Alexander recalled spending a few weeks at the front desk in the Tarzana studios, where the weapons he confiscated included Glocks, Tec-9s, and Bowie knives that were damn near the size of machetes. By Halloween, though, he was working full time as bodyguard to Tupac.
The rapper had understood what he was getting into when he joined Death Row, Alexander said; Suge Knight was “the biggest, baddest brotha out there,” and Tupac wanted all the power and protection his affiliation with Suge gave him. By the summer of 1996, however, Suge and Tupac were falling out on a regular basis, Alexander said. While he was filming the movie Gridlocked, Alexander recalled, Tupac fought with Suge over money on several occasions, and publicly accused Knight of stealing from him. And just before the MTV Awards show in New York, less than two weeks before he was shot, Tupac got into “a heated argument” with Suge over a woman, and the two almost came to blows. Money was the real problem between the two, however, Alexander said. Tupac believed he was owed millions, and that Suge was doling out his royalties in order to maintain control and keep him tied to Death Row Records.
Alexander ticked off all the things that were “odd and off” on the day Tupac was shot in Las Vegas. First, he was concerned that Kevin Hackie had been fired and that no one had been hired to replace him, Alexander recalled. Now assigned to protect Tupac all by himself, Alexander immediately learned that he didn’t have a permit to carry a gun in Vegas, then was given a cell phone with a dead battery. And that whole incident at the MGM Grand had looked fishy to him, Alexander said, for several reasons. First, Orlando Anderson looked like he was waiting for them when the Death Row entourage came out of the auditorium at the MGM Grand. Two, Suge’s home-boy Tray was the one who got Tupac to attack Anderson. Three, Anderson didn’t try to escape when Suge and his thugs came charging after him. The thing that really stuck in his mind, though, Alexander said, was that after Suge told everyone to scatter and disappear, he stopped to make a phone call before leaving the hotel.
He believed the entire assault on Anderson had been staged, Alexander said, and that it was entirely possible Suge had paid the Crip to take that beating, and then kill Tupac. The bodyguard’s description of the shooting added a detail Poole had never heard before: That white Cadillac didn’t just pull up “alongside” the car Tupac and Suge were riding in, Alexander said, but was actually a little bit ahead of the BMW when the killer opened fire, allowing him to shoot at an angle that made it possible to avoid hitting Suge with a stray bullet.
He believed that Suge, Reggie Wright, and Orlando Anderson had all been involved in Tupac’s murder, Alexander said finally, but that he’d never admit it in public.
The bodyguard also told Poole and Miller that he knew there was one LAPD officer who had been especially close to Suge. He had never met the man and didn’t know his name, Alexander said, but he did recall that Suge and Reggie referred to him as “Rabbit,” because he was such a fast runner.
His interview with Alexander convinced Poole that he needed to interview Orlando Anderson, but locating the Crip was difficult these days. It would become impossible on May 29, 1998, the day Anderson was shot to death at a car wash on the corner of Alondra Boulevard and Oleander Avenue. The Compton police said the shooting (in which two other men were killed and a fourth man wounded) had been about money, but Poole was not inclined to believe anything the Compton cops told him at this point. “It just seemed a little too convenient,” Poole explained. “Yafu Fula and Orlando Anderson, the best witness and the main suspect in the murder of Tupac Shakur, both shot dead, while the Shakur case remained unsolved.”
Kevin Hackie advised Poole to look into a couple of other killings that had taken place in Compton and South Central. The victim of the more recent of these two murders was a bodyguard named Darryl Reed, who on January 21, 1998, had been murdered in a house owned by DJ Quik. Reed was a guy who may have known too much for his own good, Hackie said, during an interview at his office in the San Fernando Valley. The more interesting case, though, Hackie told Poole, involved the May 1996 murder of Bruce Richardson. Richardson was well known in South Central L.A. as the owner of the Genius Car Wash at Crenshaw and 54th. He was even more famous, though, as perhaps the only major drug dealer who hired both Crips and Bloods. Though formally a Blood, Bruce was welcome among the Rolling 60s Crips, who treated him as one of their own. This was unusual, to say the least.
