharpton sort of pushed it out there.
00:12:42
Speaker
ah Bill Cosby was involved, which is a different Bill Cosby from our time. he put up $25,000 for a reward on the case. It was the same guy, just a different version of him, right? Right. like say The public saw him differently in 1987. I always find cases like this, the one you're talking about right now, I find them really interesting because in the event that it had occurred, it would be...
00:13:07
Speaker
atrocious Right. Right. And the very first thing that you have to overcome once you've got the big names involved is that you you have to push back in a way that says, if that had happened, it was very atrocious. However, it did not happen. And that's like the first hurdle to overcome. Now, granted, I don't know.
00:13:29
Speaker
i was very young in the eighties. So, and I haven't looked deep into that case or anything, but, I don't necessarily know like the the names that get it in the spotlight. I don't know if they realize like how unlikely something like that would have been to have happened, right?
00:13:49
Speaker
i don't know if they care. Well, see, that's what I was going to say. i don't know if they just, they use it to illustrate their point, which, I mean, maybe it exists. It kind of looks like it probably doesn't exist because of what happened, right? no But it's always fascinating to me to see that because it's, people jump on, like, condemning completely uninvolved innocent people really quick. Yeah. Which, if they were responsible for something so atrocious, they should be going through the judicial process. Absolutely.
00:14:25
Speaker
But I feel like it it's kind of, I know it's ah that's been going on forever. Yes. It's an illustration of how quickly some stupid prank or story... I don't know why. I mean, obviously, she needed some sort of help because she did that. i don't know I don't even know that she thought it was going to get so out of control, right? I doubt she knew that.
00:14:50
Speaker
But it Everything can get out of hand really fast. And I always find those interesting. And I also, al Sharpton has quite a few of those little antidotes attached to his name, in my mind anyway. Like things that he gets really out in front of and then he just disappears because like everybody has to take everything back. Oh yeah. And well so it's not just that there's like a there's like cause and effect happening here as this case goes along.
00:15:23
Speaker
And I'm using that to kind of point out like something about the sort of hostage-taking situation. Yeah, he likes to stir the pot, even though sometimes the pot is empty. Yeah, it's rage-baiting.
00:15:37
Speaker
So in this instance, Don King gets involved. He pledges $100,000 toward Ms. Brawley's education. There are protests happening in December of 1987 along the streets of Newburgh, New York, that include Louis Farrakhan.
00:15:53
Speaker
So that's how big this gets in 1987. And I'm bringing this up because it happens ahead of like the story that we're telling today. But I want people to understand that, like like you said, there's an element of like how quickly this quote went viral or became sensational or hit the national media, whatever you want to call it, that – As it's happening, like the rage baiting gets really intense. The whole idea is with no real evidence, we want people to be outraged at this time of year about this young girl.
00:16:31
Speaker
And we want it to go as far and long as we can because we want her story to be heard. Right. But they make it about race. Right. Instead of about the crime.
00:16:41
Speaker
Right. So just wrong to begin with. Right. Right. And that's where Alton Maddox Alton Maddox was a high profile civil rights attorney. We have Vernon Mason, also a lawyer who has been involved in a lot of New York cases that are very, very ah racially charged and charged for other reasons.
00:17:02
Speaker
They basically create this national media sensation. They whip up a frenzy with their press contacts and to focus in on this case.
00:17:12
Speaker
And I just want to point out how much harder that was to do in the 80s than it is now. This is incredibly difficult. And because of how racism existed at the time, it was even more difficult to do. So they had to put a significant amount of ah resources into this time, money, effort.
00:17:33
Speaker
And it's sort of like a snowball going downhill, right? Yeah. Right. And the way that they keep that snowball going is they accuse more and more people of being involved in a cover up of what Miss Brawley's story is.
00:17:52
Speaker
And they say that that cover up is solely because the defendants that they believe are involved in the case are white.
