He came back to Los Angeles on September 8, McCauley said, but returned to Las Vegas two days later to spend time with a young woman he had met the previous weekend. McCauley could only recall the young woman’s first name—“Renee”—and described her as an Asian with highlighted black hair. He could not remember her last name, her address, or her phone number, McCauley said, and had not heard from “Renee” since his second visit to Las Vegas. He was, after all, a married man.
Between September 10 and September 15, he had been either at “Renee’s” or at his grandmother’s house, said McCauley, who denied ever staying at the Luxor Hotel. When Iancin showed him a Luxor registration form that showed room No. 7050 had been occupied by a Richard McCauley of 1791 N. Sycamore in Los Angeles, McCauley said he used to live at that address but had never stayed at the Luxor. After thinking about it for a few moments, McCauley had an explanation: He had allowed his “best friend,” Compton Police Officer James Green, to use his credit card to check into the Luxor. James was going through a divorce, and had filed for bankruptcy, so he wanted to help the guy out, McCauley said, then quickly amended this story to say that he had not given the credit card to Green, but rather had used it himself to open the room account so that Green could stay there.
McCauley also denied working security at the hospital where Tupac Shakur lay dying. He had gone only one time to the hospital, McCauley said, and that was to bring food to James Green, who was part of the Death Row security detail.
At this time Iancin informed McCauley he would be facing an additional charge of “knowingly providing false and misleading statements to supervisors who were conducting an official investigation.” The IA man then explained that four security officers at the University Medical Center had identified him as part of the Death Row Records security detail, and that each of these witnesses recalled engaging in conversations with McCauley in which he had boasted about his job with the LAPD.
McCauley knew he was cooked, yet again he denied working security at the hospital. Maybe he came to the hospital more than once, McCauley said. Yes, now that he thought about it, he had stopped by two or three times to “B.S.” with James, who took him up to see Tupac. The hospital security guys saw the two of them together and jumped to the wrong conclusion, explained McCauley, adding that he “might have” told those guys he used to provide private security for Death Row Records.
James Green backed McCauley’s stories, both about the use of the room at the Luxor and about working security at the hospital. Problem was, the Compton P.D. had already told the LAPD that Green was not be trusted about anything. The accused officer’s father, Richard McCauley Sr., however, was a respected LAPD detective with more than thirty years on the job. McCauley Sr. said he knew nothing about his son’s off-duty employment or his association with Death Row Records. The older man also denied the allegation that he had phoned his son and pleaded with him not to go to Las Vegas to guard Tupac because it might cost him his career.
McCauley’s grandmother was more equivocal, saying only that she was “pretty sure” Rich had visited her on the weekend of September 6th and 7th, but couldn’t remember if he had stayed with her. She also didn’t know if her grandson had worked for Death Row Records during his stays in Las Vegas, the woman said.
At this point McCauley perhaps had plausible deniability about working for Death Row in Las Vegas, but then IA investigators found the young woman who had accompanied the officer on his second trip to Vegas, Melissa Delgado. She had started dating Rich about a month earlier, Delgado said, after he pulled her over with his patrol car to ask her out. From the start Rich told her he worked as a bodyguard for Tupac Shakur and had been doing so for the past two years, Delgado said. After disappearing for about a month, the young woman recalled, Rich phoned to say he had been in Atlanta, working for Tupac at the Summer Olympics. He told her that Suge Knight was paying him good money, Delgado recalled, and that he was ready to make a commitment to her. Rich never mentioned that he was married, she explained.
He invited her to Las Vegas to attend the Tyson-Seldon fight, Delgado recalled, but only when they were about to leave did Rich explain that he was scheduled to “bodyguard Tupac” that weekend. Just before they left Los Angeles, Delgado said, Rich’s father phoned to warn his son that he shouldn’t work for Tupac that weekend, because it might cost him his job. She backed his father, but Rich insisted he needed the money, she recalled.
