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 will be.
For the crimes which the defendant has been convicted in count one,
the defendant's levied a term in state prison of 22 years.
The 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, Sharon, he did look briefly at...
Suge Knight's sentencing for 28 years signalled 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.
Tell Frankie to call me. LAUGHTER
Frankie, you call me when she tells you to call me, Frankie.
Why, what's...? Frankie Goes to Hollywood!
Ay, yo, Frankie.
Frankie! Yo, Frankie!
CHEERING
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, you know,
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?
Oh, that's correct. Yes, he was...
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, 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 and 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 is asserting dirty cops and corruption in the LAPD is
as relevant today as it was then.
I am telling you right now! Book him up.
Book him up, you're under arrest.
You're under arrest for interfering.
BICYCLE BELL RINGS
INDISTINCT SHOUTING
GUNSHOTS
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 a really big office,
and it was located across the hall from Interscope Records.
When you first walked into Death Row Records,
..you got a vibe that it was a family kind of thing going on.
That everybody cared about everybody.
So, you kind of got food 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 "a 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 lot of jobs to the guys and his
gang member affiliation people.
It was funny, they always had on red.
Everybody that was everybody had on red.
And Snoop and them always wore their blue.
They never got off their Crip.
Used to come to the office, right?
And there'd be a gang of dudes up there, Bloods -
I can always tell they Bloods, right?
Smoking...Newports.
Where they'd pop the thing off.
Or the Camels, right?
They popped the head off the Newport, right?
And you could tell that they'd just been in the penitentiary for
a long time, cos they was just so used to sitting down, smoking weed
or 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, they're going to ask you, "Where you from"?
And you did not say you were from an enemy gang territory.
Or they're going to say... you'll have to run it.
You see what I'm saying? You know what I mean "run it"?
They'll want to fight.
RADIO CHATTER
They come from a good, tight-knit family. Really, really close.
Everyone loves each other, everyone thinks with one brain.
Parents were still together, and just, you know,
just like a regular family.
Uncle Suge was the baby, so he got he got away with everything.
So, he's spoiled, he's the baby.
He... SHE LAUGHS
He would call my mum and ask for certain, you know,
his potato salad a certain way.
He wants chicken his certain way.
It was, 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 mum.
So, whatever he says, it's, "OK, Suge. OK, Li'l Suge. OK."
So, he's, you know... he's the baby,
so he gets whatever he wants.
The happy Mother's Day from OFTB,
and all the 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.
HE VOCALISES
CHEERING
Suge gave encouragement to artists like Danny Boy,
whom he adopted as legal guardian,
aged 15, and acted as a father.
Yes, he was, for sure.
For sure. Definitely like a father, like a big brother.
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, you know, I had a real relationship with him where
I was able - I felt like I was able to talk to him and say things
that I would say to a father.
Yeah, so...
Suge lived in Compton, near Pam Brooks, an old friend of mine,
and who am I asked to work on the film.
Hi there!
Pam knows everyone.
Hi. Tell me what you know about Suge Knight.
All right. What else you need to know?
Suge Knight was on that side.
This is the Crip neighbourhood.
Suge Knight is over here... all the way down.
Do you know some of his homies?
Yeah, I'm going to get you and let you talk to 'em.
Yeah. I mean - and if they don't want to talk or be on camera,
can they just...I need to - they don't have to be on camera
if they don't want to be on camera.
Just, I need it - would they mind if they record their voice?
Just...
All right. Call me and let me...
Just call me and let me know, and then, erm...let me know.
And I don't know, these are England -
they white people, they white, but they Black.
But, I mean, they from England.
I mean... All right.
No...you know, we straight up.
They're from England. Remember, they're crazy.
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.
INAUDIBLE
How did that happen?
Well, 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, you know, hooked up.
Cos I know Suge prior from then.
I know Suge ever since the early '70s, cos we grew up
five houses from each other.
So, you know, he knew me.
Suge couldn't even play with us.
His mother wouldn't let him play with us.
Cos we were...
..the thugs in the neighbourhood.
And she had a goal for Suge.
And that was for him to play sports.
