The Killing of Tupac Shakur (18 page)

Stretch said that Zayd had taken Tupac’s gun from him
before the police arrived on the scene, so Tupac wouldn’t be in possession of a firearm.

After the shooting, videotape shot from outside Quad Studios by a TV camera operator showed Puffy inside the downstairs lobby, in a baseball cap with a straw hanging from his mouth, staring at the camera and talking to several men. News footage also showed Biggie walking out of the lobby, closely followed by Puffy.

Tupac underwent surgery that night at Bellevue Hospital. The next morning, Biggie visited him. At that point, Tupac hadn’t yet accused Biggie of being involved in the shooting.

The next morning Tupac, still recovering from surgery, checked himself out so he could be in court for his sentencing in his criminal trial. Rather than convalesce in a hospital, he stayed temporarily at actress and friend Jasmine Guy’s New York apartment. A few days later, Tupac went to prison to serve out his sentence for the sexual-assault conviction.

Before his sentencing, Tupac had told MTV News: “If God sees it fit for me to spend some time in a cell, if he’s brought me so far from hell to put me here and now he wants me to go to jail, I’ll go. When I come out, I’ll be reborn. My mind will be sharper. The venom will be more potent. They shouldn’t send me there. You don’t throw more gasoline on a fire to put it out.”

During Tupac’s incarceration, his album
Me Against The World
was released. For the first time ever, a jailed man had the country’s No. 1 best-selling album.

• • •

While in prison, Tupac obsessed in his isolation and became convinced that Biggie and Puffy had helped set up the Quad Studios’ ambush. The case, however, would never be solved.

Instead, just a month after the shooting, the New York Police Department closed its investigation into the shooting. No one would ever learn what had really gone down that
November night. The NYPD ended its probe when, they said, Tupac opted not to cooperate with investigators.

“Calls were made to Shakur’s lawyer, but they never responded,” NYPD Detective Nagy told me. “His lawyer never called back. No one ever called back. Therefore, the case was closed.”

NYPD police said that because Tupac had refused to cooperate, it meant the end of their case. “They were totally uncooperative. ... They more or less handled it in their own way,” Nagy said. The officer, clearly frustrated, then went on to outline the police’s attitude in a bold admission of the way things really are: “Why would a guy go out of his way to investigate a case when the guy who was shot didn’t even care?” he asked. “Why are you going to try hard when you have a million other cases?” That was the attitude investigators on the case had at the time, he said. He noted that to close a case, “you really need a valid reason. The boss has to sign off on it. This was a high-profile case. There had to be a valid reason to close it.”

Even after Tupac was killed in Las Vegas, Nagy said, the Quad Studios case was not reopened. He explained, “You can reopen a case if somebody walks in and says, ‘I shot Tupac.’” Without a willing eyewitness, there would be no one to testify against a suspected shooter and, therefore, no case, Nagy said.

Gregg Howard, Suge Knight’s publicist until 2000, said the shootings were nothing more than the result of jealousy by immature rappers. Combs’ attorney, Kenny Meiselas, on the other hand, said the record companies did not engage in petty jealousies among rappers and that Puffy was not involved in any way with the shooting.

Homicide detectives wouldn’t learn anything new about the shooting of Tupac Shakur during their questioning of Suge Knight. The interview took place a few days after the shooting. They did find out, however, what was going through Suge’s mind as he made a U-turn and drove away from Flamingo Road instead of staying at the scene of the crime to wait for police and an ambulance. Suge told detectives his intent had been to find a hospital. Had Suge not turned around, had he kept driving east on Flamingo, he would have run into Desert Springs Hospital, practically next door to Club 662 where they originally were headed.

You have to wonder about that, at least a little. The police certainly did.

Suge, born Marion Hugh Knight in 1965, was not unfamiliar with the area. After all, he owned a house in Las Vegas. And he had spent two years at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, also located just east of where the shooting had taken place. He played for the UNLV Rebels football team. He was there on a full athletic scholarship.

Halfway through his college career, Suge had caught the attention of UNLV recruiter Wayne Nunnely, head coach of the Rebels in 1986, who later moved on to work for the National Football League’s New Orleans Saints.

“You didn’t really see that street roughness about him,” he remembered about Suge. (Knight had grown up on the rough streets of Compton, California.)

