Tupac’s family has reportedly hired a lawyer to investigate claims that Sean “Diddy” Combs — who was arrested last month on federal sex trafficking charges — was involved in Tupac’s 1996 slaying.
Us Weekly reported that Tupac’s family has hired Alex Spiro, who represented Alex Baldwin in the “Rust” case that was ultimately dismissed. This summer, Las Vegas police said Combs has never been considered a suspect in Shakur’s murder.
READ: Tupac’s Family May Sue Diddy Amid Claims He Paid $1 Million for Rapper’s Slaying
Meanwhile, “Zone 7” host Sheryl McCollum told NewsNation that she believes Combs is linked to Shakur’s murder. McCollum, who investigated the Vegas scene where Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting, told “Banfield” guest host Laura Ingle on Friday that Tupac was shot two years earlier at Quad Studios in New York City.
She also said that Combs and his entourage of 40 people were “unharmed, unthreatened” despite also being at the studio at the time.
“You ain’t gotta shoot somebody five times to take their jewelry and their money,” McCollum said, referring to the 1994 incident that resulted in Shakur being shot five times.
In July, Nevada prosecutors said in a 179-page court filing that Tupac’s accused killer, suspect Duane Davis, 61, “asserted that the conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric ‘Zip’ Martin, and Sean [‘Diddy’] Combs.” They alleged Davis mentioned Combs in interviews with the media and police.
Prosecutors mentioned Diddy 77 times in the court filing which addressed the infamous East Coast/West Coast rivalry between Combs’ Bad Boy Records and Marion “Suge” Knight’s Death Row Records. Knight is currently serving a 28-year sentence in California for a fatal hit-in-run that occurred during an altercation in 2018.
Knight was in the car with Tupac when he was mortally wounded in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Tupac died from his injuries days later.
Davis claimed that Combs paid Martin $1 million to have Tupac killed. At some point, Davis allegedly went undercover with Los Angeles police during a trip to New York to obtain evidence showing that Combs and Martin were involved in Tupac’s shooting death.
Davis was arrested last September after a grand jury indicted him on charges of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with a gang enhancement. Davis, the uncle of Tupac’s suspected shooter Orlando Anderson, was arrested two months after cops searched his wife’s home in Henderson.
Anderson, who was a rival of Tupac’s, died in an unrelated shooting two years after Shakur was gunned down on the Las Vegas Strip in 1996. Davis said in a 2018 documentary “Unsolved: The Tupac and Biggie Murders” that he was in the car with the gunman.
Combs was arrested outside a Manhattan hotel on September 16, following months of mounting abuse and sexual assault allegations. He has pleaded not guilty to racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.
In March, federal authorities raided Combs’ homes in Holmby Hills, California, and Miami. Reports indicated that the raid was connected to an ongoing sex trafficking investigation.
The reported raids also occurred four months after R&B singer Cassie Ventura accused him of sex trafficking and abuse. In a multimillion-dollar lawsuit, she alleged that Combs drugged her and forced her to have sex with other men. The pair settled the lawsuit a day after its filing.
However, in May, a video surfaced showing Combs assaulting Ventura at a California hotel in 2016. After the video was released, Combs put out a video expressing remorse for his behavior. That video is mentioned in the criminal charges filed this week against Combs.
Two more accusers came forward a week after Ventura’s lawsuit. One of the women claimed Combs drugged and raped her at Syracuse University in New York in 1991. Combs denied those allegations before a third accuser, Liza Gardner, levied similar allegations against him.
In that case, Gardner claimed Combs and singer-songwriter Aaron Hall drugged and raped her and a friend following an Uptown Records event in 1990. Gardner said she was 16 at the time of the incident. She also accused Combs of choking her a day after the assault.
Days after footage of the 2016 assault was publicized, two more women filed lawsuits against Combs. One of those women was April Lampros, a student at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology who reportedly met Combs in 1994. Lampros accused Combs in the lawsuit of sexually assaulting her on four instances between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s.
Lampros claimed Combs promised to mentor her and connect her with executives in the fashion industry. Instead, Combs allegedly forced her to drink before raping her in a hotel room. Lampros recalled another instance in which Combs forced her to perform oral sex on her in a parking garage while a parking attendant watched.
Reports indicated that Combs has been accused of committing or facilitating sexual abuse in at least eight lawsuits. He has denied those allegations.
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[Feature Photo: AP Photo/Frank Wiese, File]