WHISTLE BLOWS
# I'm Marion Knight
# With the wavy hair
# I'm quick and fast, and always there
# I'll take on any O-lineman
# Without no scares
ALL: # That's why they call him
# The Sugar Bear!
Marion Knight, number 54...
Suge went to college, 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 doing.
Sometimes they'd think, and he'd think that that's hard.
"You took away 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, motherfucker got dealt with.
If you thought you was going to create a problem,
you had a problem.
You'd find yourself tossed upside down.
One thing people knew about Death Row is they weren't bullshitting,
and they would whoop your ass.
With no questions asked.
If you stepped on the red rug, if you answered the phone,
if you parked in somebody's spot, you gon' get your ass whooped.
Some people died.
Some people just got beat up, you know?
A few people got rat-packed.
You know, like I say, people got disciplined, you know,
if they got in the way, or...
Cos Death Row was on a mission.
You couldn't stand on the logo.
The Death Row logo.
Stood on that logo, and you probably gon' get knocked down.
Ain't no telling who would knock you out,
but you probably got knocked out.
You had a dog, Damu, Suge's German Shepherd.
His name was Damu.
It meant "blood". Yeah.
The dog would attack you.
Yeah, he was trained.
Cos he'd think... the dog's thinking you trying
to get next to him, next to Suge.
And if you're trying to get next to Shug,
that dog was going to attack you.
Yeah.
And is it true he had, like, piranha fish?
Yeah. Yeah, he had...
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,
used to buy a big pack of blood worms,
and put them in there... and they'd just go crazy.
Yeah.
You know, and he...
He'd look at...tank, and look at you...
Then, you know, people was calm.
They were gang-bangers.
They were gang-bangers, and they worked for Suge Knight,
So, they was like Suge Knight's boy.
So, I believe -
my belief of it is they did what Suge told them to do,
because they was broke, and...
They couldn't get a job because they was already marked as gang-bangers,
so they took that ride with Suge Knight.
And they accepted that thousand - for a person who never had...
For a person they don't have nothing, $1,000 is good, a day.
$1,000 a day? To do some dirty shit to the next motherfucker?
"Go over here and drop this car off, or go here and drop this bag off"?
And you don't know what's in the bag?
But nine out of ten, you know what's in the bag,
because you're not going to fuck with nobody.
You know, you're not going to 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 saying?
Cos they'd be so desperate for this money.
Inflicting pain on people was like my medicine.
It was...I felt good.
I truly feel good about it.
I took pleasure...into it.
OK, I mean, just seeing the blood,
how it came out your nose, how it came out your ears.
You...you don't want to die.
You don't want to die.
These cats don't give a fuck if they do die.
And I mean that like that.
I'm not putting them on nothing, but these cats don't care,
you know what I'm saying?
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 saying?
I watched my homeboy, Kenny, take his last breath.
Like, wow.
Mob James recruited gang members for Suge,
including Bountry, his younger brother.
Tupac would rap about Bountry, who would later be murdered.
Suge utilised each and every guy that I brung to him.
Instead of him being the businessman he should've been,
he turned into one of the homies.
Shit. Suge put on red suit, the big rings, the cigars,
and he just changed.
He went from Miriam... to this gangster.
And I say...
..some men can't take power like that, and just know that
they have all that power, and be good.
Suge took that power.
He felt the energy.
He felt like...
Let's say you're goin' to a concert,
and you got 20 Bloods behind you.
I'm the smallest one.
Everybody else is... I'm talking about, like, big.
And everybody's mentality is,
"If anybody say something to Suge, knock their fucking head off".
And all of these famous people was looking and
seeing Suge's entourage,
and it was like he was Jesus.
Everybody just start partying away.
And we would walk through that crowd. And Suge...
HE CHUCKLES
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!"
CROWD: Oh, yeah!
Let me see somebody get Dre, Suge, the D.O.C. A round of applause.
Death Row Records is going to 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 Dr Dre was going to do his own thing,
and with a lot of help from Suge Knight...
David Kenner - seen here - and Suge Knight ran Death Row.
According to employees, they did whatever they wanted.
Beverley Brolis, front centre.
CHEERING
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 telling you, that day that he set me up to be beat up,
I never thought... I had no inkling that that was going
to 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 out of 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 holding 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 must've knew something 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, like, literal girl fights where they went...
