***
Several weeks prior to reporting for duty on the task force, Tim appeared in federal court for Voletta Wallace’s lawsuit. The same day that he testified, Tim had been interviewed by the Los Angeles City Attorney regarding testimony the Wallace family believed would be beneficial to their suit.
From his interview, the City Attorney learned that Tim did not subscribe to Russell Poole’s theories about corrupt police officers being behind Biggie’s murder and the City Attorney made Tim their witness.
The Wallace family’s attorney’s never interviewed Tim before calling him to the stand. In court, Tim testified to and disputed several conspiracy theories regarding Biggie’s murder and the L.A.P.D. and he offered alternate suspects who were members of Compton-based gangs. The lawsuit continued with the Los Angeles City Attorney, in anticipation of more testimony, contacting Tim several times over the next few months.
***
Upon joining the Biggie Smalls Task Force, it took weeks for Tim and the others to review ninety-six murder books based on the investigation. Several meetings took place to discuss the direction they would pursue. There were several routes they planned to take, including following up on several bad leads that had been given by people behind bars who claimed to have inside information.
Kading and Winters wanted to involve the F.B.I. and get wiretaps on Keefe D and Suge Knight. By this time, however, in 2006, neither Keefe D nor Suge were operating at the levels they had in the nineties. Tim knew there would be problems building substantial narcotics cases against someone like Keefe D, who, in his heyday, had been one of Compton's and the West Coast’s biggest drug traffickers.
In the early days of the task force, before Brian’s retirement, the team had made substantial progress. In Tim’s eyes, Brian was a true detective, one who could see through bullshit and root out the real leads. Brian had been around when Russell Poole had the Biggie case and introduced into the investigation his beliefs about corruption and cover-ups within the department, doggedly pursuing these angles despite a lack of clear and tangible evidence. He knew that a substantial part of Poole’s theories had been based on people who’d lied or whose word and motives were, at best, highly-questionable. Brian, like Tim, understood that somewhere in the first leads that came in about the case was where the real killer(s) could be found, and over seventy percent of those initial leads - phone calls, tips - pointed to Compton. Most of those involved Suge Knight, Death Row, Keefe D, and the South Side Crips.
Brian learned all that Tim knew about the case. From Biggie's relationship with the South Side Crips, including his associations with Keefe D, Orlando Anderson, Deandre Smith, and Terrence “T-Brown” Brown - all considered suspects in the murder of Tupac Shakur - to his being in Compton prior to his death.
Brian understood that having Tim on the task force gave him access to someone with a tremendous amount of valuable information related to first leads. He began to mine that information to get to the truth.
***
Brian asked Tim if he could get Michael Dorrough to talk. Dorrough was serving three life terms with no possibility of parole. He was at Pelican Bay, California’s only supermax prison, located in the northernmost part of the state near the Oregon border. Supermax prisons - short for “super-maximum security” - were reserved for inmates considered the most hardcore.
Tim told Brian he believed he would be able to talk with Dorrough, even though he'd been the lead investigator that had put him away in that triple murder case. He and Brian contacted Dorrough’s mother, Cari, who Tim had known since 1982 when he first joined the Compton P.D. She’d worked at the department as a property officer. Cari assisted Tim and Brian in arranging a meeting with her son.
Detectives Kading and Winters and Tim went to Pelican Bay. Winters began talking with Dorrough and he was immediately put off by her. He looked at them and said, “I want to talk to Brennan. Alone.”
Kading and Winters went across the hall to sit as, for the next hour, Tim sat and talked with the man he’d sent away for life.
***
Dorrough told Tim how the South Side Crips had come to be involved with Biggie and Sean “Puffy” Combs. It had happened years earlier, he said. Their initial meetings involved drug transactions between Keefe D and New-York-based drug dealer Eric “Zip” Martin.
