Original subtitles

ANNOUNCER: Tonight on "Unsolved Mysteries."

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): September 7th, 1996,

gunfire erupts along the famous Las Vegas strip,

taking the life of rap music star Tupac Shakur.

Today, disturbing questions haunt the investigation.

Why were Shakur's trusted bodyguards unarmed?

Why do the killers seem to target only Shakur?

And why was almost no one willing to talk?

They are snapshots of a different time and place.

Virginia Burns always thought she

was the baby in the pictures.

Then Virginia learned about her father's secret life.

And now she needs your help find her long lost sister.

It is a phenomenon so bizarre that it defies

belief, ordinary people suddenly and inexplicably

bursting into flame.

Mainstream science says it can't happen,

but independent researchers insist

that the evidence doesn't lie.

Spontaneous human combustion is real.

In Ohio, the quiet of a small community

is shattered when Becky Wood and her grandchildren

are terrorized by a pair of vicious armed robbers.

Now the intruders have been unmasked,

and authorities need your help to track them down.

Join me for another intriguing edition

of "Unsolved Mysteries."

[theme music]

Becky Wood doesn't need this police photograph

to remember the terror, the choking fear of being bound,

assaulted, and absolutely convinced

that she and her four grandchildren

were going to die.

It happened in February of 1996, when two men, disguised

in masks, invaded her home.

It was 7:00 AM.

Becky's husband had just left for work.

The intruders seemed to know exactly

what they were looking for.

Out of bed, open the safe!

BECKY WOOD (VOICEOVER): When I first opened my eyes,

I saw a man with blood on the head and the eye.

And I thought, "Oh my God.

I'm having this bad dream."

And then when he said it again, I knew it was for real.

Let's go!

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Becky's granddaughter

was sleeping beside her, and Becky thought

to hide her with a blanket.

Three other children were asleep in different bedrooms.

Move, move.

Into the kitchen, into the kitchen.

BECKY WOOD (VOICEOVER): I never felt so helpless.

Take it off, OK? Take it off!

I was afraid for my grandchildren.

And I kept praying to God, "you know, please let the children

sleep through this.

Don't let them wake."

The whole time he's screaming "where's the combination?

Where's the combination?"

Now the kitchen!

[inaudible]

BECKY WOOD (VOICEOVER): And I tried

to explain to them that I didn't know,

that I didn't have it with me.

Could I please call my daughter?

[shouting]

He kicked me in the head, and he kept

telling me that they would take the children,

I'd never see them again.

And I kept telling him, "I swear I don't have the combination.

I swear I would open it.

I'd give it to you.

I don't have it."

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Sounds of ransacking

came from upstairs, where the second intruder was looting

Becky's dresser of jewelry.

That's when nine-year-old Matthew

wandered out of his room.

Hey, we got one up!

I don't really know how to explain what I felt.

Like my heart just felt like it was

just gonna beep or something.

It was pounding real hard, because I

didn't know what it was.

He threw Matthew on the floor, and put his hands behind him,

and tied him up.

[shouting]

I saw the man's feet coming around in front of me.

And he took a trash bag and put it over my grandson's head.

I thought they were gonna take me out in this rug and kill me,

and they were gonna smother Matthew.

You count to 2,000 before you move,

or else we'll be back to kill you!

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Becky Wood heard

the safe drag across the floor.

She heard her car start.

Then silence as it was driven away.

One of the other children awoke and cut Becky and Matthew free.

Becky then discovered that the intruders had sliced

all the alarm and phone lines.

Neighbors summoned police.

In addition to stealing Becky's car,

the robbers had made off with $20,000 worth of jewelry,

and the locked safe containing the Woods' life savings,

another 18,000 in cash.

Well, while they stole a lot of our possessions

that I'll never be able to replace, I'm thankful

we're alive.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): That afternoon,

police found Becky's '91 Lincoln at a nearby car wash.

The safe turned up a week later, emptied of cash,

but yielding evidence that could help convict the robbers

once they were identified.

As police began to review the case,

the facts pointed to one conclusion.

The assailants had known exactly where to find the wires

for the home alarm system.

They knew just where the safe was kept.

They knew just where to look for Becky's jewelry.

