The team's official mission was solving Biggie Smalls' murder, while Shakur's murder case was under the jurisdiction of Las Vegas police. 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.
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.
"There was a real possibility that the suit would end up being among the most expensive the department had ever had to pay out," Kading writes in Murder Rap. "So it came as no surprise that the brass wasted no time in putting together a task force to finally solve the 9-year-old case, find the killer, and hopefully exonerate the police in the process."
But investigators on the special task force determined early on that the two cases were as inseparable as the street-gang rivalries that ran through them.
Sure enough, just five months after Keffe D alleged he'd watched his nephew, "Baby Lane" Anderson, kill Shakur on orders from Sean Combs, Kading's investigative team hit a second home run when one of Suge Knight's baby mommas fingered Knight as having handed her the money to pay for Smalls' murder.
Kading describes the woman as a well-kept beauty in her early 40s with a slim figure and trademark hoop earrings — although the stress of being one of Knight's ladies-in-waiting, through the rise and fall of his L.A. rap empire, had begun to take its toll, physically.
She's named "Theresa Swann" in Murder Rap for her own protection. L.A. Weekly has verified her identity as Knight's longtime lover and business associate but has chosen not to reveal her name. Kading planned to notify her last weekend that Murder Rap was going to print. He says federal agents are prepared to relocate her if necessary, to assure her safety in the wake of its publication.
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. Knight directed [Swann] to contact 'Poochie' and advise him that Knight wanted Wallace murdered in exchange for an unspecified amount of money."
The team of feds and LAPD officers believed they were on the brink of solving one of the most haunting cold cases in popular history.
Both Baby Lane and Poochie — implicated as the triggermen by the team's sources for the murders of Shakur and Smalls — had been shot dead years ago, casualties of Crips-versus-Bloods battles set off by the celebrities' slayings. However, the rap moguls accused of hiring them were still very much alive.
Kading was certain that by tracking down a couple more Crips allegedly involved in Shakur's murder, and by wiretapping phone conversations between Knight and his lover Swann, the LAPD finally would have enough evidence to solve hip-hop's greatest murder mysteries.
But what Kading says happened next — a series of shocking moves within the LAPD's upper ranks — would lead him to question whether his superiors wanted the rappers' murderers brought to justice.
In July 2009, under former LAPD Chief William Bratton, lead detective Kading was abruptly pulled from the task force. Without his years of nuanced insight into the vast array of characters involved, he says, the investigation began to peter out as he watched helplessly.
Nearly a year later, in April 2010, when Voletta Wallace withdrew her lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, what remained of the task force was quickly dismantled by Robbery-Homicide Capt. Kevin McClure with the blessing of brand-new LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.
Within weeks, despite 22 devoted years on the force, in a move the fiercely independent Detective Harry Bosch might pull in a Michael Connelly novel, Kading turned in his LAPD badge and walked out the door.
Though Kading is well aware of the litigation to which he's exposing himself by implicating Combs and Knight — the wealthy Combs threatened to sue the Los Angeles Times over much less — Kading believes that "the story's bigger than the LAPD," and that if he doesn't share his findings with the public, "nobody's ever going to know what really happened."
The son of an honest-to-goodness 1960s flower child, Kading may have been the most unlikely man imaginable to extract confessions in two seemingly unsolvable celebrity homicide cases.
Kading grew up with his mother and two older sisters in tents and yurts around Lake Tahoe, in what he describes as a movable feast of hippies and potheads, marked by his mother's wanderlust and impulsive parenting. In 1974, at age 11 — one year after Kading was at a party with his mother and accidentally ingested LSD in spiked punch — his mother packed everything into a VW bus and headed south along the California coast toward Mexico. Kading did not know it, but his mother's plan was to drive south of the border to meet a boyfriend who was buying drugs, then smuggle the stash into California under the guise of a vacationing family.
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.
"There was a real possibility that the suit would end up being among the most expensive the department had ever had to pay out," Kading writes in Murder Rap. "So it came as no surprise that the brass wasted no time in putting together a task force to finally solve the 9-year-old case, find the killer, and hopefully exonerate the police in the process."
But investigators on the special task force determined early on that the two cases were as inseparable as the street-gang rivalries that ran through them.
Sure enough, just five months after Keffe D alleged he'd watched his nephew, "Baby Lane" Anderson, kill Shakur on orders from Sean Combs, Kading's investigative team hit a second home run when one of Suge Knight's baby mommas fingered Knight as having handed her the money to pay for Smalls' murder.
Kading describes the woman as a well-kept beauty in her early 40s with a slim figure and trademark hoop earrings — although the stress of being one of Knight's ladies-in-waiting, through the rise and fall of his L.A. rap empire, had begun to take its toll, physically.
She's named "Theresa Swann" in Murder Rap for her own protection. L.A. Weekly has verified her identity as Knight's longtime lover and business associate but has chosen not to reveal her name. Kading planned to notify her last weekend that Murder Rap was going to print. He says federal agents are prepared to relocate her if necessary, to assure her safety in the wake of its publication.
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. Knight directed [Swann] to contact 'Poochie' and advise him that Knight wanted Wallace murdered in exchange for an unspecified amount of money."
The team of feds and LAPD officers believed they were on the brink of solving one of the most haunting cold cases in popular history.
Both Baby Lane and Poochie — implicated as the triggermen by the team's sources for the murders of Shakur and Smalls — had been shot dead years ago, casualties of Crips-versus-Bloods battles set off by the celebrities' slayings. However, the rap moguls accused of hiring them were still very much alive.
Kading was certain that by tracking down a couple more Crips allegedly involved in Shakur's murder, and by wiretapping phone conversations between Knight and his lover Swann, the LAPD finally would have enough evidence to solve hip-hop's greatest murder mysteries.
But what Kading says happened next — a series of shocking moves within the LAPD's upper ranks — would lead him to question whether his superiors wanted the rappers' murderers brought to justice.
In July 2009, under former LAPD Chief William Bratton, lead detective Kading was abruptly pulled from the task force. Without his years of nuanced insight into the vast array of characters involved, he says, the investigation began to peter out as he watched helplessly.
Nearly a year later, in April 2010, when Voletta Wallace withdrew her lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles, what remained of the task force was quickly dismantled by Robbery-Homicide Capt. Kevin McClure with the blessing of brand-new LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.
Within weeks, despite 22 devoted years on the force, in a move the fiercely independent Detective Harry Bosch might pull in a Michael Connelly novel, Kading turned in his LAPD badge and walked out the door.
Though Kading is well aware of the litigation to which he's exposing himself by implicating Combs and Knight — the wealthy Combs threatened to sue the Los Angeles Times over much less — Kading believes that "the story's bigger than the LAPD," and that if he doesn't share his findings with the public, "nobody's ever going to know what really happened."
The son of an honest-to-goodness 1960s flower child, Kading may have been the most unlikely man imaginable to extract confessions in two seemingly unsolvable celebrity homicide cases.
Kading grew up with his mother and two older sisters in tents and yurts around Lake Tahoe, in what he describes as a movable feast of hippies and potheads, marked by his mother's wanderlust and impulsive parenting. In 1974, at age 11 — one year after Kading was at a party with his mother and accidentally ingested LSD in spiked punch — his mother packed everything into a VW bus and headed south along the California coast toward Mexico. Kading did not know it, but his mother's plan was to drive south of the border to meet a boyfriend who was buying drugs, then smuggle the stash into California under the guise of a vacationing family.
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