traffic light.
Gaines pulled a handgun on Lyga, who “feared he was about to be shot,” Lyga told investigators. Lyga pulled hisdepartment weapon and fired twice, fatally wounding Gaines, LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba told The Associated Press. Gaines didn’t know Lyga was an officer and Lyga didn’t know Gaines was an officer until Gaines was taken to a hospital, where he died. The Gaines family later expressed serious doubts that Kevin Gaines had provoked the shooting because, they said, he wasn’t the type.
After the shooting, it was revealed that Gaines, a six-year veteran of the LAPD, had been dating and living with Suge Knight’s then-estranged wife, Sharitha Golden Knight (they have since divorced and Knight has remarried). The officer was driving Sharitha’s car when the altercation occurred. It was also revealed that in an earlier incident, Gaines had reported to Internal Affairs that officers had pushed and cuffed him on August 16, 1996, during a search of a home owned by Sharitha Knight.
Kevin Gaines’ widow, who was separated from her husband at the time of his death, hired Johnnie Cochran Jr., O.J. Simpson’s former criminal defense lawyer, to investigate the shooting.
While the Suge Knight connection is intriguing, police have claimed that there was no harassment and that the Suge association was irrelevant.
• • •
False tips are a regular occurrence in any murder case. In a big murder case, they can become a serious nuisance, and the Tupac Shakur case was no exception.
On the morning of March 26, 1997, a man came forward and told homicide detectives that he’d seen everything and could identify the gunman. The man’s story deteriorated during interviews, until he finally confessed that he wasn’t even in Las Vegas at the time.
Sergeant Kevin Manning said a few “wackos” had called in to “confess.” One man left a blow-by-blow confession with minute and descriptive details on the homicide bureau’s voicemail. There was only one problem: He claimed he did it in December, two months after Tupac was killed.
Another “informant” who was in custody on another charge in Wisconsin swore to police there that he knew who shot Tupac Shakur. He gave the cops specific information on the investigation, “specifics we were looking for,” Manning said. “Police there interviewed the guy. They did a diagram of the crime. He was supposed to be a witness. They faxed his statement to us.” What police in Las Vegas got, however, was a script from the “Unsolved Mysteries” segment about Tupac’s murder that aired in March 1997.
“He copied ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ word for word,” Manning said. “We continue to get hundreds and hundreds of calls from ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’ If they [callers] have too many details, how do we sort out the credible from the uncredible?”
That’s why, Manning continued, police don’t worry about incorrect and inaccurate information circulating; it helps them tell the real witnesses from the fakes.
Some evidence remains sacrosanct. The gun, for example. The only hard evidence police have is from the ballistics. And they don’t give up that information to the media, because only the perpetrators and the cops know the truth. That piece of intelligence was useful when a tip came in on April 11, 1997, from FBI agents in Bakersfield, California. Sergeant Manning tells the story:
“We got a call from the FBI in Bakersfield who had a guy who said he was in the car with the shooter, but he would only talk to an FBI agent. No one else. No other law enforcement. So I said, ‘Okay.’ We gave them some questions to ask. It turned out to be nothing. The guy said he shot into the driver’s side with an Uzi.”
Police haven’t disclosed what kind of gun was fired at Tupac. Sources say it was a Glock. Even if a gun were recovered, Manning said, “We would still have difficulty putting that weapon in the actual shooter’s
Gaines pulled a handgun on Lyga, who “feared he was about to be shot,” Lyga told investigators. Lyga pulled hisdepartment weapon and fired twice, fatally wounding Gaines, LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba told The Associated Press. Gaines didn’t know Lyga was an officer and Lyga didn’t know Gaines was an officer until Gaines was taken to a hospital, where he died. The Gaines family later expressed serious doubts that Kevin Gaines had provoked the shooting because, they said, he wasn’t the type.
After the shooting, it was revealed that Gaines, a six-year veteran of the LAPD, had been dating and living with Suge Knight’s then-estranged wife, Sharitha Golden Knight (they have since divorced and Knight has remarried). The officer was driving Sharitha’s car when the altercation occurred. It was also revealed that in an earlier incident, Gaines had reported to Internal Affairs that officers had pushed and cuffed him on August 16, 1996, during a search of a home owned by Sharitha Knight.
Kevin Gaines’ widow, who was separated from her husband at the time of his death, hired Johnnie Cochran Jr., O.J. Simpson’s former criminal defense lawyer, to investigate the shooting.
While the Suge Knight connection is intriguing, police have claimed that there was no harassment and that the Suge association was irrelevant.
• • •
False tips are a regular occurrence in any murder case. In a big murder case, they can become a serious nuisance, and the Tupac Shakur case was no exception.
On the morning of March 26, 1997, a man came forward and told homicide detectives that he’d seen everything and could identify the gunman. The man’s story deteriorated during interviews, until he finally confessed that he wasn’t even in Las Vegas at the time.
Sergeant Kevin Manning said a few “wackos” had called in to “confess.” One man left a blow-by-blow confession with minute and descriptive details on the homicide bureau’s voicemail. There was only one problem: He claimed he did it in December, two months after Tupac was killed.
Another “informant” who was in custody on another charge in Wisconsin swore to police there that he knew who shot Tupac Shakur. He gave the cops specific information on the investigation, “specifics we were looking for,” Manning said. “Police there interviewed the guy. They did a diagram of the crime. He was supposed to be a witness. They faxed his statement to us.” What police in Las Vegas got, however, was a script from the “Unsolved Mysteries” segment about Tupac’s murder that aired in March 1997.
“He copied ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ word for word,” Manning said. “We continue to get hundreds and hundreds of calls from ‘America’s Most Wanted’ and ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’ If they [callers] have too many details, how do we sort out the credible from the uncredible?”
That’s why, Manning continued, police don’t worry about incorrect and inaccurate information circulating; it helps them tell the real witnesses from the fakes.
Some evidence remains sacrosanct. The gun, for example. The only hard evidence police have is from the ballistics. And they don’t give up that information to the media, because only the perpetrators and the cops know the truth. That piece of intelligence was useful when a tip came in on April 11, 1997, from FBI agents in Bakersfield, California. Sergeant Manning tells the story:
“We got a call from the FBI in Bakersfield who had a guy who said he was in the car with the shooter, but he would only talk to an FBI agent. No one else. No other law enforcement. So I said, ‘Okay.’ We gave them some questions to ask. It turned out to be nothing. The guy said he shot into the driver’s side with an Uzi.”
Police haven’t disclosed what kind of gun was fired at Tupac. Sources say it was a Glock. Even if a gun were recovered, Manning said, “We would still have difficulty putting that weapon in the actual shooter’s
Similar Books
