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Developing news now, former rap mogul Suge Knight
is headed to prison for voluntary manslaughter.
He ran down a man in the parking lot
of a Compton burger stand about three years ago,
and today, he found out what his punishment's going to be.
For the crime, the defendant has been convicted in count 1,
the defendant's levied a term in state prison of 22 years.
Prior conviction, the defendant has admitted
he's levied an additional five years in state prison
for a total, unstayed term of 28 years.
Quite a fall for Knight
since the height of his career in the '90s.
He's best known as the co-founder of Death Row Records,
and worked with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur.
And back here, live, uh, Sharon, he did look briefly at...
Suge Knight's sentencing for 28 years
signaled the end of his power,
the end of his empire.
People now, no longer as intimidated
since Suge's incarceration,
started talking more freely
about Suge being the shadow
behind Biggie Smalls' and Tupac Shakur's murders.
You tell Frankie to call him.
Frankie, you called me when she tells you to call me, Frankie.
- Why, why what's... - Frankie goes to Hollywood.
Hey, yo, Frankie!
Frankie!
- Yo, Frankie! - What are you...
It caused me to review an earlier film
I'd made about Biggie and Tupac.
People were now opening up to things
I couldn't get answered before.
Biggie and Tupac started off as the best of friends.
Tupac was the one who discovered Biggie
and brought him out on stage.
And if you look very closely, you'll see the rarest of footage
of Biggie and Tupac, hugging on the edge of stage.
But partly because of Suge's influence,
they ended up as deadly enemies.
The victims of a gang war that Suge had initiated.
It was LAPD detective, Russell Poole...
- Hey. - Hello, hello!
...who originally alleged the connection between Suge Knight
and the murders of Biggie and Tupac.
Well, like I say, based on the witnesses
that I've interviewed and the evidence,
I believe that Suge Knight
ultimately called for the hit.
And you said police chief, Bernard Parks,
stopped you from investigating further
because LAPD police officers
were involved with Suge Knight?
Well, that's correct.
Yes, he was, uh, you know...
it's several factors
on why he didn't want this pursued
to the fullest extent,
and one being the fact that
his own officers were involved.
At the time, police chief Bernard Parks
dismissed these allegations.
He is totally wrong,
he only worked the task force, for about four months.
Russell Poole resigned,
asserting massive corruption in the LAPD.
Tonight's shocking allegations against the city's top cop.
Former detective Russell Poole has filed suit
against the department.
Poole says he uncovered dirty cops
while investigating the murders
of rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.
I provided the chief with enough...
Russell died tragically a few years later.
His career in tatters, the murders still unsolved.
His work asserting dirty cops and corruption in the LAPD
is as relevant today as it was then.
- Knew I had no... - I am telling you right now...
Book him up, book him up.
You're under arrest.
You're under arrest for interfering.
You don't live here, do you?
Back in the 1990s,
Death Row was the most successful rap label ever,
worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet, by 2002, with allegations of racketeering,
it is closed down by a SWAT team and goes into bankruptcy.
Death Row Records was in a very elegant part
of Westwood in Los Angeles.
It was really a big office
and it was located across the hall
from Interscope Records.
When you first walk into Death Row Records,
you got a vibe that it was a family kinda thing going on,
that everybody cared about everybody.
So, you kinda got fooled, right off the bat.
Now, what I did notice the very first time
was that there was always a lot of guys.
When I say lot of guys I mean, they would be lined up,
sitting in the hallway, chillin'.
You didn't know why they were there.
I don't even think they knew why they were there.
You know, but Suge did give a lotta jobs to the guys,
his gang member affiliation people.
It was funny, they always had on red.
Everybody that was everybody had on red.
And Snoop and 'em always wore their blue.
They never got off their Crip.
You used to come in the office, right?
And there'd be a gang of dudes up there.
Bloods, I can always tell they Bloods, right?
Um, smoking...
Newports.
Where they'll pop the thing off.
Or the Camels, right?
They pop the head off the Newport, right?
And, and you could tell that they'd had just been
in the penitentiary for a long time,
'cause they just so used to sittin' down,
smoking weed or them cigarettes, right.
Talking shit.
And then, it'd be like, new crews of cats
you could tell fresh out the pen,
come up there to get a job.
First thing they gonna ask you, "Where you from?"
And you better not say you're from an enemy gang territory.
Or they gonna say you gonna have to run it.
You see what I'm sayin'?
You know what I mean by run it?
They gonna want, they want to fight.
We come from a good, tight knit family.
Really, really close.
Everyone loves each other.
Everyone thinks with one brain.
Parents are still together.
And we're just, you know, just like a regular family.
Uncle Suge was the baby, so he got away with everything.
So, he's spoiled, he's the baby.
He would call my mom and ask for, certain...
you know, his potato salad, a certain way.
He wants chicken his certain way.
He wants, you know... and if anybody touches his chicken,
his potato salad, he's angry.
You know, he wants his food a certain way.
He wants it... I mean he's the baby.
So, and everybody loves him and they spoil him,
especially my mom.
So, whatever he says is, "Okay, Suge.
Okay, little Suge, okay."
So, he's, he's, he's, you know what I mean?
He's the baby so he gets whatever he wants.
Happy Mother's Day from OFTB
and all other mothers out there.
Stay strong, stay up.
There is also another side to Suge.
He initially gave hope to the Compton community,
which had the highest unemployment in LA.
He also gave back to the community.
Suge gave encouragement to artists like Danny Boy,
whom he adopted as legal guardian, age 15,
and acted as a father.
Yes, he was.
For sure, for sure.
Definitely like a father, like a big brother to me.
A lot of things that people seen in Suge,
or a lot of things that people said about Suge,
you know, some of those things, I...
you know, I didn't see him as that.
You know what I mean?
Because, I had a real relationship with him
where I felt like I was able to, kinda, talk to him
and say things that a son would say to a father.
Yeah, so...
Suge lived in Compton near Pam Brooks,
an old friend of mine,
and whom I asked to work on the film.
Hi there.
Pam knows everyone.
Hi.
Tell me what you know about Suge Knight.
All right.
Now what does you need to know?
Suge Knight is on that side.
His... this is the Crip neighborhood.
Suge Knight is over there off of Wilmington and Rosecrans
all the way down.
Do you know some of his homies?
Yeah, I'ma, I'ma get you... let you talk to 'em.
Yeah, I mean, and if they don't wanna talk or be on camera,
can they just... I need to...
they don't have to be on camera
if they don't wanna be on camera.
Just... I need... would they mind if we...
they record their voice?
Just, um-
All right, call me and...
Just call me and let me know and then,
let me know, and...
I don't know, these are England...
they white people, they white but they Black.
But, I mean, they're from England.
- I mean... - All right.
No, um, no, you know, we straight up.
They're from England.
Remember, they're crazy.
Yeah.
This is the first time Lipp Dogg speaks
about working for Suge Knight.
And so, before you worked at Death Row, you were?
I was in prison...
for attempted murder.
And so, Suge offered you a job?
Right.
Offered me.
And how did that happen?
Well, when I got... when I came home,
one of my associates took me to where Suge was at.
Suge was about to go out of town
and before he boarded a plane,
me and him hooked up.
Because I know Suge prior from then.
I know Suge ever since the early '70s
'cause we grew up five houses from each other.
So, you know, he knew me.
Suge couldn't play with us.
His mother wouldn't let him play with us.
'cause we were the thugs in the neighborhood.
And she had a goal for Suge
and that was for him to play sports.
♪ I'm Marion Knight with the wavy hair ♪
♪ I'm quick and fast and always there ♪
♪
♪ That's why they call him the sugar bear ♪
Marion Knight, number 54.
Suge went to college.
And, and, you know, he had good parents.
He had both his mother and father that kept him away
from the whole gang violence shit that we was doin'.
Sometime they'd think and he'd think that's hard,
you took away that from me.
No, she gave you a better life.
Being in office was just like
conducting business on the street.
Motherfucker got in the way, a motherfucker got dealt with.
If you thought you was goin' to create a problem,
you had a problem.
You find yourself tossed upside down.
One thing people knew about Death Row
is they wasn't bullshitting and they will whoop your ass
with no questions asked.
