Duane “Keffe D” Davis is found guilty of Tupac’s murder, three decades later

He is the only person ever charged in the murder

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, 63, has been found guilty of murder in the first degree by a Las Vegas jury on Monday, in the death of Tupac Shakur.

American rapper Tupac Amaru Shakur, also known by his stage names 2Pac and Makaveli, was shot on September 7, 1996 in a drive-by shooting in Paradise, Nevada.

He was pronounced dead six days later, on September 13.

The jury returned its verdict Monday, convicting Duane “Keffe D” Davis of murder with the use of a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang.

CNN reports that Davis’ sentencing is scheduled for October 13, where he faces life in prison without parole for his first-degree murder conviction.

Davis has already made it clear to the judge he plans to appeal the verdict.

What Duane “Keffe D” Davis is guilty of in the Tupac murder

Prosecutors never accused Davis of pulling the trigger himself, but they argued he orchestrated the Las Vegas shooting as retaliation after Tupac and his entourage got into a fight with his nephew earlier that night.

While the prosecutors never claimed Davis fired the fatal shots during the September 1996 drive-by shooting, they argued he was the “shot caller” who handed the murder weapon to the gunman.

The murderer is believed to have been his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, or another man riding in the back seat.

This verdict marks the first conviction in connection with Tupac's murder, one of the most notorious unsolved killings in music history.

Jurors were pointed to Keffe D's own police interviews and his memoir, including a 2008 interview in which he told investigators he handed his nephew a gun and said his nephew was the one who fired the fatal shots.

His attorney, meanwhile, argued that Keffe D's admissions were nothing more than fiction.

The attorney told jurors his client was “full of crap”, which is why for decades he was never charged.

Over the course of the trial, jurors heard testimony from two dozen prosecution witnesses and just three defense witnesses. Keffe D did not testify in his own defense.

Who is Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, the main suspect for the murder

Orlando Anderson, a member of the gang known as the South Side Compton Crips, was suspected in the murder but denied being involved and was never charged.

He was later killed in an unrelated gang shooting in 1998.

His uncle, Duane "Keffe D" Davis, who has now been convicted, was arrested in September 2023.

His arrest came twenty-seven years after Tupac's murder, after being indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder of the killing of Shakur.

Davis' trial began on August 10, 2026, followed by his conviction on Monday, August 31.