The murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur has been of mountainous, charged discussion, whereby a mere mention of his name ignites a surge of nostalgia and agitation. The nostalgia, of course, is for his overwhelming contributions to American rap, while the agitation is for his brutal murder in 1996.
There have been a handful of documentaries and films about the rapper, each with their own take on what occurred that night, but one in particular has managed to reveal a previously undisclosed tidbit. According to the Who Killed Tupac? documentary series on A&E, the .40-caliber pistol used to murder Shakur was found in the backyard of a well-known Crip in Compton.
The weapon secretly surfaced 19 years ago. An unidentified man found it on his property in 1998 and promptly alerted the cops, TMZ reported on Friday, Dec. 15, citing a police document the team behind the documentary series acquired.
But where's the weapon now? Investigators — and this is not a joke — have no clue.
Police records show the weapon was booked on May 30, 1998, but its connection to Shakur had not yet been established. A couple of years later, the sheriff's department took over law enforcement in Compton and received thousands of confiscated firearms belonging to cops, including the weapon in question.
Several years later in 2006, a sheriff's deputy investigating the murder of Notorious B.I.G. found out that the backyard where Shakur's murder weapon was found had belonged to a girlfriend of a formidable Crip. When pieced together with the fact that Shakur tussled with an alleged Crip inside a hotel, things start to make sense.
Mopreme Shakur, Tupac's brother, said in an episode of the documentary series that he never knew about this highly critical detail. Nobody had informed him the investigators actually were able to find the murder weapon.
Benjamin Crump, a civil rights attorney and a producer for Who Killed Tupac?, was the one who unearthed the police document. While the revelation shocked Tupac's brother, Uproxx notes that this shouldn't be shocking at all to those privy to the LAPD's many instances of corruption. Many believe that the system is inherently dirty, filled with anomalous cops working on behalf of gangs and criminal organizations.
The final episode of Who Killed Tupac? premieres on Tuesday, Dec. 19.
Thoughts about Tupac's murder? What about the revelation about the murder weapon? As always, feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