They had known too much to be total strangers.

I'd met back up again with Becky and her husband Woody.

We asked them to do something that

was kind of difficult for them.

We asked them to sit down and start thinking about people

they knew, and people that they've dealt with,

and people that have worked for them,

and put a list together for us.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): It would

prove to be a solid hunch.

When the jury showed up at pawnshops in Pittsburgh,

100 miles away, police there believed it had been sold

by a man named Larry Juster.

State computers yielded this photograph.

The information was relayed to Ohio.

Becky and her husband had left town to recover some peace

of mind after the robbery.

Their daughter offered to review the pawnshop

leads for local police.

Listen, there's a photograph I need you take a look at.

You wouldn't happen to recognize this guy, would you?

Yeah, it's Gary Noble.

Gary Noble?

Gary Noble.

It's not Larry Juster?

That's what the name says, but that's Gary Noble.

He and his brother Ted Noble worked for my dad

a couple months ago.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Ted Noble

had briefly worked for the Wood family

eight months prior to the robbery.

When Ted and his brother Gary found

that detectives were closing in, they fled Ohio

and are still on the run.

We were given information that they had made statements

that they had no intention of being taken alive if confronted

by law enforcement.

The way we entered our warrants is with extreme caution

on the two of them.

BECKY WOOD (VOICEOVER): The robbery

has done something to us that you

don't really understand unless you live through it yourself.

Out of the bed!

Out of the bed!

BECKY WOOD (VOICEOVER): I'm angry what

they did to my grandchildren.

And I'm angry.

I am angry at the men that did this.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Coming up,

he was one of rap music's most popular and controversial

stars.

Then he was gunned down by an unknown assailant.

Who killed Tupac Shakur?

But first, Virginia Burns always thought she was an only child.

Then she learned that her father had gone to his grave

with a secret of an ill fated romance

and a long lost daughter.

And the heartwarming reunion of a young man

and the anonymous good Samaritan who saved his life.

August 27th, 1995 began as a joyous day

for Steve and Sharon Newton of Immokalee, Florida.

That morning, their first child, Virginia, was born.

Steve had come to the hospital straight from work.

At around 2:00 PM, he headed home on his motorcycle

to pick up the family car.

He had no way of knowing he was on a collision

course with disaster.

I just remember coming straight down on my head.

As I hit, I saw poof, this big bright light.

And that was it.

Then I was just completely out.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): For Steve Newton,

death was just a heartbeat away.

Then a gift from heaven.

Are you OK?

Can you hear me?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): A passing motorist

had turned Steve over in the water

and saved him from drowning.

She remained at the scene until Steve

was transported to a hospital.

Then she disappeared, and Steve never learned her name.

If she could just see my daughter,

she'll know that she did me the greatest favor or gift

that anybody can give, and that's to give me back my life.

And I'd like to say "thank you" for that.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): With the help of our viewers,

Steve Newton recently had a chance to do just that.

Here's Keely Shay Smith with the details.

Bob, a woman in Florida recognized

the story as one she had heard from a coworker named

Tammy Dotson.

After the broadcast, Tammy's boyfriend discussed the case

with one of his coworkers, who happened to be

Steve Newton's father-in-law.

It soon became perfectly clear that Steve's

mysterious good Samaritan was in fact Tammy Dotson.

On January 31st, 1997, Steve and Tammy

met face to face for the first time

since the near fatal accident.

As a special treat, Steve brought along Virginia,

now 1 and 1/2 years old.

She's so cute.

Nobody has ever gone that far to come to thank me.

And he kept saying that I was his angel.

I've never been called an angel before.

Far from it.

But it just--

I mean, it made me feel good inside

to know that I've done something that's helped somebody so much.

KEELY SHAYE SMITH (VOICEOVER): Steve and his wife

Sharon, now expecting their second child,

were finally able to express their gratitude to the woman

who had saved Steve's life.

I owe her everything, and there's

nothing that I have to give to her to just say thank you.

Right through here it started.

KEELY SHAYE SMITH (VOICEOVER): Before the day was out,

Tammy and Steve returned to the scene of the accident, all too

aware that Tammy's simple act of kindness

had changed both of them forever.

