The estate of the slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. filed a federal court motion on Monday claiming that a prison inmate who implicated a former police officer in the killing was lying when he recanted his testimony.
The motion seeks access to phone and prison visitation records for Waymond Anderson, a former R&B artist now serving a life sentence for murder in a separate case.
Anderson said in an Aug. 20 deposition that he lied as part of a scam involving the slain rapper’s family members and attorneys to win a monetary settlement from the city.
The estate for Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, argued that the records will reveal holes in Anderson’s latest story and show who was behind Anderson’s “wholesale assault on the truth.”
Anderson accused the family and their lawyer of offering to cut him in for a portion of any award for falsely testifying that a former police officer, Rafael Perez, told him another former officer, David Mack, was involved in the March 9, 1997 killing of Wallace.
Monday’s filing claims Anderson recanted his earlier testimony as part of an orchestrated attempt to “negatively affect public sentiment and the jury pool.”
In April, Wallace’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city, alleging that rogue police officers killed the rapper. An earlier lawsuit on similar charges ended in a mistrial in 2005.