Grand Jury Findings and Conspiracy Theories
00:18:00
Speaker
So they further suggest that, like, the Ku Klux Klan, the IRA, ah several branches of the mob are all in cahoots with the United States government to cover up this case because they see no movement in this case.
00:18:18
Speaker
At one point, Harry Christ Jr. becomes a suspect in the case because he had committed suicide shortly after the period where she was held captive. And he had been a part-time police officer over in Fishkill, New York, which has a geographical border that ties back to where Brawley lived.
00:18:39
Speaker
Stephen Pagonis, he's an assistant district attorney over in Dutchess County, New York. He was attempting to establish an alibi for Harry Christ's And during this time, he states that they had been together.
00:18:53
Speaker
So rather than like clearing him, this ADA a ends up becoming a target of Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason. And they began to allege that both Harry Criss and Stephen Fagonis are two of the rapists. Just for the record, Stephen Fagonis is a Greek-American, but they accuse him of being a racist and a white supremacist.
00:19:18
Speaker
And according to New York Times articles that are put together during all of this time, they report that Harry Chris Jr.'s suicide was documented in notes that he left and that he felt like he could not go on because of the way his girlfriend had ended their relationship in this time, which is ridiculous.
00:19:38
Speaker
nothing to do with Brawley. And because he was upset that he was unable to become a state trooper. So he was having like career and relationship issues.
00:19:50
Speaker
But the mainstream media's coverage drew a lot of criticism from the African-American press and leaders towards treatment of the teenager. And we see cases like this, like every decade has multiple cases where they get this big. Their photos leaked publicly.
00:20:05
Speaker
That show her at the hospital. They, you know, the name Tawana Brawley is on the evening news, which is not supposed to be a thing because she's underage and she's a victim of a sexual assault.
00:20:16
Speaker
In addition, Tawana Brawley has been left in the custody of her mother and stepfather and these three adult men who are pushing this narrative. And in theory, if a child in New York has been in any way sexually assaulted, the Child Protective Services Agency is supposed to take jurisdiction and custody of that child until they're safe.
00:20:37
Speaker
That would get her psychiatric attention. it would have preserved evidence of her story. But right away, this story starts falling apart. So when we get in the middle of all this, Tawana Bradley, who is 15 years old, she gets...
00:20:52
Speaker
put in front of a grand jury to tell her story by October 1988. And all these men, Sharpton, Maddox, and Mason, they suddenly tell her not to answer any questions.
00:21:06
Speaker
So Mario Cuomo gets involved. At the time, he would have been new York's governor. And he points he appoints the state's attorney general, a guy named Robert Abrams, to be the special prosecutor in this case. They convene a grand jury, they...
00:21:21
Speaker
they have a like kind of a dream team of prosecutors that they put forward to go through and to put this case together so that they can bring these people to justice. And it's really done from the perspective of like quelling this like crazy media blitz that has been going on for 12 months.
00:21:43
Speaker
How weird is it for a victim to get before a grand jury and not tell their story? it is It is a very strange situation. It's also strange for a grand jury to create basically a 200-page report because there's a 30-page explanation in a hundred and 170-page report where they have no true billed something, meaning they're not indicting anyone. Well, that goes back to that hurdle that you've got to get over, right?
00:22:11
Speaker
Right. Where you're like, it would be atrocious except it didn't happen. Right. On October 6th of 1988, the grand jury comes out and they say they don't believe that Tawana Browley had been abducted, assaulted, raped, or sodomized as it's been put forth by Tawana Browley and her advisors.
00:22:31
Speaker
The report further concludes that the allegations against Stephen Pagonis are false. They had no basis on any kind of fact. And before issuing this report, just so like you're like people can understand the sort of scope of this,
00:22:46
Speaker
They heard testimony from 180 witnesses. They saw 250 exhibits. And those 180 witnesses created 6,000 pages of testimony.
00:22:58
Speaker
In the decision, the grand jury explains that there are problems with their story. Among these problems, they say that the rape kit results do not indicate any kind of sexual assault.
