Dead men tell no tales?

Of revelation and speculation in the Los Angeles Times' Biggie and Tupac story

ON SEPT. 6, 2002, nearly six years after Tupac Shakur was murdered, the Los Angeles Times published the first story in a two-part series on the rap superstar's murder. The articles were the work of Times staff writer Chuck Philips, a Pulitzer Prize winner, who, after what he called a "year-long investigation," claims to have discovered evidence that another rap superstar, Christopher "Notorious B.I.G." Wallace – once New York based and now, like Shakur, the victim of a drive-by assassination – was behind the shooting.

Philips's belief that Orlando Anderson fired the bullets that ended Shakur's life wasn't the explosive aspect of the story – Anderson had been cited as the prime suspect in various newspapers, in Randall Sullivan's book LAbyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murder of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records' Suge Knight and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal, and on Behind the Music. Philips's bombshell was a claim that the hit had been paid for by Wallace. His article alleges Wallace was in Las Vegas the weekend of Shakur's fatal shooting, staying at the MGM Grand Hotel under an assumed name. According to Philips, Wallace didn't just offer the Southside Crips $1 million to kill Shakur – he supplied the murder weapon as well.

The story runs counter to Nick Broomfield's film, Biggie and Tupac, which uses many of the same sources as Sullivan, who investigated the murders for Rolling Stone, then wrote on them at greater length in LAbyrinth. Sullivan, who took pains to detail his sources, came up with very different conclusions. Relying heavily on the story of former Los Angeles police detective Russell Poole, he linked the murders of Shakur and Wallace to Marion "Suge" Knight and his label (then called Death Row Records), the Mob Piru Bloods, and members of the LAPD, some of whom were implicated in the infamous Rampart police corruption scandal.

Philips, whose business coverage of Knight's peculiar approach to running a company has been notoriously soft, refuses to name his sources. The account, he wrote, "is based on police affidavits and court documents as well as interviews with investigators, witnesses to the crime and members of the Southside Crips who had never before discussed the killing outside the gang." Yet, "fearing retribution, they agreed to be interviewed only if their names were not revealed."

Speculation about the killers' identities and motives has generated conspiracy theories as elegant and complicated as anything spawned by the Kennedy assassinations. But Philips's story has weaknesses that are difficult to ignore. How – in a chain of events riddled with individuals and organizations whose self-interests give them reason to distort the facts – can his Wallace murder allegation be verified? What information came from police sources, and what came from gang members? This is important – not because the gang members are potentially unreliable but because the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD (reeling from the Rampart scandal and facing a civil suit filed by Wallace's estate) have a vested interest in Phillips's conclusions. And why would Wallace – a successful entertainer who was anything but stupid – announce to a roomful of gang members, as Philips reports, his intention to have Shakur killed? Philips did not return calls seeking comment.

Philips's story requires one to believe that a 300-plus-pound celebrity was able to arrive in Vegas and check into the MGM Grand – the hotel hosting the Tyson fight – under an assumed name without being recognized by anyone (other than the anonymous Southside Crips who've made the inflammatory claims); it also asserts that the spontaneously Wallace-led plot to kill Shakur took place within a two-hour time frame.

Dismissing Philips's assertions as "falsehoods," "all lies," and "character assassination," Voletta Wallace has already threatened to file a lawsuit. Christopher Wallace's widow, Faith Evans, told MTV that a tearful, fearful Wallace called her on hearing of Shakur's death, and his friend James Lloyd Jr. (rapper Lil' Cease) gave a number of interviews stating that Wallace was in New Jersey the night of Shakur's murder, first at a recording studio and then at home watching the Tyson fight on closed-circuit TV. (Paper and audio documents of the recording date have since been produced by the Wallace estate.) While hip-hop public figures ranging from New York's Ed Lover to the Bay Area's Davey D have tried to slow down the rumor mills, Sullivan and Broomfield have also weighed in with criticisms.

"I think there is a real concern within LAPD to move on," Broomfield told us. "I think Bernard Parks has done everything in his power to make as little headway into the murder investigation [of Wallace] as possible."

At the same time, Broomfield has his own complications and conflicts. Not only does he rely heavily on one source, Poole, for critical information, but also several other important sources, including Wallace's bodyguard, Eugene Deal, appeared on film only because Voletta Wallace asked them to.

Today, East Coast-versus-West Coast has come to signify a media battle between journalists (Sullivan is New York based) and police forces: It's interesting that Philips has focused on the ineptitude of Las Vegas police rather than the LAPD's inability to solve the murder of Wallace, which took place in Philips's own city.

But as the past week has shown, uncovering the truth about these murders may be an impossibly complicated task.

J.H. Tompkins and Johnny Ray Huston