Duane “Keffe D” Davis says he never read Compton Street Legend, the 2019 memoir that prosecutors are using as central evidence that he orchestrated the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur. He made the claim in an extensive jailhouse interview with the 8 News Now Investigators in Las Vegas, published days before his murder trial begins Monday, August 10, at the Regional Justice Center in Clark County.
His account is that he handed his life story to a co-author and the co-author did the rest. In an earlier ABC News interview from the Clark County Detention Center, Davis put it plainly, saying he gave the man details of his life and that the writer went and did his own investigating and wrote the book on his own.
That argument is the whole ballgame, because the state’s case is built substantially out of Davis talking. Prosecutors are relying on the book, on a recording of a 2008 police interview, and on the long run of media appearances he gave between 2018 and 2023, including a BET documentary and paid sit downs with VladTV. His attorneys tried to get the book and the 2008 recording thrown out before trial and lost. Their argument was that the memoir was fictionalized and had a co-author, which makes it impossible to know which parts came from Davis himself. They also argued the 2008 conversation with a federal task force investigating the deaths of Christopher Wallace and Tupac was supposed to be confidential and could not be used against him.
That 2008 session is worth understanding, because it is the origin of everything that followed. Davis spoke to a joint Los Angeles task force under a proffer agreement, which is a deal where a person tells investigators what they know and that specific information cannot be used to prosecute them. It is a common tool for getting cooperation. The problem for Davis is that the agreement was with California authorities on a different case. In 2009 he detailed his account again to Las Vegas police, who were never party to that deal and were never obligated to honor it. Nevada prosecutors have said in court filings that he never received immunity in either state.
Davis, now 63, faces one count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote or assist a criminal gang. He pleaded not guilty and has been in custody since his arrest near his Henderson home on September 29, 2023. Prosecutors do not claim he fired the shots. Their theory is that he called the shot and provided the gun, and that gunfire came from the Cadillac he was riding in, and that he is one of the only people in that car still alive.
In the new interview he went further than denial. Asked who he thinks did kill Tupac, Davis pointed at Reggie Wright Jr., the former head of security at Death Row Records, who is on the state’s own witness list. He accused Wright of lying and said Wright and retired LAPD detective Greg Kading have threatened his son and his family in interviews. Wright has denied any involvement for years. He has previously said Davis confessed to the LAPD in 2008, to Las Vegas police in 2009, and then publicly from 2018 to 2023 on BET, on YouTube and in his own book, and is only turning on him now because he got arrested and has nothing else. Davis also denied any role in the 1997 killing of Biggie Smalls, a case he was once looked at in.
The witness list the state released Monday reads like a Las Vegas history book. It includes Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, who was Clark County sheriff when Davis was arrested, former Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman, and Suge Knight, the Death Row co-founder who was behind the wheel of the black BMW when Tupac was shot on September 7, 1996, after a Mike Tyson fight. Tupac died six days later at 25.
The defense case is that Davis was not there at all. His attorneys say there is no evidence he directed anything and that the state is leaning on witnesses who were not present. They have said he left the drug trade in 2009, worked a steady job afterward, and retired in 2014 because of illness. In previous interviews Davis has said police cannot place him in Las Vegas that night, that there is no gun and no car, and that he should be at his grandsons’ football and basketball games instead of in a cell.
The trial is expected to run about a month. According to the Associated Press, it is not likely to answer the question the public has been asking for three decades, which is who actually pulled the trigger. Davis has long pointed at his late nephew Orlando Anderson, who was in the back seat and who was killed in an unrelated 1998 shooting. Anderson has never been charged.
For Tupac’s family, Monday is another round of something that has never ended. His stepbrother Maurice “Mopreme” Shakur told the AP the last 30 years have been exhausting and stressful. Davis is the only person ever charged in the case.