She and Rich drove to Las Vegas with James Green and one of her girlfriends, Delgado said, and stayed at the Excalibur Hotel that first weekend. After the Tyson fight, they went to the 662 Club, where Rich and James were to work security, but shortly after arriving they learned Tupac had been shot. The four immediately returned to their hotel room, Delgado recalled, where Rich took a phone call, then said Suge Knight wanted him to work as a bodyguard for Tupac at the hospital.
Rich drove her back to Los Angeles the next day, Delgado remembered, then said he was returning to Las Vegas to work for Suge. He would call her from his hotel, Rich said, and arrange for her to visit him there. On September 13, he phoned to say he would fly Delgado and her roommate to Vegas, the young woman recalled; they could stay at the Luxor Hotel and Suge would pay for everything. When Rich and James picked the two of them up at the airport, Delgado said, her boyfriend immediately told her he wanted to get married. They could have the ceremony performed by a justice of the peace the next day.
Tupac died that afternoon, but though he was shaken, Rich kept his promise to get married, and they were, on Saturday, September 14, said Delgado, who offered the marriage license and the names of the two girlfriends who had witnessed the wedding as evidence.
When they returned to Los Angeles, she asked her roommate to move out of their apartment so Rich could move in, Delgado recalled, but he never did. He had just made sergeant, Rich explained, and was working such long hours that most nights he slept at the station. One day at the law firm where she worked as a secretary, however, a woman who had just been hired saw Rich’s photograph on her desk and said she knew him. When she told the woman Rich was her husband, Delgado recalled, the woman’s mouth dropped open. Eventually, the woman revealed that Rich was already married to a woman named Becky. She lost control of herself so completely, Delgado said, that coworkers had to carry her to the ladies’ room. When she had regained her composure, she phoned Rebecca McCauley and told the woman that she had recently married Richard McCauley. The woman on the other end of the line replied that she and Rich had been married for years and had two children together.
Richard McCauley phoned her only a few minutes later, Delgado recalled, and demanded to know why she had called Becky. She wanted to know the truth, Delgado replied. McCauley asked, “nonchalantly,” Delgado recalled, what she intended to do with that. All she knew was that she never wanted to see or speak to him again, Delgado answered. Only a couple of days later, however, Delgado told McCauley’s mother that she intended to press criminal charges. The officer’s mother replied that she would make sure her son had a good lawyer.
Delgado phoned to say she wanted to change her story—at least the part about her marriage to McCauley—only a few hours after this first LAPD interview, however. The IA investigators weren’t sure what to think. Twice before, Delgado had failed to show up for scheduled interviews with them, each time explaining to Iancin over the phone that she was being “pressured” by McCauley’s mother and his friends not to cooperate with the LAPD investigation. That evening, Delgado told the IA investigators that Rich had been so drunk during their wedding that he had laughed all during the ceremoney, and that James Green practically carried the groom back to his car afterward. Back in L.A., Rich insisted they had to annul the marriage, Delgado said, although he never told her he was already married. When the IA investigators asked why she was telling them this now, Delgado replied, “I don’t want Rich to lose his job.”
Rich would, though, in part because Delgado never retracted the part of her story that
had to do with McCauley’s work for Death Row Records in Las Vegas. And within a few weeks the IA investigators had spoken with a number of former Death Row Records security employees who agreed that Richard McCauley had done a lot of work for the record label in 1996. A Westec Security officer remembered working a Mike Tyson fight with McCauley in Las Vegas, and said that he had seen the LAPD officer with the Death Row crowd during the weekend Tupac Shakur was shot. The same man recalled a meeting in Malibu that Reggie Wright Jr. had organized between his key people at Wrightway Protective Services and gang members who worked directly for Suge Knight. McCauley had shown up in a black-and-white LAPD patrol car, the Westec officer recalled, wearing his uniform.
An Oakland P.D. officer who had been employed by Westec until February of 1997 said he had worked with McCauley at Death Row’s Tarzana studios on numerous occasions in 1996. The last time he heard from Rich was in December of 1996, the Oakland cop said, when the LAPD officer phoned to ask if he would be interested in working for a security company that required its employees to have a concealed-weapons permit or peace officer status. Two other Westec employees also described working with McCauley at the Tarzana studios.
