DoctorOz: Tupac & Biggie Murders - What Crime Scenes Reveal

Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, they're two of the biggest names in hip-hop and both were mysteriously gunned down just six months apart. It's the biggest unsolved mystery in music history. Today, the anatomy of a scandal. With the help of a forensic criminologist, we are recreating the moments leading up to their deaths. We have the autopsy record and we have the science. So today we're answering the question, could these hip hop legends have been saved? Reporter Michael Yeo has the story. Yeah, boy. In the 1970s, hip hop emerged from the South Bronx, resonating as the soundtrack of the streets. By the 1980s, LA-based gangsta rap exploded in popularity with social authenticity, promoting an East Coast-West Coast music rivalry soon became a way for competing record labels and their unofficial affiliated gangs to build up reputations and increase record sales. Tupac Shakur on Suge Knight's Death Row Records and Biggie Smalls on Sean Combs' Bad Boy Records will become rap royalty, the faces and overwhelming bases for the bi-coastal beef. Even though the two stars started as friends, for nearly a year, tempers and tensions between the two camps flared as the rappers exchanged insults through their music and labels, threatening each other at award shows, concerts, and in interviews. September 7th, 1996. Las Vegas. Tupac and his entourage are leaving a boxing match on the way to the club with Suge Knight behind the wheel. They're paused at an intersection when a white Cadillac pulls alongside their sedan and fires shots at Shakur. Tupac is hit multiple times with a .40 caliber Glock handgun. He was rushed to the hospital but died six days later from his injuries. He was just 25 years old. Many speculated his rival, Biggie Smalls, was to blame. Biggie denied any involvement and continued to make hit records and performing to sold-out arenas. Six months later, at the age of 24, Biggie would be dead. Shot to death March 9, 1997, in Los Angeles after an awards show. Witnesses claim the driver of an Impala rolled down his window, drew a 9mm pistol, and fired at Biggie's SUV, hitting him four times while he sat in the passenger seat. Biggie was rushed to the hospital and pronounced dead at 1.15 a.m. To this day, both murders, with their striking similarities, remain unsolved. For two decades, countless theories have surrounded their untimely deaths. Today, who really killed Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls? Reporter Michael Yeo joins me now. Why, why, why is the public still so invested in these murders all these years later? Well, rap wasn't a lifestyle back then in the 90s. Rap was, you know, a very niche audience. I love rap music. When Tupac and Biggie died, I was devastated. But it was niche. It was East Coast versus West Coast. You got to remember, Tupac was a showman. He was an actor. He was in a pop rap group first called Digital Underground. And then he became a gangster rapper. So I think Pac was the showman. Where Biggie was kind of like, I want to make music, I want to go home and live a great life. So those two collided, media jumped in, East Coast versus West Coast, and then the streets got involved. And that's when it got dangerous. Now, I think it's so big today is because it's easy to get music, Dr. Oz. You know, so kids are still hearing Biggie and Tupac listening to it and things they said in the songs. are still relevant today on the streets. You all know there's probably been endless speculation, countless conspiracy theories about how and why these two men were killed under such suspicious circumstances. So you're an expert at this, Michael. Break it down for us. Give us the most popular theories out there. Two of the big popular theories. First, Suge Knight. He owned Death Row Records, a label that Pac was signed to. A lot of people were saying that Pac wanted to leave the label and that they were feuding a lot. And Pac and his music always talked about dying. So a lot of people are speculating that Suge was like, okay, I can kill him, make money off his death, and he can't go to another record label and be competition. Like, none of these have been proven, but that's speculation out there. Pretty nefarious. Yeah, absolutely. And what about the thought that these were gang killings? Well, there is a big rumor that Biggie paid $1 million to have Pac knocked off because they were always feuding. And Pac... Pac was actually involved with Faith Evans, a person he dated and was married to. So a lot of people were saying that could have happened, but nothing's been proven on that either. It's just a bunch of unanswered questions, and nobody wants to come forward and talk And I saw this other really out of left field rumor that Tupac was still alive. Yes. Now, that was ridiculous when I heard that. In 2012, a photo came out of him and Rihanna. Thank you, Donna. Of course, a couple weeks later, they found it to be photoshopped. And a lot of people saying he just moved to Cuba. Instead of, he faked his death and moved to Cuba with his arm. I wish it was that easy. But there are continuous additional rumors. It doesn't stop. It keeps coming. So up next, a forensic criminologist weighs in. We're going to unravel the never-before-seen details leading up to these shootings. And ask him the question, it's a big question. Could Biggie or Tupac have been saved? Today, the