The Assassination of Chauncey Bailey - Convert's Unsolved Killing

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | December 24, 2007 | Jaxon Van Derbeken

[SmithL]

25 years later, family still suspects Ronald Allen was slain by fellow followers of Your Black Muslim Bakery - and now, police are taking another look -

Ronald Allen tried to show his minister father that the tenets of Your Black Muslim Bakery weren't that different from the precepts of the Bible.

His family would soon have cause to fear otherwise.

On Easter morning, April 11, 1982, a day after he went out for a meal with his bakery brethren, the 32-year-old father of five was found shot to death near the Berkeley dump.

Twenty-five years later, the case remains unsolved. But Allen's family remains convinced that his affiliation with the Oakland bakery was his undoing.

The bakery Allen joined two years before his death was dominated by the secret commands and public proclamations of one man, Yusuf Bey, who critics - including some former followers - say lorded over the group through threats and force. Women and even children in the bakery were given to Bey for his sexual pleasure, former followers have said.

As the revelations about Bey mounted before and after his death from cancer in 2003 - and as his would-be successors were slain or jailed in a string of violent crimes, including the killing of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey - Berkeley police decided to re-examine Allen's death.

They hope to finally pierce the secrecy that enshrouded the bakery and solve the slaying of a man who apparently stood up to Bey and may have been among the earliest victims of one of the bakery founder's cardinal laws: "If you do me wrong, I'm going to fix you up."

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Allen was an unlikely convert to Your Black Muslim Bakery, his family recalled.

The favorite son of a Southern Baptist minister, ...

[tbpiper]

...that the tenets of Your Black Muslim Bakery weren't that different from the precepts of the Bible

Little differences can sometimes reap big consequences.

[Brad from Tennessee]

If Muhammad returned from the grave he would be aghast to see the comedic flimflam scheme—to gain wealth, women and power—he used to fleece a population of spiritually hungry goatherds, bandits and beggars, had become a world religion.

[yldstrk]

He would probably be thrilled.

This is exactly why in the United States of Americe we have repudiated the authoritarian way—we are a country of laws-—not persons. Individuals who exercise great power become corrupt—and evil.

[GovernmentShrinker]

one of the bakery founder's cardinal laws: "If you do me wrong, I'm going to fix you up."

Now there's some deep theology < /s>

[GovernmentShrinker]

He would probably be thrilled.

Yes, but I expect he'd also take advantage of it to start living it up again. I don't think you'd find him holed up in caves on the Afghan-Pakistani border or traipsing around Iraq with a motley crew of wannabe suicide bombers.