The only suspect ever charged in the killing of rapper Tupac Shakur is speaking out for the first time, insisting that he is “innocent.”
In a jailhouse interview with ABC News, Duane “Keffe D” Davis said he should be at home watching his grandchildren grow up instead of waiting to stand trial in the notorious Las Vegas murder of Shakur.
Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in Shakur’s death, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996.
“I’m innocent,” Davis said in an hour-long meeting at the Clark County Detention Center. “I did not do it. They don’t have nothing. And they know they don’t have nothing.”
“They can’t even place me out here. They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing,” he added.
“I ain’t killed nobody. Never did, never killed nobody,” Davis said.
Davis said he has tried to turn his life around and described himself as a “good man.”
“I did everything they asked me to do. Get new friends. Stop selling drugs. I stopped all that,” he said in reference to police and prosecutors. “I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight at one of my f—ing grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”
According to ABC News, Davis claims he was in Los Angeles at the time of the shooting and that witnesses can confirm his alibi.
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Prosecutors have said the evidence against Davis is strong, including his own accounts of the murder in his tell-all memoir, Compton Street Legend: Notorious Keffe D’s Street-Level Accounts of the Tupac and Biggie Murders, Death Row Origins, Suge Knight, Puffy Combs, and Crooked Cops.
Davis, an ex-gang leader, is accused of orchestrating the shooting near the Las Vegas Strip that killed Shakur shortly after a brawl at a casino involving Shakur and Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson.
In both interviews and his 2019 memoir, which described his life as a leader of a Crips gang sect in Compton, Davis said he obtained a .40-calibre handgun and handed it to Anderson in the back seat of a car, from which he and authorities say shots were fired at Shakur in another car.
Davis now says he has “never read the book” and that his co-author took artistic liberties he had nothing to do with.
“I just gave him details of my life,” Davis said. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”
Davis is accusing Reggie Wright Jr. of having orchestrated the shooting that killed Shakur. Wright Jr. is a former Compton police officer who ran security for Suge Knight’s Death Row Records in the mid-1990s.
“Prove that I orchestrated this,” Davis said. “Their top witness is the lead suspect, Reggie Wright Jr.”
In response to Davis’ latest claims, Wright Jr. said, “Keffe D confessed to Tupac’s murder to the LAPD in 2008, to the Las Vegas Metro PD in 2009 and then publicly from 2018-2023 on BET, multiple YouTube interviews, and in a book about his life, and is only now using the media to slander me because he finally got arrested and has no other defense.”
In February, Wright Jr. denied having anything to do with the shooting after Davis’ lawyer, Carl Arnold, alleged that Wright Jr. and his team were responsible for Shakur’s death.
“It’s heartbreaking they keep dragging in my name,” Wright Jr. said in reaction to the allegations. “I didn’t have anything to do with that. One of the worst days of my life when I heard that that happened.”
Davis has been jailed since his September 2023 arrest. His trial is scheduled to begin in March.
— With files from The Associated Press
