More Than One Decade After Confession, Keefe D Charged With Murder of Tupac Shakur

Duane Keith Davis, 60, has been indicted for the murder of legendary rapper Tupac Shakur. Davis, also known as Keefe D, was one of the men seated in the white vehicle that pulled up and opened fire on the front passenger side of a black BMW 7-series in which Shakur sat in 1996.

Tupac was shot four times. He died six days later in a Las Vegas hospital.

“This is no doubt a pivotal moment,” said Tupac’s sister, Sekyiwa Shakur, who is also president of the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation. “The silence of the past 27 years surrounding this case has spoken loudly in our community. It’s important to me that the world, the country, the justice system, and our people acknowledge the gravity of the passing of this man, my brother, my mother’s son, my father’s son…There have been multiple hands involved and there remains so much surrounding the life and death of my brother Tupac and our Shakur family overall.”

Although Davis isn’t believed to have been the gunman, it is believed that he provided the murder weapon and was the “on-ground, on-site commander” who orchestrated the plan to kill Tupac and attempted murder of Marion “Suge” Knight.

Davis, a member of the Crips, had spoken to police on record in 2009 through a proffer agreement, which meant that he could not be prosecuted on the information that he had given. The boasting that Davis was doing in interviews was not covered in this deal, however.

In 2019, Davis released a memoir titled Compton Street Legend. In the book, he writes that the attack on his nephew Orlando Anderson the night of the Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon fight at the MGM in Las Vegas gave him the “ultimate green light to do something," adding that "Tupac chose the wrong game to play.”

Later in the memoir, he describes the moments before the fatal shots. “As they sat in traffic, we slowly rolled past the long line of luxury cars they had in their caravan, looking into each one until we pulled up to the front vehicle and found who we were seeking.”

Davis went on to add that he is one of the only living eyewitnesses to Tupac being shot that night and knows the full story behind Tupac and Notorious B.I.G.’s murders.