Fox’s Roger Friedman has a story about Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown apparently forming ties with the Black Hebrew cult. The thing that caught my eye about the story was how Friedman describes the case of Hulon Mitchell Jr.,
In 1990, a U.S.-affiliated offshoot sect of Black Hebrews in Miami — led by Yahweh Ben Yahweh, aka Hulon Mitchell Jr. — was indicted for conspiring to commit murder and racketeering. Prosecutors said Yahweh directed followers to commit 14 murders, two attempted murders and the firebombing of a Delray Beach neighborhood. Several of the victims were decapitated with a machete and others had their ears cut off as proof of the slayings.
Mitchell was sentenced to 18 years in jail for racketeering. The murder charges produced a hung jury. Mitchell served 10 years and was released in 2001.
Which, for Fox, is a rather un-sensational way of framing the story. What is left out is that many of the murders ordered by Mitchell were racially motivated — as an initation rite into the cult, members were sent to kill a white person and bring back a body part as proof.
Former NFL player Robert Rozier testified, for example, that under orders from Mitchell he waited outside a New Jersey church and stabbed to death 52 year old Attilio Cicala to death after picking him out at random to fulfill the initiation requirement.
The real kicker, though, is that even though allegations about Mitchell’s involvement in murder and his black supremacist views should have been well known, just a month before his indictment Miami’s mayor declared a “Yahweh Ben Yahweh Day” to highlight Mitchell’s contributions to the city.
It’s simply inconceivable that such a dangerous individual was paroled after serving only 10 years of an 18 year sentence — less than 8 months per victim.
Source:
Is Whitney Being Used By a Cult?. Roger Friedman, Fox News, May 28, 2003.