Internal Affairs also made little effort to identify the other officers who accompanied Henderson when he questioned witnesses to the Gaines-Lyga shooting. The coffee company employee, who by now was so worried about her personal safety that she requested LAPD protection, refused to identify two black Pacific Division officers, Bruce Stallworth and Darrel Mathews, as members of the group that had been with Henderson when he showed up at her office. (On the night of the shooting, Stallworth had been paged by Sharitha Knight in the presence of Captain Doan, and Mathews was Stall-worth’s closest companion.) The next time the LAPD detectives contacted the woman from the coffee company, she informed them that she had quit her job and was moving to Arizona. “That’s how scared she was by the publicity and by Henderson’s aggression,” Poole recalled. “But when she left the state, IA used this as an excuse to drop the criminal investigation, and make the case an internal investigation.” In the end, Henderson would receive a slap-on-the-wrist suspension, while none of the other officers involved were even identified, let alone disciplined.
“I’d been on the department for almost seventeen years and I’d never seen anything like this,” Poole recalled. “But I was new to Robbery-Homicide and had never worked out of Parker Center before. So I kept my mouth shut and told myself they did things differently downtown. At the same time, though, I promised myself that I would not let the politics of this case control my investigation. I figured if I did everything by the book, I was covered. That shows you how little I knew.”
CHAPTER TWO
Knowing what needed to be done was no guarantee that you would be permitted to do it, Russell Poole was learning, at least not for a detective assigned to the LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division. Poole had joined RHD only four months earlier, and considered it an honor to be part of “the department’s elite division.” Even better, he was assigned to the unit still known as Major Crimes, but now officially titled Homicide Special, that handled all of Los Angeles’s “high profile” murder investigations. Well before he arrived at LAPD headquarters in Parker Center, however, Poole had been warned about Robbery-Homicide’s “country club atmosphere.” Only a detective who was “sponsored” could win an assignment to RHD and the only detectives who got sponsors, Poole discovered, were golfers. “It sounds ridiculous, but it’s true,” he said. “Most of the senior detectives, and some of the brass, too, would be out on the golf course while on duty, with their pagers and cell phones on if anyone needed to get in touch with them.”
Poole had spent most of the past eight years at South Bureau Homicide, a unit that covered just four of the LAPD’s eighteen divisions but handled half of the department’s murder investigations. South Bureau Homicide boasted a “solve rate” of nearly 70 percent, yet maintained a list of 1,500 unsolved gang murders between 1985 and 1998, “which tells you how many gang killings there were in South Central during those years,” Poole said. In 1993 alone Poole had arrested twenty-three killers involved in seventeen murders. Of the seventy-five suspects he had arrested for murder during his years as a homicide detective, only two were acquitted at trial, and in both cases the victims had been drug dealers. While few killings in South Central Los Angeles made headlines, Poole had received twenty-two commendations for his murder investigations, and was proud of his reputation for success.
South Bureau Homicide detectives put in long hours and “lived our cases,” as Poole put it, but the atmosphere in Robbery-Homicide was much different. Cases were given priority on the basis of media interest and political considerations. A lot of RHD detectives, especially among the more senior ones, seemed to feel they needed to be available only for major mobilizations and were free to float the rest of the time. Fred Miller told Poole that the tone had been set by his old partner, the most famous homicide detective in LAPD history, “Jigsaw John” St. John, who had investigated the Black Dahlia case, among others. “Jigsaw John was a media legend, this great detective who had handled all these big cases back in the forties and fifties, and was still working as a homicide investigator at an age when most guys have long since retired,” Poole said. “But Fred told me that Jigsaw John had just coasted for the last fifteen or twenty years he was on the department, and that the brass let him. Fred said the two of them would work from seven to eleven in the morning, then go out for a martini lunch that might last until ten or eleven at night. They spent most of their time sitting in restaurants or bars, with their pagers on if something big happened.”
