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On March 25, 2025, jurors in Clark County District Court sat through a 17-year-old audio recording that prosecutors say lays bare the truth behind Tupac Shakur’s 1996 murder. The tape, played for the first time in a criminal trial, captures Duane “Keffe D” Davis telling Las Vegas detectives that his nephew, Orlando Anderson, pulled the trigger during a drive-by shooting on the Las Vegas Strip. Davis, now 61, is charged with murder with a deadly weapon and gang enhancement. He has pleaded not guilty, and his defense team argues the recording is a byproduct of a flawed investigation and a defendant chasing fame.
In the 2008 recording, detectives assured Davis that the conversation was confidential and that nothing he said could be used against him. That promise, prosecutors now contend, was never binding because Davis later publicly bragged about the killing in interviews and a memoir. The tape, which lasted about 40 minutes, reveals a man who initially claimed he was only a witness before gradually admitting deeper involvement. “If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,” Davis told officers, describing how he, Anderson, and two other men pulled up alongside the BMW driven by record executive Suge Knight. According to the recording, Davis handed his own gun to Deandre “Big Dre” Smith, who refused to shoot. Anderson then allegedly took the weapon and opened fire, striking Shakur four times.
The shooting occurred on September 7, 1996, after Shakur and his entourage beat Anderson earlier that night at a casino. Shakur died six days later. Anderson was never charged and was shot dead in a gang-related incident in 1998. The other two men in the car—Smith and a man named Terrence “T-Bone” Brown—are also dead. Davis was the last surviving alleged participant and was arrested in 2023 after a grand jury indictment. His case is one of the most high-profile cold‑case murder trials in hip‑hop history.
What makes this trial unusual is the shifting narrative from Davis himself. In the years since the 2008 interview, he gave multiple media interviews and wrote a book, Compton Street Legend, in which he described the 1996 killing in graphic detail. Prosecutors argue that these public statements nullified any confidentiality agreement and that Davis’s own words prove his guilt. “He chose to cash in on Tupac’s death,” Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo told the jury in his opening statement. “Now he has to face the consequences.”
Davis’s defense attorney, Carl Arnold, countered that the prosecution’s case is built on a “house of cards.” He pointed out that there is no
