Accused Killer Says Confession Was Coaxed

(CBS)  The man indicted for murdering an award-winning journalist explains why he confessed to that crime, which he now says he did not commit. In his first television interview, Devaughndre Broussard also says he knows who the real killer is. Broussard's interview is part of a story about the murder of Chauncey Bailey, a journalist killed, the police believe, to keep a story he was writing out of print. As a result, Bailey was just named the winner of a prestigious journalism award named after a reporter killed on assignment. Bailey's story, reported by CNN's Anderson Cooper, will be broadcast on 60 Minutes Sunday Feb. 24 (7:00-8:00 p.m., ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Bailey was editor of the Oakland (Calif.) Post and was shot-gunned to death last summer while investigating a controversial religious and business organization called "Your Black Muslim Bakery." Police have tied the organization to crimes including rape, murder and kidnapping. Broussard worked at the "bakery" and, he says, after initially denying any involvement in Bailey's murder, confessed to it at the behest of his boss and religious leader at the bakery, Yusef Bey IV. They talked privately in a meeting arranged by police after Broussard's arrest.

"[Bey] was saying… 'you got to take this fall.' He was saying, like, 'as your commanding officer, you got to follow orders,'" Broussard says Bey instructed him. Bey also invoked religion in his argument, says Broussard, a recent convert to Islam. "He was telling me how I was being tested by God…You got to prove your loyalty and what not," says Broussard. Then Broussard said Bey told him that most people don't know when God is testing them. "'[Bey said] I'm helping you out. I'm telling you, you are being tested by God,'" Broussard says Bey argued.

Broussard then confessed to police, using phrases like "good soldier" to describe his killing of Bailey to protect the bakery. A few days later, Broussard recanted and maintains to this day that he had never heard of Bailey until his arrest. He says he knows who killed Bailey but will not reveal that now. "I'm going to give all that info up when I go to trial."

The police believe Bailey was murdered to keep his story about the alleged scandals at the bakery out of print and so do the judges for the George Polk awards, who this week named Bailey the winner of its local reporting award. The awards are named for CBS News reporter George Polk, who was killed in 1948 while covering Greece's civil war.