Like, in the middle of the floor where they...
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 them.
And I was 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 Quik?
No.
It was an insult to me. Hm?.
No. So they're stealing a life.
This car Jacuzzi that 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 had been hard to get.
Oh, yeah. I got a good plot going on in my head.
A good plan? Plot. You gotta plot.
You gotta plot with motherfuckers like this.
You want to play hardball, let's play.
So what's your plot for tomorrow?
Well, I'll go get... Get rid of her.
Go get... Go get my friend.
And then go out there,
get some weed and smoke it, go out there and, you know,
rub my tittles against him because he likes me.
I just got to 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,
real rough motherfuckers, ex-smokers,
you know what I'm saying?
Ex-cons, fresh out the penitentiary motherfuckers.
They did not play. They overdid they job.
And they robbed and they stole, they pillaged and they plundered.
And I've seen them do it.
One of they favourite things was this,
as far as them being security, for Suge, they favourite thing
would be to do this .
Suge's boys, they were thieves,
robbers, murderers, rapists.
Let me tell you, it was Compton's worst.
And so what he would do is...
What they would do is, "He got a gun!"
Might be a guy with a big chain, right, big old chain
or gang jewellery on, and they'll point him out 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 jewellery, no wallet,
might not...might be missing a few teeth,
you know what I'm saying? 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 dealing.
It was, like, multiple suitcases with powdered cocaine
or re-rocked cocaine up in there, there's 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 was involved
in drug trafficking.
The big piece of this is the fact that we had police officers working
in the organisation 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 Gaines
and Mack and Perez were part of that crew.
They were willing to do anything for Suge Knight.
COMMENTATOR: 102 is Dave Mack of America.
David Mack, in blue, before he became a police officer,
was a world-class athlete.
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.
But I knew David very well because we worked together for years
before he was an officer, so...
..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 by controlling the street gangs.
And he ran from us and discarded the narcotics in the gutter.
It was no big deal to us.
We'll just put the dope on you, we know you had it.
Here, Perez confesses to stealing over $1 million 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 levels
of the department to make things disappear.
I will say that he did way beyond what anybody
would have expected of a chief of police,
way beyond.
There's strong evidence that Rafael Perez, Nino Durden
and David Mack, seen here in Blood colours,
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.
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.
This is Tupac 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...
..probably, Interscope could have got him out of jail.
You know? Tom Whalley could have got him out of jail
Jimmy Iovine could have got him out of jail.
He was on their label, Interscope.
So Death Row's a subsidiary....
..as you know, of Interscope,
and if Interscope people had 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 Suge, so I can't speak on his behalf at all.
You know, I don't know him.
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 pleasant for me to have to even talk about,
because he's alive. His downline is alive.
You know, his people are alive.
You know, these people are revengeful.
This is 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 said, I'm alive, I'm walking.
People still get shot for no fucking reason, you know what I mean?
Like, it's...
The gang shit, it's ridiculous.
It's ridiculous.
What's up, Hammer?
He took it very hard.
He felt more of an impending doom,
having signed with Death Row,
because 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 fairy land,
which we're not even living in any more.
It's sad.
Because 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 and drug abuse?
Aren't they wondering? Don't they understand that more people,
I mean, more kids are being handed crack
than they're being handed diplomas.
I mean, shouldn't...?
I mean like, OK, in school we're learning to analyse
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 they should change every week.
It's prison that changed Tupac.
Going to jail over all that stuff made him bitter
and they changed him.
Even 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 want to get entangled with people who can hurt
you, you know, but at the same time, you know, something's
going to happen to your friend.
You tried to warn him in in a way that was covert,
but you didn't want to just blatantly say, you know,
these guys, they're stick-up kids, they're extortionists.
You know, they're going to come for you.
The whole time he was in jail, he was trying to figure out
how he was going to get revenge.
He started to plot on how he was
going to get back at everybody who wronged him.
I bet you that music 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 The Killuminati Theory,
or whatever it was called - I forgot the name of the last album.
I loved it, but...
Those albums weren't him.
That 17-year-old would have never said any of that stuff, you know?
I mean, back when he started, I mean, he would never be like that.
