The Killing of Tupac Shakur (11 page)

Police haven’t disclosed what kind of gun was fired at Tupac. Sources say it was a Glock. Even if a gun were recovered, Manning said, “We would still have difficulty putting that weapon in the actual shooter’s possession. By now it’s been too long. Even with fingerprints, it wouldn’t be too useful.”

In fact, he added, “Even a confession wouldn’t solve the case, without concrete physical evidence.”

Reports that there was more than one gunman were not true, Manning noted. Also, reports by a cub reporter in one local newspaper that the gunman had gotten out of the car to shoot Tupac were unfounded, he said. The security guards and some of the members of the entourage had gotten out of their cars, and witnesses in the confusion might have thought that one of them was the shooter, Manning said.

• • •

Richard Fischbein, the Manhattan attorney administering Shakur’s multimillion-dollar estate and representing Tupac’s mother, said in a telephone interview, “It’s an outrage that the Las Vegas police are sitting around waiting for a suspect to come to them. I believe that had [Afeni] been anyone else, they would have had the courtesy to call her, to keep in contact to tell her what is going on.

“Afeni’s comment is, it’s not going to bring her son back if they catch the killers or they don’t ... catch them,” Fischbein said. “On the other hand, it would be nice if the Las Vegas Police Department tried, because that would be the right thing to do. It would show that it doesn’t matter who you are—if you get shot, the police are going to be there to do something about it.”

But homicide Lieutenant Petersen took issue with the statement, saying that it was Shakur’s mother who, when contacted by detectives, had refused to talk to
them
.

“The first time we contacted Mrs. Shakur, she would not talk to us. All other contacts were made through her attorney,” Petersen said.

Interestingly, officers had had ample opportunity to interview Mrs. Shakur. She was at the hospital off and on during the six days Tupac was on life support. According to family members and friends, detectives never approached her.

A local radio personality intimated that it was prejudice
and not a lack of cooperation that prevented an early resolution to the case. Louis Conner, a deejay for KCEP (now known as Power 88 on FM 88.1) radio in Las Vegas, whose on-air name is LC, said that if Tupac had not been a gangsta rapper, police might have worked harder to solve the case. LC said he played Tupac’s music the remainder of the day Tupac passed away “as a tribute to him.” He said he doesn’t understand why police haven’t made more progress in their investigation.

“It’s unfortunate that Metro Police have not been able to make an arrest in the Shakur case,” LC said several months into the investigation. “Maybe they’re out of manpower, I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a black-and-white issue. I think it’s what Tupac represented, what he rapped about in his music. I think that makes it another type of prejudice. A lot of prejudices and stereotypes went into this case, and that’s one of the things holding up the investigation process. I think they’re working on it. They’re just going about it at their own pace.”

Sway, a disk jockey on San Francisco’s KMEL radio station, agreed that police could have done more in attempting to find Tupac’s killer.

In an interview from his San Francisco studio, Sway elaborated, saying, “This is hard for me to believe—that somebody as visible as Tupac can, during prime time in Las Vegas, just get massacred on the Strip. It doesn’t seem like that’s possible in 1997 without somebody knowing something.

“I don’t think the powers that be give a damn that another little ghetto kid gets killed in the streets. It’s not important to them to solve this case. I think they feel it’s another headache killed in the streets. It doesn’t serve their time and energy to solve the case of Tupac Shakur. I think it’s just another day in America. If it was one of theirs, the killer probably would have been convicted and sentenced to death by now. From what Tupac represented to them, they probably thought it didn’t matter as much.”

• • •

Orlando “Little Lando” Anderson’s name surfaced early in the investigation, when it was determined that he was the one attacked by Tupac and members of his entourage at the MGM Grand just hours before the mortal drive-by shooting. And police have said Anderson was associated with the Crips, the rival street gang to the Bloods, with which Suge Knight has allegedly been affiliated since he was a teenager. Detectives, however, stopped just short of calling Anderson an actual suspect.

“We’re not ruling anybody out at this time,” Lieutenant Petersen said, “but for us to say he’s the only suspect is incorrect. There are people out there who believe Marion Knight is a suspect.”

