He says federal agents are prepared to relocate her if necessary, to assure her safety in the wake of its publication. Voletta Wallace's lawyer, Perry Sanders, tells the Weekly he suspended her lawsuit in part because she and the federal judge on the case strongly believed that LAPD was relaunching the investigation in full force. Speaking on the 25th anniversary of Biggie's death, Kading told The Sun: Suge indirectly told Poochie to kill Biggie through Swann. L.A. Weekly has verified her identity as Knight's longtime lover and business associate but has chosen not to reveal her name. Money that was immediate was what they worked for. It was almost as if, in some surreal way, Russell Poole had been right all along, Kading writes in the final chapter of Murder Rap. According to the claim, Perez, an alleged affiliate of Death Row Records, admitted to LAPD officials that he and Mack (who was not named in the lawsuit) "conspired to murder, and participated in the murder of Christopher Wallace". With that crushing figure hanging over the city, almost simultaneously, Voletta Wallace filed a second lawsuit in the summer of 2006, and the order came down under then-Chief Bratton: Find Biggie Smalls' true killer. While her real name has been mentioned online and in books, Swann has always shied away from the limelight. Feeling frustrated and betrayed, Kading resigned. [34], United States District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper granted summary judgment to the city on December 17, 2007, finding that the Wallace family had not complied with a California law that required the family to give notice of its claim to the State within six months of Wallace's death. I had no idea there were such powerful forces involved in all of this.. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers. After Greg left, we finally made the decision, McClure says. [16], Several days into the trial, the plaintiffs' attorney disclosed to the Court and opposing counsel that he had received a telephone call from someone claiming to be an LAPD officer and provided detailed information about the existence of evidence concerning the Wallace murder. Deaths Were Nearly 'The End Of Rap', "Review: Rappers' deaths probed in 'LAbyrinth'", "Slain rapper's family keeps pushing suit", "Witness in B.I.G. Sitting in the backseat of the Cadillac, according to Keffe D, was his own nephew, Orlando Baby Lane Anderson, who got his ass kicked in the MGM Grand lobby earlier in the evening by Shakur's posse over a piece of Death Row bling that Baby Lane supposedly had stolen. Suspiciously, the first man to visit Mack in jail was named Amir the same first name a jailhouse informant gave Poole for Smalls' alleged killer. Greg Kading: We believe its a guy named Poochie, who was a Blood affiliate of Suge Knights. ", "Biggie Told Interviewer He Worried About Safety". I have no problems with Greg, McClure says. Harry Billups) were originally named as defendants in the civil suit, but were dropped shortly before the trial began after the LAPD and FBI dismissed them as suspects. And Russell Pooles theory of course leads to the inevitable lawsuit about the police being involved because Russell Poole finds out that a guy named Amir had visited David Mack at the Montebello City Jail after his bank robbery arrest. Greg Kading: Well, we dont know. [7] Wallace traveled in the front passenger seat alongside his associates Damion "D-Roc" Butler, Junior M.A.F.I.A. ", "Biggie kept saying: 'Is this where they dump the dead bodies?' Long before Kading stepped into what many believe to be the cursed unsolved mystery of Shakur's and Smalls' murders, a storm of rumors and news stories suggested that a few bad apples within the LAPD had been involved in Smalls' killing. And this is their own policy that you can look into and probably verify. Unsolved case Kading added: "Suge would have figured out she spoke, but the reality was that he was not going to kill or harm the mother of his child, especially if she is working with law enforcement. But when Kading visited Voletta Wallace in Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago to hand her a copy of his book, he says she thanked him, saying it would prove very beneficial.. DX: And, ultimately you believe Biggies mother is mistaken in her apparent loyalty to Russell Pooles original theory that Amir Muhammad murdered her son at the direction of former L.A.P.D. What Poochie says, that's what happened.. I tell them what I think and they tell me if I'm right or not.. Sanders says he can't remember which LAPD official under Beck made this promise, but definitely recalls it being made. Theresa kept the remaining $12,000 for being a lookout to give info to Poochie of Biggie's location when he was leaving the party. Again, the defense attorney found out, and again, Wilson hammered Searight. [13] The New York Times described Broomfield's documentary as a "largely speculative" and "circumstantial" account relying on flimsy evidence, failing to "present counter-evidence" or "question sources. According to the report, three of the four shots were not fatal. Wait a minute, I have a clue with a guy named Amir on it. It was a very loose connection. Kading writes in Murder Rap that his former teammates carried all of the team's hard-earned evidence to the LAPD archive room to collect dust. It was definitely necessary to follow-up on it, but it wasnt enough to build a whole theory around. The testimony from the star witnesses helped the U.S. Attorney's Office file a raft of charges against Torres, and hot shot Kading was the toast of the LAPD. Former Times reporter Philips spent years struggling to redeem his reputation, and now is co-producing