Parents of school shooter face trial; New evidence alleges motive in Tupac’s shooting — TCD Sidebar
In this episode of True Crime Daily The Sidebar Podcast
Matt Murphy joins host Joshua Ritter to break down the biggest cases making headlines across the nation. They discuss the renewed investigation into a mother’s disappearance after her body is discovered, the parents of a school shooter charged criminally for negligence, and new evidence revealed by prosecutors in the shooting death of Tupac Shakur.
Tweet your questions for future episodes to Joshua Ritter using the hashtag #TCDSidebar.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:00:10]
Hello and welcome to The Sidebar, presented by True Crime Daily, taking you inside the courtrooms of high profile and notorious cases from across the country. I'm your host, Joshua Ritter. I'm a criminal defense lawyer based in Los Angeles and previously an LA County prosecutor for nearly a decade. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at @joshuaritteresq or at joshuaritter.com. We are recording this on Friday, October 6th, 2023.
In this week's episode, a landmark case is set to go to trial as prosecutors seek to hold the parents of a school mass shooter, Ethan Crumbley, responsible for their son's actions. Also, we break down new evidence released in the shooting death of Tupac Shakur, uncovering what was the cause of this decades old unsolved crime. But first, the discovery of a missing mother sparks renewed speculation that her husband had a hand in her death.
Today, we are very excited to be joined by Matt Murphy, a former prosecutor and current criminal defense attorney. Matt is also a legal analyst and ABC correspondent. I have personally been looking forward to this, Matt. I've followed your career since you were a prosecutor in Orange County, and I'm a big fan of the work that you do on television. So welcome to the show.
Matt Murphy:
[00:01:26]
Thanks, Josh. Happy to be here.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:01:29]
Before we jump in, tell listeners a little bit about your background and what your current practice involves.
Matt Murphy:
[00:01:34]
So I spent 26 years as a deputy DA in Orange County. I spent four years in the sexual assault unit, a little bit in gangs, but I finished out my career with 17 years in the homicide unit. So what's a little different about Orange County, the way they do it for the vertical units, that's like sexual assault, homicide gangs, you actually get assigned cities. So in the homicide unit, we would go to our own crime scenes, which is a little bit different.
So we'd get the call in the middle of the night. I'd roll out with whoever my assigned investigator was, meet with the detectives, and I was responsible for the cities of Laguna Beach, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Irvine. And so those those cities don't generate a ton of volume. But when the murders happen, they tend to be really twisted and kind of bizarre. So did some high-profile cases. When it was time to wrap up my career in the DA's office, I got an awesome offer from ABC News to do some contributions and news analysis and it's been really fun.
So I spend a large part of my current practice is actually defending police officers. I'm one of the lawyers for the Fraternal Order of Police. So when everything from like admin things, with arguments with girlfriends, when the neighbors call the cops, all the way up to homicide cases involving police officers and officer involved shootings was a big part of my job at the DA's office. And then it became kind of a larger and growing part of my current practice.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:03:02]
Fantastic. Well, we're going to call on that vast experience of yours. And I know that you also, in the work that you do in legal analysis, follow these cases very closely. So let's just jump right in. The first case is out of Salida, Colorado, where remains of Suzanne Morphew have been discovered nearly three years after the wife and mother of two teenage girls went missing.
Morphew, who went missing on Mother's Day 2020, was last heard from after she allegedly went for a bike ride near her and her husband's remote Colorado home. Her husband, Barry Morphew, immediately became the prime suspect in the case, with prosecutors alleging that Suzanne sought a separation from her husband prior to her death. A year after Suzanne's death, Barry was officially charged with his wife's murder.
However, the prosecution was fraught with hang ups, including a sanction after prosecutors allegedly failed to hand over evidence to Barry's defense. The charges against Morphew have eventually been dropped, and the husband subsequently filed a $15 million lawsuit against county officials alleging his constitutional rights were violated. The discovery of Suzanne's remains has rekindled suspicion about Barry's involvement, causing his legal team to issue a statement denying any culpability in the death.
Officials have not publicly indicated in what condition the remains were found, and currently no charges have been filed in the case. Matt, I'm hoping that you could first, for the benefit of listeners, talk to us about what this so-called discovery violation on the part of the prosecution, they're calling it a Brady violation. What is that? How serious is it? Could this case even survive that?
