Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations (15 page)

Dorrough was subsequently tried and found guilty of all three homicides under the California felony murder rule, which stipulates that if a death occurs in the commission of a crime, the offender is automatically liable for murder, even if the death was incidental. Dorrough was convicted of triple homicide and given a triple-life sentence at Pelican Bay, the infamous maximum-security prison in Northern California.

In the minds of many, the violent end of Baby Lane was fitting payback for the murder of Tupac Shakur. But there was never anything more than circumstantial evidence linking him to the rapper’s death. If he was indeed the shooter, the one person who might know was Michael Dorrough.

Along with Tim Brennan, on one of his last official tasks for the team, I went to Pelican Bay to interview Dorrough. It may seem a little strange, but I enjoy going to prisons. For one thing, there’s a lot of history there, maybe not Pelican Bay, which was a relatively new, high-tech facility, but certainly in prisons like Folsom, which opened its gates way back in 1880 and houses California’s original Death Row. It’s composed of two tiers of cells, four on top and four on the bottom. When a prisoner was scheduled for execution, he’d start out on the bottom right and move along from cell to cell as the ones ahead of him emptied out. Finally he’d be on the far left of the top tier, outside of which was a large overhead beam. When the time came, they’d take him out and hang him right there.

In contrast to the other thwarted interviews we had conducted, Dorrough was ready and willing to make a deal. He just wanted one thing in return. Knowing he had no chance of getting his triple murder sentence reduced, he was holding out instead for a transfer to Corcoran State Prison, where his father, likewise serving a life sentence, was housed. In exchange for the transfer, Dorrough promised to tell us about a purported meeting by Suge Knight, Baby Lane, and his uncle Keffe D Davis, that had supposedly occurred a few months after Tupac’s murder.

In his convoluted version of events, Dorrough claimed that Puffy Combs had hired Baby Lane to kill Tupac Shakur, but that after the shooting Puffy had backed out of the deal and refused to pay the contract. A meeting was then called by Suge, during which it was proposed to pay Orlando what Puffy had promised if Baby Lane would take out Biggie. There was only one problem. The whole thing was a complete fabrication. It came unraveled when, monitoring the convict’s phone calls, we heard him on the line instructing his cousin to go along with the story he was peddling to us. We’d struck out one more time. And we were running out of options.

CHAPTER
11

Keffe D

A
S 2006 WOUND DOWN
and we began a new year of active investigation, the complex entanglements of the case became even more formidable. My original approach, to divide the investigation into separate probes on both the Crips and Bloods, helped to manage the amount of sheer information we were dealing with. But the fact was that we were running what amounted to two major cases at the same time, which required the task force to split it’s focus. At the same time there were further personnel adjustments within the task force. We needed a Sheriff’s Department replacement for the departing Tim Brennan and requested a homicide investigator to continue looking into the stack of unsolved killings he had compiled. They sent us Karen Shonka.

Relaxed and congenial, with a sharp eye for detail and a willingness to get her hands dirty, Karen was a welcome addition. But even with an able new member on the team, we were still feeling the pressure. No one had set a deadline for us to solve the Biggie Smalls murder, but considering the amount of manpower and resources we had deployed, we knew it wasn’t going to be an open-ended proposition. Sooner rather than later we would need to show results. Of course, police work doesn’t unfold within predictable time frames. As our futile fishing expeditions had already established, a case could chase its own tail for weeks or months at a time before finally breaking. Someone once described war as long periods of boredom punctuated by intense bursts of action. That’s a pretty apt description of detective work, too.

It wasn’t until late 2007 that we saw our next burst of action. Part of the reason for the snail’s pace of the investigation was simply that we didn’t want to call unnecessary attention to our work. If word got out on the street that we were once again looking for the killer or killers of Biggie Smalls, and Tupac Shakur while we were at it, those who might be helpful would almost certainly get scared off. Our efforts had to appear routine, with no signs of urgency. We had to proceed with caution, cover our tracks, and, as much as possible, stay under the radar.

