Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (33 page)

On reflection, it only served to underscore what I increasingly suspected, that by decapitating the task force the department hoped the case would dry up and blow away. Their purpose, plain and simple, was to pull the plug, and it had nothing to do with any perception of my integrity, or lack thereof. By providing me with this backhanded vote of confidence, they had tipped their hand as to their actual intent. Giving me any assignment I requested was their way of trying to placate me, to keep me quiet.

I had been the investigative head of what, by any reckoning, was among the most famous cold cases in American criminal history, one that was ostensibly a top priority for the LAPD. Once they pulled me off that job, they assigned me to another high-profile investigation that the department had also vowed to solve, come hell or high water. Beginning in the late eighties, a task force had been assigned to find the serial killer responsible for the deaths of eight women, their bodies found in dumpsters and alleyways in and around South Central Los Angeles. Originally dubbed the Southside Slayer, the perpetrator was renamed the Grim Sleeper by the press when he reappeared after a nearly fourteen-year hiatus. But, as important as it was to find the Grim Sleeper, I found myself unable to muster much enthusiasm for my new job. I had grown accustomed to a hands-on, proactive approach to investigative work. It was easy to see that the detectives on the Grim Sleeper task force could only wait around for a DNA hit that would match the evidence that had been gathered at the various crime scenes over the years. It wasn’t my idea of police work, although in the end the investigators, all of them highly competent professionals, identified the perpetrator by the breakthrough use of familial DNA, pinpointing a match through the killer’s son. It was solid, innovative forensics work that deservedly made headlines. But by that time I was already gone.

Not long into my tenure with the Grim Sleeper team, I decided that what I really missed was breaking cold cases. Tracing the faintest of trails, recovering lost evidence, reimagining the crime itself…that was a part of
my
DNA. I asked to be reassigned to the Cold Case unit and immediately stumbled across an intriguing thirty-four-year-old unsolved rape-and-murder case. The victim had been an eighty-year-old woman living in West L.A. in 1975. In the course of the sexual assault, her assailant had left his DNA traces. Thanks to the improved database that had been developed over the intervening years, we were able to match the genetic material to an itinerant laborer who had been sixteen at the time he committed the horrendous crime. It got even more horrendous after we brought him in. The suspect, who literally shit his pants during our interview, denied any involvement in the incident. Since we had a positive DNA match, his protestations of innocence were as good as a confession, and we set about to further bolster the case against him. We located a bank robber serving time in a Minnesota mental hospital who admitted to being a party to the murder by suffocation. He was, however, insistent that no rape had occurred. Putting together a timeline of the crime, we realized that our suspect had actually returned to the victim’s home to have sex with her corpse.

I can’t say that getting such a glimpse into real human depravity improved my attitude toward my job. But there was something about the rhythm and routine of investigative work that eventually blunted my initial determination to retire. I was doing what I’d always done, what I did best, and there was a certain satisfaction in that. But it was what remained
undone
that continued to color my outlook, despite my best efforts to move on. That outlook grew considerably darker as I saw the direction the Biggie Smalls investigation was taking in my absence. I did my best to keep tabs on the progress of the case, at the same time being careful not to put Daryn into the compromising position of revealing what was, after all, still tightly guarded information. But I was able to stay up to date just by keeping my eyes and ears open, and what I learned only deepened my frustration and resentment over the department’s handling of the case. Instead of responding to my heartfelt plea to put an effective and knowledgeable detective in charge of the task force, they had instead replaced me with someone I considered to be one of the least capable candidates: Alan Hunter.

Simply put, I had no confidence that Hunter was suited to handle an investigation with the multifaceted complexity of the Wallace probe. A by-the-book officer, he demonstrated early on his seeming lack of interest in the details of the investigation and not once after assuming control of the task force did he request a meeting with me to be debriefed. I understood and acknowledged that we had personal issues. To the degree that I bore responsibility for that animosity, I was willing to make amends and move on for the sake of the case. Hunter, for his part, apparently didn’t see the necessity in reaching out to the one person who knew the most about the job he’d been assigned to complete. But, for me, the truth was now all but unavoidable. Hunter
hadn’t
been assigned to finish the job. He was there for one purpose only: to shut the investigation down. It was, I became convinced, just one more element of the LAPD’s strategy to bury the case once and for all with a policy of not-so-benign neglect.

Shortly after I was pulled off, the task force abruptly received instructions to hand over to the Las Vegas police all the evidence that had been gathered in the murder of Tupac Shakur. So much for our carefully considered strategy to keep LVMPD out of the loop for the time being. We had made that decision to prevent them from compromising our star informant, Keffe D. Once they had been apprised of his involvement in the Tupac murder, LVMPD could easily justify making an arrest. When that happened, of course, the case would fall apart.

It was almost as if, in some surreal way, Russell Poole had been right all along. The LAPD
was
trying to cover up the Biggie Smalls murder, not by protecting corrupt cops but by undercutting the ability of its own investigators to solve the case. What they had to hide was not culpability in the killing but rather a studied disregard for justice. It was expedient for them to cripple the case in the interests of avoiding a potentially difficult prosecution. That expediency trumped everything, including the pledge to “Protect and Serve” stenciled on the door of every black-and-white patrol car in the city.

But turning over evidence to the Las Vegas police would be only the first step in what seemed like a concerted effort to dismantle the case. What happened next goes a long way toward proving that simple, garden-variety incompetence in law enforcement can do as much damage as any conspiracy to undermine law and order. I learned from a contact in the district attorney’s office that, in the waning months of 2009, Hunter made the decision to scrap the wiretap. Instead, he proposed signing Theresa on as an informant with the intent of sending her back to Suge wearing a body wire. This was wrong on so many different levels, not least of which was the fact that, as an official informant, Theresa would no longer be motivated to cooperate. And in case Hunter missed that point, Theresa’s newly hired attorney proceeded to make it clear in no uncertain terms, demanding that Theresa be granted immunity from the charges she was facing in exchange for her further assistance in the case.

