Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (4 page)

“He was sitting there,” Simmons would later recall, “not even moving his cane. He was so cool, so funny and calm. I wanted to be like him.” It’s revealing that Simmons, a towering figure in modern black music, would find himself awestruck in the presence of the young rapper. But this was Biggie’s night and there was no denying him his due.

Under the circumstances, it seems unlikely that he would have been aware of troubling undercurrents amid all the attention and excitement. Mingling with the glittering guests were clusters of Crips and Bloods, sworn enemies who might or might not have put their differences aside for the evening. The fact was, the presence of authentic thugs only added to the evening’s edgy glamour. The posse that accompanied DJ Quik, for example, turned out to be fully-fledged members of the Tree Top Piru, the Bloods from Compton’s north side. Among the more notable Crips in attendance were Duane Keith “Keffe D,” Davis and his nephew “Baby Lane” Anderson. They had also arrived with a delegation of more than a dozen gangbangers.

For the most part the rivals merely glowered at each other across the dance floor and down the length of the bar. Meanwhile, out on Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, even more gang members were milling around, looking for a way into the action. A security guard on the payroll of Da Streetz was stationed at the Fairfax entrance, where he was instructed to turn away the overflow by any means available. The best he could come up with on the spot was the feeble excuse that they were wearing tennis shoes, in violation of an imaginary dress code. But as the partying continued without incident, it seemed to some observers that a sort of unspoken truce had taken effect. The thugs were under control, there to provide local color and nothing more.

It was not an opinion shared by Keffe D. It would have been hard not to notice the Crip’s hulking, intimidating presence hovering at Biggie’s corner table. But whatever the purpose of the whispered conversation Keffe D was having with Puffy Combs, nothing but the slight whistling through his gapped front teeth could be heard over the pounding bass of the music. The party rolled on and the crowd got bigger. The crush on the first and second floors quickly doubled Radford’s original estimate of a thousand, and still more guests, invited or otherwise, were pushing themselves past the heavy glass doors and the increasingly overwhelmed security contingent.

The situation was rapidly reaching critical mass. As early as ten o’clock, museum guards had made a futile attempt to clear the front entrance. The crowd pushed back, their mood growing progressively surlier as they heard the thudding party mix just beyond their reach inside the Petersen.

An hour later, a fire marshal from the L.A. Fire Department’s station 52, who had been on the scene the entire evening to monitor possible safety violations, put in a radio summons to the LAPD Wilshire Division for help with crowd control. After twenty minutes the police arrived, surveyed the scene, and decided the best course of action would be to let the event run its course rather than risk stirring up an angry mob. They left.

At that point, a sequence of confusing and contradictory events started to cascade. As midnight approached, the fire marshal decided that he had no choice but to try to shut the event down. “This party is over!” a fireman announced over a bullhorn on the first floor. “Please leave immediately in an orderly manner.”

The crowd reacted with angry shouts, both inside and outside the museum, as word quickly spread upstairs that the evening was coming to an early conclusion. Slowly departing guests ran directly into the throng of fans still waiting outside on the off chance of getting in. The entrance to the museum quickly became a logjam and except for the ten frightened security guards, there was no one on the scene to enforce the evacuation.

At 12:05 A.M., the desperate fire marshal made his way to the Petersen’s front desk, where video monitors displayed the premises from several different angles. He ordered the guard who manned the desk to put in another call to the Wilshire Division. Not only had the crowd become uncontrollable, there were now scattered reports of a shot being fired from a black Ford Bronco seen heading south on Orange Grove Avenue. Eyewitnesses had gotten the license plate number. As the guard speed-dialed the Wilshire Division, he looked through the glass doors of the entrance, where several panicked people were running and ducking.

Meanwhile, Biggie and Puffy were making their way leisurely down from the Grand Salon. Ken Story, G-Money, and Reggie Blaylock hurried ahead to bring around the cars as the rest of the posse formed a protective phalanx around the stars. At that point, the plan was to head out to a private after-after-party at the home of a record company executive. But it was going to be awhile before they got there. Biggie’s still-mending leg was aching, making it painful to move through the fans who repeatedly waylaid him, wanting photos and autographs. It took nearly forty minutes to reach the front entrance of the museum, where the unruly mob was still refusing to disperse.

Biggie and his cohort stood at the valet stand on Fairfax waiting for their SUV’s, which had pulled out of the parking garage and were idling less than a block away. As they headed for their rides, the rapper turned back to some friends. “See y’all at the next party,” he said, his voice barely audible above the turmoil.

But as they moved down the street, Biggie and Puffy decided to call it a night. They had wanted to squeeze in more studio time the next morning. It was still early enough to get a solid night’s sleep and be fresh for the session. The group divided. Combs climbed into the front passenger seat of the first Suburban, driven by Ken Story. The bodyguards Eugene Deal, Steve Jordan, and Anthony Jacobs clambered into the backseats.

Biggie took the second of the matching green SUV’s. On its rear bumper a sticker read Think B.I.G. March 25, 1997, a teaser for the upcoming
Life After Death
album
.
Riding shotgun
beside G-Money, Biggie was joined in the vehicle by Lil Caesar, D-Roc and Groovy Lew Jones. At the wheel of the Blazer, the last vehicle in the line, was Reggie Blaylock, who shared the front seat with Paul Offord.

