Almost 30 years later, the murder of Tupac Shakur will go to trial for the first time.
The gang leader allegedly responsible, according to the prosecution, will only have himself to blame if he goes behind bars.
‘I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody.’
Smoking gun
Postmortem records, documentaries, and conspiracy theories have surrounded the death of Shakur for decades, and the same goes for his rival, rapper Christopher Wallace, aka the Notorious BIG.
The rivalry between the West Coast and East Coast rappers and their entourages hit a boiling point on September 7, 1996, in Las Vegas following a Mike Tyson boxing match.
The two sides had already employed gangs for protection, with Shakur and Death Row Records protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang affiliated with the Bloods. Producer and longtime suspect Marion “Suge” Knight was already affiliated with the group. Wallace’s side, Bad Boy Records and Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, had allegedly hired the South Side Compton Crips as their bodyguards.
It was then, prosecutors say, that Duane “Keffe D” Davis was the leader of those Crips who ordered the killing of Shakur on Sept. 7 and provided the gun to kill him in a drive-by shooting, the Guardian reported.
Reports from the trial, starting Monday, say that the cold case was revived only after Davis’ memoirs were published in 2019. In the book, Davis said he was in the front seat of the Cadillac from which Shakur was shot and allegedly handed the pistol used to someone in the back seat. The book reportedly does not say who opened fire, but everyone else who was in the car that night has since died.
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‘I ain’t killed nobody’
The story goes that Shakur and Knight attacked Davis’ nephew, another member of the Crips named Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson. The fight was allegedly a retaliation for an assault on an employee of Death Row Records.
Prosecutors say Davis was out for revenge after the scuffle, but the 63-year-old said he did not commit the murder and said there was no evidence against him.
“I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody, never did ever kill nobody,” Davis told ABC News in 2025.
Davis argued to the outlet that he should be out living a normal life instead of facing the allegations.
“I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight,” he said. “At one of my f**king grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”
Saying he left the gang life long ago, Davis stated that he was not even in Nevada at the time of the shooting but in Los Angeles, which is over four hours away by car.
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Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images
Hype or homicide?
“They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas,” Davis asserted.
Davis faces life in prison without parole if he is convicted, but despite his apparent admission in his memoirs of being involved in the murder, he has since claimed that the information in the book is not accurate.
“I just gave him details of my life,” Davis said about the author, claiming he never read the memoirs. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”
Davis claimed the book’s details were inflated to generate book sales.
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