Matt Murphy:
[00:04:50]
So Brady is, it's Brady versus Maryland. It's a federal case essentially standing for the proposition that the prosecution has to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense. And it's kind of one of the -- it's one of the hallmarks of criminal justice in the United States. And it's a point of sort of common-sense fairness, where if the prosecution, during their investigation or any part of the prosecution team has something that helps or is exculpatory for the defense. And then those words are different.
But essentially, if it is something that can prove the innocence or may tend that way for a criminal defendant, they've got to turn it over. And they have to turn it over their statutory guidelines in every state that require that it be turned over within a certain period of time. What's interesting about Brady is that the knowledge is imputed to the prosecution. So what that means is you can have a prosecutor who may have no subjective knowledge.
Like say, it's a cold case and there's some police officer that was involved in the investigation 20 years earlier. If they have a notebook or some photographs that they took that are sitting in their garage ten years after they retired, the prosecutor is imputed to know about that. And so it is their responsibility. And the courts do that to make sure that every prosecutor, there's no such thing as willful ignorance, like they have an affirmative duty to do their best to try to make sure that all exculpatory information or evidence is turned over to the defense.
So there's been a lot of developments in that, especially in California recently. But that's the fundamental idea. If you've got stuff that helps the defense, you've got to turn it over in its most simple terms.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:06:28]
Okay. Thank you. That was very helpful. So this is what I'm curious about in this case. The way that you're describing it, and I don't know if we're quite sure what that evidence was that they failed to turn over. But that evidence to me, in my view, many times in these Brady situations, that evidence may not have played a role even in the filing decision of the DA's when they filed the case.
So, yeah, it was a problem back then. They dismissed the case. I'm wondering, though, however, do you feel that that flaw is so fatal that they can't get past it to file new charges if they wanted to? Again, because I can't imagine that that so fundamentally changed their view of the case as far as their suspicions of the husband or is it something that might just be the end of this case? And regardless of the fact that they just discovered her body, it's not going to change their filing decisions moving forward?
Matt Murphy:
[00:07:27]
Well, I think that the nature of this evidence is what's really interesting here. And short answer is, I don't think it does. I think that any Brady violation is certainly cured by a dismissal. Most states allow felonies to be refiled. So the defense has it now. They can't complain that they've been prejudiced. Or they could make that argument, I don't see that going anywhere. What's interesting about this case is, is the nature of the evidence.
And one of the things about what we're doing now, Josh, you and I, both it's like whenever we're involved in one of these cases as prosecutors, we know every detail. And like we'd go to the scenes, we've got the detectives, we've got all the reports, we've got everything at our fingertips. Doing this kind of commentary, like I would love to read these files and know exactly what they have, but we're always limited somewhat to what's released in court and what's released to the media. And so I'd be very curious to read these files. But the nature of the evidence that they allegedly didn't turn over is kind of a bombshell.
Apparently, there's one of the investigators publicly stated that they found DNA on the glove box of her car that matches three unsolved sexual assault cases, two in Arizona and one in Chicago. And that's a big deal. A lot of people don't know that -- and I'm sure you've had this, too, Josh. Like you get hit up with the question like, hey, when you're a prosecutor, looking back now, just between us, did you ever prosecute anybody that you thought was innocent? And it's a well-intended question. It's like if it wasn't so kind of fundamentally insulting, it would be kind of almost charming, right.
And the answer to that is no, because prosecutors have a sacrosanct ethical duty never to proceed on a case unless they subjectively believe to every soul, every bit of their soul and every cell in their body that the person is guilty. And when a prosecutor receives evidence and you're supposed to keep an open mind throughout the entire pendency of the case. If you receive evidence from the defense, from an investigative twist or anything like that, that causes you to entertain a doubt, even if you doubt the ability to convict. So there's two parts to that. One is you got to believe the guy did it. Second is, you got to believe the evidence is strong enough to actually convict the person to convince a jury. Either of those two things are absent, your ethical duty as a prosecutor is to dismiss the case.
So I think that when they received that evidence, I think that the main problem with that is they started thinking, okay, how does this factor in now, there's problems with that from a defense perspective, too, because she apparently was on a bike ride. And so how the guy's DNA, if it's related to her murder, wound up on her glove box. If she's on a bike ride, that's a big problem. And I don't know.
And I think they dismissed it because they wanted to sort it all out. They publicly said we want more time to find her body, but there are reasons why her husband was charged. It's one of those things. Like he said things apparently in the investigation to investigators that were not true and that, as you know, Josh, in domestic violence, homicides are the bread and butter of every murder prosecutor. I mean, it's always about half your caseload or more.
