Suge Knight - Wikipedia
Tupac Shakur was shot multiple times in a
drive-by shooting in Las Vegas,
Nevada on September 7, 1996 and died six days later on September 13, 1996. When Shakur's
East Coast rival,
The Notorious B.I.G. (
AKA Biggie Smalls), was murdered in a similar drive-by shooting in
Los Angeles,
California on March 9, 1997, speculation arose that Knight was involved and that B.I.G.'s death was a revenge killing.
[19] Former Death Row artists, including Snoop Dogg, also later accused Knight of being involved in Tupac's murder.
[20]
A theory accusing Suge Knight in the deaths of both Biggie and Tupac was that of ex-detective
Russell Poole, who conjectured that Knight had Tupac killed before he could part ways with Knight's label and then conspired to kill Biggie to divert attention from himself in the Tupac case.
[21] The convoluted Biggie murder theory implicated Suge Knight, a rogue cop, a mortgage broker named Amir Muhammad (who was never a police suspect) along with the chief of police and the LAPD in a conspiracy to murder and cover up the murder of Biggie. The Biggie theory formed the basis of a US$500 million lawsuit by the Wallace family against the city of Los Angeles. A key source for Poole's theory was Kevin Hackie. Hackie had implicated Suge Knight and
David Mack. Hackie, a former Death Row associate, said that he had knowledge of involvement between Suge Knight and David Mack and other LAPD officers. His information was used by the Wallace family in their suit against the city of L.A. for Biggie's death. But Hackie later told a
Los Angeles Times reporter
Chuck Philips that the Wallace attorneys had altered his declarations.
[22] The suit brought by the Wallace family against the city of L.A. based on the
Russell Poole theory was dismissed in 2010.
