Hey guys, welcome back to my channel and welcome to part two of the death of Biggie and Tupac. You might be confused if you did not see part one. This is part two, so make sure you check out part one. There is a link in the description box. All right, so we just talked about the death of Tupac Shakur and people were just railing from it.
Now this was really hard on literally everyone, even Biggie. There's an interview of him a week before he himself would be killed talking about how, you know, he wouldn't have wished death on anyone no matter how much of enemies they truly were. He passed. How do you feel? I mean, I was more shocked than anything, you know what I'm saying? But I wasn't more shocked of him dying. I was more shocked of him
Pac is a strong dude, yo. I know dudes, you know what I'm saying? He's real strong. So when it was like he got shot, I was just more like, again? You know what I'm saying? He always getting shot or shot at. He gonna pull through this one again, make a few records about it, and it's gonna be over, you know what I'm saying? But when he died, I was just like, whoa.
You know what I'm saying? It kind of took me by... I mean, even though we was going through our drama, I would never wish death on nobody. You know what I'm saying? There ain't no coming back from that. So it kind of turned me down a little bit. But at the same time, you know, you got to move on. You know, I felt for his mom's...
for his family or whatever, but, you know, things gotta move on, you know? I felt him. I felt him. I still feel him. You know, we got the records. You know, I'm out here every day. He run the radio station. He ain't got heavy rotation. He got every rotation. Every rotation. You know what I'm saying? Everywhere you go. I hear him, and every time I hear him, I feel him.
A few months after Tupac's death, Biggie and his group went back to California to produce an album. Now at this point, Biggie was a little less concerned about his security being in California since this was not his territory now that Tupac was gone. And Suge was in prison, so he was definitely feeling more secure. However, this was definitely a false sense of security. On March 8th of 1997, Biggie was talking on the phone with his mom.
His mom was ironically telling him how she was becoming really worried about his security in LA. Biggie did try to calm her down though and tell her that he had some LA police protecting him. Later that night, Biggie and Puffy went to a party in LA at the Peterson Auto Museum. And around 11:00 PM, the LAPD was called to this party because it was just getting too loud. Now this party is a little bit like a TanaCon situation. It got way too lit, way too far.
and way more lit than anyone planned for it to be. There were people, way more people than were able to get in were there. So there was like crowds outside. There was really shitty security inside. So yeah, definitely like a TanaCon situation. There were only about 10 security guards hired for this event. And there were way more people than they planned on being there. At around 12:05, there were reports of gunshots fired at the party. The people who were filing the reports to police also said that they saw a black Ford Bronco
quickly trying to flee that area. So eventually people kind of figured out that that shooting was actually a conspiracy plot to kill Biggie, but it failed. So about 30 minutes later, Biggie and Puffy decided that they were going to leave the party. So they were outside of it, just waiting for their cars to be brought around.
While they were waiting, Puffy's bodyguard, Eugene Deal, noticed a suspicious-looking person wearing a blue suit. The amazing thing is that Biggie and Puffy were under surveillance at the time of the murder.
So then Biggie's car pulled up and he got in and before he pulled off he was talking to his friend Damien Butler and his famous last words were "we'll see you at the next party".
So it was around 12:45, so technically it was already March 9th at this point. Puffy and Biggie were driving with their group down the road when all of a sudden a white SUV pulled up and cut off the car with Biggie's security. A lot of people believe that the sketchy behavior of this SUV ultimately had something to do with the killing of Biggie.
All this happened really fast and it happened so similar to what happened to Tupac. While everything was happening though, a dark Chevy Impala just pulled up next to Biggie's car and the driver began firing shots right at Biggie's door. The shooter was described to be an African-American male who was using a semi-automatic pistol. Now he was also described wearing a blue suit. Could this have been the man that Damien recognized back at the party? - Yeah, I was right behind him. He was in the passenger seat and I was right behind him.
- In the backseat, I was right there. I just seen the car just roll up and just start shooting in there. And they had to plan it, you know, 'cause it happened too good. And it was police out there. They shut the party down from a fire drill, so it was police there.