It makes me want to do more for other people now.

If someone's in trouble, I would go that extra mile, that extra

just to help that person.

I just wanted to hug him.

I was so glad to see that he was OK.

And the baby and everything, I was

just thrilled that he was fine.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): The images are from another place

and another time.

The proud young father cradles his newborn daughter,

her gentle smile captured in dozens of photographs.

Virginia Burns of Aurora, Colorado

always thought they were pictures of her.

She learned the truth when she was in her early 30s.

My father said, "oh no, those aren't you."

And I asked my mother, "well, who are they?"

And she says, "oh, that's just a friend's baby."

Mom, how are you feeling?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Years would

pass before Virginia finally learned the entire truth.

In 1991, a year after Virginia's father

died, her mother confided that he had been previously married.

Then she made an even more startling revelation.

Honey, there's something I have to tell you.

You have a sister.

What do you mean, I have a sister?

You know the baby pictures that you always thought

were you, and we told you they were the daughter

of a friend of ours?

Well, she's your sister.

My mother admitted that she didn't tell me to protect me.

She had no way of knowing where my sister was.

And why tell me if there was no way I could meet her?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Three months later, Virginia's mother

also passed away.

With both of her parents gone, Virginia

launched a search for the sister she had never known.

I was looking through the pictures,

and I found written on the back of one

in my father's handwriting, it said "Susan and I in Hugo."

And I had no idea where Hugo was, so I asked my husband.

And he said, "well, that's a little town

out on the eastern plains of Colorado."

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Hugo, Colorado

is where Virginia's father, Joe Coram, lived in 1942.

He was a dishwasher and bus boy in a small cafe.

That's where Joe met a young woman named Diana.

Hey, I just wanted to know if maybe Friday night you'd wanna

go to the picture show with me.

Oh, I'd love to, but I don't think my mother will let me go.

OK, well, how about a walk?

Just for an hour?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Diana's mother

Clara ran the cafe.

Diana, come here.

I don't like you talking to that boy.

Mother, he's perfectly nice person.

He could be a nice person, but, honey, he's a drifter.

He just came in here--

Clara didn't approve of my father because he was poor,

and he had no future.

He-- she didn't see where he could really go anywhere.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Despite Clara's objections,

a romance blossomed.

Joe and Diana decided to get married.

A year later, Susan was born.

But the tensions between Joe and his mother-in-law

apparently escalated, and eventually

drove Joe and Diana apart.

Diana, please.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): In 1946, they divorced.

And Joe left town for good.

Come here, sweetie.

How's my little girl.

Daddy's gonna miss you.

Diana, I need you inside.

VIRGINIA BURNS (VOICEOVER): I think

it was probably one of the most heartbreaking

things he ever went through.

I'm sorry, Joe.

VIRGINIA BURNS (VOICEOVER): To leave Susan and Diana.

I really don't think he would have left unless there was just

horrendous pressure on him.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Joe Coram apparently never saw

his wife or his daughter again.

After the separation, he moved to Greeley, Colorado,

where he fell in love with Virginia's mother, Dolly.

They eloped, and Virginia was born a year later.

Joe was happy with his new family,

but he apparently never forgot the daughter

he had left behind.

Now looking back some 40 years, Virginia

understands the poignance of one memorable incident

from her childhood.

It was Virginia's sixth birthday.

For months, she had coveted a doll

in the window of a local store.

VIRGINIA BURNS (VOICEOVER): She was

just like an unreachable dream.

I opened that box, and there was that doll.

And it was just like time stopped.

I was so excited to get that doll.

So what do you think of your doll, sweetie?

I love her.

She's beautiful.

Well, what's her name?

I don't know.

What do you think I should call her?

VIRGINIA BURNS (VOICEOVER): He says, "why don't you

call her 'sweet Sue?'"

How about "sweet Sue?"

VIRGINIA BURNS (VOICEOVER): And I did, not realizing that that

was the name of my sister.

Ginny, why don't you go inside and play with your dolly?

OK.

Run inside.

Sweet Sue?

I know, I know.

It's OK.

You must really miss her.

Yeah.

Let's clean up.

I know he missed her.