00:23:11
Speaker
They say that despite saying she had been held captive outdoors for four days, she was not suffering from hypothermia, she was well-nourished, and she was she was appeared clean, and she appeared to have been brushing her teeth regularly.
00:23:27
Speaker
Despite her clothing having been charred, there were no burns on her body, and although a shoe she was wearing had a cut through it, she had no injuries to her foot. The racial epithets that were written on her body that were wildly widely photographed were written upside down, which led to the suspicion that she had written the words herself.
00:23:48
Speaker
And testimony from multiple schoolmates indicated that during the four days she had supposedly been abducted and was missing, she had attended a local party. One witness even came forward claiming to a to have observed Tawana Browley climbing into the garbage bag. The feces on her body were identified as coming from a neighbor's dog, and she never testified despite a subpoena ordering her to do so. Well, that leads me to believe that people knew she was lying. Well, that's what I going to Her mom, Glinda Browley, she got 30 days in jail, and she was fined $250 for contempt of court because she refused to testify.
00:24:27
Speaker
And she began evading arrests by hiding in local churches and with local groups. Police failed to arrest her, and they argued at the time that it would lead to violence. So eventually, Bradley family fled New York State.
00:24:43
Speaker
and They traveled around the country for a couple of months before settling in in Virginia Beach. So obviously, this is going to have a massive aftermath in how the advisors are viewed and like sort of how this whole situation is viewed. People wanted to know if there was a motive. Multiple claims are brought forward. The grand jury evidence sort of pointed to a possible possible motive for Tawana being involved in falsifying this incident, that she was trying to avoid a violent punishment from her mother or potentially her stepfather, Ralph King.
00:25:16
Speaker
Witnesses had testified that Glenda Browley had previously beaten her daughter from running away. And she had also been spending nights out with boys. Now, for Ralph King's part, he had a history of violence. He had stabbed his first wife 14 times.
00:25:32
Speaker
And at some point in time, he shot
Family Dynamics and Motivation in Brawley Case
00:25:34
Speaker
and killed her. There was considerable evidence that King could and would violently attack Tawana. When Tawana had been arrested on a shoplifting charge in May in 1987, Ralph King had attempted to beat her up for the offense while standing in the lobby of the police station.
00:25:57
Speaker
ah Multiple witnesses had also testified that Ralph King had talked about his stepdaughter in a sexualized manner. On the day of her alleged disappearance, Tawana Bradley had skip school to visit her boyfriend, a guy named Todd Buxton.
00:26:11
Speaker
And the reason that we know that is because Todd Buxton was in a local jail and Tawana checked in and out. When Todd Buxton's mother, whom she had visited Todd Buxton with in jail, told her to go home before she got in trouble,
00:26:31
Speaker
Tawana Browley told Todd's mom, I'm already in trouble. And then she described how angry Ralph King had gotten over a previous incident where she had stayed out late.
00:26:45
Speaker
Neighbors also told the grand jury that in February, they overheard Glinda Browley saying to Ralph King, you shouldn't have took the money because after all, it comes out. They're going to find out the truth.
00:26:57
Speaker
And another neighbor heard Glinda say, they know we're lying and they're going to find out and they're going to come get us. There's another story that pops in April of 1989 from the New York Newsday.
00:27:11
Speaker
It claims that another boyfriend of Tawana Brawley, Daryl Rodriguez, he says that she told him the story was made up with help from her mom because they were both trying to avoid the wrath of Ralph Keane.
00:27:24
Speaker
So this has been written about multiple different ways, but I will say this. What she did to fabricate this story, if she fabricated this story, which I believe that she did based on all of its evidence, it's wildly sensational.
00:27:41
Speaker
But for three grown adult men to run with this story... is wild See, I think that ah if they had no run with it, I don't think I would be as sensationalized. We're talking about a 15-year-old who's lying to avoid getting in trouble. Right.
00:27:59
Speaker
And, like, the police themselves can shut that down very quickly. Right. In fact, they do it all the time. Right. Right. Like, I mean, when things come up and, you know, you weren't kidnapped, you literally skip school to go see your boyfriend, right?