a documentary on Suge Knight that will feature a soundtrack by Knight's latest company, Black Kapital. Kading isn't certain what the remaining members of the task force did during the next year, from the time he was sidelined until the team was quietly dismantled by Robbery-Homicide Division boss Kevin McClure, with a nod from Chief Beck, in the spring of 2010. DX: You believe he did the shooting himself? In July 2009, under former LAPD Chief William Bratton, lead detective Kading was abruptly pulled from the task force. Combs may take heat for these new revelations or he may not. He came on early, he was claiming that Suge had tried to hire him to get some guns, and some other Suge associates were gonna go do the murder. Kading planned to notify her last weekend that Murder Rap was going to print. Former L.A.P.D. They were the fruit of an intensive investigation by a special task force of LAPD officers plus agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation that had begun years earlier, in May 2006. We would ask, and if anybody tells us, Hey, it was David Mack, well we would immediately draft up a report, [and] wed give that to the Internal Affairs division, which was handling the lawsuit against the city. Everybody that we would talk to and bring that up and ask those questions it was always the same answer: Well yeah How do you know? Well, its what I read in the newspaper. Well, why do you believe that? I read it in the newspaper. So everything about those guys was stuff that was hearsay information. DX: Now, I dont know if you can answer this question, but I do need to ask it: Is Theresa Swann actually former Death Row Records artist, and mother of Suge Knights nine-year-old daughter, Michelle? (Knight would survive that night's shooting with a bullet wound to the head.). She's named Theresa Swann in Murder Rap for her own protection. [in Biggie & Tupac] where [Nick Broomfield] gets up and Eugene Deal points at [a photo of Amir Muhammad in a lineup], theres a lot of problems with that legally, and the way that it was developed. Film 'City of Lies' Pulled From Release Schedule", "Mark Saylor dies at 58; former Times editor oversaw Pulitzer-winning series", "Man No Longer Under Scrutiny in Rapper's Death", "Informant in Rap Star's Slaying Admits Hearsay", "Hip-Hop Homicide "Worth More Dead Than Alive" Crime Library on", "LAPD launching new Notorious BIG task force", "Interview: Suge Knight paid Poochie $900 before killing B.I.G. Her confession is summarized in an official LAPD report reviewed by L.A. Weekly: During one or more of [Swann's prison visits], Knight instructed [Swann] to help him coordinate the murder of Christopher Wallace. We wanted a million. In another stunning confession, detailed in LAPD documents reviewed by the Weekly, the mother of one of Knight's children, identified in Kading's book as Theresa Swann, breaks down in tears, stating that the former Death Row boss gave her the money to pay Wardell Poochie Fouse Knight's close associate and a fellow member of the Mob Piru Bloods to kill Smalls. It now appears that Kading was unfairly blamed by Judge Wilson and the media. [31] The case remains officially unsolved, despite a good amount of evidence being found. Kading added: Suge would have figured out she spoke, but the reality was that he was not going to kill or harm the mother of his child, especially if she is working with law enforcement. officers David Mack and Rafael Perez? A police report quoted in the book says that "Theresa Swann" (an alias), one of Suge Knight's baby mothers, confessed to taking money from him in order to set up the hit: "During one or more of. But Kading says the big money was an official $50,000 reward being offered in an entirely different case that Smith knew something about. [29] Kading alleges Shakur was killed under the orders of Combs.[30]. [33], The documents centered around interviews by numerous police officers of an incarcerated informant, who had been a cellmate of imprisoned Rampart officer Rafael Perez for some extended period of time. Join Facebook to connect with Theresa Swann and others you may know. [35] The Wallace family refiled the suit, dropping the state law claims on May 27, 2008. A barrel-chested black man with a front tooth missing, relaxed yet instinctively cautious, is seated across from four spellbound cops in a glass-walled conference room at 8200 Wilshire Blvd. At the time the multi-agency task force was formed by the LAPD, Smalls' mother, Voletta Wallace, was suing the City of Los Angeles for potentially hundreds of millions of dollars because she believed dirty cops had been involved in her son's murder. He had been wrongly accused of the U.S. Attorney's errors, and he had already elicited two confessions that put him on the brink of solving Shakur's and Smalls' murders yet had been yanked from the case. Smalls, a 400-pound Brooklyn native, was slain in a March 1997 drive-by shooting while rolling out of a star-studded party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in L.A.'s Miracle Mile. [1] Retired LAPD Officer Greg Kading alleged that Marion "Suge" Knight, the head of Death Row Records, orchestrated the murder in revenge for the September 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur in a similar drive-by homicide by gunshot.[2]. But it wouldn't last. While her real name has been mentioned online and in books, Swann has always shied away from the limelight. An LAPD spokesman insists in an email that the case is still active/ongoing but that no further information is available. In Laguna Beach, however, his mother learned that her boyfriend had been arrested; she decided Orange County was as good a place to live as any.