Notorious B.I.G. - Dead wrong: the continuing story of city of lies, corruption and cover-up in the Notorious B.I.G. murder investigation

The Curse of Oak Island

Untouchable

The Miracle Detective

LAbyrinth

The Price of Experience

The Continuing Story of

City of Lies,

Corruption and Cover-Up in the Notorious B.I.G. Murder Investigation

Copyright 2019 by Randall Sullivan

Cover design by Cindy Hernandez

Cover photograph Christopher Wallace Clarence Davis/NY Daily

News Archive/Getty; city skyline and police shield Getty

Page 1: All images public domain; page 2: Perry Sanders and Rob Frank, Courtesy of Sanders Law Firm. Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, Courtesy of the Los Angeles Daily Journal; page 3: Voletta Wallace (top), Courtesy of Getty Images. Voletta Wallace (middle), Courtesy of AP Images. Voletta Wallace (right), courtesy of Voletta Wallace; page 4: All images public domain. Page 5: Michael Berkow and Sergio Robleto, public domain. Voletta Wallace and Faith Evans, Courtesy of AP Images; page 6: Kevin Hackie, Courtesy of AP Images. Marion Suge Knight, Courtesy of Getty Images; page 7: Christopher Wallace and Sean Puffy Combs, Bernard Parks, Courtesy of Getty Images. Rafael Perez, Courtesy of AP Images; page 8: Gerald Chaleff, Courtesy of Getty Images. Chuck Philips, Courtesy of Dennis Romero.

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FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: July 2019

This book was set in 12 pt. Janson by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021- 2932-1

eISBN 978-0-8021-4700-4

Atlantic Monthly Press

an imprint of Grove Atlantic

154 West 14th Street

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Dedicated to the memory of Sergio Robleto and Russell Poole

I wrote the book LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal more than fifteen years ago. At that time, like the investigator who was the books protagonist, I believed the truth would come out and those murders would be solved long before now.

I was wrong.

Even in 2002, I was incredulous that arrests hadnt been made. I was asking people, Do you believe that if Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin had been whacked by the Mafia in the 1950s, theres even the slightest chance the killers would have gotten away with it? In those days, comparing Tupac and Biggie to Sinatra and Martin made sense to only a sliver of the American populace. Today, a far larger segment of our society gets it. But that hasnt made the slightest impact on the investigation of either murder. The only explanations I can conceive of for this are that people dont care enough and that those in positions of power have a vested interest in making sure the facts remain obscured.

In LAbyrinth, I followed Detective Russell Poole of the Los Angeles Police Departments elite Robbery-Homicide Division into the maze of lies and corruption that surrounded the Biggie and Tupac killings. As Poole followed the evidence that implicated LAPD officers working for Suge Knight and Death Row Records in the Notorious B.I.G. slaying, he came up against an institutional stone wall so thick and encompassing that it not only choked off his investigation, but suffocated the mans faith in the organizations and the traditions to which he had dedicated his life. In the Los Angeles of the late twentieth century, the vectors of racial politics and institutional entrenchment had been woven into a thicket so dense that it smothered Pooles probe of the Biggie murder, and of the assassination that he believed was connected to it.

Poole never claimed to be certain beyond all doubt that LAPD officer David Mack had helped arrange the Notorious B.I.G. homicide or that Macks friend Amir Muhammad had been the shooter. Pooles position was that this theory of the case was the one best supported by the evidence and therefore the one to which he should dedicate his efforts. He was prevented from this at every turn. When Mack was arrested in December 1998 for the robbery of a Bank of America branch near the University of Southern California campus, Poole was denied permission to run forensic tests on Macks vehicle, to obtain subpoenas for Macks financial records, or to obtain the ballistic evidence that might have connected Mack to the Biggie murder. He was not even allowed to speak to Amir Muhammad. The best explanation he ever got for that was, Were not going in that direction.

Gradually, Poole came to believe that Macks former partner Rafael Perez had been his accomplice in the bank robbery and that Perez might have been part of the Biggie murder conspiracy. Poole became convinced that Mack and Perez were part of a cadre of LAPD officersgangsta copswho were working for Death Row Records and aiding the record labels CEO, Suge Knight, in commission of crimes that ranged from drug dealing to homicide. Poole was not allowed to investigate the evidence that supported this theory, either. Eventually he found his way to Kendrick Knox, an LAPD officer who had investigated the links between the LAPD and Death Row, until his probe was shut down by orders from on high. Like Knox, Poole became convinced that the orders blocking their investigations had come from the very topfrom LAPD Chief Bernard Parks.

By then, though, the Biggie investigation had been subsumed by what became known as the Rampart Scandal, in which the central figure was none other than David Macks friend and former partner Rafael Perez. The Rampart Scandal had been invented by Perez after his arrest on charges that he had been stealing large quantities of cocaine being held as evidence in the LAPDs Property Division and selling it on the street. The Rampart Scandal narrative, largely concocted by Perezimplicating dozens of mostly innocent officers in an epidemic of corruption and brutalityhad been swallowed whole by the media in Los Angeles, particularly by the Los Angeles Times. In part this was because that narrative was publicly endorsed by the Times main source, Bernard Parks, whose motives were both personal and political. Poole and his investigation were first absorbed and then stifled by the Rampart Scandal.