According to Dorrough, when Puffy and Biggie had business in the west, they would meet with a group of South Side Crips that included Dorrough, Orlando Anderson, Keefe D, Keefe’s brother Kevin Davis, Wendell Prince, Corey Edwards, and others. This group of South Side Crips acted as Puffy and Biggie’s West Coast entourage/security detail - necessary protection in a city where they were often viewed as the enemy, especially after the East Coast/West Coast war escalated.
At the time Tupac was killed in Vegas, Dorrough had not been with the rest of the South Sides who were there in the city. He was in jail for a probation violation related to a murder in Compton he and Orlando had been involved in. He was released shortly after Tupac’s death.
According to Dorrough, Anderson told him he pulled the trigger and killed Tupac because he was jumped at the MGM Grand. Anderson told him that Keefe D was driving the car and Deandre Smith and Terrence Brown were the passengers.
When Suge Knight was arrested for violating his probation after being seen attacking Orlando Anderson in the footage from the MGM Grand, Suge's attorney approached Anderson and his attorney, Edi Faal, and, per Dorrough, paid them twenty-thousand dollars for Anderson to testify on Suge’s behalf at his trial. Dorrough told Tim that he was at Edi Faal’s office when Anderson was paid off. When Suge received a nine-year sentence despite Anderson’s testimony, Dorrough said the South Side Crips were approached once more. Dorrough alleged that Death Row personnel approached Keefe D on behalf of Suge to assist in the murder of Biggie. Dorrough stated that the South Side Crips took the deal. He said other gang members, Pirus, were involved, and that he would tell Tim more the next time they met.
***
Winters and Kading were highly upset about not being a part of Tim’s interview with Dorrough, but after Tim reported to them what was said, Winters immediately called Brian Tyndall and gave him the information. Winters complained at length to people about not being at the interview, saying Tim should never have done it alone, that he should have insisted to Dorrough that he had to talk to all three of the detectives.
The next day at Robbery/Homicide, there was a meeting about the Dorrough interview. Tim explained that, as any real detective would know, you don’t just stop someone from talking just because he/she doesn’t want to speak to a particular detective. You let the person talk to the detective he/she felt most comfortable with, especially if the person was in the mood and mindset to talk. There was always the opportunity to request later that other detectives be present.
There were instances, however, where some detectives wanted to be stars, insisting on being the ones to receive the information or no one at all. In those cases, investigations suffered, and the truth often never had the chance to come to light.
***
Arrangements were made to move Michael Dorrough to Calipatria State Prison in Southern California for follow-up interviews. After he was moved, Brian, Bill Holcomb, and Tim went to Calipatria in an attempt at another interview, but were stopped at the door. Kading and Winters had gotten an Assistant U.S Attorney involved in the investigation and that person didn’t want Tim, Brian, and Bill questioning Dorrough any further. The Assistant U.S. Attorney wanted to slow down the investigation.
Tim couldn’t believe it. It was common for federal investigations to take years, often ending up with nothing. It was a waste of taxpayer money and time, and it was not the way Tim was accustomed to doing police work in a city as intense as Compton. Where he came from, cases had to be investigated before leads grew cold, before informants lost interest. If too much time passed, informants, when asked about murders and other crimes, were likely to shrug it off with a “That’s old�
��who cares?” dismissiveness.
With the news that the investigation was being slowed now that federal law enforcement was involved, Tim could see the writing on the wall.
Over the next several months, Dorrough and his mother would call requesting to talk to Tim, but Tim was told not to talk to Dorrough.
***
Tim gave the task force the names of several key players within MOB Piru and the South Side Crips that he knew would talk to him and provide information. He gave them the history of the gangs, the names of their members, and their drug connections. Tim also researched forty-five other murders that were directly and indirectly connected. The forty-five murders were charted, detailing suspects and victims within the large circle of gang members connected to the murders of Biggie and Tupac. All the evidence from Tim’s forty-location search warrant affidavit was recovered and re-examined.
Tim also knew about three-thousand-plus guns that had been transferred from Compton P.D.’s evidence division into the Sheriff’s Department’s evidence division. Many of those guns had never been test-fired and entered into a database.
