Pop Smoke’s 2020 Death Linked to Bizarre July Murder

In late July, a 55-gallon barrel mysteriously floated to shore and was found by a park worker at Malibu Lagoon State Beach in California. Upon investigating, authorities would soon discover the body of 32-year-old Los Angeles native Javonnta Murphy in the barrel, an aspiring rapper who went by the stage name Sirtanky.

With the case still unsolved a week after the body was recovered, TMZ reported Sunday (Aug. 6) that Murphy was actually the brother of a man named Jaquan Murphy. Jaquan was arrested in July 2020, along with four others, as a suspect in the February 2020 home invasion murder of at-the-time rising New York rapper Pop Smoke. While he would eventually be cleared of any wrongdoing in the case, the Los Angeles Police Department is now checking to see if his eerie death this year is related in any way to Pop Smoke’s.

“L.A. County Sheriff’s Department’s investigators are currently looking into the possibility Javonnta’s murder was a retaliation killing for Pop’s murder,” police told TMZ. “Of course, it’s not their only theory, but definitely one they’re digging into.”

After Jaquan was cleared of the 2020 crime, the four other men initially arrested were then charged. In April of this year, one of the four men whose name was withheld earned a 4-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter and home invasion robbery in relation to the emcee’s killing. The three other defendants, including Keandre Rodgers and Corey Walker who were 18 and 19 years old at the time of the crime, are still awaiting sentencing.

[RELATED: Pop Smoke’s Killer Receives Four-Year Sentence after Guilty Plea]

After Pop Smoke passed, he was honored with two posthumous albums in the form of Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon in July 2020 and Faith in July 2021. As of this April, Pop Smoke’s producer Rico Beats has insisted that the late rapper has no music left in his vault.

Photo by SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images