 Welcome to the original gangsters podcast. I am your host Scott Bernstein along with my co-coast co-coast co-host the coast and co-conspirator my partner in crime Jimmy Vajralado the doctor hey now so we're gonna do a quick hitter episode keeping people up to date with what's going on in the Tupac murder investigation we did a whole episode a month or two ago because we saw that this thing was trending towards a potential indictment which landed a couple weeks ago Keefy Dee who before when we were doing the full length episode we know that his house had been raided by the feds or excuse me his house had been raided by the Las Vegas I think it was the local authorities that raided this house in Vegas but I could be wrong and we knew that his immunity deal was falling apart and it looked like he was gonna be arrested he has been arrested he is facing first-degree homicide charges in the murder of Tupac Shakur from September 1996 let's unpack this a little bit to me there are two big revelations here one that the person that we thought this whole time was the shooter Orlando baby Lane Anderson Keefy Dee's nephew according to the indictment was not the shooter according to the indictment the person who killed Tupac was Deandre Smith a big Dre Smith former college basketball player that fell into the gang life he's he died natural causes 10 plus years ago but according to the indictment baby Lane took the gun from Keefy Dee was going to be the shooter couldn't get the right angle so they passed the gun to Deandre Smith who actually shot into into the car or which which hit cock and then the second big takeaway and then I'm gonna throw it back to Jimmy is where Puffy combs P. Diddy Sean combs plays in this whole thing it seemed like for all these years it were these you know these back room rumors and things that didn't seem like it had a lot of credibility and now it looks like it could have a lot of credibility and the proverbial shit could be hitting the fan for the consummate American hip hop mogul the person who kind of invented the ability to be a hip hop mogul Puffy combs I'd be worried if I was him I'm not saying he's gonna be charged but there's a lot of talk that seems to legitimize some of the talk from years ago that didn't have legitimacy back then yeah I mean the P. Diddy's alleged involvement has always been something that people who study these things have talked about either people who study the underworld or hip hop but it really didn't get a lot of mainstream acknowledgement in fact the L.A. Times ran a story at one point about this and then had this very scenario and they were kind of laughed off the page yeah as buying into a theory with a ton of holes and yeah limited merit to it they had to like you said they had to pull it back and retract it now looks like that reporting was a lot more on point than initially believed yeah so this is the most momentum that this part of the theory has ever generated I agree with you who knows if that means anything in terms of the criminal justice system but the fact that now the mainstream media is at least acknowledging that that this is a you know something that's out there and should be taken seriously and it's even gotten to the point where other well known hip hop artists are trolling Puff Daddy about this I guess I guess he's P. Diddy now I remember when he was puffy to me I'm your old guys I guess but but I'm I think 50 cent has been has been trolling him 50 cent was on stage in Europe a couple days ago he's on a tour in Europe and he got on the mic and started joking with the crowd that you know Puffy better lawyer up quick he's got a case coming yeah I mean so the argument goes that that Keefe Dee he's he's alleging that Puff Daddy actually issued this contract out on to Pock and I'm still confused over whether the intent was to kill Pock and sugar just Pock but what one of the arguments here is that Puffy viewed this as a preemptive hit if you recall during this time period the late 90s the temperatures were really high with the you know the battling back and forth and the disc records especially coming from to Pock in the death row camp and that Puffy felt that if he didn't hit one of the death row guys first they were going to hit him and so he contracted this out and that's that's one of the arguments and Keefe Dee is you know he's been he's been saying this for a long time that's the other interesting thing Scott and I were talking about off camera was it's not like he just got popped and then he throws this out as this big revelation he's been publicly claiming for a long time that Puffy was involved well and not just that Puffy was involved but that Puffy stiffed him money that he had promised him and he claims again this is it seems to be gaining validity the more the you know the more days that have passed since the indictment it was something that I see that I don't I didn't know if I believed or not I seem to have more of a appetite to believe it now one of the things that that I thought was interesting in Keefe Dee's I think it was his Vlad interview because Keefe Dee was running around these last 5-10 years doing a lot of interviews and frankly putting his immunity deal at risk he had cut in a he had cut a deal on the late 2000s I believe with LAPD take that back I think it was the federal authorities he cut a deal that was a drug case mm-hmm and they offered him a chance that if he debriefed about what he knew about the Tupac murder he could get immunity for it as long as he copped to the drug case and did the time he needed to do for the drug case but go ahead Jimmy yeah I was just gonna say if you can comment on that you're the legal guy here I remember when we ran this episode last time there were some pushback people saying that he didn't have an immunity deal and can you clarify that I don't know I don't know who said that he had an immunity deal okay the immunity deal is only worth the paper it's it's written on if you're being truthful yeah the government if they find holes in your story the immunity deal goes out the window sure and that's why I you could read the tea leaves I think back in the summer with the with the raids in Vegas the rate of his house they're looking for the gun mm-hmm that he I'm taking some liberty here but I believe