After firing the shots, the car turned right onto Wellshire Boulevard and Biggie's security tried to go after them, but they ultimately just lost them. Biggie's car just came to a stop. Puffy stopped right behind him, got out of the car, ran up, like noticed that he wasn't responsive in the car. So he got in and drove him to the hospital. It took them five minutes to get there. 911 emergency, what do you report? Yeah, we need an ambulance on Fairfax and Wilshire. Please, Los Angeles.
But sadly, around 1:15 a.m., doctors notified Puffy and Faith Evans that Biggie did not make it. Early this morning in Los Angeles, the 24-year-old rapper whose real name is Christopher Wallace lived in Raleigh in the 1980s. FBI agents are looking for a man they say could-- Both communities are mourning the death of the rapper known as Notorious B.I.G.
Good evening, everyone. I'm Linda Laverne. Miriam is off tonight. He was only 24 years old, was just starting what was expected to be a promising career in music. But tonight, it's only what could have been. Los Angeles police are investigating the shooting death of rapper Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls.
He was gunned down early today. The rap star, whose real name is Christopher Wallace, had just left a Soul Train awards party and was sitting in his car when a vehicle drove by and someone opened fire. Because he never lied about his lyrics. He always spoke from his heart.
You know, he just kept it real. He represented the real world. The stuff he talked about, it happened in the real world, you know. Maybe not as much as he said it, but it really happened, you know. It was the next night he was shot after attending a crowded music industry party.
just moments after the undercover surveillance team had pulled off Biggie to follow one of his associates. Shot like Tupac in the passenger seat. According to the police, no random event, but a well-executed hit by a still unknown assailant.
And he was so damn young. Both of these guys were so young. Like, I thought they were so much older, but now
that I'm 25. I mean, Biggie was only 24 when he died. It's crazy. Hi, I'm Abby Kearse. I'm here in downtown Brooklyn, a place where normally on a Sunday afternoon people are shopping. And this is a somber moment and a sad day in hip hop. We talked to the fans to find out what they think about this tragic day. When I first heard Biggie Smalls die this morning, my first reaction was ultimate shock. I was in total disbelief that...
He was dead. He was one of my favorite rap artists, and I can't believe it. I'm totally astounded that he's gone from my community. Another black brother is gone. It's a shame. You're killing your own people. You know, it don't make sense. That was somebody's son. That was somebody's father. You know what I'm saying? When we gonna stop? I think Biggie's a person who really had truly deep, deep fans, who felt his worldview spoke to them and articulated things they could not articulate themselves.
It gives a profound sense of loss, and it's like losing a friend. The autopsy showed that he was shot four times with the fatal shot in his torso, and they actually believe that he died just moments after being shot. So he probably, you know, didn't suffer for very long, which is good. Now, this had only happened six months after Tupac was murdered. So as soon as the news got out that Biggie was shot and killed, so people automatically started connecting it to the death of Tupac.
This type of event is usually reserved for political and religious leaders. This is a historical moment here right now. The crowd is going nuts. They are giving their love to him. And Little Caesar, Biggie's best friend from Junior Mafia, headed up the procession. They are almost through. And Brooklyn has welcomed him home.
On March 18th of 1997, a big funeral was held in New York and during the funeral they started playing music through the streets and it became pretty lit actually. When someone put on hypnotize, the whole place erupted. Only a week after Biggie died, he was nominated for three Grammys on his album Life After Death, which is so ironic.
My son was just a little upcoming rapper in California for an award. FBI was following him. Were they following him here in New York City? Up there in California, everywhere he was going? Why? I would like to know why. Ms. Wallace would like to know why. If FBI was following my son, where were they?
The case slowed early in the investigation. In 2002, the Los Angeles Times published a two-part story by Chuck Phillips titled "Who Killed Tupac Shakur?" And based on a year-long investigation, Phillips reported that the shooting was carried out by a Crompton gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier. Las Vegas police considered Anderson a suspect and interviewed him only once
very briefly. Then there's Michael Little Owl Durow. He went by Hoot Hoot, and he was a Southside Crip who was friends with Orlando Anderson. On the day that Orlando was killed, Michael confronted him and two other men in a car wash in Compton that apparently they owed him some money. And this confrontation led to a fight, which ultimately led to a shootout, and that's how Orlando died.