And when I would get those calls at 3:00 in the morning to go to a crime scene, chances were overwhelming that I was going to go to somebody's house and somebody's husband or wife was going to be dead on the floor. And commonly, the spouse is the one who did it. But we also know that weird things happen, and this man is presumed innocent. He enjoys that presumption now. And I think there's a lot of question marks. And of course, if there's reasonable doubt, you can't proceed on that case.
So it's a really interesting one. I would be curious to see if there's any evidence in the skeletal remains of the wife of what killed her, whether it was a knife, whether it was a gun. There's no way they're getting any DNA off that, right? She was found in a shallow grave, but mostly scattered. So the forensic term for that, of course, is she was scavenged by animals. It means the animals got tornadoes. Her bones are scattered. So whoever killed her, the chances of finding DNA on that are virtually nil. But they could find evidence. I would love to see the reports on that. There could be a shell casing perhaps, or there could be evidence. It could be a bullet somewhere in there. We just don't know.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:11:41]
Yeah. Yeah. I want to get to that point, too, that you made about them saying that they're going to wait until the discovery of her body before they kind of reevaluate, but that does change things a bit. If this evidence that they fail to turn over, if they were aware of it at the time or not, of the presence of some sort of evidence of someone who's been linked to some other sexually related crimes being found on her glove box. I mean, we're not talking about glove boxes inside her vehicle. To me, that means somebody made contact with her vehicle in some sort of meaningful way. This is not something that you would think to be accidental or explained in some sort of innocent way.
I know I'm doing a lot of kind of connecting fairly spaced apart dots here. But I'm wondering, had they known about it beforehand, would it have affected their belief that the husband was involved anyways? Because sometimes, you know this too, you're just going to find these weird anomalies in cases, and that doesn't necessarily mean that your main suspect is not your main suspect.
Matt Murphy:
[00:12:49]
No, that's absolutely right. I mean, look, I had a case out of Costa Mesa. It was a serial killer who was active, murdered a 22-year-old pregnant Mormon woman, a horrific case, raped her, sodomized, or the whole deal. And it was a complete mystery. Murdered broad daylight, large apartment complex. Nobody saw anything. And we found a fingerprint in the kitchen. And we know the killer had gotten the knife out of the kitchen on the refrigerator. And it was -- it came back to a convicted felon, and it was like, okay, we're in business. This is like -- I mean, that's like straight out of the game of clue, right? You got a fingerprint. It's like Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe.
Turns out that we ran the print, sure enough, convicted felon out of Kentucky. And he worked at the manufacturing plant that made the refrigerators. And he'd never been to California. And he was totally innocent of our murder. And we didn't charge him. But that's an example of how if this guy, if the -- it's entirely possible that guy is working at a car wash. So these things come up where there are anomalies. Like you said, you just you don't know. It's a fascinating case that went out of Colorado. And it's horrible. By all accounts, she was a really nice lady.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:14:07]
Yeah. And you and I both know, too, that even though it might be an anomaly, we feel it is that way from a prosecutor's perspective, in the hands of a very skilled defense attorney, they're going to make more than just small, hey, out of the fact that fingerprint was found in her vehicle. Yes, you're right. She may have been, by all accounts, killed while on a bike ride, but they're going to somehow use that to the fullest that they can in placing some sort of seeds of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. So we'll have to see how this all continues to play out. And we will keep a close eye on it.
Let's jump over now to Detroit, Michigan, where a groundbreaking legal precedent is being set as prosecutors seek to place responsibility for a school shooting on the perpetrator's parents. James and Jennifer Crumbley, parents of Oxford School shooter Ethan Crumbley are charged with involuntary manslaughter and are now headed to trial after an appeals court ruling clearing the path.
Crumbley, the son pleaded guilty to charges of murder and terrorism for his perpetration of the shooting and is set to be sentenced this December. However, prosecutors are not stopping there. They now allege that the parents ignored obvious warning signs and made the gun used in the fatal shooting accessible to Ethan. The defense has countered that mistakes were made with the child but maintained that the shooting was not foreseeable and that their actions or inactions should not rise to the level of involuntary manslaughter. Ethan is set to be sentenced on December 8th. No trial date has been set yet for his parents.
Matt, I'm just going to let you jump right in on this. What are your thoughts on this? In this prosecution, is this a bridge too far or is this exactly what prosecutors should be doing in these types of cases?
