Who Killed Biggie? The Unsolved Mystery Behind the Death of a Legend

Biggie Smalls was one of the most influential rappers of all time.

He put the whole East Coast on his back while the West Coast was dominating the game.

Tragically, before he even dropped his second album, he was gunned down at just 24 years old.

His murder has never been solved, but today we’re breaking down the real story of who might have been behind the hit.

Back in March 1997, Biggie was in LA to promote his second album, Life After Death.

Tupac had just been killed a few months earlier, and Biggie had told a radio show called The Doghouse that he hired a security team because of how crazy the East versus West Coast beef was getting.

 

 

On March 7th, Biggie attended the Soul Train Music Awards.

The next day, he was supposed to fly out to London.

However, instead of getting on the plane and leaving the tension behind, Biggie stayed in LA and went to an after-party at a car museum.

This decision turned out to be a deadly mistake.

Just after midnight, Biggie and the rest of the Bad Boy Records crew were leaving the party to hit another spot.

They hopped into two SUVs, with Diddy in the front car and Biggie in the second, followed by a security team.

The street outside was packed with people leaving the party when Biggie’s SUV stopped at a light just 50 yards from the museum.

That’s when a Chevy Impala pulled up, and the driver started letting off shots.

Biggie was hit four times, with one of the rounds going through his colon, liver, heart, and lung.

His crew rushed him to the hospital, but the wounds were too severe, and he was tragically pronounced dead less than an hour later.

After Biggie died, all kinds of rumors started flying about who was behind the hit, but nobody had any real answers.

Biggie’s security team tried to chase the shooter down after it happened, but they couldn’t keep up through the traffic and lost him.

One of the most popular theories about Biggie’s death is that he was taken out by a corrupt LAPD cop who was working with Suge Knight.

Russell Poole was assigned to the case, and after a few months of digging through evidence, he started accusing a cop named David Mack and his friend Amir Muhammad of being involved with the hit.

According to Poole, Mack grew up in the same area of Compton as Suge Knight, and they were always close.

A man named Psycho Mike is the one who told Poole about Muhammad.

 

 

Psycho Mike’s story was believed by many for a long time, but when his police interview leaked, it made the theory a lot shakier.

Psycho Mike is a schizophrenic murderer who couldn’t even identify Muhammad; he got all the details wrong about what he looked like and said he grew up in Compton when Muhammad was actually from Virginia.

However, just because Psycho Mike was wrong about Muhammad doesn’t mean Poole was off about David Mack.

Mack is one of the most notorious cops in LA history.

Back in 1993, he was awarded for heroism after he shot a drug dealer who allegedly threatened his partner.

But later, it turned out that they had lied about the whole situation and planted a gun on the dealer.

A few months after Biggie was killed, Mack’s girlfriend started working at Bank of America.

The two of them concocted a plan to steal over $700,000 from the bank.

However, Mack’s girlfriend flipped on him, leading to a 14-year sentence.

Poole brought all of his evidence against Mack to the chief of police, but the chief told him to stop investigating.

Poole was then forced to retire a couple of years later.

Another theory suggests that Diddy had his own artist taken out.

According to some, he saw how many Tupac records Death Row sold after his death and realized that Biggie dying would make his label a ton of money.

There’s no concrete evidence that Diddy was behind the hit, but on the night it happened, he did pull a move that many consider sketchy.

 

 

Diddy was in the car ahead of Biggie and allegedly told his driver to run a red light outside the museum because he didn’t want to sit out in the open.

Instead of keeping their crew together, Diddy left Biggie behind, and that’s when the shooter pulled up and killed him.

Since Biggie’s murder happened so soon after Tupac’s death, people immediately began linking the cases.

Everyone knew they were the faces of the East-West Coast war.

A retired LAPD detective claimed that Diddy ordered the hit on Tupac.

In 2006, the investigation into Biggie’s death was reopened because the city wanted more evidence to defend themselves against a lawsuit Biggie’s mom had filed for $500 million in wrongful death.

