Local News

OAKLAND (BCN) ― Santa Barbara police spokesman Lt. Armando Martel said Thursday that detectives may come to Oakland soon to interview people in connection with the unsolved shooting deaths 40 years ago of a couple affiliated with a mosque that was a forerunner to Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Martel said Santa Barbara police recently reopened their investigation into the deaths of 33-year-old Birdie Mae Scott and her husband, 30-year-old Wendell Scott, on Aug. 17, 1968, because of possible similarities to Bay Area incidents that may be connected to Your Black Muslim Bakery, which was based in Oakland until it recently closed.

Martel said one of the people detectives want to talk to is Abdul Raab Muhammad, 71, formerly known as Billy X Stephens.

Muhammad, who lives in Oakland, is the brother of Yusuf Bey, who was born Joseph H. Stephens and founded Your Black Muslim Bakery in 1968. Bey died of cancer in 2003.

The brothers founded a mosque and bakery in Santa Barbara in the mid-1960s.

In their initial investigation, Santa Barbara police looked at the possibility that the Scotts were killed because Wendell Scott had tried to drop out of the local mosque and threatened to expose possible wrongdoing.

The Scotts were slain with a rifle as they slept in an apartment they shared with Birdie Scott's two children. The children were unharmed.

Martel said Muhammad lived in the same apartment complex as the Scotts and was the person who reported their shooting deaths to police.

Your Black Muslim Bakery has been in the news in the past year because it went bankrupt and its headquarters facility was sold and because bakery handyman Devaughndre Broussard, 20, has been charged with murdering Oakland Post editor Chauncey Bailey, 57, last Aug. 3.

Broussard initially told Oakland police he shot Bailey because he wanted to be a "good soldier" for bakery leaders and was upset that Bailey was working on stories critical of the bakery.

But Broussard later recanted his confession.

His attorney, LeRue Grim, has said that current bakery leader, Yusuf Bey IV, the 21-year-old son of Yusuf Bey, talked Broussard into taking the fall for Bailey's murder when the two men talked privately in an Oakland police interview room. Grim has said that Broussard will disclose the real killer of Bailey when the case goes to trial.

Bey hasn't been charged in connection with Bailey's death, but he's in custody for many alleged crimes throughout the Bay Area, including the kidnapping and torture of two women in Oakland last May.

Martel said Santa Barbara police don't necessarily think there's a similarity between the way that the Scotts were killed and the way that Bailey was killed, but he said they do think there may be similarities between the way they were killed and the manner in which other people were killed or attacked in the Bay Area in the 1970s.

Martel said there was "a full investigation" by Santa Barbara police after the Scotts were murdered but the case "went cold" in 1969.

Martel said that even though the shootings occurred 40 years ago, many people mentioned in the police report at that time are still alive.

Martel said Santa Barbara police will begin their re-opened investigation by talking to people in that area and probably will come to Oakland in the near future, depending on how their initial interviews go.

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