LOS ANGELES (AP) – The mystery of who gunned down Notorious B.I.G. – and why – has frustrated and fascinated the hip-hop world for eight years.

With FBI and police investigations failing to net even a suspect, a swirl of theories implicated corrupt cops, gang hits, bicoastal beefs – or all three at once. None have been provable, so far.

The case finally is in court, as a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the New York rapper’s family against the city of Los Angeles and its police department. On Tuesday, a nine-person jury was selected. The panel is expected to at least get a peek inside the so-called murder book showing whom the Los Angeles Police Department interviewed and which leads were followed.

Both sides also presented opening statements, and B.I.G.’s mother Voletta Wallace dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as an attorney recounted the night of her son’s death.

Christopher Wallace was killed shortly after midnight March 9, 1997, on a Los Angeles boulevard after someone in a dark sedan fired seven shots into his sport utility vehicle while both cars were stopped at a light. Wallace was heading to a hotel following an awards show after-party.

The suit claims LAPD officials covered up a former officer’s involvement in the slaying and ignored a systemic problem of potentially dangerous moonlighting. The family claims a number of off-duty officers associated with gang members while providing security for Death Row Records, home of Wallace’s West Coast rival, Tupac Shakur.

Shakur was slain on the Las Vegas Strip six months before the 24-year-old Wallace was killed, and the two are forever linked in hip-hop culture.

According to the Wallace family lawsuit, both record companies began hiring off-duty policemen as bodyguards. The suit describes several instances in which police investigating assaults involving Bad Boy or Death Row employees arrived to find off-duty officers on the scene.

The trial will be split into three phases and could last up to a month.

First, jurors must decide whether Mack was involved in the killing and acted using his authority or skills as a policeman.

If they find he was, they’ll then consider whether the LAPD and the city should be held responsible for the off-duty officer’s actions.

In a third phase, jurors would award damages. The family is asking for an unspecified amount but can present evidence showing Wallace’s potential earnings far exceeded $100 million, Sanders said.

In his two albums, which Nielsen SoundScan says together sold nearly 8 million copies in the U.S., Wallace appears to have foreseen the tumult that’s followed his death.

On the final song of “Life After Death,” Wallace warbles through the chorus: “You’re nooobody til sooomebody kills you.”