(CNN) – In 1998, Duane Keith Davis told a cable channel that he was a passenger in the car from which a passenger fired the shots that killed Tupac Shakur.
In 2009, Davis, known as “Keffe D,” admitted to police his role in the case, a former detective investigating the shooting told CNN, but authorities were unable to use the information at the time.
And then, after police say the investigation gained new momentum, Davis, 60, was arrested Friday in Las Vegas and a grand jury indicted him on a charge of murder with the use of a deadly weapon. The arrest comes some 27 years after the rapper was shot while leaving a boxing match on the Las Vegas Strip.
The Sept. 7, 1996, shooting was a retaliatory attack on the 25-year-old star, police said Friday. Authorities allege Davis planned and orchestrated the shooting within hours of the rapper and others attacking his nephew that day.
Davis is the only suspect in the case who is still alive, police said. In his memoirs, he said he was one of two living witnesses, the other being the head of a record label who drove the car in which Shakur rode.
“Over the last five years, we have conducted countless interviews and confirmed numerous facts that were not only consistent with the crime scene on the night of the incident, but also corroborating and consistent with the sequence of events that night,” said Jason Johansson. , a lieutenant with the Las Vegas Police Department’s Homicide Unit, during a news conference Friday.
Here’s what we know about Davis leading up to the shooting and his indictment and arrest.
Duane Keith “Keffe D” Davis has been charged in connection with the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department)
According to police, Davis was “the decision maker.”
Shakur’s shooting stemmed from a conflict between two gangs based in Compton, California, police said Friday.
Shakur and Marion “Suge” Knight, then CEO of the Death Row Records label, were connected to the Mob Piru gang in Compton, Johansson said. Davis was a member of the Southside Compton Crips.
Shakur was in Las Vegas to attend a Mike Tyson boxing match at the MGM Grand Hotel, which was also attended by Davis and his nephew Orlando Anderson.
After the match, members of Death Row Records saw Anderson near the elevator in the hotel, approached him and began kicking and punching him, Johansson said Friday during the news conference, showing hotel surveillance footage of the altercation. Among the men who attacked Anderson, Shakur and Knight stand out.
Both teams left the hotel after the fight and Shakur and his group headed to a post-fight party at a nightclub.
When Davis learned of the attack on his nephew, “he began hatching a plan to obtain a firearm and retaliate against Suge Knight and Mr. Shakur,” Johansson said.
After receiving a gun “from a close associate,” Davis got into a white Cadillac with Terrence Brown, Deandre Smith and Anderson, Johansson said. While sitting in the car, Davis handed the gun “to the passengers in the back seat of the vehicle,” Johansson said.
Eventually, the group located the car Shakur and Knight were in – a black BMW – and fired shots from the Cadillac, striking Shakur four times, authorities said. The rapper died six days later.
“Duane Davis was the decision maker for this group of people who committed this crime. He orchestrated the plan that was carried out to commit this crime,” Johansson said.
Anderson and Smith were both in the back seat of the Cadillac, the indictment against Davis says, but it doesn’t specify who pulled the trigger. Anderson denied involvement in the murder to CNN before he was killed in a gang-related shooting in 1998.
Knight is in prison on involuntary manslaughter charges in an unrelated case.
Davis went to the crime scene
In an interview with BET in 1998, Davis said he was sitting in the front seat of the car from which the shot was fired.
“Because of the rules of the road, I’m going to keep it,” Davis said when asked who pulled the trigger. “It just came from the back seat, bro.”
Then, more than a decade later, in 2009, Davis admitted to police his involvement in the shooting, said Greg Kading, a former police detective who investigated the case.
But his statement cannot be used as evidence because it was made as part of a “tender agreement,” Kading told CNN on Friday. An offer is an agreement in which a suspect agrees to provide information that may be useful to an investigation, but the statements made generally cannot be used as evidence against the suspect.
Additionally, a memoir written by Davis, a copy of which was seized in July during a police search of Davis’ wife’s Nevada home, describes Davis and Knight as the only two living witnesses to Shakur’s shooting.
Items seized during search in July
During the search of the apartment, police confiscated several tablets, an iPhone and five computers. Authorities also seized USB sticks and hard drives, photos and a copy of a magazine about Shakur.
At that point, police were searching for “notes, writings, ledgers and other handwritten or typewritten documents about television shows, documentaries, YouTube episodes, book manuscripts and films about the assassination of Tupac Shakur,” according to a report. a search warrant.
Davis “put himself in prison”
Rapper Tupac Shakur poses for a photo backstage after his performance at the Regal Theater in Chicago, Illinois, in March 1994. (Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The decades-old case received renewed attention in 2018, particularly as Davis spoke publicly about it and new information emerged, officials said.
“Davis’ own confessions about his involvement in this murder investigation, which he shared with numerous different media outlets,” helped jumpstart the investigation, Johansson said Friday.
Davis took part in a Netflix documentary about Shakur’s murder in 2018 and published his memoirs in 2019.
“He began publicly bragging about his involvement in the murder, and that led to his claims being vetted by authorities in Las Vegas, and ultimately he ended up in prison,” Kading, the former investigator, told CNN.
“This was probably the last time we successfully solved this case and filed a criminal complaint,” Johansson said.
CNN’s Kyung Lah, Jason Kravarik, Josh Campbell, Alishia Ebrahimji, Cheri Mossburg and Scott Glover contributed to this report.