Suge Knight: 'I Didn't Kill Tupac'

Original: “Suge: I didn’t kill Tupac” · Associated Press, reprinted in the Las Vegas Sun · no byline · March 9, 1997

A week after being sentenced to nine years in prison, Suge Knight breaks his silence. On Fox’s America’s Most Wanted, of all shows, the Death Row boss gives his first interview from prison, broadcast on Saturday night, March 8, 1997. The news agency AP summarizes the conversation the following day.

A Shot to His Own Head?

In it, Knight calls Tupac his best friend. “I loved ‘Pac then. I love ‘Pac now,” he says. He calls speculation that he himself had anything to do with the murder “crazy.” His argument: nobody gets shot in the head just to make it look good. He also rejects rumors that Tupac wanted to leave Death Row. Tupac, he says, praised him and the label in every interview.

U-Turn on the Strip

In the interview, Knight defends his actions immediately after the shooting. Instead of taking the fastest route to the hospital, he had turned around at the wheel and driven back toward the Strip. Anyone sitting behind the wheel with a fractured skull isn’t thinking about the fastest route, he counters his critics. In addition, he claims police have long since questioned the man he believes is the perpetrator.

Regarding allegations from Tupac’s mother Afeni Shakur that Death Row cheated her son, Knight provides his own figures: he gave her a check for $3 million from prison. Tupac himself had previously spent around 2.5 million in just a few months.

One Murder Case, Two Proceedings

Knight was in prison in 1997 for a probation violation. Hours before the fatal shooting, he had taken part in the brawl against Orlando Anderson at the MGM Grand. By “the man police questioned,” he likely meant this very Anderson, whom police had arrested and released in Compton in October 1996.

Despite the denials, suspicion against Knight persisted for years in books and documentaries. Only the verdict of August 31, 2026 (not final, as of October 2026) paints a different picture. Duane “Keffe D” Davis of the Southside Compton Crips, Anderson’s uncle, was found guilty. Knight was not charged in the proceedings. He himself has been serving a 28-year prison sentence since 2018 for a fatal 2015 hit-and-run.