Record Executive Investigated in Rapper’s Slaying

Homicide detectives have identified imprisoned rap music executive Marion “Suge” Knight as a key suspect in the ambush slaying of rapper Notorious B.I.G., police sources confirmed Tuesday.

The focus on Knight--founder of Beverly Hills-based Death Row Records--builds on earlier speculation that the March 9, 1997, murder stemmed from a feud between East and West Coast rappers.

According to police sources, Knight was behind bars at the time investigators suspect he took a prominent role in a murder-for-hire plot against Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace.

Wallace, a 24-year-old rap sensation from Brooklyn, N.Y., was shot to death as he sat in a car preparing to leave an industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in the Miracle Mile district of Los Angeles.

On Tuesday, detectives served search warrants on four locations linked to Knight. Police said a dark, metallic-purple Chevrolet Impala seized at one of the sites matches witnesses’ descriptions of the vehicle used in the shooting.

Investigators also served search warrants on the offices of Death Row Records, once the most successful rap label in the country with artists such as Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg, but now struggling to survive.

Knight, a flamboyant 315-pound former University of Nevada at Las Vegas football star with an extensive police record, is serving a nine-year prison term in connection with an unrelated 1992 attack on two aspiring rappers in a Hollywood recording studio.

Attorney David Kenner, who represents Knight, said he was unaware of the searches when he was contacted Tuesday afternoon. Later in the day, Kenner said that he had no information on the searches, but that he expected a statement from Death Row Records on the matter.

Bitter Feud Between Stars

According to police and music industry observers, tensions ran high between Knight’s Death Row Records and the New York-based Bad Boys Entertainment, which was the label for which Wallace recorded.

Six months before Wallace’s death, Shakur--the star of the Death Row label--was slain during a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, in a crime that remains unsolved. Knight, who was sitting next to Shakur in the car, was slightly wounded in that attack. Police sources allege that Knight believes Bad Boy Entertainment was somehow behind that attack. Such a link has never been proved.

In the years before their deaths, Wallace and Shakur were involved in a public feud that came to symbolize the rivalry and rift between the two rap labels. Shakur had accused Wallace, Bad Boy Entertainment founder Sean “Puffy” Combs and others of being involved in a 1994 robbery in New York in which Shakur was shot several times and lost $40,000 in jewelry.

At a music awards show in 1996, Wallace’s bodyguard brandished a weapon and got into a scuffle with armed members of Shakur’s entourage outside the Shrine Auditorium. Also that year, Shakur taunted Wallace in a song, calling him a “fat mother . . . ,” and claiming that he had sex with Wallace’s wife.

Knight also was said to believe that Combs was behind the murder of a Death Row employee who was killed at a music industry party in Atlanta in 1995.

The Wallace shooting apparently was payback for previous squabbles between the two labels, police sources allege.

It was unclear whether charges will be brought against Knight. But because he is in prison, authorities have no fear he will flee their investigation. As part of a plea agreement in the 1992 attack on the two aspiring rappers, Knight’s nine-year sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation. In November 1996, however, Knight was imprisoned after he was found to have violated his probation by kicking a man during a scuffle at a Las Vegas hotel--an altercation that was captured on a hotel surveillance tape.

Police officials declined to discuss the investigation into Wallace’s death. Police sources would not say what evidence they have linking Knight to Wallace’s murder.

Investigators descended on Death Row’s Beverly Hills offices on Wilshire Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon to search for evidence. A large LAPD motor home from the Robbery-Homicide Division was parked in a lot next to the building, as investigators went in and out of the offices. The Chevrolet Impala was towed to the Death Row office, loaded on a flatbed truck and hauled to an undisclosed location.

Police declined to identify the other locations they searched.

The investigation into the murder originally was handled by detectives in the LAPD’s Wilshire Division. It later was turned over to the department’s Robbery-Homicide Division, which handles the city’s most sensational and difficult investigations. Although Wallace’s murder occurred in front of dozens of witnesses, police have said the investigation has been hampered because many potential witnesses were reluctant to come forward with information. As the investigation has dragged on, friends and relatives of Wallace--especially his mother--have grown frustrated waiting for the case to be solved.

Shooting Was Well Planned

The probe into Wallace’s death has led detectives to the tough streets of Los Angeles, where they interviewed gang members, and to the posh offices of New York recording industry officials. At one point, detectives questioned Combs, the influential chief executive of Bad Boy Entertainment, who had been with Wallace on the night of his murder.

Many music industry officials publicly dismissed notions that Wallace’s murder stemmed from a bicoastal rap feud.

Months into the investigation, detectives speculated that Wallace was gunned down over a financial dispute with a member of the Southside Crips--possibly the result of an unpaid security bill. However, police sources Tuesday said the evidence does not support that theory.

“This was a professional hit,” said one source.

The killer, police sources said, had the shooting well planned.

According to police and witnesses’ accounts, a lone gunman in a dark sedan drove alongside the Suburban in which Wallace was a passenger and fired at least seven shots from a 9-millimeter handgun. The gunman sped away in what police now believe was a well-planned escape route.

Wallace, 6-foot-3 and 380 pounds, suffered several wounds to his upper body. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Police sources said investigators suspect that in addition to the lone gunman and Knight, others were involved in planning and carrying out the slaying.

The gunman was described by witnesses as an African American man in his early 20s, wearing a bow tie.

Known as a “gangsta” rap artist, Wallace was immensely popular at the time of his death. A former Brooklyn drug dealer, Wallace climbed to the top of the rap music charts with his gritty, reality-based lyrics of gang violence.

Even as a celebrity, he maintained a tough-guy image, which occasionally got him into trouble with the law. A couple of years before his death, he was arrested several times, including once for allegedly using a baseball bat to deter autograph seekers.