The Killing of Tupac Shakur (20 page)

Besides the FBI’s investigation into Death Row’s alleged ties to street gangs and the New York Mafia, a Los Angeles deputy district attorney was investigated by the California state attorney general’s office for unusual ties to Death Row and Suge Knight.

And Death Row had reportedly fallen behind in meeting deadlines to deliver five albums that were scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of 1996, the most profitable time of the year for record companies.

Worst of all, Suge himself had lost his freedom.

In 1995, Suge Knight pleaded no contest to assaulting two rap entertainers at a Hollywood studio, was placed on five years’ probation, and warned to stay off drugs and to obey all laws. By taking part in the beating of Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand the night Tupac was shot, a Superior Court judge ruled that Knight had violated the probation order.

In court just before he was sentenced, Suge made a statement to Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Czuleger:

“I been through a lot this year. I lost my best friend. A lot of people don’t realize how it is to lose a best friend. I always wanted a little brother, and now he’s not here.

“As far as the situation with the fight, I’m not trying to open up the case or go back to the incident in Vegas, but I wanna stipulate on that because it’s important to me, ‘cause I gotta live with this. When [Orlando] Anderson came up to testify, I’d be the first to say he’s not a friend of mine. And to be honest, I felt that this guy could play with the truth and go against me just to lie. But since he was under oath, I felt he told the truth.

“Your honor, I was breakin’ up the fight. I knew I was on probation. I put my freedom and my life on the line. And I feel if I wouldn’t have stopped that fight—I’m not saying the same person who came and shot us later was these type of people, but if they was, instead of me getting shot in my head and one person dead, it could have been 30 people dead in Vegas at the MGM.

“And even at the end, Your Honor, when everybody say, ‘It was a kick,’ it wasn’t a kick. I admit that I was breaking up a fight, and I admit I was frustrated, but at the same time, it’s not a nine-year kick. This guy wasn’t harmed. Wasn’t anything broke on him. If you ask anybody that seen me fight, Your Honor, the first they’d tell you is, ‘That guy wouldn’t be standing there giving statements.’ When I fights, sir, I fights.

“But I’ve changed my life to get away from fighting. And I wanna enlighten not just you, but the courtroom, because my family is here. And it might be the last time I speak to my family. I could go to jail and anything could happen. But I’m not here for the judge to feel pity for me. I’m just speaking from my heart.

“I’m not gonna waste any more of the court’s time, but I just thought it was important that I get this off my chest and address the court the way I feel.”

Despite his plea for leniency and his team of attorneys’ earlier filings of motion after motion, on Friday, February 28, 1997, Judge Czuleger handed down a harsh sentence.

“The defendant is sentenced to nine years in state prison,” he told the court. Then he turned to Knight and said, “You did blow it.”

Suge’s attorneys appealed the ruling and unsuccessfully tried to have Suge released. Las Vegas attorney, David Chesnoff described Suge as “a political prisoner,” noting, “He’s been punished enough.”

No one else involved in the Orlando Anderson beating on September 7th was arrested or charged in connection with the scuffle. The greatest irony is that, officially, the scuffle incident never happened. Las Vegas police did not file a crime report, therefore there was no crime. Suge was sentenced to nine years of hard time for something for which no official record exists.

Suge’s life in prison was a far cry from the high-flying days when the Hip Hop Nation’s largest rap label in history produced records from the top rap artist ever. On March 12, 1997, four months after his arrest, Suge was taken by a prison bus from Los Angeles County’s central jail to Delano, California, where he was incarcerated at the North Kern State Prison near Bakersfield, housed as prisoner No. K43480. Suge was placed in the reception wing—DC6 unit, cell No. 229L—awaiting permanent quarters.

On May 21, 1997, Suge was transferred to the California Men’s Colony East. The prison, on State Highway 101 three miles west of the quaint city of San Luis Obispo and nine miles east of Morro Bay, is a medium- to high-security facility. Two prisons there (East and West) house 6,500 inmates. Suge was placed in the East prison because of his notoriety and for his safety, according to prison spokeswoman Terri Knight (no relation). The facility has armed security and a double-fenced line surrounding it. Other celebrities incarcerated there in the past have included Christian Brando, Ike Turner, Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson (a former linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys convicted of drug-related crimes), and several members of the Charles Manson family.