Tim contacted Sergeant Paul Mondry at the L.A.S.D.’s Unsolved Homicide Unit and advised him of the connections between the forty-five homicide cases and the need for weapons testing. Tim worked with Mondry, Scott Lusk, and Bob Wachsmuth identifying the cases and weapons that needed to be test-fired.
It was an exhaustive effort to locate and identify all the weapons. Tim, Mondry, Lusk, and Wachsmuth had to go through numerous boxes at central property at the Sheriff’s office. They located all the 9mm and .40 caliber guns to do ballistics tests for the murders of Tupac and Biggie. Tim was assured by an A.T.F. agent who was assigned to their team that they would test-fire fifty weapons a week and enter them into the NIBIN system. NIBIN, which was maintained by the A.T.F., stood for the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network. Digital images taken at crime scenes of spent bullets and cartridge casings or those test-fired from seized weapons were entered into NIBIN to allow law enforcement to access and share information from and with jurisdictions all around the country. Even though several hundred weapons were identified to be test-fired, by the time Tim left the task force a year later, not even fifty of them had been done.
***
One day, while sorting through the weapons to be tested, Tim found a .40 caliber Glock semi-auto handgun - the kind used in Tupac’s murder. It had been reported as “Found Gun” at an address Tim recognized to be the residence of South Side Crip Corey Edwards’ girlfriend, Lisa Garner.
Edwards had figured prominently in the murder of Tupac. Even more interesting, or perhaps bizarre, was that the date the gun was reported as found was May 30, 1998, the day after Orlando Anderson had been killed in the shootout at Rob’s Car Wash in Compton. Lisa Garner’s father had called the police to come pick up the gun. He’d discovered it because their dog, a pit bull, was walking around in the backyard with the weapon in his mouth.
Tim pulled the gun for an immediate test-fire against evidence in Tupac’s murder investigation. The next day when he went to L.A.P.D., they were all abuzz. Everyone was excited. A.T.F. had test-fired the found gun and the NIBIN computer database positively identified the Glock to be a match with the weapon that killed Tupac Shakur!
Everyone on the task force was sworn to secrecy.
Days later, Tim was questioned by Sheriff’s Homicide supervisors about why he hadn’t told them the results of the ballistics test. He explained his loyalty to the task force. The supervisors pointed out that his loyalty needed to be with his employer first, the L.A.S.D.
Then, in a surprising turn, the A.T.F. agent informed the task force that Las Vegas P.D. stated they test-fired the weapon and it was not a match for the gun that killed Tupac.
It was all very strange.
Tim later contacted one of the top firearms experts in Los Angeles, who said there are some rare false positives in NIBIN, however he had never known of a false positive on a Glock because they make such unique markings.
Tim was beginning to wonder what was the real truth. The F.B.I. and the U.S. Attorney had been brought onto the task force. It was well-known that a lot of F.B.I. agents were computer savvy but not necessarily street smart. When dealing with informants, they were often told whatever they wanted to hear so the informant could beat the case. The F.B.I. had previously investigated Tim and Bob, their boss Reggie Wright, Sr., and the Compton Police Department for perceived corruption and ties to Suge Knight. The F.B.I. agents believed their informants, many of whom were willing to stain the reputations of police officers who’d repeatedly put them behind bars in order to cut deals to remain free.
Years earlier, when Tim and Bob first found out about the investigation, they went to F.B.I. headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard.
“Here we are,” they said. “We hear we’re being investigated. Ask any questions you want.”
They were interviewed separately by several investigators. They told the investigators how they felt about what was happening, that what they were being accused of was all bullshit, and that they were willing to take polygraphs. The F.B.I. agents had no concern about whether they were sullying the names of good cops. They had taken the words of unreliable, self-serving informants as gospel.
Now, years later on the task force, Tim found himself once again facing their accusations. The F.B.I. agents told L.A.P.D. they couldn’t trust Tim, even though Tim had brought more knowledge of the people involved in the murders than anyone on the task force.