00:28:14
Speaker
Right. So I bring the Tawana Brawley story up to say that, keep that in mind when we're talking about eight years later in New York, what I'm about to tell you related to Roland James Smith.
00:28:30
Speaker
Because Sharpton matters in all of this. ah This article comes from the San Francisco Chronicle, which is sfgate.com, if you care.
00:28:41
Speaker
It is telling us the story of what's happening at Freddy's Fashion Mart across the street from the Apollo Theater. It is 10, 12 a.m. or so when this man, who's described as a very tall man with a.38 caliber revolver, has come into the store. He's got a container of flammable liquid, and he has started basically dumping whatever is in this container,
00:29:10
Speaker
all over bins in this ah store. Roland Smith Jr. has ordered the black customers to leave. He then sets the store on fire with this flammable liquid container and he positions himself near the only exit.
00:29:28
Speaker
As police officers start to arrive at the fire, Roland Smith shoots at two of them and he shoots four customers as they are trying to escape the fire.
00:29:41
Speaker
By 12.07 p.m., the firefighters had contained the blaze and they had entered the burned-out building. They discovered that seven store employees had died of smoke inhalation, and Roland Smith Jr., along the way, had fatally shot himself.
00:30:00
Speaker
They also discovered that the store's sprinkler system had been shut down, which would be a violation of the local fire code. The only fire escape that would have been available inside of the building had been bricked up, which technically this would not have been a violation of local code because as long as you have a working sprinkler system, you don't need the fire escape.
00:30:23
Speaker
But the only exit for the people that were trapped inside of the store would have meant they had to go by Roland James Smith Jr., who was waving his revolver.
00:30:35
Speaker
Three of the victims were found in a back room at street level, and the other four were found in the sealed basement. Switching back over to the San Francisco Chronicle to give you a little more information, they describe it as eight people in a Harlem clothing store were killed yesterday in a fierce blaze that police believe was deliberately set as part of a bitter landlord-tenant dispute that had led to angry protests in the neighborhoods.
00:31:04
Speaker
Among the dead was a man police suspect set fire to the store. The fire consumed the building on Harlem's main thoroughfare shortly after tall gunman waving a revolver burst into Freddy's Fashion Mart.
00:31:15
Speaker
Police said last night they believed the gunman was one of a group of demonstrators who had picketed the store in recent weeks in a dispute over the threatened eviction of a sub-tenant, the Record Shack, which is a neighborhood institution.
00:31:28
Speaker
At the time, police did not identify the gunman, but they say he was found dead with a revolver in his hand, reeking of accelerant. Beside him was a white container that officials believed held the accelerant.
00:31:40
Speaker
Four other people were shot in the en incident it and escaped from the store before the fire enveloped it. According to officials and residents... The fire followed months-long dispute that involved the owner of the building, which was a black Baptist congregation called the United House of Prayer.
00:31:59
Speaker
i i think they are Pentecostal because that is what I read about ah the United House of Prayer. I believe this comes from quick reporting and poor reporting that they call it a Baptist congregation. But there are some similarities between the denominations.
00:32:16
Speaker
I was going to say, there's also, depending on who is talking, and they may not see a difference. There is a difference, right? Yeah. But it may just be to them they're saying the same thing. I i have seen that it was a Pentecostal. Right.
00:32:33
Speaker
either way but it's between the owner of the building which is the black baptist congregation the way that this is reported it sounds like there's a dispute between the owner of the building and the black baptist congregation But the United House of Prayer owns the building.
00:32:49
Speaker
The owner of the clothing store, Fred Harari, and Sekou Lushand, who owns the record shack. He's just a subtenant. He doesn't own it. ah He owns the store. Right, right, right. Yeah, but not the property. The store is a subtenant of the building. Yeah, right.
00:33:05
Speaker
So this is the important part, right? Right. So Kulu's shop has been specializing in blues, Motown, African and Caribbean music for over 20 years.
