Nearly 30 years were devoted by homicide detectives to figuring out who killed Tupac Shakur in a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on September 7, 1996.
Authorities said on Friday that Duane “Keffe D” Davis had been charged with murder, ending decades of misery for those who sought justice for the adored rapper.
Las Vegas Sheriff Kevin McMahill stated, “Many people who did not believe the killing of Tupac Shakur was important to this police department, I am here to tell you: That was simply not the case.” Authorities offered a timeline and examples of the evidence they claimed supported their case against Davis, some of which were based on interviews Davis gave to different media sources.
In a news conference on Friday, Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson stated that Davis “will appear in court in the next few days” to establish his custody status and a trial date. According to Wolfson, he has been charged with one count of open murder with a deadly weapon and a gang enhancement.
Davis, who is 60 years old, is the last remaining suspect in the case. Who is the man who has spent 27 years eluding capture?
A self-described “hardened gangster”
According to investigators, Davis planned his retaliation against Shukar while serving as the leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang. He published a candid autobiography in 2019 titled “Compton Street Legend.”
In the memoir, he claimed to have advanced through the ranks of the infamous South California gang to become a “shot caller,” and to have built up a multimillion dollar narcotics business that was operating across the country. Davis was raised in Compton, which he described as a “middle-class, family-oriented neighborhood for Black families,” after leaving his birthplace of Watts, California. According to Davis’ memoir, his father gambled on horses with his uncle at the Agua Caliente Racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, and won $50,000 (the equivalent of $1 million in today’s money).
Davis stated that his parents, a homemaker from Texas and a Marine from Virginia, used the money to buy a house in Compton and two new automobiles. They were inspired by the promise and potential of America. According to Davis, their family was the only Black family on their neighborhood when they first moved in in 1965. White families gradually started to leave “like cockroaches fleeing when the lights were turned on,” Davis wrote.
Davis, one of 12 siblings, grew raised in a loving home. Davis was 15 when his mother passed away from colorectal cancer in 1980. According to Davis, he was diagnosed with the same cancer that killed his mother in 2014 but is currently in remission. Two of his brothers also passed away; one from cancer and the other from a shooting on Compton’s streets. When Davis was 9 years old, he claims to have first met Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight. He claimed that in 1971, he first became associated with the Crips, primarily because that was what the other lads in his area were doing. His job at Compton College “wasn’t rolling fast enough,” he said.
Davis said in his writing that his time in prison for dealing from 1985 to 1989 did not rehabilitate him but rather turned him into a “hardened gangster.” Davis described his interactions with law enforcement regarding Shakur’s passing. Despite being 46 years old and being charged with federal narcotics offenses, Davis consented to talk to them in order to “shred the indictment.”
How is Duane “Keffe D” Davis allegedly involved in the murder?
Three additional guys who were thought to have been in the white Cadillac the night Shakur was shot have passed away. According to authorities, Davis is the last remaining suspect in the case. Shakur and his crew went to the Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on the night of the shooting.
According to investigators, Shakur and Knight saw Davis’s nephew Orlando Anderson in the hotel. Shakur and Knight were caught on camera punching the nephew, and hotel staff intervened to break up the brawl. Davis learned about the altercation, according to the authorities, and he immediately set about planning his retaliation.
Police claimed that Davis obtained a pistol from a “close associate” and then enlisted the services of Deandre Smith, Terrance Brown, and Orlando Anderson before driving off in the notorious white Cadillac. His Henderson, Nevada home was raided by Las Vegas police on July 17.
Multiple computers, 40-caliber ammunition, “tubs containing photographs,” a cellphone, and a hard drive were discovered during the search, according to the detectives’ report. They also seized a copy of “Compton Street Legend” and a magazine that featured Tupac Shakur.
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