His father, Marion Knight Sr. He instilled in his son a passion for football and music. Even as a teen, Knight cut an imposing figure. He stood 6 feet 3 and weighed more than pounds. But his temperament was sweet, prompting his father to give him the nickname Sugar Bear, recalled his mother, Maxine.
While many of his friends in Compton were running the streets, Knight was getting his aggression out on the football field. He starred at Lynwood High and El Camino Community College before being recruited in by the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where he was an all-conference defensive lineman for two seasons. Knight left UNLV a few credits shy of graduation in His efforts to catch on with a National Football League team fizzled. Discouraged, he took a job as a bouncer for a Las Vegas nightclub and quickly got in trouble with the law.
From to , he was arrested eight times on charges such as carrying a concealed handgun and assault and battery with a deadly weapon. In each case, he pleaded no contest and was given a suspended sentence and probation.
Knight went to work as a bodyguard for a Los Angeles concert promoter and got an inside look at the music business. Major record labels and music publishing companies reaped the bulk of the profits, often collecting millions of dollars annually by packaging and repackaging the same music.
Knight bore these lessons in mind when he went out on his own in as a talent manager, representing a handful of relatively unknown songwriters. Reports of his peculiar negotiating style spread through the industry. In , pop star Vanilla Ice claimed that Knight dangled him from the balcony of a Beverly Hills hotel during a dispute over royalties.
Afterward, the rapper agreed to increase payments to a songwriter whom Knight represented. Dre from a recording contract. A few months later, in the same studio, Knight pistol- whipped aspiring rappers George and Lynwood Stanley, court documents show. Death Row Records opened in the winter of Knight and his partner, Dre, hired unknown artists from the ghetto, many with criminal records.
Knight and his artists catapulted hard-core hip-hop into the mainstream, transforming it from a ghetto fad into a global cultural phenomenon. In , Dre pleaded no contest to assaulting a producer and breaking his jaw. In , Snoop was charged with murder after his bodyguard, firing his gun from a Jeep that Snoop was driving, killed a man in a West Los Angeles park.
The rap star and his bodyguard claimed the shooting was in self-defense and were acquitted. Major companies that once refused to do business with him launched copycat labels. The heavyset kid from Compton was now a millionaire with estates in Malibu and Las Vegas. Now, every major corporation puts out aggressive records with cussing. People close to Knight say he secretly longed for the approval of his childhood pals from Compton, many of whom had turned into hardened criminals.
Knight began to flaunt his connection to an obscure street gang called the Mob Piru Bloods. He traded in his blue jeans and work boots for manicured suits and bowler hats made of red silk -- the color worn by the Bloods. He bought crimson carpet for his studio office. He drained the pool at his Las Vegas mansion and had the tiled bottom painted scarlet. Knight hired Bloods from three feuding factions -- the Mob Pirus, the Leuders Park and the Fruit Town Pirus -- to answer his phones, market his records and provide security at his office and studio.
For some, he bought cars. For others, he paid the rent. Knight put a different spin on it. He bragged that his company offered a second chance to people shunned by society. Many of his employees had never held a job before.
For the Bloods, Death Row offered entree to a world of privilege -- chauffeured limousines, chartered planes, backstage passes, escort girls. It was a nonstop party where they, and their weapons, were always welcome. In , authorities began investigating Death Row employees in connection with a series of assaults, robberies and murders in Compton. The victims, in many cases, had had run-ins with Knight. Police suspected that Knight was orchestrating the crimes but could not find sufficient evidence to charge him.
Knight denied any wrongdoing. In , his empire began to crumble. Dre left to launch his own label. Shakur was fatally wounded in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip, with Knight at his side. People familiar with the situation say Knight tried to control the rival Bloods factions with money and gifts. But his largess often provoked resentment. He lent luxury cars and apartments to his favorites, only to revoke the perks on a whim.
He told associates that if they stuck by him, someday they too would have big houses in the suburbs. Keefe D was a member of the Southside Crips and a well known person to Suge. While Suge was in jail, he conspired with his girlfriend. Suge gave her the directive to get Poochie. Poochie lay in wait outside the Petersen Automotive Museum. As soon as he became aware of where Biggie was sitting in his car, he drove up, and he shot him. At the time, he was a year old member of the Mob Piru Bloods.
Reggie Wright Jr. They had a very secreti ve and exclusi ve relationship. Poochie lay in wait outside the Petersen Automoti ve Museum.
As soon as he became aware of where Biggie was sitting in his car, he dro ve up and he shot him. Orlando Anderson was killed outside a Compton record shop in May Poochie died in July as a result of multiple gunshot wounds. He was shot in the back while riding his motorcycle in Compton. The co-conspirators are never going to be prosecuted. Unfortunately, the cases are so complicated and convoluted. These will never see criminal prosecution.
I worked directly on these cases for years and know exactly where they stand within law enforcement. They would be very problematic prosecutions because of all of the convoluted peripheral issues that were raised during the investigation.
So the D. That was really the impetus to the whole investigation that I was involved in to begin with. We know who killed them. The D. So everyone go back to work. I was so disappointed that I was being removed on this very ridiculous basis. They just shelved the whole case after the Wallace camp retracted their lawsuits.
Those books are on the shelf. One of the biggest problems in the whole Biggie Smalls murder investigation was that there never was [any mention of] Amir Muhammad. But he never mentioned an Amir Muhammad, he just put down the name Amir. So we actually got fi ve different names associated with this potential shooter. There was all this exaggeration of information, and a whole theory was built on it, which never had a basis but captured the popular imagination.
Russell Poole—the L. Coincidentally, Mack has a friend named Amir Muhammad. That circumstantial connection, put this investigator down a rabbit hole. Harry Billups could not have been the person that was being discussed in that clue. Harry Billups had no association with Compton, no association with Crips, and no association with the Fruit of Islam.
Actually, the individual who brought that information to the L. It was all bullshit. All the clue is, is an Amir. If you take selecti ve information and you ignore the information that refutes your theory, you can put together a conspiracy theory and convince people of it.
They knew his jailhouse informants were discredited, they were unreliable, and they were lying. The L. There was surveillance, out in California, by a task force, that was looking into drug and gun activities, because they were getting ready to indict Biggie and a couple of his friends on some narcotics and some guns that they had found in his house.
But the conspiracy theory of them being there that night and watching this thing go down and doing nothing, is absolutely ludicrous.
There was no law enforcement present at the time of the murder. We knew Poochie had a car matching that description, and that, reportedly, he received it from Knight when he ordered two custom Chevrolets. We tracked the purchase of the green Impala back to a Chevy dealership in Phoenix, Arizona. We got that far. But by the time we discovered this information in , those records no longer existed for us to get a paper trail back to or when the car was ordered.
Is there one person in particular who was responsible? One of the main influences in disbanding the taskforce and making the decision not to do anything else was a guy named Gerry Chaleff. He was a defense attorney. Since retiring from the force, what are you doing these days?
I own my own private investigation firm: I do murder investigation, missing person investigation and I stay relatively busy with that. Ben Westhoff. Read more. Reuse this content.
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