Black History

Still Unsolved: The Cold Cases of Biggie, Tupac and Jam Master Jay

NNPA NEWSWIRE — As 2019 begins, the senseless murder of some of Hip-Hop’s biggest and most talented stars remains in the cold case files. “It’s a shame that we lost talented artists such as Tupac, Biggie and JMJ,” said Hip Hop activist and artist Sean XLG Mitchell.

Published

6 years ago

January 18, 2019

Oakland Post

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent
@StacyBrownMedia

Little did Tupac Shakur know, as he left a heavyweight boxing match in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996, that his life was about to end.

With Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight at the wheel and Shakur in the passenger seat, gunmen pulled up and pumped several bullets into Shakur who later died at University Medical Center, Las Vegas Valley.

He was 25.

On March 8, 1997, Shakur’s so-called East Coast rival and fellow Hip-Hop superstar, Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, presented an award at the Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles.

An afterparty was reportedly shutdown at about 12:30 a.m. because of overcrowding, forcing Wallace to leave with friends, including Bad Boy Records Founder Sean “Diddy” Combs.

Approximately 15 minutes later, as Wallace and the others traveled down a Los Angeles street, a black Chevy Impala pulled alongside the “Hypnotize” rapper’s vehicle and fired several bullets – four of them striking Wallace — who died a short time later at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

He was 24.

On Oct. 30, 2002, Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell sat in his Jamaica, Queens, recording studio in New York listening to new music.

An unknown assailant entered the building at about 7:30 p.m. and shot and killed Mizell, 37, who, along with his group Run-DMC, transcended Hip-Hop and paved the way for the commercial success of all Hip-Hop acts.

As 2019 begins, the senseless murder of some of Hip-Hop’s biggest and most talented stars remains in the cold case files. “It’s a shame that we lost talented artists such as Tupac, Biggie and JMJ,” said Hip Hop activist and artist Sean XLG Mitchell.

“I believe arrests haven’t been made on any case because of the dynamics involved in terms of the criminal elements: Possibly drugs, gang ties, and the ‘no snitching’ mantra in the Black community,” Mitchell said.

Last year, a cable television series titled “Unsolved” depicted the murders of Shakur and Wallace.

The three-part series, which aired on USA and Netflix and connected Shakur’s murder to an alleged gang war between the Bloods and the South Side Crips, was based on an LAPD task force investigation headed by Detective Greg Kading, who was initially assigned to work on Wallace’s case.

Kading, whose investigation ultimately took him to Las Vegas where he became involved in the Shakur murder probe, concluded that Orlando Anderson was Shakur’s murderer.

According to the series and numerous reports, the now former detective claimed in the series that Anderson’s uncle, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, revealed that Anderson and two other men – DeAndre Smith and Terrence Brown – were in the car together when Shakur was shot.

After Anderson was beaten up earlier that night, they went looking for Shakur at the 662 Club in Vegas. Keffe D said they found him on the strip and pulled up alongside the car, which was being driven by Suge Knight.

“All the chicks was like, ‘Tupac’, and he was like, ‘hey’ like a celebrity, like he was in a parade,” Keffe D said in an interview with BET’s Death Row Chronicles. “If he wouldn’t even have been out the window, we would have never have seen him.”

He would not go so far as to reveal who pulled the trigger but said it came from the backseat, narrowing it down to Anderson and Smith.

Anderson, who always denied that he was the murderer, died himself just two years after Shakur. No one has ever been charged in the murder. However, “Unsolved” creator Kyle Long has called for Keffe D’s arrest.

“He went live on television and confessed to being an accessory to murder and the Las Vegas PD, as far as I know, is doing nothing about it,” Long told The Wrap last year. “And I just think it’s outrageous. I just don’t understand it. It makes me upset.”

Long also spoke to Vulture and said, “What has happened since we made the show, which is fascinating to me, is that Keffe D went on a documentary called the Death Row Chronicles and confessed again.

“He doesn’t have immunity in that confession. He tried to get cute and says, ‘Oh, I handed the gun into the back seat, but I don’t know who pulled the trigger.’ You watch it, and it’s like, he just confessed without immunity to being an accessory to murder. They should go arrest him.”

That hasn’t happened.

Meanwhile, in 2017, New York City police detectives acknowledged that their investigation into the 2002 slaying of Jam Master Jay had gone cold.

“It’s not resolved to the legal eye, but the street always talks,” Jeremy “JL” Lam, a friend of Jam Master Jay’s family, told the Associated Press (AP).

