On Nov. 14, 2005, a SWAT team filed into the Monterey courthouse and took up positions around the third-floor courtroom, automatic weapons at the ready. Outside, more law enforcement personnel patrolled the halls and balcony, securing a perimeter around Judge Adrienne Glover’s courtroom.

When sheriffs brought the plaintiff into the courtroom wearing a prison jumpsuit and handcuffs to meet with his estranged wife, the door was locked behind them. Michael and Lydia Harris greeted each other pleasantly and sat down with their respective lawyers. The unusual meeting was set up so the prisoner and his wife could figure out how to split $107 million.

So began the most heavily armed divorce hearing in Monterey County history, and one of the last chapters of the remarkable tale of Death Row Records, the legendary rap label that boasted a history as violent and flawed as it was brilliant and influential.

In March of 2005 a Los Angeles judge had awarded Lydia Harris a $107 million civil court judgment in a lawsuit against Marion “Suge” Knight, the bigger-than-life hip-hop mogul. The judgment vindicated her claims that she had co-founded Death Row Records with $1.5 million seed money provided by her husband, Michael “Harry O” Harris, a cocaine kingpin doing 28 years for conspiracy to commit murder and drug trafficking, and who also happened to have an impressive and diverse track record as a legitimate businessman.

In siding with Harris, the judge effectively threw the switch on Death Row Records, killing the landmark West Coast hip-hop label that sold 18 million albums and earned more than $325 million in its first four years alone with renowned talent like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg and Tupac Shakur. After skipping several court hearings and refusing to disclose his assets, Suge Knight finally filed for bankruptcy on April 4 in a last-ditch effort to avoid losing control of the valuable Death Row library.

It was an ignoble end to the once-glorious label that expanded on the style of West Coast gangsta rap made famous by artists like N.W.A. (Niggaz With Attitude) while sparking a deadly bicoastal feud and making a martyr of its most famous artist, the fiery young Tupac Shakur. It is the stuff of dark legend, a tale of artistic genius, ruthless ambition, betrayal and murder set to a Compton Boulevard bump. And at its center stood Suge Knight, an indelibly scary icon with trademark bling, cigar, and the unspoken promise of violence.

But while Suge Knight glowered from magazine covers and television screens over the last 10 years, few outside the inner circle of Death Row records knew about the label’s silent partner, a shadowy but highly respected man who was represented by his loyal wife, “Lady Boss,” and a little black phone in the Death Row recording studio that only received collect calls, a line that was to remain open under all circumstances.