When Poole first interviewed for the job at RHD, Miller had been his biggest backer, openly opposing the lieutenant who had preferred another candidate. Despite their differences in age and rank, the two got on well at first, but the more Poole heard about his senior partner, the more leery he became. “People began telling me that whenever Fred identifies a suspect, he moves on to another case,” Poole recalled. “Other detectives told me, ‘Fred hasn’t made a murder arrest in years.’ I took the position that I’d have to see for myself.”
What Poole saw almost immediately was that Miller regularly put his caseload second to his golf game. That approach to the job first had become a real problem for Poole on the morning of February 28, 1997. “Fred and I and [another senior detective] went out for an early breakfast,” Poole recalled, “and afterward they started driving east. I didn’t know where we were going until we arrived at this giant golf warehouse out in the City of Industry, which is about twenty-five miles from Parker Center.” The detectives were still shopping when all three pagers went off simultaneously. A pair of twenty-something weight lifters wearing ski masks and encased from ankle to neck in body armor had just robbed the Bank of America branch on Laurel Canyon Boulevard in North Hollywood. Now they were using assault rifles modified to fire on full automatic to battle the LAPD officers who had surrounded the building.
“Fred and [the other detective] were shitting when we got the call,” Poole recalled. “We had to drive through heavy traffic to get back to Parker Center, where we dropped [the other detective off]. I knew that Fred never carried a homicide kit in the trunk of his car, because he needed the space for his golf clubs, so I ran upstairs and grabbed as many supplies as I could, then brought them back down and threw them into the backseat. We took off to the scene, but it took forever, and by the time we got there the two robbers had been shot dead.” Poole volunteered to serve as evidence coordinator at what had become the largest crime scene in LAPD history, and would work onsite until the following morning. “Fred let me know he didn’t think that was too bright,” Poole remembered. “And I let him know I was not going to stand around and watch other guys work. So we already had a little tension between us by the time of the Gaines-Lyga investigation.”
Miller, who had more than twenty-five years on the job and was perpetually planning his retirement, was one of the RHD detectives most affected by the ordeal of the lead investigators on the O.J. Simpson case. “After watching what Tom Lange and Phil Vannatter were put through on the witness stand and in the media, and the way they went into retirement under this giant cloud of controversy,” Poole explained, “a lot of the older RHD detectives, but Fred especially, made up their minds that they were not going to get drawn into something like that at the end of their careers.
“So as soon as Fred finds out that Johnnie Cochran is involved in Gaines-Lyga, he’s scared to death and doesn’t want anything more to do with the investigation. After about the first week, you won’t find my partner’s signature on anything connected to the case. Because he doesn’t want to find himself in a courtroom being cross-examined by Cochran. So I’m pretty much going it alone.”
Poole was getting plenty of advice from his superiors in the department, but found their instructions more troubling than helpful: “When I asked what was happening with Henderson, the brass told me to stay away and keep my mouth shut. When I asked if IA had identified the other officers who were with Henderson when he confronted [the coffee company employee], they told me it was none of my business. Then my li
eutenant tells me that I am not to make any mention of Sharitha Knight or Gaines’s connection to Death Row Records in my follow-up report, because that document will become a public record, and that this order is coming down all the way from the chief’s office. Other detectives already had told me I had to leave that information out of my reports, ‘because we don’t want people to know that one of our officers is involved with Death Row.’ I said, ‘Why not? It’s the truth.’ What I got back was, ‘Do as you’re told.’ And I did. I’m fairly new and I don’t want to rock the boat. I’m still getting acclimated to working downtown, but I’m thinking, ‘Is this the way it works in RHD? No wonder they got embarrassed in the O.J. trial.’ There’s a bad taste in my mouth, but I’m sure the truth will come out eventually.”
Poole’s problem was that his pursuit of the truth forced him to investigate the links between Kevin Gaines and Death Row Records. The existence of such links was suggested by the clues Poole had started with, those gathered from Gaines’s vehicle, from his locker at Pacific Division, and from his corpse at the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
The evidence collected from the green Montero established mainly how intertwined Gaines’s life was with Sharitha Knight’s. Among the items inventoried were a love note Gaines had written to his girlfriend, an invitation to the fourth birthday party of Suge and Sharitha Knight’s daughter Kayla, and, in addition to three of Gaines’s LAPD pay stubs, a stub for another check bearing this note: “Sharitha, from Marion Knight, Monthly Allowance, $10,000.”