But we all change. He got his edge, he knew what he had to sell records.
He was like, this is what I got to do.
I'll shoot three albums or four albums or whatever many albums
I got to do this, and these albums got to 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 kind of got gangsta, you know?
Like, his personality changed,
I guess, just saw Suge, you know, "I'm all that," you know.
I remember he came up with the plot that he was going to sleep
with Faith Evans in jail.
You know, at first when you told me it, I'm like...
Then I was just like, you can't tell Pac nothing.
Whatever he said he's going to do, he's going to 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, "What? What did you do?"
And he was like, "Oh, I fucked Faith."
He was like, "Not only did I fuck her,
"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.
So, now we've got the East Coast, West Coast shit,
we got a bad 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 cast of characters that the press loves.
You remember that shit.
It just took a life all of its own.
Any artists out there want to be an artist,
they want to stay a star,
they don't want to have to worry about the producers trying
to be all in the videos
all on the records, dancing,
come to Death Row.
CHEERING AND BOOING
If he'd have stood the course on saying, you know,
you don't want the person being all in your videos
and if he'd have stood on that and not tried to get in videos
and put his ass on magazines?
He tried to become the star.
Going towards the end, he was in all the magazines
with cigars in his mouth.
He forgot what he said.
And that's what brought him down.
You got to take care of the artist.
Biggie Smalls took Puffy's side on the East Coast.
So, we got Brooklyn in the house representing!
Snoop, Tupac and Dr Dre supported Suge Knight on the West Coast
at Death Row Records.
BOOING
The East Coast ain't got no love for Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg and Death Row?
Y'all don't love us?
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 a gorilla and you turn into a monkey, you've 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 to this crowd.
They gon' eat your ass up.
So he had to keep it up there,
he had to keep his chest up.
He had to be Suge Knight.
And he did that well.
Tupac and Biggie's 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 ol' messy-ass Vibe
and a lot of them magazines, you know,
East Coast, West Coast, this, that, whoo.
East Coast, West Coast, that, what, wow.
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 turned him up another notch, you know,
cos it was already going down.
He came to a company where it was already going down.
So, when he came over here, he looked like,
"Oh, yeah, I'm finna turn the fuck up."
He said, "I got these fools with me?
"They feel right. Oh, yeah.
"We gon'... Everything that get in my way, I'ma knock it down.
"I'm going crazy."
Cos he was already amped up.
You know what I'm saying?
So, he landed right where he wanted to land.
And he already had an attitude because they didn't go get him,
the 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, he was going to be fully loyal.
All right, still hanging out at the afterparty,
and with me, from Death Row, introduce yourself, my man?
Hey, yo, I'm Suge Knight.
Tupac Shakur. All right.
Do you believe in God? Certainly.
Believe in Death Row East.
Believe in that, for real.
I'ma ride with you! If 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, cos nobody else did.
Eating, travelling, 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, if he said it, it went.
I mean, we shopped in the malls, three o'clock in the morning.
3am in the morning, four o'clock in the morning,
you know, four or five stores are staying open because Suge Knight
called them early in the day and made an appointment
for them to be open at 3am.
And we just go into this Foot Locker
and get as many shoes and clothes that we want or, you know,
going to 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 on 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 some cool location, they've got the cars,
they've got the big houses.
Pam had introduced me to some of the girls
who dated Suge and Tupac, and I wondered if she recognises
any of them from these pictures.
Let me see.
I've seen her somewhere before.
I don't know where I seen her at.
But she looks SO familiar.
They look like they're very, erm...
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 demoralising shit...
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, he just was a follower.
Suge Knight had his head blew up,
had his head so blew up to where he lost his life.
He had 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 loyal.
And he's looking for love, too.
This is the one I seen before.
SMALL GIRL: Hi, Mom!
Goddamn.
Hey. Hey, Mom.
Hi, Nick. Hi, Symphony.
Hey!
I got to go get the computer.
Go say hi to my Auntie Anne.
Say hi to Nick in there.
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.
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,
rest in peace, he went around there and looked in the studio
where Dre and Pac and all them was at and he ran back around to us
and he say, "Cuz." I say, "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 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 kind-hearted person
who got lost in the image of being tough.