The convoy pulled into the northbound lane of Fairfax and started to cross Wilshire Boulevard. As the GMC with Puffy aboard moved into the intersection, the stoplight turned yellow and Ken Story accelerated quickly to get to the far side. Behind them, G-Money pulled to a stop at the red light, the Suburban’s stereo pounding out a track from
Life After Death
.

From that moment on, the events at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire, shortly after 12:30 on the morning of March 9, 1997, disintegrated into a dozen distinct points of view, each reflecting a different perspective.

It’s a common perception that the facts of any crime can be established by a careful correlation of forensic evidence and eyewitness accounts. Yet, more often than not, forensic findings collapse into a welter of incongruous and mutually exclusive data, and eyewitness testimony is worse than useless. Memory, at best, is unreliable. Perceptions can be colored and warped by presumption, emotion, and all the intangible circumstances of the moment.

Biggie Smalls’ entourage and vehicle configuration.

Illustration by C. Jackson Investigations Inc.

Approximate location of vehicles at time of shooting.

Illustration by C. Jackson Investigations Inc.

At no time was that principle more in play than in the events leading up to the murder of Christopher Wallace. Who saw what, in what sequence and from what viewpoint, depended in large part on who they were, what they thought they had seen, and what they wanted others to believe they had seen. The scene at the Petersen was sheer pandemonium, packed with eyewitnesses, innocent bystanders and curious gawkers. Time lines overlapped and diverged at several key points, speeding up or slowing down according to what each witness considered important. There were those who, caught in the frenzied mob, had no idea what was happening; others who, with their own agendas and inside information, were sure they knew exactly what was going down and why. And somewhere in between were the police, frantically trying to make sense of a still unfolding situation.

One of the jagged puzzle pieces that authorities would later try to fit into a coherent whole was the view of the rap fans from Houston, who had parked across Fairfax earlier that evening. Watching the departures of the celebrities as the party began slowly and reluctantly to break up, one of the six began videotaping the scene. It was at that point that they would later recall hearing a screech of tires coming rapidly up behind them. A moment later six shots, three equally spaced and three in quick succession, can be heard on the grainy video footage.

“Somebody got shot!” a voice says from the back of the van.

“It was Biggie!” another shouts.

“No, it was Puff!” a third insists.

“Somebody got shot!” the first voice, now shaking with fear, says again.

The audio track garbles, the camera swings wildly, and the image pixelates. “Y’all crank up the car, please,” a girl’s voice pleads. “I’m ready to go.”

Moments before, a group of four women had made their way from the choked museum entrance and were headed north on Fairfax toward Wilshire, in the same direction as Biggie’s departing convoy. They were Aysha Foster, Selma Jefferson, Shala King, and Inga Marchand, better known as the rapper Foxy Brown.

The four had flown in from Brooklyn to attend the Soul Train awards. As the Vibe party began degenerating, the foursome, all of whom had some connection to the music industry, had decided to beat a retreat to yet another after-party. Foster, the fiancée of Biggie’s associate D-Roc, worried that her husband-to-be would find out she was on the town without him and was hurrying toward Foxy Brown’s gold Lexus 300 parked near a fire hydrant on Fairfax Avenue. Before she reached the vehicle, Foster heard the same screeching of tires and rapid report of gunfire. Almost immediately, she saw a southbound white SUV make a sharp U-turn and try to squeeze in behind the second Suburban and the black Blazer, driven by Reggie Blaylock. The off-duty cop lurched forward, cutting off access, and the white SUV swerved back into the southbound lane, speeding away down Fairfax.

Meanwhile, a security guard on the graveyard shift at the Petersen had arrived to work on a Wilshire Boulevard bus. Coming in through the relatively quiet staff entrance, he went to the locker room, where he changed into his uniform and reported for duty. He was immediately directed up to the second floor to help clear the Grand Salon of lingering guests. In the process of emptying the huge space, he stepped onto the balcony that opened up off the Grand Salon with a spectacular view of the Miracle Mile. “I just heard gunshots,” said an unknown voice behind him, although the guard himself had not heard the firing. He moved to the edge of the balcony and looked down, just as black-and-whites began pulling up, sirens howling.

The police had finally arrived in response to the latest request for assistance from the beleaguered Petersen, where the single shot fired from a Ford Bronco on Orange Grove Avenue had been reported. Even as they were moving out, another call was received. It was 12:35. More shots had been heard, semiautomatic gunfire this time, coming now from the west side of the museum, on Fairfax Avenue.

Sergeant Gary Fredo of the Wilshire Division, receiving the urgent summons, generated an Incident Number: 7068000030. Joining the units just then rolling out, Fredo arrived at a scene of complete bedlam. The crowd was hostile, refusing to leave even as the gunshots had left them fearful and apprehensive. The arrival of the police only heightened the tense atmosphere, and beer cans began flying. “I formed a skirmish line of officers,” Fredo would later report, “and entered the location. We needed to find the Fire Department personnel and make an attempt at controlling a possible crime scene.”