Matt Murphy:
[00:16:03]
I mean, this is a fascinating one, Josh. This really is. This goes to the center of one of the most hotly debated topics in America right now, and that's the Second Amendment. And as you know, as an attorney, it's one of the most widely misunderstood constitutional provisions. A lot of people think, even a lot of judges think that Second Amendment is all about self-defense. And it's not. It's actually about resisting political tyranny. We all have the inherent right of self-defense. So a lot of people even involved in high levels of that debate don't understand the constitutional underpinnings of it. And it's a very, very complex issue.
So I think that our country is so divided right now that whenever -- it's almost like there's a lot of topics, not just the Second Amendment, where it just seems like for those of us, and I definitely consider myself a part of this and I hope I'm rational, but those of us in the middle and a lot of these issues that are not like ideologically super aligned with one side or another. Like public safety, I mean, these poor kids at this school kind of requires a rational discussion. And it's very difficult to have on so many topics, but particularly the Second Amendment, because the positions are so hardened, and we have the demonization of all disagreement in America today it seems like. It's very difficult to have, even among friends, to have a rational conversation about some of these issues because everything is so emotional.
So that said, this is fascinating. So just legally, the concept of an involuntary manslaughter, what that means is that the parents are being charged with criminal negligence. And so we are talking about essentially a case that is based on what is normally a civil or a tort concept. Like how negligent were these parents? Did it rise to the level of being criminal? And a lot of that boils down to what's reasonably foreseeable.
I did a little deep dive into this case this morning. I think that these parents, they made some really bad decisions on this. First of all, he's 15 and apparently, he's suffering from some mental illness. And what I read is that they actually purchased this gun for him and he's 15 years old. So right away, that's a pretty big problem when he later uses it in a school shooting. But it gets way worse.
He's, apparently, has told his parents that he's starting to suffer from audio and maybe even visual hallucinations, which are the first stages of schizophrenia. And this is one of those things where wherever you fall on the Second Amendment and guns, when it comes to the mentally ill, I think the rationale of us in the middle, I am perfectly comfortable seating Second Amendment rights, when you have a mentally ill person living with access to firearms, because we see how that turns out over and over again.
And that's not trying to take rifles away from people that are law abiding citizens. That's right in what I would consider rational public safety efforts. And that fundamentally is what prosecutors are supposed to do. So the defense has some really interesting quotes out there about how you don't stretch the law to accommodate horrible facts. And as attorneys, you and I both agree with that, certainly, but this is a really old concept. It's like were they so negligent that they're responsible?
And I'll tell you what, apparently, they brought these parents in. For those of you who don't know the story, they bring the parents in for a teacher conference because they found a drawing written by their son. And he's 15 years old. And it was a drawing of the gun and a dead body with bleeding. And it was something like, the voices won't stop, Help me. Some words to that effect.
And I'll tell you what, at that moment, the fact, like the teachers don't know that they've actually purchased a firearm for this guy or this kid. And the idea that that boy, and he's a boy, has access to a firearm and parents didn't check the backpack. If this landed on my desk, Josh, I'm kind of with the prosecution on this one. I mean, especially when you consider the families of those kids. you shot 11 people and killed four, and it's like they got to do better.
And what's interesting, if you look at other countries, South Africa has a really interesting approach to the possession of firearms and to the ownership of firearms. And South Africa, if you want a gun, you can get a gun as long as you're incentivized to live a good life. Like you can't have any violence. You can't have any domestic violence. You can't have any criminal history.
So if you're a law abiding citizen going through things the right way, you can get a gun in South Africa and you get a license per gun. Okay. So each gun has its own license and you get -- that includes a license to carry. You get the gun, you can carry it in your car, you can carry it on your person. You get that gun, but you are responsible for that gun.
And if that gun is taken away from you and used in any sort of a crime, you have both civil and criminal liability for failing to properly store, care for, guard, make sure that that gun is never in the hands of somebody that isn't mentally fit to use it, which is exactly what we have here. And that's an interesting concept. And South Africa has a lot of problems, but that law makes a lot of sense. It's like, yeah, you got a gun, you are responsible for this gun.
And it's not really what we have here in the United States. So this case, it will be interesting because I think a lot of people, if they realize they have skin in the game and they can potentially be prosecuted. And look, these parents have spent two years in custody. I'm sure you saw that, Josh? I was shocked to see that. Two years in custody because their bond was set at $500,000, which is a high bond. The fact that they're still in is they've already served quite a penalty for this.
