While Las Vegas police said no one would come forward and point a finger at the gunman, they, too, refused to officially name the shooter, even while they said they knew who did it.

  Sergeant Manning said, “We’d like to solve every case. In this particular case, there’s personal pride and organizational pride involved. We’d love to put handcuffs on somebody. Once again, it comes back to this: Until somebody has the courage to take the witness stand and put themselves in front of the prosecution and defense attorneys to answer hard questions, the case is at a standstill. This isn’t like you have fiber evidence and hair evidence. You’re talking about a drive-by shooting that leaves very little evidence behind.”

  Then-Compton Mayor Omar Bradley told me in his first interview about the case that Compton cops expressed to him their disappointment in LVMPD’s handling of Orlando Anderson after they detained him during the gang raid in L.A. Officers told the mayor the word on the street with gang members was that Anderson was involved.

  “Officers don’t like to criticize each other publicly,” Bradley said. “But they did criticize Las Vegas police privately.

  “We arrested someone [in the Shakur case]. The Las Vegas police didn’t want him. Compton police thought he was the one. I think the Compton police did their job.”

  Bradley said he was surprised that Orlando “was not further scrutinized by the Las Vegas Police Department. I don’t understand why the Las Vegas police didn’t pursue the case. It doesn’t seem as if the investigation is proceeding.”

  When told that Las Vegas investigators felt they didn’t have enough evidence to charge Anderson with Shakur’s murder, Bradley said, “Evidence is something that prosecutors would decide, isn’t it? Did Metro submit their case to the district attorney?”

  The answer to that question is a resounding no; the case was neither submitted to a grand jury nor to the district attorney’s office so that they, and not the police, could make the final determination as to whether there was enough evidence to seek an arrest and prosecute.

  Wayne Petersen, the lieutenant in charge of the homicide division of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department at the time of the shooting, defended that position with this: “We believe we know who is responsible for this. The problem we have with this case is we don’t have anyone willing to come forward and testify to it. The gang, gangster-rap mentality that they don’t want to tell the police is definitely hurting this case. We don’t have any more than rumor and innuendo. It’s all these unconfirmed sources saying that, yes, Orlando Anderson did it, but there’s no witness there [at the scene] who can testify to it. It’s the old talk on the street, everybody claiming they heard that Orlando Anderson did it. We have no evidence linking him to this.”

  Petersen summed it up like this: “Getting away with murder happens all the time. The general public would probably be alarmed to know how often people get away with murder.”

  However, a source close to the investigation revealed in October 2001 that Orlando Anderson, despite “official” denials, was, in fact, considered a full-on suspect by police when he was alive. They believed him to be, the source said, Tupac’s murderer.

  “Orlando Anderson was the likely suspect [shooter], but wasn’t alone in the car,” the source said. “There have been no new leads and the case is just sitting there until or if something comes up that they can follow-up on. With the people involved in that case, gang members and rap dopers, it will be a hard case to get any more information on. [Homicide investigators] know who was involved with [Tupac’s] death, but probably will never be able to prove it.”

  Compton police, too, having sources deeply ingrained in the area’s street gangs, are adamant that Orlando was the shooter. Compton detectives were unimpressed with LVMPD homicide detectives’ interview of Orlando, referring to it as “elementary,” a Compton source said. After Las Vegas Sheriff Jerry Keller learned of Compton Mayor Bradley’s criticism of his department, Keller called the chief of police in Compton. The chief issued a formal apology. Mayor Bradley did not.

  • • •

  The list of questionable decisions in the Tupac Shakur homicide investigation is long.

  Both bike cops who heard the shooting from the Maxim Hotel’s parking garage followed the BMW instead of splitting up, so one could secure the crime scene and the other could follow the BMW.

  Detectives and a K-9 team were dispatched to the wrong location. It took awhile, officers said, to figure out what was going on and where the crime had occurred.

  No aerial photos were taken. LVMPD officers who responded to the bike cops’ calls for back-up alienated all but one of the potential witnesses within a few minutes of the shooting.