If you stepped on the red rug,
if you answer the phone,
if you parked in somebody's spot,
you gonna get your ass whooped.
Some people died.
Some people just got beat up, you know, uh...
few people got rap pacts.
You know, when I say people got disciplined,
they got in the way or Death Row was on a mission.
You couldn't stand on the logo.
The Death Row logo.
Stood on that logo, you're probably gonna get knocked out.
And no telling who gonna knock you out,
but you probably got knocked out.
You had a dog, Damu.
Suge's German Shepherd.
His name was Damu.
It mean blood, you know.
The dog would attack you.
How it was trained.
'cause it thinking, the dog thinking
you tryin' to get next to him, next to Suge.
And if you tryin' to get next to Suge,
that dog is gonna attack you.
You know?
And is it true he had, like, piranha fish?
Yeah, he had a black tank
built into the wall in his office.
And it was dark...
it was black piranhas.
We used to feed 'em blood worms.
He used to buy a big pack of blood worms
and put 'em in there and they'd just go crazy.
Yeah.
No, they, and he'd, he'd look at that,
at that, at that tank
and look at you,
then you know, people, they was calm.
They were gang bangers.
They were gang bangers and they worked for Suge Knight.
So, they was, like, Suge Knight's boys.
So, I believe... my belief of it is
they did what Suge told them to do.
Because they was broke, they're...
they couldn't get a job because they was already marked
as gang bangers so they took their ride with Suge Knight.
And they accepted that 1,000.
That 1,000... for a person that never had no-
for a person that don't have nothin',
a $1,000 is good day.
$1,000 a day to do some dirty shit
to the next motherfucker.
Or go over here and drop this car off
or go over here and drop this bag off.
And you don't know what's in the bag,
but 9 out of 10, you know what's in the bag.
Because you not gonna fuck with nobody.
You know, you not gonna put yourself in a situation
where you don't know if it's a dead body in a trunk or not.
Some people do.
Some motherfuckers don't give a fuck.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Because they'd be so desperate for this money.
Inflicting pain on people was, was like my medicine.
It was... I felt good.
I, I truly felt good about it.
I took pleasure into it.
Okay, I mean, just the... seeing the blood,
how it, it came out your nose, how it came out your ears.
You, you, you don't wanna die.
You don't wanna die.
These cats don't give a fuck if they do die.
And, and I mean that like that.
I'm not puttin' 'em on nothing, but these cats don't care.
You know what I'm sayin'?
We lose homies in prison,
we lose homies on the street on the daily.
We done seen death.
We done seen it.
I held it.
You know what I'm sayin?
I watched my homeboy Kenny Chuggs take his last breath.
Like, wow.
Mob James recruited gang members for Suge,
including Buntry, his younger brother.
Tupac would rap about Buntry who would later be murdered.
Suge utilized each and every, every guy
that, that I brung to him.
Instead of him being the businessman he shoulda been,
he turned into one of the homies.
Shit, Suge put on a red suit,
the big rings, the cigars,
and he just changed.
He went from Marion
to, to, to this gangster.
And, and, and I say
some men can't take power like that,
and, and, and just know
that they have all that power and be good.
Suge took that power.
He felt the energy.
He felt, like... just say, for instance,
going into a concert and you got 20 Bloods behind you.
I'm the smallest one.
Everybody else is, is,
I'm talking about like, like big.
And everybody mentality is,
if anybody say something to Suge,
knock their, knock their fucking head off.
And all of these famous people was lookin'
and seein' Suge's entourage
and it was, it was like he was Jesus.
Everybody just start parting away,
and we would walk through that crowd.
And Suge,
he felt it.
But it was just too much for him.
At the end of the day, it was too much.
Put your hands together and say, oh yeah!
- Oh yeah! - Oh yeah!
Lemme see somebody give Dre, Suge and D.O.C.
a round of applause.
Death Row Records is gonna be the record company of the 2000s!
Death Row had the money to throw
the most lavish celebrity parties in Beverly Hills.
The label started with, uh, Dr. Dre,
who was gonna his own thing,
and, uh, with a lotta help from Suge Knight...
David Kenner, seen here, and Suge Knight, ran Death Row.
According to employees, they did whatever they wanted.
Beverly Rollis, front and center.
He had huge houses.
He had lots of cars.
He could come to work every day in a different car for a month
and never drive the same car.
Really?
To be honest, Suge was just two-faced.
He was two-faced and he really wasn't
a man of his word.
And I'm tellin' you, that day that he set me up to be beat up,
I never thought... I had no inkling
that that was gonna happen that day.
He had planned that whole thing all weekend.
He was ready.
He had one of his girlfriends bring the girl up to the office.
They snuck her through the back door.
The girl that jumped on me, she was dropped off
by a girl that was one of his girlfriends.
This girl came outta nowhere and she sucker-punched me.
Stomping me in my face.
And Suge had me by my feet,
and David Kenner just stood and watched.
And what did Suge say?
He was holdin' my feet.
So then, when I kicked him in his nuts,
that's when I got familiar with the back door.
So, when I ran out the back door and I ran over to Interscope,
they musta knew somethin' was happening,
because they locked the door, so you couldn't go in.
You know, they treated women...
I mean, they would have fights in there,
girl fights, in the offices
where they would put the assistants against other women
and they'd like... like, literal girl fights
where they would open up... like, in the middle of the floor.
Where they would... like it was like boxing matches
where women would fight.
And I just... I never saw the fights,
they would just tell me about them.
Dre told me about 'em, and I was just like,
"Who does that in the offices of the..." whatever.
And so, that's how little they thought of women.
And so, I, I never... I just never understood it.
I just... they just thought women were second class citizens.
They were just literally there for their amusement,
entertainment, and enjoyment.
Nothing else.
And if you dated one of them,
you understood that was your place.
What about DJ Quick?
No?
What an insult to them.
- Mm? - No.
'Cause they still in the life.
Let's call Joe Cool and see what he got going on.
Pam showed me some useful tips I hadn't learned at film school.
Pam is friends with Joe Cool, Snoop's cousin,
who'd been hard to get.
Oh yeah.
I got a good plot goin' on in my head.
A good plan?
Plot, no, you gotta plot.
This is... you gotta plot with motherfuckers like this.
You wanna play hardball, let's play.
So, what's your plot tomorrow?
Well, I'll go get the... get rid of her,
go get the... go get my friend and then go out there,
get some weed, smoke that, and go out there and,
you know, rub my titties against him 'cause he likes me.
I just gotta play the game.
Pam and Joe Cool go way back.
He's a Crip and worked with Snoop, his cousin.
At Death Row, there's an uneasy alliance
between Blood and Crip gang members.
Suge is a Blood, Snoop and Joe Cool are Crips.
These dudes that Suge had were known Crip killers.
Uh, real rough motherfuckers,
ex smokers.
You know what I'm sayin'?
Ex cons, fresh out the penitentiary motherfuckers.
They did not play.
They overdid their job.
And they robbed and they stole.
They pillaged and they plundered.
And I've seen them do it.
One of their favorite things is this,
as far as them being security for Suge.
Their favorite thing would be to do this,
Suge's boys, they were thieves, robbers, murders, rapists.
I'm telling you, it was Compton's worst.
And so, what he would do is...
what they would do is, "He got a gun!"
It might be a guy with a big chain on, right?
Big old chain on or a gang of jewelry on,
and they'll point him out and they like, "Oh, he got a gun!"
Next thing I know, everybody jumps on this dude.
When the dude come up,
he ain't got no jewelry, no wallet, might not...
might be missing a few teeth, you know what I'm sayin'?
Disorientated and just left there in a bloody mess.
And they would do that all the time.
It was drugs up there.
It was, you know, drug dealings.
It was like multiple suitcases with powdered cocaine
or, or, re-rocked cocaine up in there, it was a lot.
I've seen, I've seen things
and I've been handed things, you know?
Russell Poole had said this years before.
He alleged that dirty cops were an essential part of Death Row.
It was no secret that Death Row Records,
uh, was involved in drug trafficking.
The big piece of this is the fact that
we had police officers working in the organization.
And police officers on different levels, you know.