I don't know what it's worth. I mean, it's certainly not worth like life in prison for them, in my opinion. But this is one of those things I would not be at all surprised to see now that the Michigan Supreme Court has ruled that they can go to trial if they attempt to plea involuntary manslaughter and are convicted felons. Their son is doing, I believe, life without possibility of parole in Michigan right now. So they've lost their son, two years in custody. They've certainly lost any employment they have. They probably lost their house. They've paid a substantial consequence for that. But I'm kind of pro consequence under these circumstances. I hope I don't offend anybody by saying that. I don't want to step on any third rails, but I'm kind of with the prosecution on this one.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:23:02]
Yeah. No, very well put. It is a very nuanced conversation. I think a lot of people immediately hear about this case and they jump to their respective kind of corners on how they feel about it, and they have pretty strong feelings. But when you really begin to think about it and dive into it, it's far more dwelling in that murky middle that it's just incredibly nuanced. And because, one, listen, you and I agree, we both sympathize with the idea that the shootings are awful. It's an epidemic in our country. Everyone is trying their level best to do anything that they possibly can to try to curb this, including prosecutors. And I applaud their efforts to try to be more creative about it and seeing what more can be done to hold people responsible and try to stop this from happening.
Where I begin to get uneasy, and you can understand this, having dealt in the criminal world as long as you have, that when you start to hold somebody responsible for the actions of someone else, the independent actions, we're not talking about a typical aiding and abetting situation where they were the driver, they were along for the ride. They were under they -- were in on the plan. We're talking about someone who, yes, did some things that I think we can all agree are negligent, but that someone else took it upon themselves to act so independently that caused these deaths.
But now you're not just charging them with negligence, you're charging them with responsibility for the deaths. This is involuntary manslaughter. This isn't child negligence or negligence related to the handling of a firearm. This is involuntary manslaughter for the deaths of those children who lost their lives. And yes, everybody wants somebody to be held responsible. He's going away for the rest of his life without parole.
But do we want the law to continue to extend its arm to this degree? And I hear everything you're saying, and I agree with it in large part that, yeah, people do need to be held responsible for this type of stuff, especially if you're putting a weapon in the hands of somebody who's exhibiting such signs of mental illness. But again, it was independent actions that he took and okay, well, then the teachers were aware of some of this. The administrators were aware of some of this. Where do we start drawing the line? And we're in the world of the criminal law and you don't know where the lines are. That's where I begin to get a little uneasy.
Matt Murphy:
[00:25:42]
I agree. It's a very dangerous slippery slope. And I think the answer to that, hopefully, is it's a case-by-case basis, and really has to be. And this is one, what put me over the edge on this is the idea that the same day of the shooting, the parents were in there in the school, and the teacher show them this drawing and the kid had the gun in his backpack and nobody checked. That's kind of what put it over the top to me. Like if he's having these mental health issues, I think that that firearm needed to be secure out of his reach and that is a responsibility.
But everything you just said, I agree with 100 percent. We have to be very, very careful. And look, that going full circle back to the Second Amendment, that really is, that's the purpose of the Second Amendment in the first place, like legislative tyranny. That's the point of it by the founding fathers like you want. It's almost a pacifier. I think as the argument goes in the pro camp, for the pro rifle camp, the ideas that you, people, if they feel that they have a last option ability to resist tyrannical imposition of rules by government. This is, as their argument goes, not my argument, but their argument that it actually pacifies them. And as opposed to creating the desperate idea in their own minds that they don't have an outlet, there's no way to resist. These laws are horrible. And that's when we would run into trouble. It's a very interesting theoretical debate back and forth on that.
But back to that, as you know, Josh, having done it, the vast majority of murders are I think it's actually, the latest statistics on that from the FBI, of all the homicides committed nationwide, I think it's less than 4 percent are committed actually with rifles, a substantial portion of committed with handguns. But people have been killing each other for millennia, long before the invention of firearms. And I had a -- I mean the worst slaughter I ever had in my 17 years was a guy with a samurai sword who went into a Ralphs Supermarket in Irvine. And he was, again, mentally ill guy, Samurai sword. And what actually stopped the slaughter was an AR 15, actually shot him and killed him.