  Then, in another questionable move, detectives released Yafeu “Kadafi” Fula, the only witness willing to cooperate. The decision becomes even more troubling in light of Fula’s murder two months later, before police could interview him at length. When Metro needs prostitutes or transients or even out-of-towners to testify as witnesses or to issue statements against a suspect, they simply lock them up, because they’re considered flight risks. Even though the other witnesses to Tupac’s shooting were uncooperative, police did not feel they needed to detain their only willing witness, one who lived 2,300 miles away, in New Jersey. Yafeu Fula slipped through their fingers, and they had no one to blame but themselves.

  Las Vegas detectives, while saying they were doing the best they could to investigate the murder, admitted waiting for their phones to ring. Yet, when people did call in, they often chalked up the calls to fake leads from wannabe tipsters. When Sergeant Manning received 300 calls in one day about the Shakur case, he simply stopped answering his phone and let his recorder pick up.

  The detectives assigned to the Shakur murder appeared on “America’s Most Wanted,” but not “Unsolved Mysteries.” News stories historically prompt witnesses to come forward, and sometimes ferret out suspects. Publicity via the media gets the word out to the public, which, in turn, often helps solve crimes. Not only would LVMPD not take part in the “Unsolved Mysteries” segment, they declined to be on hand to take calls at the studio right after the “Unsolved” segment aired.

  Finally, LVMPD police have said they believe they’ve known all along who those involved are, but they don’t have enough evidence to press charges. If they do know who’s behind the killing, any efforts they’ve made to capitalize on that knowledge have been ineffective.

  5

  ABOUT TUPAC SHAKUR

  Violence was nothing new to Tupac Shakur. He grew up on the mean streets in housing projects in New York City, Baltimore, and Oakland. A product of those environments, as an adult he looked every inch the thug his songs insisted he was.

  Tupac’s head was clean shaven, his muscular frame covered in tattoos. Even after surviving an earlier shooting, he was able to maintain rippled abdominal muscles that resembled a washboard.

  He was handsome, with boyish good looks and an engaging smile and manner. He had a sauntering but determined walk, a hard stare, but soft eyes and long eyelashes—a look decidely different from other rappers.

  Over the years, Tupac had accumulated more than a dozen tattoos, although some were said to be temporary. The one on his left forearm said, “OUTLAW.” On his left upper arm, there was Jesus’ head on a burning cross with the words, “Only God can judge me.” Also on his left upper arm was written, “Trust Nobody.” On his right upper arm was the word “HEARTLESS” etched above a bloody skull and crossbones, underneath which was written, in small print, “My only fear of death is coming back reincarnated.” On his left shoulder was the head of a black panther.

  Revealing his street allegiances, on his right forearm, in old English lettering, was the word “Notorious”; on the back of his right forearm was “MOB”; and on his right shoulder was the word “westside.”

  Etched on the right side of his neck was “Makaveli,” the moniker he used while performing with the Outlawz; on the back of his neck, the word “Playaz”; underneath that, “Fuck the World.” On his back was a large cross and, below it, “Exodus 18.11.” (The Biblical passage reads, “Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods: For in the thing wherein they dealt proudly he was above them.”)

  He also had the image of an AK-47 fully automatic assault weapon tattooed on his left upper chest just below a scar from a bullet wound. The tattoo splashed across Tupac’s lower chest said “THUG LIFE” with a bullet in place of the letter “I.” Above that was “50 NIGGAZ” positioned atop a rifle. This tattoo symbolized a black confederation among the 50 U.S. states. And splashing the word “Nigga” across his chest, he believed, would advertise it as an acronym, which he said meant “Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished.” “2PAC,” his stage name, was tattooed above his left breast.

  On his right upper chest was “2DIE4” below the profile of a woman’s face: Some say it was Nefertiti, an Egyptian queen whose name means “The Beautiful One is Come”; others believe it was a portrait of his mother.

  The images tattooed on his body represented the things Tupac held sacred.