The most interesting interview conducted in connection to the McCauley investigation, however, was with Reggie Wright Jr., who finished McCauley off with the first few sentences he uttered. Yes, McCauley had worked at Death Row’s Tarzana studios “off and on” during 1996, agreed Wright, who acknowledged his signature on work sheets showing that McCauley was at Death Row’s front desk during April, May, and June of that year. After that incident with Kenneth Knox in 1995, McCauley claimed that the LAPD had “lost” his work permit, remembered Wright (who was led to believe this investigation concerned only McCauley’s presence in Las Vegas around the time of Tupac Shakur’s murder).
Some Death Row employees referred to the company’s security director as “Rona Barrett” behind his back, because the man talked too much, but Wright tried to say as little as possible to the Internal Affairs investigators. He made a major mistake, however, by producing a work sheet that listed the names of those assigned to Death Row’s September 7 “security detail” at the 662 Club in Las Vegas. Richard McCauley’s name was on it.
Wright also acknowledged that McCauley had been at the hospital where Tupac Shakur lay dying, but said the LAPD officer had come on his own, and that the only compensation he received was a free room at the Luxor Hotel. He knew that McCauley and James Green were staying together, Wright said, because he spoke to both men when he phoned the room.
Green had asked to be paid “under the table,” Wright said, but never received any money because the Compton P.D. had initiated an investigation of the officer soon after he returned to Los Angeles carrying Tupac Shakur’s ashes in an urn.
For Russell Poole, what made Wright’s interview so significant was the very last question he answered. Were there any other LAPD officers who worked for Death Row Records? Wright was asked. The label’s security director at first refused to reply, but when threatened with a subpoena he “reluctantly” provided the names of three other LAPD officers who had “performed security work” for Death Row. They were Hurley Glenn Criner, David Love, and Kenneth Sutton. Wright, however, “was vague in explaining their actual roles with Wrightway Protective Services,” noted Sgt. Iancin, who ended his notes of the interview by promising that “this information will be addressed in a separate investigation.”
To Kenneth Knox’s knowledge, though, it never was. “As soon as it was suggested that there were at least several and probably many more LAPD officers working for this gangster organization, the brass told Knox to back off and not get involved anymore,” Poole explained. “He was very disturbed and frustrated, because he had become convinced that this was a giant scandal in the making. Knox agreed with me that McCauley and the other officers named by Reggie Wright were probably just the tip of the iceberg, and that Wright most likely had just given up the ones who were minor players. We both figured that the names of the guys who were deeper in would never show up in any paperwork. Suge Knight is too smart for that. He wasn’t going to give up the guys he owned. We had already been told that some of these cops who worked for Death Row weren’t considered security guards, but were more like confidants or troubleshooters or covert agents.”
Like Poole, Knox was outraged by the intradepartmental memorandum, signed by Deputy Chief David Gascon, that concluded Richard McCauley was the only LAPD officer working for Death Row Records. “This ‘conclusion’ was based entirely on the fact that McCauley was the only one either stupid or honest enough to apply for a work permit,” Poole observed. “Instead of doing an investigation, they ‘performed an audit.’ They only found what they wanted to find.”
Kenneth Knox was stifled a short time later, when his superiors ordered him not to discuss Death Row Records with anyone inside or outside the department unless authorized to do so. “They closed the lid on him,” said Poole. “But not before he made me aware that the LAPD brass had known for some time that their officers were working for Death Row Records. The fact that Kevin Gaines was involved with Sharitha Knight and Death Row became a matter of record for the LAPD back in August of ’96 when that 911 call incident happened. And the McCauley investigation started a month later. But they kept those two things separate and they kept them secret. The brass all knew about McCauley but they never told me. I had to find out from Knox. And they never gave me any information about this other supposed ‘investigation’ they conducted into the rest of the cops who were working for Death Row. I don’t think there was any investigation. They kept it all buried in Internal Affairs, where the person who ultimately controlled the information was Deputy Chief Parks.”
