A woman identified in court documents as Jane Doe #1 testified under oath that Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey first molested her when she was 8. The sexual assaults became regular at 10 when he became her guardian and that she became pregnant with the first of three children by Bey, when she was only 13.
Jane Doe #1 and several other women sued Alameda County, settling for $188,000 dollars.
"The County should have investigated some of the things that were happening at the bakery," said Attorney David Washington.
Jane Doe #1 dropped a bombshell in her deposition for the case, recounting a conversation with a bakery worker named Usman.
"This is what I heard him say out of his own mouth, that he walked into the restroom and saw brother Bey sexually assaulting this young man," said Doe.
We've seen the proof that Bey sexually-assaulted young girls. This is the first time he's accused of molesting a boy.
"He was saying, because I overheard him speaking to someone else, 'Brother Bey! What are you doing, Brother Bey?' And he went on to tell this other guy, 'Yeah, man, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe what I seen with my own eyes,'" said Doe.
Jane Doe #1 testified and just a few days after that conversation, Usman was gunned down, just a few blocks from the bakery.
"And someone walked up to the passenger's side with a shotgun and just blasted," said Doe.
"We have someone who, we have testimony that he walked in on Dr. Bey raping this boy, told people about it, and within a couple of days, was shot dead," said Thomas Peele from Bay Area News Group.
The I-team has been investigating the killing, in association with the Chauncey Bailey Project.
Bailey was the editor of the Oakland Post who was gunned down last August, as he was probing the finances of Your Black Muslim Bakery.
Reporters are picking up where Bailey left off.
"Now, we're kind of playing catch up and excavating the past and going back and looking at what happened during that time period when the media wasn't focused on the bakery, and a lot of times, law enforcement wasn't either," said A.C. Thompson from New America Media.
When A.C. Thompson and Thomas Peele read a transcript of Jane Doe #1's deposition, they scrambled to verify her story. Who was Usman? Did he work at the bakery? Did he really die on the streets of Oakland, in the time frame described by Jane Doe #1?
The break came when they searched the Oakland Tribune story morgue.
"We zeroed in on this one, where the circumstances in a very brief three paragraph news item, were very similar to what was described in the deposition," said Peele, Bay Area News Group.
This clipping on Oakland's 68th Homicide of 1986 matched Jane Doe #1's description.
That lead to the death certificate for Peter August Kaufman: cause of death, gunshot wound to the head.
His employer was Yusuf Bey.
And now, Jane Doe #1 confirms the connection.
"She told us that this 'Usman' that we had been hunting for was in fact Peter August Kaufman and that was the man who had been murdered at the direction of Dr. Bey," said Thompson, New America Media.
Jane Doe #1 also revealed who may have killed Usman or Peter Kaufman. She testified, word around the bakery at the time was that Yusuf Bey's son, Akbar, pulled the trigger. But, in 1994, Akbar Bey was also gunned down by a drug dealer.
Alameda County prosecutors tell us they are re-opening this cold case, because of information uncovered by the Chauncey Bailey Project.
It's the seventh unsolved murder the group has connected to the Bey family and Your Black Muslim Bakery.
You can read more on this case from the Chauncey Bailey Project on Wednesday, April 9, 2008 in the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and in a new I-Team blog.