Yet, slowly but surely, we began to find our way forward, and by the early fall we had trained our sights on the one person who had been present at the scene of both the Biggie and Tupac murders, part of the Crips contingent in Las Vegas and a guest at the Petersen during the Vibe party. The name of Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis was popping up over and over again as the scope of our investigation broadened.

The uncle of the deceased Baby Lane, Keffe D, along with his brother Kevin, was also one of the top shot-callers in the South Side Crips hierarchy, a hardheaded businessman who ran a high-volume narcotics manufacturing and distribution operation. Over the course of two decades he had racked up an impressive rap sheet, including numerous felony arrests for possession with intent to sell, and in 1997 he had become the target of a major federal narcotics investigation.

The case exposed an extensive network headed by Keefe D, with Kevin Davis as second in command, overseeing a squad of Compton-based dealers who went by such names as “Doonie” and “P-Rain,” “Fly” and “Big Dog.” The crew handled transactions measured in multiple kilos, and tens of thousands of dollars changed hands on a weekly basis. Federal wiretaps recorded the constant use of the term “glazed donuts” to signify an ounce of cocaine, and the investigation further revealed that Davis and his gang were expert “flippers,” kiting money provided by one buyer to finance other deals. Convicted on multiple narcotics counts, Davis received a four-year sentence.

After serving his time, Davis immediately went back to business, with expansion plans that dwarfed his previous operation. Short and stocky, with a salt-and-pepper goatee and his trademark gapped front teeth, Keffe D, in partnership with his brother, would do much in the years that followed to take the Crips criminal enterprise nationwide, with a wide-ranging network of franchised drug dealers. Naturally, Keffe D had been in our sights from the inception of the task force. If we could figure out a way to flip him there could be a huge potential pay-off, but as with every element in the case, we needed to tread lightly to allay any suspicions that we were targeting him.

Unfortunately, not everyone in the task force was on the same page. Early on in the investigation Alan Hunter, and another detective on loan to us from the LAPD had taken it upon themselves to try and single-handedly deliver Keffe D. Without advising Tyndall or any of the other supervisory staff, they sought out Kevin Davis in hopes of pressuring him for information on his brother. When he proved uncooperative, Hunter and his partner left a police business card and departed. A few hours later Tyndall received a phone call from Keffe D’s attorney Edi Faal, who had previously defended alleged gang members, including Orlando Anderson. I had had a run-in with Faal during an alleged false-arrest case that had been summarily tossed out of court. That encounter had left me leery of the high profile lawyer.

Faal’s message to Tyndall was clear: his client, Duane Keith Davis, didn’t want to talk to the police for any reason, at any place and at any time. If we have anything to say to him, we say it to Faal. Before we clocked out that day, the LAPD detective, who’d been the ranking officer on the botched attempt, had been asked to leave the task force.

Keffe D now knew we were looking for him, which meant he would be all that much harder to find, and more frustrating months would pass before we discovered another way to make a move on him. Because of our federal status we had access to the extensive Drug Enforcement Agency database, from which we learned of an ongoing investigation out of Richmond, Virginia, that directly involved both Keith and Kevin Davis.

The DEA had been tracking a drug-running business that the brothers had set up between Compton and Richmond, involving a large contingent of middlemen, including the Southside Crip Leon “Dirt Rock” Hammond, who had been present at the Lakewood Mall during the now-infamous theft of the Death Row medallion. Another key figure in the Richmond case was Pedro Hill, who had become an unusually talkative defendant after his arrest in early 2007. Hill would provide the DEA with a richly detailed account of the drug ring’s operations, naming “Cali Kev,” aka Kevin Davis, as his Los Angeles cocaine connection. Kevin, Hill told the DEA, ran a vintage-car restoration business as an elaborate front for moving merchandise by shipping vehicles back east stuffed with cocaine in their tires. Unrestored cars would make the return trip packed with money.