A fellow player also said that rough side wasn’t visible on the playing field.

Suge, according to Steve Stallworth, director of sports marketing at UNLV and the starting quarterback when Suge played on the defensive line, “was all about the team.” Stallworth said that his work ethic was second to none. “He never missed a practice. He was never even late for a practice.”

Suge played for the Rebels in 1985 and ‘86, lettering both years as a first-team defensive lineman. He earned Rookie of the Year honors and was voted All Conference. He was also one of three player-elected captains of the team, along with teammate Eddie Wide Jr., during his senior year.

The last time Eddie Wide saw Suge was a couple of nights before Tupac was shot. They ran into each other during an evening out on the town.

“I saw him in passing,” said Wide, who still lives in Las Vegas. “He was busy, taking care of business. I saw him and we talked, basically, ‘How you doing, what’s up.’ You know, real quick.”

Before that, the last time Wide had seen Knight had been in Irvine, California, when the two were trying out for some Canadian football teams at a combine camp—a pro-football combination camp where “different athletes are put together to showcase their talents,” Wide explained.

“Suge was down there and a couple of other guys [from UNLV] were there, and we sat around and talked a little bit. We talked about what to do [on the field] mostly.”

Wide described Knight as “a real cool guy everyone got along well with. If he had gang ties at the time, it didn’t show.”

“I wouldn’t know about the neighborhood he came from or the kind of guy he was before [UNLV],” Wide continued. “We only met each other playing ball. What happened before that time, nobody knew. I didn’t know if he was a gang member or not and I didn’t care. I’m not from L.A. I was raised in
Vegas pretty much all my life.

“Marion was one of those guys who could, if someone had a problem, he’d talk to them. He was the kind of guy you liked to be around because he was cool. He wasn’t an asshole. He wasn’t cocky. He got what he gave. Marion and I got along. We were buddies. We were the type of guys [who] might go to a club together or grab something to eat. It was mostly black guys he hung out with, but he got along with everybody.

“He’s got some serious talent, as far as playing ball. Very talented. We all had the same goal, and that was to play pro ball. He did what had to be done on the field. It’s a lot of work and the guys on scholarships worked hard. Marion came on a full ride [scholarship]. For somebody who was that talented, he could still be in pro ball.”

As for his talent in the music business, that came later.

“The music thing, that kind of came out of the blue, because there was this one guy [on the team] named Eric Collins,” Wide said. “Eric actually signed with Death Row later. Marion and Eric, these guys were both from L.A. Suge would always say how good Eric could rap. Eric was good. When Marion made the transition into music, I don’t know. I was surprised at how big and how fast [Death Row] went up. With the guy’s personality, you knew he was going to be successful at
something.
There were a lot of other guys getting in trouble in school. Some of the guys on our team are still in prison. To see Suge then and to see him now, I never would have predicted it, that he would be this kind of guy, the fact that he would have been in all the problems with the police, an outlaw. All the criminal activity, I never would have predicted.”

Even while in college, with his sights set on becoming a professional athlete, Suge was moving toward becoming a businessman. While in school, Suge’s favorite classes at UNLV were business-related, and his favorite instructor was a business professor. His records at UNLV have been sealed, the registrar’s office said, after trying to pull up his transcripts in the college’s computer system.

“I can’t give out any information on that student,” a school clerk said. “He has a hold on it himself, so nothing about him can be given out. I can’t give you any information without a signed release from him.”

Suge’s coaches say he left UNLV his senior year, without graduating, when the football season ended. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams, where he played part of a season. He crossed the National Football League’s picket line during a contract strike and played several games for the Rams before he was released.

He told
Vibe
magazine that he loved the game and still played sometimes, but that it wasn’t meant to be for him. He had moved on.

Part of what Suge moved on to was trouble. In October 1987, Sharitha Lee Golden, mother of Suge’s first child, obtained a restraining order in Los Angeles against her then-boyfriend that covered her, her sister, her mother, and her aunt.

“Once I refused to talk to him, he began to threaten me and my family ... tamper with my car,” Golden wrote in a court document.

(Suge and Sharitha later reconciled and, according to Clark County marriage license records, were married on Friday, November 3, 1989, at the Candlelight Wedding Chapel, advertised as “the No. 1 choice of recording, stage, and movie personalities in the heart of the Las Vegas Strip.” Sharitha later headed Suge’s management company, and they had a second child together.)

