Las Vegas Police arrested and charged Duane “Keffe D” Davis for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur on Friday, Sept. 29. The move marks the first indictment in connection with the shooting, one of the most infamous and oft-debated unsolved murders in modern American history.
Davis, 60, was indicted on one charge of murder with a deadly weapon, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo announced in court on Friday. Describing Davis as the “on-ground, on-site commander” who ordered Shakur’s murder, DiGiacomo told the Associated Press: “It has often been said that justice delayed is justice denied. In this case, justice has been delayed, but justice won’t be denied.”
Suge Knight and Tupac Shakur in Las Vegas, hours before the shooting the left Shakur dead.
In Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand on Sept. 7, 1996, Shakur was riding passenger-side in a BMW with Death Row Records chief Suge Knight when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside the vehicle and fired shots into the car. Shakur was hit with four bullets, and after being placed in a medically-induced coma, succumbed to his injuries six days later at the age of 25.
Davis’ alleged involvement in the crime has long been a matter of public record, after the former member of the South Side Compton Crips gang admitted in a 2009 proffer session with LAPD investigators that he had been in the white Cadillac when his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, fired the shots that killed Shakur. Hours prior to the shooting, Shakur had confronted Anderson in the MGM lobby.over a dispute with one of his associates, and a brawl ensued. Questioned and later dismissed by investigators in the aftermath of Shakur’s death, Anderson publicly denied any involvement in the shooting, and was murdered two years later in an unrelated incident.
After years of investigation (and thanks to a whole cottage industry of books, newspaper articles and TV series about the murder), Anderson came to be widely regarded as the most likely suspect, and Davis added more fuel to the fire in recent years when he elaborated on their involvement in a rash of TV appearances and a self-published 2019 memoir, titled Compton Street Legend. (Indeed, Las Vegas Police acknowledged in a press briefing that Davis' statements to the media gave them the opportunity to revive the case, which had been stalled for decades.) Davis’ Nevada home was the subject of a police raid in July of this year, with investigators seizing computers, hard drives, ammunition, photographs and a copy of Vibe magazine with Shakur on the cover.
At the time of his murder, Shakur was one of the most popular rappers in the world, and his influence has only grown in the 27 years since. The subject of countless biographies, biopics and documentaries, Shakur was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018, and became only the third hip-hop artist to have a song included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry. His albums have sold nearly 30 million copies worldwide.