He just wasn't a fighter.
He was definitely a lover, not a fighter,
and we used to laugh about it.
GUNSHOTS
He had suffered some brutal beatdowns 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 then,
cos I introduced him to most of my friends and family,
they said he started acting like he was Bishop.
I ain't got to do nothing.
You the past, bro.
My time is now.
You ready to die, nigga?
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.
You know, 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 on the thug shit, like Suge. He...
He know he can't be touched at this time.
"I got ten, 11 motherfuckers who gon' 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 want to do,
"I can cuss out any motherfucker I want to cuss out,
"I can spit on whoever I want to spit on.
"And ain't nothing gon' happen.
"There's no such word of repercussion here."
You know, 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.
Bountry, 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,
nigga, you could claim tomorrow if you want to.
Nah, you can't.
You ain't did no drive-by shootings, you ain't did no...
You ain't beat no-motherfucking-body up.
You ain't did shit.
What it takes to be what we are.
So, that's just like me, just, phew.
Tupac the homie because Tupac got money.
No, fuck that, this means a lot more to me than Tupac.
You go on over there and be a Death Row Mob,
but not this, not from here.
You ain't from Compton.
Me and my sister used to sing that song,
but she couldn't sing that good, so...
Anyway, I want everybody to give a big welcome for...
..Tupac.
CHEERING
They were like brothers.
Tupac was 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, that stability.
Uncle Suge did.
So, I think that's why they kind of fed off each other.
Uncle Suge was thinking more so of just getting money
and making money and,
you know, supporting, you know, I guess black people as a whole.
And Tupac was more, "Nah, think bigger. Think bigger.
"We can go international, we can do this, we can do that."
Hence the Death Row East and etc, etc.
I mean, he was like, "I want our faces printed on money,
"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? OK."
That's Tupac and Uncle Suge, and they shared everything.
Yes, they shared everything.
Things were totally out of control.
And it's very sad.
I always had that dark sense
that I was always seen to be the one to 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 on the West Coast,
doesn't matter what you do as long as you're making 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,
was also Tupac's lawyer.
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 he 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, 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 something wrong with that?
And he would go all the way, live off on me and basically say,
"I know it's a problem, OK?
"But I know what I'm doing." Yes.
And it caused conflict.
It caused conflict 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,
"Nah, homie, we got to protect you,
"we got to be like this."
Let's say he just put the icing on the cake
because now there's more fun,
now there's more Tupac trying to 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.
Now there's drinking and getting high all day
and wanting to beat up somebody,
you know, just the whole mentality, 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.
SCREAMING
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, I'm 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 we laid him down on the ground,
and that's when the 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, the six, seven days that Pac was
living, we would go in the room and, you know, pray.
You know, praying 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, it was one of his favourite songs
that he liked me to do.
Remind me of that song.
So, that's by Sam Cooke.
You want to hear it?
# I was born by the river
# In a little tent
# Oh, just like that river
# I've been running ever since
# It's been a long
# Long time coming
# And I know a change gon' 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 $1 million 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, Keffe D said,
"That's no problem, you know, that's what we do."
And Keffe D said he wanted $1 million and Puffy, essentially,
was like, "Just, whatever, just handle it."
It was this war that 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, fo' sho', fo' sho'.
And it was just a sad thing, you know what I'm saying?
That these two guys brought gangs into,
you know, the Hollywood world,
the music industry, you know what I'm saying?
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 killing each other
since the '70s. And he was a shooter, too.
That's the thing.
When you out here, you don't know who you messing with.
If you messing with a shooter,
you gon' get shot.
If you messing with some fighters, y'all might be down.
But it's going to happen.
That's the thing about it, is he's going to come back
and that's how Orlando was. He wasn't going for that.
Yeah, we had to wear bulletproof vests, especially going towards
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 them. 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 there was a lot of people that lost their lives.
And it appears to be possibly a shooting.
18 months later, Orlando Anderson himself is gunned down
and killed at this car wash 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, cos, you know, I... 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?
I mean, I wouldn't, if he was an ex-police officer,
you think I would help him and fuck with him?
He wasn't... Listen. Uh-uh.
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.
They lying.
I don't fuck with the police.
I mean, 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 said that shit is lying and...
