Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (13 page)

But Billups’ ordeal didn’t stop there. After Poole resigned in 1999, the FBI launched a police corruption investigation targeting David Mack. In the course of the probe, agents interviewed the jailhouse informant Michael Robinson, who had revealed that Biggie’s killer was named Amir or something similar. He would subsequently go on to insist that he could also positively identify the suspect. The FBI decided to find out just how accurate the informant’s claim was, outfitting Robinson with a wire and sending him directly to Billups’s house. The resulting encounter quickly devolved into farce as Billups answered the door to find a complete stranger trying to make small talk, all the while being monitored by FBI agents down the street. Billups summoned the cops, who arrived to arrest the intruder before they got a frantic call from the eavesdropping FBI agents, afraid of having their informant’s cover blown. The police retreated even as Billups loudly insisted that he wanted to file a complaint. In light of this embarrassing incident, the viability of Harry Billups as a suspect dropped several notches in the estimation of the task force.

So, too, did the significance of the black Impala. The vehicle was, in fact, the ride of choice among many gangsters and rap moguls at that time. Among the half dozen black Impalas that would make an appearance over the course of the investigation was one belonging to Suge Knight, another driven by a bodyguard for DJ Quik, and still others owned by David Mack and Keffe D. Given this abundance of Impalas, the likelihood of finding the actual car used in the murder was, to say the least, not high. We had nothing more to go on than its color, make and year. The absence of any other distinguishing marks, along with the fact that so many Impalas were being driven by suspects and witnesses to the crime, caused us to look elsewhere for a solid lead.

By the early fall of 2006, we had pretty much cleared away enough of the debris that had piled up around the cold case to begin the actual work of a new investigation. The question was where to begin. Knocking down flimsy theories and eliminating false leads was one thing. Building a new case on reliable information was quite another. We had our work cut out for us.

CHAPTER
9

Fishing Expeditions

O
NCE WE SORTED OUT
where we didn’t need to go, we began looking around for new ways forward in the long-stalled case. With virtually every witness wrung dry years before, we knew we had to come at the investigation from a fresh angle, identifying those who might have undisclosed information and then finding a way to pry it loose.

Fortunately for us, there were more than a few persons of interest in the case who were already in jail, awaiting trial, or serving time on a variety of unrelated charges. Maybe they could be induced to stop stonewalling and start talking, which meant that we had to have something to bargain with: like a reduced sentence, a good word in a plea bargain, or some other form of special consideration.

What we had going for us was the fact that they were almost all gang members. Gangs are tight-knit clans, with extended family relationships that afford members the favored status of “cuz” in their particular set. As a result, everyone pretty much knew what was going on with everyone else. There was a lot of talk, gangster-to-gangster, as well as the usual bragging and bagging that went on between rival sets. Word, even of the most incriminating variety, inevitably got around.

Such was the case with Trevon “Tray” Lane, who was in L.A. County Jail awaiting trial on a charge of evading police. Tim Brennan and I paid him a visit in early July. Tray was uniquely qualified to tell us something we didn’t already know, given his involvement in an incident that had led up to the shooting of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996.

Two months prior to that night, Tray, his friend Kevin “K.W.” Woods, and two other Bloods had been shopping at a Foot Locker outlet in the Lakewood Mall, a sprawling shopping complex between Compton and Long Beach that was a favorite spot for gangsters to strut their stuff. That evening, Tray was sporting a large diamond-cut medallion stamped with the Death Row logo, a prized piece of bling bestowed on favored associates by Suge Knight. As the foursome left the mall and made their way through the parking lot, they were jumped by upward of eight Southside Crips, including Maurice “Lil Mo” Combs, Denvonta “Dirt” Lee, and Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.

Baby Lane would subsequently appear on the list of likely suspects Brennan had supplied to detectives in the initial Biggie Smalls investigation. Tall and rangy with an ice-cold stare, Baby Lane had been arrested for murder in 1996 and on a robbery charge the following year. But his rap sheet paled in comparison with the crimes he was suspected of committing but that could not be proved. They included involvement in a number of drive-by shootings and other gang-related assaults. He was the quintessential menace to society.

But Anderson had simple larceny on his mind that afternoon in the parking lot of the Lakewood Mall. Specifically, he was after the gaudy gold-and-diamond Death Row necklace that Tray was wearing. Later stories circulated that Puffy had offered a $10,000 bounty to anyone who could bring him one of these medallions. Compton police officer Reggie Wright, Jr., had heard rumors to that effect from the Southside Crips and had passed the information along to investigators during the initial probe into Biggie’s death.

But it’s much more likely that Anderson simply wanted the pendant with its heavy chain for himself. And he got it, ripping it off Tray’s neck and leaving the humiliated Pirus to plot their revenge.

They had their chance several weeks later when Tupac and Suge were in Las Vegas to see Mike Tyson take on the WBA heavyweight champion, Bruce Seldon, in one of the more controversial boxing matches in recent sports history. Tyson took out Seldon in the first round, knocking him down twice with blows that the slow-motion replay footage later suggested had either missed the defending champ completely or simply grazed him. The fight was called after a little less than two minutes, with cries of “Fix!” echoing through the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

But Tyson’s questionable punches weren’t the only ones thrown that night. Also in town for the fight was a contingent of Crips, including Baby Lane. At close to nine o’clock, following the main event, Anderson was making his way across the lobby of the MGM Grand Hotel. Tray, who had accompanied Tupac and Suge to Las Vegas, spotted him across the crowded room, leaning over to whisper in Tupac’s ear.

