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According to his lawyer, Steven Goldberg, Michael Harris filed for divorce in June 2005 when he learned Lydia Harris was engaged in independent settlement negotiations with Suge.

“There were negotiations between Knight and Lydia in an attempt to settle the case that Michael had been formerly unaware of,” Goldberg says.

By filing divorce papers from Soledad prison, Harris was able to impede any settlement talks between his wife and Knight, and guaranteed that his divorce case would be heard here in Monterey County. Lydia Harris, for her part, denies she ever tried to cut her husband out.

“Yes, I spoke with Suge Knight’s attorney. I no longer had an attorney so I just had to negotiate. I had the right to do it and it got misconstrued to Michael,” she says. “They didn’t come to him with the right story.

“You been locked up all those years, you already angry. You hear your wife doing something behind your back. You going to react,” she continues. “It’s the divide-and-conquer strategy. I’m so privy and close to it because I saw the same moves between Suge and Michael Harris as Michael and Lydia Harris. They manipulate and try to show another picture. They been speculating.

“This case never should have got into my personal relationship and that’s what caused all the problems today,” she says. “Everyone’s so worried about my personal relationship.”

On Aug. 29, 2005, a day after Suge Knight was shot in the leg at a party, Judge Adrienne Grover added his name as an “interested party” to the divorce of Lydia and Michael Harris—a move that placed a block on Knight’s accounts.

Earlier this month, after four no-shows at court-mandated hearings, Knight heard from Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald Sohigian that he would take control of everything Knight owned, including Death Row and its valuable library of master recordings, unless he presented documents revealing the location and extent of his assets.

On April 14, the morning he was likely to be held for contempt and that his assets were to be placed in receivership, Knight filed petitions for bankruptcy on behalf of himself and Death Row. According to Steve Goldberg, the move will only forestall the inevitable.

“It’ll be a lengthy process, but Knight is going to have to make full disclosure of his assets in bankruptcy court. If he fails, that’s a felony. You can get prison time for it,” Goldberg says. “The bankruptcy court has nationwide powers to gather his assets and then they do get reserved and ultimately liquidated and distributed to his creditors, the primary being the Harrises.”

According to an April 5 Los Angeles Times article, the other creditors listed in the petitions include the Internal Revenue Service, owed $11.3 million, and the law firm of Christensen, Miller, Fink, Jacobs, Glaser, Weil and Shapiro, owed $350,000. Goldberg says all of Knight’s creditors, first and foremost the IRS, are likely to get paid.

“He’s got homes, cars, jewelry, and cash, but the real value is in the music library,” Goldberg says. “Knight and Death Row have a very, very valuable music library. Dr. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and others. That’s something that will be collected and auctioned. It’s worth in excess of the debt.”