The murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace are
still classified as unsolved. Russell Poole continued to investigate those
murders even after he was pushed out of the Los Angeles Police Department six
months before his 20th anniversary with the department. Poole
pursued the killers until his dying breath under mysterious circumstances.
Chaos Merchants, the book Poole was working on at the time
of this death, with writer Michael Douglas Carlin, has finally been released on
Amazon. Poole and Carlin previously teamed up on Tupac:187 with documentarian
filmmaker, RJ Bond. RJ Bond returns to write the foreword for Chaos Merchants.
Russell Poole died August 19th 2015, mysteriously
in a meeting with Los Angeles County Sheriff’s about reopening the
investigations into the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace. At the
meeting Poole suffered a massive heart attack and died at Sheriff Headquarters
in Monterey Park, California. The death made national headlines in media
outlets including Rolling Stone, BET, The Independent, among others.
The death of Poole was ruled “natural causes” by the Los
Angeles County Coroners Office but what makes this fishy is that Poole was
meeting with Sheriff’s about possible department corruption in both of the Suge
Knight cases: the shooting at 1Oak on August 24th 2014, and the
homicide investigation at Tam’s in Compton.
Suge Knight is currently facing possible life in prison from
murders charges resulting from the Sheriff’s Investigation.
Poole, who for years held the view that Suge Knight was
behind the Shakur and Wallace murders, uncovered a 1998 confession letter to
the murder of Tupac that recast everything he believed. When Poole, Bond, and
Carlin reexamined Poole’s original case files in light of the letter it was a
game changer. Poole had come to believe that Suge Knight was a victim on
September 7th 1996 when Shakur and Knight were attacked in a drive
by shooting in Las Vegas. Knight was the primary target of that attack because
of the value of Death Row Records and those that stood to gain from the
potential death of Death Row Records sole shareholder. At the time, Death Row
Records was worth half a billion dollars. When Poole died he was meeting with
Sheriff’s Investigators to convince them to abandon their cases against Suge
Knight due to conflict of interest and potential corruption and to enlist Suge
Knight in solving the murders of Tupac and Biggie. Poole was, in effect,
apologizing to Suge Knight.
The book examines all of the original case files that were
purged from the LAPD murder books shortly after Russell Poole left the
department by “Department Brass” in their effort to derail the investigations.
Two civil suits brought by the family of Christopher Wallace were also derailed
by the LAPD. The first case was ruled a mistrial when it was discovered that
Detective Steven Katz had hidden thousands of documents from the plaintiffs.
Steven Katz is the Captain of Homicide at the LA County Sheriff’s
Department (is it the same Katz?) and was “in the loop” about Russell’s meeting. Russell talked to an
investigator the day before his meeting who confirmed that corruption had been
uncovered in the Suge Knight shooting at 1Oak. That information is likely to
surface in the coming Suge Knight murder trial.
Russell Poole, the LAPD Detective credited with solving the
murder of Ennis Cosby, always felt that the Tupac and Biggie cases could be
solved and he never stopped meeting with the D.A.’s office or law enforcement
investigators in spite of the danger. He continued to investigate literally
until his dying breath.
“Russell was adamant that every fact be footnoted,” says
writer Michael Douglas Carlin. “Chaos Merchants has sources for every single
detail in the investigations.” Both Tupac:187 and Chaos Merchants are a
combination of all available video interviews with relevant witnesses, a
confession letter to the murder of Tupac, and Russell’s original case files.
The books paint the clearest picture of everything known about the murders and
what actually transpired.
Chaos Merchants, listed under True Crime, is available at Amazon
in a Kindle version and at Smashwords.