“That’s the dude,” he reportedly said, identifying Anderson as the Crip who had stolen Tray’s Death Row medallion and the two moved quickly across the casino floor.

“You from the South?” Tupac asked Baby Lane before laying him out on the plush carpet with a sucker punch. His posse, including Suge, piled on with kicks and blows to the face and torso in a vicious assault that, clocking in at one minute and nine seconds, lasted nearly as long as the championship bout they had just attended.

The entire incident was captured on a hotel security camera, the roving eye of the lens following an attractive woman across the lobby past an elaborate carved glass sculpture. She suddenly recoils and the camera pans over to record a flurry of blows and kicks, then tracks Tupac and his entourage hurrying across the lobby as security guards scramble to figure out what just happened.

What had just happened was the opening round in an all-out gang war. The theory that Baby Lane had shot Tupac later that night as payback for the assault almost immediately gained currency, due in large part to his obvious motivation. But the famed rapper was hardly the only victim in what would quickly escalate into a bloody free-for-all between Crips and Bloods in the months to come.

If anyone was in a position to track the blowback from the Tupac murder in the aftermath of the MGM Grand incident, it was Tim Brennan, who became actively involved in the case thanks to his expertise in Compton’s gangs. Eager to assist the Las Vegas Police Department in their investigation, Brennan had written search warrants for several Compton gang safe houses, looking for any weapon that might have been used in Tupac’s slaying. He drafted a lengthy Statement of Probable Cause, laying out in great detail the chain reaction of reprisal and retaliation that resulted from the events in Las Vegas.

According to Brennan’s account, on September 9, two days after the murder, a Southside Crip kingpin named Darnell Brim was shot several times in the back on a Compton street. A stray bullet hit a ten-year-old girl, who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition, while later that evening persons unknown shot at another Crip, Orlando Lanier. Twelve hours later, Lanier’s associate Bobby Finch was gunned down, even as Gary Williams, brother of Death Row Records security guard George Williams, was dispatched in a drive-by shooting.

Four days later two Mob Piru gangsters, Tyrone Lipscomb and David McMullen, were taken out in another drive-by, followed quickly by the shooting of Piru members Marcus Childs and Timothy Flanagan. Less than a week later the names of two more Crips, Gerode Mack and Johnny Burgie, were added to the bloody tally.

As the body count mounted, Bloods held a council of war in Leuders Park, a well-known gang hangout in Compton. On hand were representatives of a wide swathe of Compton Piru sets, including the Mob Piru, the Elm Lane Piru, the Fruit Town Piru, and the Cedar Block Piru. It was a rogues’ gallery of gangsters with street names like “Lil Scar,” “Tron,” “Lil’ Vent Dog,” “Spook,” “T-Spoon,” and “O.G. Chism,” who attended the conclave in a wheelchair. The message relayed by the Piru shot-callers to their troops was clear: anyone wearing Crips colors was fair game.

The Crips called their own war council, bringing together the Southside and Neighborhood Crips, along with the Kelly Park, Atlantic Drive, and Chester Street sets. In gangster parlance, it was on, and it would become one of the deadliest conflicts in Los Angeles gang history.

Given the distinct possibility that both Tupac and Biggie had been prime targets in the mayhem that had its origins in the Lakewood Mall and MGM Grand episodes, it made sense for Brennan and me to try to elicit more information from Tray. He had, after all, been a key player in both confrontations. The fact that more than a dozen years had passed since the events went down didn’t improve our odds. If Tray had kept the truth to himself for so long, why would he talk to us now?

Our hope was that he might be willing to bargain information in exchange for leniency on the charge he was facing. I’d long since learned that when it comes to bad guys facing prison time, they all have a number in mind. That number is the length of a sentence beyond which they are willing to serve. For some, getting put away for two, four or even six years is no problem. Most gangsters have, after all, been in jail off and on their whole lives. To them, it’s like a continuation of the old neighborhood, with friends and family members right there on the same cell block. But when the sentence begins to stretch into double digits they start to look for ways out, most commonly by assisting authorities in ongoing investigations. It’s then that opportunities present themselves. But you also have to be careful. Facing stiff sentences, criminals have nothing to lose by telling you what they think you want to hear. Cutting deals with talkative convicts can be a treacherous business.

But it became apparent almost from the moment that Brennan and I showed up at the L.A. County Jail visiting room that we weren’t going to get anywhere close to Tray’s magic number. As soon as we started asking questions about the Lakewood Mall episode, we could almost see him shutting down in front of us. He didn’t want to talk about it and wanted even less to talk about his connections to Suge Knight. At the mere mention of his name we could see, mixed with the stubbornness and suspicion in Tray’s eyes, a flicker of fear. It was clear we were getting nowhere. We had come up empty on our first fishing expedition.

But it wasn’t going to be our last. Given the dearth of any fresh information in the case we had no choice but to stick with our strategy of finding someone we could possibly turn. The next candidate to appear on our radar was named Corey Edwards, a Compton native with some solid connections to the Crip’s upper echelons, including Baby Lane and his uncle, the drug dealer Keffe D.

Edwards had been present in Las Vegas the night of Tupac’s death but his version of events had not proved especially enlightening. According to his statement, he had seen Baby Lane in a bar at the MGM Grand shortly after Tupac and his posse had beaten him up. “I walked over to him,” Edwards recounts, “and asked him what had happened and if he was okay. He said that he had got into it with Tupac and Tupac’s people, but that everything was cool. Baby Lane didn’t appear to be injured or too upset about what happened.”