Tim and Bob were known and respected by investigators across the country and had stellar reputations with all the high-ranking Assistant District Attorneys in Los Angeles County, yet these F.B.I. agents were making baseless accusations against Tim’s character, without ever producing any evidence.
Tim began seeing task force members whispering to each other when he came around. They didn’t trust him and he didn’t trust them, and he wished one of them would just come and talk to him directly.
After a year or so on the task force, Tim was informed by his captain at the Sheriff’s Department that he was being promoted to the L.A.S.D.’s gang division, O.S.S., and would have to leave the task force. Homicide had assigned four investigators - including Paul Fournier, Mike Caouette, and Karen Shonka - to the task force to investigate the forty-five murder cases Tim had written up. Tim had contributed a considerable amount of information, knowledge, and effort, but never had a chance to interview the suspects that could have resulted in the investigations being solved. Tim knew almost every gangster connected to those forty-five murder cases, and they would have talked to him because he had credibility, he had their respect - respect that he’d earned in the streets of Compton.
***
It was upsetting to Tim that he wouldn’t be allowed to finish solving cases he knew he could solve, nor assist in prosecuting them. Tim asked his captain at the Sheriff’s Department the real reason he was being pulled from the task force. The captain would only say it was because he was being promoted. Tim told him what he believed to be the reason, but his captain wouldn’t confirm it. Tim told his captain that he didn’t want the promotion. He just wanted to go back out in a gang car working in Compton. His captain said Tim could reject the promotion, but he couldn’t go back toCompton.
***
It was L.A.S.D. Chief Ronnie Williams who’d told O.S.S. that Tim couldn’t work Compton. Williams had made comments months earlier at a meeting with most of the O.S.S. staff that were detrimental to Compton’s mayor, Eric Perrodin. Perrodin was trying to bring the department back to Compton and was not popular with the brass at the Sheriff’s Department.
Williams’ comments made their way back to Perrodin, who then complained to the Sheriff. Williams inquired about who could have gone back to Perrodin with what he’d said. He was told that Tim and another former Compton gang unit member, Eddie Aguirre were close to Perrodin and had been behind a lawsuit to stop the merger of the Compton P.D. and the Sheriff�
�s Department.
Chief Williams reportedly wasn’t happy about this. He made it known throughout the department that Tim and Eddie could never work Compton.
***
Tim’s captain helped as much as he could, assigning Tim to the Century Station gang unit. Century Station bordered Compton.
Tim filed a grievance that made it up to the Assistant Sheriff. It was denied. During the grievance process, Tim requested to speak with Chief Ronnie Williams, but Williams wouldn’t see him.
Even though he wanted to say more on his last day on the task force at L.A.P.D. Robbery/Homicide, Tim thanked everyone for the chance to be a part of the team. He told them he knew the real reason he was leaving. Task force member Bill Holcomb approached Tim and said he wanted to have a word over a cup of coffee.
Minutes later, Tim and Bill sat and talked. Bill told him he deserved to know the truth. He said the U.S. Attorney and the F.B.I. didn’t trust Tim.
Tim went off on a rant, explaining that nearly all of the best leads and suspects on the case had been provided by him and Bob ten years earlier. Why would the U.S. Attorney and the F.B.I. think he would do anything to derail the investigation? Tim demanded that those accusing him meet him face-to-face and have it out.
“They won’t do that,” Bill said. “They’re scared of you.”
***
Over the next five years, nothing much happened with the task force. The team couldn’t agree on a direction. After five years of not solving the forty-five cases that directly and indirectly connected to the Biggie murder case, Detective Greg Kading ended up as the last lead detective on the task force. He offered Keefe D immunity on a Las Vegas case, getting him to say that he and the South Side Crips were not involved in Biggie’s murder, but that he, Terrence Brown, Deandre Smith, and Orlando Anderson were involved in the murder of Tupac.
Kading retired from the L.A.P.D. In 2011 when he published the book Murder Rap, some of what he wrote was based on information provided by Tim in his work on the task force, including photos supplied by Tim.
Once Upon A Time in Compton Page 29