  Tupac also adorned himself with jewelry. He had a particular penchant for gold. Besides the solid-gold chains around his neck and diamond and gold rings on the fingers of both hands, he wore diamond studs in his nose and ears and an 18-karat-gold Rolex watch on his right wrist.

  Tupac wore jewelry like medals, badges of honor. Even the lyrics of Tupac’s favorite passage, a borrowed poem, became a reality for him. To his director in his first movie, Juice, he recited Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It read:

  “Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaves a flower; but only so an hour. Leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, so dawn goes down today. Nothing gold can stay.” (Tupac, who was an avid reader, often quoted passages from a book or lines from a poem or lyrics from a song. His friends were used to it. He’d done it since he was a boy.)

  Just before his death, Tupac had formed a new group made up of kids, which he named Nothing Gold. He planned to personally produce their songs, which would, he felt, send a positive message to teenagers.

  Tupac was a talented singer-songwriter with five solo albums to his name. Additionally, he had contributed songs to soundtracks for several movies, including Above the Rim, Poetic Justice, Supercop, and Sunset Park. He was also a rising film star, having starred in the movies Juice (1992), Poetic Justice (1993), Above the Rim (1994), Bullet (1997), Gridlock’d (1997), and Gang Related (1997). The latter film wrapped up a week before the fatal shooting and was released on the first anniversary of his death.

  Boston Globe movie critic Jay Carr described Shakur’s acting abilities in a January 31, 1997, review. “Whatever else the late gangsta rapper Tupac Shakur was, he was a good movie actor,” Carr wrote. “He was good in Juice, and he was the best thing in Poetic Justice. He’s even more appealing as the soulful half of the strung-out buddy team alongside Tim Roth in Gridlock’d.”

  Rap journalist Kevin Powell said Tupac acted with a moody intensity comparable to that of James Dean, whose acting career was also cut short, but by a fatal car accident.

  Tupac had reason to be moody. His childhood had been far from easy.

  • • •

  Tupac’s mother, Alice Faye Crooks, a.k.a. Afeni Shakur, and his father, Billy Garland, in the late 1960s were founding members of the national Black Panther Party, based in New York. Alice (not yet known as Afeni Shakur), while out on bail pending felony charges for conspiring to blow up department stores and police stations, dated Garland. She’d earlier been married to Lumumba Abdul Shakur, but short time after she got pregnant (by Garland), Lumumba, a fellow Panther, divorced her.

  In April 1969, she and 20 other Panther members were arrested. They were dubbed the notorious “Panther 21.” Also part of the group was Tupac’s future aunt, Assata Shakur (who began living in exile in Cuba in 1984). Alice found herself pregnant and incarcerated at the Women’s House of Detention in Greenwich Village. Alice represented herself in court, pro per, delivering, according to Connie Bruck in a July 1997 article in the New Yorker, “a withering cross-examination of a key prosecution witness, who turned out to be an undercover government agent.” Fourteen of the original 21 co-defendants, including Alice, were acquitted in May 1971, only a month away from Alice’s delivery date of her baby boy.

  On Wednesday, June 16, 1971, a son was born to Alice Faye. She named him Lesane. She and Garland parted ways soon after Tupac’s birth. Garland, who had two other children from previous relationships, saw his son off and on until he was five, then lost contact. Garland wouldn’t see him again until 1992, after he saw Tupac’s picture on a poster advertising the movie Juice.

  The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide unit lists Tupac’s given name as “Lesane Crooks.” Lieutenant Larry Spinosa said the family gave officers that name. The Clark County Coroner shows the rapper’s name as Tupac A. Shakur with an alias of Lesane Parish Crooks. It is believed that his legal surname, Crooks, was his mother’s maiden name.

  Alice Faye married Jeral Wayne Williams, her second husband, when Tupac was a toddler. Later, when Williams changed his name to Mutulu Shakur, Alice Faye Williams became Afeni Shakur, and she gave her son the name Tupac Amaru, after a warrior and the last Inca chief to be tortured and murdered by Spanish conquistadors. Tupac means “Shining Serpent,” which was an lncan symbol of wisdom and courage. Shakur, which became his new surname, is Arabic for “Thankful to God”; it is a common surname chosen by members of the Nation of Islam when they join the Muslim religion. Afeni never legally changed her son’s name to Tupac Shakur, but that’s what he went by the rest of his life.