Bernard Parks had been promoted to Chief of Police by the time Richard McCauley was scheduled to appear at a trial board hearing where he faced six potentially criminal charges, each one related to the lies he had told about his work for Death Row Records. Shortly before that hearing, Parks permitted McCauley to resign “in lieu of dismissal,” ensuring that none of the facts of the case against him would become public record.
“The truth got buried,” explained Poole, “and that’s what made me such a problem for the department’s brass. Because they knew I wanted to dig it all up.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The biggest difference between the informants who implicated Suge Knight in the killing of Biggie Smalls and those who pointed blame toward the Crips, Russell Poole had noticed, were that the former gave their names. This alone did not make such witnesses credible, of course. Four of the six identified informants who had implicated Knight in Biggie’s murder, in fact, were behind bars.
The first was an inmate at L.A. County’s Wayside Detention Center named Wayman Anderson, who on April 4, 1997, told Wilshire detectives that Knight had offered him a contract on the rapper’s life. The tip produced a flurry of activity, including a lie detector test administered to Anderson. Ultimately, detectives concluded that Anderson probably knew something about the murder of Biggie Smalls, but that he couldn’t be relied upon as a witness in court.
Only a short time later, a county jail inmate named Antonie Sutphen—an employee of Death Row Records prior to his incarceration—told detectives he was one of Suge Knight’s “closest associates” and could provide them with evidence that Biggie Smalls had been murdered by members of Suge’s “goon squad.” Detectives assigned to investigate Sutphen’s story soon found their way to a young woman who told them that she had been the object of a romantic rivalry between Antonie and Suge’s “personal bodyguard” Aaron Palmer, better known as “Heron.” She chose Heron, the young woman said, after he told her that Sutphen was nothing more than a “waterboy” at Death Row. A short time later, the two men had a violent argument, the young woman said, and when Heron backed Sutphen down, Antonie had come up with a story for the police that would implicate Suge’s man in the murder of Biggie Smalls.
A slightly more persuasive account
of Biggie’s slaying was offered by an inmate at Corcoran Prison. This man said that Marcus Nunn, a Mob Piru Blood who shared a cell with him at the time of Biggie Smalls’s murder, had confided that Suge hired another Mob Piru to take the rapper out. The Corcoran inmate also claimed to know who had killed Tupac Shakur, and said Suge had been behind that, also. This was all at best secondhand information, however, and Marcus Nunn denied everything.
A Los Angeles County Jail inmate who gave only his first name—“Devin”—phoned the management company of Biggie’s ex-girlfriend L’il Kim (after reading an article about the singer in People magazine), and said he knew for certain that the killer of Biggie Smalls was a Bloods gang member who had received $50,000 for the job from David Kenner. The shooter had fled to Chicago immediately after the killing, Devin said, but now was back in L.A. and working at Death Row Records. The problem for LAPD investigators was that “Devin” had identified the killer only as “Willie Williams”; when Poole ran the name through the LAPD computer, hundreds of convicted criminals with that name popped up on-screen.
Two current Death Row Records employees, one male, the other female, had contacted the LAPD during the first week after Biggie Smalls’s death with information that linked the record label to the murder. That the two provided their names, addresses, and phone numbers made them at least interesting to the Wilshire detectives. Kelly Cooper, the black detective who had headed up the Smalls murder investigation during its first month, noted that he had been unable to find even a single Death Row employee who would talk about the beating death of Kelly Jamerson back in 1995. These two witnesses could not offer anything close to what would provide probable cause for an arrest, however. The male employee said he had heard Suge Knight boast about arranging Biggie’s murder, while the female employee told police that she believed David Kenner had actually arranged the hit, and that she could provide information that Kenner was a “major drug dealer.” In the end, detectives concluded that the woman’s evidence was entirely circumstantial, and that the man’s would be thrown out in court as hearsay.
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