Michael ended up being the only survivor and was convicted and ended up serving a life sentence. So when investigators went to the prison to interview him, he told them that Suge Knight had actually hired the Crips to kill Biggie. Investigators then started to monitor Michael's phone calls and mail that was going in and out of the
prison. And during this time, they discovered that Michael and his cousin were working on a giant elaborate fake plan. They were going to make a fake story of what happened, hoping that it was able to provide them with good information to the police about the case and that they would decide to move him out of prison to a far less secure facility. And then there's people that think that the FBI killed Tupac. Basically the theory is that they were trying to get rid of like the
violence between the East and the West Coast gangs. And that was their way of doing it. But there's like no evidence for this and it doesn't really make a lot of sense. So then there's obviously Orlando Anderson. Is he the one who actually killed Tupac? He's probably the most widely believed, but we're not completely sure. He was the guy that Tupac got in a fight with, but the problem was he wasn't even considered to be a suspect until a decade after he was dead. So that didn't work out too well. So what about who killed Biggie?
The lead investigator for Biggie's case was a man named Steven Katz. However, Steven didn't last long on the case. While he was investigating, he made some really big mistakes. We'll come back to this in a second. It was then that Biggie's murder was turned over to a detective named Poole. Now, Russell Poole's a really, really interesting person. He helped on the book that I mentioned earlier, Labyrinth, and he basically came up with a theory that there were corrupt
Los Angeles Police Department officers working with death row records that committed the murders. And there actually is a lot of proof of police working with death row records and being on payroll at death row records. You know, there's a lot of factors, but I think the fact that law enforcement officers were working
for death row and that was a scandal in itself. The fact that law enforcement officers were working for gangsters, known felons, basically organized crime because it was no secret that Death Row Records was involved in drug trafficking. Suge Knight to me was one of the most powerful gangsters around.
But Russell was basically the one who put it all together and realized that Suge Knight was hiring cops to carry out the murder of Biggie. More specifically, he believed that an officer named David Mack and his friend Amir Muhammad were looked at as possible suspects. And we'll go into more details on this in a bit. One of the biggest mistakes that the first investigator, Stephen, made on this case was not doing any type of tests on David's Impala.
He also never even interviewed Amir and he apparently forgot to turn in over 200 pages of documents when it came to transfer this case to somebody else. So he was clearly really good at his job. So then Russell went to the rest of the police department and decided to present his theory about corrupt officers being involved in the murder. It was then that his supervisors quickly shut him down saying, "We're not going that way with this." Not even kidding, eventually Russell was kicked off
off the case for even suggesting that type of thing.
That seems pretty corrupt to me. Just kicking someone off who questions the police department and the integrity of the officers seems a little weird. So this is when Russell started working with the author of Labyrinth, Randall Sullivan, and they worked together to kind of put out their own version of things. And after this book came out, the theory about the police having murdered Biggie became pretty well known and kind of widely believed by the public. People who were involved all along, certain people. In the killing of Biggie.
I would say that'd be a true statement. There's certain people within the DA's office who've known about this thing all along. Whether or not someone's actually going to pinpoint that an actual ex-officer killed Biggie, I don't know if they'll ever be able to prove that. But as far as the person who actually did the shooting, as far as I'm concerned, I believe probably within 24 hours, even two weeks max, I could have a person in custody, guaranteed who the person is. Okay, and LAPD has known this all along.
And is this the guy that Russell Poole thinks is responsible, Harry Billings? I would say yes. And based on this theory, Biggie's mom, Valetta Wallace, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. The lawsuit ended up going through the court system for years. And then it was announced by a judge that if L.A. were to lose the lawsuit, the damages could add up to around $400 million, which is what people estimated was Biggie's lifetime earnings.
But sadly years passed with no solid leads about Biggie's murder. But then on May 1st of 2006, it was announced that a task force was put together to try and solve this case. So a task force is basically a group that is specifically designated to focus on something. So it's normally when they really want to get something done, they'll build a task force. The first thing that this task force had to do was go through 92 binders of case files. I'm sure that was fun. The binders were filled with Russell's investigative work, the guy
who they booted for suggesting the cops were involved. And it was also filled with all the work that had been done on the case before him for the nine years prior. And in order to get more eyes on the case, they decided to get federal investigators involved so that, you know, they have more power than the LAPD.
