The Mystery Of The Notorious B.I.G.’s Death: So It Wasn’t The Cops, After All?

jharv | September 26, 2007 9:33 am
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Who murdered Biggie? Apparently it’s not the LAPD. According to the LA Times, Waymond Anderson, a resident of the Los Angeles correctional system currently doing a life bid for murder and who had previously claimed two crooked cops helped take down the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997, “said in a recent deposition that he lied about LAPD involvement in the Smalls slaying as part of a ‘scam’ concocted by two other convicts to squeeze a large monetary settlement out of the city”:

Smalls’ family has filed a wrongful death suit seeking damages from the city. In a surprising twist, Anderson accused the rapper’s family and its lawyer of participating in the scheme and offering to pay him for false testimony implicating the LAPD.

He said he was offered a percentage of any settlement if he testified that former Los Angeles Officer Rafael Perez had told him that another ex-officer, David Mack, was involved in the murder. In the deposition, he repudiated earlier statements to police investigators in which he described conversations with both of the disgraced officers.

So then the Wallace family’s lawyer, Perry R. Sanders Jr., called bullshit on Anderson’s claims that the attorney had promised to slip the inmate some cash to perjure himself about the police officers’ involvement, counter-claiming that Anderson was under the sway of Chuck Phillips, a reporter who had covered both Biggie’s death and Anderson’s case and who had worked for a paper, i.e. the Times, looking for a juicy new angle for the Biggie story, i.e. announcing that Mr. Sanders was supposedly going to hook up a convicted murderer to finger the LAPD. Sanders also claims that he didn’t even begin working with the Wallaces until after Anderson is claiming his plot was hatched. Get all that? They may want to call a rewrite meeting on that Biggie biopic.

Inmate Recants Story About LAPD Link To Rapper’s Slaying [L.A. Times]