Duane Keith Davis, the former gang leader who on Monday was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur, long claimed that he had orchestrated the drive-by shooting as retribution for a beating of his nephew by Mr. Shakur and his associates.
Mr. Davis, 63, made those declarations in interviews with the police, for a documentary and in his memoir, which became a catalyst for the authorities to reopen Mr. Shakur’s case.
In the trial that concluded on Monday, jurors repeatedly heard Mr. Davis’s account of the night of the shooting. In a 2008 interview with the police, for example, he said he had been provided a gun from an associate of Sean Combs. In the 1990s, Mr. Combs’s Bad Boy Records was in a heated rivalry with Death Row Records, led by Marion Knight, known as Suge, who had signed Mr. Shakur.
Mr. Davis, who goes by Keffe D, said he first tried finding Mr. Knight and Mr. Shakur at a nightclub owned by Mr. Knight on the evening of Sept. 7, 1996, when Mr. Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson, was attacked in Las Vegas.
Along with two other associates, Mr. Davis and Mr. Anderson gathered in a white Cadillac in Las Vegas and spotted Mr. Knight and Mr. Shakur in a black BMW, Mr. Davis said. He said he passed a gun to Mr. Anderson, who was seated in the back of the vehicle, and Mr. Anderson shot at the BMW. Mr. Shakur was shot four times and died six days later. Mr. Davis is the only person to have been charged in connection with Mr. Shakur’s death.
Since his arrest in 2023, Mr. Davis has recanted his admissions. No hard evidence was presented at the trial to support his previous claims. The murder weapon and the Cadillac were never recovered. The other three people Mr. Davis identified as having been in the Cadillac are deceased.
“They can’t even place me out here,” Mr. Davis told ABC News in 2025. “They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing.”
Michael Sanft, Mr. Davis’s defense lawyer, said his client was prone to embellishing stories. During the trial, Mr. Sanft placed the word “bullshit” on a large monitor and said that “Keffe was known to do this.”
Mr. Davis said in 2014 that he was diagnosed with colon cancer, and has since said that he is in remission. The authorities arrested Mr. Davis outside a home in Henderson, Nev. He told the police that he had moved there because of his wife’s job.
After the verdict was returned on Monday, the judge said that Mr. Davis would be held without bail. He faces a potential sentence of life in prison.
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