In an interesting aside, the prison guard also said that officials had hung on a wall in Suge’s prison module an LAPD
“wanted” poster for the suspect in the Biggie Smalls’ murder.

To get privileges within the prison system (such as phone use, quarterly packages from family members, and canteen privileges for snack foods), inmates must work in a prison-industry factory, making state license plates, prison-issue T-shirts and shoes, textile products and socks, work boots for forestry crews, and jackets. Inmates also have the option of going to school, but the privileges are better from the factory work.

Suge was allowed to have non-contact visits four days a week with people who were approved by the prison, including his team of attorneys.

Suge eventually worked a yard-detail job at the prison. According to a guard inside the facility, “The ‘gardening jobs’ are pretty much a farce. The guys walk around and pick up trash for seven hours. We have no ‘gardens.’ We do have lots of grass, so a few of the guys in those jobs cut the grass once or twice a month in the summer, but I haven’t seen Suge doing that. In actuality, the guys in those jobs work for about a half an hour a day. They check in with their supervisor a couple of times a day, then get lost for most of their work shift. The workers are very loosely supervised, if they’re supervised at all, because their supervisor is responsible for lots of other custodial duties that make it impossible for him or her to actually spend much time with the yard crew.”

All that ended when Suge came under suspicion by the LAPD. For his own protection, he was moved to Administrative Segregation, or “ad seg.” “He only leaves his cell for showers, exercise, or non-contact visits, which take place in a small room with both participants behind glass,” the prison guard told me. “He is fed in his cell. They justified it as a protective-custody precaution since he is now a suspect in Biggie’s death.”

Once he was moved about a year later to Mule Creek prison in Ione, California, Suge was housed once again in the general population with a cellmate. Suge, according to prison spokesman Sean McCray, adjusted so well that his release
date was moved up. Also, because he had no disciplinary problems, he was given more privileges at the 4,000-inmate prison. “They did an assessment,” McCray said. “He met the criteria for custody reduction. That allows Mr. Knight to go out into the evening yards in the after-daylight hours. He has visiting rights in the evenings, as well as family visits.”

Night visits were Thursdays and Fridays. Just as they had been at the San Luis Obispo prison, visitors of Suge often arrived in limos. “We have several limousines showing up now and then to see Knight,” Cray said. Included on his visitor list was singer Michel’le, a petite R&B singer with a squeaky Betty Boop-like speaking voice. She surprised many with her rich throaty singing style. Guards at the prison entrance of both the San Luis Obispo and Mule Creek prisons sometimes allowed Michel’le to bypass the lengthy processing of visitors.

Suge was eligible for parole after five years, which included “good-time” credits he’d earned at both prisons. Until that time, his incarceration meant he could not run Death Row Records. Knight’s former wife Sharitha, from whom he amicably separated, ran the day-to-day operations in the beginning. Later, it was a group of about five Death Row employees who kept the label going.

• • •

On April 20, 2001, Suge was paroled from the Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, then transferred to a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon, to finish the remaining months of his sentence. He’d been on probation for state and federal charges when he was sentenced to nine years in prison for violating his probation by taking part in the Las Vegas fight.

Federal investigators had been building a racketeering case against Death Row Records by probing alleged links to street gangs, drug traffickers, and organized-crime figures, sources told the
Los Angeles Times
. The investigation, which began shortly after Suge was jailed, involved agents from the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Police in Los Angeles and Las Vegas were reportedly working on the case.

David Chesnoff, Suge’s Las Vegas attorney in the federal case, had this to say about the federal probe: “Apparently, there’s a grand-jury investigation. There’s been document production and I know they’ve interviewed witnesses. But that’s all I know. Unlike the President Clinton grand-jury investigations, we don’t get to read in the newspapers about what they [federal investigators] are doing.”

