Keffe D Trial Opens With 1998 FBI Admission in Tupac's 1996 Killing
Updated
Updated · Los Angeles Times · Aug 15
Keffe D Trial Opens With 1998 FBI Admission in Tupac's 1996 Killing
3 articles · Updated · Los Angeles Times · Aug 15
Summary
Prosecutors told jurors Duane "Keffe D" Davis admitted to the FBI in 1998 that he was in Las Vegas and in the white Cadillac used in Tupac Shakur's shooting.
Opening statements cast the killing as revenge for Orlando Anderson's beating hours earlier at the MGM Grand, rooted in a Compton gang war between Southside Crips-Burris Street and Mob Piru.
Garry Dale, a Las Vegas police officer who rode with Shakur in the ambulance, testified the wounded rapper stayed conscious but refused to identify the shooter, saying, "We'll take care of it."
The state is leaning on Davis' 2008 task-force interview, later media appearances and his 2019 memoir to argue he supplied the gun, while defense lawyers say the book was fiction and no physical evidence places him there.
Davis, arrested in 2023 and now 63, has pleaded not guilty; the trial revisits a nearly 30-year-old case long clouded by witness silence, dead suspects and failed earlier investigations.