13 Years Later, Notorious BIG Investigation Back On

Thirteen years later, the murders of rappers Notorious BIG and Tupac Shakur remain two of the music industry’s highest-profile unsolved mysteries—but that could soon change. Police “reinvigorated” the Notorious BIG murder case months ago, sources tell CNN, and they are actively looking into leads and new information related to the 1997 crime. The task force investigating the case includes the LAPD, FBI, and the LA County DA’s office.

Notorious BIG, real name Christopher Wallace, was shot six months after Tupac Shakur’s drive-by death; a popular theory holds that Wallace’s murder was payback for Shakur’s. A now-retired detective on the Wallace case tells CNN he believes Suge Knight, head of Shakur’s label Death Row Records, ordered the hit on Wallace—and that off-duty police officers working for the record company may also have been involved. "I think I was getting too close to the truth," he says, but the former chief of police calls the idea of a cover-up “absurd.” (More Notorious B.I.G. stories.)