There was actual security guards
that were actually doing security for various artists,
and then you had, like, these confidants,
which I believe, uh, Gaines,
and Mack and Perez were part of that crew.
They were willing to do anything for Suge Knight.
102 is Dave Mack of America-
David Mack, in blue,
before he became a police officer,
was a world-class athlete.
David Mack, 5.
By complete chance, Tupac's manager, helped train him.
Leila has avoided talking about David Mack
for the past 24 years.
I was working with Olympic track and field athletes
in the early '80s.
So, David Mack, who ended up being the cop
that was entangled with Suge and everything,
he was one of the athletes on the team.
I worked on David Mack in '82, '83, '84.
The Olympics were in 1984.
And I knew David very well, 'cause we worked together
for years before he was an officer.
So, um, I can't speak to all the things
that went on and what they did.
All I can tell you is you cannot run
a criminal enterprise, at that magnitude,
without a certain level
of compliance with the police department.
It was David Mack who introduced fellow LAPD officer
Rafael Perez to Suge Knight.
Perez actively dealt in narcotics.
The police did this you controlling the street gangs.
They ran from us and discarded the narcotics in the gutter.
It was no big deal to us.
We'll just put dope on you.
We know you had it.
Here, Perez confesses to stealing
over a million dollars of cocaine
from the LAPD evidence locker.
...having violated several vows and oaths...
He implicates a further 70 other police officers
in crimes ranging from murder, beatings,
trafficking narcotics, filing false police reports,
and lying on the witness stand.
This is police chief Bernard Parks.
The city of LA ended up paying an estimated $125 million
in settlement claims.
Do you think Chief Parks tried to influence
the investigation into David Mack and Perez?
Well, the evidence that was presented to us
clearly showed that there were attempts
at the highest level of the department
to make things disappear.
I will say that he did way beyond
what anybody would've expected of a chief of police.
Way beyond.
There's strong evidence that Rafael Perez, Nino Durden,
and David Mack, seen here in Blood colors
as well as being police officers,
were members of the Mob Piru Blood gang, as was Suge Knight.
They and other members of the police department
controlled the streets with a reign of terror.
Yeah, pad down, down the waist, around the waistline.
Put 'em behind your back, lie down!
The streets are controlled by the biggest gang that we have,
and that's the police.
And those gang members,
many of whom didn't end up serving on the streets,
they became officers.
What are the requirements to become a police officer?
Not a whole lot.
The corrupt police
are facilitating the distribution of drugs.
There's no way in the world
you can have the mass amount of drugs
if not for police allowing stuff to come in.
And into this messy and volatile situation
of gangs, violence, and corrupt police
came Tupac Shakur, who had himself
just come out of prison on assault charges
and would fuel the fire of Death Row even more.
Tupac would be dead within 11 months.
Ah, look.
This is Tupac Shakur with his producer, Tracy Robinson,
who says that none of it needed to go the way it did.
When I went to visit him in Dannemora,
I think he would not have gone to Death Row
if Interscope had just stepped up.
Anyone from, uh,
probably Interscope could've got him out of jail.
You know?
Tom Molly could've got him out of jail.
Jimmy Iovine could've got him out of jail.
He was on their label, Interscope.
So, Death Row was a subsidiary,
as you know, of Interscope,
and if Interscope people had've got him out of jail,
it would be a whole different scenario.
But instead he's stuck in a situation
with some people who are gang people.
What did you think of Suge?
I don't know Suge, so I can't speak
on his behalf at all, you know.
I don't know him.
Uh, and,
I just know the energy that I've got from him
from the time that I had to deal with him.
It's not pleasant, it's just not.
And, you know, it's not, it's not pleasant
for me to have to even talk about.
'Cause he's alive, his down line is alive.
You know, his people are alive, you know.
These people are revengeful.
This is the kind of stuff I'm just saying to you right now
like, I wouldn't even want this on tape because,
like, I live here, I'm alive.
Like I says yo, I'm alive, I'm walking.
People are still getting shot for no fucking reason.
You know what I mean, like, it's...
that gang shit is... it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
Sup, Hammer?
There he comes!
He took it very hard.
He felt more of an impending doom
having signed with Death Row.
'Cause even while he was in jail,
people were telling him not to sign with Death Row.
Yaasmyn Fula raised Tupac, but rarely speaks.
She knew Tupac better than anyone.
Here she is visiting Tupac in prison.
Having just been released from prison,
and now he's signed with Death Row Records,
he had to continue to bask in this
being part of that gangster element
when he really wasn't.
Tupac was not a gangster.
That had a very negative effect
on the positive things he was trying to accomplish.
You know, here you are, you're a gangster
or you're relishing in this persona of being a gangster.
You're associating with people throwing up gang signs,
making music that glorifies the gangster ethic,
you know, and debases women.
You know, so, there were so many contradictions
that he had to overcome
before he could even achieve the things
that he really wanted to achieve.
He wanted to address the issues
of poverty, despair,
drug addiction.
It's hard to equate the image
that Tupac presented at Death Row
with the young idealistic, politically motivated Tupac,
the son of a Black Panther.
We're not being taught to deal with the world as it is.
We're being taught to deal with this fairyland,
which we're not even living in anymore.
Uh, and it's, it's sad.
'Cause I'm telling you and it should not be me telling you.
It should be common knowledge.
Aren't they wondering why death rates are going up
and suicide is going up an drug abu...
aren't they wondering?
Don't they understand that more people are...
I mean, more kids are being handed crack
than they're being handed diplomas?
I mean... shouldn't... I mean like, okay,
in school we're learning to analyze and then...
well, I learned it now, they should relearn it.
I think adults should go through school again.
You know, I think that...
I think that rich people should live like poor people
and poor people should live like rich people
and it should change every week.
It's prison that changed Tupac.
Going to jail over all that stuff,
it made him bitter, and they changed him,
made him hateful.
He wasn't hateful before.
But that made him very hateful and paranoid.
Tupac blamed Biggie for not coming forward
to help him at this time.
Biggie knew the gangsters
that had shot him at the Quad Studios
and were behind the sexual abuse charges
that landed Tupac in prison.
I would say...
Big had love for Pac.
And it's not that he wanted to snake him,
but self-preservation.
You know, you don't wanna get entangled
with people who can hurt you.
You know, but at the same time,
you know something's gonna happen to your friend.
You try to warn him in a way that was covert
but you didn't wanna just blatantly say,
you know, "These guys, they stick up kids,
they're extortionists.
You know, they're gonna come for you."
The whole time he was in jail, he was trying to figure out
how he was gonna get revenge.
He started to plot on how he was gonna get back at
everybody who wronged him.
I bet you that music hurt, hurt him a little bit inside.
I don't have a fact, I don't have anything to back that up.
But that ain't who he was.
All Eyez On Me and um,
the Killuminati Theory or whatever it was called...
I forgot the name of the last album.
I loved it, but, um,
those albums weren't him.
That ain't the seven... that 17-year-old
would've never said any of that stuff.
You know, I mean, he... back when he started,
I mean, he was... he would never be like that,
but we all changed.
He got his edge, he knew what he had to sell records.
He was like, "This is what I gotta do.
I'll hold Suge three albums or four albums
or whatever many albums, I gotta do this
and these albums gotta sell."
When he first started, he was talking about Panther Power.
Black issues, Black rights.
When Tupac was around us, he was really nice.
He was, he was another one that was a genius.
Tupac was a reader but when he got around Suge,
it was a whole different person.
He kinda got gangster.
You know, like, his personality changed
I guess to just show Suge, you know, "I'm all that."
You know?
Come on, man!
I remember he came up with the plot
that he was going to sleep with Faith Evans
in jail.
You know, and at first when he told me it, I'm like...
Then I was just like, you can't tell Pac nothing.
Whatever he said he's gonna do, he's gonna do it.
So, it's like, get on board with it, or get out the way.
Yeah, he called me up and he's like, "Guess what?"
He was like, "I did it," and I'm like,
I'm like, "What, what did you do?"
And he was like, "Oh, I fucked Faith."
He was like, "Not only did I fuck her," he was like,
"but I got her to come in the studio and do a song with me."
