Officer David Mack first came to the attention of detectives investigating B.I.G.'s murder in mid-November 1997, when he was arrested for one of the biggest bank robberies in L.A. history. With the assistance of a girlfriend who worked at a Bank of America branch near the USC campus, Mack and two accomplices had stolen $722,000 in shrink-wrapped bundles. He had pulled a Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol from a shoulder holster under his suit jacket, pointed it at the two women who were counting the cash and told them, "Don't touch those fucking pagers or I'll blow your heads off!"

The girlfriend rolled over on him only a month later, though, and Mack was arrested on December 16th. Mack encased himself in a hard shell from the moment detectives from the LAPD's bank-robbery squad began reading him his rights. "Take your best shot," he told them. At the Montebello City Jail, where he was locked up after his arrest, Mack informed the other inmates that they had better not fuck with him because he was a member of the Mob Piru Bloods, then boasted that the nearly $700,000 remaining from the bank robbery was "invested" in a way that would double his money by the time he was released from prison.

One night when Knight had arranged for them to be alone, Ha'mmonds recalled, Knight said, "'You're from up north, right, man? You fuck with Felix and them, right?' I said, 'Yeah.' And he mentioned Christopher Wallace -- Biggie Smalls -- and he say, 'You know, that fat punk is giving me a lot of lip and a lot of shit on the East Coast. You think you can handle it?' By 'handle it,' meaning, can you arrange or do -- assassinate -- Christopher Wallace, Biggie Smalls? I told him no." Knight seemed very disappointed: "He say, 'Aww, I thought you was hard, man.'"

Along with Frank, Sanders has taken particular pleasure in watching how the L.A. Times has absorbed the new reality of the case. The newspaper's story reporting the discovery of the Boagni materials changed dramatically from one edition to the next. The first version ran under a subhead reading, "Three weeks into their civil case, lawyers for Notorious B.I.G.'s family have failed to prove an LAPD link to the star's 1997 slaying." That version did not even mention the lockdown of the LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division and the discovery of the hidden tapes and documents until the fifth paragraph. By the third version of the story, however, the lead sentence reflected what was already appearing in East Coast newspapers: "The LAPD deliberately hid witness statements tying corrupt police to the slaying of Notorious B.I.G., a federal judge said Thursday in granting a mistrial and potentially lucrative attorney fees to the rapper's family."

Still, the newspaper didn't seem to want to go down without a fight. In the first article reporting the discovery of the hidden Boagni materials, Andrew Blankstein, the reporter who had covered the trial for the Times, threw in a line from Mack, interviewed in prison, claiming that Sanders and Frank "offered him inducements to change his testimony." Sanders, who had already called the allegations a lie, confronted Blankstein. According to Sanders, "He said to me, 'I've got editors. I was instructed to put that in there.' So I know that somebody in a position of power at that newspaper has an agenda. I don't know what it is, but I know that it involves discrediting our case and protecting the city from this lawsuit." (Blankstein didn't return calls asking for comment.)

Los Angeles Times assistant managing editor Marc Duvoisin told Rolling Stone, "We stand behind our coverage of the killings of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace. Chuck Philips and The Los Angeles Times have no agenda regarding these stories. We have not tried to favor or disfavor any of the parties to the Wallace lawsuit. We have tried to learn about and publish important and interesting information to the best of our ability, and we will continue to do so. For reasons that should be obvious, we will not reveal the identities of confidential sources."