Biggie Smalls’ still-unsolved killing keeps surfacing in a courtroom where no one is charged with it. Why?

Notorious B.I.G. poses for a photo outside his mother's house in Brooklyn in 1995. (Clarence Davis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Six months after the murder of Tupac Shakur – the most prominent casualty of the boiling hip-hop feud between coasts – his biggest rival, Christopher Wallace, looked tired of it all.

“I’m just getting over – you know what I’m saying – this whole situation with this East Coast-West Coast thing, you know?” Wallace – better known as Biggie Smalls and The Notorious B.I.G. – told San Francisco radio station KYLD in March 1997. “That’s just game over, you know what I’m saying? I’m trying to, like, basically squash it.”

Four days later, Wallace was dead, too. Another drive-by shooting, and another tally in the body count blamed on a rap rivalry that had helped make them both rich.

Although the high-profile murder trial of Duane “Keffe D” Davis – which will culminate with closing arguments Monday after less than two weeks of testimony – is focused on the allegation he orchestrated the killing of Shakur, the name Biggie Smalls keeps coming up.

Within the first hour of opening statements, he was mentioned by prosecutors. Two of the witnesses who testified were originally assigned to investigate Wallace’s death – not Shakur’s. And Davis wrote in his 2019 memoir that he was nearby when both of the men were killed.

The question of whether the two murders were related was first raised on March 9, 1997, the very day Wallace was shot to death in his vehicle while stopped at a red light outside a music industry party at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

“Given the fact that they were both gangster rap artists, naturally our people will be contacting the Las Vegas authorities to see if there was any connection in the two,” LAPD Lt. Anthony Alba said at the time.

Although people looking for clear connections between the back-to-back murders of former friends that shook up the hip-hop industry have been frustrated for nearly 30 years, Davis’ trial has exposed just how tightly connected the investigations became, despite the unraveling of their friendship.

LAPD gets pressure to solve Notorious B.I.G. murder

The investigation into who shot Christopher Wallace had been languishing at the LAPD for nearly a decade when it got a jump start in 2006, as the LAPD’s then-chief William Bratton set up a task force to find Wallace’s killer.

That came after a 2002 federal lawsuit filed by Wallace’s family against the city of Los Angeles claimed police officers – including one connected to Shakur’s label, Death Row Records – were responsible for the murder. The department, the suit claimed, failed to investigate leads in order to protect their officers.

The LAPD denied those allegations, but less than two weeks after opening statements, the judge declared a mistrial, discovering a critical transcript alleging the involvement of an LAPD officer had been hidden in the lead detective’s desk.

The lawsuit put city officials under pressure to come up with answers about the drive-by outside a major entertainment event, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Ultimately, the family agreed to dismiss the lawsuit, but not before the city was ordered to pay them US$1.1 million in legal fees and costs. And not before their suit set into motion the interviews that unexpectedly led to a break in the Tupac Shakur investigation.

Biggie Smalls investigators put pressure on Duane Davis

Davis was flagged by police investigating the Biggie Smalls murder on little more than a hunch.

“Everybody was a suspect at that time,” Daryn Dupree, an LAPD detective who was part of the task force interviews of Davis, testified during the first week of the trial.

One of the few leads in the killing of Wallace were eyewitness reports that shots had been fired from a Chevrolet Impala, and Davis was known to drive one. And that’s not all he was known for.

“We knew that Mr. Davis was the man with all the money in their ‘hood,” said Dupree.

After catching Davis with a gallon of PCP and a kilo of cocaine, the detective said, they had leverage to demand information. Davis already had snitched to the FBI on two previous occasions in 1998 and 1999 to try to get leniency, where he said he and his crew had nothing to do with the murders of Shakur and Wallace.

When Dupree and other LAPD investigators sat down with him in 2008, Davis acknowledged being at the same party at the Peterson Automative Museum in Los Angeles where Wallace had been before getting shot, but he said he had no other knowledge of it.

“He said, ‘No, we didn’t have anything to do with that one,’” according to Dupree.

Asked to clarify what he meant by that, according to Dupree, Davis responded, “We did the other one.”

Investigators were “shook” by the statement, Dupree said. Wallace’s case, they were prepared for. They had no idea revelations about Shakur were coming.

“We didn’t ask him any questions about Tupac. He offered that on his own,” said Dupree.

Regrouping with officers in December 2008 at Davis’ attorney’s office in Beverly Hills, with an assurance that nothing he said would be used against him, Davis laid out the timeline of the Shakur shooting that is now at the heart of his murder case.

He told detectives the shooting was in retaliation for a beating given to his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, by Shakur’s crew at the MGM Grand following a Mike Tyson boxing match they had all attended. Davis said he obtained a gun and intended to retaliate at a nightclub owned by Shakur’s boss at Death Row Records, Marion “Suge” Knight, but they never showed up. When Davis and his crew left, he said they happened to see both of them in a car as Shakur was on his way to the club and pulled up alongside.