00:33:16
Speaker
And he was being evicted as a subtenant of Fred Harari, apparently at the instigation of the church, who is part of They're part of the ownership of this building.
00:33:28
Speaker
So there have been a dozen or so pickets outside of Freddie's Fashion Mart urging a boycott of the store because they believed it did not employ blacks and was behind the eviction of the record check. And again, Fred Harari was evicting them at the behest of the black Pentecostal church.
00:33:46
Speaker
Right. Just making sure that like that people get that part because it's about to take a turn. So the commander of the 28th precinct, a deputy inspector named Joy Stevens, said the police department, in addition to sending uniformed officers to monitor the picketing, had opened a racial bias investigation of an incident that had arose during the protesting on November the 29th.
00:34:07
Speaker
Joy Stevens said a security guard told the police that one of the demonstrators had said, we're going to burn and loot the, quote, Jews. So Rudy Giuliani and Police Commissioner William Bratton, they rushed to the scene. The mayor, while saying that the investigation focused on the protest against the clothing store, also urged New Yorkers not to rush to judgment about the case.
00:34:34
Speaker
At the same time, the Reverend Al Sharpton, who had been helping to sponsor the protest against the clothing store, criticized the investigators for quickly linking the conflagration the protest.
00:34:47
Speaker
Because of the intensity of the fire, it took more than two hours before firefighters could reach to the inside of the gutted store. Besides the gunmen, they found three bodies huddled together in a back room on the first floor and four more bodies clustered together in the basement.
00:35:01
Speaker
The police and medical examiner's office quickly said seven victims apparently died of smoke inhalation, but it was unclear whether the gunman died of smoke inhalation or the single bullet wound he suffered.
00:35:12
Speaker
In the early moments of the confrontation, police said the gunman fired on two police officers arriving on the scene, but Bratton said a preliminary check of the weapons on the police officers on on the scene indicated they had not fired their guns.
00:35:28
Speaker
Of the four people wounded in the gunfire, so these are the people running out of the store, the police said that three of them were listed in critical condition. Okay, so why is all this stuff about Al Sharpton important?
00:35:40
Speaker
Because he'd been sponsoring the protests, not understanding the chain of ownership between all of these people. And they were putting the blame on Fred Harari.
00:35:53
Speaker
Right. In a very specific quote. Yeah. That Al Sharpton, he incited rage, just like you were saying. Yeah. Yeah. So this quote, they believe it potentially came from who would eventually be the person setting the fire.
00:36:10
Speaker
And I don't know for sure that Roland James Smith Jr. is the one that said that. They sort of indicated in some of the articles people can come to their own conclusion.
00:36:21
Speaker
They do have an interesting blurb here I'm going to bring up. It's labeled as a subtitle to the article, possibly false ID. And it says, the policeman said the gunman was carrying an identification card with a name Budima Malika and an address on Mount Morris Park West.
00:36:40
Speaker
They're not sure whether this is his true identity. Detectives went to the address and said that residents there had never heard of him and did not recognize the person in the photograph.
00:36:51
Speaker
Now, Keep in mind, what I'm reading from is from an article in 1995. It's happening... December 9th. It's in the hours following event. So I just find it interesting how it's unfolding. And somehow the San Francisco Chronicle is covering it all with the New York Times. So we've got these detectives. They're going around and no one knows who this is. One of the detectives is quoted anonymously. We're confident he was not known at the location on the identification. So the day had begun like any other for the dozen or so workers in Freddy's. There were construction crews working on a
00:37:29
Speaker
store expansion, and this is important, a $5 million dollars renovation to the church. Suddenly, the world exploded in the chaos, confusion, gunfire, flames, and death when a man walked into the store, kicked over a table, sloshed flammable liquid around, shouted for people to get out, and began shooting.
00:37:51
Speaker
So that's where we get this story from. Then we get a little bit of story about the officers as they race into the store the man was shooting this is the cops going on three wounded people were helped out of the store, but one of the officers was pinned down and trapped inside.
