Former LAPD Detective Russell Poole Has Died
Russell Poole, the ex-LAPD detective who was handling the murder case of The Notorious B.I.G., has died of a suspected heart attack on Wednesday.
According to the LA Times, Poole was meeting with detectives about a cold case when he reportedly collapsed and was unresponsive from a heart attack. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Poole was known in the hip hop world for working on Biggie’s murder case for about a year. When Biggie died on March 9, 1997, it spawned tons of conspiracy theories. One in particular was that Biggie’s death was somehow connected to the slaying of Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas because their two record labels had beef.
Poole has written a book about his findings in 2003 called Labyrinth: A Detective Investigates the Murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G., the Implication of Death Row Records’ Suge Knight, and the Origins of the Los Angeles Police Scandal. More recently, Poole’s theory on Biggie was highlighted in a Vice article penned by veteran music journalist Jeff Weiss.
Poole’s successor is Greg Kading, who is also a former LAPD detective that investigated the murder of Biggie. In his findings published in his 2011 book Murder Rap, he believed it was a paid hit orchestrated by Suge Knight and his girlfriend. His claims conflicted with Poole's theory.
Neither ‘Pac nor Biggie’s murders have been solved.
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