And this is when they looked into Russell Poole's theory a bit more. Basically, his theory that David Mack and his friend Amir Muhammad were possible suspects. Russell's theory started with rumors that Death Row Records was hiring L.A. cops as security. I think primarily Death Row Records, in a sense, hired individual officers. I mean, in a sense, officers who would, as I said, we see, but we don't see. But isn't that a compromise?
in a sense. And Russell came up with this theory due to two events that had happened. The first event was something that happened before Russell had even joined the Biggie investigation.
The event was a shooting that happened on March 19th of 1997 when LA off duty officer Kevin Gaines was shot and killed by an undercover LAPD officer in a road rage incident. And this is how the book starts out. And it's really interesting. While Russell was investigating this shooting, he found out a lot about Kevin Gaines personal life and how he was bizarrely connected very, very strongly to Suge Knight and death row records.
Gaines apparently was actually dating Suge Knight's wife when he was killed and was driving their car at the time. Gaines apparently was also a frequenter at a steakhouse that the Death Row Records gang kind of hung out at. So this is all starting to support the idea that LA police officers were working with Death Row Records. The second event was a bank robbery that was committed by LAPD officer David Mack.
In December of 1997, David was arrested for robbing a bank near the USC campus. During this robbery, he was able to make out with $722,000. Now what's really weird is when authorities searched his house, they found a makeshift shrine of Tupac. He also drove a black Chevy Impala.
There was also a picture found of David wearing a red suit, which could indicate that he was part of the blood gang. Now, despite a lot of proof that this is true, the FBI has shut this one down. The FBI claims that it's just not true, but they did admit that when they searched David's house, they found a gecko ammunition, which is the same ammunition that was used to kill Biggie. And in the FBI report, it said that this type of ammunition was extremely rare. However,
However, the FBI's report ended up being wrong. It actually wasn't as rare as they thought and it was often used by gangs in this area. The next big clue though in Russell's theory was a connection to David's accomplice, Amir Muhammad. Within weeks of Biggie's murder,
an inmate named Michael Robinson or psycho Mike told police that Biggie Shooter's name was either Kenny Kiki, Abraham, Ash mirror, or a mirror. And while David Mack was in custody for the bank robbery, he actually got a visitor who filled out their name as a mirror movement.
This made Russell think that this Amir is the same Amir that Psycho Mike was telling him about. Amir, however, did use a fake social security number when signing in. Even though he didn't use a correct social security number, he did use a correct address. He listed his correct driver's license number and his correct full name. So this made the task force discount him as a suspect because if he was actually had anything tied,
he would have also faked everything else, not just his social security number, which makes a whole lot of sense. But Michael Robinson or Psycho Mike ended up confessing that he was actually in jail during Biggie's murder and that he got a lot of his information from other inmates in the jail. So eventually they came to the conclusion that it was not the right Amir and that the connection was not there.
But then there are many theorists that believe that the people who actually shot the guns in the actual museum, in the party that Biggie was leaving from before he got shot, remember there were gunshots at the party, that they actually had something to do with it. Many people think that this whole event was a diversion tactic to end up killing Biggie outside.
But they figured out that what had actually happened was while people were getting into this car, the driver ended up dropping his gun on the floor. And he decided to, I don't know, pick it up, hold it up in the air and shoot it off a few times just to make sure it was working, which was obviously stupid as fuck.
you know, considering because he was in a big crowd and, you know, there was like minimal security and all hell broke loose because of this. After he had, you know, cleared this party by shooting off a gun in the air, the dude decides to roll on down to Biggie's murder scene and see if he can find out what happened.
And instantly they're like, yo, you're the dude that we just caught shooting a gun off. Like we were just called to this scene because of you and now you're here. So it made him look like a suspect, but eventually he was ruled out because he was pretty much just assumed to be some idiot that like was there that night. Clearly wasn't actually involved, but just running around being an idiot. So then there's a theory that Corey Edwards, who is a crip killed both of them. Corey
Corey was known to be in Las Vegas on the night that Tupac died. He was also at the same party that Biggie was out right before he was shot. So, you know, he's at both locations. Just the fact that he was at both of the locations made the investigators wanna look further into him. But they actually had a hard time getting ahold of him because he had been on the run for five years for some type of drug involvement.
they were finally able to find him and arrested him. They wanted him to cooperate in the investigations of Biggie and Tupac, but he didn't want to participate at all. So he decided to go ahead and take the drug charges and not work with police. However, there was also Dwayne Keith known as Keithy D. Davis.