A lot of times when I was growing up, he would search

faces.

We would go out, and there be a lot of little girls around,

and he would search faces.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Virginia learned

that her father tried to find Diana and Susan several times,

but was never successful.

He died in 1990, without ever learning their fate.

Virginia now hopes to succeed where her father failed,

and find the sister whose memory lingers on

in the sweet innocence of a young girl's doll.

This is important to me for two reasons.

Number one, here is a little girl

who has gone her whole life without knowing that she had

a father who cared about her.

My sister does not know that her father

cared about her, that he looked for her,

that he wanted to find her.

She needs to know she has a father who loved her.

And secondly, I have a sister out there.

And I'm more than ready to be a sister.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): When we return, for mainstream

science, it is too incredible to believe,

but some researchers are convinced

that spontaneous human combustion is very, very real.

And later, last September dozens of eyewitnesses

watched in horror as rap music star

Tupac Shakur was gunned down on a crowded Las Vegas strip.

Six months later, the killer remains at large.

Good morning.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Morning coffee at Kay and Mike

Fletcher's hardly ranked as an unsolved mystery,

until the peculiar events of February 11th, 1996.

It happened just after 9:00 AM.

- Mike? - Kay.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): The Fletchers

say that smoke suddenly began to billow from Kay's body.

Maybe it's got my sweater.

Take it off.

I had Michael take a look at my back.

I said, "take a look at my back."

Because I'm thinking, "do I have blisters or what?"

And he says, "no, it's just red."

We really were frantically looking through the clothing.

You know, like arm and back, and just

looking it over very carefully.

And we found absolutely no discoloration.

We found no sight of any kind of fire damage.

I mean, it was actually coming off of her skin,

but there was no flame.

The smoke was so thick that we did have to turn on the fan

and open the window, just to get the smoke out of there.

Now, earlier in my life I had worked at a crematory.

And the smell was that of burnt flesh.

There was no mistake of that, because it's

an unmistakable smell.

Mike?

Mike?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): For Kay and Mike Fletcher,

it was frighteningly real, yet at the same time

almost impossible to believe.

Only later did they learn that such mysterious episodes

have been reported for well over 500 years.

Students of the paranormal call it

spontaneous human combustion, or SHC,

when a perfectly normal person bursts

into flame without warning and without apparent cause.

Mainstream scientists dismiss such accounts.

Still, the reports have persisted

since the 15th century, and show no signs of letting

up now at the dawn of the 21st.

If there is indeed such a thing as SHC,

Kay Fletcher is one of the few who lived to tell about it.

Most of the others weren't so lucky.

March 26th, 1986, Kendall Mott was worried.

His father George, a retired fireman,

had serious lung problems.

An air pump and facemask helped keep him breathing.

But on that day, George hadn't answered repeated phone calls.

A quick look around convinced Kendall

that something was wrong.

KENDALL MOTT (VOICEOVER): The windows were all brown.

And I noticed that the door handle

was warm when I grabbed it.

Dad?

KENDALL MOTT (VOICEOVER): It was real dark inside the house,

and it smelled like it had been burnt.

Dad?

Dad?

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Kendall was

confronted by a ghastly sight.

Fire had reduced his father to a scattering of ashes,

a few splinters of bone, and a fragment of skull.

It's scary to find somebody like that, to walk in and find

somebody that you love all burnt like that with no explanation

as to why or what happened.

The case of George Mott in the spring of 1986

has all the hallmarks of classic spontaneous human combustion.

There was incredible localized damage done to the body.

George Mott was incinerated to an extent

that we have been told by forensic experts could only

be replicated inside a crematorium

operating at 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit or more

for 12 long hours.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): The searing heat had melted

a television in the room.

Yet curiously it had left much of the bedding unscathed.

In addition, scarcely two feet away, a box of wooden matches

had failed to ignite, and air was still pumping

through George's facemask.

Skeptics, however, insist that behind the bizarre scene

lies a rational explanation.

Now, do I know exactly what happened?

I don't, but let me reconstruct a little bit.

We're told that Mr. Mott was a former drinker

and a former smoker, but that he had reformed.

He was supposed to be depressed.

Just suppose that he said, "what the heck?

