Thirty years after the murder of Tupac Shakur, a former gang leader is on trial

The trial of the former gang leader accused of orchestrating the murder of Tupac Shakur begins Monday in Las Vegas and is expected to last nearly a month, thirty years after the death of the famous Californian rapper.

The debates will probably not shed light on who shot the rap legend on the night of September 7, 1996, while he was visiting Sin City to attend a Mike Tyson boxing match.

But the prosecution hopes to demonstrate that Duane "Keffe D" Davis, the former leader of the South Side Compton Crips, ordered the murder and provided the murder weapon.

Aged 63, he faces a life sentence without parole.

The murder remains one of the most famous cold cases in the United States, the subject of endless debate among music fans. Killed at 25, "2Pac" was a key figure in the famous rivalry between the West Coast and East Coast rap scenes of the United States.

With his hits "California Love" and "All Eyez on Me", delivered over melodies blending groove and heavy bass, this son of a Black Panthers member embodied the bad boy of the "West Coast".

The trial promises to delve back into the ego wars between his label Death Row Records, founded by Marion "Suge" Knight, and Bad Boy Records, the one created on the East Coast by Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, and where Christopher "The Notorious BIG" Wallace - a star rapper killed six months after the death of Tupac Shakur - worked.

According to the prosecution, Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang of which Suge was a member; while Bad Boy Records had hired the rival South Side Compton Crips organization, led by Duane Davis, for its protection.

After Mike Tyson's fight at the MGM Grand casino, Suge and Tupac beat up Duane Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, because he had ripped a medallion off the neck of one of the Death Row employees.

The gang leader then allegedly organized a revenge attack, according to the prosecution.

- Compromising memoirs -

Lacking evidence, the investigation stalled for decades, before being revived by the publication in 2019 of Duane Davis's memoirs.

In it, he recounts being in the front seat of the white Cadillac from which the fatal shots were fired at Tupac. He also explains that he passed a pistol to the back seat, without ever saying who fired – all the passengers in the vehicle have since died.

Compromising statements consistent with previous interviews given to the press, which backfired on him and led to his arrest in September 2023.

But the former gang leader now denies these confessions and pleads not guilty.

"I am innocent. I have never killed anyone," he asserted in March 2025 to ABC News, in an interview from his prison cell. "They have no evidence against me. They can't even put me in Las Vegas."

He now claims that he was in Los Angeles on the night of the crime and that he has never read his own memoirs, which he says were fictionalized by his co-author for commercial reasons.

"I just gave him details about my life," he said. "And he went and did his own little investigation and wrote the book all by himself."

Before the trial, his lawyers fought to prevent the book, as well as a police interview he gave in 2008 as a witness, from being used as evidence against him. In vain.

The hearing is expected to last four weeks, the first of which is to be entirely devoted to the selection of jurors.

Whatever the verdict, it is unlikely to satisfy Tupac Shakur's family.

In May, his half-brother filed a civil lawsuit in which he argues that "there remain individuals involved in Tupac's murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes."

The complaint specifically mentions the recent documentary miniseries "Sean Combs: The Reckoning," where Duane Davis claims in a police interrogation that P. Diddy offered him one million dollars to assassinate Tupac.