{"id":865823,"date":"2026-08-21T05:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T05:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865823\/"},"modified":"2026-08-21T05:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T05:16:12","slug":"tupac-murder-trial-jurors-hear-secret-police-interview-with-keffe-d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/865823\/","title":{"rendered":"Tupac Murder Trial: Jurors Hear \u2018Secret\u2019 Police Interview with Keffe D"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThe once-\u201csecret\u201d interview at the heart of Duane \u201cKeffe D<\/a>\u201d Davis\u2019 murder trial was played in a Las Vegas courtroom Thursday, giving jurors an unfiltered look at the blockbuster meeting prosecutors say amounted to a full confession of Davis\u2019 role in the 1996 drive-by shooting that killed hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDon\u2019t bullshit me, and I won\u2019t bullshit y\u2019all,\u201d Davis said on the recording at the start of the Dec. 18, 2008, meeting at his lawyer\u2019s office in Los Angeles County. Davis agreed to speak with investigators in hopes of helping himself avoid prosecution on drug charges that he had been told could carry a life sentence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNothing you say can be used against you,\u201d former LAPD Det. Greg Kading told Davis, who appeared skeptical of the promise but also weary of his years as a leader of the South Side Compton Crips. Davis lamented what he described as the \u201cnew wave MySpace gang bangers\u201d gaining prominence and the betrayals of gang life. He said he was \u201cthrough with this shit\u201d and ready to retire, according to a livestream of the trial<\/a> from Law&Crime.<\/p>\n

\n\tInvestigators then asked Davis to identify the occupants of the rented white Cadillac that pulled up to the passenger side of a BMW driven by Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight<\/a>, with Shakur in the passenger seat. The BMW was idling at a red light at the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane, just off the Las Vegas Strip, on Sept. 7, 1996.<\/p>\n

\n\tDavis said he was riding in the front passenger seat, with his nephew, Orlando \u201cBaby Lane\u201d Anderson, directly behind him, and fellow South Side Compton Crips member DeAndre \u201cDre\u201d Smith seated behind the driver, Terrence \u201cBubble Up\u201d Brown. Davis said he didn\u2019t have a clear shot, so he passed the loaded .40-caliber Glock to the back seat. Smith hesitated, he said, so Anderson grabbed the weapon and opened fire.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo Orlando shot across Dre?\u201d one of the investigators asked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe leaned over on the window. He rolled down the window, popped \u2019em,\u201d Davis replied. \u201cIf they drove on my side, I would have popped \u2019em, know what I\u2019m saying. But they was on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tDavis said Knight looked directly at him as the gunfire erupted, while Shakur appeared to be trying to climb into the back seat. Knight tried to duck, Davis said, but was too large to get out of the way and was struck by something. Davis said he believed Knight had been shot in the head and wouldn\u2019t survive. Knight lived, but Shakur was hit multiple times and would die in the hospital a week later.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe did what we had to do,\u201d Davis said of the shooting. After fleeing the scene, the group returned to their hotel to \u201csmoke weed and drink,\u201d he told the task force. Davis also claimed that an ambulance carrying Shakur and Knight to the hospital passed him and the others at some point near a crosswalk on Las Vegas Boulevard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat shit was funny as a motherfucker,\u201d Davis told the investigators.<\/p>\n

\n\tFormer LAPD Det. Daryn Dupree testified Wednesday that he and Det. Greg Kading laid the groundwork for the bombshell interview by first approaching Davis in the garage of his Inland Empire home east of Los Angeles County in 2008 while investigating the 1997 Los Angeles murder<\/a> of New York rap legend Christopher Wallace, also known as the Notorious B.I.G. and Biggie Smalls. At that point, he said, Davis was considered a person of interest in the murder because he owned a dark-colored Chevrolet Impala, and investigators believed Wallace\u2019s killer had been riding in a similar car.<\/p>\n

\n\tDupree said they told Davis they had evidence of him dealing cocaine and PCP, and with his prior criminal history, he could be facing a potential life sentence. \u201cWe sat in his garage and advised him of what we had,\u201d Dupree testified. They suggested he find an attorney to discuss his options. The parties later gathered at the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office in Los Angeles, he said.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tAt that meeting leading up to the Dec. 18 gathering, investigators asked Davis if he was involved in Biggie\u2019s murder. \u201cHe said no, he didn\u2019t have anything to do with \u2018that one,\u2019\u201d Dupree testified. \u201cWe were like, \u2018That one? What do you mean?\u2019 And then he said, \u2018We did the other one.\u2019 \u2026To me, personally, the only other one was Tupac.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tDupree said Davis caught them off-guard.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t ask him any questions about Tupac. He offered that on his own,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were shook. We were surprised.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe subsequent \u201cproffer session\u201d on Dec. 18 was set to formalize his statement as part of a possible cooperation deal, he said. That meeting was recorded, though Dupree said he didn\u2019t know it at the time. Asked if anybody notified Las Vegas authorities that Davis was going to be talking about Shakur\u2019s murder, he replied, \u201cUnfortunately, no.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDavis, 63, has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon and has been jailed since his arrest in September 2023. Prosecutors say the drive-by shooting was retaliation for a beating hours earlier inside the MGM Grand, which itself stemmed from an earlier gang confrontation. Shakur and members of his entourage attacked Anderson after Death Row associate Trevon Lane spotted him in the casino crowd following a Mike Tyson fight.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his opening statement Monday, Clark County Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said Shakur and others in his entourage attacked Anderson because they believed he had been among a group of South Side Compton Crips who allegedly robbed Lane, a Mob Piru Bloods member, of his Death Row chain and medallion at a mall outside Compton about two months earlier.<\/p>\n

