A former gang leader is set to stand trial Monday in Las Vegas for the decades-old murder of rapper Tupac Shakur one of America’s most infamous unsolved cases.
The trial, expected to run about a month, is unlikely to definitively reveal who pulled the trigger that killed Shakur on the night of September 7, 1996, when he was in Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson fight.
Prosecutors, however, contend that Duane Keffe D Davis, the former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, orchestrated the attack and supplied the weapon used in the drive-by shooting. If convicted, Davis, 63, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Tupac Shakur—also known as 2Pac was 25 when he was killed, a central figure in the East Coast vs. West Coast hip-hop rivalry.
Famous for tracks like “California Love” and “All Eyez on Me,” Shakur was the son of a Black Panther, raised in Harlem and Baltimore, but became a symbol of West Coast rap after signing with Los Angeles-based Death Row Records.
The trial will revisit the fierce competition between Death Row, founded by Marion “Suge” Knight, and Bad Boy Records, led by Sean “Diddy” Combs and featuring Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, who was himself killed in 1997.
Prosecutors allege that Death Row was protected by Mob Piru, a Bloods-affiliated gang in LA, while Bad Boy Records hired the rival South Side Compton Crips for security. Davis led the Crips at the time.
On the night of the murder, following the Tyson fight at the MGM Grand, Shakur and Knight assaulted Davis’s nephew, Orlando Baby Lane Anderson, allegedly in retaliation for an attack on a Death Row employee.
According to prosecutors, Davis sought revenge. Later that night, a white Cadillac carrying Davis, Anderson, and others pulled alongside Shakur’s car. Shots were fired from the Cadillac, fatally wounding Shakur.
For years, the investigation stalled due to lack of evidence. It was revived in 2019 after Davis published memoirs admitting he was in the front seat of the Cadillac and handed a gun to those in the back, though he never identified the shooter. Everyone else in the car has since died.
These admissions, consistent with earlier interviews, led to Davis’s arrest in September 2023. Davis has since recanted, pleading not guilty and claiming innocence. “I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody.
Never did ever kill nobody, Davis told ABC News in March 2025. “They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas.” He now claims he was in Los Angeles the night Shakur was killed and says his memoirs were exaggerated by his co-author for sales.
Davis’s lawyers unsuccessfully sought to block the memoir and a 2008 police interview from being introduced as evidence. The trial will begin with a week of jury selection. Regardless of the outcome, many close to Shakur may remain unsatisfied.
In May, Shakur’s stepbrother Maurice Shakur filed a wrongful death lawsuit, arguing that others involved in the murder have not been held accountable.
The lawsuit references a recent documentary, Sean Combs: The Reckoning, in which Davis told police that Combs, now also in prison, offered him $1 million to kill Shakur.
