Dead Wrong

by Randall Sullivan

Email from Greg Kading to Chris Blatchford, August 1, 2014

  GREG KADING

  United States District Court, Central District of California, Order Re Pretrial Motions in Limine, Motley, et al. v. Parks et al. (including Greg Kading), Case No. CV 00-01472 MMM (SHx), June 19, 2006

  U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration, Synopsis of Meeting with LAPD detectives Greg Kading and Daryn Dupree, December 18, 2008

  Sandy Ribera Handwritten Notes of Meeting with Greg Kading and Perry Sanders, Hilton Garden Hotel, Calabasas, 2011

  MICHAEL BERKOW

  Email from Lieutenant Amy Midgett, U.S. Coast Guard, August 31, 2018

  Email from Michael Berkow to Randall Sullivan, September 5, 2018

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Dead Wrong was built on the platform of my earlier book LAbyrinth. And LAbyrinth could never have been written without the unstinting assistance of the book’s dogged protagonist, Russell Poole. Russell was dead by the time I began working on Dead Wrong, but he and I had spoken on the phone every month or so for more than a decade before his death, always about some development associated with the investigations of the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. He was, in his way, the background source for this book.

  I won’t be acknowledging here the others who helped me in writing LAbyrinth, unless they were significant sources for Dead Wrong. But again, people like Kendrick Knox (the former LAPD officer whom I interviewed, more briefly than I would have preferred, for LAbyrinth) and Don Vincent (the Los Angeles assistant city attorney whom I interviewed for the Rolling Stone article “The Unsolved Murder of Notorious B.I.G.”), along with numerous others, provided an underlying understanding of the Biggie murder investigation. In writing Dead Wrong, I did draw extensively on interviews I conducted for that second of the two Rolling Stone articles I wrote about the murder of Notorious B.I.G..

  When I wrote LAbyrinth, many of those I interviewed (and most who refused to be interviewed) expressed their fear of Suge Knight and the Bloods gang. Fifteen years later, when I began work on Dead Wrong, those who spoke to me about this case were most afraid of the Los Angeles Police Department and its political allies, in particular the ones who occupied positions in the federal government.

  I applaud the courage of those who talked, especially Phil Carson. For me, there was an eerie echo of Russell Poole’s wrenching, career-wrecking experience in Carson’s story. The two were quite similar in some ways: both earnest Boy Scout types who tried to be above politics and just do their jobs as they understood them. They were a pair of investigators who couldn’t conceive that there was any duty greater than the solving of a homicide. The discovery that this attitude made them not only unusual but actually dangerous in the eyes of others working in law enforcement came as a shock to both men. Their idealism was mere naïveté in the eyes of the people they were working for. Of the two men, Poole paid the higher price and it could be argued that this was by his own choice. Carson, though, may not be done paying. I anticipate that there will be powerfully placed people who will attack him after this book is published. What I wonder is whether those whom he worked with, and who know the truth, will speak up in his defense. The ones I interviewed, to a man and a woman, described Carson as utterly honest—“a guy who couldn’t tell you a lie even if he wanted to,” as one former colleague at the FBI put it. To the extent they had knowledge, they backed what Carson told me, but did not want their names cited in the book. (I interviewed Cathy Viray and Lou Caprino for Rolling Stone back in 2005, and the quotes attributed to them by name came from those interviews.) Carson was actually more sympathetic to his former colleagues than I was, explaining how recent events in Washington, D.C., had made the FBI into an even more treacherously political organization than it had been previously, and that everyone was, as he put it, “running scared.” For me, given that an underlying theme of this book is the politicization of law enforcement, and that I believe there were dozens of officers, agents, and officers of the court whose failure to do their jobs—for political reasons—resulted in the murder of a young man going unsolved, this isn’t a sufficient explanation. Carson seems sure that those he once worked with will step up if called upon. I hope he’s right.

