B.I.G. Case Not Cold Yet

While a wrongful-death civil suit against the city of Los Angeles over the shooting of rapper Notorious B.I.G. was dismissed last year, a local and federal task force is apparently still actively pursuing leads in a related criminal case.

Sources reportedly close to the matter recently told CNN the 13-year-old case heated up a few months ago as the result of new information. However, that information was not disclosed given the ongoing nature of the investigation.

Notorious B.I.G. (real name Christopher Wallace) was shot and killed after leaving a music industry party in Los Angeles. According to police reports, a lone gunman in a Chevy Impala pulled up next to the rapper’s Suburban and opened fire.

A popular theory behind the shooting has linked it to an East Coast/West Coast rap war between Sean “Diddy” Combs’ Bad Boy Entertainment label and Marion “Suge” Knight’s Death Row Records.

Just six months before Notorious B.I.G.’s death, Death Row Records rapper Tupac Shakur was shot and killed while riding in a car with Knight in Las Vegas. Retired Los Angeles police detective Russell Poole still sees a connection between Shakur’s earlier death and the Wallace case.

“Suge Knight ordered the hit,” Poole told CNN, adding that members of Death Row’s security team and a rogue police officer who was later sent to prison on a bank robbery charge were involved in the scandal.

Poole claims he retired early from the LAPD because his efforts to investigate the case were thwarted by several officers that worked off-duty for Death Row Records.

“I think I was getting too close to the truth,” he said. “I think they feared there would be a scandal.”

Former chief of police Bernard Parks, however, found Poole’s accusations “absurd.”

“We would never have ignored a lead that could have helped us solve that murder,” he told CNN.