Several months after the killing, the informant gave Los Angeles Police Department detectives the basis for the theory that Knight, founder of Death Row Records, conspired with then-LAPD Officer David A. Mack to arrange the shooting. According to this scenario, a college friend of Mack's, a mortgage broker named Amir Muhammad, ambushed Wallace as his motorcade waited at a stoplight.
The informant was not only paid with money. He was paid with liberty, which is a commodity far more precious than money. It's what makes snitch testimony inherently unreliable:
In July 1997, Psycho Mike contacted LAPD detectives from a county lockup, where he was serving time for a parole violation. He said he had information about the Wallace murder. In return for helping investigators, he hoped for early release from jail.
In his recent deposition, he described his career as a criminal and, later, as an informant. He grew up in Compton, started stealing bicycles at age 6 and moved on to car theft and armed robbery. In 1979, he shot a man to death to avenge the killing of his twin brother, he said. Behind bars, he joined a prison gang and stabbed an inmate 14 times as an initiation rite. Then, he said, he found God and decided to change his life.
The man, now 48, said he has served as a paid informant for an array of agencies: "The Sheriff's Department, FBI, DEA, Long Beach Police, anti-terrorist groups." He said he has suffered from paranoid schizophrenia since childhood, has been hospitalized repeatedly for treatment, and has been on medication "for most of my life."
