The Murder of Biggie Smalls
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| Author | Cathy Scott |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | True crime, Biography |
| Publisher | St. Martin's Press |
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Publication date
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October 11, 2000 |
| Media type | Hardcover |
| Pages | 210 |
| ISBN | |
The Murder of Biggie Smalls is a non-fiction true crime book by author and journalist Cathy Scott. Published in October 2000 by St. Martin's Press, it covers the March 9, 1997, murder of Christopher Wallace in a drive-by shooting.
The book includes a chapter about accusations from fellow rapper Tupac Shakur, that Biggie, 24, and his producer, Sean "Diddy" Combs, were responsible for Tupac being injured during a 1994 shooting at New York City's Quad Studios, where Biggie was recording that same night. Smalls denied the accusation, as did Combs, and no arrests were ever made in the case. In September 1996, Shakur, 25, was shot a second time, this time in Las Vegas. Shakur died six days later. That murder, too, remains unsolved, which Scott covered in The Killing of Tupac Shakur.
In what was promoted as a Sunday series with "exclusive information" in the Los Angeles Times, the article quoted a single source saying Biggie Smalls had been in Las Vegas the night Shakur was murdered and that Smalls had paid for and ordered the hit against Shakur. When Voletta Wallace, Smalls' mother, gave proof to the Times that her son had, in fact, been in a New York studio recording music the night Shakur was shot, the newspaper retracted the story and ultimately removed it from its website. Scott commented on the article in a Las Vegas CityLife column. "Wallace was a rapper, not a killer," she wrote. "He was an only child who attended private Catholic school and was raised by an over-protective single mom. While Wallace spewed violence in his songs, he wasn't a street thug like Shakur."
People magazine interviewed Scott about the claim, quoting her as saying, "It's easy to point a finger at a dead guy. The dead can't sue."TruTV's "Crime Library" quoted one possible scenario from the book that Combs could have been responsible for Smalls' death because "dead stars sell records without the bothersome upkeep."
An earlier article in the L.A. Times, which accused Tupac's music producer, Suge Knight, and a rogue Los Angeles Police Department officer as also being involved in Smalls' murder, the informant for the article recanted his claims and described himself to the Times as "a paranoid schizophrenic."
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