  Tupac was born a fighter.

  “It’s funny, because I never believed he would live,” Afeni told writer Veronica Chambers about her son in an Esquire interview. “Every five years, I’d be just amazed that he made it to five, that he made it to 10, that he made it to 15. I had a million miscarriages, you know.

  “This child stayed in my womb through the worst possible conditions. I had to get a court order to get an egg to eat every day. I had to get a court order to get a glass of milk every day—you know what I’m saying? I lost weight, but he gained weight. He was born one month and three days after we [Panther 21 members] were acquitted. I had not been able to carry a child. This child comes and hangs on and really fights for his life.”

  After she was found not guilty, Afeni went on the speakers circuit to talk about her experiences. But her celebrity was short-lived; Afeni found herself back on the welfare rolls, living in the ghetto.

  She settled with her baby boy in the Bronx. Two years later she gave birth to Tupac’s half-sister Sekyiwa Shakur. Sekyiwa’s father, Mutulu, was also a Black Panther and a nationalist with the Nation of Islam. Mutulu called himself a doctor, claiming he had received a degree in acupuncture in Canada.

  In 1986, Mutulu was arrested and charged with masterminding a 1981 Brinks robbery in which two Nyack, New York, cops and a Brinks security guard were killed. Mutulu denied being involved in the hold-up. He was convicted anyway and is serving a 60-year sentence in a federal maximum-security penitentiary in Florence, Colorado. Mutulu was also convicted of conspiracy for his role in helping to break Assata Shakur, a family friend whom Tupac called “aunt,” out of prison. Assata, also a Black Panther, then a Black Liberation Army leader, was convicted in 1977 of murdering a New Jersey state trooper and sentenced to life in prison. She escaped a few years later. She has been living in Cuba since 1986 and remains at large.

  Mutulu went underground after the Brinks holdup in 1981 and wasn’t captured until 1986. He was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List until his capture. Tupac was taught early by Mutulu not to trust law-enforcement officers. FBI agents would periodically go to Tupac’s school to ask him if he’d seen his stepdad. Mutulu, who was close to Tupac, kept in touch while on the run.

  Tupac’s godfather, Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt, a deputy minister in the Black Panther Party, also wasn’t around when Tupac was growing up. Pratt was sentenced to life in a California prison after his conviction for the murder of a white Los Angeles grammar school teacher when Tupac was an infant. Pratt’s attorney at the time was a young Johnnie Cochran Jr., who went on to successfully defend former football star O.J. Simpson in the murder trial of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Pratt’s case became, and remains, a famous civil-rights cause célèbre for L.A.'s African-American community, because Cochran claimed racism. Cochran argued, and Pratt maintained throughout his incarceration, that Pratt was framed by law enforcement. After his conviction, Pratt was denied parole 16 times because he refused to renounce his politics or confess to a crime he said he didn’t commit.

  Geronimo Pratt walked out of prison in June 1997 after his conviction was overturned by an Orange County Superior Court judge, who declared that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s prosecution was unlawful and corrupt. His conviction was reversed on the grounds that the government suppressed evidence favorable to him at his trial, notably that the principal witness against him was a paid police informant. The decision was handed down midway through Pratt’s 26th year in prison.

  Tupac later said that he continued where Geronimo Pratt, Afeni and the Black Panthers, Mutulu Shakur, and Lumumba Shakur all left off. In his lyrics, Tupac referred to them as political prisoners.

  Afeni and her two children eventually moved to Harlem to live with Afeni’s new lover, Legs, and in homeless shelters and with friends and relatives. Legs, once linked to New York drug lord Nicky Barnes, was jailed for credit-card fraud and died in prison at 41 from a crack-induced heart attack.