And I was like, "Really?"
Today, however, through the lyrics of rappers
who display no respect for women...
It is obscene, it is obscene, it is obscene.
And now we got the East Coast, West Coast shit.
We got bad a motherfucker on the East Coast.
Puffy, bad boy.
We got Suge.
And here we about to come into this
East Coast, West Coast nonsense,
with two motherfucking casts of characters
that the press loved.
You remember that shit.
It just took a life all on its own.
Anyone who's out there,
wanna be a artist and wanna stay a star,
don't wanna... they won't have to worry about
the executive producer trying to be all in the videos,
all on the records, dancing.
Come to Death Row.
If he'd have stood the course on saying, you know,
"You don't want the person being all in your videos,"
and did a... if he'd have stood on that
and not try to get in videos and put his ass on magazines...
He tried to become the star.
Going towards the end, he was on all magazines
with cigars in his mouth.
He forgot what he said,
and that's what brought him down.
You gotta take care of the artist.
Biggie Smalls took Puffy's side on the East Coast.
So y'all, Brooklyn in the house.
Representing!
Snoop, Tupac, and Dr. Dre supported Suge Knight
on the West Coast at Death Row Records.
The East Coast ain't got no love for Dr. Dre
and Snoop Dog and Death Row?
Y'all don't love us?
Well, let it be known then...
Suge definitely couldn't back down.
Suge had more to lose if he showed a sign of weakness
because of these guys he had.
If you turn in... if you a gorilla
and turn into a monkey, you got a problem.
You don't belong in this crowd.
If you a motherfucking pit bull and turn into a poodle,
you don't belong in this crowd.
They gonna eat your ass up.
So, he had to keep it up there.
He had to keep his chest up.
He had to... he had to be Suge Knight.
And he did that well.
Tupac and Biggie shit just threw
a motherfucking atomic bomb on the gasoline,
and it just exploded.
Boom, and people was taking sides
and you have now magazines like...
whole messy ass vibe and a lot of them magazines,
you know, East Coast, West Coast,
this, that, whoo.
East Coast, West Coast, that, dot, aah, wham, bam.
All that nonsense.
Tupac got swallowed up by Death Row.
He got swallowed up by his surroundings.
Tupac was already crazy.
It just, it just,
it just turned him up another notch.
You know, 'cause, it was already going down over...
he came to a company where it was already going down.
So, when he came over, he looked like,
"Wow, yeah, I'm finna turn the fuck up."
He said, "I got these fools with me?
They finna ride?
Oh yeah, we going to go...
everything to get in my way, I'ma knock it down.
I'm going crazy."
'Cause he was already amped up.
You know what I'm saying?
So, he landed right where he wanted to land.
And he already had a attitude because they didn't go get him...
other people didn't go get him out,
you know, when he caught the case.
Suge Knight went and got him out.
So, when he came out, you know, people gonna be fully loyal.
All right, still hanging out at the after party and, uh,
with me, uh, from uh Death Row, introduce yourself, my man.
Hey there, I'm Suge Knight and...
Tupac Shakur.
- Do you believe in God? - Certainly.
Believe in Death Row East.
- Believe in that, for real. - You my homeboy say,
- I'ma ride with you to... - That's it right there.
When you believe in God, believe in Death Row East.
I think Pac really appreciated that Suge
was looking out for him the way that he was,
'cause nobody else did it.
Eating, traveling, girls.
Whatever they did, they did it together.
To me it was just an incredible life,
I mean, you know, it was Death Row.
We were the Motown of the '90s.
The Motown of the '90s, we had the hottest rappers.
Suge was like the mayor of LA.
I mean, you know, and if he said it, it went.
I mean, we shopped in the malls, three o'clock in the morning.
Three AM in the morning, four o'clock in the morning.
You know, four, five stores is staying open
because Suge Knight called them early in the day
and made an appointment for them to be open at three AM.
And we just go into this Footlocker
and get as many shoes and clothes that we want
or, you know, going some of the boutiques
and shop at three in the morning.
Those fringe benefits were incredible.
To be 15 years old, coming from where I come from
and, you know, eating in the finest places,
always flying on airplanes and private jets
and on his yachts and things like that.
That was incredible.
That's what Death Row was about.
We caught things on records that nobody else...
you hear them footsteps in records.
And those doors slamming, boom,
"Welcome to Death Row," that was organic.
That's why he's the daddy of rappers
because those things were organic.
He's living the life.
The money's there.
They've got the girls around.
They're living the video life.
Whatever it is.
It's, um, cool location.
They've got the cars, they got the big houses.
Pam had introduced me to some of the girls
who dated Suge and Tupac.
And I wondered if she recognizes any of them from these pictures.
Let me see.
I seen her somewhere before though.
I don't know where I seen her at,
but she looks so familiar.
They look like they're very young.
Looking for love.
When you're looking for love and looking for somebody
to care about you, this is what happens.
- Looking for love? - Looking for love.
Looking for love.
You only do demoralizing shit and, um...
You only let a motherfucker treat you like this
if you don't have nothing.
You know what I'm saying?
And they bait you in.
And Tupac, but he just was a follower.
Suge Knight had his head blew up,
had his head so blue to where he lost his life.
He's at the prime of his life,
but he's being directed by a fucking asshole.
And a deal, he don't even see it coming,
but he's so low, and he's looking for love, too.
This is the one I seen before.
Hi, mom!
Goddamn.
- Hey! - Hi, mom.
- Hi, Nick. - Hi, Symphony.
Hey!
I gotta go get the computer.
Go say hi to my Auntie Anne.
Backpack for you.
Say hi to Nick and them.
Remember Nick and Barney?
- Hi! - My Auntie Anne.
Tupac was so influenced by Suge,
that he joined the Mob Pirus, Suge's Compton gang,
also known as the Bloods.
He would become so gang obsessed
that he would ultimately lose his life to it.
I remember the first night when he turned MOB.
We was on one side of the studio
and one of my little homeboys, Tycas, rest in peace,
he went around there and looked in the studio
where Dre and Pac and all of them was at.
And he ran back around there to us and said, he said,
"Cuz," I said, "What's happening?"
He said, "Man, Pac over there in all red."
We went over there and looked.
I said, "Well, they got him."
And we went back over there to our side.
That night we went over there and looked and went in there
and seen him in all that red, that night he turned MOB.
Before that he was hanging with us all the time,
on the Crips side.
He was a very kindhearted person
who got lost in the image of being tough.
He just wasn't a fighter.
He was definitely a lover, not a fighter.
We used to laugh about it.
But he had suffered
some brutal beat downs out here.
He wanted to be tougher.
After he did Juice, he started acting like
he was the character in Juice.
His persona changed.
And he... you know, a lot of my childhood friends
from Marin 'cause I introduced him
to most of my friends and family.
They said he started acting like he was Bishop.
I ain't gots to do nothing.
You the past, bro.
My time is now.
Ready to die, n****?
When they expected him to be this thug, this gangster,
which he wasn't, it got him killed.
It's a hard thing to be a gun toting person
with all that malice in your heart.
It's a burden.
Tupac Shakur.
You know, when I, when I first met Tupac,
Suge brought him to the hood when he came home.
Tupac was real cool.
He was real cool.
And, the next time you see him,
he owned the thug shit like Suge.
He know he can't be touched at this time.
I got 10, 11 motherfuckers who gonna be around me
all day, every day.
And they ready to kill a motherfucker for me.
So, right here, telling me, I can do what I wanna do.
I can cuss out any motherfucker I wanna cuss out.
I can spit on whoever I wanna spit on.
And ain't nothing gonna happen.
There's no such word of repercussion here.
When he put the Mob on him, I definitely didn't like that.
Because me and my brother
used to have the biggest arguments in the world.
Buntry, Mob James' brother,
seen here in hat and red,
became Suge and Tupac's number one man,
which caused problems between the brothers.
My brother and them can say...
N**** can claim the Mob if you want to.
No, you can't.
You ain't did no drive-by shoots, you ain't did no...
you ain't beat no motherfucking body up.
You ain't, you ain't did shit.
What it it takes to be what we are.
So, that's just like me just...
Tupac the homie 'cause Tupac got money.
