Who killed Tupac Shakur?
LAS VEGAS — The neon lights vibrated in the polished hood of the black BMW as it cruised up Las Vegas Boulevard.
The man in the passenger seat was instantly recognizable. Fans lined the streets, waving, snapping photos, begging Tupac Shakur for his autograph. Cops were everywhere, smiling.
The BMW 750, with rap magnate Marion "Suge" Knight at the wheel, was leading a procession of luxury vehicles past the MGM Grand Hotel and Caesars Palace, on their way to a hot, new nightclub. It was after 11 on a Saturday night — Sept. 7, 1996, six years ago today. The caravan paused at a crowded intersection a block from the Strip.
Shakur flirted with a carful of women — unaware that a white Cadillac had pulled up beside him. A hand emerged from the Cadillac. In it was a semiautomatic pistol, aimed at Shakur.
Six years later, the killing of the world's most famous rap star remains officially unsolved. Police never have made an arrest. One theory in the music media and among Shakur's followers is that Knight, owner of Shakur's record label, arranged the killing so he could exploit the rapper's martyrdom commercially. Another is that Shakur faked his death to escape pressures of stardom.
A yearlong investigation by the Los Angeles Times reconstructed the crime and events leading up to it. Evidence gathered by the paper indicates:
The shooting was carried out by a Compton, Calif., gang called the Southside Crips to avenge the beating of one of its members by Shakur a few hours earlier.
Orlando Anderson, the Crip whom Shakur had attacked, fired the fatal shots. Police discounted Anderson as a suspect and interviewed him once, and then briefly. He was killed in an unrelated gang shooting.
The murder weapon was supplied by New York rapper Notorious B.I.G., who agreed to pay the Crips $1 million for killing Shakur. Notorious B.I.G. and Shakur had been feuding for more than a year. B.I.G. was gunned down six months later in Los Angeles. That killing also remains unsolved.
Notorious B.I.G. and Anderson denied any role in Shakur's death. This account is based on police affidavits and court documents as well as interviews with investigators, witnesses and Crips members who never before had discussed the killing outside the gang.
The slaying silenced one of modern music's most eloquent voices — a ghetto poet whose tales of urban alienation captivated young people of all races and backgrounds. Shakur, 25, had helped elevate rap from a crude street fad to a complex art form.
Tupac Amaru Shakur was born in 1971 into a family of black revolutionaries and named after a martyred Incan warrior. Radical politics shaped his upbringing and music.
His godfather, Black Panther leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, spent 27 years in prison for a robbery-murder that he insisted he did not commit. Pratt was freed after a judge ruled that prosecutors concealed evidence.
Shakur's stepfather, Black Panther leader Mutulu Shakur, was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list until the early 1980s, when he was imprisoned for robbery and murder. His mother, Afeni Shakur, also a Black Panther, was charged with conspiring to blow up a block of New York department stores — and acquitted a month before the rapper was born.
Shakur grew up in tough neighborhoods and homeless shelters in New York and Baltimore. He studied ballet, poetry, theater and literature at the Baltimore School for the Arts.
In 1988, his mother sent him to live with a family friend in the San Francisco Bay Area to escape gang violence in Baltimore. Living in a tough neighborhood north of Oakland, Calif., he joined the rap group Digital Underground and signed a solo record deal in 1991.
Shakur's debut album, "2Pacalypse Now," sparked a political firestorm. The lyrics were filled with vivid imagery of violence by and against police. A car thief who murdered a Texas state trooper said the lyrics incited him to kill. Law-enforcement groups and politicians denounced Shakur. Then-Vice President Dan Quayle said the rapper's music "has no place in our society."
Shakur's recordings explored gang violence, drug dealing, police brutality, teenage pregnancy, single motherhood and racism. He also drew admiring reviews for acting performances in "Juice" and other films.
But he never put what he called the "thug life" behind him.
