“They were trying to get him to do something." According to The Chicago Tribune, O’Neal was actually arrested for flashing a fake FBI badge several months after the FBI agent had first been in touch. "He said they had someone tied up and they were pouring hot water over his head,” Heard revealed. In the years before his death, O’Neal revealed to his uncle, Ben Heard, that he had been involved in home invasion, kidnap and even torture in his youth. I know you did it, but it's no big thing I'm sure we can work it out.’"īy this time, the teenager already had a pretty heavy criminal record dangling over him. According to O’Neal, “He said something like, ‘Well, you know, there's no need in you trying to bullshit me. Unluckily for him, he had signed over his personal details at a nearby pool hall prior to the mysterious incident, and that’s how FBI agent Roy Mitchell got a hold of him months later. It’s a neat way of establishing O’Neal’s talent for deception and adds a weighty charge to his rap-sheet (“five years for impersonating a federal officer”) that goes some way to explaining why he agreed to work for the government as an informant.īy O’Neal’s own admission, he stole a car with his friend and drove it across state lines to Michigan, where he “had an accident” from which he fled (he was 17 at the time). He confronts a group of Black gang members wearing green berets, brandishes a hooky FBI badge, and begins shaking them down before failing to make off with one of their cars. The movie begins with William O’Neal walking into a South Side pool hall dressed like a G-man in a Stetson fedora. The film paints a suitably slippery picture of the spy, played by LaKeith Stanfield – but how much of it is grounded in truth? Scenes from the show, both real and recreated, bookend Judas the Black Messiah, director Shaka King’s new film that delves into the duplicitous relationship that O’Neal forged with Hampton at the behest of the FBI. Nine months after conducting the explosive interview, in the early morning of 15 January, 1990, the 40-year-old committed suicide by running out onto the westbound lanes of Chicago’s Eisenhower Expressway. Judas and the Black Messiah is currently streaming on HBO Max.O’Neal stuck to that promise. Prior to this a short clip from it was posted in 2016. This is the first time the doc has been on YouTube in full. I just had to continue to play the role." "Then I got mad.and then I had to conceal those feelings, which made it worse. I knew that indirectly, I contributed, and I felt bad about it," he said. "I just began to realize that the information that I supplied leading up to that moment, I had facilitated that raid. Hampton and Clark were 21 and 22 years old at the time of their deaths. In his interview, he talks about realizing the information he'd given the FBI led to Hampton's death as well as the death of another Black Panther leader Mark Clark. A transcript of O'Neal's interview is also available.Īccording to The Grio, Pilot Media has uploaded the entire documentary in two parts, with the second featuring O'Neal's interview. Now you can watch his full interview on YouTube. The film buttresses the performances by Lakeith Stanfield and Daniel Kaluuya with real footage of O'Neal during his first and only interview filmed for the documentary series Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985. As many viewers know, Judas and the Black Messiah focuses on William O'Neal's actions as an FBI informant that led to the assassination of Black Panther Chicago chapter leader Fred Hampton.
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