On September 24, 1995, the West Coast contingent suffered another blow, and this time it was fatal. The occasion was a late-night birthday party for a record producer at the Platinum House in Atlanta. Suge Knight and Puffy Combs were in attendance with their respective entourages. A fight broke out outside the nightclub and shots were fired. Jake Robles, a Death Row employee who was also a Mob Piru Blood, lay on the ground, seriously wounded. Robles was a close friend of Suge Knight. Witnesses accused Puffy Combs’s bodyguard of the shooting, and Knight immediately put the blame directly on Combs.
A few days after Jake Robles’s death, Mark Anthony Bell, an independent record promoter from New York, was contacted by a mysterious stranger who promised him a record deal if he “cooperated.” According to Randall Sullivan in LAbyrinth, Bell had gone to high school with Puffy Combs and had done some work for Bad Boy. The stranger asked Bell to write down the home addresses of Combs and Combs’s mother on a piece of paper and drop them on the ground where it could be retrieved. The stranger assured Bell that his “help” would never be revealed. Bells refused to give out any information about Combs, suspecting that the stranger was in some way connected to Death Row.
Record promoter Mark Anthony Bell was allegedly confronted by Knight and attacked by several of Knight’s associates at a Dec. 15, 1995, party at the luxurious Chateau Le Blanc in Los Angeles.
According to a police report, Bell is a friend of Sean “Puffy” Combs, the New York head of Bad Boy Entertainment, a rival rap label. Bell, who had done promotional work for both Death Row and Bad Boy, said that on the night of the party he was escorted by Knight into an upstairs VIP room.
After the door was closed, Knight began grilling him for the home address of Combs and his mother. When Bell refused to provide the information, Knight’s associates allegedly began to strike him. One individual grabbed him from behind in a chokehold until he fell to the floor, the report said.
Fearing he would be killed, Bell tried to escape by jumping off a balcony that overlooked the main lobby of the mansion. Knight’s associates allegedly grabbed him and pulled him back into the room, the report said.
Then, according to the report, Knight ordered his associates to clean up the room and make sure Bell was presentable before allowing him to leave.
A friend of Bell witnessed the struggle on the balcony and notified police, who arrived in minutes. But Bell said he was fine and asked the officers to call him a cab. The officers told detectives that Bell had abrasions on his face and arm, but told them he got them in a fall at the party, according to a follow-up police report.
Two days later, Bell began cooperating with police and provided details of the alleged assault, which was described in two police reports.
Bell then hired New York attorney Michael F. Bachner, who notified Knight and Death Row in March that he planned to file a civil lawsuit related to the alleged assault. The suit was never filed, but sources said Bell eventually received a settlement worth an estimated $600,000 from individuals affiliated with Death Row–but not from Knight himself. Several months after the alleged assault, Bell stopped cooperating with authorities, sources said.
Neither Bachner nor Kenner would comment, citing a confidentiality clause in the settlement.
Before receiving his money, sources said, Bell signed a statement declaring that he was “virtually certain” that Knight played no part in the assault.
In that statement, Bell also declared that while he realized he had given several statements to the police after the party, he no longer knew how accurate they were because he was drunk at the time the alleged assault occurred, sources said.
