Tupac Shakur murder suspect Duane “Keffe D” Davis will finally go on trial 30 years after the rapper’s death in Las Vegas.
Davis, 61, the only person ever charged in connection with the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, claims he is innocent and had nothing to do with the drive-by shooting. Authorities arrested him on one count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang in September of 2023.
The ironic part of his arrest is that it came about mainly due to Davis making numerous media appearances talking about the crime and even self-publishing a memoir with the tagline “The last living eyewitness to Tupac’s murder is telling his story.”
Davis now claims that the book was fictional, that he has never even read the memoir, and that he signed his name to it purely for financial gain.
“I just gave him details of my life,” Duane Davis said in an interview with ABC News in March. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”
He also claimed he wasn’t even in Las Vegas, despite his previous statements, including those to police in 2008 and 2009 and in a 2018 docuseries titled Death Row Chronicles. Now he says he was hundreds of miles away, at home in Los Angeles, at the time of the murder.
According to prosecutors, Davis, Terry “Bubble Up” Brown, Deandrae “Freaky” Smith, and Davis’ nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson were in a white Cadillac that drew up next to Shakur’s vehicle and started shooting on Sept. 7, 1996, after a fight at the MGM Grand. Davis is the only one of the four men who is still alive.
The trial will have a long and storied witness list
Jury selection in the case, which will take place in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, begins on Monday and is expected to last through September. The court will hold a daily lottery for seats in the courtroom, while a second-floor room in the courthouse will be open to the public and display a live feed of the trial.
The official witness list includes more than 200 names, including Death Row Records cofounder Marion “Suge” Knight, who has said he “wouldn’t testify.” Knight was in the car with Tupac Shakur the night when both were shot in Las Vegas.
Kirk Burrowes, who cofounded Bad Boy Records with Diddy, is also expected to testify. Burrowes claimed in a 2003 lawsuit that Diddy “orchestrated” Shakur’s shooting.
Former Los Angeles Police Department detective Greg Kading is also on the witness list. In 2024, Kading said in an interview that Diddy ordered a hit on Tupac a few months before he was murdered. Kading, who was involved in the murder investigations of both Tupac and Biggie Smalls, says Diddy instructed Duane “Keefe D” Davis to assassinate both Tupac and Suge Knight and even offered him a bounty of $1 million for each killing.