Death of a B.I.G shot

The LAPD are just the latest suspects to take the rap over the murder of hip-hop star Notorious B.I.G. But will this latest courtroom drama finally solve music's biggest mystery? Andrew Gumbel reports

We've had the magazine articles. The investigative series. The books, the documentaries, and unceasing talk of a Hollywood movie production. For more than seven years, the back-to-back killings of rival rap stars Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. have been more than an unsolved mystery; they have turned into a cultural phenomenon unto themselves, a ghetto version of the mini-industry surrounding the assassination of JFK.

We've heard the gang feud theory, the corrupt cop theory, the record-label rivalry run wild theory - even the inevitable rumour that Tupac, at least, faked his own death and is now alive and well and living in some undisclosed exotic location (along, one presumes, with Elvis and Jim Morrison).

And now the story is moving on to a new level - in open court. In Los Angeles this week, a jury has at last been convened, lawyers have made their opening statements and the press are on stand-by for any hint of a break in the case that could at last reveal who or what caused two of the biggest names in gangsta rap to be cut down in a hail of bullets within six months of each other. This is not, however, a murder trial, with a clearly identified defendant or defendants, and the full weight of a state prosecution team offering a coherent theory on who did what to whom, when and why.

Instead, what we have is a civil action in which Notorious B.I.G.'s family - in particular his mother, Voletta Wallace - is suing the city of Los Angeles and the LA Police Department for what they are terming his wrongful death. They contend the rap star was murdered with the active involvement of a crooked cop called David Mack, currently serving a lengthy prison term for bank robbery, and that the only reason the LAPD never solved the case was that it was too busy covering its rear end to do the legwork and draw the appropriate conclusions.

Like every other theory of the murders, this one is hardly new. In fact, the family first aired the allegation three years ago, when it launched its suit, naming not only the LAPD and the city of Los Angeles as defendants but also Mr Mack and the man the Wallaces believe pulled the trigger, a Los Angeles mortgage broker called Amir Muhammad. The Wallace family and the city of LA have been involved in protracted settlement negotiations, which were eventually scuppered when the city council voted against making a deal.

In the absence of any official imprimatur for their contentions, the Wallace family will have to rely on just a handful of privately unearthed witnesses.And now the witnesses themselves are starting to look distinctly shaky. One of them, a jailhouse snitch known to police by the nickname "Psycho Mike", admitted a few months ago under oath that he had never seen Mr Muhammad before picking his picture out of a police lineup. A second witness, who has not been named, is known to have made contradictory statements during a videotaped deposition, casting doubt on his usefulness to the plaintiffs.

And a third witness, a former bodyguard for the LA rap label Death Row Records called Kevin Hackie, told the Los Angeles Times at the end of last week that despite his earlier incendiary and quite specific testimony against his old employers he has in fact been suffering from severe memory loss and can't promise being able to recall anything that might be of use on the witness stand. "I will be in court to testify, but it is a matter of record that I am stressed out and have been on medication for the past five years," he told the paper in the presence of his lawyer. The Wallace family sees the collapse of the witness list as an indication that they are on the right track. Why else would witnesses retract their testimony unless they were being made afraid by the very people with most to lose?

Whatever their precise cause, the murders took place against a startling backdrop of violence and bitter rivalry pitting a West Coast stable of rap artists, based at Death Row Records, against an East Coast stable, centred on Sean "Puffy" Combs and his Bad Boy Entertainment. Tupac Shakur, who had survived a gang-style shooting in New York and gone to prison for sexual assault, was killed on the Las Vegas Strip in September 1996 while sitting in the passenger seat of his boss at Death Row Records, Suge Knight.

The death of Notorious B.I.G., also known as Biggie Smalls or - to police - his birth name Christopher Wallace, followed six months later outside a music awards ceremony in the heart of Los Angeles. He was sitting in a four-wheel-drive at a stop light when seven bullets were fired from a vehicle that pulled up alongside him.

Amid the jumble of theories, there are two broad schools of thought. The first, embraced enthusiastically by the Wallace family, argues that both Tupac and Biggie were gunned down on the orders of Suge Knight himself. He had Tupac slugged because the rap star was threatening to leave Death Row Records, and he had Biggie killed to cover up his own complicity in the crime and make it look like another iteration of the eternal East Coast-West Coast rivalry. Leaving aside the problem of insufficient evidence, there are numerous problems with this theory - not least the suggestion that Suge Knight would order a hit on Tupac Shakur while the two of them were in a car together. Knight claims to have narrowly escaped with his own life on the night of September 7, 1996, and under the circumstances - rapid gun-fire from another vehicle on the traffic-clogged Las Vegas Strip - it is not hard to believe him.

The second school of thought ties the whole gangsta rap rivalry to another, older one between LA's two oldest street gang, the Crips and the Bloods.

On the night of Tupac's murder, he and Suge Knight - both affiliated with the Bloods - had spotted a young Crip in the corridor of a Las Vegas hotel-casino where they been watching a Mike Tyson boxing match. They recognised the young man, Orlando Anderson, as one of a group of Crips who had recently organised the beating of one of Tupac's bodyguards, and they proceeded to lay into him with fists and feet. (Knight later went to prison for his part in the assault.)

The assumption is that Anderson then either arranged Tupac's killing, or possibly pulled the trigger himself. A further variant on this theory, touted by the Los Angeles Times in an investigative piece that appeared three years ago, is that Biggie paid $1m for the hit and might even have provided the murder weapon. The Wallace family has since denied Biggie was even in Las Vegas on the night of Tupac's shooting. Whatever his involvement, the theory suggests Biggie was identified by the Bloods as one of Tupac's killers and knocked off in an act of revenge.

Now it seems dubious the mystery will ever be solved, because so many opportunities for police in LA and in Las Vegas to dig up hard evidence have been lost. The FBI dropped an investigation into the case for precisely that reason - there just wasn't enough to go on. It is unlikely that the jury in the civil suit now unfolding in Los Angeles will come to a different conclusion.