I think I'll have a cigarette."

This would explain him taking off the oxygen mask

while the unit would still be left running.

And it would explain why the matches were there.

Now, if that's the case, then this

is just another case of smoking in bed,

and is not mysterious, and is a rather mundane case.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): But not even skeptics

use the word mundane to describe what Don Gosnell

found in December of 1966.

A gas company meter man in Coudersport, Pennsylvania,

Gosnell called on Irving Bentley,

a 92-year-old retired physician.

That day, Dr. Bentley was apparently away from home.

Gosnell let himself into the basement.

DDN GOSNELL (VOICEOVER): When, I got to the bottom of the steps,

there Was a pile of ashes on the floor.

And there was an odor, something I had never encountered before.

It was kind of sickening sweet odor.

And then I looked up, and here there

was a hole through the floor right above me.

And I stood there, and I looked at that hole,

and there was little red embers all around the hole yet.

And all I could think was, "they got Dr. Bentley out of here,

but why didn't somebody call the fire company

and get this taken care off?"

So I went run running upstairs and went into the bathroom.

And that's when I found the remains of Dr. Bentley,

or what was left.

All there was part of one leg.

And it was so discolored I couldn't tell

it was a human being or a mannequin

till I got right down close and looked at it.

And when I got the picture, I left right then.

What is so amazing and so profoundly

perplexing to mainstream science about the scene

that Dr. Bentley left behind is the incredibly intense fire

that consumed his body quite literally to powder,

leaving behind only his head, a kneebone, and a lower

left leg as mute testimony to what

had once been a human being.

The rest of his body was ash in the basement below.

We believe that Dr. Bentley answered a call of nature,

to be polite.

While standing in front of the toilet,

suddenly, spontaneously, he became a human fireball.

The nature of the fire, and we kind of use fire

in quotes here, failed to produce enough thermal energy

to melt the little aluminum walker, failed

to produce enough heat to blister paint

on the bathtub inches away.

And yet it was quite capable of directing its energy downward,

through the oak beams, through the flooring,

and into the subfloor beneath into the basement.

The case of someone like Dr. Bentley

is very understandable in the sense of him being infirm.

He had a history of setting his clothes on fire from his pipe.

His clothing was pockmarked with burns from his pipe.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Dr. Bentley

also had a habit of keeping matches

in his bathrobe pockets.

Joe Nickel believes that burning ashes from Bentley's pipe

dropped near them and they ignited.

And there was plenty of fuel to feed the flames.

In many of the cases, the person's own body fat

can contribute to the fire.

If we imagine Dr. Bentley with his body on fire,

he falls to the floor, there is linoleum on that floor.

And linoleum, once it catches fire,

is a very powerful flammable material.

The flooring burned.

The subflooring burned.

And beams, there's beams underneath.

There's a tremendous amount of wood underneath his body

to act as a funeral pyre.

Mysterious?

Not really, not scientifically mysterious.

Unusual, yes.

The debunkers of spontaneous combustion

could conduct a very simple experiment.

Take a cadaver.

Put it on a tar-based linoleum flooring,

put an aluminum walker over the top of it,

and drop a cigarette on it.

If it burns to powder, we're gonna be real impressed,

and that person deserves a Nobel Prize in physics.

But I'll wager money that experiment is gonna fail.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Larry Arnold theorizes

that some cases of spontaneous human combustion

may be an explosive aberration of the electrical current flows

naturally present in the body.

We have the potential of hundreds of thousands

of volts of electricity coursing through the body

instantaneously.

If the amperage is sufficiently high,

then the body would literally become its own electrocution

mechanism.

It would fry itself out from the inside electrically.

This is crackpottery of a very high order.

There is not a single reasonable theory

for spontaneous human combustion.

There is no convincing scientific evidence of it.

So the mystery mongers ought to shut up and get a life.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Larry Arnold

is unfazed by such criticism.

He claims to have researched over 400 cases

of spontaneous human combustion, some dating back to the 1400s,

and many documented by photographs.

The naysayers, the PhDs who are phenomena-hating debunkers,

choose not to face the facts.

This is a mystery that's crying out for study, that's

crying out for recognition.

