Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (18 page)

Others were not so lucky. In September of that year Suge’s friend and enforcer, Jake Robles was shot and killed at the Platinum Club in Atlanta, Georgia, a hit that, according to a 1997 issue of
Spin Magazine
, Knight pinned on one of Puffy’s bodyguards. It was a charge Combs would vehemently counter in the pages of
Vibe
. “I went to Atlanta with my son,” he asserted, “…I didn’t even have bodyguards, so that’s a lie that I did.”

Three months later and a year to the day after the Quad ambush, Tupac’s associate “Stretch” Walker, was shot dead on a Queens street. It is a homicide that, like so many other incidents surrounding the recording studio ambush, has never been solved. But its ripple effects would continue to be felt for years afterward, down to 2008, at the same time as our task force was deep into the resurrected investigation of the Biggie Smalls homicide and, by extension, the death of Tupac Shakur. It was in March of that year that the
Los Angeles Times
published a bombshell article purporting to have uncovered new and incriminating information about the Quad Studios attack fourteen years earlier. Chuck Philips, a highly respected Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who covered the music industry, filed the story. His account leaned heavily on a description of events laid out in an FBI report from a confidential source, claiming that Puffy Combs had indeed been behind the assault on Tupac. The unnamed source also went on to implicate Jimmy Henchman, Haitian Jack, and a wannabe gangster named James Sabatino. The FBI document detailing these revelations was duly posted on the newspaper’s website.

There was only one problem. As the
Smoking Gun
website quickly discovered, the report was a complete fabrication. It was James Sabatino, using a prison typewriter and photocopier, who had assembled it for the sole purpose of putting himself in the middle of the action.

Sabatino had long boasted of being a member of Bad Boy’s inner circle, supposedly planning lavish parties for Combs, using fake credit cards to charge hotels, choppers, and limos. He was eventually convicted of wire fraud and racketeering and sent to jail, where he concocted the fake FBI reports that Philips had used as the basis of his explosive story. Sabatino was something of a pathological liar, at least according to his father, who characterized him as a “disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug.” Philips, who had devoted years of intensive investigative journalism to the Biggie and Tupac murders, had been taken in by a forgery, and an inept forgery at that.
The Smoking Gun
pointed out in its analysis of the purported FBI document that, among other inconsistencies, the Bureau had not used typewriters for thirty years and there were also typos and misspellings “remarkably similar” to those found in the court documents Sabatino had previously filed. “The
Times
appears to have been hoaxed by an imprisoned con man,”
The Smoking Gun
concluded, “an audacious swindler who created a fantasy world in which he managed hip-hop luminaries.”

“In relying on documents that I now believe were fake,” Chuck Philips subsequently admitted in a statement, “I failed to do my job.” There was no such dereliction of duty on the part of attorneys for Puffy and Jimmy Henchman. Combs’s lawyer claimed that the newspaper’s conduct met the legal standard for “actual malice,” while Rosemond’s attorney was even more to the point. “I would suggest that Mr. Philips and his editors…take out their checkbooks.”

Like Russell Poole before him, Chuck Philips had been taken down by a case that now richly deserved its reputation for being cursed. Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur were dead and gone. But they were a very long way from being forgotten.

CHAPTER
14

662

A
S TUPAC AND SUGE CRUISED
down the Vegas Strip on their way to some hard partying, the nightmare of the last few years must have seemed like a distant memory. The mogul had delivered on all the promises he had made while Tupac was in jail. Tupac was now selling records and concert tickets in staggering numbers and had a firm foothold in Hollywood thanks to his roles in the twin hits
Poetic Justice
(1992) and
Above the Rim
(1994). He was a bigger star with a brighter future by a mind-boggling order of magnitude.

The ongoing gang war he had helped to incite only served to fuel his outsized ego. Only a few hours earlier he and his Piru posse had dealt a painful lesson to Baby Lane in the lobby of the MGM Grand, punishing the Crip for the crime of stealing a Death Row medallion at the Lakewood Mall two months earlier. For Tupac, art now imitated life: the “Thug Life” that he celebrated in song and played to the hilt as a world-class celebrity outlaw. He was at the absolute pinnacle of his life and career. There was no place left to go and nothing standing in his way of getting there.

After the Tyson-Seldon bout, Tupac had returned to the suite at the Luxor Hotel he shared with Kidada Jones, daughter of the music impresario Quincy Jones and sister of QD3, the producer of several tracks on
The Don Killumanti
. An off-and-on girlfriend at the time, Kidada was serving as Tupac’s consort for the Vegas weekend, and she listened as Tupac bragged about the thrashing he had just given Baby Lane, even as he took his time selecting a change of clothes. He had decided to go casual, picking out a black-and-white tank top, baggy blue jeans, and the regulation gold Death Row necklace for his night on the town. Kidada, instinctively wary of potential blowback from the beating, declined to accompany him.

Conspicuously absent in Tupac’s attire was the bulletproof Kevlar vest he wore as protection against the many enemies — real and imagined — he had accumulated on his rise to the top. He didn’t need it, he had earlier told Kidada as they had packed for the trip. After all, Vegas was hot and dry and the flak jacket would be uncomfortable and, more to the point, noticeably bulky. Sin City was, he believed, far removed from the gang violence of the East and West Coasts and the last thing Tupac wanted was to create the impression that he had something to fear.