Richardson had attended high school with Suge Knight, and was a major figure in the black neighborhoods of southern Los Angeles County long before Suge Knight began to capture public attention. Among other things, Bruce was all but unbeatable in hand-to-hand combat. A legendary streetfighter with a black belt in karate, the tall and powerfully built Richardson intimidated just about everyone, including Suge Knight, who at one time had openly admired his former schoolmate. That changed, of course, when Suge became the CEO of Death Row Records. Even when Suge was the one with all the power, though, Bruce refused to kowtow. Calling Suge “a punk and a pussy,” Richardson decided to become a manager of rap groups and beat Suge at his own game. One of Bruce’s rappers, a kid named Dramacydal, became close friends with Tupac Shakur, who wanted Dramacydal to join his Outlaw Immortalz as a backup performer on the All Eyez on Me album. Bruce gave his consent, but only if Suge promised him a percentage of the album’s royalties. After the album was completed, however, Suge not only refused to pay but persuaded Dramacydal to leave Bruce and sign on as a client with Knight’s own West Coast Management.
An enraged Richardson confronted Suge a short time later at a nightclub where he astonished onlookers by slapping Knight around until three of his thugs jumped in and drove Bruce off. Publicly humilated, Suge made no secret of the fact that he wanted revenge.
Two weeks later, Bruce Richardson was shot to death in his home. Kevin Hackie named Suge Knight’s thugs Neckbone and Buntry as the likely hit men—they were the guys that did this sort of thing for Suge, Hackie said—but a question remained about how the killers had gained access to Richardson’s home. It was well known that Bruce’s place was a virtual fortress, with reinforced steel doors, double dead-bolt locks, heavy bars on all the windows, and an elaborate alarm system. The evidence clearly indicated that Bruce had opened the door for his killers, engaging in a fierce battle with them only after they were inside the house. No way Richardson would have let a couple of Suge’s thugs into his living room, Hackie and Poole agreed. He might have opened the door for a couple of guys in LAPD uniforms, however. There were, of course, other possibilities; at right around the same time Bruce was killed, three Bloods had gained entrance to the home of a drug dealer they robbed and shot by posing as Muslims selling bean pies door-to-door. It didn’t seem likely that Bruce Richardson would have fallen for that sort of ruse, though.
According to the Rolling 60s Crips, Tupac Shakur had phoned Bruce Richardson’s father shortly after Bruce’s murder to say that he had nothing to do with it. Tupac hadn’t been willing to say the same about Suge Knight, however.
Kevin Hackie proved to be the most verbose Death Row insider Poole had interviewed so far. He already had shared most of what he knew with the FBI, Hackie said, but was happy to repeat it to Poole and Miller. He first met Reggie Wright Jr. back in the late 1980s, Hackie recalled, when he was hired by the Compton Unified School District’s police force. Reggie was working as a jailer at that time, but joined his father Reggie Wright Sr. on the Compton P.D. a short time later. Wright Jr. and his partner Smoky Burrell were notorious for ripping off drug dealers, Hackie said, and he believed that was how Reggie and Suge Knight had become involved. It was well known in Compton that Reggie was helping out Suge’s homeboys when they got into trouble.
Wrightway Protective Services was created with $300,000 that Suge loaned Reggie in ‘93 or ‘94, Hackie said. Suge also was the one who encouraged Reggie to hire off-duty police officers, which, among other things, obviated the need to apply for concealed-weapon permits.
He realized that Death Row was more than s
imply a record label, Hackie told Poole, soon after joining Wrightway Protective Services in 1994. At the Tarzana studios, Suge’s closest associates, after Reggie Wright Jr., were his thugs. He knew for certain that Buntry, Neckbone, and Heron were running drugs, Hackie said, and had heard Suge discussing how to obtain and distribute assault rifles on at least one occasion. Also, Hackie said, Death Row ran a money-laundering operation that took in as much as $80,000 per month.
Suge was a classic bully, but he was shrewd and nervy at the same time, Hackie said, with a real talent for psychologically manipulating the people around him. The cops still underestimated him; he was as powerful as any gangster in the country. Hackie used almost the same words that Frank Alexander had in describing Suge Knight’s approach to business. “Both bodyguards said that Knight only let people get close if he had something on them,” Poole recalled. “And that he always lets it be known that you will be killed if you cross him.”
