The cop who said Biggie’s death might be a conspiracy is dead

Russell Poole, the ex-LAPD detective who was handling the murder case of The Notorious B.I.G.

Poole was discussing a cold case murder investigation with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s homicide investigators when he was stricken at their Monterey Park offices.

Poole was known in the hip hop world for working on Biggie’s murder case for about a year. Poole alleged that police were involved in the killing, as part of a general theory that the killing sprang from an East Coast-West Coast rap feud.

The murders of both Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. remain unsolved.

Speaking to Nick Broomfield in the filmmaker’s 2002 documentary Biggie & Tupac, Poole also explained, via Rolling Stone, “Had we’d been able to aggressively investigate and had the heart to connect the two and do a thorough investigation, I think we probably would have found out more information”. The theory involved cooperation from the Los Angeles Police Department in the murder (especially a Compton native and former Knight employee named David Mack), and examined Death Row Records’ hiring of off-duty cops from the department throughout the 1990s. One of the few LAPD officers with supreme integrity.

Poole advanced the theory that Wallace’s death came from a plot involving a corrupt LAPD detective and Marion “Suge” Knight, who headed Shakur’s company when Shakur was killed.

Times archives show Poole quit the police force in 1999 after a series of disputes over the direction of multiple investigations, including Wallace’s murder.

Poole suggested Wallace’s killing was carried out as retaliation.

Ambrosia For Heads extends our condolences to the family of Detective Russell Poole.