The mystery surrounding who orchestrated the murder of Tupac Shakur is finally being unraveled as the much-anticipated trial opens in Las Vegas. Accused of masterminding the 1996 shooting, the man now faces the scrutiny of the courtroom.
In their opening statements, prosecutors asserted their commitment to demonstrating the culpability of Duane “Keffe D” Davis, once a prominent Los Angeles gang leader, as the individual who ordered the attack.
“Duane Davis wasn’t the person who fired the shots,” explained Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal to the jury. “However, he orchestrated the shooting as retribution for the assault on his nephew. You’ll discover these facts directly from Duane Davis’s own declarations.”
At 63, Davis stands accused of murder involving a deadly weapon, with the alleged intent to further criminal gang activities in relation to Shakur’s death. Although Davis insists on his innocence, branding the prosecution’s case as fictitious, if found guilty, he faces a life sentence.
Palal presented the jury with footage capturing the altercation between Shakur’s entourage and Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in front of the MGM Grand shortly before the shooting on September 7, 1996. The jurors were also shown images of the black BMW that Shakur occupied when the shots were fired.
“You will learn, when the opportunity presented itself for retribution, Duane Davis made sure that the shooters were armed and ready,” Palal said.
They also heard from witness Ingrid Stokes, who was living in L.A. in 1996 but visited Vegas for the weekend. She was in a car trailing the BMW.
“We ran into Suge and Tupac in the car,” Stokes told jurors.
“Did anyone shoot at you?” Stokes was asked.
“Probably, I honestly don’t know. There was a lot of gunshots,” Stokes answered.
Davis, dressed in a blue suit and tie, listened intently as prosecutors claimed he ordered the killing of Shakur as an “act of revenge.”
Some evidence expected to be presented in this case comes from “Compton Street Legend,” a tell-all book Davis published and promoted. But Davis now says he didn’t write it, and claims the book was a ploy to make money.
In an ABC News exclusive jailhouse interview in 2025, Davis denied all allegations.
“I’m innocent. I ain’t kill nobody. Never did ever kill nobody,” he said.
What Davis has told investigators before
In a 2008 interview with a federal task force investigating the killing of Shakur’s rival, the Notorious B.I.G., Davis instead talked about the Shakur shooting. He described handing a gun to the men in the back seat of a white Cadillac that fired on a black BMW with Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight inside.
As prosecutors played audio of Davis explaining the moment Shakur was shot, members of Shakur’s family, including his stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur, sat quietly in the audience, staring ahead.
Palal told jurors Davis held onto a visceral hatred for Shakur for decades that drove him to speak.
He said as early as 1998, the defendant talked to the FBI and admitted he had been in Las Vegas the night of the shooting. He spoke again in 1999 to the FBI and said again he was in Las Vegas then but denied responsibility.
In 2009, he admitted to his role in the killing in an interview with Las Vegas police, Palal said.
“And now 30 years later, we’re going to ask you to finally hold Duane Davis accountable,” Palal said.
Will Suge Knight testify?
Knight, who is serving time in an unrelated case, told ABC News he believes Davis will struggle to convince jurors that his past statements were untrue.
“Everything he said and talked about, he already told on himself,” Knight said.
In the years since Shakur’s murder, what exactly happened in that hail of bullets — and who pulled the trigger — was obscured by a lack of physical evidence, feuding cops and the gangland code of silence. Knight, the only eyewitness still living, was in the car with Shakur when he was shot that night, and told ABC News he is no more willing to cooperate with law enforcement during Davis’ trial than he has been for the last 30 years.
“To actually get on the stand, and point somebody out, it’s worse than taking a gun and shooting that man in the head. Because if you shoot a person in the head, they die once. If you get on the stand and you snitch on that person, they die a million times,” Knight told ABC News from prison earlier this month, ahead of Davis’s trial. “Leave me out of it.”
Legal analyst Joshua Ritter said Knight’s account would be significant if he takes the stand.