Homicide detectives don’t keep lists with names of suspects, Petersen said. It’s others, he explained, not the cops, who have called Orlando Anderson a suspect. On the record, anyway.

Police treaded lightly for another reason, a good one: Police would be putting his life in danger. “I’m getting tired of everybody calling Orlando Anderson a suspect,” Detective Becker said, “because if he gets killed, well ...” hen his voice trailed off.

While Las Vegas police said no one would come forward and point a finger at the gunman, they, too, refused to officially name the shooter, even while they said they knew who did it.

Sergeant Manning said, “We’d like to solve every case. In this particular case, there’s personal pride and organizational pride involved. We’d love to put handcuffs on somebody. Once again, it comes back to this: Until somebody has the courage to take the witness stand and put themselves in front of the prosecution and defense attorneys to answer hard questions, the case is at a standstill. This isn’t like you have fiber evidence and hair evidence. You’re talking about a drive-by shooting that leaves very little evidence behind.”

Then-Compton Mayor Omar Bradley told me in his first interview about the case that Compton cops expressed to him their disappointment in LVMPD’s handling of Orlando Anderson after they detained him during the gang raid in
L.A. Officers told the mayor the word on the street with gang members was that Anderson was involved.

“Officers don’t like to criticize each other publicly,” Bradley said. “But they did criticize Las Vegas police privately.

“We arrested someone [in the Shakur case]. The Las Vegas police didn’t want him. Compton police thought he was the one. I think the Compton police did their job.”

Bradley said he was surprised that Orlando “was not further scrutinized by the Las Vegas Police Department. I don’t understand why the Las Vegas police didn’t pursue the case. It doesn’t seem as if the investigation is proceeding.”

When told that Las Vegas investigators felt they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Anderson with Shakur’s murder, Bradley said, “Evidence is something that prosecutors would decide, isn’t it? Did Metro submit their case to the district attorney?”

The answer to that question is a resounding no; the case was neither submitted to a grand jury nor to the district attorney’s office so that they, and not the police, could make the final determination as to whether there was enough evidence to seek an arrest and prosecute.

Wayne Petersen, the lieutenant in charge of the homicide division of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at the time of the shooting, defended that position with this: “We believe we know who is responsible for this. The problem we have with this case is we don’t have anyone willing to come forward and testify to it. The gang, gangster-rap mentality that they don’t want to tell the police is definitely hurting this case. We don’t have any more than rumor and innuendo. It’s all these unconfirmed sources saying that, yes, Orlando Anderson did it, but there’s no witness there [at the scene] who can testify to it. It’s the old talk on the street, everybody claiming they heard that Orlando Anderson did it. We have no evidence linking him to this.”

Petersen summed it up like this: “Getting away with murder happens all the time. The general public would probably be alarmed to know how often people get away with murder.”

However, a source close to the investigation revealed in October 2001 that Orlando Anderson, despite “official” denials, was, in fact, considered a full-on suspect by police when he was alive. They believed him to be, the source said, Tupac’s murderer.

“Orlando Anderson was the likely suspect [shooter], but wasn’t alone in the car,” the source said. “There have been no new leads and the case is just sitting there until or if something comes up that they can follow-up on. With the people involved in that case, gang members and rap dopers, it will be a hard case to get any more information on. [Homicide investigators] know who was involved with [Tupac’s] death, but probably will never be able to prove it.”

Compton police, too, having sources deeply ingrained in the area’s street gangs, are adamant that Orlando was the shooter. Compton detectives were unimpressed with LVMPD homicide detectives’ interview of Orlando, referring to it as “elementary,” a Compton source said. After Las Vegas Sheriff Jerry Keller learned of Compton Mayor Bradley’s criticism of his department, Keller called the chief of police in Compton. The chief issued a formal apology. Mayor Bradley did not.

• • •

The list of questionable decisions in the Tupac Shakur homicide investigation is long.

Both bike cops who heard the shooting from the Maxim Hotel’s parking garage followed the BMW instead of splitting up, so one could secure the crime scene and the other could follow the BMW.