Suge met with Omar Bradley and Mustapha Farrakhan to talk about backing Bradley’s run for a vacant congressional seat, Hackie said, yet at the same time treated the Compton mayor like one of his bun boys. And after Knight caught Bradley messing around with one of his girlfriends, Hackie added, Suge told the mayor that if he ever came near the young woman again he was a dead man.
David Kenner was “the brains of the company,” Hackie said, and it was common knowledge at Death Row that the attorney provided connections to the organized crime families back east.
Although he was absolutely certain that Suge and Reggie Wright had been behind Biggie Smalls’s murder, Hackie said, he had no real evidence that Suge was responsible for Tupac’s slaying. He believed it was more than possible that Suge had been involved, though, Hackie added. Shakur and Knight were fighting over money all summer; when Tupac would ask for the royalties he was owed, Suge would respond by sending him a forty- or fifty-thousand-dollar bill for the expenses his family had run up at the Westwood Marquis. Everyone at Death Row recognized that Tupac was inching his way toward the door, and when he fired David Kenner, they knew the rapper was risking his life. In fact, Wright had turned on Hackie because Reggie and Suge believed the bodyguard was encouraging Tupac to leave L.A. and relocate to Atlanta. Tupac definitely did not want to go to Las Vegas on the weekend he was murdered, Hackie said, and changed his mind only because Suge went to work on him. He was unimpressed by the fact that Suge was in the car with Tupac when the rapper was shot, Hackie said: “Suge was bold enough to take that chance.”
Frank Alexander wasn’t the only one whose life was threatened after Tupac died, Hackie told Poole: Reggie Wright had phoned him to say, “I can have you killed at any time.”
He believed, by the way, that Reggie had been behind the murder of Orlando Anderson, Hackie said; Wright owned a champagne-colored Chevy Blazer that matched the description of the “suspect vehicle” in that killing. And no matter what else they heard, Hackie told Poole and Miller, Reggie Wright was the one running Death Row while Suge was in prison. Reggie was Suge’s “little bitch,” and did his master’s bidding without question.
Kevin Lewis had no evidence that Suge was involved in the murders of either Tupac Shakur or Biggie Smalls, but the former Death Row studio manager had no doubt that Knight was capable of killing anyone he wished to eliminate. The terror in his eyes was what made Lewis so persuasive. It had taken Poole months to arrange a sit-down with Kenneth Knox’s main informant, who vowed that he would never set foot in Los Angeles again. A scheduled meeting in Chicago was aborted when Lewis phoned from New York to say he couldn’t make it, and that he still feared Suge Knight might have him killed. And when Death Row’s former manager finally rendezvoused with Poole in Chicago, he added little that he hadn’t already told Kenneth Knox. Lewis did acknowledge for the first time that he had been present when Kelly Jamerson was beaten to death at the El Rey Theater, though, and said he in fact “stepped over the body” on his way to the nearest exit. Getting away with that murder, Lewis said, definitely emboldened Suge and his thugs. Lewis also spoke in greater detail than previously about the fights between the Crips and the Bloods that had broken out in the Tarzana studios, and told Poole that Suge had seemed to encourage these near riots. Those battles had created a real dilemma for Snoop Dogg, who was “more blue than red,” Lewis said, and might be the one important Death Row rapper willing to talk about what he knew. Eight months earlier, the Long Beach detective who infiltrated Death Row as part of the federal task force had told LAPD detectives that “Suge used to slap Snoop Dogg around like a little girl.” He believed Snoop hated Suge enough to betray him, the Long Beach detective said.
What Poole didn’t know when he spoke to Kevin Lewis was that Snoop already had hit back at Knight. On May Day, shortly after breaking with Death Row to join Master P at No Limit Records, Snoop had appeared onstage to perform one song with his new partner at a concert in the Universal Amphitheater. As soon as Snoop stepped away from the microphone, he was surrounded by five Bloods. When one of them punched him in the face, the rapper broke free and ran toward the metal detector behind the stage, where a pair of deputies from the nearby L.A. County Sheriff’s substation were posted. After the deputies called for backup, it took another twenty deputies, along with four dozen security guards, to break up the mob of young black males that had grown to more than sixty. Once they got Snoop inside the substation, deputies did a pat-down search and found a baggie filled with marijuana in the rapper’s hip pocket. The lieutenant who commanded the substation then interviewed Snoop personally, and eventually relayed his account to Poole.