No, fuck that.
This means a lot more to me than Tupac.
You going over there and be Death Row Mob.
But not this, not from here.
You ain't from Compton.
I'd let my sister sing that song
but she just ain't that good, so...
Anyway, I want everybody give a big welcome for...
Tupac.
They were like brothers.
Tupac is, is like a little brother to him.
They had keys to each other's house.
They think with one brain.
Tupac never had a foundation.
Never had a foundation, he never had like that family...
you know like, that stability.
Uncle Suge did.
So I think that's why they kind of fed off each other.
Um, Uncle Suge was thinking more so of
just getting money, and making money
and uh, you know, supporting the...
you know, I guess Black people as a whole.
And Tupac was more so, "No, think bigger, think bigger.
We can go international.
We can do this, we can, we can do that."
Hence the Death Row East and et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, he was like, "I want our faces printed on money.
I want, I want something bigger,
let's think bigger, let's think bigger."
And Tupac more was on the bigger side.
Let's think bigger, and Uncle Suge was like,
"Huh, okay."
That's Tupac and Uncle Suge and they share everything.
Yes, they shared everything.
Things were totally out of control.
And it's very sad.
I always had that dark sense and, um,
I always seemed to be the one
to uh, kill the joy.
Everybody wanted to be happy
and high and drinking,
and I felt like they smoked too much weed.
You know, the whole atmosphere
was one of total disconnect to reality.
But it was way beyond
what he needed to deal with the realities
of his life at that time.
He had too much going on that required
a lot of logical, level-headed thinking,
and he wasn't getting that.
I was trying to give it to him,
but he wasn't listening to me.
I didn't know who to trust,
and I didn't trust Death Row.
They have a "get rich or die ethos," the West Coast.
Doesn't matter what you do as long as you makin' money.
Death Row made millions, yeah.
But Tupac didn't see that money.
First thing I noticed was that David Kenner,
who was the lawyer for Death Row Records.
And I said to him, "Tupac, that's a contradiction.
You need your own lawyer."
Tupac did not fire David Kenner
until, I believe, August.
So we went all those months
with his business up in the air,
no accountability about his money,
no accountability about what was being spent,
what was being recouped.
So that's why we were always asking,
"Well, what is... how much money does he actually have?"
Well, every time we would ask for the audit,
there'd be a new gift.
There'd be a new car.
There'd be a gift to the family.
And these cars weren't even in his name.
When Tupac passed away,
that's the first thing Death Row did was come
and take the cars back.
He didn't want to hear me telling him that,
"Tupac, they're sending over roses.
They're sending over cars.
They're sending over gifts."
I said, "Don't you think there's somethin' wrong with that?"
And he would go all the way live off on me and say,
and basically say, "I know it's a problem, okay?
But I know what I'm doing, yes."
And it caused conflict.
It caused conflict with... between me and him.
It was a living nightmare.
Everybody just got too comfortable
and it went the way it went
because nobody was in Tupac's ear, "No, homie.
You... we gotta protect you.
We gotta be like this."
They say he just put the icing on the cake
because now there's more fun,
now there's more Tupac tryin' be like, you know,
like the security opposed to being a rapper,
and he's not on the Snoop Dogg tip,
he's on the homies tip.
And now there's drinking and getting high all day
and wanting to beat up somebody.
You know, just the whole mentality.
Every... they just changed.
I stopped Tupac from fighting many times.
Tupac was a disturbed soul when it came to gangbanging
and fighting and stuff like that.
He loved to fight.
- He loved to fight? - Oh, he loved to fight, yeah.
He loved getting into altercations.
- Did he? - Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
The night of the fatal shooting,
Tupac, to prove his gang loyalty,
took on a Crip gunman called Orlando Anderson.
Orlando, a Crip gang member,
was a long-term enemy of the Bloods,
but it would turn out to be a fatal mistake for Tupac.
Suge, himself, took part in the fight,
for which he would be sent to prison.
Orlando boasted that he had shot Tupac.
Frank, Tupac's bodyguard, was in the car behind.
The gun just starts firing.
He's obviously aware that bullets are coming through
the car and he's being shot at.
And as he fires, he hits Tupac a couple of times
and bullets are bouncing, going all through the car.
As I'm running up to the car thinking,
"Oh my God, they're dead."
Suge's laying down on the ground.
Tupac is still in the passenger side.
At that point, we pulled Tupac out
and, um, we laid him down on the ground
and that when the, uh, paramedics were taking over
at that point right there.
Did Tupac say anything at that point?
He just... he moved his arms from his side
and he crossed 'em over his body, as such,
and said, "I can't breathe."
And that was the last thing I ever heard him say.
So, we were there the six days that...
six, seven days that Pac was living.
We would go in the room and, um, you know, pray.
You know, pray for him to get better,
and yeah, I sang for him.
I always sang for him, though.
I always sang for him, but being able to sing for him,
in the hospital while he was laying how he was
was something.
I sang Change is Gonna Come,
that was one of his favorite songs
that he liked me to do.
What, remind me of that song?
So that's by Sam Cooke.
Wanna hear it?
♪ I was born by the river ♪
♪ in a little tent ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ Just like the river ♪
♪ I've been running ever since ♪
♪ It's been a long ♪
♪ A long time coming ♪
♪ And I know ♪
♪ a change gonna come ♪
♪ Oh, yes it will ♪
Greg Kading, in his book, Murder Rap,
alleges the shooting of Tupac
coincided with Keefe D, Orlando Anderson's uncle,
and the Crips being offered a million dollars
by Puffy for protection.
He claims that Puffy was saying,
"Listen, I need you to do something about this conflict
I'm having with Suge Knight and Tupac,
and you know, just I'm tired of having to look
over my shoulders," essentially.
"Can you handle it?"
And, of course, Keefe D said, "That's no problem.
You know, that's what we do."
And, Keefe D said, "We wanted a million dollars."
And Puffy, essentially, is like, "Just, whatever.
Just handle it."
It was this war the Suge Knight had with Puffy Combs
that cost so many lives.
After Orlando shot Tupac,
he went back to Compton bragging about it.
You know what I'm saying?
So we know who killed Tupac.
For sure, for sure.
Um...
and it was just a sad thing.
You know what I'm sayin'?
That these two guys brung gangs into,
you know, the Hollywood world,
the music industry.
You know what I'm sayin'?
So it destroyed everything.
After Tupac's death, a major gang war breaks out
between the Bloods and the Crips.
Orlando Anderson is arrested in the police raids,
but he's never charged because of insufficient evidence.
Tupac didn't know what he was getting into.
He didn't know that the Crips and Bloods
been killin' each other since the '70s.
And he was a shooter too.
See that's, see that's the thing.
When you out here, you don't know who you messin' with.
If you messin' with a shooter,
you gonna get shot.
If you messin' with some fighters,
y'all might get down, but it's gonna happen.
That's the thing about it.
He's gonna come back and that's how Orlando was.
He wasn't going for that.
Yeah, we had to wear bulletproof vests,
especially going toward the end.
I had to have security sleep in my room, in my hotel.
I had to stay in a hotel for a while
and security slept in my room
and I couldn't move without 'em.
Why was that?
I mean, all the death threats that was coming.
A lot of people lost their lives when Pac died.
Pac died, but it was...
there was a lot of people that lost their lives.
It appears to be possibly a shooting.
Eighteen months later,
Orlando Anderson himself is gunned down
and killed at this carwash in Compton.
According to sheriff's deputies,
one person was struck by gunfire in Compton.
Right now we have one down outside the car,
one down inside the car.
Not surprisingly, nobody in the community trusts the police,
who are feared and despised.
Not snitching to the police is so basic
that even though he knew the identity of Tupac's gunman,
Suge refused to cooperate.
If you knew who killed Tupac, would you tell the police?
Absolutely not.
I mean, 'cause, you know, I don't know...
- Why not? - Because it's not my job.
I don't get paid to solve homicides.
I don't get paid to tell on people.
Pam, our producer, had to defend us
from being mistaken for LAPD police officer, Greg Kading.
Without Pam, we could never have made the film.
No, he's not.
No, where did you hear that from?
No.
I'm 100% sure.
