Two Witnesses: "Nobody Ever Asked Us"

Original: “Two Witnesses Claim They Saw Tupac’s Killers” · MTV News · no byline · March 3, 1997

On the night of September 7, 1996, two men were in the car directly behind Suge Knight’s BMW: Malcolm Greenidge, a rapper in Tupac’s backing group, and Tupac’s bodyguard Frank Alexander. In late February 1997, the Los Angeles Times reported that the two had seen the perpetrators-yet police had never shown them photos of suspects. MTV picked up the story.

Four Faces in the White Cadillac

Greenidge described four men in a white Cadillac. He said he did not recognize who fired. But he had seen the gun come from the back seat through the driver’s window and caught sight of all four faces for fractions of a second. Whether he could identify them he didn’t know-yet nobody had asked him.

Alexander said he could “possibly” recognize the shooter. Police, however, had never shown him a photo.

“Absolutely Not”: Police Counter with Old Tapes

Las Vegas police pushed back. Sergeant Kevin Manning said both men had given statements on tape on the night of the crime. That did not fit their new claims at all. Investigators were surprised that the two had not come forward sooner; detectives had since made contact.

The contradiction is well documented. According to the Las Vegas Sun, the transcripts from the night of the shooting were 13 and 11 pages long. Asked whether he could identify the shooters, Alexander had replied “absolutely not” at the time, Greenidge “no.” Manning was also puzzled by the witnesses’ portrayal: they had told the newspaper both that police had harassed them-and that police had never approached them.

Silence in the Circle and a Dead Witness

Behind the story lies a fundamental problem of the investigation: hardly anyone from Tupac’s circle wanted to talk to police in 1996. One witness who might have done so was already dead by then.

Yafeu “Yaki Kadafi” Fula, 19 years old and a member of the Outlawz, was considered by Las Vegas police to be a key witness whom they had wanted to interview since the shooting. He was shot dead in Orange, New Jersey, on November 10, 1996. Local police saw no connection to Tupac’s death.

The Late Verdict Comes Without the Witnesses of That Night

Malcolm Greenidge is known to fans as E.D.I. Mean of the Outlawz. Frank Alexander later wrote a book about his time as Tupac’s bodyguard.

That the case was ultimately tried in court after all was not due to these witnesses, but to statements by former gang member Duane “Keffe D” Davis about the white Cadillac. A Las Vegas jury found him guilty of murder on August 31, 2026 (not final as of October 2026).

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