During a 1993 concert in Michigan, he attacked a local rapper with a baseball bat and was sentenced to 10 days in jail. In Los Angeles, he was convicted of assaulting a music-video producer. In New York, a 19-year-old fan accused Shakur and three friends of sexually assaulting her.
While on trial, the rapper was ambushed in a Manhattan recording studio, shot five times and robbed of his jewelry. Shakur said Notorious B.I.G. and his associates were behind the attack.
Shakur, convicted of sexual abuse, was serving a 4-1/2-year prison term when he was visited by Suge Knight, founder of Death Row Records in Los Angeles. Knight offered to finance an appeal of his conviction if Shakur would sign a recording contract with Death Row.
Shakur accepted the offer and was released from prison in 1995 on a $1.4 million appellate bond posted by Knight. Hours later, Shakur entered a Los Angeles studio to record "All Eyez on Me." The double CD sold more than 5 million copies, transforming Shakur into a superstar.
On Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur, still out on bond, attended a championship boxing match between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon at the MGM Grand Hotel.
The arena was jammed with high rollers and an assortment of underworld figures: Chicago mobsters, New York drug dealers, Los Angeles street gangs.
Shakur arrived around 8:30 p.m. accompanied by armed bodyguards from the Mob Piru Bloods, a Compton gang whose members worked for Knight's Death Row Records. Shakur and Knight sat in the front row, smoking cigars and signing autographs.
Tyson flattened his opponent so quickly that many patrons never made it to their seats.
Shakur, Knight and a handful of bodyguards in silk suits headed for the exit. In the MGM Grand lobby, a bodyguard noticed a member of the rival Southside Crips.
The hoodlum near a bank of elevators was Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, 21, who recently had helped his gang beat and rob one of Shakur's bodyguards at a mall in Lakewood, Calif. Anderson had a string of arrests for robbery, assault and other offenses. Compton police suspected him in at least one gang killing.
After the beating of Shakur's bodyguard, Anderson had dared to rip a rare Death Row medallion from the man's neck — an affront to Knight's honor and a slight to the Bloods.
The Bloods had been fuming for weeks. Now, unexpectedly, Anderson was standing before them.
Shakur charged the Crip. "You from the South?" he asked.
Before Anderson could answer, Shakur punched him. His bodyguards jumped in, pounding and kicking Anderson to the ground. Knight joined in, too.
Shakur and his entourage stomped triumphantly across the casino floor on their way out of the hotel. They walked to the Luxor, where Death Row Records had booked more than a dozen rooms. Knight then drove about 15 minutes to his gated mansion in the city's southeastern valley.
The plan was to regroup at a benefit concert at Club 662, a nightspot just opened by Death Row. The club's name was an emblem of how gangs had infiltrated the rap business. On a telephone keypad, 662 spells "mob."
A bruised, shaken Anderson gathered himself off the floor in front of dozens of startled onlookers. MGM security guards and police tried to persuade him to file a complaint against his assailants, but he declined.
Anderson crossed over a pedestrian bridge to the Excalibur Hotel, where he had checked in with his girlfriend. News of the beating swept through the gang underground. Before he reached his room, Anderson's pager was beeping with calls, according to what he told associates.
Anderson phoned his comrades and set up a meeting at the Treasure Island hotel.
By the time his taxi reached the Treasure Island, more than a dozen gangsters were holed up in a Crips-reserved room. Marijuana clouded the hallway. Alcohol was flowing. The gang was furious. The topic of discussion: Who pulls the trigger?
According to people who were present, the Crips decided to shoot Shakur after his performance at Club 662. The plan was to station two vehicles of armed Crips outside the nightspot and lie in wait.
For the Crips, the beating of Anderson warranted swift, fatal retaliation. Still, the Crips thought, why not make a little money? They decided to ask Shakur's biggest enemy to pay for the hit.
The gang arranged a rendezvous with Notorious B.I.G., a Brooklyn rapper whose real name was Christopher Wallace.