Where did you get that shit from?
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't...
if he was an ex-police officer,
you think I would help him or fuck with him?
He wasn't in the... listen, uh-uh.
Didn't I... didn't he send you the link to everything
you can Google and find out about who he is?
All right, I'ma send it to you.
I want you to check it out.
Now where did you... they lyin'.
I don't fuck with the police.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and let me just say this to you,
it don't even fucking matter to me
because I don't fuck with the police
and whoever say that shit is lyin' and the...
How the fuck this n**** ex-police
and he's from fucking England?
He's from the fucking UK.
And he started saying stuff like,
"What do you do when you ain't got real friends?
What do you do when the people you love do you wrong?"
Like, these are some of the words that I remember.
And he would talk about it a little more
and he would turn around in the chair,
and when he turned back around,
like about the third time, he's crying.
You know, and I knew where that place was coming from.
I seen it in his face.
You can almost look in his eyes and see just like...
he's just like had this just stare.
Like he was so surprised that this happened to Death Row.
So surprised that this could happen to somebody that he was,
like, the chief of watch.
He was the overseer,
and that happened on his watch.
And he already thought that he was untouchable.
And at that time, we'd been touched.
What happened in the end when he got locked up,
Suge got a little selfish side of him as well.
Mean side, mean streak.
So, that attitude, I'm sure, kicked in.
Meaning that if I could survive off of $5 a week,
if I could survive in jail off of cookies and milk,
if I could survive off of not going anywhere,
if I could live in this shithole jail,
you should be able to make it on the streets.
That's his attitude, so he didn't even have to tell me.
I knew that's the kind of person that he is.
"Oh, they out there on in the streets."
He's not gonna pay for you to live in Beverly Hills
and he's in a damn Los Angeles County jail.
So, it felt like when he got locked up, we were locked up.
For sure we was.
When Suge Knight was sentenced to jail,
that's when everybody went to jail.
It was a fuckin' shame, man.
And excuse my language,
but, um, you know, at the end of this thing,
you know, Snoop is kinda like...
he's like a duck.
He's real cool, but underneath,
paddling like, "Oh shit!"
You know?
"I hope I don't drown," you know what I mean?
Same thing with the, you know, Dogg Pound.
Same thing with Nate Dogg.
Same thing with all the, you know, with all the acts.
They all get up there and it's like, "Wait a minute.
You mean there's nothing to actually hold on to?"
That's kinda sad.
That's like, "What was you doin'?"
While in jail he's just, he's just stewing
and he's so pissed off.
You know, he just lost his friend,
his number one artist, and his record company
is kind of beginning to circle the drain.
And so he takes it upon himself to retaliate.
He puts things into order to have Biggie killed.
Somebody had to go after Tupac.
I truly believe that.
- So... - Somebody had to go?
Yeah, somebody would've had to die.
It's, it's way serious now.
It's way serious now.
Y'all done cut the head off the chicken,
so we gotta do the same thing to y'all.
And that's all it is,
it's repercussion, revenge.
Somebody gotta do something.
Something got to happen because if don't nothin' happen,
then you'll have everybody and their momma from everywhere
tryin' to get at you
because y'all sat back and let Tupac get killed.
So, it had to be something.
- Sup, sup? - How you doing?
Biggie shouldn't have came to California after Tupac died.
That was a bad choice for them to make.
With the East Coast, West Coast thing,
like I told... said before, it's just a situation
where it was just me and Pac
had our little differences or whatever.
But I'm here to take over.
Saying it's all over with.
I'm in the West right now.
If you need me, wanna see me,
talk to me, whatever you wanna do.
- Cool. - Now the time, call on up.
And they all on Power 106
and they just all over the radio stations
and, you know, and Pac is dead now.
I'm like, "What the fuck is these dudes thinkin' about?"
And, and there's already an undercurrent,
grumbling happenin' in LA.
Like, "These n****s got a lot of nerve.
They just think they gonna just come out here?"
I'm serious.
These is now all the gang dudes in LA.
And I'm talkin' about Mexican gangs, too.
This had nothin' to... this wasn't just Black gangs sayin' it.
"Gonna get them motherfuckers."
No doubt.
- B.I.G. - B.I.G.
- Hey, what's up B? - What up, dog?
- Hi. - What's up?
Both theories about the shooting of Biggie Smalls
agree that Suge Knight ordered the hit from prison.
Kading argues the police were not involved
and the hit was carried out by Blood gangsters.
Russell Poole has always argued that dirty cops did it.
You know, had it been just your ordinary drive-by shooting
by some unexperienced gangbangers,
we would have solved it a long time ago.
No question about it, but you gotta think to yourself,
"Well, who could do this and get away with it?"
You gotta get into their minds.
Cops.
911 emergency, what are you reporting?
Yeah, we need an ambulance on 5th after Wilshire.
Please, Los Angeles, we have a man shot.
- We have a man shot. - Wilshire Boulevard.
Okay, hold on while I get that...
Right on the corner of Wilshire and 5th Avenue.
Wilshire Boulevard.
We've a man shot in our car right now.
We're in the car right now.
We're rollin' to the hospital right now.
I don't know, I'm not from here, I'm from New York.
Is the party that was shot in your car?
- No. - I thought you said
you were going to the hospital-
The car was in front of me.
What hospital are you going to?
N****, that was a pro.
That wasn't no bunch of scattered fuckin' bullet holes.
Them bullet holes went straight across like that.
Wasn't no scattered bullets like in the BMW, the Tupac car.
It was a straight nine.
Russell Poole gave up his career to solve this murder
and was vilified by his superiors.
I was told not to talk about the Biggie Smalls killing.
During the course of the investigation
of David Mack possibly being involved
in the Biggie Smalls case, I was told,
"Hey, Mack had already gone down for the bank robbery.
Let's not get into any more controversy,"
and that was that.
And there was no urgency to investigate David Mack
for the killing of Biggie Smalls.
Four years later, in the year 2000,
when still nobody had been charged for the murders,
we take Russell to New York
and introduce him to Voletta Wallace,
Biggie's mom, who is equally frustrated.
Hi.
So this is...
Hi, Mrs. Wallace, how you doin'?
I'm Russ Poole.
Nice to meet you.
Oh, hey there.
How are ya?
Nice to see you again.
Hi there.
You know, there are some private investigators
- working on some good leads. - Uh-huh.
And if they come up with some good stuff,
we'll be sure to come back out here.
Okay.
Voletta went on to file a $500 million lawsuit,
an estimate of her son's lifetime's earnings,
against the city of Los Angeles.
All it was is a Puffy and Suge Knight war.
So if that's the case, Puffy, Suge Knight,
solve your damn problem.
They should have done that.
So that's where the East Coast, West Coast thing came.
Everybody wants to be famous,
so they went to the newspaper
and gave their own little stories
and everybody start, "East Coast, West Coast."
East Coast was Puffy.
West Coast was Suge Knight.
East Coast was Biggie.
West Coast was Tupac.
Come on now.
You're messing with lives here.
And that's exactly what happened.
Two lives were lost as a result of what?
Stupidity?
Years later I discovered that this earlier film I did
with Voletta did prompt an FBI investigation
into possible LAPD involvement
with her son's murder.
I literally was watching TV one night
and I came across this documentary.
It was on the whole Biggie murder.
So I wrote up a long report to my bosses.
They all signed off on it.
They said, "Yeah, you know what?
You got something here, let's run with it."
So that's how, that's how the whole case got started.
The LAPD did not welcome this FBI investigation
and set up their own, looking for evidence
to counterattack the Biggie Smalls lawsuit.
Greg Kading was the head of Operation Transparency.
Yeah, so as that lawsuit kinda weaved in and out of the courts,
it came to a point where the LAPD realized that,
you know, in civil court just about anything could happen,
and they thought it would be in their best interest
to relook at the case.
The City of LA prevented the lead FBI investigator,
Phil Carson, from testifying at the trial.
They said, "Yeah.
You're not looking into solving a murder.
You're looking into solving a murder
that involved the LAPD orchestrating it."
They said, "You guys gotta squash this subpoena
because if Phil testifies, we got at least a 50/50 chance
of losing a $500 million lawsuit."
