Jimmy had no idea what he had started. The Quad ambush would alter the course of Hip-Hop history. None of us knew it that night, but the job we did for Jimmy was a portentous moment in the history of American entertainment.
Although the crime was never solved, our actions would trigger a cross-country rampage that left a trail of body bags from Manhattan to Los Angeles, igniting a vicious bi-coastal rap war that culminated in the deaths of the world’s most important and influential rap starts; Tupac and Biggie.
On June 15, 2011, I released a statement to allhiphop.com in which I publicly confessed to robbing and attacking Tupac at Jimmy Henchman’s behest in 1994. The revelation rocked the world. Copies of my confession ran in every major U.S. newspaper and hundreds of media outlets around the world. Here is what I said: “My name is Dexter Isaac. On Monday, May 23, 2011 Rosemond released a statement in which he named myself and another individual, a Mr. Winston Harris (who I do not know), as government informants. I would like to clear the record on that statement: I have never been a rat for anybody and I do not have any deals nor was I made any promises by any government agency for information on Mr. Rosemond.
Mr. Rosemond has crucified good reporters like Chuck Philips, at the LA Times, and Alison Gendar, at the Daily News, for telling the truth about him his activities. He claims they had no proof that he was a rat for the government, which is an outright lie, because Mr. Rosemond, you signed a proffer agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York on 10-20-1998. Mr. Rosemond, I have copies of your presentence report from North Carolina dated 1-13-1997 and other documents about you working with the government sending people you befriended to prison so you can maintain your own freedom. I have met with individuals on whom Mr. Rosemond has told.
Jimmy, I say to you: I have kept your secrets for years. You have never been arrested because of me, or anyone of our friends because of me. How dare you call me an informant! I have stayed silent in prison for the past thirteen years, doing a life sentence like a real soldier should, when you and everybody have turned your backs on me. I have never gotten any help nor asked for any help from you or anyone since being locked up.
As a matter of fact, when I was first notified a couple of years ago that the Feds and Chuck Phillips were investigating you, I wrote you and sent you everything they sent me. I kept it real with you because that’s what real G’s do. Anyway, that was before I found out that you were, in fact, already a turncoat rat for the government. Mr. Rosemond, if I were an informant like you, I would’ve been home years ago with my family, not doing life in prison.
Now I would like to clear up a few things, because the statute of limitations is over, and no one can be charged, and I’m just plain tired of listening to your lies.
In 1994, James Rosemond hired me to rob Tupac Shakur at the Quad Studio. He gave me twenty-five hundred dollars, plus all the jewelry I too, except for one ring, which he wanted for himself. It was the biggest of the two diamond rings that we took. He said he wanted to put the stone in a new setting for his girlfriend at the time Cynthia Reid. I still have as proof, the chain that we took that night in the robbery.
Now, I’m not going to talk about my friend Biggie’s death or Tupac’s death, but I would like to give their mothers some closure. It’s about time that someone did, and I will do so at a different time. Jimmy, you and Puffy like to come off all innocent-like, but as the saying goes: ‘You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.’
Mr. Rosemond, I ask you “Are you going to flip on Puffy when the Feds get you? To save yourself like you have done in the past? Because that’s what a rat does. So in closing, we shall see who the rat is in the near future.”
Two weeks after the statement was published, five N.Y.P.D. detectives came to the jail in MDC Brooklyn to interview me. I swear, the lead investigator, detective Reives, could’ve passed for Denzel Washington. Detective Dozier was a real smooth bald-headed brother who impressed me as a quiet, sneaky type of dude. Detective Salta looked like Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone, in the movie “The Godfather.” I complimented detective Salta on his pin-striped suit.
“I’ma big fan of the Sean Jean clothing line, and I recently spent several hundred dollars at the Sean Jean store in Manhattan,” detective Salta replied.
“I find it odd for a white cop to patronize the business of a black entrepreneur who’s released rap songs in which he boasts about how much richer he is than most while folks, and brags that he does not need their money,” I replied to Salta’s statement. Detective Salta suddenly got real serious, like I had offended him. “I never heard that song.”
His colleagues told him I was telling the truth. There was also this fine Puerto Rican female officer with them who looked exactly like J-Lo. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. She was looking very sexy in her tight two-piece suit. The last detective was another real quite brother with short curly hair. He told me he initially doubted that I had committed the robbery, but after house of interviews he said he was convinced that I was 100% the real deal.
I told the detectives some very specific details that had never been mentioned in the media, such as, if Tupac was shot five times, like he claimed, what type of caliber bullets was he shot with? What happened to the five slugs? What happened to the five casings? The lobby and the elevator at the building that housed the Quad Studios are very small. With all the sophisticated technology and evidence analysis that the N.Y.P.D. has at its disposal, they should’ve recovered any bullets lodged in the walls of the building or casings on the floor, or bullets in Tupac’s head or body.
Have you ever heard the police or the media claim he got shot with a 9mm or a .45 caliber weapon? The answer is no because he was only shot once with a 10mm bullet from his own weapon.
For the last seventeen years, I’ve heard people complaining about why we did him like that and all types of crazy statements. I could not have spoken up earlier because of the statute of limitations was not up on that crime, and my boys and I could’ve been prosecuted for it. The statute of limitations is up now so no one can ever be prosecuted for the crime. It is very important that you understand that point. Over the years, I’ve heard many erroneous rumors about this robbery, so I would like to take this opportunity to clear the air.
Anyone who doubts whether Puffy knew about the ambush need only to consult an interview he gave in the September 1996 issue of Vibe magazine, where he suggests that Tupac shot himself. (How could he possibly know that?)