This is a mystery that is to this day unsolved.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Next, the poetic music of rap star

Tupac Shakur glorified gang culture

and seemed to predict his own violent demise.

Now the investigation into Shakur's murder

has become a tangle of chilling speculation

and conflicting theories.

Tupac Shakur, one of rap music's most

popular and enigmatic artists.

His autobiographical songs reflected

a dark, treacherous world he knew all too well.

Alternately described as a street

thug and a charismatic poet, Tupac

won the duration of millions.

By the age of 25, he had cut four platinum albums

and starred in five feature films.

I thought he was a brilliant man.

I thought he had a lot of vision, a lot of foresight.

He made-- he was very creative.

He was an artist.

And at the same time, he was a revolutionist.

He was a great person. He was extremely charismatic.

He was very intelligent, very business smart, very funny,

very warm, intelligent, caring.

That was the Tupac that I knew.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Despite his success,

Tupac could never resist the lure of the streets.

Between 1991 and 1995, he was arrested eight times.

In 1994, he was shot five times and left

for dead in the lobby of a New York City recording studio.

In 1995, he served eight months in prison for rape.

Within a year of his release, Tupac's explosive past

finally caught up with him.

He was cut down in a hail of gunfire

just off the Las Vegas strip.

His killer is still unidentified, still at large.

According to those who knew him best,

Tupac Shakur never expected to reach his 25th birthday.

He was wrong, but only by three months.

Shakur's untimely death has raised a host of questions

and given rise to three distinct theories about his murder,

a murder that occurred as Tupac Shakur

relaxed with friends in America's

playground, Las Vegas, Nevada.

It was September 7th, 1996.

Las Vegas was operating at full capacity.

Thousands had gathered for the heavyweight boxing match

between Mike Tyson and Bruce Seldon,

held at the world famous MGM Grand Hotel.

Tupac Shakur was one of the many celebrities

who attended the fight.

He was accompanied by Marion Suge

Knight, CEO of Death Row Records,

Shakur's recording company.

This photograph of Tupac and Suge

was taken after the fight at around 10:55 PM.

They were headed for Sugee's dance

club, followed by an entourage of musicians and bodyguards.

CATHY SCOTT (VOICEOVER): Tupac normally

was known to pack a weapon, as was Suge and many people

in the entourage.

They weren't armed that night, and

everybody said they felt safe.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Reporter Cathy Scott is writing

a book about the murder.

So it was a very festive mood.

Obviously, they were playing their music loud.

So they were in a partying mood.

They were flirting with women.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): At 11:10, Tupac and Suge

pulled up to an intersection and spoke

with two unidentified women.

Is there a party somewhere?

You know that, always a party.

The two were looking at the girls and talking to them.

That's what the witnesses have told police.

And that's when a white Cadillac drove up on the passenger side

next to Tupac and opened fire.

[gunshots]

Tupac tried to climb into the back seat, and didn't make it.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): As the attackers sped away,

Suge Knight took off in the opposite direction.

He finally stopped in front of a casino one mile away.

Tupac Shakur was in critical condition, shot in the chest,

in the hip, and in the hand.

Suge Knight had escaped with a slight bullet

graze in the temple.

Despite the presence of thousands

of potential witnesses, police say only one person

offered a glimmer of hope.

I was in the car behind 'em.

Car behind 'em?

The Yafeu Fula, one of Tupac's backup singers,

was riding in the car directly behind Suge and Tupac.

I was [inaudible] backseat.

Next thing you know, [inaudible] shot him.

All right, relax.

He told police that night that he could do a photo lineup,

pick out the gunman from a photo lineup.

Police interviewed him briefly.

Apparently, not extensively.

Took his number, and he went on his way.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): For six long days,

fans gathered outside the Las Vegas hospital

where Tupac clung to life.

It was a losing battle.

On the afternoon of September 13th, 1996,

Tupac Shakur took his last breath and died.

Initially, conventional wisdom had it

that Tupac fell victim to a spontaneous burst

of gang violence.

Supporting that scenario was this videotape, recorded

by a security camera at the MGM Grand,

just three hours before the shooting.

Members of Tupac's entourage can be seen in the lobby

engaged in a brutal scuffle.

