The FBI has released its files on the murder of Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace. The heavily redacted files don’t say who shot and killed the rap performer as he was leaving a post-Soul Train Music Awards party in Los Angeles 14 years ago.
According to CNN, the Los Angeles Police Department investigation has been reopened because of new information.
The documents say that during the course of the FBI’s original investigation, several sources named a Los Angeles Police Department officer as the gunman in the shooting. In addition, it says that the murder was orchestrated in such an organized manner, that it couldn’t have been a one-person job.
The report says that other LAPD officers were seen with the unnamed officer just prior to the shooting.
It says Wallace was in the center car of a three-car caravan on the evening of March 9, 1997, when a dark-colored Chevy SS Impala pulled next to his vehicle and someone fired Gecko 9mm bullets into the passenger area where he was sitting. The ammunition is armor-piercing.
The report cited the unnamed officer as being the registered owner of a 1995 black SS Impala with chrome wheels.
However, the case was closed in 2004 after a witness said that his memory was fading and that his “statements were taken out of context.”
When a civil suit was filed by the Wallace family, they tried to preserve the witness’s testimony because he was afraid to testify, but that motion was denied. That suit was dismissed last year.
Wallace had a rap feud with Death Row Records’ Tupac Shakur stemming from the 1994 shooting of Shakur in New York.
Tupac was shot after a Mike Tyson championship fight in Las Vegas on Sept. 7, 1996, almost 6 months before Wallace was murdered. He would succumb to his wounds six days later. According to the file, the original FBI investigation characterized Wallace’s murder as a retaliation for the Shakur shooting.