Five days a week, Thomas Hagan lives an almost anonymous life in Sunset Park, working in a fast-food restaurant, going home to his wife and kids and following the primary race between Hillary Rod ham Clinton and Barack Obama.
The other two days, Hagan lives in a minimum-security correctional facility in Manhat tan around the corner from Mal colm X Boulevard – ironically, named after the Muslim leader Hagan assassinated 40 years ago.
The slight-framed 66-year-old sports spectacles and a neatly trimmed gray mustache. He wears a baseball cap low when he’s out in public and speaks softly, barely above a whisper.
But the meek demeanor and aver age-Joe lifestyle belie his role in one of the most infamous killings in US history.
At the time of the Feb. 21, 1965, shooting, Hagan, then 23, was a mili tant member of the Nation of Islam, a black-separatist religious movement that Malcolm X broke from after accus ing the group’s founder, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, of adultery and of not doing enough for civil rights.
Hagan and four others plotted the assassination and gunned down Malcolm X as he gave a speech at Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights, according to an affidavit Hagan signed years after the shooting.
One man, claiming to have been pickpocketed, created a diversion. Another, with a shotgun, blasted Malcolm X in the chest.
Hagan and another gunman then fired several rounds at the black leader’s dying body slumped on the stage.
Hagan, who went by the name Talmadge X Hayer at the time, was arrested at the scene and confessed. Khalil Islam and Muhammad Abd Al-Aziz were arrested later and have maintained their innocence.
Hagan has said they were not his accomplices.
Each was sentenced to 20 years to life in 1966. Al-Aziz was paroled in 1985, and Islam in 1987.
Hagan has been denied parole 13 times. For the past 19 years, however, he has served his time under the work-release program, spending just two nights a week in the Lincoln Correctional Facility, a minimum-security center overlooking Central Park on West 110th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard.
Years in prison have mellowed Hagan’s anger and allegiance to the fringe group, he told The Post in an exclusive interview last week.
While still a practicing Muslim, he has parted ways with the Nation of Islam.
“It wasn’t really a correct ideology. There are a lot of misconceptions,” he said.
Likewise, he now apologizes for shooting the black leader. “I’ve expressed my regrets and sorrow,” he said, though he’s never apologized personally to Malcolm X’s family.
Hagan filed a lawsuit on April 24 challenging the New York parole board’s most recent decision.
“I’ve been incarcerated for 40 years, and I’ve had a good record all around,” Hagan said. “I don’t see any reason for holding me.
“I think I deserve it, comparatively, to guys who are in and out and in and out of the system,” he said.
When reached by phone, one of Malcolm X’s daughters, Gamilah Shabazz, declined to comment on whether she would like to see Hagan get full parole.
“It’s not my life. What’s done is done. Let the chips lie where they fall,” she said.
While inside, Hagan earned a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. Under work release, he has held jobs at the Crown Heights Youth Collective and as a counselor at a homeless shelter on Ward’s Island. He declined to say why he lost the shelter job. “Things happen. You have to move on,” he said.
Hagan says he shuns publicity so as not to look like he is capitalizing on his infamy. He said he has no interest in writing a book, unlike Khalil Islam, who is currently working on a memoir.
“I would like to think that people have grown, have more understanding and insight,” he said.
“Why shouldn’t he have full parole?” said Islam. “How long is this going to go on? He didn’t kill the pope. I don’t understand it, to tell you the truth.”
Hagan is next up for parole in January.
jfanelli@nypost.com