Biggie Smalls’ still-unsolved killing keeps surfacing in a courtroom where no one is charged with it. Why?

Biggie Smalls’ Unsolved Killing Echoes in Courtroom

Goldlaner.com – Biggie Smalls’ still-unsolved killing has become an inescapable thread woven through a very different courtroom proceeding. On a March morning in 1997, Christopher Wallace — widely known as Biggie Smalls and The Notorious B.I.G. — sat across from a San Francisco radio host and confessed his exhaustion with the spectacle surrounding him. He had just watched his closest rival, Tupac Shakur, become the highest-profile casualty of the East Coast–West Coast rap war, and Wallace wanted the noise to stop.

“I’m just getting over — you know what I’m saying — this whole situation with this East Coast-West Coast thing, you know? That’s just game over, you know what I’m saying? I’m trying to, like, basically squash it.”

Four days after that interview, Wallace was dead. A drive-by shooting outside the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, where he had stopped at a red light after leaving a music-industry party, ended his life at twenty-four and added another name to the tally of deaths attributed to a rap rivalry that had made both men enormously wealthy.

The Trial That Keeps Pulling the Thread

Nearly three decades later, the Wallace case resurfaced within the first hour of opening statements in the high-profile murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis. That trial — which entered its closing-argument phase Monday after fewer than two weeks of testimony — centers on the allegation that Davis orchestrated the 1996 Shakur killing in Las Vegas. Yet two witnesses who took the stand had originally been assigned to investigate the 1997 shooting, not Shakur’s death. And Davis himself wrote in his 2019 memoir that he was physically present near both men when they were shot.

The question of whether the back-to-back murders were linked was posed publicly within hours of the Wallace shooting. LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba told reporters that day that, given both victims were gangster-rap artists, the department would reach out to Las Vegas authorities to check for any connection. That inquiry, however, stalled almost immediately and languished at the LAPD for close to a decade.

How a Hunch Became a Trial

The investigation received a sudden jump start in 2006, when then–LAPD Chief William Bratton assembled a dedicated task force to identify the shooter. The catalyst was a 2002 federal lawsuit filed by Wallace’s family against the city of Los Angeles, alleging that officers — including one with ties to Shakur’s label, Death Row Records — had been responsible for the drive-by and that the department had deliberately failed to pursue leads to shield its own personnel. The LAPD denied every allegation. Ultimately, the family agreed to dismiss the case, but only after a court ordered the city to pay $1.1 million in legal fees and costs. More consequentially, the interviews the suit set into motion unexpectedly produced a break in the long-dormant Shakur investigation.

Davis was flagged by officers investigating the 1997 shooting on little more than instinct. Daryn Dupree, an LAPD detective who participated in the task-force interviews, testified during the trial’s first week that essentially every person connected to the scene was a suspect at that point. One of the few concrete leads involved eyewitness reports that shots originated from a Chevrolet Impala. Davis was known to drive one.

“We knew that Mr. Davis was the man with all the money in their ‘hood.”

That observation, offered by Dupree, carried practical weight. After officers caught Davis in possession of a gallon of PCP and a kilogram of cocaine, the detective said the department gained leverage to demand information. Davis had already cooperated with the FBI on two prior occasions — in 1998 and again in 1999 — seeking leniency in separate matters, and on both occasions he stated that he and his crew had nothing to do with either murder.

When Dupree and other LAPD investigators sat down with Davis in 2008, the defendant acknowledged being at the same Petersen Automotive Museum party where Wallace had been before getting shot. Beyond that, he claimed no further knowledge of the event.

“He said, ‘No, we didn’t have anything to do with that one.'”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the Wallace case appearing in the Shakur trial? Two witnesses originally assigned to investigate the 1997 shooting testified in the Davis trial, and Davis’s own memoir places him near both victims. The two investigations became entangled during the 2006 LAPD task force, so testimony from one naturally bleeds into the other.

Has anyone been charged with the 1997 shooting? No. Despite the 2006 task force and years of follow-up work, no individual has been formally charged with Wallace’s death as of the trial’s current phase.

What role did the 2002 civil lawsuit play? The suit pressured the LAPD to reopen dormant files and interview witnesses. Although the family eventually dismissed the case after receiving $1.1 million in court-ordered fees, the interviews it triggered produced a lead that helped connect Davis to the Shakur investigation.