Duane Davis Charged With Tupac Shakur's 1996 Murder
Las Vegas Police arrested a man connected to the murder of Tupac Shakur, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996.
Duane “Keefe D” Davis was arrested and charged on Friday, September 29, Us Weekly confirmed. In a press conference, police said Davis, 60, was not the gunman but described him as the “shot caller.” A grand jury voted to indict Davis on one count of murder with a deadly weapon.
“For 27 years, the family of Tupac Shakur has been waiting for justice,” Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters on Friday. “While I know there’s been many people who did not believe that the murder of Tupac Shakur was important to this police department, I’m here to tell you that is simply not the case.”
Marc DiGiacomo, a chief deputy district attorney for Clark County, said in court that Davis was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who “ordered the death” of Shakur. Prosecutors accused Davis of obtaining a gun “for the purpose of seeking retribution against” Shakur and Suge Knight, who was in the car with the rapper on the night he was shot.
The arrest comes two months after police raided Keefe’s wife’s home in Henderson, Nevada, which is near Las Vegas. Documents said authorities were looking for items “concerning the murder of Tupac Shakur.” According to the AP, investigators collected multiple computers as well as a cell phone, hard drive, several .40-caliber bullets, two containers of photographs, a Vibe magazine featuring Shakur and a copy of Davis’ memoir, Compton Street Legend.
Shakur was shot on September 7, 1996, after leaving a boxing match held at the MGM Grand. The rapper, then 25, was riding in a BMW on Las Vegas Boulevard with Knight, now 58, when a white Cadillac pulled up next to their vehicle and gunfire erupted. Shakur was shot multiple times and died one week later. His murder has remained unsolved for the last 27 years.
In both his 2019 book and in interviews, Davis admitted he was in the Cadillac at the time of the attack. He also claimed his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson was one of two people sitting in the backseat when the shots were fired.
Anderson, however, denied any involvement in the shooting. He died in May 1998 in an unrelated shooting in Compton, California. Davis is the only person who was in the Cadillac that is still alive.
Greg Kading, a former detective for the Los Angeles Police Department who has investigated the case, recently told the AP that he wouldn’t be surprised if Davis was arrested in connection with Shakur’s death. “It’s so long overdue,” Kading, 60, said. “People have been yearning for him to be arrested for a long time. It’s never been unsolved in our minds. It’s been unprosecuted.”
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Kading went on to say that he believes the investigation gained momentum in recent years in part because of public statements Davis has made about the case. “Prior to Keffe D’s public declarations, the cases were unprosecutable as they stood,” Kading told the AP. “He put himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy.”
During a 2018 interview, Davis claimed that he knew who was responsible for Shakur’s murder but would never reveal the perpetrator. “I’m going to keep it for the code of the streets,” he said in Netflix’s Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G. “It just came from the backseat, bro.”
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