One of the key investigators into the death of rapper Biggie Smalls has died. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies say during a cold case meeting with the Homicide Bureau yesterday morning Russell Poole collapsed. Hospital officials believe he died from a sudden heart attack. Christopher Wallace or Notorious B.I.G. was shot to death while sitting in a car at a red light in downtown Los Angeles in 1997. Poole suggested that Wallace was gunned down as retaliation for the death of rapper Tupac Shakur six months earlier.
Poole accused a corrupt LAPD officer of conspiring with Death Row Records head Suge Knight to pull off the murder.
Following, then police chief Bernard C. Parks ordered Poole to cease his investigation. In protest, Poole retired from the department in 1999.
When Poole talked to CNN back in 2011, he said “I think I was getting too close to the truth,”I think they feared the truth would be a scandal.”
Poole would file a lawsuit against the LAPD for violating his First Amendment rights when the department attempted to prevent him from going public with his information from the investigation. He would continue to work on the case as a private investigator.
(source-Billboard)
