Dead Wrong

by Randall Sullivan

  Berkow would leave the Savannah job, but again did more than simply land on his feet afterward. His old pal William Bratton had helped arrange for Berkow to receive a highly paid position as president and chief operating officer of the new Kroll Associates division Altegrity. (Bratton had also arranged to return to working at Kroll himself when he retired from his position as LAPD chief a few months later.) Berkow ran Altegrity for two and a half years, then in 2012 was hired by the Boston Police Department (where a younger William Bratton had served in the department’s second-highest post, executive superintendent) to “streamline” the BPD’s internal affairs complaint process. A Boston Globe article on Berkow’s background was not published until after he had also been hired, with a little help from his friends, as director of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Investigative Services, a position placing him in charge of this armed service’s detectives worldwide. It’s a job he holds to this day.

  “Unbelievable,” said Phil Carson, who had retired from the FBI and was now working in private security jobs in Los Angeles. “Berkow still working in law enforcement is maybe the part of this whole thing that bothers me most.”*

  In 2012, Berkow’s former collaborator Chuck Philips defended his reporting on the murders of Biggie and Tupac in an article published by the Village Voice. He argued that in his Los Angeles Times article about the shooting of Tupac Shakur that relied on fraudulent documents, “at worst what I had done was make a mistake.” His editors were ultimately responsible, Philips said, but let him take the fall for it. The most painful part of his firing, Philips said, was learning that the Times had settled the legal claim against it by paying “Jimmy Henchman” Rosemond $200,000 in cash on the same day Philips lost his job.

  Since then, he had applied for hundreds of jobs in journalism, Philips wrote, and had been turned down every time.

  By focusing his wrath on Rosemond and pointing a finger at his former Times editors, Philips had persuaded the L.A. Weekly to run an article under the headline “Chuck Philips Demands L.A. Times Apology on Tupac Shakur.” After years of correspondence with various prison inmates, Philips had found his way to one named Dexter Isaac, a convicted murderer who claimed to have participated in the Quad Studios shooting and said it was orchestrated by Rosemond. Isaac had validated the essence of the article that got him fired, Philips insisted, and now the Times should run another front-page correction, this one aimed at rehabilitating his career.

  The man owned no end of gall. “I never had a major error in a story before,” he told the Weekly. “I had a couple of small corrections. No serious drama.”

  His own editors at the Times first “fucked up my story,” Philips added, then “threw me under the bus.” Since he named no names, it couldn’t be said for certain that Philips was talking about his former hands-on boss Marc Duvoisin, who by then had been promoted to Los Angeles Times managing editor. Duvoisin would lose that job in March 2016 after he was caught up in a controversy over claims the Times had delayed a story about how the former dean of the USC Keck School of Medicine partied on campus with a prostitute and drug dealers. In June 2018, Duvoisin was hired as editor and vice president of the San Antonio Express-News.

  Thirteen years after the mistrial was declared in Wallace v. Los Angeles, eleven years after the city and the LAPD had succeeded in secreting much of the evidence in the case in a locked box, it was still there, in the bowels of the District Court.

  That it would remain there forever, however, was no longer as certain as the city side imagined or hoped.

  In late spring 2018, on the basis of information gathered for this book that I shared with Sanders, the attorney approached Voletta Wallace to suggest that she consider supporting him in an attempt to refile the civil lawsuit.

  The conversation was fraught. It had been Mrs. Wallace who decided, in consultation with Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans, not to refile before the rapper’s youngest child turned eighteen and the statute of limitations expired. Sanders had told her that the success of the city in withholding whatever new evidence the LAPD had uncovered made moving ahead with the lawsuit a high-risk proposition, one in which they could be blindsided from a hundred different directions. It increased the chances of losing in court tenfold at least, said Sanders, who wanted to proceed anyway.

  She was exhausted by a case that had dragged on for a decade already, Voletta told the attorney. Her grandchildren had grown up with their father’s murder at the center of their lives, and she wanted them to be free of it, finally. It wasn’t as if she or they or Faith needed the money. Biggie’s fame had only grown in the years since his death, and his work still continued to produce millions of dollars of income annually, more than enough to take care of them all.

