Cop's Book Says Sean Combs, Suge Knight Ordered Tupac and Biggie Killings

By the time Kading had Swann in the hot seat, two other sources had pointed to Poochie (Fouse) as Smalls' probable killer. But Swann's reaction meant everything, especially because, in Poochie's staged false confession, Swann herself was named as a conspirator in Smalls' murder.

Seated at the head of a long conference table in the DEA's chilly downtown L.A. offices on May 28, 2009, Swann stared at the false confession "as if [Detective Dupree] had pulled out a rattlesnake and placed it on the table," writes Kading.

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Tupac Shakur

PHOTO BY DAVE LONGENDYKE/ZUMAPRESS/NEWSCOM

Rap mogul Sean Combs

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Once she had finished reading it, Kading says, Swann whispered, "That's right. What Poochie says, that's what happened."

Swann broke down in tears and gave detectives the story in her own words: Knight, reeling from Shakur's death, ended up giving her $13,000 to pay Poochie for a revenge hit on Smalls, according to LAPD documents reviewed by L.A. Weekly.

"She was just a train wreck," Detective Kading tells the Weekly. He says he kept handing her tissues to sop up the mascara streaming down her face as she begged cops not to tell Suge Knight they had spoken with her.

In Kading's Murder Rap, he paraphrases Swann as explaining why she believes the Death Row honcho ordered the kill: "He was really mad about [Shakur's murder]. Like I never saw him before. He told me where Biggie would be ... you know, that party at the car museum. He told me to tell Poochie to get over there and take care of it, you know what I mean?"

Yet this is when the investigation was inexplicably derailed. Two months after Swann's 2009 confession that she was the paymaster in Biggie Smalls' killing, Kading was taken off the case because Internal Affairs had to probe his role in the Torres prosecution — in which he was ultimately cleared.

Kading recalls in Murder Rap that his direct supervisor, Cmdr. Pat Gannon, called him into his office and told him, "Allegations were made in the Torres case. We know they're baseless, Greg, totally without foundation. But there's a perception out there and we're concerned that it might work against you in the Biggie case. This is for the best. Believe me."

Kading isn't certain what the remaining members of the task force did during the next year, from the time he was sidelined until the team was quietly dismantled by Robbery-Homicide Division boss Kevin McClure, with a nod from Chief Beck, in the spring of 2010.

However, Kading says the cop who replaced him as lead investigator into Combs and Knight was a bizarre choice by LAPD brass. Either Beck or Beck's underlings decided to replace Kading — one of Southern California's top-notch investigators — with a detective lacking a strong background in narcotics or informants, Kading says. Kading feels that the task force, as reconstituted under Beck, jeopardized the cooperation promised to the LAPD by Keffe D — by turning over Keffe D's confession to Las Vegas police. He believes LAPD lost its grip on Swann by ditching Kading's idea to wiretap her conversations with Knight so they could use her as an informant. Gradually, Kading says, all leads dead-ended.

Kevin McClure, who supervised the task force as head of the Robbery-Homicide Division, confirms that he got approval from LAPD brass to dismantle the team. Now chief of police in Montebello, McClure says Kading's perception is skewed.

"I have no problems with Greg," McClure says. "But investigators are like softball parents: Their kid is always better than your kid. We followed every viable lead that we had at the time and pushed it to the point where we needed something else to occur in order to move the case forward. And that something — someone else coming forward to corroborate what we had — didn't happen."

Voletta Wallace decided to withdraw her final lawsuit against LAPD in April 2010. Shortly afterward, McClure decided to jam a spike in the investigation, Kading says.

Voletta Wallace's lawyer, Perry Sanders, tells the Weekly he suspended her lawsuit in part because she and the federal judge on the case strongly believed that LAPD was relaunching the investigation in full force. Sanders says he can't remember which LAPD official under Beck made this promise, but definitely recalls it being made.

In fact, Beck's detectives were doing the opposite. By the time Kading was cleared of wrongdoing in the Torres–Numero Uno case, the Biggie Smalls investigation had been called off. Kading writes in Murder Rap that his former teammates carried all of the team's hard-earned evidence to the LAPD archive room to collect dust. Feeling frustrated and betrayed, Kading resigned.

McClure says it was his decision to shelve the case, and the Beck administration merely went along.

"I was the commander over Robbery-Homicide," McClure says. "I managed the case, I made the recommendation to my superiors as to what I wanted to do, had concurrence to do it and, I'll be quite honest with you, I'd do it again right now. It was the right decision."

Not only had the Shakur and Smalls investigations hit dead ends, he says, but McClure needed his elite detectives for more pressing matters.