Duane “Keefe D” Davis, a former Los Angeles gang leader, is accused of ordering the September 1996 murder.
This is the first time that prosecutions have been initiated in the investigation into this murder which marked the history of music. Former gang leader Duane Davis was arrested and charged on Friday, September 29, in Las Vegas (United States), in the investigation into the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, shot dead in September 1996. Almost thirty years after the events , the gangster nicknamed “Keefe D” is accused of having ordered the assassination and providing the murder weapon.
It was a grand jury that handed down the indictment for gang-related “murder with a deadly weapon,” said Marc DiGiacomo, Clark County deputy prosecutor. “Under Nevada law…you can be charged with a crime whether you were directly involved or an accomplice.”, said the prosecutor, Steve Wolfson. And to get back to Duane Davis, the investigators only had to listen to him. Explanations.
Rap star murdered
The police retraced, during a press conference, the rivalries which led to the events of the night of September 7, 1996, fatal to Tupac Shakur. At the time, the 25-year-old rapper was both a star and a central protagonist in the famous rivalry between the rap scenes of the West Coast and the East Coast of the United States. A native of New York, he embodies “West Coast” hip-hop after moving to California as a teenager with his family. His titles California Love And All Eyez On Mereleased a few months earlier, were hits.
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That evening, in Las Vegas, the rapper attended a Mike Tyson boxing match, notably in the company of Suge Knight, founder of the music label Death Row Records. Suge Knight is also linked to the Mob Piru gang in Los Angeles, an enemy gang of the South Side Compton Crips, whose leader is none other than Duane Davis. In 2019, the latter boasted in his memoirs of having managed national drug trafficking for several years which brought in “millions of dollars”as reported by Guardian.
After the fight, members of Death Row Records beat up a nephew of Duane Davis, Orlando Anderson, in the corridors of the arena. Later that evening, stopped at a red light in a BMW driven by Suge Knight, Tupac Shakur was hit by four bullets fired from a white Cadillac. He succumbed to his injuries six days later.
The last survivor
Nearly 30 years after the events, there is no longer much doubt about the role of Duane Davis: after having “recovered a weapon from a close associate”the gangster, sitting in the front of the Cadillac, “handed the gun to one of the two passengers in the back”, according to the police, cited by CNN. For prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo, the gangster is therefore “the on-site sponsor” who has “ordered death” of Tupac Shakur and the attempted murder of Suge Knight, who was driving the vehicle the rapper was in.
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Duane Davis had already admitted that he was present at the time of the murder, but assured that he was only a witness. In 2009, he admitted to having had a “role” in the murder, according to an investigator cited by CNN. But he was then protected by an immunity agreement: the useful information he revealed to the police could not be used as evidence against him.
The gangster is also the last passenger in the Cadillac still alive. There were four on board: Duane Davis, the nephew struck a few hours earlier, Orlando Anderson, as well as DeAndre Smith and Terrence Brown.
A “personal” matter
If he had not participated in a Netflix documentary in 2018 and published his memoirs the following year, the ex-gang leader would perhaps never have been worried again by American justice in this case. Because it was his own revelations, made when his immunity agreement had expired, which led him straight to prison awaiting a verdict.
He confirmed several times that he was in the white Cadillac, and publicly suggested that he was more involved than he had previously admitted. “When word got around that there was a million dollar reward for the heads of Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight, it was business. But when they attacked my nephew, it became grimly personal,” he also writes in his book, cited by Rolling Stone.
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Duane Davis’ statements are “entirely consistent with the evidence” of the case, concluded Lieutenant Johansson of the Las Vegas police on Friday. One question remains: who pulled the trigger? On this subject, Duane Davis has never been very clear. He writes in his book that it is “from one of his guys”but also, at other times, incriminated his nephew, Orlando Anderson.
Expected in court in the coming days, Duane Davis risks a heavy sentence, the grand jury having requested an additional sentence of 20 years of imprisonment for connection with the activity of a criminal gang. “We often say ‘justice delayed, justice denied’”District Attorney Steve Wolfson said Friday during a press briefing. “In this case, justice has been delayed, but justice will not be denied”he assured.