How the fuck is Nick an 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.
And I knew what that place was coming from.
I seen it in his face, you can almost look in his eyes
and see just, like, he had this... just a 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've 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 can 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.
They out there in the streets,
he's not going to pay for you to live in Beverly Hills
and he's in damned 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 fucking shame, man, and excuse my language,
but, you know, at the end of this thing,
you know, Snoop is kind of like,
he's like a duck, he's real cool,
but underneath pedalling like, "Oh, shit, I hope I don't drown,"
you know what I mean?
Same thing with, 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 kind of sad.
That's, that's like... what was you doing?
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 at it after Tupac.
I truly believe that, so...
Somebody had to go?
Yeah, somebody had to die.
It's way serious now.
It's way serious now, y'all done cut the head off the chicken,
so we got to do the same thing to y'all
and that's all it is, is repercussion, revenge.
Somebody got to do something.
Something got to happen because if don't nothing happen,
then you have everybody and they momma from everywhere
trying to get at you
because y'all just sit back and let Tupac get killed.
So it had to be something.
Biggie shouldn't have came to California after Tupac died.
That was a bad choice for them to make.
But the East Coast, West Coast thing, like I told you 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, if you want to see me, talk to me,
whatever you want to do, 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 thinking about?"
And there's already an undercurrent grumbling happening in LA.
Like, these niggas got a lot of nerve.
They going to just come out here.
I'm serious. These is now all the gang dudes in LA
and I'm talking about Mexican gangs, too.
This had nothing... This wasn't just black gangs saying it.
"I'm going to get them motherfuckers."
Both theories about the shooting of Biggie Smalls
agree that Suge Knight ordered the hit from prison.
Kading argues that 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've got to think to yourself, well, who could do this
and get away with it?
You've got to get into their mind.
GUNFIRE
911 emergency. Yeah, we need an ambulance on 5th after Wiltshire.
Please, we have a man shot. We have a shot.
OK, hold on, I'll get that to you.
Right on the corner of Wiltshire and 5th.
We have a man shot in our car right now!
We're rolling to a hospital right now...
Listen, is the body that was shot in your car? No.
You're going to the hospital?
Thing is, that was a pro.
That wasn't no bunch of scattered fucking 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 line.
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 mum, who is equally frustrated.
Hi.
So this is... Hi, Mrs Wallace, how you doing?
I'm Russ Poole.
Nice to meet you. Oh, hey there.
How are you? Nice to see you again.
Hi there.
You know, there are some private investigators working on
some good leads, and if they come up with some good stuff,
we'll be sure to come back out here.
OK. Voletta went on to file a $500 million lawsuit,
an estimate of her son's lifetime 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 really 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've got something here, let's run with it."
So 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 kind of weaved in and out of the courts,
it came to a point where the LAPD realised, you know, in civil court,
just about anything could happen and they thought
it would be in their best interest to re-look 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 got to 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 you, they're right.
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 the 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 in 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 him. I've seen David Mack plenty of time.
They had to come to the party because you never knew
when it was going to jump off.
Hung out with them,
been in the room with them,
been around them. You know,
ever since they'd been around, I was around.
That's all I've got.
And who was the other one?
Rafael Perez. Rafael Perez, seen him too.
Like I said, it wasn't no different from us.
Only thing, they had badges and we didn't.
So, you know, we might be somewhere, you know, it'd go like this.
We'd get into it with whoever we get into it with,
and when the police rushed us, our police rushed 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 out of uniform, he'd try to be, try to look like he cool and shit.
He would wear little accents of red, you know.
You know, like try to fit in.
I'm like, "Oh, that's what the police do."
But I never knew that he was a part of that Rampart Division shit
until I seen him. And out of all the police in the world
that I remember, I remember him for being up on Death Row.
And then there's another one,
the one that they said killed Biggie, right?
Black too.
He used to be up there too.
I don't know if he did this, but the one
that they had on the nose, he was there a lot.
Hi. 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've had... 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 on that Board of Rights,
or any that I've ever done in over 30 years,
was there was a photograph of Rafael Perez and David Mack
who are 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, the hat, whatever, which is the colour of
the Blood gangs. There's the Crips and their colours are blue.