anatomy of a scandal. We're taking a scientific and forensic look at the mysterious deaths of rap icons Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. Crimes that changed the music industry forever, and they remain unsolved even to this day. Over two decades ago, both men were gunned down six months apart in their cars while parked at traffic intersections. So what do we need to uncover in order to be able to finally solve these murders? We need to know the motives, and to do that, I feel like we have to know more about who the killers could be. So there's a way of doing this, is to bring in people that are experts in forensics. So come on over. We're going to break down what we actually know. And criminologist Dr. Laura Petler is going to help us. And she's a forensic criminologist. Yes. Which really gives her the gusto. Thank you for being here. Hi. Thank you for having me. So she has retreaded in front of us both crime scenes. In our crime lab here, we've got Tupac's murder here and Biggie's murder here. Two events spaced six months apart. But as I look at them, they seem eerily similar. I see intersections, cars heading into them. That's what the papers are reporting. Right. And Dr. Oz, they are at first glance, very similar looking. They both are outdoors. They're both on busy roads. They're both at traffic lights and both victims are waiting for the red light to turn green. So there are lots of similarities. But you're a world expert at this as a forensic criminologist. So what do you see that we don't see when you look at these cases? So many things. Tupac's murder is very, very different from Biggie's. So let's start with Tupac's and go through that. When we're talking about Tupac's murder, first it's important to recognize that Tupac was at an event that evening and then after he left the event, he was going to perform at a nightclub that was down the road. So he went back and he got ready and about three hours later, he finds himself here at this stoplight. He has his entourage behind him and Tupac is seated in the passenger seat of this first car. As they're waiting for the red light to turn green, a car full of girls pulls up onto the left side of Tupac's car. Tupac and the girls and people in the car, they all start talking to each other, flirting with each other, and just having a really good time. He's inviting them to come to see him perform. As this is all going on, a white late model Cadillac begins to very, very eerily creep up and sneak up on Tupac's car, passing the other two vehicles. And gets into this area here and begins firing. Ended up firing 12 to 14 rounds into Tupac's car, impacting Tupac's body at least six times. And what's interesting is then this car makes the getaway. So that seems, first of all, only half the bullets hit his target. That's right. So it's very, very interesting that from this perspective, you have this car shooting, the window goes down, the driver's side window goes down, the shooter takes the gun, puts it outside the window and starts shooting through the front driver's side window. There's a large distribution of bullets going all across the side of this car. This looks like a very inexperienced shooter. It doesn't look like someone that has planned this. It doesn't look like something that has a lot of A lot of characteristics of something that's well organized. How does that change the way you look at Tupac's death? When I first heard about the death, I thought it was a hired hit. I thought it was professional. But looking at this, it looked like it was an accident. The girls even pulled up to him. It's like a coincidence. And these guys almost are like, oh, there he is. Perfect opportunity. Perfect. It almost feels like it's revenge. It's getting back. It's a bunch of anger in this. It's not planned. And they'd had a fight earlier in the evening, so that sort of fits that a little bit. Yes, there was a fight earlier that evening. When Tupac was at MGM, he got into a fight in the lobby with another individual. So there was preceding conflict right before the death, within three hours of his death. And it has been said that was this car full of girls a distraction? Was it intentionally, you know, set up like this to distract him? It's not. ...characteristic in their culture, in this type of culture, to set someone up. They go in, they shoot, they leave. And by the way he shot, I mean, these people were in danger, too, because... Absolutely, and why are you going to put yourself in the path of the bullet? All right, let's compare this to Biggie Smalls. Six months later, again, layman in this regard, I'm at an intersection. Yes. You've got Biggie, B's the Biggie. Okay, so what's going down? So what happens is, is that let's just kind of start back here. Biggie is at an event this evening, and he then leaves because the party, after party gets shut down. So they pull out from the event, two, two suburbans basically pull out, or SUVs. They pull up to this light, it's yellow, and the first car goes and parks over here, the first car of his entourage. Biggie pulls up here. This black impala comes alongside And as Biggie's sitting at the light, the black Impala comes up and stops. The driver is also the shooter in this case. And this shooter is precise, and he shoots straight into the passenger side of the car, impacting Biggie. Now, it looks like he shot about six times, and Biggie was shot, actually, he was hit