“I think I know who killed Tupac,” the lieutenant said.
“I do, too,” Snoop replied. “The guy who was seated next to him.”
“You mean Suge Knight?” the lieutenant asked.
“Yes!” Snoop answered. The rapper’s explanation was essentially the same one given by Frank Alexander and Kevin Hackie: Suge owed Tupac $3 million and didn’t want to pay it, especially if Shakur was going to leave his label.
Armed with what he had learned from Alexander, Hackie, and Lewis, Poole once again approached his superiors in the Robbery-Homicide Division, seeking permission one more time for a full-scale investigation of the clues that implicated David Mack in the Biggie Smalls murder. Again he was rebuffed. “The only explanation I got was, ‘Those clues aren’t viable,’” Poole recalled. “When I asked why they weren’t viable, and if there had been an investigation that exonerated Mack, I was told it was none of my business. That was a first. Here I am still listed as the lead investigator on the Biggie Smalls case, and the investigation of the person I consider the main suspect is ‘none of my business.’”
Poole was beginning to believe that the explanation for this was very simple: “Criminal cops get protected because the department wants to avoid scandal and publicity.” And that protection seemed to increase exponentially whenever the criminal cops were black.
The LAPD’s new double standard was nowhere so obvious as in the different treatment received by Kevin Gaines and Frank Lyga. While Gaines not only escaped repeatedly from the consequences of his actions, and was sheltered from investigation even after his death, Lyga remained under a cloud long after the evidence submitted by Poole had demonstrated his innocence. Chief Parks ordered Internal Affairs investigators to comb through Lyga’s personnel package, breaking down every use of force by Lyga during his ten years on the force into assorted categories, including the suspects’ race. IA investigators twice ran tests at the Gaines-Lyga shooting scene to verify that it was a “dead spot” where Lyga’s radio broadcasts couldn’t be picked up at LAPD headquarters. Even after the LAPD’s Officer Involved Shooting Unit and a three-man “shooting board” agreed that Lyga’s actions had been within departmental policy, Parks authorized a costly, computer-generated 3–D video model of the shooting, then nullified the ruling of the first shooting board and convened a second, this one made up entirely of black officers. That board also cleared Lyga.
&n
bsp; “I gave them my final follow-up report months before they finally approved it and exonerated Lyga,” Poole recalled. “It was in delay mode for a long time, the longest I’d seen in my entire career. The whole thing was blatantly political. And I was shocked when I saw the Internal Affairs report on Gaines later that year. They kept a lot of things out, including that fifteen-seven report from Officer Guidry that Gaines was a posible dope courier for Suge Knight.”
Frank Lyga’s ordeal wasn’t over, either. When the detective’s personnel package had been sent to the City Attorney’s office to prepare for the lawsuit filed by Johnnie Cochran, the documents inside disappeared for eighteen months. During that time, Los Angeles newspapers ran a series of stories detailing every complaint filed against Lyga during his career. There were four, and although not one of them was sustained, articles filled with verbs like “punched,” “kicked,” and “tackled” created a troubling impression, especially when coupled with Cochran’s charge that Lyga was “a racist, out of control cop.” Only when the LAPD’s final report was presented in March of 1998 did the public learn that the first of these complaints, made by an arrestee who claimed Lyga bound his wrists too tightly with handcuffs, was filed eight months after the incident. The second complaint had been made by an arrestee who said Lyga had kicked him in the kidneys, but omitted that Lyga had just found a concealed pistol in the suspect’s boot and had forced the man back to the ground only after he tried to stand up. The third complaint, filed by an arrestee whose nose had been broken when Lyga and his partner tackled him, was dropped when the man pleaded guilty to resisting arrest. The fourth complaint, filed by an arrestee who claimed Lyga had beaten him, was dismissed after the man’s friend said he had made up the story and investigators learned that Lyga hadn’t even been on the scene at the time the incident occurred. An embittered Lyga demanded to know why the newspapers didn’t want to put that information on their front pages.
LAbyrinth Page 21