Roberts was sure he had never before seen the three shooters at the Audubon. His testimony—that the shooters were complete strangers to a trained police observer—could have dispelled the prosecution’s charge that the other shooters were Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, both members of the Harlem mosque whom Roberts knew. At the trial, several other witnesses testified against Butler and Johnson, and both men were convicted along with Hayer. Butler served twenty years in prison, and Johnson twenty-two years, for Malcolm’s murder. Although Roberts gave eyewitness accounts to his
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