four times. Oh, let's start with Tupac Shakur. I actually have the last photo of him, there he is, right before his death. So, Laura, take us through what happened that evening. So, to set the foundation for this, in Tupac's case, it was a frenzied attack. It was spontaneous. It was emotional. And like Michael mentioned, it was angry. It doesn't take 12 bullets to kill somebody, Dr. Oz. It takes one. But they fired 12 times. So it was like, I don't know which one of these bullets is going to hit you, but one of them is going to hit you. It's an inexperienced shooter. These, the shape of that bullet hole right there is so interesting because it shows that the shooter is precisely perpendicular to the car door. He's shooting. It's like a sharpshooter. He's a trained shooter. He's a marksman. This is very calculated. He's calm. He's put together. He's not, it's not an excitable situation at all. And it looks like. He knows he only wants to hit one person in that car. Absolutely. Not anyone else. It's a purposeful, targeted victim. Both of them are targeted victims, but this one is more consistent with contract. All right, so I did some digging. I wanted to actually see the autopsy reports. And so my team was able to pull this out. This is actually the autopsy report, 23 pages long, on Biggie Smalls. Now, here's the thing. A verified autopsy report has never been released for Tupac Shakur. Right. Think about that. Makes you wonder, doesn't it, everybody? Up next, could Biggie Smalls have been saved? What his autopsy report tells us. And when we come back, we got all that. Don't go away. I'm back with reporter Michael Yeo and forensic criminologist Dr. Laura Petler unraveling the death of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls. And when it comes to Tupac, no autopsy has been released. I'll say it again, there is no autopsy for us to look at. My team tried to obtain it, we couldn't. To me, I gotta say, it is sort of strange. That he died six days after a gunshot wound. Usually, if he's shot, you stop the bleeding. Right. And then that's it. In his case, what I'm being told, indirectly, is he bled, but later. And I know he was trying to leave the hospital, so the whole thing is a bit strange to me. He was sedated. He was in a sedated coma to keep him calm. So, that's Tupac. But Biggie's case is a little different. In Biggie's case, we were able to get his autopsy report and we got asked the question, could he have been saved? So, how long after Biggie was shot did he pass? He died within about an hour. Biggie died within about an hour. So let's go through what happened. In his autopsy report, and I pulled these up, there's actually pictures in here. Of exactly how it happened, but I actually made this little illustration that I think might be more beneficial to you So this is the human body and let's focus in on the part of the body that we care the most about which is his chest Okay, so the entry point was down around the right hip and it exited up by the left shoulder went through here So you might think how does that happen? So you sort of have to rotate the diagram like this Which is sort of a strange way for a bullet to go. So, Laura, why would the bullet progress in this kind of a weird trajectory? Because when the shooter began shooting into the car, it's natural human instinct to try to get away from the attack. So, Biggie leaned over toward the driver, which put his body in a position for the driver to have, the bullet to have impacted from his hip going up to his shoulder. So, if he hadn't shied away crazily. He might have survived. Maybe more lateral. It could have been. It might have been lower, but it still could have caused multiple organ damage as this one did, too. Well, this is the perfect shot. Again, pointing out the fact this was not a crime of passion. No. Because this bullet, just to show you what happened, went through the hip, through this structure, which is the colon. That's the gallbladder there. That's the liver. Liver's a big organ. Went right through the liver, and then they kept going north. Now, if you look north of the liver, there's the diaphragm. But then there's this structure, which is a really important one, the heart, right there. And if I rotate this forward so you get your bearings back again, you'll see what was going down. It went through the heart. which led to a lot of bleeding obviously because the heart's pumping a couple liters a minute through this lung and then up into the the left upper part of his chest up where the shoulder is that's a lot of organs a colon a liver a diaphragm it's the heart itself the lungs there's a lot of organs hurt at once which makes it devastating so i've got to say from a medical perspective there is no way no way you could stop that much internal hemorrhaging from a bullet And what's fascinating to me is you see these two stories, and I realize how different they really are, which, Michael, takes me to the issue of the public. Will they ever stop? Trying to figure out what happened to these folks. No, because these are the two biggest rap icons, and they're timeless. Everybody always references them if you're a rapper or in music. So they'll never go away. And that's one thing I'm very happy about, because they meant a lot to me growing up. Thank you both for being here. Thank you. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you never miss out on new videos to live the good life.