According to the
L.A. Times
’ account, the feds were determining whether members of the Bloods had committed crimes while on Death Row’s payroll, and whether Death Row had been launched with drug money or other illegal funds. Suge’s association with convicted drug kingpins Michael “Harry O” Harris and Ricardo Crockett, both of whom were imprisoned, was also being looked at by federal agents. Suge admitted knowing the men, but said he did not take money from them to launch Death Row. Because Harris was serving time for, among other things, a narcotics conviction, they believed drug money may have been used by Knight.

According to a federal grand-jury indictment filed in Las Vegas in 1993, Suge Knight was listed as the 34th defendant, along with Crockett, in a drug-distribution ring in which cocaine was brought in from Los Angeles and sold in Las Vegas. The indictment alleged that Crockett ran the operation, selling the cocaine to his sub-distributors for further sale in the Las Vegas area between July 1992 and May 1993. The indictment also charged that Crockett and others had used guns to protect the operation or to rob other narcotics dealers of money and drugs. Suge ended up with a gun-possession conviction in the Crockett case and received probation. Crockett was convicted of drug charges and sent to a penitentiary.

The feds were also reportedly looking into Suge’s investment in the now-defunct Club 662 for links to organized crime. On February 13, 1997, a federal grand jury subpoenaed the financial records of Suge, his attorney David Kenner, Death
Row Records, and 36 companies, including Club 662, and individuals who had done business with them.

One of Suge’s many lawyers is John Spilotro, attorney of record for Suge’s 1987 attempted-murder charge in Las Vegas. Spilotro was the nephew of the late Chicago mobster Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro, an “enforcer” and the muscle behind the mob in Las Vegas in the 1970s.

From L.A. County Jail where he was incarcerated at the time, Suge vehemently denied the federal allegations of ties to organized crime, saying he was being targeted because of his race.

“This is the most outrageous story I have ever heard,” he told the
L.A. Times
. “A black brother from Compton creates a company that helps people in the ghetto, so what does the government do? They try to bring him down.”

Suge’s company attorney, David Kenner, also strongly denied allegations of mob ties to the New York Genovese family, telling reporters, “Suge wouldn’t know a member of the Genovese crime family if he tripped over him.”

Oscar Goodman, a famous Las Vegas attorney who made a successful career of representing mob figures and later became mayor of Las Vegas, was in court in L.A. as a consultant on Suge’s case. Goodman is also partners with David Chesnoff, Suge’s federal attorney of record.

“I went down to Los Angeles as a consultant on [Suge’s] revocation case,” Goodman told me. “I went down there for one court proceeding and counseled with the lawyers who actually made the presentation. The judge [Superior Court Judge Stephen Czuleger], in my opinion, went through the charade of pretending to afford Knight due process and gave the decision. The presentation by defense attorneys couldn’t have been better. They walked beautifully through their presentation to the judge. They shouldn’t have wasted their time and effort. The judge, I think, enjoyed the media attention, and it was a foregone decision. It was a done deal. Before they even made their presentation, the judge’s mind was already made up. The decision was made and the judgment typed up.

“On the federal case, if there ever was any federal case, if anything ever came to light federally, I would probably be involved.”

In a standard FBI-style non-denial, Special Agent John Hoose with the FBI’s Los Angeles bureau told me, “We’ve neither confirmed nor denied there’s an investigation.”

But George Kelesis, another Las Vegas lawyer who has represented Suge, said he got a call from out-of-state FBI agents after Tupac was shot, questioning the lawyer about Suge’s business dealings. He said he believes the feds unfairly targeted Suge.

“He was definitely a target,” Kelesis said. “I think it has more to do with the image, the image that they manifest. I can tell you I have not seen a shred of tangible evidence that would indicate to me that he is involved in a criminal enterprise. And I’m not blowing smoke and hot air.”

On Monday, August 6, 2001, Suge Knight was released from a federal prison in Sheridan, Oregon. He boarded a plane for Los Angeles and went straight to the studio to work. At his headquarters in Beverly Hills, a huge billboard above his offices greeted him with the words “Welcome Home Suge.”