It is a very, very complex issue. And we have such a hardening of positions, like you said, that when it comes to like that rational, like, hey, where can we meet, and all agree, I really think a good first stop is the mentally ill. I think that I disagree with anybody that says that if you live with somebody who's mentally ill, especially somebody that's drawing pictures of guns and dead bodies, that you do not have a paramount responsibility to ensure they don't have access to firearms. I think that's where the prosecution is coming from.
But also, I hope they got some trial game because they're, like you said, they're going to be up against it. The defense lawyers look pretty good. And if you're going to go forward with something like this, you better have the game to bring it home, but it's going to be interesting to watch. It's a horrible case. All of these school shootings are absolutely horrible. But I just feel like something constructive has to start happening on these. And maybe this is where it happens. Maybe this is one small step in the right direction where we all win, sober, carefully applied application of involuntary manslaughter against people, and doesn't have to be parents, can be roommates, maybe boyfriends, girlfriends, somebody that has the responsibility to ensure that they're mentally ill kid, boyfriend, husband, whatever, doesn't have access to something that can slaughter innocent people. I don't know.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:29:26]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it is. I hesitate to use the word fascinating, but it is from a legal perspective that it is an incredibly tragic case. And it's unfortunately in a long string of tragic cases. But you're right, maybe this is that turning point. So we'll continue to keep an eye on that case. Like I said, the trial hasn't been set. We will be watching it closely.
Finally, let's turn to Las Vegas, Nevada, where new evidence continues to come to light in the 1996 shooting death of Tupac Shakur, following a grand jury indictment in the rapper's murder. Dwayne Keffe D Davis was charged with murder last week, followed by a news conference where investigators highlighted Davis' alleged admission to his involvement in media interviews and an autobiography authored years earlier.
Prosecutors have released previously unseen photos taken by investigators the night of the fatal shooting, as well as video following an altercation at the MGM Grand between Shakur, Suge Knight and a rival gang, of which Davis' nephew was a member. We have that footage and we're going to show some of that to you now. In that video, Shakur and Knight are seen at the front of a large entourage after a fight allegedly focused around the theft of a high value Death Row Records necklace. Important to note, murder charges in Nevada apply beyond the perpetrators of murder, extending to those who also aid and abet in the murder.
All right, Matt, they've had this evidence for years. The stuff that at least it seems like they're highlighting and hanging their hat on in making this filing decision. They've been convening a grand jury for three months. What do you think took so long in this indictment? Was there an actual turning point here? What are your thoughts?
Matt Murphy:
[00:31:16]
Well, this is fascinating to me. This whole thing is fascinating to me. One of the LAPD investigators who was in charge of the Biggie Smalls investigation had a great quote out there. And there's a lot of overlap between these two cases. And as we know, like the East Coast, West Coast, the rap rivalries, the diss songs, all that stuff. And he said this case has never been unsolved. It's been unprosecuted, which is a very poignant comment to make. And I think that the cops in LA deal with that a lot. Especially in the current era of George Gascon as the DA of L.A.
Like you have dedicated police officers who put cases together and show up at the suspect and the case goes unprosecuted because either, there can be a variety of reasons for that. Lately, a lot of politics come in play, which is totally not right in my opinion. But a lot of times also, as you know, you can get people that are just, they don't have the gumption to do it. It looks too hard. There's some excellent prosecutors out there, as you know, Josh, but some of our colleagues wanted to work a little less hard than others. And sometimes, it winds up with people that just don't want to take it on, high profile case, all that.
That said, there's another interview recently of Suge Knight in prison. And Suge Knight is like he talks about the case, and he provides all kinds of information. And he's like, but I ain't testifying. No way. And that is why this case took so long. And Josh, you did hardcore gangs, didn't you? Are you hardcore?
Joshua Ritter:
[00:32:56]
Yeah.
Matt Murphy:
[00:32:56]
Okay. So for those of you who don't know, that means Josh knows what he's talking about for his audience. Gang cases are, it's like the code of the streets and they all embrace this nonsense where the witnesses to those, there's an adage, crimes in hell don't have angels' witnesses, old adage. Right. Well, crimes in the gang world don't have angels' witnesses either. In fact, most of the time it's gangsters like ignite who won't talk.
So the police show up with every intention to do it right. You can have dedicated real good prosecutors like they have in the hardcore gang unit who are ready to to take a run at it. But none of the witnesses cooperate. And then everybody complains, oh, the cops haven't done their job, which is totally unfair. And the police in Las Vegas have gotten a lot of unfair heat, in my opinion, on this, because this guy was identified within days of the shooting back in 1996. And it took so long partially because nobody wanted to cooperate back then.