In November 1987, a month after Sharitha got the restraining order against Suge, he was arrested at his Las Vegas apartment for attempted murder, grand larceny auto, carrying a concealed weapon, and use of a deadly weapon to commit a crime. According to the crime report, Suge got into a fight with a man on Halloween night at Suge’s home, at the Rancho Sahara Apartments at 1655 East Sahara Avenue, unit No. 3119.

The arrest report said that at 8 p.m. on October 31, “an altercation broke out between the above subject and another man, during which time Knight shot the victim twice—once in
the wrist and once in the leg—with a handgun, then continued to chase him. After Knight shot the victim, he then got into the victim’s vehicle, which was at the scene, a 1986 Nissan Maxima . . . and drove away without the victim’s permission to take the vehicle.”

Afterward, two LVMPD officers, Kathleen Alba and S. Stubbs, were called to the apartment complex to talk to Suge, but he wasn’t there. At 10 p.m., a security guard called officers to tell them Suge had returned to his apartment. Officers Alba and Stubbs returned.

“When we arrived,” the officers’ report stated, “we saw Knight coming out of the area of his apartment and when he saw us, he turned around and walked quickly back toward his apartment door where he removed a 38-caliber revolver from inside the waistband of his pants, which was covered up by the jacket he was wearing.” The LVMPD officers confiscated the .38 Smith & Wesson Special.

Suge was arrested and kept overnight in a crowded and dirty holding cell. He was booked on November 2nd into the Clark County Detention Center in downtown Las Vegas at Bridger Avenue and Second Street.

Suge Knight pleaded out to a misdemeanor in exchange for a suspended two-year sentence and was placed on three years’ probation. He was fined $1,000.

Then, on June 6, 1990, Suge was charged with breaking a man’s jaw in a scuffle outside a friend’s house in Westside, the predominantly black area of town, when the man apparently said the wrong thing. Suge was accused of holding a gun to the man’s face, while demanding an apology. The man apologized, but Suge hit him in the jaw anyway, first with his fist and then with a pistol. Suge was charged with felony assault with a deadly weapon and eventually pleaded guilty, according to the court record. He received a $9,000 fine, a two-year suspended sentence, and three years’ probation. The judge also ordered Suge to complete “a temper-control counseling program.”

• • •

Suge Knight was neither a rapper nor a musician and had no early connection to the music industry. He was a bodyguard in Los Angeles. While working security for rhythm-and-blues singer Bobby Brown, singer-actor Whitney Houston’s husband, Suge spent time behind the scenes. He learned the ropes backstage at concerts and was sharp enough to recognize a good opportunity when it was right in front of him. After awhile, he’d spent enough time around the L.A. rap scene to see its potential for making big money.

Suge became friendly with Tracy Curry, who rapped under the stage name D.O.C. and put out albums for Ruthless Records. When D.O.C. was injured in a car accident, Suge took care of him.

“I’ve seen Suge do some shit to some motherfuckers that’s out of this world,” D.O.C. told
L.A. Weekly.
“Once, we were leaving a club and I was standing there waiting for my car to come, and some nigga run up on me like he’s fixin’ to hit me in the jaw, and Suge just tore his ass up—broke him down to his very components. Suge was a different nigga when he was doing his business.”

In 1990 Suge began promoting shows in Los Angeles, where he became friendly with rap producer Andre “Dr. Dre” Young, whom journalist Joe Domanick in
L.A. Weekly
called “the greatest producer and best ear in the history of hip-hop music.” While Dre was under contract with Ruthless Records, he was unhappy with the label. Suge talked him into forming an alliance with him.

Ruthless had been started by Eazy-E, a streetwise rapper known for his record “The Boyz N the Hood” who later died of AIDS. Suge planned to produce an album for D.O.C. and took Dre and D.O.C. to meet Dick Griffey, the chairman and founder of Solar Records and cofounder of the television show “Soul Train.” Griffey was considered a player and an insider in the record industry. Griffey and Suge reportedly intimidated Eazy-E, allegedly threatening him with pipes
and baseball bats, into releasing Dre, D.O.C., and R&B singer Michel’le (once Dr. Dre’s wife who later became Suge’s second wife) from their contracts.