Leaving Kidada to make her own plans for the evening, Tupac descended to the Luxor’s sweeping driveway, where the evening’s convoy had already arrived. His entourage was the standard assortment of flacks, flunkies, and hangers-on, as well as a hefty security presence, including Tupac’s bodyguard for the event, Frank Alexander, one-time bodybuilder and former reserve deputy for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Also on duty was the ex-Compton police officer Reginald Wright, Jr., head of Wright Way Protective Services, a security firm financed by Suge Knight specifically to provide muscle for Death Row. Since the necessary out-of-state permits had not been obtained, none of the Wright Way guards present that night were armed.

The half dozen vehicles, with Suge and Tupac in the lead, made their way over to the prestigious Paradise Valley township on the city’s outskirts, where Suge Knight kept a home. There, Knight also changed for the evening, and at about ten o’clock the group headed out again, heading for Club 662. It took them the better part of an hour to reach the south end of the Strip, through bumper-to-bumper traffic and the fast-gathering crowd along the sidewalks, clamoring for pictures and autographs. Just after eleven, Suge was pulled over by a LVMPD officer on a bicycle. The brand-new car displayed no temporary plates, the cop told him, also informing him that the volume on the car stereo was too loud. After a brief exchange, Suge was let go without being ticketed.

Shortly afterward a rented convertible Sebring pulled up alongside Suge and Tupac. Inside the Chrysler were four female friends out from Los Angeles for a weekend of fun. Among them was Ingrid Johnson, who recognized Suge from a brief encounter some four years earlier. She caught Knight’s attention and he invited the group along to Club 662 as his guests. The procession continued, the Sebring keeping pace with the BMW as it turned off Las Vegas Boulevard east onto Flamingo Road. A mile farther on they stopped for a red light at Koval Lane. The BMW carrying Tupac and Suge was in the center lane, one lane over from Johnson and her companions. Other vehicles in the convoy had pulled up directly behind the idling BMW, effectively boxing in the lead car.

It was then, as they waited for the light to change, that Ingrid Johnson heard gunshots, a lot of gunshots. “Drive on!” she shouted to her friend behind the wheel. “Drive on!” The convertible squealed across the intersection, making a sharp right and narrowly avoiding another vehicle making the same turn. When questioned later, she would be able to identify it only by its color: white.

It was a late-model Cadillac. Unnoticed, it had eased down Flamingo Road past the security contingent and pulled along the right side of the BMW. According to other eyewitnesses, four black men were paired off in the front and back seats. It was the rider in the right rear seat of the Caddy, leaning over the passenger next to him, who had opened up with a semiautomatic handgun, spraying the right side of the 750, riddling the door and shattering the heavily tinted windows.

“All I saw was the position of the shooter,” the bodyguard Frank Alexander would later recount, describing his perspective from the car immediately behind the Beemer. “He was in the backseat. I saw the arm of the shooter come out. I saw a silhouette of him, which was a black person wearing a skull cap, a beanie cap.”

Directly in the withering line of fire, Tupac tried desperately to scramble out of the way, but was held in place, a stationary target, by his seat belt. As he twisted around trying to escape the spray of bullets, he exposed his torso and was immediately struck in the chest, as well as his right hip, arm, and hand: four hits at close range, all in quick succession. “Get down!” Suge bellowed, grabbing the rapper and trying to pull him back into his seat before being clipped himself in the head and neck with shrapnel and glass fragments.

Meanwhile, Alexander had leaped from his car and was running toward the BMW, spattered now by thirteen slugs. As he approached, the car suddenly lurched to the left. In a desperate maneuver Suge had yanked the wheel into a sharp U-turn, riding on two blown-out tires as he sped back down Flamingo Road. Alexander hurried back to his car and peeled out, following close behind. In quick succession the other vehicles in the caravan joined him.

Meanwhile, the Cadillac sped south on Koval Lane, followed by the panicked ladies in the Sebring, who were blindly trying to get as far from the shooting as fast as possible. They didn’t succeed. After a few hundred feet, more gunfire erupted from the fleeing Caddy. The Sebring screeched to a halt as, half a block ahead of them, the assailants disappeared down a side street.

In the BMW, a panicked and bleeding Suge made a wide wobbling turn onto Las Vegas Boulevard, doing his best to avoid the heavy traffic before eventually colliding with the concrete meridian, riding up on the deflated front tire and blowing out the other in the process. “You hit?” asked Suge.

“I’m hit,” Tupac replied, his voice stricken and faint.

A moment later police on bicycles arrived alongside the stalled vehicle. Among them was Officer Paul Ehler, who had radioed ahead for additional support and an ambulance. Within minutes the scene was swarming with officers, who immediately ordered everyone in the convoy out of their cars and facedown on the sidewalk. That included Suge, whose head by now was covered with blood from his scalp and neck wounds. Tupac, on the other hand, was left alone in the front seat, obviously too gravely injured to move, his breathing shallow, passing in and out of consciousness. “Got to keep your eyes open,” he muttered.

Still trying to sort out what exactly had happened and whether it was victims or perpetrators laying spread-eagled on the street in front of them, LVMPD officers finally allowed Suge and his associates to stand up just as the paramedics arrived. “I can’t breathe,” Tupac repeatedly told the emergency medical personnel as Suge and Alexander lifted him out of the car and placed him on the ground. The response team opened a gurney and wheeled Tupac’s limp body into the ambulance. With the injured Suge taking a seat inside, it sped off with sirens blaring, heading for University Medical Center, some three miles away. There, Tupac was rushed into surgery, doctors working desperately to try to stabilize his quickly deteriorating condition. It would be the first of several surgeries Tupac would endure as an ever-expanding team of physicians fought to save his life.