00:38:08
Speaker
More police from the neighboring 25th Precinct responded to the call for backup. They got the officer out unhurt. At St. Luke's Hospital, there were three badly wounded victims, all men.
00:38:19
Speaker
They had been taken there. Dr. Kevin Sanborn, the associate director of anesthesiology, said one of them had said that a man came into the store and started the fire right away. And as people tried to escape, the man started the fire at
Freddy's Fashion Mart Tragedy
00:38:33
Speaker
them. Across the street, a man named Thomas Pierre, who's a voter registration worker, he glanced out his third floor office window when he heard sirens and shots and saw police rushing up.
00:38:43
Speaker
And dressed like construction workers staggering out of the building in pain. Suddenly the whole front of the building went up in flames. It started just like that.
00:38:54
Speaker
So this is a little less hostage taking and a little more like crazy firebomb attack. A little, yeah, but they were still hostages because he entered the store and he let he let some people go.
00:39:11
Speaker
he let the he he told the black customers to leave, right? Yeah. and then he he was going to hold them hostage until they burnt or ah smothered, died from smoke inhalation, however you want to say it. So I think it is hostage. Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
Yeah, it is. Like, I i think it's kind of a mixture. Part of the hostage taking dynamic is the terror you experience in the and between time, right? Yeah.
00:39:39
Speaker
You were held hostage. You don't know what's going to happen. And this may have been pretty quick, but they still had it. And they were protesting for a little while leading up to this. And it sounds actually like I thought it was storm place, but I guess the construction workers were the injured ones. The ones, so store employees were the dead and the construction workers were the injured.
00:40:00
Speaker
The construction, okay. That's what I was confused about because it does say that it was, I don't think any customers died. No, I don't believe any of these people are customers. If I said that, I said it wrong. No, no, you didn't, but I was just kind of deciphering it. But the whole issue behind why this got so worked up was because Sharpton is an activist. We gave an example earlier. Some things he does are he he's trying to do the right thing, but he's he brings a lot of sensationalism to whatever he it is he's doing.
00:40:35
Speaker
Right. And they had been leading these protests and the thought and Sharpton said to the crowd of protesters, we will not stand by and allow them to move this brother so that some white interloper can expand his business. Right.
00:40:54
Speaker
That was the quote he told the protesters that incited the violence that led to this. And the Either Al Sharpton misled or he misunderstood what was happening because he represented to the people who showed up to protest the the record shack subtenant being evicted.
00:41:21
Speaker
He was saying Fred Harari, this Jewish tenant, is who I guess he was white, he's wanting to expand his business. And he's kicking out this poor black guy who has had this record shack. as He's been a subtenant there for 20 years or whatever. And none of that is what was happening.
00:41:43
Speaker
Right. And so it was all for absolutely nothing. Right. Yeah, it was all for nothing. And then in 2002, Sharpton regretted making the white interloper comment, but he denied responsibility for inflaming or provoking the violence.
00:42:04
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. and you know, for people who don't know the record check is coming on over the years. it i think it reopened...
00:42:17
Speaker
But I'd have to look at like what happened there. um i at At one point, I knew the history of it pretty well. And i knew that the first location was at Frederick Douglas Boulevard on 135th. And had been...
00:42:30
Speaker
and it had been across the street from ah the Apollo Theater for a very long time. But I want to say that after this, they move it, but I don't think they move it off the block.
00:42:43
Speaker
I was going to say, so, you know, the solution to this, for one thing, I do want to point out, I don't know that the record shack owner was behind any of this, right? No, no, I don't think he has anything to do with it. He probably just said, what can I do? And he might have started a little bit of a like a hubbub. And and so the the the answer would have been for the community to come together and say okay, well, you know, they want you out or, you know, direct it towards the people who are actually the the church, right? They wanted to expand. That's why they wanted the record check evicted. And right it the community could come together and find another location, which I do realize in New York City, ah that's kind of a, you know,
00:43:30
Speaker
It's complex. Real estate is, you know, it's it's prime as far as like there's not a lot of room and everybody wants to be there or whatever. And this was an unnecessary provocation of rage.