Inside Gaines’s locker, investigators found betting stubs from Las Vegas, “various phone numbers of unknown females,” a business card for a security company embossed with the name of Officer Bruce Stallworth, a confusing collection of real estate documents, plus 8 x 10 glossies of Suge Knight and Tupac Shakur that were taped to the locker’s back wall.
Gaines seemed to have made idols of the slain rapper and his boss at Death Row Records, yet Sharitha Knight insisted that she knew of only a single tense encounter between Kevin and Suge. She and Kevin and several of her relatives were in Las Vegas for a concert that had just ended when they stepped outside and were met by Suge and a man she did not recognize, Sharitha said. Suge and his companion pushed their way into the van the group was traveling in and asked for a ride to their hotel, according to Sharitha. Kevin, who was driving, put his gun in his lap and asked, “Where you guys want to go?”
“I’ll tell you. Just keep driving,” Suge replied, then began whispering into her ear, “threatening me, basically,” Sharitha recalled. Eventually she realized Suge was directing them to “this deserted spot,” Sharitha said, and became alarmed.
“That man [Gaines] is a police officer,” she told her husband, “and I don’t think we’re going to play games with you.” She told Kevin to turn the van around, Sharitha said, and a few minutes later they dropped Suge off at his hotel. From there, Kevin drove straight to the airport and got on a plane to Los Angeles.
According to Captain Doan of Pacific Division, the first words Gaines’s wife Georgia spoke when informed of her husband’s death were, “Suge Knight’s people killed him.”
If Kevin Gaines wanted to avoid Suge Knight and his “people,” however, he had gone about it in a strange way. At the time of his death, Gaines’s wallet contained a ten-day-old receipt from Monty’s Steakhouse in Westwood, a well-known hangout for Death Row executives. A number of LAPD officers acknowledged that Gaines had tried to recruit them to work security at Death Row parties. Frank Lyga reported that an informant had told him Gaines was an active member of the Bloods gang; Suge Knight had long been associated with Compton’s Piru Bloods.
There was as well the question of how Gaines had managed to support an exorbitant lifestyle on his police officer’s salary. That receipt from Monty’s showed Gaines had paid $952 for a single lunch. Also in Gaines’s wallet were ten credit cards, each one carrying high limits that “no cop can afford,” Poole recalled. Other patrol officers from Pacific Division told Poole that Gaines regularly showed up for work wearing Versace shirts costing $1,000 a piece. His fleet of cars included a BMW, a Ford Explorer, and a Mercedes 420 SEL sporting vanity plates that taunted the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division: ITS OK IA.
Derwin Henderson maintained that Gaines covered some of his costs with thousands of dollars won at the blackjack tables in Las Vegas (Henderson, who drove a Mercedes of his own, claimed that he made $20,000 a year betting on horse races at Hollywood Park). Other LAPD officers, however, said Gaines had bragged about earning $250 an hour working security for Death Row Records.
Among Gaines’s other boasts, according to the officers who worked with him, was that he owned so much real estate he no longer needed to work for the LAPD. His locker had been filled with blank rental and lease agreements from a company called “Scott Properties,” yet his wife said she knew nothing about any of that, and insisted her husband had owned just the house where she and the children lived in Gardena, plus one other modest property. Internal Affairs investigators asked for a warrant to search for other real estate owned by Gaines, but their request was denied. Poole told his superiors in Robbery-Homicide that he needed a search warrant to check Gaines’s financial records for the past ten years, but he too was refused. “All the brass would tell me,” Poole recalled, “was, ‘Gaines is dead. Leave it alone.’”
