Photo Credit: Good Morning America / ABC News
Duane ‘Keefe D’ Davis says he is innocent of the Tupac Shakur murder more than 30 years ago. Davis was arrested in September 2023 and gave his first interview after being arrested to ABC News this week.
Davis insists that he is being railroaded by authorities and that he only confessed to his involvement in the crime because he was paid to lie. During a jailhouse interview with ABC News, Davis said he should be at home watching his grandchildren grow up and tending his garden.
“I’m innocent,” Davis said during the hour-long meeting at the Clark County Detention Center in Nevada. Davis describes himself as a ‘good man’ who is retired from the drug slinging life he had as a young man. “I did everything they asked me to do. Get new friends. Stop selling drugs. I stopped all that,” Davis tells reporters. “I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight at one of my f*cking grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”
Prosecutors allege that Keefe D was a longtime member and leader of a Crips street gang based in his hometown of Compton, California. Authorities say he was the alleged ‘shot caller’ on the night of Shakur’s killing in September 1996. As such, they say Davis is the one who orchestrated the drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur on the Las Vegas strip at a red light.
While waiting at the red light, a car pulled up next to the BMW being driven by Suge Knight and fired multiple shots into the vehicle. Shakur was rushed to the hospital to treat his wounds, but died six days later. The unsolved murder has haunted hip-hop’s legacy for nearly 30 years—mostly thanks to street code which does not take kindly to ‘snitches.’
Vegas detectives built their case off Davis’ own account of the killing, retold in multiple police interviews, public media appearances, and a 2019 self-published memoir with his own name on it. Davis’ previous words copping to his role in the killing is the main piece of evidence against him. Investigators said they spent years working to beef up Davis’ narrative of events by using evidence and additional accounts from others. The case is expected to be presented to a jury in 11 months.
“I’ve never read the book,” Davis tells reporters of the memoir ‘Compton Street Legend.’ He shares credit as co-author and the book tagline reads, “The last living eyewitness to Tupac’s murder is telling his story.” Davis alleges that his co-author took artistic liberties in writing the book. “I just gave him details of my life,” Davis says. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.” Davis alleges he was not even in Sin City at the time of the murder, instead saying he was in Los Angeles.
“I did not do it,” he says emphatically on camera. “They don’t have nothing. And they know they don’t have nothing. They can’t even place me out here. They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keefe D, no nothing.”
In 2008, Davis confessed to his alleged role in the Shakur murder in an interview with detectives who were looking for information on Notorious B.I.G.’s murder—which happened six months after the murder of Shakur. David told investigators that he did not have information about Biggie’s murder, but did have other information the investigators would be interested in. Davis’ admissions in that case were made as part of a ‘proffer agreement’—that is he would share information with no threat of prosecution for what he revealed.
The following year, Davis again confirmed his alleged role in the Shakur murder with detectives in Las Vegas. But Vegas authorities were not part of the original proffer agreement, which means he could potentially be prosecuted for that information. The case hinges of Davis’ own public words “reinvigorating the investigation,” retired head of the Vegas homicide bureau Jason Johansson told ABC News last year.