Davis told police he passed the gun back to Deandre Smith, who was sitting in the back seat next to Anderson, but Smith lost his nerve.

“I gave it to Dre, and Dre was like, ‘No, no, no,’” Davis said in the recording. “And Lane’s like, ‘Give it here.’ He popped it to him.”

In addition to revenge for his nephew’s humiliating beating, Davis said there was another motive in the shooting: a promise from Bad Boy Records founder Sean “Diddy” Combs – then better known as Puff Daddy – that he could be rewarded for eliminating his rap rivals.

Combs told Davis he wanted to get rid of Shakur and Knight, offering $1 million “to handle the problem,” the police summary of Davis’ interview says.

Davis told investigators he tried to collect the bounty from Combs through an intermediary after Shakur’s killing but got stiffed.

Combs, who is serving a 50-month prison sentence on charges relating to prostitution, has repeatedly denied having anything to do with Shakur’s murder.

“Davis has denied his own claims, maintaining that he made the statements to gain fame and notoriety and that they were not true,” a representative for Combs told CNN.

Although Davis’ task force interviews proved to be key to charging him in the death of Shakur – especially after a judge ruled they could be admitted into evidence because Davis later made similar statements in public – they didn’t bring the LAPD any closer to solving the Biggie Smalls case.

CNN asked the LAPD last week whether there is currently an active investigation into the murder and did not receive a response.

Tupac and Biggie never reconciled after New York shooting

The mostly jocular rivalry between labels took on a more personal tone after the first time Shakur was shot. On Nov. 30, 1994, awaiting a verdict in his sexual abuse trial, he was invited to a recording studio near Times Square to guest feature on a recording in exchange for a cash payment of $7,000, Shakur later told VIBE magazine.

As he arrived, Shakur said he saw Lil’ Caesar, a protégé of Wallace, and both Wallace and Combs later acknowledged being in the building that night.

As soon as he entered the building, Shakur was jumped, robbed of his jewelry and shot five times, later telling VIBE he had gone in and out of consciousness while being pummeled on the ground.

Shakur survived, incredibly, without long-lasting injuries, but the incident left him shaken and wondering who was responsible, especially after Biggie Smalls released the single “Who Shot Ya?” which Shakur interpreted as a taunt at his own shooting.

“Even if that song ain’t about me, you should be, like, ‘I’m not putting it out ‘cause he might think it’s about him,’” he told VIBE.

Shortly after the shooting, Shakur was convicted and sidelined from rapping for eight months before Knight financed his bail during an appeal that was still pending when he died.

In an interview with 2 Live Crew rapper Luther Campbell in 1995, shortly after he was released from prison, Shakur sharpened his criticism of Wallace, saying he and other New York-based rappers should be careful about talking tough and throwing up gang signs for street cred, especially when they come to the West Coast.

“If they come to California, some of these true-to-life gangbangers are going to pull your m*therf**king card. ‘Cause these n***as out here dyin’ for that sh*t, and you want to make a video and play with that sh*t?” Shakur said, adding, “It’s very dangerous out here.”

Any hope of mending their relationship quickly ended after Shakur’s release of the diss track “Hit ‘Em Up,” only three months before his death, ridiculing both Biggie Smalls and Puff Daddy by name.

“Who shot me? But you punks didn’t finish / Now you ‘bout to feel the wrath of a menace,” Shakur rapped.

Reggie Wright Jr., the former head of security at Death Row Records, testified he had to assign another security guard to Shakur after “Hit ‘Em’ Up” was released, but that guard didn’t show up for work the night Shakur was shot.

On the eve of his death, Biggie called for peace

Six months after Shakur’s gruesome death – Wallace said he figured his former friend blamed him for the robbery and shooting at Quad Studios but said he had nothing to do with it.

“It’s false. Why would I do that?” he told KYLD radio in what would turn out to be his final formal interview.

“Me and Pac had our little differences and whatever … it wasn’t something that we intended on doing,” he said.

During testimony in Davis’ trial, a medical examiner testified that, in addition to the fresh wounds that ultimately took his life, autopsy photos still showed the physical scars of the Quad Studios shooting nearly two years earlier, accompanying the emotional scars Shakur acknowledged in interviews.

In the final week of his life, Wallace told the San Francisco radio station he was done with the feud that he understood had gotten out of hand, a promise he never got the chance to fulfill.

“It’s all over with,” said Wallace. “I’m in the West right now. If you need me, if you want to see me, talk to me, whatever you want to do, now’s the time: Call on up.”

CNN’s Taylor Romine and Michael Figliola contributed to this report.

By Andy Rose, CNN