Detectives and a K-9 team were dispatched to the wrong location. It took awhile, officers said, to figure out what was going on and where the crime had occurred.

No aerial photos were taken. LVMPD officers who responded to the bike cops’ calls for back-up alienated all but one of the potential witnesses within a few minutes of the shooting.

Then, in another questionable move, detectives released
Yafeu “Kadafi” Fula, the only witness willing to cooperate. The decision becomes even more troubling in light of Fula’s murder two months later, before police could interview him at length. When Metro needs prostitutes or transients or even out-of-towners to testify as witnesses or to issue statements against a suspect, they simply lock them up, because they’re considered flight risks. Even though the other witnesses to Tupac’s shooting were uncooperative, police did not feel they needed to detain their only willing witness, one who lived 2,300 miles away, in New Jersey. Yafeu Fula slipped through their fingers, and they had no one to blame but themselves.

Las Vegas detectives, while saying they were doing the best they could to investigate the murder, admitted waiting for their phones to ring. Yet, when people did call in, they often chalked up the calls to fake leads from wannabe tipsters. When Sergeant Manning received 300 calls in one day about the Shakur case, he simply stopped answering his phone and let his recorder pick up.

The detectives assigned to the Shakur murder appeared on “America’s Most Wanted,” but not “Unsolved Mysteries.” News stories historically prompt witnesses to come forward, and sometimes ferret out suspects. Publicity via the media gets the word out to the public, which, in turn, often helps solve crimes. Not only would LVMPD not take part in the “Unsolved Mysteries” segment, they declined to be on hand to take calls at the studio right after the “Unsolved” segment aired.

Finally, LVMPD police have said they believe they’ve known all along who those involved are, but they don’t have enough evidence to press charges. If they do know who’s behind the killing, any efforts they’ve made to capitalize on that knowledge have been ineffective.

Violence was nothing new to Tupac Shakur. He grew up on the mean streets in housing projects in New York City, Baltimore, and Oakland. A product of those environments, as an adult he looked every inch the thug his songs insisted he was.

Tupac’s head was clean shaven, his muscular frame covered in tattoos. Even after surviving an earlier shooting, he was able to maintain rippled abdominal muscles that resembled a washboard.

He was handsome, with boyish good looks and an engaging smile and manner. He had a sauntering but determined walk, a hard stare, but soft eyes and long eyelashes—a look decidely different from other rappers.

Over the years, Tupac had accumulated more than a dozen tattoos, although some were said to be temporary. The one on his left forearm said, “OUTLAW.” On his left upper arm, there was Jesus’ head on a burning cross with the words, “Only God can judge me.” Also on his left upper arm was written, “Trust Nobody.” On his right upper arm was the word “HEARTLESS” etched above a bloody skull and crossbones, underneath which was written, in small print, “My only fear of death is coming back reincarnated.” On his left shoulder was the head of a black panther.

Revealing his street allegiances, on his right forearm, in old English lettering, was the word “Notorious”; on the back of his right forearm was “MOB”; and on his right shoulder was the word “westside.”

Etched on the right side of his neck was “Makaveli,” the moniker he used while performing with the Outlawz; on the back of his neck, the word “Playaz”; underneath that, “Fuck the World.” On his back was a large cross and, below it, “Exodus 18.11.” (The Biblical passage reads, “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods: For in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.”)

He also had the image of an AK-47 fully automatic assault weapon tattooed on his left upper chest just below a scar from a bullet wound. The tattoo splashed across Tupac’s lower chest said “THUG LIFE” with a bullet in place of the letter “I.” Above that was “50 NIGGAZ” positioned atop a rifle. This tattoo symbolized a black confederation among the 50 U.S. states. And splashing the word “Nigga” across his chest, he believed, would advertise it as an acronym, which he said meant “Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.” “2PAC,” his stage name, was tattooed above his left breast.

On his right upper chest was “2DIE4” below the profile of a woman’s face: Some say it was Nefertiti, an Egyptian queen whose name means “The Beautiful One is Come”; others believe it was a portrait of his mother.