Detective Greg Kading worked on the case for years and believes that Suge Knight ordered the hit on Biggie because Diddy was the one who put a bag on Tupac’s head.

Tupac’s death has never been solved either, but there have been rumors about Diddy being involved ever since it happened.

One major theory about Tupac’s death is that it was revenge for a beating he put on a Crip named Orlando Anderson just hours before the shooting.

After Biggie died, rumors circulated that the South Side Crips were the ones who took him out.

When the case was reopened in 2006, Kading started pursuing a South Side Crip named Keith D.

Keith D was moving major weight in Compton in the 90s and was booked in a federal drug case the same year Biggie died.

Kading brought him in and threatened him with a 25-to-life sentence to get Keith to talk about Biggie’s murder.

Keith simply told him, “That one wasn’t us.”

 

 

According to Keith, he actually talked to Biggie at the party the night he died.

He offered to give Biggie more protection while he was in LA, but Biggie turned him down, saying the FBI was all over him.

Apparently, Biggie didn’t want Keith and his guys catching any federal heat.

But if he had taken up the offer, there’s a chance he’d still be alive today.

Last year, Kading told Fox 11 Los Angeles that the case is finally solved, but it just hasn’t been prosecuted yet.

According to him, the man responsible was hip-hop’s own boogeyman, Suge Knight.

Back in the 90s, Suge was the scariest dude in the game.

He ran Death Row like a mob boss and handed out beatings to anyone who crossed him.

There were always rumors that he had something to do with Biggie’s death, and now Kading claims he knows for sure.

Suge was already locked up when Biggie was killed, and Kading says he used his girlfriend to orchestrate the hit.

In 2009, the LAPD and FBI brought the woman in for questioning.

Kading says that while she was telling them what went down, she had tears in her eyes because she was so afraid.

Snitching on Suge could be a death sentence if he found out.

Kading explains that she pretended to be a legal assistant so she could talk to Suge in jail without their conversations being recorded.

This allowed her to have unmonitored visits with him.

According to documents from the LAPD, Suge worked with her to help coordinate Biggie’s murder.

He instructed her to get in touch with a Bloods member named Poochie and pay him for the hit.

 

 

Poochie was associated with the Mob Piru Bloods, and there are pictures of him hanging out with Suge at parties.

However, by the time Kading connected him to Biggie’s murder, Poochie was already dead.

In 2003, Poochie was shot ten times while driving his motorcycle, and Kading never had the chance to interrogate him.

Even though Poochie isn’t around to talk about what went down that night, Kading is so convinced that he thinks the case should be officially closed.

One retired detective mentioned that simply saying the case is over isn’t enough to convince everyone.

Last year, Mob James told DJ Vlad that he had it right.

James is an OG with the Mob Piru Bloods and stated that Poochie was indeed a shooter.

“Was Poochie known as a shooter? Yeah, he was a hitter for real,” James confirmed.

According to him, everyone around Death Row back then knew Poochie was a shooter, but it took everyone else a long time to catch up.

There have been many wild rumors about Biggie’s death.

Some people think the FBI took Biggie out to stop the East Coast-West Coast war, while others say both he and Tupac are still alive and chilling in Cuba.

But Mob James argues that the reality is much simpler.

He believes it was just a street beef between Death Row and Bad Boy Records.

Like many beefs, it escalated until people started dying.

People want to make it into a big conspiracy, but that’s just because they love Tupac and Biggie so much.

The idea that they died over petty drama doesn’t sit well with fans.

 

 

We will probably never have a 100% concrete answer about who really killed Biggie.

Kading and others say it was Suge and Poochie, but Poochie died before he could be interrogated, and Suge definitely isn’t talking.

At the end of the day, the rap game lost one of its most legendary artists.

Biggie was just 24 years old, and there’s no telling what he could have accomplished if he had gotten on that plane to London.

Unfortunately, we’ll never know.

Rest in peace to the Notorious B.I.G.