Both Suge Knight and Tupac were present.

Moments later, Tupac followed by Suge

can be seen hurrying through the casino.

The target of the assault was 22-year-old Orlando Anderson,

an alleged member of a Los Angeles street

gang, the South Side Crips.

It has long been rumored that Suge

Knight is affiliated with a rival gang, the Compton Bloods.

Was this confrontation the spark that led to Tupac's murder?

Any time someone as popular as Tupac Shakur can be killed

in front of thousands of people after one of the biggest

events in the world in one of the most popular cities, Las

Vegas, in the world, then there's something more to it

than just some random shooting by some idiot

who decided to pick up a gun and point at Tupac Shakur.

It has to be some organization or some movement

behind that killing.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Some say this music video by Tupac

offers a clue to a second scenario.

In the months preceding his death,

Tupac was at the center of a heated

dispute between East Coast and West Coast rap music factions.

There was a rivalry that started between Tupac Shakur.

And artist Biggie Smalls and Puffy Combs, who is the CEO

of Bad Boy Entertainment.

That rivalry between them existed

because when Tupac was shot at Quad Studios

he felt not that Big and Puffy set him up,

but that they knew that it was coming and didn't warn him.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): In a dramatized portion

of the video, Tupac publicly blamed Puffy Combs

and Biggie Smalls for the attack that nearly killed him in 1994.

Please don't kil me.

It was Buff's idea.

I'm just a rapper, man!

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): No one has ever

been arrested in that shooting.

I ain't gonna kill you.

We was homeboys once, Pig.

Once we homeboys, we always Homeboys.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Just weeks before his death,

Tupac appeared on radio station KMEL in San Francisco,

and candidly discussed his feelings

towards his East Coast rivals.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): Just last weekend, Biggie Smalls,

AKA Notorious BIG, was himself gunned

down shortly after leaving a party in Los Angeles.

At this time, there is no known connection between

his murder and Shakur's.

In addition, there is no proof that the East Coast West Coast

rivalry had anything to do with two Park's

death, leading to intense speculation

about a third possibility.

Perhaps the murder was an inside job orchestrated by someone

close to Tupac Shakur.

This scenario is populated by unanswered questions.

In the midst of the jam-packed Vegas strip,

how do the gunmen know where Tupac would be?

Why did he seem to target only Tupac?

Why weren't Tupac's s bodyguards armed at the time

of the shooting, when they had been

armed earlier in the evening?

And why were the strips swarming with people,

including the two unidentified women just

a few feet from the shooting?

Was no one apparently willing to cooperate with police?

[gunshots]

What I was told by one homicide detective

was that everybody went deaf, dumb, and blind.

They were surprised because they said these

are professional bodyguards.

They're paid to guard Tupac.

He hired them for this purpose, yet they didn't see anything.

ROBERT STACK (VOICEOVER): The only person

who reportedly did see something, Yafeu Fula,

never had the opportunity to view a photo lineup

of possible suspects.

Within a week of the shoot, he returned to his home

in New Jersey.

Two months later, Fula was gunned down in the stairwell

of a housing project.

A random act of violence or a premeditated murder

to keep Fula from talking to the authorities?

He was their best bet.

He was right behind the car when it happened,

and he said he could identify--

he believed he could identify the gunmen.

And now Fula's dead, and they don't have that anymore.

Authorities have always maintained

that Fula was the only eyewitness willing to talk.

However, just two weeks ago, two other members

of Tupac's entourage claimed they

told police from the beginning that they had

a clear view of the shooter.

They say police never asked them to view a photo lineup.

The police say the men initially denied seeing the shooter,

but have now re-interviewed them.

Ironically, in one of Tupac's final videos,

he seemed to foretell his own violent demise.

[gunshots]

Cut down in a hail of gunfire by a shadowy unknown assassin.

I don't know if we'll ever know who killed Tupac Shakur,

but I do know that there's millions of people that

are devastated by his loss.

There was a lot of things people might consider bad

about Tupac, but there was a lot of good things about Tupac,

amd we had yet to see all the good things

that I believe could have come out of Tupac Shakur.

Join me next time for more "Unsolved Mysteries."

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