Death in Vegas:

The Times' claim that B.I.G. arranged the killing of Tupac Shakur simply doesn't make sense

Las Vegas Citylife Sept, 17 2002

A claim by the Los Angeles Times, in a two-part installment arguing rapper Notorious B.I.G. masterminded rap star Tupac Shakur's Las Vegas murder, simply doesn't hold water.

First, Times staff writer Chuck Philips says, in the Sept. 6 installment, that B.I.G. was in Las Vegas at the time Shakur was cut down in a September 1996 drive-by shooting on Flamingo Road at Koval Lane. Wallace was, in fact, at home in Teaneck, N.J., according to his mother. She says her son spent the evening with his roommates and that she saw him the next morning, noting that he wept at the news.

The day before the Times story was to appear, national news outlets were tipped off by the newspaper that it was "releasing exclusive information" about the Shakur investigation and that it would be fingering a killer. It was a stunning revelation, especially given that it's a six-year-old case where the trail is cold.

The Times story appeared to be newsworthy - that is, until TV producers and newspaper editors learned the paper was pointing a finger at Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace (aka Biggie Smalls). That angle was old news. The popular rapper was accused early on in the investigation, but the theory never panned out. The Times was also claiming that Wallace had supplied the shooter with the murder weapon plus paid the killer $50,000 upfront with a promise of $1 million total.

Shakur was killed with a 40-caliber Glock. The Times story claims the triggerman was Orlando Anderson, a 21-year-old Crips gang member, who was murdered 18 months later in an unrelated shooting. Naming Anderson is also old news. But saying that Wallace supplied Anderson with the gun is new.

Anderson had a motive and didn't need Wallace to give him one. Anderson was in Las Vegas, captured on surveillance video inside the MGM Grand hotel-casino being beaten by Shakur and his entourage. A few hours later, Shakur was shot. In a raid a month after the Shakur slaying, Compton Police confiscated a Glock from Anderson's Southside Los Angeles home. According to Los Angeles-area police at the time, the gun was stolen and did not come back registered to anyone on the East Coast, including Wallace, which is another hole in the Times report.

Wallace, 24, was murdered in Los Angeles in an eerily similar drive-by shooting six months after Shakur. Both crimes are unsolved.

Not long after her son was murdered, Voletta Wallace, in an interview at her New Jersey home, said she talked to him at length about Shakur's murder. He was "terribly upset" by it, she says. That's because Shakur and Wallace were once friends. Shakur mentored Wallace and gave him his first break, often inviting him on stage to rap with him. The exposure elevated Wallace's career from mediocre to meteoric.

But the bad blood between Shakur and Wallace began in November 1994, when Shakur was hospitalized after being shot five times and robbed in the lobby of a Manhattan recording studio. Shakur accused Wallace, who was upstairs at the time recording with producer Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, of setting him up.

After Shakur, 25, bragged on an album about having an affair with Wallace's wife, R&B singer Faith Evans, Wallace told Vibe magazine: "He just doin' what he gotta do. I couldn't be the one to do it back though - that's not my style."

Wallace was a rapper, not a killer. He was an only child who attended private Catholic school and was raised by an over-protective single mom. While Wallace spewed violence in his songs, he wasn't a street thug like Shakur.

Voletta Wallace says that her son took in stride derogatory comments about him made by Shakur. "He would laugh about it," she says, "because he knew that Tupac was just acting like he was angry."

After Shakur was killed, Voletta Wallace says her son stopped laughing. "He was shocked and upset when Tupac died," Voletta Wallace recalls. "My son had nothing to do with Tupac's murder."

After the Times article appeared last week, the Wallace family issued a statement calling Philips' story "patently false" and "irresponsible journalism," and threatened a lawsuit against the paper. "Christopher had nothing to do with the death of Tupac," the statement says. "He wasn't in Las Vegas at the time of the crime, he did not arrange the murder, he didn't pay $50,000 bounty money to anyone and he did not hand a gun to Orlando Anderson to be used in the hit on Tupac. It is all lies."

Last week, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police homicide detectives weren't aware of the Times' independent probe into Shakur's murder. That, too, is noteworthy, considering it is Metro's investigation.

While Philips may have had some interesting new details in the installments, it doesn't appear he has uncovered new evidence that proves Notorious B.I.G. was behind the slaying of Shakur. The articles were speculation, and that's been done ad nauseam in the investigation. What Philips did provide is one more theory to add to the pile.

Cathy Scott, a freelance writer based in Las Vegas, is the author of The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls. She can be contacted at CRScott@aol.com.

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