MOVIES
Thursday, april 15, 2021 • ThE BullETiN
GO! MAGAZINE • PAGE 21
Gearhart journalist dives into deaths of rap legends
BY R.J. MARX • The Astorian
I
Randall
Sullivan
stands next
to a table of
his books at
By the Way
in Gearhart.
n 2001, Rolling Stone magazine assigned journalist Randall Sullivan a
story about corruption in the anti-gang unit of the Rampart Division of
the Los Angeles Police Department. Sullivan worked his source, Detective
R.J. Marx/The
Astorian
Russell Poole, who had evidence officers moonlighted as security for the hip-
hop label Death Row Records and arranged the 1997 killing of rapper Notorious
B.I.G. No one has ever been charged.
Sullivan’s reporting culminated in the
book, “LAbyrinth: The True Story of City
of Lies, the Murders of Tupac Shakur and
Notorious B.I.G. and the Implication of the
Los Angeles Police Department.” The book
has been made into the movie, “City of Lies,”
starring Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker
and hits theaters this month.
“‘City of Lies’ is about a corrupt chief of
police and a group of gangster cops,” Sulli-
van told The Astorian. “The bad guys were
Black but the victims were Black, too.”
“It’s as if Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra
had been whacked by the mob in Las Vegas
in the ’50s,” he said. “Do you think that mur-
der would go unsolved for 20 years?”
A privileged position
Sullivan considers himself an Oregonian.
He and his wife, Delores, moved to Gearhart
in 2018. Locals sometimes recognize him
for his roles on the popular Oprah Win-
frey Network show “Miracle Detectives,” or
“The Curse of Oak Island: The Story of the
World’s Longest Treasure Hunt” on the His-
tory Channel.
He was born in Los Angeles but moved
to Coos Bay before he was a year old. The
family spent 12 years there before a move to
Portland. “My dad was a walking boss,” he
said. “It’s like a longshore foreman. He was a
rugged man, rough and very bright.”
Sullivan attended the University of Ore-
gon and then went to Columbia University
in New York City on a writing fellowship.
He was hired at the New York Daily News,
then the United States’ largest circulation
newspaper. He worked there for a year
when the 1978 New York newspaper strike
brought his job to a temporary halt.
When he got a job offer from the legend-
ary editor Jim Bellows at the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, he jumped at it and re-
turned to the West Coast as front-page edi-
tor with a daily column.
He won a Los Angeles Press Club award
for the series “LAPD: A Matter of Black and
White.” “It was all about the way Black cops
were being treated and marginalized,” Sulli-
van said. “It really forced the LAPD to start
hiring and promoting more Black cops.”
Two years later, Jann Wenner, the pub-
lisher of Rolling Stone, recruited Sullivan. A
working relationship developed that would
last more than 20 years. Sullivan made his
home base in Portland while raising twins, a
boy and a girl.
Sullivan said the majority of clues col-
lected by investigators assigned to Notorious
B.I.G.’s murder pointed in the same direc-
tion as the word on the street.
According to Sullivan’s account, an in-
mate at California’s Corcoran State Prison
said his cellmate had confided that Suge
Knight, the founder of Death Row Records,
from behind bars, had hired another gang
member to take out Biggie, whose name was
Christopher Wallace.
A former Death Row employee claimed
he could provide police with evidence that
Biggie had been murdered by members of
Knight’s “goon squad.”
The Los Angeles Police Department and
the FBI took the case to prosecutors, who
refused to proceed. Neither the Los Angeles
County District Attorney’s Office nor the
U.S. attorney’s office explained why.
“After he decided he liked me, Russ said he
wanted to show me something,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan followed Poole to a storage unit
that revealed an entire wall lined with boxes
of documents he had carried out of the po-
lice department’s robbery-homicide divi-
sion.
“I made copies and when I read them,
knew this was an incredible story of corrup-
tion and cover-up,” Sullivan said. “The peo-
ple who know the truth are haunted by it, it
was almost impossible for them to live with
it and accept. It almost kills them inside.”
‘City of Lies’
In “City of Lies,” Poole is played by Depp.
The character of the journalist, originally
modeled on Sullivan, is renamed and played
by Whitaker.
Sullivan wrote early drafts of the film’s
screenplay from his book. The final script is
by Christian Contreras. Brad Furman is the
director. Sullivan has an executive producer
credit.
“City of Lies” received its international
premiere in Italy in 2019. Saban Films took
on distribution rights and the film is now
playing throughout the country, including at
theaters on Oregon’s North Coast.
Sullivan’s follow up to “LAbyrinth,” “Dead
Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of
Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up in the Noto-
rious BIG Murder Investigation,” was pub-
lished in 2019.
Sullivan said he hopes a result is to see
the wrongful-death case filed by Biggie’s
mother, Voletta Wallace, against Los Ange-
les reopened. Wallace could seek $1 billion
in damages. Sullivan thinks she can win.
“Absolutely, the only hope is this lawsuit,”
he said. “That’s all that’s left.”
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