By this single action, Hunter undercut any incentive for Theresa to work with them. Moving forward, especially by wearing the body wire, Swann could claim that she had already done her best to gather evidence against Suge, regardless of the outcome. Any leverage the task force had over her had now been forfeited. She could simply waive her immunity flag. Theresa was working for the government now. No one was going to send her to jail. Hunter had not only initiated procedures that seemed specifically designed to undercut the considerable progress Daryn and I had made, he also failed to follow-up on our most promising leads. Theresa had identified Poochie as the shooter, but the task force never used the photo on his 1997 driver’s license as part of a “6-pack” of mug shots that could have been shown to witnesses such as Eugene Deal, Lil’ Cease and D-Roc Butler, who might have identified him as the man with the fade haircut behind the wheel of the black Impala that night outside the Petersen. Nor was Jewell questioned about her presence at the party and what she might have seen. More to the point, Theresa Swann was never subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, an essential step in any projected prosecution of this nature. It was clear enough that the investigation was circling the drain.

In the meantime, I had been making persistent inquiries as to the exact nature of the Internal Affairs complaint that Commander Gannon said had been made against me. Like everything else regarding an evaluation of my involvement in the Torres case, information was being stonewalled. Nobody, it seemed, could tell me who had filed the complaint with the IA, what infraction I was supposed to have committed, or how the department intended to handle the matter. Vague references to the faulty search warrant were alluded to, but no one would or could say for sure. Patience was advised, along with a lot of shoulder shrugging and weary references to the snail’s pace of bureaucracy.

But I wasn’t buying it. I couldn’t help but wonder if the LAPD might not be holding the ongoing IA investigation over my head as a way of silencing my objections to the fate of the task force. I have no way to prove any of this, of course, but what kept coming back to me in those days and weeks was the legal concept of Preponderance of Evidence. Maybe I didn’t have enough to flat-out accuse the LAPD of hindering an ongoing investigation or intimidating one of its own detectives. What I knew for sure, what I felt in my gut, was that it all added up to something. I just didn’t know what.

Then, on April 19, 2010, a federal judge abruptly dismissed the latest in a string of civil lawsuits that the Wallace family had been filing against the LAPD since 2002, alleging police involvement in the Biggie shooting. Aside from being the last gasp of Russell Poole’s theory, the dismissal of the suit, without prejudice, removed the last impediment to the LAPD’s plan to shelve the case. No threat of a mega million-dollar judgment remained, no chance of a “death by a thousand cuts.” They were, finally and completely, off the hook. In a bitter irony, the attorney for the Wallace estate announced in public that the plaintiff, to avoid hampering what he called a “reinvigorated” police investigation, had withdrawn the suit. “The criminal investigation has been opened back up full force,” he asserted. Asked by reporters about the exact state of the Biggie case, the commander of the Robbery-Homicide Division spoke in artful circles. “It’s always been considered an open investigation,” he said. “We’ve never filed a case on somebody or said we had it solved.” As if to underscore the point, he added that there were
no new
suspects currently under investigation. What he neglected to mention, of course, was just how close we had come to exactly that outcome. When asked if the police were any closer to resolving the thirteen-year-old case, he snapped back, “Probably not.”

The dismissal of the civil suit effectively hammered the last nail into the coffin of the investigation. Formed in direct response to the threat of a lawsuit, the task force was quickly dismantled when that threat evaporated, without regard to the fundamental question it was charged with answering: who killed Christopher Wallace and Tupac Shakur? Not that it mattered. Not anymore. Within weeks of the dismissal, it was announced that the remaining members of the team had exactly one month to finish their work, draw whatever conclusions they cared to, and call it a day. I guess one of the most painful aspects in that forlorn interlude was watching from across the room as Hunter and Dupree methodically packed away all the task force case files, piling up cardboard transfer boxes waiting to be returned to the archives.

Not long afterward, I finally received the Internal Affairs report on the complaint that had been filed against me. The substance of their findings did indeed concern the flawed search warrant request I had written during the Torres investigation. My infraction dealt with an interview I had conducted with Torres’ brother Manuel regarding company practices at the grocery chain. “In transcripts of the recording,” the report read, “Kading used the word ‘procedure’ instead of ‘policy.’”

That was it: the sum and substance of the Internal Affairs investigation that the LAPD had dangled over me for a year. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. My reputation, they had regretted to inform me, had been compromised by a perception so damaging they were forced to remove me from the task force. And this, in the end, was the best they could come up with? I had been railroaded and they hadn’t even bothered to put a real locomotive on the tracks. I didn’t know whether it was a tragedy or some sort of twisted comedy. But I did know one thing. My career in the Los Angeles Police Department, to which I had given twenty-two years of dedicated service, was over.

I did due diligence on the handful of cases that remained on my desk. I had my weapon and badge framed in a handsome display box. I took Daryn out to lunch and we talked and laughed about the old days, the better days. Keffe D and Zip Martin and Theresa Swann and Poochie and Stutterbox — especially Stutterbox: we acknowledged them all, good and bad, as some of the most intense and involving individuals we had ever met. In a way, it had been a privilege to know them all, worthy opponents who had given us a run for our money. And in the end they got away. There was no denying that. But we’d come close, so close, and that was something to be proud of, an accomplishment that no one could take away.

The next morning, I went downstairs to the personnel office and submitted my retirement papers.