  “Voletta told me that she felt the mistrial had been the victory she needed, that she felt we had proved that LAPD officers were involved in her son’s murder,” Sanders recalled. She had decided, apparently, to be content with that.

  When Sanders arranged for Voletta Wallace to speak with me, however, she began to change course. Hearing about the blocked investigation of FBI agent Phil Carson had been key. The decision by the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case Carson had made, combined with the refusal of the federal government’s lawyer to offer any explanation for that decision, infuriated Biggie’s mother. So did what she heard about the collusion between LAPD deputy chief Mike Berkow and Los Angeles Times reporter Chuck Philips to derail the lawsuit she had filed against the City of Los Angeles. The pivotal moment, though, came when Biggie’s mother heard what the city had argued in its efforts to end the FBI investigation and, in particular, to keep Phil Carson off the witness stand: did the FBI really want to throw away a working relationship with the LAPD that involved dozens of agents and tens of millions of dollars in order “to solve the murder of a four-hundred-pound black crack dealer turned rapper”?

  “Oh, my God! They said that?” she asked. According to Phil Carson and another FBI agent who was present, yes, they had, I told her.

  She went quiet for several moments, then declared, “I want justice for my son.” Sanders should begin working on a filing to reopen the case, she said.

  The expired statute of limitations would make that difficult, Sanders said. After consulting with Rob Frank, though, Sanders believed the two of them had found a legitimate basis for reviving the lawsuit. California had laws that permitted it in cases where discovery had been denied, in which evidence or information had been withheld or concealed. There was strong evidence that’s exactly what had happened in Wallace v. Los Angeles, Sanders said. And if Phil Carson was ever allowed to take the witness stand, this lawsuit not only could but almost certainly would be won.

  “This case had been covered over with lies,” Sanders said, but when what was under those lies is revealed, justice might finally be done.

  “They’ve been tellin’ themselves they got away with it for years. Maybe now we get to tell them they haven’t.”

  * Asked to explain how it could reconcile Michael Berkow’s current position as head of its Investigative Services division with the various accusations made against him, including the findings of the jury in the Christle case, the U.S. Coast Guard replied with this written statement:

  Mr. Berkow is a valued member of the Senior Executive Service. While the Coast Guard will not discuss the hiring process in a particular case, it’s important to point out that a suitability screening is conducted to ensure a candidate meets federal standards of character and conduct. Also, the Coast Guard validates whether a candidate has an existing security clearance which meets the senior executive position requirements. If a candidate does not have an existing security clearance (as was the case with Mr. Berkow), the appropriate background investigation and suitability determination are conducted pursuant to the hiring process for a member of the Senior Executive Service. Mr. Berkow currently holds an active security clearance.

  APPENDIX A

  While researching and writing this book, I attempted to
contact Michael Berkow directly (bypassing the U.S. Coast Guard) through his LinkedIn account, but there was no reply to my messages. When this book was about to go into production, I went directly to the Coast Guard, asking for both a reply from Berkow and one from the military service itself about how he had obtained his present position. The Coast Guard replied first, stating that Berkow had passed a background check, and I was able to put that into the body of the book as a footnote. Berkow himself replied a short time later. At that point, the best available means of incorporating his claims and denials was in this Appendix.

  Berkow seemed to be most concerned about the Ya-May Christle case, and in particular her accusations concerning his sexual activities, and his promotion of the women subordinates who consented to sex with him. It’s a subject that’s of minor significance in the context of this book, but Berkow’s lengthy statements have compelled me to clarification. The Christle lawsuit accused Berkow of having sex with as many as five different women under his command and stated, “All the paramours benefitted because of this sex.” According to plaintiff filings in the case, “This rampant orgy of lust that Berkow enjoyed at work was known to [Christle] and was [so] severe and pervasive that it altered the conditions of her employment, creating an abusive working environment.” Only one of the five “paramours” named in the lawsuit admitted to having sex with Berkow while under his command; both she and Berkow claimed that she enjoyed no professional benefits as a result of their relationship.