And to be honest with ya, they're right.
They got a... I think it's better than a 50/50 chance.
Greg Kading, who headed up the LAPD task force,
disputes that LAPD cops were involved
in the hit on Biggie Smalls.
He not only wrote a book,
but was involved in a major series on Netflix and on BET
and his views are widely accepted today.
He says that officers Mack and Perez
never worked at Death Row,
but we came up with new evidence
showing Greg Kading is incorrect.
David Mack, the LAPD officer,
never, ever worked or was affiliated and associated
with Death Row Records at all.
Neither was Rafael Perez.
And those were the two individuals
that jailhouse informants had claimed
were part of Death Row's security.
They weren't, ever.
And that was looked into not only by
the original investigators back in the mid-'90s,
but also by our task force.
Officer David Mack was apparently
a charismatic and social guy.
So many people at Death Row remember him.
I knew David very well.
I was actually quite shocked when I saw David
and he was an LAPD.
Very surprised.
And he came with me to the video shoot
when we were doing Mac Mall and Ray Luv's video shoot
and Tupac was directing and he wanted to be connected
because he wanted to do off-duty work for rap artists.
And I brought him to that video shoot
and a little later, I found out he was working
with all the rappers I knew, off-duty
and a lot of other cops that I knew.
Leila isn't the only one who remembers Mack and Perez.
Yeah, I seen it.
I seen David Mack plenty of time.
They had to come to the party 'cause, you know,
never knew when it was gonna jump off.
Hung out with 'em.
Been in the room with 'em.
Been around 'em.
You know, ever they been around, I was around.
And what, who was the other one, Rafael Perez?
Rafael Perez.
Seen him too.
Yep, all that.
But like I said, shit, they wasn't no different from us.
The only thing, they had badges, we didn't.
So, we have... you know, we might be somewhere,
you know, it go like this, we get into it
with whoever we get into it with.
And when the police rush us, our police rush them.
That's how it went.
That's how the get down went.
Yes, Officer Perez.
He was friends with Suge.
I seen him up there several, several times.
Several times.
And he was friends with Suge.
I seen him in uniform and out of uniform.
And when you're out of uniform, you try to be...
try to look like he cool and shit.
He wear little accents of red, you know?
You know, like try to fit in, I knew who he...
I'm like, "Ah, that's the the police dude."
But I never knew that he was the part of
that Rampart Division shit until I seen him.
I'm like, "Oh!"
Out of all the police in the world that I remember,
I remember him for being up at Death Row.
And then there was another one.
The one that they say killed Biggie, right?
Black dude.
He used to be up there too.
I don't know if he did this,
but the one that they had on the news,
he was there a lot.
- Hi. - Hey.
Good morning, very good of you to see us.
What makes Kading's comments about Mack and Perez
look especially weak is that
even Police Chief Bernard Parks himself
said they worked for Death Row.
We know that David Mack and Rafael Perez
both worked security in this rap culture,
as it relates to some of these artists,
- but we have had... - Pertaining to Death Row.
Death Row Records, but we have no information
nor has any information come forward that would cause us
to believe that either one of them are suspects.
If, in our continuing investigation,
we uncover facts that we can prove,
then we will continue moving forward to clear that case,
but until then, what we've seen so far
is merely undocumented speculation
that has not led to any significant leads.
It would appear that Police Chief Bernard Parks
should have been well-acquainted with Mack and Perez,
according to Xavier Hermosillo.
One of the most shocking things in that Board of Rights,
or anything that I've ever done in over 30 years,
was there was a photograph of Rafael Perez and David Mack,
who were the two police officers that were bad, bad, bad news,
and a woman standing in the middle.
And they were all dressed in red, from head to toe.
A hat, whatever, which is the color of the Blood gangs.
There's the Crips and their clothes are blue.
And so these guys were dressed in red
and they were standing behind a table.
There was a, a cake that said something like,
"Bloods rule," or, you know, something like that.
And I was startled, because I recognized the woman,
and it was the daughter of Police Chief Bernard Parks,
who it appeared was a Blood gang member.
That's incredible.
Yeah, tell me about it.
I looked at this thing and I turned to my two partners
and I said, "Is this who I think it is?"
And they said, "Yeah."
The Biggie Smalls' estate lawyers were never able
to get a copy of this photograph,
which mysteriously disappeared.
It is also alleged that Michelle Parks
and Officer Rafael Perez were in a dating relationship.
Officer David Mack was later convicted for this bank robbery.
It's alleged that on the night of the robbery,
Michelle Parks, Mack and Perez
celebrated at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
When, on a subsequent occasion,
Michelle Parks was arrested in Las Vegas for narcotics,
it is Rafael Perez who posts bail.
Xavier also mentions the account of this man, Boagni,
and another cellmate of Officer Perez
who alleged Perez took part in Biggie's murder
and were threatened with death if they testified against him.
I have a great admiration and respect
for the Los Angeles Police Department,
but this is the one time... and I've been around
the department 40 years as a civilian.
And one of the things that I think bothered me the most
was how this one case,
being the murder of Biggie Smalls,
and everything that emanated from it,
was really problematic.
And in this particular case with these two prisoners,
they were visited at their prisons,
thousand miles apart, and told not to come and testify
at the Board of Rights hearing that I was involved with.
And they were told that if they did testify,
that friends of Perez who were in prison
would have them killed for testifying,
for snitching.
That I found to be, you know, just abhorrent,
just illegal.
And it was LAPD police officers who told them?
It was two detectives.
And, uh, we heard it for the first time
when Boagni, Kenny Boagni, sort of blurted it out.
I asked him a question and he started,
you know, kind of shaking a little bit.
And then the advocate for the department,
who was like the prosecutor,
he jumps up and he gets in his face
and he says, "Keep your mouth shut.
You were told not to talk about that."
That was so unreal.
I'd never seen that in all the years
of being involved with the department.
Shortly afterwards, I received a phone call from Boagni,
who is currently serving a 40-year sentence
in state prison.
This call is from an inmate at a federal prison.
So are you saying that Suge Knight
was behind the hit, though?
So which, which offi...
which officers are you saying were implicated
in the murder of Biggie Smalls?
This call and your telephone number
will be monitored and recorded.
It is this testimony from Boagni
that is concealed by the LAPD
and kept from the Biggie Smalls lawyers.
The LAPD will be fined $1.1 million
by a US district judge for concealing evidence.
However, it's Kading's unfounded theory
that, over time, with podcasts and TV shows,
is accepted as valid today.
Whereas, Russell Poole,
an outstanding police officer for 20 years,
is discredited and ostracized.
And I mean, I almost took my life,
but it was my kids that actually saved me, okay?
And it hurt.
I was betrayed by my own department
because of the core values
that the Los Angeles Police Department
preached from day one.
Honesty, integrity.
Okay, tell the truth.
Swear to tell the truth, nothing but the truth,
so help you God.
Do a good job.
Do a thorough investigation.
Work for the community.
Uh, I believed in the oath of office.
I believed in the protect and serving the people,
I really did.
But on the inside, behind closed doors,
that it wasn't the case.
When it came to cops being investigated,
we weren't serving the public
the way we should have served the public.
And when I'm assigned to...
Solving these murders would dominate Russell's life.
He died tragically of a heart attack
at LA Sheriff's Headquarters during a meeting
about the Biggie Smalls murder.
...not be suppressed and kept away from the public.
A lot of what Russ Poole did...
telling you right now, that guy was legit.
For people to say that he was a disgraced detective,
it's not fair.
The guy knew what he was doing.
He was actually a good cop,
and they did what they could to shut him down.
And I know a lot of people like to say,
"Oh, he keeps going down this theory."
No, his theory is correct.
The only time I met Suge Knight was in 2002
when he was serving nine years
for the Orlando Anderson fight.
Both Kading and Russell agree Suge Knight commissioned
the Biggie Smalls murder,
yet he's never been charged.
When I went to visit him at Mule Creek State Prison,
Death Row was already collapsing.
Both Dre and Snoop had left,
and Suge Knight was trying to manage Death Row from prison.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
By now, Suge had mentally moved on to his new enemy,
Snoop, who had just left Death Row.