  Perry Sanders was my most valuable source in writing this book. Along with his partner Rob Frank, Sanders provided me with an almost blow-by-blow account of the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit. He also opened a good many doors for me. One example was getting Eugene Deal on a conference call so that I could ask about the recent claims by Greg Kading that Deal had changed his story. The infuriated big man not only denied this in vivid and profane terms; he also described in hugely entertaining detail what he planned to do to that “lyin’ motherfucker Kading” if he ever got in a room with him. It was through Sanders and Frank also that I obtained many of the documents that helped me in writing this book, although the person who actually did the work in that regard was paralegal Audrey Matheny, a woman to whom I owe more than I will likely ever have a chance to repay.

  Sanders’s and Frank’s associate counsels Chris Brizzolara and Bradley Gage also gave me invaluable assistance, particularly in understanding the latter stages of the Wallace v. Los Angeles suit and its sad, unsatisfying conclusion. Brizzolara is an especially insightful fellow. I very much appreciate the interview that another of Sanders’s associates, Sandra Ribera, gave me, and am enormously grateful that she took the time to dig out the handwritten notes she made of the meeting she and Sanders had with Greg Kading back in 2011.

  Sergio Robleto was an absolutely indispensable source and a delightful companion. I helped him get the job as an adviser on the film made from LAbyrinth, and hanging out on the set with Sergio was both edifying and a whole lot of fun. Though I spoke with him on the phone half a dozen times afterward, I never saw him face-to-face again. His sudden death shook a lot of people, me included. Sergio’s operatives, former Los Ageles County sheriff’s deputy Richard Valdemar and former LAPD detective Bruce Stoughton, gave me great interviews. The depth of feeling that Valdemar brought to our conversations about Mike Robinson made a huge impression on me.

  The contained fury of former LAPD officer Cliff Armas was just as affecting; no one I interviewed gave me greater insight into how the mostly trumped-up Rampart Scandal infected everything it touched inside the LAPD, and for that matter throughout the city of Los Angeles. Attorney Joseph Avrahamy ran him a close second, however. Although in this book I used only an excerpt from the op-ed Avrahamy wrote for the Daily News, my conversation with him echoes in every word I wrote about the Rampart Scandal.

  Because I don’t believe one can be brave unless one is also frightened, I call Shelby Braverman one of the most courageous people I’ve ever interviewed. The man had been, as he put it, “broken” by what Bernard Parks and the LAPD had done to him, and he was terribly afraid that the police department might find a way to hurt him again if he spoke to me. But speak to me he did, and I’m very appreciative of it. I appreciate also the help that former LAPD detective Jeff Pailet gave me in arranging interviews with Braverman and with former LAPD sergeant John Cook. Cook is a cautious, careful man, taciturn to a fault. But he told me enough.

  Xavier Hermosillo, on the other hand, is extraordinarily loquacious and thank God for that. Hermosillo described the Board of Rights hearing at which Kenneth Boagni and Felipe Sanchez first testified about the involvement of Rafael Perez in the Notorious B.I.G. murder in such vivid detail that I could almost hear the breathing of the people who had been in the room with him. Hermosillo was equally evocative in describing his complaints against Bernard Parks and the process by which he initiated the declaration of a mistrial in Wallace v. Los Angeles. The man leaves nothing out. Through him, I found Al Rubalcalva, the former LAPD Internal Affairs investigator who provided the police reports Hermosillo used to block Parks’s appointment as LAPD chief back in 1992.

  I was unable to interview Bernard Parks. We did have a brief phone conversation in which he refused
to answer questions about any of the allegations that were made about him by various others among my sources. “My reputation has already been established and I don’t need to defend it to you,” Parks told me.

  I also could not interview Chuck Philips for this book, though I did interview Philips and his Los Angeles Times editor Marc Duvoisin for Rolling Stone back in 2005, and I’ve used parts of those interviews in Dead Wrong. I reached out to Philips through every means available to me (two email addresses and his website) and he never replied. I also wrote to Marc Duvoisin at the San Antonio Express-News, where he was hired as editor in chief last year, asking not only for an interview with him but also for help in making sure his friend Chuck Philips understood the gravity of his actions as reported in this book. We eventually spoke off the record.

