Sharif Allah

Who murdered this man who was found buried in a San Francisco park?
For nearly two years, the family of Sharif Allah held onto the fading hope of seeing him again. The 33-year-old African-American man, who also used the name Ronnie Brown, had been living in San Leandro with his girlfriend when he vanished on October 20, 2007. The day after he was last seen, the rental car he had been driving was discovered abandoned in Oakland, with traces of blood inside, a grim sign that his disappearance was suspicious. The San Leandro Police Department investigated, but the trail went cold, leaving his loved ones with only questions and fears.

The unsettling mystery took a somber turn on July 6, 2009. City park crews were clearing a homeless encampment in a section of McLaren Park, a sprawling 312-acre urban oasis in San Francisco, when they made a horrific discovery. Partially buried in a shallow grave, wrapped in a blue tarp and bound with duct tape, were human remains. San Francisco Police homicide investigators were called to the scene, and based on tattoos, they tentatively identified the victim as Sharif Allah. The state of the body suggested it had been there for more than a year, a silent testament to a violent end that occurred long before he was found. An official identification was pending analysis of dental records.

The investigation into Allah's death, led by the San Francisco Police Department, immediately drew connections to a dark and violent chapter in Oakland's recent history. Investigators noted that Allah had been "associated with people connected to Your Black Muslim Bakery," a once-influential institution that had crumbled under the weight of extensive criminal activity. Though the exact nature of his affiliation was never clearly defined, the circumstances of his death were chillingly similar to another bakery-related homicide. Waajid Aljawwaad Bey, who took over the bakery after its founder's death, was found in a shallow grave in the Oakland hills in 2004, also wrapped in a tarp and tape.

Allah’s disappearance occurred just two months after a police raid on the bakery led to the arrest of its leader, Yusuf Bey IV, and other members for a series of violent crimes, including the August 2007 assassination of journalist Chauncey Bailey. Bailey had been investigating the bakery's finances and internal conflicts. At the time he went missing, Allah was on federal supervised release for a 2004 conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm. His criminal history also included prior convictions for drug possession and another weapons charge.

Despite the high-profile connections and the grim discovery in McLaren Park, the investigation into Sharif Allah's murder stalled. No arrests were ever made, and the specific motive for his killing remains unknown to the public. The former San Leandro police officer who initially investigated his disappearance noted that "everything we heard that happened to him happened either in Oakland or San Francisco," but the details of his final hours remain locked away with his killer or killers.

As of today, the murder of Sharif Allah is a cold case. The initial flurry of media attention surrounding the notorious Your Black Muslim Bakery has long since faded, but the pain and uncertainty for those who knew him endure. His case serves as a somber reminder of a period of extreme violence that emanated from the bakery's collapse, leaving a trail of victims whose stories are not all fully known. The San Francisco Police Department continues to seek information that could bring a resolution to this long-unsolved homicide.