But another thing that's fascinating to me on this one, Josh, which is just, we're old enough to remember the 90s, right? And like Gangsta rap and N.W.A. Like most of us, at least I did as young men, we had half of our playlists back then were composed of a lot of that kind of music. And it was really kind of glorified. And with the songs and with Biggie and Tupac and the East Coast, West Coast and those diss songs, they're musically very creative and kind of iconic songs now where they're basically talking crap back and forth between the West Coast and the East Coast.
And when you go down the list of the people in that video, like that entourage as they're walking out, or we could even start with the two cars. There are six different men, young men in these two cars. You got Suge Knight driving one who was the owner of Death Row Records, who was one of the like, I mean had to be making money hand over fist in the gangster rap era. You've got Tupac Shakur, who's on the rise, one of the most creative musical talents in American musical history. Right.
Then you've got four other guys. And of those six young men, they're all, almost every one of them is dead. And the other two are either serving lengthy prison sentences or about to. Every person in those two cars is either dead or in custody and mostly dead. And when you go down the list of the guys in that entourage, witness after witness after witness, they're all dead now. So it's like gangster rap. Yeah.
And the truth is, that lifestyle led nowhere. And we were talking about guns a minute ago. Witness after witness, if you go down the list, it's like, oh, he was shot in a drive by, a month later. He was shot in a drive by the following year, unrelated drive by, unrelated shooting. All these guys got murdered or doing life in prison for murder. Not every one of them, but a shockingly high number.
So it's just kind of interesting. We had this moment in time in 1996, and here we are almost three decades later, and we see what that lifestyle brought. I think that's one of the most interesting parts about this.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:36:05]
Yeah. Yeah. You've alluded to it a few times now, too, but one of the interesting parts to me is how at the end of this, 27 years later, it's a gang crime. I mean, you were in the gang unit. You saw this countless amount of times where it's this beef that occurs over something that seems incredibly trivial, that escalates beyond belief. And before you know it, people are getting killed and the repercussions can be felt, in this case, across state lines where people are ending up dead over beef reputation. Somebody feeling slighted, street cred. I mean, it's just, to me it's all these years later, people speculated on it, wanted it to be kind of this bigger thing. And really at the end of the day, it's another, not to be pejorative, but it's another garden variety gang crime.
Matt Murphy:
[00:37:12]
I don't think that's pejorative and I cannot agree more with you. There are books written about this. And I mean, and fascinating books. Like the East Coast, West Coast rivalry between Bad Boy Records and New York City and Death Row. And they almost like became gangs in and of themselves. And you've got the Biggie Small and that murder. That must have been in retaliation. So he must have been.
And the conspiracy theories on this case rival the Kennedy assassination. They really do. I mean, it is so in-depth. There were lawsuits where some of these elaborate theories were brought into a courtroom where family members were suing. And you're absolutely right, this was a stupid, banal gang beef over nothing. And it resulted in the death of this musical talent. We all lost out. I mean, this guy, I don't know, it's kind of like musically, you think about Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix and like, what songs would they have written if they hadn't OD'd, right? Or Janis Joplin or Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon, like Bradley Nowell, the list goes on and on.
Well, this is the gangster rap version of that. Tupac didn't know he got murdered over a frigging fight in a casino. And there was nothing elaborate about it. There was nothing smart about it. There's no great matching of wits. It was, for lack of a better term, a bunch of young knuckleheads who got into it with another bunch of young knuckleheads and happenstance. They wound up on the strip or close to it in a car, and it's like, that's the guy that just beat me up. And next thing you know, Tupac Shakur spends six days in the hospital before dying. And you're right. And I was in the gang unit in Orange County when this happened. And having done hardcore gangs, but what a lot of people don't understand, this is the kind of stupidity and the senselessness of a lot of gang murders.
It's over a look or it's over somebody walking down the wrong street or a confrontation with somebody they don't know. And the classic gang challenge is, where are you from? And depending where you are as a young man and certain parts of Southern California, even today, if you answer that question the wrong way, you're going to get shot or stabbed.
It's borders on mindless and that's not gangster related gangs, it's not like rap gangs that is across the board with gangs, that's white supremacist gangs and they're all a little bit different. They have different gang cultures. But the inane, just banal stupidity of the murders, it's cross-cultural across the gang world. It's the same thing. It's young guys with guns who have way more bravado than brains.