Within the rank and file of the LAPD, stories had been circulating for several years that there was a growing cadre of black officers whose involvement with Death Row Records superseded their loyalty to the department. A good deal of this gossip was generated by an incident that had taken place just after midnight on March 14, 1995, at the El Rey Theater in L.A.’s Wilshire District. The occasion was a Soul Train Record Awards “after party.” Three uniformed LAPD officers had been called to the El Rey when a fight broke out earlier in the evening. The officers were standing on the sidewalk under a sign that read “Death Row Private Party, Guest List Only,” when they heard a commotion inside the theater. One of the three turned just in time to see a young man named Kelly Jamerson get his head split open by a beer bottle, then watched as a crowd of more than a dozen black males surrounded the bleeding Jamerson, and “began kicking and hitting the victim on all areas of his body.” By the time the LAPD officers reached Jamerson, the young man was dying of injuries that included a brain hemorrhage. Then, as the report filed by Wilshire Detectives put it, “Approximately four hundred people exited the theater as officers attempted to protect the victim. Many were intoxicated and failed to comply with instructions to remain where they were.”
By the time the officers at the scene got around to asking questions, the only available witness was a bartender who said he had seen Jamerson arguing with four black males. The bartender “believed that one of the suspects was a member of Death Row Records Company,” according to the Wilshire Detectives report, “whom he described as a male black, 6′4″, 390 pounds with short hair cut into an angle. He observed the suspect remove a Miller beer bottle from the counter and strike the victim on the head.”
It was almost daybreak when LAPD investigators arrived at the El Rey to find a large bloodstain on the paisley carpet in the lobby and, under an arch of red, white, and silver balloons, a dance floor littered with torn Death Row Records posters, broken glass, and shards of china plates. Kelly Jamerson was pronounced dead shortly after noon, when the case officially became a murder investigation. The victim was so badly beaten—covered with “lacerations, abrasions, swelling and bruising to the head, torso and extremities,” the deputy medical examiner who performed the autopsy reported—that it was virtually impossible to pinpoint any single injury as the cause of death.
Much of the evidence detectives collected came from anonymous callers who had been at the El Rey party when the beating took place. Combined with the statements of the bartender, the club manager, the ticket taker, the theater’s security guard, and the two guests at the party who were willing to be identified as witnesse
s, these reports provided a remarkably consistent picture of what had taken place.
The party had been staged as a “classy” affair, detectives kept hearing from the people who had been there. Except for the white strippers who worked the stage area wearing only glitter and G-strings, nearly everyone present was black, and the guests ranged from executives to homeboys. The centerpiece of the event was a giant ice sculpture of the Death Row Records logo, and the record company’s CEO had been in an especially exhilarated mood. Suge Knight was roving through the hall with a “wild, excited look in his eyes,” as one guest described it, grabbing the strippers by the hips and grinding against them at the same time he carried on conversations with his associates.
The trouble began when the party’s guest of honor, rapper Snoop Dogg (at the time facing first-degree murder charges) took the stage to perform his lastest single, “Murder Was the Case.” Suge Knight and nearly every one of his associates at Death Row were affiliated with the Blood gangs from Compton, but Snoop Dogg came from Long Beach and claimed Crips membership. In the middle of his number, Snoop had been inspired to throw Crips gang signs to several members of the gang’s Rolling 60s set, and to give the crowd a flash of the Crips color, blue. Though the Crips in the audience were badly outnumbered, several emboldened gang members responded to Snoop by throwing gang signs back at him, thereby infuriating the Bloods. Almost immediately, Death Row rapper DJ Quik (David Blake) began to throw Blood signs at one of the Crips. DJ Quik had been attacked two years earlier by Rolling 60s members who broke his jaw, according to the Compton police, and publicly sought revenge. Almost immediately, according to the El Rey’s security guard, one of DJ Quik’s bodyguards attacked the Crip who was jawing with his boss. DJ Quik himself then picked up a chair and used it to knock the Crip to the ground, where his bodyguards pummeled the man. DJ Quik, dressed in the same black-and-red Pendleton shirt the Death Row bodyguards wore, kicked the man while he was down, then broke away from the melee to step onto the El Rey’s stage, where he spoke briefly to Suge Knight, who promptly left the theater.
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