'Suge' Knight Suspected in Notorious B.I.G. Murder

By Steve Gorman Reuters

LOS ANGELES (April 22) - Jailed rap music executive Marion ''Suge'' Knight is being investigated as a suspect in the slaying of rapper Notorious B.I.G. two years ago in what is described as a major break in the case, Los Angeles police said Thursday.

Homicide detectives served search warrants on three locations Tuesday, including the Beverly Hills offices of Death Row Records, the rap music label Knight founded, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Allan Michelena, who is overseeing the investigation.

Notorious B.I.G., a gangsta rapper from Brooklyn, New York, whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was gunned down on March 9, 1997, as he left a party at a Los Angeles auto museum. The killing came during a period of tension between rival rap music camps.

Identifying Knight as a suspect ''is a big step in the investigation, but by no means is it the last,'' Michelena said, adding that he expected indictments.

During Tuesday's search at Death Row, police seized a car that matches witnesses' descriptions of the one driven by the unknown gunman in the slaying, Michelena said.

Knight, 33, who is serving a nine-year prison sentence in connection with an unrelated 1992 attack on two aspiring rappers in a Hollywood recording studio, was in jail at the time of the Wallace slaying. However, police Lt. Anthony Alba said investigators suspect he was involved in plotting the murder from behind bars.

There was widespread speculation at the time of Wallace's murder that it grew out of a feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers. Wallace recorded for a label run by Sean ''Puffy'' Combs, a major rap music figure and rival of Knight's.

The slaying came six months after the fatal drive-by shooting in Las Vegas of rap star Tupac Shakur, a leading Death Row recording act. Knight was with Shakur at the time and was slightly wounded in that attack.

Knight, a former football star at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, received a nine-year suspended sentence as part of a plea agreement in the 1992 attack of the two rap artists in Hollywood. He was jailed in the fall of 1996 after he was found to have violated probation during a scuffle at a Las Vegas hotel.

An attorney for Knight referred calls about the police investigation of the Wallace killing to publicist Larry Solters, who declined to comment. Officials at Death Row Records did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Wallace's mother, Voletta Wallace, said the recent developments in the investigation into the murder of her only child is what she's been praying for.

''I've been waiting two years for this,'' she said Tuesday from her New Jersey home. ''I'm hoping and praying, and waiting to see what happens.''