  Thanks to Steve Strong for describing Greg Kading’s bad behavior in the George Torres case in such authoritative terms.

  Thanks also to Richard “R.J.” Bond and Jesse Surratt for the information they provided about Kading and his absurd claims of having “solved” the Biggie murder. Bond gets a bad rap even from people who aren’t named Greg Kading, but not from me. I know it bothered him that I had so little enthusiasm for his theory of the Tupac murder, but I found R.J. to be extraordinarily knowledgeable and diligent, and a real help to me. Along with Michael Carlin, he gave me a deeper understanding of Russell Poole’s last years, months, weeks, and days.

  Finally, I want to say thanks again to Voletta Wallace. I spoke to her only once while working on this book, but I felt her support throughout. Seeking justice for her son has cost this woman enormously, but she’s never backed down. If only there were more people who believe the truth will set them free so sincerely as Voletta does.

  Russell Poole (3rd from right) and Sergio Robleto (far right), posing with the then-LAPD Chief Willie Williams (center) and detectives from LAPD South Bureau Homicide.

  First two reward posters prepared by the LAPD in connection to the murder of Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious B.I.G. The one on the right was distributed before Poole and his partner Fred Miller determined that the Impala driven by the killer was black, not green.

  Perry Sanders Jr. (left) and Robert Frank (right), the lead attorneys for Voletta Wallace and the other heirs of Christopher Wallace in the wrongful death lawsuit filed against the City of Los Angeles.

  Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, who presided over the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit for seven years and made the mistrial ruling in 2005.

  Voletta Wallace with a wax statue of her son, Notorious B.I.G. (top), speaking to reporters outside the federal courthouse in Los Angeles (bottom left), and posing with Biggie’s son C.J. Wallace (bottom right).

  Former LAPD officer David Mack (above) and his friend Amir Muhammed, aka Harry Billups, aka Harry Muhammed (below left), accused in the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit of conspiring to murder Notorious B.I.G. To the right of Muhammed is the sketch of the killer made with the help of witnesses riding with Biggie when he was shot to death.

  Former LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Berkow, accused by former FBI agent Phil Carson and others of conspiring with disgraced Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips to derail the federal investigation of the murder of Notorious B.I.G.

  Sergio Robleto, the former head of LAPD South Bureau Homicide who became the lead investigator for Biggie’s family in the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit.

  Biggie’s mother Voletta Wallace and his widow Faith Evans, who grew closer to one another after the murder.

  Former Death Row Records bodyguard Kevin Hackie, whose changing story complicated Wallace v. Los Angeles.

  Marion “Suge” Knight, former head of Death Row Records suspected of arranging the assassination of Notorious B.I.G. Shown here while in custody at the Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail.

  Biggie with Bad Boy Entertainment head Sean “Puffy” Combs, whose failure to help solve the murder of Notorious B.I.G. frustrated the attorneys prosecuting the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit.

  Rafael Perez, the dirtiest of the LAPD’s dirty cops, fabricator of the Rampart Scandal, accused by Kevin Boagni and Felipe Sanchez, among others, of involvement in the Notorious B.I.G. murder.

  Bernard Parks, the former LAPD chief alleged to have covered up the employment of LAPD officers by Death Row Records, protected Rafael Perez and his false narrative of the Rampart Scandal, and stymied Russell Poole’s investigation of the Notorious B.I.G. murder; perhaps no man in the history of Los Angeles will go to his grave with more secrets than Parks.

  Gerald Chaleff, the former Los Angeles defense attorney who became an LAPD deputy chief and gave the court testimony that blocked the release of evidence in the Notorious B.I.G. murder investigation that remains hidden in the bowels of the federal courthouse in Los Angeles.

  Chuck Philips, the disgraced former Los Angeles Times reporter accused by Phil Carson and others of serving as the conduit of the LAPD’s disinformation campaign during the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit.