Corrupt former police officer Rafael Perez acknowledged working security for Death Row Records on the night Notorious B.I.G. was killed, according to a prison informant quoted in documents revealed Monday in federal court.
If true, the purported admission would link the central figure in the Los Angeles Police Department's Rampart scandal with the record label whose founder has long figured in theories about the 1997 slaying of the New York rap star also known as Biggie Smalls.
Perez's one-time cellmate Kenny Boagni said Perez and fellow rogue officer David Mack "were involved in Death Row Records. ... They went to all their parties and stuff," Assistant City Attorney Don Vincent told the judge presiding over a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
Boagni also said in the November 2000 declaration to a police detective that "Perez told him he was at the award show when Biggie Smalls was killed" and called Mack on a cell phone before the slaying to say the rapper was in his SUV, Vincent said.
Monday's revelation came after an attorney for B.I.G.'s family received an anonymous tip last week that Perez and the B.I.G. killing were mentioned during an LAPD disciplinary hearing held in a jail basement in December 2000. Boagni was a witness at the hearing for a now-deceased officer.
Attorneys for the city confirmed the account Monday, and outside the presence of the nine-member jury read from the declaration and hearing transcripts. U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ordered a halt to the trial to give both sides time to review the documents. Testimony was scheduled to resume Thursday....