And Dwayne was a crip that was pretty high up in the gang. He was referred to as a shot caller because he called the shots when it came to dirty work, such as killing people. Not only that, Dwayne was also Orlando's uncle. Investigators were able to find out that Dwayne was in Las Vegas on the night that Tupac died with Orlando.
And it was discovered that he was also at the party at the museum right before Biggie was killed. And after Tupac was shot, rumors started going around that Bad Boy Records owed the Crips $1 million. Now this was because it was said by several people, but also Dwayne, that he overheard Puffy
or P. Diddy talking at a party about how he wanted Tupac's head and that he would pay a crip a million dollars to kill him. Now, jumping back forward, police figured out that Dwayne had a lot of other involvement in some other drug related things. So they decided that they could maybe use this as a bargaining chip with him.
And he basically came down to the decision of helping the police with this investigation or life in prison. So he decided to help. He told them that on the day that Biggie was killed, they were at a basketball tournament with Puffy earlier and that he invited them to the museum party that night.
When Dwayne was at the party, he claims that he talked to them both before they drove off and right before Biggie was shot. Puffy, though, denies having any involvement with Dwayne, denies ever having hired Crips as security guards. However, a bunch of witnesses and a bunch of investigators have ways to connect these three that Puffy
Dwayne and the Crips were all connected and all kind of working together. He confirmed the rumor about Puffy wanting Tupac's head for a million dollars. And then he went on to tell them that the day of the murder in Vegas, Orlando and two of his other friends drove out to meet Dwayne in Las Vegas in a white suit.
He claimed that after Orlando was attacked by Tupac in the lobby, Orlando immediately planned retaliation. They said it would be a perfect night to take care of Tupac like Puffy wanted. And so they went to the club that he was supposed to be at. That's where they were going to take him out. But then he didn't show up after 15 or 20 minutes. I don't know where he was at this point, but they decided to go to a liquor store.
And then on the way, some of the guys that were there kind of decided to chicken out. They didn't want to participate in it. So according to Dwayne, Orlando hopped in the Cadillac and decided to go off and find Suge and Tupac.
According to Dwayne, they pulled up next to their car. Orlando got out his gun and shot them. So according to him, Orlando is the one who shot Tupac. Over the top of Dre, right? Yeah, he did. You say he looks over, he sees you? No. Dwayne said they calmly just drove back to their hotel after this, parked their car, and left their gun on the front tire. They pulled up in the ambulance while we were standing right there.
I ain't ever told nobody this story.
And they proceeded to just go chill back in the hotel room. He said after this, they went back to their car and they all headed back to LA the next day.
So as you can see, there's many different theories when it comes to what actually happened and no one is going to quite know. I definitely can't give you one that's like the best. There's just different, everyone has different ideas. Is it more police involved? Is it a mixture of police and Crips? Is it Suge versus P Diddy? Like how much is everyone involved?
It's very, very complicated and confusing. And that's why I will be making a full podcast about it, going more deep into each of these corners. Because as you can see, you can talk about this for just hours. It's so complex. So then there's, of course, theories that Tupac is still alive. Most recently, some random Instagram account was claiming that he was alive and well, chilling with Beyonce in Malaysia. Turns out that is a lie.
In 2015, a news outlet reported that a man named David Myers claimed that he helped Tupac to fake his death. However, the story seemed to originate from a fake news website, so the chances of it being true are really, really small. Unfortunately, as much as I'd like to believe that Tupac is out writing poetry on a beach somewhere, I'm pretty sure he was straight up murdered. And all of this really comes back to the violence between, obviously, the gangs, between East Coast, West Coast, but really between Suge Knight and Tupac.
Puffy both Biggie and Tupac's deaths were completely unnecessary Imagine how hip-hop culture and music would be different today even if they had continued living I mean they were 25 and 24 the cases are still being investigated. They're still open and Unsolved so pretty interesting stuff. I definitely want to know your guys's thoughts and which direction you think things go Who do you think is most responsible for this?
That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then stay safe out there.