00:43:45
Speaker
There were rumors, though, that ah Roland James Smith had actually criticized Sharpton. So there's debate on how much responsibility, like...
00:43:58
Speaker
i I do think... he criticized the nonviolent protesting part. He thought it should be doing more.
Social Media's Impact on 1990s Incidents
00:44:05
Speaker
again, it's hard to reason with this scenario because once you explain it you can't say it's a racial thing anymore, right? Right.
00:44:16
Speaker
So why are you upset? Yeah. Yeah. It's really strange how all of this went down. i put this one in here because, so okay, couple things.
00:44:30
Speaker
First of all, it's now 30 years ago, right? Yes. And I had recently been looking at a meme that was talking about how some people think 30 years ago and they're thinking in the 1970s, but it's actually in the nineteen ninety s Yeah, I'm one of those people.
00:44:50
Speaker
and And I thought this was a good story. like I know like a lot of these are kind of set in the ninety s because that's the time period I was poking around in when I was researching the holidays. But I thought this was a good story to put out there because of how it tied into what I call today rage baiting where people like put up a reel or they put up a Instagram post or a Facebook post a tick tock or whatever. far too easy now to do that.
00:45:19
Speaker
Can you imagine what these 90s incidents would have been like back in, like if they had access to today's social media? I'd like to think, so okay, that goes two ways. I'd like to think a couple things. I'd like to think that, um for one thing, the protesters could have gotten the factual information right from social media and understood what was actually happening. Right.
00:45:45
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So that's one thing, right? That's one side of it. um I do think think there would have been and like a TikToker out there that was like, no guys don't do this. Here's why. Yes. It would have been us. Let me show you how the church actually owns this building. Yeah. Like us, we would have been doing that. Like we would have been saying like,
00:46:03
Speaker
I mean, I don't know that we would have been doing this in 1995, but instead of just listening to al Sharpton, who is a well-known like talking head, so to speak, of black activism, standing there while all the black people in the community show up, and he's saying to them...
00:46:24
Speaker
They are putting one of our brothers out of business so a white man can expand his store. Okay, that's not what was happening at all, but all those people hear that. And of course it enrages them. But if we had social media...
00:46:39
Speaker
you know, for one thing, i don't imagine people like showing up. They, you get your in information, you don't go somewhere, you get it from somebody that's there telling you about it. Right. yeah And then you have to weigh the facts of the situation. Right. And people who are trying to, you know,
00:46:56
Speaker
make this situation like normalize it and make people understand that that's not what happening, what's happening. They would have factual basis like from, okay, look, you know, the black Pentecostal church, the United house of prayer actually owns this property. So this white guy, and I'm quoting like, i like our audience can see me.
00:47:19
Speaker
um This white guy, yeah, air quotes, this white guy, has no authority over anything here, right? he They told him to can evict his subtenant.
00:47:31
Speaker
And probably what they said was, we want this space, it's it's we we have you as the tenant for it, but you have sub you have a sublease and we want you to evict it and we're going to to take the part you've subleased, right? So they were probably modifying his agreement as well.
00:47:54
Speaker
Okay. And so we people would be out there saying that kind of thing. And then I think at least part of the people who were so enraged would understand And I would hope that the people that understand would spread it around.
00:48:11
Speaker
That's what we try to do with a ton of cases. I know this isn't really a case, so to speak, but eight, ah seven people and the perpetrator died, right? Yeah.
00:48:22
Speaker
And so, you know, this is a big deal. So I do think social media can work for you. um I also think that there would be a ton of people out there rage baiting. Yeah, i think I think it would be too, yeah. And it is left, of course now, like, it's, my brain isn't really doing this very well because I know in 1995 social media didn't exist. I was also like a teenager, right? And so I think to myself, like, I would be one of the people doing this, except not when I was a teenager. Like, I would do it now, right? Because I want people to make their own decisions based on facts, not what somebody has told them that's wrong, especially when it's wrong. Right. yeah And so social media is a double edged sword.
