Jury Hears Duane 'Keffe D' Davis's Own 2008 Recording Naming His Nephew as Tupac's Shooter

Since Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal's opening statement on August 17 laid out the state's theory that Duane "Keffe D" Davis orchestrated the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, prosecutors in Las Vegas have spent this week building their case on Davis's own words.

On Thursday, August 20, jurors in Clark County District Court heard a 2008 audio recording in which Davis told detectives that his nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, fired the fatal shots. Davis, now 63, said he was riding in a white Cadillac with Anderson and two other men, Deandre "Big Dre" Smith and Terrence "Bubble Up" Brown, when the car pulled alongside a BMW carrying Shakur and Death Row Records CEO Marion "Suge" Knight, according to the Associated Press, which was carried by NPR, the Guardian and Breitbart.

"If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted," Davis said on the recording. Instead, he said, he passed his gun to Smith, who didn't want it. Anderson took the weapon from the backseat and opened fire, Davis told the detectives.

Courthouse News Service captured additional detail from the same recording, including an exchange in which an unnamed interviewer asked, "So, Orlando shot him across Dre?" Davis replied, "He leaned over on the window, he rolled down the window, popped." Davis also claimed on the recording that Sean "Puffy" Combs had offered $1 million to have Shakur killed. Combs, now incarcerated on prostitution-related charges, faces no accusations in Shakur's death and has denied Davis's claims, according to Courthouse News.

The interview wasn't originally about Shakur. Los Angeles police detectives Daryn Dupree and Greg Kading brought Davis in to discuss the unsolved 1997 killing of the Notorious B.I.G., for whom Davis had briefly been a suspect. "Everybody was a suspect at that time," Dupree testified Thursday. Kading told Davis on the recording, "Nothing you say today can be used against you." The Guardian noted that some in the courtroom audience shook their heads at that assurance, given prosecutors are now using the same recording against him.

Prosecutors say the shooting was retaliation for a beating Shakur's entourage gave Anderson at the MGM Grand hours earlier, following a Mike Tyson fight. The Epoch Times reported that Palal showed jurors surveillance video of that casino attack during her August 17 opening, telling them Davis spent the following two-and-a-half hours planning payback. "Duane Davis did not pull the trigger. But he did plan the shooting in retaliation of the beating of his nephew," Palal said, according to the Epoch Times. "You will learn that from Duane Davis himself."

On Tuesday, August 18, jurors saw a different kind of evidence: Shakur's autopsy. PBS reported that Dr. Lisa Gavin, a Clark County forensic pathologist who was not present at the original 1996 autopsy but testified as an expert because the original examiner has since died, described three gunshot wounds, including one that collapsed and required removal of Shakur's lung. Some family members left the courtroom before the photos were shown. Shakur's cousin, Zayd Akinyela, stayed and told the AP the details helped him grieve. "I feel like the details, especially for people that are close to him, honestly for me helps the grief process," Akinyela said. "We've been waiting 30 years to grieve properly."

Davis's defense has pushed back hard on the reliability of his own statements. His attorney has called the prosecution's narrative "fiction" and argued Davis was "full of crap" when he told stories about his involvement over the years, whether to the FBI, in a documentary, or in his 2019 memoir "Compton Street Legend." The defense also contends prosecutors can't prove Davis was even in Las Vegas that night, according to Courthouse News. Davis previously told the FBI his nephew wasn't involved and speculated instead that Knight or Combs were behind the shooting, a contradiction prosecutors are expected to use against his credibility.

Anderson was never charged in Shakur's death. He died in a separate gang shooting in 1998. Davis is now the only person alive who was in that Cadillac. Smith and Brown have also since died, according to the Epoch Times. Denvonta Lee testified Thursday that Mob Piru, tied to Death Row Records, and the South Side Compton Crips, which Davis led, were the gangs behind the rivalry driving the violence.

The trial, which began with jury selection in mid-August, is expected to run roughly a month. Prosecutors still must convince jurors that a recorded conversation Davis was told would stay confidential, paired with details from a memoir his defense calls "fictionalized," amounts to proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he orchestrated a murder no one has ever been convicted of committing.