It was barely after midnight on March 9, 1997. Christopher Wallace, the man the world knew as The Notorious B.I.G., was sitting in the front passenger seat of a GMC Yukon XL. He’d just left a Vibe magazine party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The vibe was supposed to be celebratory. Instead, a dark Chevy Impala pulled up alongside his SUV at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Fairfax Avenue. A man in a blue suit leaned out, leveled a 9mm blue-steel semi-automatic, and fired.
Biggie was gone before he hit the hospital. He was 24.
Decades later, people are still asking who killed Biggie Smalls with the same fervor they did in the late nineties. It’s a rabbit hole. Honestly, it’s more like a labyrinth where every turn leads to a dead police officer, a disgruntled gang member, or a record executive with a terrifying reputation. If you’re looking for a neat, wrapped-up answer with a bow on top, you won't find it here. Nobody has ever been charged. But the evidence that has surfaced over the last thirty years paints a picture that is way more complicated than just "East Coast vs. West Coast."
The Southside Crips and the Orlando Anderson connection
The most "boots on the ground" theory involves the Southside Crips. To understand this, you have to look at what happened six months earlier in Las Vegas. Tupac Shakur was murdered after he and Suge Knight jumped Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, a member of the Southside Crips, in the lobby of the MGM Grand.
Death Row Records was tight with the Bloods (specifically the Mob Piru). Bad Boy Records, Biggie’s home, reportedly used Southside Crips for security when they were on the West Coast. This is where things get messy. Greg Kading, a retired LAPD detective who led a multi-agency task force years after the murders, argues that the hit on Biggie was a direct retaliation.
According to Kading’s book, Murder Rap, a high-level Crip named Duane "Keefe D" Davis—who was recently arrested and charged in the Tupac case in 2023—claimed that Biggie’s associates had put out a "bounty" on Death Row members. Whether Biggie knew about that or not is a matter of massive debate. Most people who knew Wallace personally say he wasn't that guy. He was a storyteller, not a strategist for street hits. But in the mid-90s, the line between the booth and the pavement was paper-thin.
Kading’s investigation suggests that a man named Wardell "Poochie" Fouse, a close associate of Suge Knight, was the actual shooter. Poochie was killed in 2003, which conveniently (and tragically) prevents any courtroom testimony. If Poochie did it, the motive was simple: revenge for Tupac.
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The David Mack and Harry Billups theory
Then there is the theory that makes the LAPD look much worse. This is the one popularized by the late, great journalist Randall Sullivan and former LAPD detective Russell Poole. Poole was a dog with a bone. He believed Biggie was killed by a professional hitman hired by Suge Knight, but the kicker was that the hitman was allegedly assisted by corrupt LAPD officers.
Poole’s primary suspect for the shooter was a man named Amir Muhammad (born Harry Billups).
Wait, it gets weirder.
Poole linked Muhammad to David Mack, a rogue LAPD officer who was later convicted for a massive bank robbery. Mack owned a black Chevy Impala—the same car witnesses saw at the scene. He also had a "shrine" to Tupac in his house. The theory goes that Mack and other officers who worked off-duty security for Death Row helped orchestrate the hit to settle the score for Suge.
The LAPD brass basically shut Poole down. He eventually quit the force in frustration, and his health spiraled until he died of a heart attack in 2015 while discussing the case at a sheriff's station. You can't make this stuff up. It feels like a movie script, but the families involved, especially Voletta Wallace, took this theory seriously enough to file a $400 million lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles. They eventually dropped it, but they never stopped believing the police were involved in a cover-up.
Why the "East Coast vs. West Coast" narrative is kinda a lie
The media loved the "War of the Roses" angle. It sold magazines. It gave the story a Shakespearean arc. But if you talk to anyone who was actually there, the "war" was mostly a marketing tool that got out of hand.
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Biggie wasn't a soldier.
Tupac was an actor and a poet who got caught up in the hyper-masculine posturing of Death Row.
When people ask who killed Biggie Smalls, they often want to blame a coast. But the streets don't work in geographic blocks. They work in personal slights and financial debts. Biggie was in LA to promote Life After Death. He was trying to bridge the gap. He was told he was safe. He wasn't.
The tragedy of the Biggie investigation is that it happened during a time of extreme corruption within the LAPD’s Rampart Division. These guys were planting drugs, stealing evidence, and, in some cases, reportedly moonlighting for gangs. When the people supposed to solve the murder are potentially in the pockets of the suspects, the trail doesn't just go cold—it gets erased.
The evidence that vanished
- The Composite Sketch: Several witnesses gave descriptions of the man in the blue suit. The sketch looks remarkably like several people in the Death Row orbit, yet it never led to an arrest.
- The Shell Casings: The ammunition used was rare—9mm armor-piercing Gecko rounds. These were the same rounds found in David Mack’s home. Coincidence? Maybe. But a huge one.
- The Informants: Over the years, dozens of jailhouse snitches have claimed to know the "real" story. Most were looking for reduced sentences and were rightfully ignored. But some, like "Waymond" (a pseudonym for an informant), provided details about the conspiracy that aligned perfectly with Poole’s findings.
What we know for sure (which isn't much)
We know the shooter was a Black male. We know he was professional. He didn't spray the car wildly; he hit Biggie four times with clinical precision. Only the fourth shot was fatal, entering his right hip and tearing through his colon, liver, heart, and lungs.
We know the car was a dark Impala.
We know the hit happened in front of hundreds of people.
Yet, the silence was deafening.
The fear of Suge Knight in 1997 cannot be overstated. Suge was the boogeyman of the music industry. Witnesses didn't talk because they wanted to keep living. By the time the federal government got involved and the FBI started sniffing around, the physical evidence was stale.
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Moving past the conspiracy
Honestly, the most likely scenario is a mix of the two main theories. It’s highly probable that Suge Knight ordered the hit from behind bars (he was jailed for a probation violation shortly after Tupac's death) and used his network of gang members and "dirty" cops to execute it.
The "who" is likely Poochie Fouse or someone very much like him. The "why" was a twisted sense of loyalty to Tupac and a need for Suge to maintain his image as the most dangerous man in music.
If you're looking for actionable ways to dive deeper into this or find some semblance of "truth," start by looking at the primary sources rather than the sensationalized documentaries.
How to actually research the Biggie case
- Read the Murder Rap book by Greg Kading. He provides the most modern, evidence-based look at the Keefe D/Poochie connection. It’s less "conspiracy" and more "street reality."
- Watch the Unsolved scripted series on Netflix/USA. While it's a drama, it actually does a brilliant job of showing the two parallel investigations (Poole’s and Kading’s) and why they clashed.
- Check the FBI Vault. A lot of the original files on Christopher Wallace were declassified and are available online. Reading the actual witness statements from that night is chilling. They contradict each other. People were terrified.
The search for who killed Biggie Smalls isn't just about a name. It's about a period in American history where the music industry and the criminal underworld became indistinguishable. Biggie was a generational talent who became a pawn in a game he didn't really want to play. He was a father and a son.
The case remains "open" according to the LAPD, but without a living suspect to put on the stand, we are left with the ghost of a legend and a lot of "what ifs."
To get the most accurate picture, stop looking for one villain. The "villain" was a system of corruption, a cycle of retaliation, and a total failure of law enforcement to protect one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. Stick to the records, the depositions, and the investigative journalism of people like Sylvester Rivers and Randall Sullivan. Avoid the TikTok theories. The truth is in the paperwork, even if that paperwork was buried for twenty years.