“Tupac knows who shot him. If you ask him, he knows.”
In April 2005, Vibe magazine published an even more revealing interview in which Jimmy brags about detailed knowledge of the crime.
“Tupac went for his gun and shot himself, and it all makes sense to me because if you got shot five times while laying down, you wouldn’t do all that running around like he was doing in the studio. Later on, I heard that the gun went off, and he got the shyt beat out of him and was gun butted.” Later in the same interview, Jimmy said he once confronted Tupac backstage in 1995 at the House of Blues in Los Angeles to explain the exact motive for the attack.
“Dude, you gotta stop telling people that shyt,” Jimmy recalled. “Nobody came to rob you, they came to discipline you, that is what happened!”
There are people who have been unjustly blamed for the Quad attack that had absolutely nothing to do with it.
*First and foremost: Biggie had nothing to do with Tupac getting robbed that night. *Scotter (real name: Spencer Bowen) played no part in Tupac’s beating. He was nowhere around.
*King Tut, whose real name is Walter Johnson, had absolutely nothing to do with the ambush.
The reason police suspected him of being involved was because this clown used to always go around bragging he committed crimes he didn’t actually do, including the Quad ambush. He was a stick-up guy from Brooklyn trying to beef up his street credibility. Tut had zero to do with the Quad ambush. Tut's bragging finally caught up with him in '96, however. He was sentenced to LIFE in prison, on a third strike, for a robbery he did not commit. Police picked him up after somebody at a party heard him running his mouth about details of the robbery he had overheard from the real perpetrators.
*Haitian Jack (real name" Jacques Agnant) had nothing whatsoever to do with the Tupac robbery.
Like Tupac, Jack and another guy were arrested in 1993 for an alleged gang rape of a 19-year-old woman at the Parker Meridian Hotel in New York. I know Tupac was mad because Jack's lawyer got his charge reduced to a misdemeanor, when Pac, in fact, ended up getting convicted for sexual abuse, and was sent to prison. Pac told everybody the reason Jack got off was because he was a snitch. But here's the thing: sometimes when two or more people commit a crime, only one person goes to jail as the sacrificial lamb. Like it or not, that's the way the justice system often works in this country.
Let me take y'all back for a minute. Remember earlier in this book when I told you about my arrest in the game room with Vicky, Stephan, and his uncle with the guns and drugs? I was the only one that went to prison on that case. None of them told on me. That's just how Lady Justice works sometimes. When she wants you, she's going to get you. Unfortunately for Tupac, that's what happened to him in 1994.
I'm not saying Haitian Jack is not a snitch, nor am I saying he is a snitch. I have no idea. But before someone accuses a person of being a snitch, they should have proof because such accusations can get a person killed in or out of prison. Once somebody says it, you can never take it back, because people like to gossip and spread rumors. I too have heard these rumors about Jack over the years, but I have never met anyone in prison or on the streets that said Haitian Jack sent them to jail or that he testified against them in court. I have never seen a single court document showing Jack was a government informant. Nor have I ever spoken to anyone who has.
I cannot say the same for Jimmy Henchman. He has snitched on both friends and enemies. I have seen the, documents, and now, you will too in the next few pages. No wonder Jimmy was always so lucky. I can't even remember how many times he dodged arrest. He shot a guy in the face and beat the case. He escaped from prison and the government called it bail jumping. He was a fugitive for three years, even the night he had Pac robbed and beaten. The police never even questioned him that night and he was the guy that rented the studio. His entire crew got popped in 2005 and went to jail, everybody but Jimmy. He'd either avoid getting locked up, or if he went to prison, he always served less time than everybody else. When someone deals drugs for nearly twenty years without getting caught, it's going to make you wonder.
So, look closely through these documents. They do not lie. Jimmy says his enemies fabricated them, but they were obtained from his own court cases, most of them written by his own lawyers. The New York Daily News ran a story in September, 2010, that accused Jimmy of being a snitch. He said he was going to sue them, but he never did. Why? In October, 2010, he sent his lawyer to court in North Carolina and California to try to seal the very papers you are looking at.
Like I said, back in the day, all of us had mad love for Jimmy. He was an American myth, our Scarface. We respected his defiance of the law, the way he thumbed his nose at the man. Apparently he tested the government's patience one too many times.
One week after I released my statement on allhiphop.com Jimmy was arrested and charged with running a nationwide cocaine trafficking operation, money laundering, and obstruction of justice and implicated in the murder of a man who slapped his son. Some of his crew who have been arrested for the murder have told authorities that Jimmy orchestrated it. I had absolutely nothing to do with Jimmy's arrest or trial. Like I said before, I have been in prison since 1998.
Soon after his arrest he did exactly what I said in my statement. He made a deal with the prosecutors and started spilling his guts just like the rat I said he is. He met with agents more than nine times telling on everybody he knew, trying to get a deal to save his ass. He even finally confessed to setting up the Quad robbery during one of his proffer sessions with federal agents and prosecutors. At one time Haitian Jack and Jimmy use to be friends. Now they are enemies.
Tupac and Jimmy use to be friends, but they became enemies after Jimmy set him up to get robbed at the Quad Studio.
Haitian Jack and Tupac use to be friends and they became enemies after they fell out over the rape case. Me and Jimmy use to be friends but now we are enemies because he slandered me and I exposed him as the "Rat" he is.
Puffy and Suge use to be friends. Now they are enemies. Tupac and Biggie use to be friends and they became enemies because of negative people around them whispering bullshyt in their ears. But who knows, now maybe they are back to being friends again, smiling down on us...
wow be prepared those Pac stans are going to be mad at you. I'm just trying to warn you