If you hear about a lot of the artists,
used to be some of them used to be on Death Row,
some of them on other labels, you might hear them,
um, getting caught up with drugs,
getting caught with a gun, stab somebody,
do those type of crimes,
and they're gonna come to prison.
One of the reason they're gonna come...
- You mean like Snoop? - Oh, Snoop would never come.
I mean, Snoop is on... you know, we'd be at the murder trial
for him, but then he was on probation.
Then he got caught with two ounces of marijuana.
Then he got caught with guns.
And each time, it's nothing, they're not gonna violate him,
because for the street guys,
street guys know what I'm talking about.
There's no puzzle.
I mean, if you get a guy that
constantly getting in trouble and never got come to prison,
that's because he's an informant, he's a rat.
- Yeah, yeah. - A snitch, you know.
And they more important to the police
on the streets than in here,
because they let them know what's going on.
They might say what they saw by telling
three or four, five other guys.
You know, I'm from Compton and I'm...
a rat is the lowest you can go.
A rat will do anything.
This was Suge's message to Snoop.
When Suge got back out in 2001,
you know, he changed the name to The Row.
It never rose.
It never, it never prospered at all.
Suge was just living off of Death Row reputation.
He was living off of the reputation of people
that wasn't even alive no more.
So I left Death Row in like 2002,
'cause it was really over with.
It was just like...
to me, it was just like a little gang hangout.
How you doing, man?
Yeah.
Once Suge lost everything, he lost everything.
He lost his accountants, he lost everything.
He didn't have nobody really on his side.
And Jimmy Iovine, them, they businessmen,
they was consistently getting the money.
I need $50.
Can I have $50?
Where did all the money end up?
I don't know.
I know a fool and his money shall soon part.
I know that the fool lost his money
from doing foolish things,
and that's Suge.
We know the big boys got the bag.
They took the bag.
David Kenner ain't...
I guarantee you, David ain't broke.
Ted Field, come on.
That's Marshall Field's brother.
The Seagrams family is intertwined in that.
They're not broke.
But, you know, Suge was standing up
in the wrong way to the wrong people.
You know, you can't scare Jimmy Iovine.
Don't even make sense.
Hey.
That's coming from the East to the West.
Hey, check this out.
This my homeboy.
BJ, you know what I'm saying?
My PO let me out here, but I fuck with me,
my n****s, right here, but this BJ is my n****.
This man is like my brother.
I'm gonna fuck n****s up behind the homeboy, n****.
Suge, money wasn't the way it was no more.
Now what?
You know, he wasn't making no more money,
so when he wasn't making no more money,
the people that he want to get from the neighborhood,
he wasn't paying them, so they start dropping off.
And that's why, a lot of times used to see Suge,
he used to be by himself.
Once the people on the street seeing that,
they start attacking Suge.
He got shot at Chris Brown's party.
He got knocked out.
Well, that looked like Suge, bro.
Some people was like, you know what I'm saying,
"You ain't nothing."
I mean, things start to happen to him
that would never would have happened.
But once... it's just like Moses.
Moses had a veil.
He didn't want nobody to see
that the light was gone on his face.
So Suge's veil start to appear
that it... that these people weren't behind him no more.
So the people weren't scared no more.
All I know is,
none of the guys that was working for Death Row
got a house, didn't get a car out of it,
um...
don't have a big bank account.
Everybody is just back...
it's like the Cinderella story.
Twelve o'clock, everything changed
back into the same thing,
changed back into what it is.
That's how it is in Compton.
Everybody just changed back into what they were.
You know what I'm saying?
It was good.
Tupac, they had Tupac for 11 months, I think,
and everybody was good.
But soon as he passed,
everybody turned back into
just a regular old cat in the neighborhood.
It was all gone, from rags to riches to worse.
Or to the dirt.
This is Rosecrans and Atlantic.
I believe this is still Compton.
Looks like more than likely they were shot
while trying to fill up their car with gas.
Suge Knight, struggling to maintain control,
created a rivalry between his own Blood gang members,
who started killing each other.
A lot of them died for him,
including my brother.
Some guy got out of a van and AK'ed him down.
I think he got shot nine times, ten times,
and he was laying there.
I've seen the scene so many times.
I've seen what happened to him so many times.
You know...
I can say I can't even imagine
that somebody would do him like that,
but that's how we was living,
that's the shit we was doing when we was doing drive-bys.
That's the shit that I lived for,
that I had to go out and live like that.
So, seeing my brother,
it was, it was so different.
It was like I'm... I had to step outside of myself
and to see him laying there
with his eyes open and just...
I had, I had so much anger in me.
It's, it's... hm...
It's rough talking about him.
Every time they mention his name, I get choked up.
Uh...
The pain is a cold feeling.
That's my brother.
But I guess, in a way, his death gave you something.
Huh?
His death gave you something too.
It taught me a lot.
It gave me a better understanding
of my self-destruction,
what I was doing to other people.
I know there's somebody right now
and they feeling the same way about their brother.
You know what I'm saying?
And you know, I can't do nothing but apologize
for the way I lived,
and I'm trying to make it better.
I'm trying to help people.
Um...
Karma's a motherfucker.
And he's paying for it.
If you ever been to prison,
you ain't got nothing but time to think,
especially when you're sitting in that damn cell.
You gonna think about every one of those guys that's dead.
Your Big B's, your Herons, your Hen Dogs,
your Chias, your Buntrys.
You're gonna think about all of these guys
that lost their lives.
People felt freer to talk once Suge commenced his sentence.
Many of the people who witnessed Biggie's killing that night
have kept a secret for 24 years.
I didn't wanna do interviews for years.
It was dangerous.
It's dangerous to know anything.
I was there that night Biggie got killed,
and so were some of the LAPD officers we talked about.
I would put money on LAPD's involvement, you know?
They're all not on the force anymore,
so I guess it doesn't matter, but...
Did you see David Mack and Perez
at the event at the Petersen Motor...
They were all there.
Yes, they were there.
'Cause the LAPD now have sort of
come up with a whole other theory.
Mmm, outside of the police?
- Yeah. - I'm sure they did.
What's their theory?
That a gang member called Poochie
shot and killed Biggie.
You know, really it doesn't matter who pulled the trigger,
although I wouldn't agree with that,
but what I would say is
any gang member that was to shoot or kill Biggie
could have only done so
with police involvement and support.
It would have been impossible.
They were everywhere.
It was... you don't have an event
that's a party after the Soul Train Awards,
and especially in LA and there's that many Black people,
and you think the police aren't everywhere?
They're everywhere.
Didn't work that way.
So there has to be compliance.
They were, they were complicit in everything that happened
that had to do with Death Row.
I hold the police department responsible for so much.
Word up.
- Ready, n****? - Yeah.
Ready for that raw dog shit, n****?
Okay, all right.
Let me see how my head should win.
You want to set it off?
Man, I'm scared to do some freestyle.
♪ I'm scared to do some freestyle ♪
♪ Flow, I'm too high and I might go off tempo ♪
♪ But now I'm back to let these n****s know ♪
♪ just how deep my game run ♪
♪ Tupacalyse don't sleep ♪
♪ I keep a motherfucking glock in my car ♪
♪ If I'm holdin' in the club ♪
♪ I gotta be the fucking star ♪
Biggie didn't give a fuck.
Tupac didn't give a fuck.
It's fucked up that the cause of their deaths
is behind the pettiest shit on the planet.
♪ Money, hoes, and clothes ♪
♪ Blood smoke coming out the nose ♪
♪ It's all a n**** knows ♪
♪ Flipping off foes, putting tags on toes ♪
♪ Watching the stash growing, clocking the cash flow ♪
They were buddy-buddies.
They were, they were street buddies.
At the time of Tupac's death,
I think they were still buddies,
because when I told my son that Tupac died,
I could see the pain in his eyes.
♪ Drive a fat-ass truck ♪
♪ Grab the nine, two clips and run amok ♪
It sometimes brings me to tears
just thinking about what could have been.
Where would we be right now if they both were alive?
The world lost someone
that could have made quite a difference.
♪ Peace and love, when we go ♪
Hey, that's what I'm talking about.