SOURCE FILE · LAS VEGAS
Justice For Tupac After 29 Years
A Las Vegas jury took less than three hours tonight to convict Duane “Keffe D” Davis of murder in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur — twenty-nine years, eleven months and twenty-four days after the shooting, and seven days short of its thirtieth anniversary. Davis, 63, did not fire the gun. Prosecutors said he bought the plan, supplied the pistol and gave the order, and after nine days of testimony the jury agreed.
In Order
November 30, 1994 to October 13, 2026. Orange marks a hinge.
Nov 30, 1994
Shakur is shot five times and robbed in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Times Square, hours before a verdict in his sexual abuse trial. He survives. He comes to believe people around Christopher Wallace — the Notorious B.I.G., then still a friend — knew it was coming. The rivalry between the two labels stops being a joke.
Sep 7, 1996
MGM Grand, Las Vegas, after Tyson–Seldon. Death Row associate Trevon Lane spots Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson of the South Side Compton Crips in the lobby. Shakur punches Anderson; his entourage joins in. Grainy VHS security video of the beating is played for the jury thirty years later.
Sep 7, 1996
About two hours later, a white Cadillac pulls alongside the BMW that Death Row co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight is driving, near the Strip, and opens fire. Shakur is hit four times. Knight is wounded and survives. Prosecutors would later say Davis obtained a .40-caliber handgun and passed it to the men in the back seat.
Sep 13, 1996
Tupac Shakur dies of his wounds six days after the shooting. He was 25. He had released All Eyez on Me earlier that year and was at the commercial peak of his career.
Mar 9, 1997
Six months later, Christopher Wallace is shot and killed in Los Angeles — stopped at a red light outside the Petersen Automotive Museum after a music industry party. He was 24. Six months before he died he had told a San Francisco radio station he was “just getting over… this whole situation with this East Coast-West Coast thing.” The case has never been solved and no one has ever been charged.
May 29, 1998
Orlando Anderson is killed in a shootout at a car wash in Compton, in a dispute unrelated to either rapper. He was 23. He had been the leading suspect in Shakur's killing and was never charged with it.
2006
After Wallace's family sues the city in federal court alleging police misconduct and ignored leads, LAPD Chief William Bratton creates a task force on the killing. The investigation had gone nearly a decade with little movement.
Dec 2008
The break, and it arrives sideways. Sitting with a joint LAPD and federal task force investigating Wallace's murder, Davis instead starts talking about Shakur's. Asked about Wallace, he says: “We did the other one.” He describes riding in the Cadillac's front passenger seat and handing a loaded .40-caliber Glock to the back seat. The statement is played for the jury in 2026.
2018–2019
Davis tells the story again in public, on his own initiative — in BET's Death Row Chronicles and in his 2019 memoir “Compton Street Legend,” in which he writes that he got the gun that killed Shakur and was in the car it was fired from, but did not pull the trigger.
Jul 17, 2023
Las Vegas Metropolitan Police search Davis's home in Henderson, Nevada.
Sep 29, 2023
Davis is arrested and charged with murder — the first arrest anyone has ever made in the case, twenty-seven years on. He has been in custody since.
Nov 2023
Davis pleads not guilty.
Aug 17, 2026
Trial opens in Las Vegas. Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal tells jurors the shooting was “an act of revenge” for the MGM Grand beating, amid gang tensions between the South Side Compton Crips and the Mob Piru Bloods.
Aug 31, 2026
Guilty. Davis, 63, is convicted of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. The jury deliberates less than three hours after nine days of trial, 24 prosecution witnesses and 3 for the defense.
CBS News, Aug 31, 2026 · NBC News, Sep 1, 2026 · Hollywood Reporter, Sep 1, 2026
Sep 7, 2026
Seven days after the verdict: the thirtieth anniversary of the shooting.
Oct 13, 2026
Sentencing. Davis faces life in prison.
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★ The Hole
one of these two cases now has a verdict. the other one is twenty-nine years old and nobody has ever been charged.
Spotlight Dispatch