  The judge hearing the Christle lawsuit, William Fahey, ruled that the evidence offered by Christle and her attorney to substantiate her accusations about Berkow’s abuse of authority for sexual purposes was largely inadmissible. Berkow was dropped as a defendant in the case after Fahey dismissed the plaintiff’s claims of sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. Judge Fahey, however, did not dismiss the claim that the LAPD, acting through Berkow and others, had retaliated against Christle both for reporting Berkow’s suspected sexual activities and for her assertion that he had ordered her work computer taken from her and expunged of information relating to the Notorious B.I.G. murder case. The lawsuit went to trial on the basis of those claims and the jury not only ruled in Christle’s favor but awarded her more than $1 million in damages. That ruling was appealed, but Christle prevailed at every level and eventually received nearly $5 million when the case was settled.

  Berkow insists that he has no knowledge of what happened with the case after he was removed as a defendant. I find that difficult to believe, given that much if not most of the evidence offered by the plaintiffs centered on him and his behavior. Be that as it may, I do not see how Berkow can claim to have been vindicated by the litigation of the Christle lawsuit. As Christle’s attorney Bradley Gage put it to me: “The entire lawsuit was based on Berkow’s conduct. Our case involved the actions of Berkow.”

  Far more germane to this book, obviously, are the accusations against Berkow that involve the Notorious B.I.G. murder investigation, and in particular the claims that he exposed Michael Robinson as an FBI informant, communicated improperly with Amir Muhammad, and collaborated with Chuck Philips to destroy the reputation of Phil Carson, all in an effort to subvert the Wallace v. Los Angeles lawsuit. I believe that Berkow did all of those things, either directly or through subordinates. I acknowledge that this belief is based substantially upon what I’ve been told by others involved in the case, and that Phil Carson is the only one fully on the record. But Carson’s recollections haven’t been disputed by any of the others—current and former FBI agents, former LAPD officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, attorneys and investigators who worked on the case—that I’ve spoken to.

  Berkow, though, denies everything. “I have no idea who many of the individuals you named are and while I do know who S/A Carson is, it is in connection with a completely different criminal matter that he was investigating with members of the LAPD Professional Standards Bureau. Nothing to do with Christopher Wallace’s murder,” he wrote to me. “That denial was underlined by his attorney, who said Berkow ‘never asked the FBI to stop any investigation, much less the Wallace investigation.’ ”

  In his emails to me, however, Berkow not only contradicted Phil Carson (along with several other FBI agents); he also contradicted himself. “I am unaware of any confidential informant or FBI investigation into this case or of any of the other allegations you are making,” he wrote to me. This is the same man who, as LAPD deputy chief, was the single departmental source quoted by name in the Los Angeles Times March 20, 2004, article by Chuck Philips that revealed both the FBI investigation of the Biggie murder and the agency’s use of Michael Robinson as the confidential informant who was sent to Amir Muhammad’s home in an attempt to obtain incriminating evidence against him. Robinson’s work as an informant in the Biggie murder investigation had been part of “a joint FBI-LAPD investigation,” Berkow told the Times, one in which the LAPD was “cooperating with the feds 100%.”

  Perhaps reading that quote will jog his memory.

  APPENDIX B

  I acknowledge being every bit as offended as Perry Sanders by former LAPD detective Greg Kading’s blatantly false characterization of Russell Poole’s investigation of the Notorious B.I.G. murder. Most of Kading’s misrepresentations have been described in the body of this book.

  This appendix is intended in part to acknowledge two others who have investigated and denounced Kading: R.J. Bond and Jesse Surratt.