\n\tPalal told the jurors Davis essentially confessed when he gave his statement during the 2008 interview with authorities. He argued Davis then made the details of the statement fair game when he later repeated it in public interviews and his 2019 memoir, Compton Street Legend. Davis had been promised his 2008 statement couldn\u2019t be used against him, but he wasn\u2019t granted immunity, prosecutors say. <\/p>\n

\n\tDavis and his lawyer, Michael Sanft, have centered their defense on the argument that Davis invented his accounts for personal advantage, entertainment and money. He needed leverage in 2008, so he fabricated a story, they say. In his opening, Sanft emphasized that authorities did not charge Davis after the 2008 interview because they didn\u2019t find it credible. He argued the detectives could have tried to corroborate Davis\u2019 claims in various ways but gave up without a thorough investigation. \u201cIt\u2019s because they knew he was full of crap,\u201d Sanft told jurors.<\/p>\n

\n\tDupree testified that he believed Davis was telling the truth during the 2008 proffer. \u201cI didn\u2019t think Mr. Davis was lying because he put the gun in his nephew\u2019s hand. And if anyone knows anything, from what I hear, Mr. Orlando Anderson was the man, besides Keffe D, in that neighborhood. He was the prince, and his family loved him. I didn\u2019t think that Mr. Davis would put the gun in his own nephew\u2019s hand, dead or alive, and put that smut on him, unless it was true.\u201d (Anderson died in 1998 at age 23 in a shooting with a rival Crips member at a Compton car wash, police said.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first witnesses at Davis\u2019 trial was former Las Vegas police officer Garry Dale, who said he rode in the ambulance with the wounded Shakur and repeatedly asked who shot him. Dale testified that Shakur refused to identify anyone, saying, \u201cNo, we\u2019ll take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFormer Las Vegas Metropolitan Police homicide detective Brent Becker testified that after the 1996 shooting, visiting gang investigators from Compton quickly identified Anderson from surveillance video showing Shakur attacking Anderson inside the MGM. The ID made Anderson an early suspect. Becker said Knight came in for questioning three nights after the shooting but claimed he could not identify anyone involved. \u201cI thought he lied to us,\u201d Becker testified.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn Tuesday, James \u201cMob James\u201d McDonald, a former Mob Piru Bloods member who said he worked unofficial security for Knight, testified under subpoena that the shooting quickly triggered a \u201cgang war\u201d in Compton. McDonald repeatedly resisted defense efforts to make him identify people with knowledge of the shooting. \u201cI know everybody that was there,\u201d he declared, before dodging follow-up questions from Davis\u2019 defense lawyer. \u201cI don\u2019t want to send him to prison, even though we don\u2019t like each other,\u201d he said, referring to Davis. \u201cYou\u2019re asking me questions that can hurt him. \u2026 You\u2019re asking something that\u2019s gonna hurt this dude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tReggie Wright Jr., Knight\u2019s former head of security, followed McDonald on the witness stand. Wright identified members of Knight\u2019s entourage beating Anderson the MGM Grand surveillance video. Wright testified that he had also seen Davis with members of Sean Combs<\/a>\u2019 Bad Boy Records<\/a> entourage during a tense confrontation at the 1996 Soul Train Awards in Los Angeles. Wright said someone on the Bad Boy side brandished a gun, but he did not believe Davis was the person holding the weapon.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his separate testimony, Dupree described himself as being low on the totem pole in the LAPD task force that was working with the federal agencies, including the FBI, ATF and DEA. He said the East Coast-West Coast war pitting Sean Combs\u2019 Bad Boy Records against Knight\u2019s Death Row was a focus. He said the task force signed Davis up as a \u201cconfidential informant\u201d in March 2009 and traveled with him to New York. The plan was for Davis to meet up with Eric \u201cZip\u201d Martin, an alleged drug trafficker identified in court as the link who introduced Davis to Sean Combs. Dupree said they were trying to confirm the claims Davis made during his proffer.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSean \u2018Puffy\u2019 Combs supposedly had given money to Zip Martin to give to Mr. Davis for payment for the Tupac murder,\u201d Dupree testified. \u201cFast forward, we go to Mr. Davis, he says he can rekindle that relationship with Zip and get him to talk about the money given from Sean Combs to Mr. Martin that never got to Davis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDupree said the plan failed when Davis arrived in New York, and Martin, who was in poor health, passed him off to his nephew. According to Dupree, he and Kading were trying to solve the Wallace murder with their investigation while members of the task force on the federal level were pursuing a RICO case.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[They were] trying to solidify that Death Row Records was built on narcotics, and Bad Boy Records,\u201d Dupree told jurors. \u201cI\u2019m from the hood. Everybody knows it was, okay. Everybody knows that those record companies were started with the sales of narcotics. So, the feds were looking at a RICO, we cared about the murders. So, this was chasing the money. This was chasing Sean Combs, to see if he was involved in the hit on Mr. Shakur.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCombs, now serving a 50-month prison term for his 2025 conviction on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution, has vehemently denied any involvement in Shakur\u2019s death.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The once-\u201csecret\u201d interview at the heart of Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis\u2019 murder trial was played in a Las…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":865824,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[300912,49,48,7562,17537,75,300913,32649,300914,63629],"class_list":["post-865823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bad-boy-records","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-controversy","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-keffe-d","tag-sean-combs","tag-suge-knight","tag-tupac-shakur"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865823"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865823\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/865824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}