he told them he doesn't know where the gun is he had no knowledge of what happened the gun afterwards I would assume that's what he said but yeah I don't know but it looks like they found the gun or they found bullets from the gun which I can't believe that's from bizarre but keep that type of right momentum or bizarre a conversation piece so you know we'll see only time we'll tell I think there'll be a lot more that that unspools from this over the next couple months Puffy we we know for sure that there were ties between Puffy and the Crips that's not a secret no Puffy whenever he would go out West in the 90s he would hire Crips as his security guards there are a number of people that I deem credible that are coming forth now saying that Puffy knew key PD right doesn't mean that key PD took a murder contract from Puffy to kill Tupac right but both of those revelations putting Puffy Puffy putting Puffy in company of the Crips and having knowledge or some association even if even a small connection to key PD puts you closer to the belief that he might have utilized them for wrongdoing yeah if I had to predict I would say there won't be any legal problems for Puffy with this unless Keith he can provide I have a feeling he is not going to be considered a strong enough just his testimony alone unless they can have someone else come forward and corroborate it but it certainly is interesting and I imagine puff daddy's worried about this from a public relations because he's he has a pretty you know a lot of people yeah I mean people that don't follow this think he's a very they think he's like yeah but he has some skeletons in his closet not literally we don't know that's not what out this the issues that he's had in his past one being the shooting in the club in in 99 with with shine his protege at the time in Jennifer Lopez and then the other being before he became famous he staged some type of event or concert in Washington DC at Howard University and there was some people ended up dead from overcrowding and like trampling on in the crowd that he was yeah he was running the event and that the the alleged ties to BMF which right we've talked about we've had that I mean someone from the federal government IRS criminal investigation division told us that straight up I mean that doesn't mean you can prove it in court but they told us that that their informants informants were telling yeah federal law enforcement in the mid 90s that puffy comes started bad boy records yes Clive Davis you know I think that's who gave him the label it was either Clive or or Erma Eragon one of the big music contros but it's not that simple he still needed money for startup costs and whatnot and we heard from very credible sources in law enforcement that the black mafia family had provided that startup cash to puffy there's also the belief that they provided startup cash to guys down in Texas as well as guys that were affiliated with murder Inc. Irv Gotti Ja Rule Ashante and those and those people so yeah and so again none of that means he had anything to do with Park's death but it does it does suggest that he's a more complicated person than just the guy you see on Good Morning America and his dad again it's not a secret his dad was a gangster his dad was murdered in New York in the early 70s his dad worked for Nikki Barnes and Frank Lucas and all those Harlem dope bosses of the superfly era um and then I don't think I finished a thought a couple minutes ago was that in one of those interviews that Keefe D did I believe it was Vlad he said that at his debriefing that the feds told him that informants had told them that puffy had either offered or provided Keefe a million dollars for the hit and Keefe's response was I never saw the money but other people got paid but he's saying again I didn't know if I believed this when I first heard this but now I'm a little bit more prone to believe it that the feds were kind of back according to Keefe D the feds were backing up what he was saying uh at in his debrief yeah so it's interesting we'll follow it we're we're both um big fans of old school hip hop especially uh two bucks a guy to me man yeah two two bucks to go I mean I grew up I grew up on Tupac I can remember I'm you can hit the siren I can remember at school I'm 14 years old at 15 and my buddy's like hey I got the new uh pock just put out a an album I was like who's Tupac what are you talking oh the guy from digital underground and I remember going into the in the parking lot into some kid that had a listening to like that's his old I just I he was so so instrumental in my um my falling in love with hip hop and rap and and he's such a uh complex fascinating riveting character it's it's sad that you know what will end on this I guess to me and I think I might have said this in the last episode to me what you saw from Tupac at 25 years old was merely scratching the surface of what would have been one of the all-time great artists because I don't think he would have just been a rapper he would have been an actor a producer a director a poet I mean he was all these things already but I think he would have Oscars now I think he'd be doing that kind of corporate snoop dog thing now we're so he there was so much more for him to achieve and it's just tragic that we only got uh I mean he was only in the in the public eye for about five years yeah it's it's sort of uh bizarre when you think about it that way because he was so larger than life but yeah when when he was actually a well-known artist it was a very brief very brief time and check out uh for the youngsters out there check out juice check out poetic justice check out gang related um those are probably my three favorite Tupac movies uh above the rim oh that's a great soundtrack yeah yeah and shameless self-promotion this is an audio only episode our interview with ben westoff who wrote the book original the untold story of dr dray easy ice cube two boxer core and the birth of west coast ramp that's an audio only episode maybe one of these days we'll put it up on youtube too but um anyhow it's interesting we'll see what happens we'll keep you updated on what's going on in the Tupac murder investigation and the upcoming trial for jimmy butcholato and benny behind the glass i'm scott birnstein og pod out