And so these guys were dressed in red and they were standing
behind the table where there was a cake that said something
about "Bloods rule" or, you know, something like that.
And I was startled because I recognised the woman.
And it was the daughter of police chief Bernard Parks,
who it appeared was a Blood gang member.
That's... That's incredible.
Yeah, tell me about it.
I looked at this thing, I turned to my two partners and I said,
"Is this what 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 allege 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, 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 1,000 miles apart and told
not to come and testify in 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 just abhorrent, just illegal.
And it was LAPD police officers who told them. It was two detectives
and 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... Which officers are you saying were implicated
in the murder of Biggie Smalls?
This call and/or 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 ostracised.
I mean, I almost took my life, but it was my kids
that actually saved me, OK?
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.
OK, 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. I believed in the oath of office.
I believed in protecting 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...
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, 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, OK.
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 someone
used to be on Death Row, someone on other labels, you might hear them
getting caught with drugs,
getting caught with a gun, stab somebody, do those type of crimes,
they're not going to come to prison.
One reason... You mean like Snoop. Snoop would never come.
I mean, Snoop was... We'd be at the murder trial for him
but then he was on probation,
then he got caught with 2oz of marijuana.
Then he get caught with guns.
And each time it's nothing, they're not going to 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's constantly getting in trouble
and never going to prison, that's because he's an informer,
he's a rat, 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 save their soul by telling on three or four
or five other guys. You know, I'm from Compton.
A rat is the lowest you can go, a rat will do anything.
This was Suge's message to Snoop.
BARKING
GUNFIRE
WHIMPERS
When Suge got back out in 2001, you know, he changed the name
to Tha Row.
It never rose, 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.
It was really over with, it was just like...
To me, it was just like a little gang hang-out.
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.
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. That's Suge.
We know the big boys got the bag, they took the bag.
David Kading 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 not broke.
But, you know, Suge was standing up in the wrong way
to the wrong people.
You know, you can't, you can't scare Jimmy Iovine. Don't even make sense.
That's coming from the east to the west.
This is my homeboy right here, you know what I'm saying?
My PO let me out here but fuck with me, my niggas went to war,
but this my nigga. This like my brother.
I'ma fuck niggas up behind the homeboy, nigga.
Suge money wasn't the way it was no more.
You know, he wasn't making no more money.
So when he wasn't making no more money, the people that he wanted
to get from the neighbourhood,
he wouldn't have.
So they started dropping off.
And that's why a lot of times you just see Suge, he's by himself.
And once the people on the street seen that,
they start attacking Suge.
GUNFIRE
He got shot at Chris Brown's party.
He got knocked out.
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.
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 veil start to... appear that these people
wasn'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.
Don't have a big bank account, everybody it's just back...
It's like the Cinderella story,
12 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...
Death Row, 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 neighbourhood.
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 guys got out a van and AK'd him down.
I think he got shot nine times, ten times and he was laying there.
I 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 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.
This is...
It's rough talking about him.
Every time they mention his name, I get choked up.
The pain is, is, is this cold feeling.
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, that they feeling the same way
about their brother, you know what I'm saying?
And, you know, I can't do nothing but apologise for the way I lived.
And I'm trying to make it better. I'm trying to help people.
Karma's a motherfucker.
And he's paying for it. If you ever been in prison, you ain't got
nothing time to think, especially when you sitting in that damn cell.
You're going to think about every one of those guys that's dead.
Your Biggies, your Herons, your Hen Dogs, your Chins, your Buntrys.
You're going to 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 want to 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 any more
so I guess it doesn't matter.
Did you see David Mack and Perez at the event
at the... They were all there.
Yes, they were there. Because the LAPD now have sort of come up
with a whole other theory. Mm. 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. Doesn'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.
What up? Ready, nigga?
Ready for that raw dog shit, nigga?
OK. All right.
And this is how the heads should meet. You want to set it off?
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 niggas know just how deep
my game run, Tupacalypse don't sleep.
I keep a motherfucking Glock in my car if I'm all in the club,
I got to 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 holds the clothes, blood smoke coming out the nose
is all a nigga knows, flipping off foes,
putting tags on toes, watching the stash grow,
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.