And that's what this whole thing boiled down to. It was a stupid beef after a Mike Tyson fight, and that prompted almost three decades of investigations. And also it went like every other gang case, you've got an eyewitness in Shuge Knight who clearly knows more than he's ever going to say. He's proudly announcing he's not going to cooperate. And as a result -- I saw an interview recently with Tupac's brother. He seemed like a really nice guy. I don't know anything about him, but he had a family. He had a mother who loved him. And Tupac was apparently not in a gang. He was associating with Suge Knight, he was a part of a Blood set in Los Angeles.
So Suge Knight was a documented gangster, it's my understanding. Tupac Shakur was not. But he was with the CEO of his record label. He gets in a fight and then he gets murdered. It's beyond tragic. And I think we all lost. And this thing would have been solved a long time ago if it wasn't for the gang culture of omerta to the death, we will not speak. If you cooperate with the police, you're a snitch. Yeah. So, anyway, I'm fascinated by this, and it will be interesting to see.
That said, despite his statements, this is not an indefensible case. I think that the defense is going to have some stuff to say on this, because how much of his, how much of these were admissions and how much of this was bragging? I mean, they have a few things to argue. And he said he handed the gun back into the backseat. That's aiding and abetting. That's potentially conspiracy. There's a bunch of different ways you can skin that cat legally and affix criminal liability to that in the context of a murder.
But so much of it, I think is based on his own. Like the book that he wrote and the interviews he gave. One of which he had a lawyer sitting next to him where he's talking about, yeah, he handed the gun, which made me scratch my head a little bit. But yeah, it will be interesting to see what happens. He's 60 years old. Apparently, he's already had cancer once. Yeah, it's just, it's amazing. All of these guys on the video, so many of them, their lives were so promising, and they went nowhere.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:42:05]
Yeah, well put. All right. Last point on this. I want kind of your hot take. I'm glad that you pointed out that quote from the LAPD investigator. That was something that stood out to me. It applies to many, many cases. They're not unsolved. They're just unprosecuted. This case is very linked to another famous murder that took place of a famous rapper here in Los Angeles of Biggie Smalls. Do you think we see a break in that case? Is this just kind of the beginning, the break in the tide that we might see some new developments in that case as well?
Matt Murphy:
[00:42:41]
Well, that's a great question. I think that this will certainly put pressure on those involved in that case. And I don't know enough about that to really know how strong the evidence is, but they've got to be looking at it. Now, a jury in Henderson, Nevada is going to be, or Clark County, Nevada, I think it's Clark County. Right.
A jury in Clark County, Nevada, is going to be very different than a jury, as you know, even better than me in CCD, in Downtown Los Angeles. So that's certainly going to factor in any filing decision, I think. Plus, like, I hate to say it, I have no faith in the LA DA's office right now. They have awesome prosecutors. I am not a fan of George Gascon by any stretch. And I don't put any confidence that they will, even if the detective showed up with a perfectly viable case, I don't have any faith that they would actually prosecute it.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:43:37]
Yeah, it's unfortunate, but I think you might be right. Well, maybe things will change on that front soon and we might see development in that case. In the meantime, Matt, this was a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on this week. Where can people find out more about you?
Matt Murphy:
[00:43:51]
So you can follow me on Instagram, @MattMurphyLaw. I do have a book coming out sometime in the next year about my time in the homicide unit. I've got a website up and running on that. It's called Thebookofmurder.com. But also, hopefully appearing regularly on NewsNation with Elizabeth Vargas and hopefully others. I've got some 2020s coming out on ABC. So yeah, hopefully the media stuff is really interesting and fun and dynamic. And as you know, Josh is very different than some of the combat of trying cases. So I'm sort of enjoying a little break, a little. We got some trials coming up and then I'm going to have to deal with soon enough but.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:44:37]
Well, good. In the meantime, I enjoy and watch regularly you on Elizabeth Vargas on NewsNation. I encourage everybody to check it out.
Matt Murphy:
[00:44:47]
I'm gonna be on again tonight, so.
Joshua Ritter:
[00:44:49]
Oh, good. I'll be watching. In the meantime, I'm your host, Josh Ritter. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter at @JoshuaRitterESQ or at joshuaritter.com. And you can find our Sidebar episodes wherever you get your podcasts. And we want to hear from you. If you've got questions or comments you like us to address, tweet us your questions with the hashtag #TCDSidebar. And thank you for joining us at the True Crime Daily Sidebar.