00:49:11
Speaker
orset you would have the, you would have the people who were being dramatic for clicks and likes, which Al Sharpton is the version of those people. Right? I mean, he is He's the one who's like, look at me, listen to what I'm saying. And, you know, he got that way on his own or whoever helped him do it. And you just have to take... He's kind spin doctor.
00:49:42
Speaker
and know for certain that it's absolutely true i also don't know whether he is like a legit just content creator from you know the eighty s and ninety s who he's kind of a end doctorctor Well, I don't see, I don't know if he actually believed what he was saying or not. I think that it's possible that you could hear that, be enraged, say it out loud without even having any understanding of it. I could have done that at some point in my life. I think I probably have done that at points in my life where I heard something just so outrageous and I just spit it back out without verifying the sources.
00:50:19
Speaker
It's just, I'm nobody and it doesn't catch fire, right? It doesn't matter. Yeah, he's really just a personality through all of it. You're right. He really is. and But I don't know that he's trying to do it on purpose. And I also know that...
00:50:37
Speaker
it's very, very ah difficult to even find the balance now. And we were not ready for social media in 1995 for sure. i don't need We're not ready for it now, but it does have about a way to balance. the problem Part of the problem is in these types of situations where someone's screaming racism, the people who are saying, wait, wait, wait, it's not racism. They're the people who get jumped on Right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:51:09
Speaker
And so, like, we are the people who get jumped on about things. And I don't really care because, you know, I'm a grown up. And i i know what's right because it's right, not because somebody told me. Right? Right.
00:51:22
Speaker
Yeah. It's a whole different situation. But I do think that um that could have gone a lot of ways. And I feel like it's really sad that that the you know there were victims and people that got hurt. Do you have any idea if um the record check is still...
00:51:40
Speaker
No. so that's what I was trying to remember because I had run the history down at one point. Like it closes, but it's like, i remember when it closed it had been in business for 40 some years. So it doesn't close because of this. It could have been just a cycle. Like he could have been ready to retire or whatever.
00:51:57
Speaker
Right. And then... i think it read i think he I think he legitimately he said I want to retire, but I think it was really that the the cost was too high for him to keep renting.
00:52:12
Speaker
Oh, really? Well, plus record stores. i mean, actually, they have some novelty niche to them, but they kind of got replaced, right? if Yeah, if I remember correctly, he closes sometime in the early 2000s. Okay. And then he tried to reopen as the Harlem Record Shack or something like that. And I don't think that iteration of the store still exists. I don't know if...
00:52:38
Speaker
um I don't know if Sean's just still ah alive or not. I was thinking about that the other day because um i did another project related to the Apollo Theater a while back. And when I was looking him up, I remember like reading some memorials, but I'm not sure if it's a memorial for the store or him.
00:52:57
Speaker
ah My assumption is at this point that like online music has killed the record channel. going to say it's it wasn't just his, right? like i You're not going to buy a physical copy of music now?
00:53:10
Speaker
No, a lot of people don't. i mean, some people still do, but not enough to keep a store like that in business in that kind of expensive area. And that's hard. lie And that was just, that had nothing to do with anything except the evolution of technology, right? i mean Yeah, yeah.
00:53:26
Speaker
but Ultimately, it's just abolition of technology. That's all I got on this one. i didn't know if you got anything else. No, that's it.
00:53:36
Speaker
Special consideration was given to True Crime XS by LabradiCreations.com. If you have a moment in your favorite app, please go on and give us a review or a five-star rating.
00:53:47
Speaker
It helps us get noticed in the crowd. This is True Crime XS. s
00:55:51
Speaker
True Crime Access is brought to you by John and Meg. It's written, produced, edited, and posted by John and Meg. You can always support True Crime Access through Patreon.com, or if you have a story you'd like them to cover, you can reach them at TrueCrimeAccess.com.
00:56:10
Speaker
Thank you for joining us.