After 27 Years, Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis Arrested For Role In Rapper Tupac Shakur’s Murder

Rapper Tupac Shakur was murdered at 25 years old in a drive-by shooting in 1996, and police have finally arrested a man who was involved in the plot to kill him.

Las Vegas police arrested Duane “Keffe D” Davis early Friday morning on a charge of conspiracy to commit murder.

Davis has in the past been very public about his role as a witness to Tupac’s death, as well as hip hop mogul Marion “Suge” Knight on the Las Vegas strip in September 1996.

Davis said that he was in a white Cadillac with four others when they pulled up next to the rapper’s car, rolled down the windows, and shot Shakur four times.

In his memoir Compton Street Legends, Davis wrote that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, was responsible for the fatal shooting. Anderson was a member of the South Side Compton Crips gang and died in a gangland shooting in 1998 at age 23. Prior to his own death, Anderson had denied any involvement in Shakur’s murder and was never charged.

Nevada does not have a statute of limitations when it comes to murder case prosecutions, and Shakur’s case was never closed.

This July, as part of Shakur’s homicide investigation, Las Vegas police searched the home of Davis’ wife, Pamela Clemons, in Henderson, Nevada. Several computers and iPads were confiscated, in addition to a .40 caliber cartridge, which had the same casings as the ones recovered from the crime scene in 1996.

Police believe that Davis gave the gun to his nephew, who was in the car with them before they went out to shoot Tupac.

After being shot, Shakur was rushed to the University Medical Center of Southern Nevada, along with Knight, who was listed to be in critical condition. Shakur died of cardiac arrest six days later, on September 13.

It has been speculated for years that Shakur’s death was gang-related, as the rapper had been associated with the Bloods street gang. On the evening of his death, a few hours earlier, he had gotten in a fight with Anderson about a boxing match between Bruce Seldon and Mike Tyson.

In an interview with CNN, Shakur’s stepbrother Mopreme Shakur said he and his family have been frustrated at how long it has taken to arrest Davis when his name had been floated in connection to the murder for decades.

“This theory hasn’t been looked into for 27 years,” he said. “Why? My family’s been traumatized, my sister, my daughter, my nieces, my nephews, we’ve all been traumatized, waiting. We’ve been waiting for something to happen, for someone to be proactive enough to take action.”

Shakur was widely regarded as one of the most influential rappers in history and sold over 75 million records worldwide.