As of October 2026: On August 31, 2026, a Las Vegas jury found Duane “Keffe D” Davis guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. Sentencing is set for October 13, 2026. Davis denies the killing and plans to appeal; the verdict is not final.
There is no murder weapon, no car and no trace from the crime scene that implicates Duane Keith Davis. No version of events has him pulling the trigger. Even so, he is the only person ever found guilty of murdering Tupac Shakur. In the jury’s view, his own words convicted him: accounts he gave to investigators, in a book, on television and on YouTube, all of which he now calls made up. The trial itself is covered on The Trial of Duane Davis.
Watts, Compton and the Southside Crips
Davis was born in Watts in South Los Angeles, one of twelve children; in 1965 the family moved to Compton. His mother died of colon cancer in 1980, when he was 15. That is how he tells it in his memoir, as summarized by CBS News in 2023. By his own account he joined the Crips in 1971 and rose to “shot-caller,” the man who gives the orders. Prosecutors called him a leader of the Southside Compton Crips in 2026; the Los Angeles Times described him as the head of the gang’s Burris Street set.
His money came from drugs. He spoke of a nationwide, multimillion-dollar operation and says he served time for dealing from 1985 to 1989. In 1998 a federal case over the sale of two kilos of cocaine caught up with him. After the 2026 verdict he claimed he had left gang life behind in 1988; nothing confirms that.
He says he has known Suge Knight since they played football as kids. An FBI report from 1998, shown at trial, records Davis describing himself as friendly with Knight before Knight’s crew beat up his nephew. That nephew was Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
September 7, 1996
According to the prosecution, Davis was in Las Vegas for the Tyson fight that night but took no part in the beating in the MGM Grand lobby. Afterwards, according to the prosecution, he got hold of a gun and cruised the city with Anderson and two other men in a white Cadillac. When they pulled up beside the BMW carrying Knight and Tupac, Davis passed the weapon to the back seat. The jury accepted this version. The sequence of events is laid out in The 1996 Las Vegas Shooting and The Investigation.
A story in many versions
1998, the FBI. In a confidential session tied to his cocaine case, Davis said that after the fight he stayed in his room at the Excalibur with Anderson and their girlfriends. He floated the idea that Compton police officers working for Knight had done the shooting, and said his nephew was not involved.
2008, the LAPD task force. This time he was facing a federal life sentence over PCP and cocaine sales. Detectives led by Greg Kading wanted to talk about the murder of The Notorious B.I.G., in which Davis had briefly been a suspect. He denied any role in it, then volunteered: “We did the other one.” He said he passed the gun back to DeAndre “Big Dre” Smith, and when Smith balked, Anderson took it and fired. He also claimed that Sean Combs had offered money through a middleman to have Tupac and Knight killed. Combs has always denied this and was never charged in the Shakur case; prosecutors at the 2026 trial made no allegation against him. In March 2009 Davis was signed up as a confidential informant, without the knowledge of Las Vegas police, according to one of the detectives.
2011, someone else’s book. Kading made the interviews public in Murder Rap. Prosecutors later argued that this angered Davis enough that he wanted to tell the story himself.
2018 and 2019, in public. On BET’s Death Row Chronicles he said he had been in the car and that the shots came from the back seat; the street code kept him from naming the shooter. He had cancer, he said, and nothing left to lose. In YouTube interviews, among them VladTV, he went further: “Orlando rolled down the window, and popped him.” His 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend, refers to the shooter only as “one of my guys.”
2025, from jail. In his first TV interview after his arrest he said he was innocent and had been hundreds of miles away that night, and that he had neither written nor read the book.
2026, after the verdict. He told The Hollywood Reporter that his 2008 account was a rehearsed “script” meant to get him out of the drug case, and that on the night of the shooting he was at a bar in Los Angeles. He also called the Combs story invented. There is no evidence of an alibi, and no court has tested this version.
Arrest and custody
Las Vegas police reopened the case in 2018. Davis’ book and interviews had “reinvigorated” the investigation, they said after arresting him on September 29, 2023. He has been in custody ever since. Bail was set at $750,000 in 2024, but the judge refused to release him because she doubted where the money came from.
Jail brought another case. After a fight with a fellow inmate on December 23, 2024, a jury convicted him in April 2025, and in September 2025 he was sentenced to 16 to 40 months. At his murder trial Davis did not testify; he says his lawyer warned him it would hurt his appeal.
He says he was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2014. During the trial there were reports that it had returned; afterwards Davis said he was doing fine.
Waiting for the sentence
Judge Carli Kierny is scheduled to pronounce sentence on October 13, 2026. Davis faces life in prison. Defense attorney Michael Sanft plans to build the appeal mainly around the admission of the 2008 recordings. Davis himself fully expects to be released. Separately, since April 2026 he has been the defendant in a wrongful-death suit brought by the Shakur family against him and as yet unnamed others.
One name, two spellings
The nickname is spelled inconsistently. Las Vegas authorities, the Associated Press and the title of his book use “Keffe D”; many hip-hop outlets, however, write “Keefe D.” Davis himself said in 2026 that the book’s cover did not even get his name right. This page follows the authorities’ spelling.