Jury convicts former gang leader in Tupac Shakur murder
Tuesday 1st September 2026 on 12:00 in
Estonia
A jury has convicted former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis of first-degree murder in the shooting death of rapper Tupac Shakur, ERR reported. Davis, 63, was also convicted of committing the crime with a firearm.
Shakur was 25 when he was shot from a car window while travelling in a black BMW in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson boxing match on September 7, 1996. Davis could be sentenced to life in prison in October. He plans to appeal the verdict.
During the trial, jurors heard a 2008 police interview in which Davis said he was in the white Cadillac from which the shots were fired. He said, however, that he did not fire the bullets that killed Shakur.
Prosecutors said Davis, a former leader of the South Side Crips gang in Compton, ordered the shooting and obtained the gun used by his nephew Orlando Anderson. Anderson opened fire, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said the shooting was planned as revenge for a confrontation in Las Vegas several hours earlier involving Anderson, Shakur and their associates. Anderson denied any connection to Shakur’s killing before he died in an unrelated shooting in 1998 at the age of 23.
Davis’s statements from the 2008 interview, as well as later comments on podcasts and in his memoirs, became key evidence. His lawyers argued that he had invented or exaggerated the stories to make money and sell books. His lawyer urged jurors to treat him as a liar seeking publicity.
Davis had previously also linked Sean “P. Diddy” Combs to Shakur’s murder. In the 2008 interview, Davis said Combs had been willing to pay anything for Shakur’s “head.” Davis claimed that Combs had offered him $1 million to kill Shakur and his manager, Suge Knight, but received no payment. Davis rejected those claims in court.
Shakur’s killing has been associated with the intense rivalry between the United States’ West Coast and East Coast hip-hop scenes, as well as conflicts between the Bloods and Crips gangs. Theories surrounding the case, including claims that Shakur was still alive, have helped sustain and expand his public image for nearly 30 years.