  Of those two, Bond is the one who has contested with Kading longer and more frequently, filing complaints with the LAPD’s Internal Affairs Division focusing on how and from whom Kading has obtained what should be confidential information. Bond was on good terms with Kading prior to the publication of Murder Rap. On the first day of 2008, Kading sent Bond an email that read, “Happy New Year friend, be safe and take care.” By 2011 Kading was sending Jesse Surratt an email under the heading “Your Boy Bond,” with an attached document titled “RJ Bond’s an Idiot.”

  What first caused him to begin looking at Kading in a negative light, Bond said, was the way in which the former detective had tried to whitewash his conduct in the George Torres case. In Murder Rap, Bond observed, “Kading made it sound like all the trouble he had gotten into on the Torres case was about nothing more than some technical error he’d made in applying for a search warrant. There wasn’t a word about the fact that he’d manipulated witnesses with false promises or lied to the judge, all stuff I knew a lot about. I had found some other things a lot of people seemed not to know about. For instance, there was this witness to whom Kading had made the promise that a relative of his would either get out of prison or receive a shorter sentence if the witness said what Kading wanted him to say. When the guy was called by the defense in the Torres case to testify about what Kading had said to him, Kading went ballistic. He told the guy, ‘You fucked us. Just for that, your brother’s not gonna get out of jail.’ And the court has the transcript because the conversation was being recorded. The defense was able to use it in court to bury Kading. See, all of Kading’s testimony in that case was sealed, so he thought it would never come out. He’s quite calculating.”

  Eventually Bond, the son and grandson of LAPD officers, accused Kading of violating California Penal Code Section 404 (b) by “misappropriating” government property—specifically interview tapes and case files from the ongoing investigation into the murder of Christopher Wallace. “Russ Poole had preserved his notes and documents because he was suing the LAPD,” Bond explained, “but Kading had no such motive. His pure reason for absconding with those materials was to promote himself in his book. The fact that the LAPD was looking the other way made me start thinking about why, and the only explanation, I realized, was that they wanted Kading out there putting down the Russell Poole theory of the case.” Bond filed a complaint with the LAPD that was examined by Internal Affairs investigator Efrain Flores, whose work, from Bond’s perspective, would produce exactly one significant piece of inform
ation: an admission that “Theresa Swann” was really Tammie Hawkins. When he read Flores’s report, Bond was struck by an early statement that the investigator had found no evidence Daryn Dupree provided documents to Kading himself, or to the two L.A. Weekly reporters who had produced a fawning story about Kading’s book (a story that made no reference whatsoever to the numerous false or skewed claims in Murder Rap). “But I never mentioned Dupree by name in my complaint,” Bond observed. “So why was Flores bothering to try to exonerate him?” More interestingly still, Flores wrote that he had contacted Dupree to discuss the claims made by Bond, and that immediately afterward he had received a call from Kading seeking to confirm that he was under investigation. “Obviously Dupree alerted Kading, which is a departmental violation right there, but Flores did nothing about it,” Bond said. “Then he comes up with this report that states there’s no rule against a retired LAPD officer ‘discussing’ an ongoing investigation. But that wasn’t what my complaint was about. My complaint was about Kading illegally taking home LAPD documents containing information that could jeopardize the safety of witnesses, and Flores didn’t even mention that in his report. So, to me, that was just more evidence that the LAPD was covering up for Kading because Kading was covering up for them.”

  He had decided to drop the matter, Bond said, until he met Jesse Surratt, who was at that time the moderator of an Internet chat forum called “Tupac Nation.” Following the publication of Murder Rap, Surratt had developed every bit as much contempt for Kading as had Bond. “After I read his book, I did an interview with Kading,” Surratt recalled. “When I asked about the inaccuracies in his book, he became very, very defensive. I read the judge’s remarks during the Torres trial, which cited multiple examples of Kading’s disregard for the truth, none of it mentioned in his book. I did some more research and realized that all of the cops put on that task force Kading was on were damaged cops, just like him. I came to believe that the LAPD banded together a certain task force of cops they knew would whitewash the Biggie murder investigation. They didn’t look at a single bit of the evidence that implicated Mack and Perez.”