OAKLAND -- A 19-year-old handyman at an Oakland business was formally charged with murder Tuesday in the shooting death of a journalist who was investigating the organization's troubled finances.

DeVaughndre Broussard, who worked at Your Black Muslim Bakery, appeared in Alameda County Superior Court on charges that he gunned down Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey last week. His arraignment was postponed until Monday so he could hire his own defense attorney.

Broussard appeared somber, mostly kept his head down and wore a red jail jumpsuit in the packed courtroom. He was being held without bail.

Broussard was one of several people arrested last Friday in raids on the bakery and related locations. Police said they found the weapon that had killed Bailey only the day before.

Oakland Police Assistant Chief Howard Jordan said earlier that Broussard confessed to fatally shooting Bailey, saying he was upset that the journalist was investigating the bakery's finances.

Jordan said police don't believe Broussard acted alone, but they were still putting together how the plan was developed.

Broussard was put on probation last year for robbing and assaulting a San Francisco Municipal Railway passenger on Halloween 2005.

Bailey, 57, worked for the Oakland Tribune for more than a decade before becoming editor of the Post, a weekly newspaper geared toward the Bay Area black community, earlier this year.

On Monday, Saleem Bey, the son-in-law of bakery founder Yusuf Bey, said he was the main source in the slain editor's investigation and had agreed about two weeks ago to detail the group's inner workings.

Bey, 43, said he provided documents that cast light on what he alleged were fraudulent and unfair business practices by the group's CEO, Yusuf Bey IV, 21, who was arrested along with six others in a Friday raid.

"I gave (Bailey) the stories. I knew everything that was going on. I thought it was dangerous for me, not him," Saleem Bey told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bailey had been investigating the bakery, but the newspaper could not verify several details of the story and never ran it, said Oakland Post lawyer Walter Riley, who would not confirm Saleem Bey as Bailey's source.

A lawyer representing Yusuf Bey IV in several other criminal cases said she believed a property dispute with Saleem Bey's side of the family may have motivated efforts to discredit her client.

"I'm not at all convinced just how reliable that the information that was provided to Chauncey Bailey might be, because I know there were bad feelings between these two factions of the family," defense attorney Lorna Brown said.

Your Black Muslim Bakery was founded nearly 40 years ago by Yusuf Bey with the goal of providing support and a haven for Oakland's poor and had grown to include a security service, a school and other businesses. The organization is a regional splinter group that is not affiliated with the Nation of Islam, or with other area Muslim groups.

In recent years, financial and other problems had surfaced at the organization, which filed for bankruptcy last October.

In 2002, Yusuf Bey was accused of raping a girl who worked for him. He died of cancer in 2003 while awaiting trial. His appointed successor later disappeared and his body was found buried in the Oakland hills in a still-unsolved crime.

Yusuf Bey's 23-year-old son, Antar Bey, took over the group's leadership until he was killed in 2005 in a what police called a botched carjacking attempt. His brother, Yusuf Bey IV, then took over.

Several of the business entities have been suspended by California's Secretary of State and owe substantial state and federal taxes, according to public records.

Health officials shuttered the group's bakery operations Friday over what they called unsanitary conditions.