THE DEADLY INCIDENT WAS APPARENTLY OVER JEALOUSLY OF MALIK’S DANCING SKILLS:

‘Malik was a terrific dancer, and that was apparently what provoked the young man who killed him. While on vacation, Malik and a friend had gone with the friend’s cousin to a teen-age dance club (no alcohol) in suburban Salt Lake City. Malik had stayed behind when his companions left to get something to eat. He stayed because the deejay finally played a song he especially liked, and he got up and danced, all by himself. He was having fun….The 800-page transcript of Leota’s trial doesn’t answer all the questions it raises. Malik may or may not have beckoned girlfriends of Leota to join him.

Leota, who had a long history of trouble with the law, was angry. He’d fought with two other young men that same night in Club 35…A witness said Malik was backing away when Leota hit him so hard that Malik was lifted six inches off the ground. Malik’s head struck something as he fell. Then Leota, who testified that he had not intended to kill Malik, kicked him in the head. When Todd got the phone call that every parent fears most, Malik was only being kept alive by machines. He died two days later, on March 20, 1989.’

WHOOPI GOLDBERG & OTHERS PROTEST MALIK’S KILLER’S SENTENCE:

Beverly Todd says that Utah’s justice system during that time was heavily biased based on religion and racial tensions. Her son’s murderer was a member of the popular church in Utah at that time, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This is what she said about that:

“I really feel that we didn’t get fairness in Utah,” says Todd, who points to Leota’s conviction on a misdemeanor charge and his one-year sentence as evidence of pro-Mormon bias in the Utah courtroom.

There was also racial tension throughout the trial, she says. Leota is of Tongan ancestry. After friends of Todd and Keiser, including Whoopi Goldberg, wrote to the judge, protesting Leota’s conviction on a misdemeanor, members of the Polynesian community in Utah held a press conference and described Todd and her friends as “wealthy Hollywood blacks” who were trying to deny Leota justice by putting pressure on the judge. A Polynesian attorney told the press: “We, the Polynesian community and citizens of Utah, say to these celebrities, Utah is a law-abiding state. We demand you let the judicial process go forward. We do not want the legal process to be influenced in any way.”‘

Todd denied that and said that both she and her husband kept a low key profile throughout the trial for this reason:

“You get very fearful about causing too much of a stir in terms of making it a mistrial or doing something else that’s going to jeopardize the outcome. You want everything to turn out right so that you get justice. And so when they started complaining about these people coming up from Hollywood that were from the NAACP, we asked them not to come back because we didn’t want to cloud the issues or to cover up what was the real issue, which was the murder,” says Beverly Todd.

This is just another reminder that although it has been 29 years since Beverly’s beloved son was killed, the more things change, the more they sadly stay the same. Almost three decades have gone by and unfortunately there is still an increasingly growing number of parents who are in the exact same helpless position as Beverly Todd was in when her son’s life was reduced to an outcome of a misdemeanor charge and his killer spending just 8 short months in jail.

Although Beverly Todd has continued to work and looks amazing at the age of 69 years young, she said that she will always have pain over the death of her son: “Because your child is dead, doesn’t mean that you stop being a parent. You still think about your kid. It’s just that the thoughts have no place to go.”