Hill arranged with Cali Kev to make several such shipments to Richmond in early 2006, the last for two hundred kilos, discounted to $19,000 apiece in consideration of Hill’s status as a valued customer. Pedro was, in fact, treated to a dazzling stay in Hollywood on his next trip to the coast, put up in a swank hotel and taken backstage for a concert at the House of Blues to see the Death Row rapper Snoop Dogg. He also had an opportunity to meet Keffe D and would go on to tell authorities that the brothers didn’t see eye to eye when it came to running the business. Kevin, Hill claimed, was doing all the work, while Keffe D was resting on his laurels as a respected “Original Gangster,” who had used his influence and connections to set up the network.

Once we caught wind of the DEA’s developing case out of Richmond we got in touch with the investigators to coordinate our efforts. We were particularly interested in their developing case against Dirt Rock, who, as a courier for the ring, would shortly be facing federal charges of drug trafficking and money laundering. Given that Keffe D, by virtue of his “O.G.” status, was one step removed from the daily operation of the ring, it was going to be difficult for the DEA to pin charges on him. We needed to engineer an operation to reel him in and compel his cooperation. Dirt Rock was facing some significant prison time, and it was clear from our first meeting with him in early September 2007 that the possible sentence would far exceed the magic number we needed to get him working on our side. Our approach was simple and direct: we wanted Dirt Rock to buy drugs from Keffe D, the more the better. But we also knew that, as a lowly mule, he would immediately raise suspicions if he approached Keffe D waving a wad of cash for a big buy. Instead, we decided, he would pose as a go-between. All we needed was a credible customer.

We had a perfect candidate in mind. He was a CS (confidential source) that the ATF’s Jim Black and I had frequently used in the past, specifically to make drug purchases from suspected dealers. He would pose as our buyer while Dirt Rock assumed the role of broker.

It wasn’t until early 2008 that we had all the pieces in place and put Dirt Rock on a wiretapped call to set up a meeting with Keffe D, telling him that he had a potential buyer for “one of those Kentucky Fried Chickens.” It was yet another code phrase, this time signifying a kilo of coke. Keffe D was amenable to the arrangement, going so far as to suggest that Dirt Rock’s customer might also be interested in purchasing some “Arrowhead Water,” a reference to the potent and volatile street drug phencyclidine, more commonly known as PCP and sold in liquid form. There was only one condition: Keffe D wanted to meet the buyer. Accordingly, Dirt Rock and the CS arrived for a formal introduction at an apartment in a neighborhood bordering Compton.

“Are you bringing the contract with you?” Davis had asked over his tapped line when Hammond called ahead to announce their arrival. The “contract” was $16,800 in DEA funds parceled out in thousand-dollar bundles carried by the CS in a bag. Assured they had the money, Keffe D produced a tightly wrapped parcel of high-grade “Kentucky Fried Chicken.” The deal was done with a promise of others, including the PCP Davis had mentioned, to come.

We were on our way, but it was imperative not to act precipitously and push for another drug deal too soon. As spring turned to summer, we bided our time, keeping tabs on Keffe D through constant surveillance and a wiretap, allowing us to chronicle his numerous drug deals and at the same time compile a complete list of his customers. For good measure, we hid a GPS transmitter on the undercarriage of his Lexus to track his movements. We were trying, as much as possible, to build an airtight case that would meet federal guidelines for a life sentence. The simple truth was that we needed to leverage Keffe D’s cooperation. The only way to do that, to compel him to tell the truth, was to present him with a credible threat of life in prison. The reality is that a majority of crimes are solved and criminals apprehended by just such methods, by using bad guys against each other, creating a situation in which we can catch them doing what they do. We never forced Keffe D to sell drugs. We simply facilitated a routine transaction that we could then use as evidence against him. That’s how you catch criminals.