Family members, however, reportedly were less optimistic.

“We know it’s anniversary, but we don’t like to talk about it much anymore,” Jam Master Jay’s older sister, Bonita Jones, said from their mother’s home in North Carolina.

A cousin, Ryan Thompson, believes the potential witnesses may never come forward because they “could go to jail as accomplices.” According to some reports, the 37-year-old Jam Master Jay hugged one of the men before gunfire erupted.

One round missed him but a second, fired from point-blank range, entered the left side of his head.

The men vanished.

Police said there were at least four other people in the studio at the time, but none provided enough details to produce fruitful leads. Thompson said a security camera in the studio was broken.

Prosecutors later identified a career criminal serving time for armed robbery as a suspect, but he denied involvement and was never charged, according to the AP.

Meanwhile, family, friends, fans and activists like Mitchell still hope for answers in the murders of Shakur, Wallace and Mizell.

“I believe there’s evidence that can’t be corroborated because of the number of people involved, which makes it dicey or risky to pursue any leads that are not going to result in criminal charges,” said Mitchell, the author of several books including “Hiphophooray: Celebrating 30 Years of Rap Music,” and “The Roof is on Fire: 101 Greatest Moments in Hip-Hop.”

“And you also have the face of racism involved too — that’s often overlooked — which is essentially the lives of black men don’t seem to have the same value as the lives of others, so why waste your time? Does it matter? Absolutely, I believe the family members of each victim deserve justice and closure and the only way to get it is with a conviction.”

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Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

4 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

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Activism

‘Criminal Justice Reform Is the Signature Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,’ says D.A. Pamela Price

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

Published

4 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and practices of the 1950s, our country is not going to move forward,” she said.

By Ken Epstein

Part Two

District Attorney Pamela Price, facing a recall that began before she took office in January 2023, explained in an exclusive interview with the Oakland Post how she came to dedicate her life to transforming a deeply flawed criminal justice system into one that provides equal justice and public safety for all and ends mass incarceration for African Americans and other working-class people.

She summarized her life experiences as someone who was “traumatized and radicalized” by Dr. King’s murder, joining the Civil Rights Movement full force, getting arrested when she was 13 years old in a civil rights demonstration, being tracked into the juvenile justice and the foster care systems, and making it as a foster kid from the streets of Cincinnati to Yale College.”

“I understand a lot of things about struggle, about sacrifice, about trauma and fortunately survived all of that, and as a survivor learned some important lessons, and I brought all of that with me into the law and have been able to become a civil rights attorney in Alameda County,” she said.

“That’s been the joy of my life; I’ve lived every lawyer’s dream,” she said.

“Years ago, when I first decided to run for district attorney, I realized that mass incarceration was so destabilizing to our communities,” she said.

She saw that the “criminal justice system has so many impacts on our community, the safety of our community, the stability of our community, the growth of our community, the direction of our community.”

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and the practices of the 1950s … our society is going to be mired in discord, and we will not have social justice, racial justice, economic justice, none of the things that actually make our communities worth living in.”

It is crucial to address the needs of “young people in the juvenile justice system when they are more likely and able to be rehabilitated and redirected,” she said. Young people are much more able to be rehabilitated before the age of 18, really before the age of 26, and before they end up in an adult prison.

D.A. Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’ Malley, joined the D.A.’s office in 1984, where she remained for 39 years. She was promoted to a leadership position after just six years in the office during the era of mass incarceration when there was an explosion of prison construction in California.

“Prosecutors like my predecessor were the ones who filled (those prisons) up. She became a leader in the office around 1990. And what is very important for the public to know is that prior to becoming the district attorney in 2009, she was the chief assistant district attorney for 10 years under Tom Orloff.

“O’Malley worked very closely, hand-in-hand with him for the period of time that included the illegal conduct or the unconstitutional exclusion of Jewish people and Black people from death penalty juries.”

Commenting on the recall campaign against her, she said that had not a handful of multimillionaires and billionaires “put millions of dollars into this, we would not be having this recall. It is not a grassroots movement. It’s a platinum movement.”

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I’m just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said.

If they successfully paint Oakland as a failed city, then hedge fund billionaires and real estate developers can come in and buy up the property cheap, she said.

Though D.A. Price has been bombarded by a massive tsunami of lies, slanders, and misrepresentation, she remains strong and positive because she is a woman of faith, she said.

“I’ve been saved and guided by (a) higher power since I was 13 years old. So, I’m not a new person to faith, and I’m grounded in that,” she said.