Once tight friends, the two entertainers now ridiculed each other. In one song called "Hit 'Em Up," Shakur bragged about having sex with Wallace's wife and vowed to kill him. The threats between the rappers and their labels, Death Row and Bad Boy Entertainment, escalated into a series of assaults and shootings — one of which resulted in the killing of a Death Row bodyguard in Atlanta in 1995.
Fearing for his safety, a friend of Wallace arranged for the Crips to supply bodyguards for the rapper whenever he traveled west.
Wallace began flashing Crips gang signs and calling out to the homies at concerts, sometimes even inviting gang members on stage. He privately prodded the gang to kill Shakur — and promised to pay handsomely for the hit.
On Sept. 7, 1996, the Crips decided to take him up on the offer.
They sent an emissary to a penthouse suite at the MGM, where Wallace was booked under a false name.
According to people who were present, the Crips' envoy explained that the gang was prepared to kill Shakur but expected to collect $1 million. Wallace agreed, with one condition, a witness said.
He pulled out a loaded .40-caliber Glock pistol and placed it on the table. He wanted the satisfaction of knowing the fatal bullet came from his gun.
Around 11 p.m., police stopped Knight for cranking the black BMW's stereo too loud and not displaying its license plates properly. Shakur and Knight joked with the officers and talked them out of issuing a ticket. The BMW then turned right on Flamingo Road and headed east toward the club.
Moments earlier, hovering under the Treasure Island hotel's skull-and-crossbones logo, the four Crips waited silently as the valet brought out a 1996 white Cadillac. A fifth Crip in an old yellow Cadillac met them at the curb and followed closely behind. He rode solo, with an AK-47 assault rifle lying across the front seat.
The Cadillacs turned onto Flamingo and headed east toward Club 662. As they passed Bally's on the right, the driver saw a caravan of cars ahead on the left. The vehicles, packed with Mob Piru Bloods and Death Row employees, were stopped at a red light across from the Maxim Hotel. The crosswalk was filled with tourists.
Leading the convoy was Knight's black BMW. Shakur was in the passenger seat. They were alone, unarmed.
The Crips couldn't believe their luck. They decided to chuck their plan and strike immediately. The white Cadillac raced up on the convoy and pulled up beside the BMW. Shakur didn't notice. He was flirting with a carful of women in a lane to his left.
"I saw four black men roll by in a white Cadillac," said Atlanta rapper E.D.I. Mean, in the vehicle directly behind Shakur's. "I saw a gun come from the back seat out through the driver's front window."
Bullets flew, shattering the windows of the BMW. Shakur tried to duck into the rear of the car, but four rounds hit him, shredding his chest. Blood was everywhere.
"We heard shots and looked to the right of us," Knight said. "Tupac was trying to get in the back seat, and I grabbed him and pulled him down. The gunshots kept coming. One hit my head."
Neither Knight nor Mean could make out who had fired. The driver of the yellow Cadillac behind the assailants never had a chance to fire his AK-47.
"It all happened so quick. It took three or four seconds at most," Mean said.
The Cadillac then screeched around the corner. A bodyguard near the back of the Death Row caravan fired at the fleeing sedan. In a ruse designed to confuse Shakur's entourage, the Crip in the yellow Cadillac chased the white Cadillac around the corner, as if in hostile pursuit.
Knight made a U-turn, his bullet-riddled BMW squealing around the concrete median. The Death Row convoy followed him back to the Strip, where he rammed his car onto a curb.
After summoning an ambulance for Shakur, police ordered everyone else in the convoy out of their cars at gunpoint. Police forced Knight, who was bleeding from a head wound, to lie face down on the pavement.
By the time the detectives figured out that Knight and his caravan were victims, not suspects, the Crips had returned to their hotel rooms and gathered their belongings.
Staggering their departures to avoid attracting attention, Anderson and his fellow gang members hit the highway, each in a different car. Two younger gang members drove the white Cadillac back across the desert.
Tomorrow: Las Vegas police committed a string of costly missteps.