Tupac: Day 9 - Two White Cadillacs?

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1:01Hello and welcome back to the Tupac Murder Trial from Fame Under Fire from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Matanda-Dawati. Today, we heard the defence's case. So we've been listening to the prosecution for a couple of weeks. They put on their witnesses and presented their facts and their theory. And today we heard from the defence. It begun and it ended in, I think, about two hours. It was a very, very quick case. They put on about three witnesses, most of whom were former Metropolitan detectives from the Las Vegas unit and another one who was a homicide detective who looked after the case from 2004.

1:30Now, I'm going to break all of that down for you today. But it's come to my attention that some people don't know that we are a podcast. Fame Under Fire is a podcast for the BBC. We cover the celebrity trials that are taking place. After the Tupac trial, we are going to be covering the Russell Brand trial in the UK. So make sure you are subscribed and following along for that. And then on August 31st, we will hear about that arraignment with the David case D4VD in Los Angeles. And we will be covering that as well. So make sure you're locked in and you don't miss anything because these court cases, they're really important.

1:57This one, a 30-year-old murder case, a cold case. And the defense from the beginning from Michael Sanford has been you have absolutely no evidence that places Dwayne Keefe D. Davis in Vegas on the night of the shooting, let alone placing him in the white Cadillac, let alone supplying the gun. So today, the first person we heard from was Stan Haidt. Now, he was working on the 7th of September in Las Vegas, 1996, as an overtime officer. So he was brought in. It wasn't his normal route, but he was brought in because there was the MGM fight with Mike Tyson. And there was going to be this big party at Suge Knight's house afterwards.

2:28And they wanted extra officers on the streets patrolling those locations so that something didn't go down, which, of course, we know it did. Now, he testified that he was working outside Suge Knight's house. He was stood near an entrance, near a gate that they used to get in. And that was where he was monitoring. and he said that he witnessed an entourage of cars come through into Suge Knight's property, the last one being Suge's car. He says it was a, quote, cream-colored Cadillac. With regards to the entourage of vehicles, where did they go? In through the gate. I never went in through the gate, so I didn't see where they went after they entered the gate.

3:02OK. And with regard to the vehicles that went in, did you recognize or give note of any of the vehicles that were in there? The last one was Suge Knight's cream-colored Cadillac. And fair to say, though, that sometime in the future, you were asked to obviously write a report on that particular issue. Yes. That was your officer's report? Yes. And in that officer's report, did you include the mention of a cream-coloured Cadillac with two black male adults in it? I do. And this is really important because since the beginning, since the shooting took place, it was noted that it was a light-coloured Cadillac, a white Cadillac or a cream-coloured Cadillac that the shots were fired out of.

3:38So he's actually saying that he saw that car as part of the 15 car entourage that goes into Suge's property. Now, he says the first 15 went in, then they came out again. Then Mike Tyson came in and then he came out again. And about 10 minutes after that, the shooting took place on the Las Vegas Strip at the corner of Quoval and Flamingo. Now, this is really important because in the story that was told by the prosecution, their narrative, the white Cadillac is rented in Los Angeles. They drive to Las Vegas. They go to the MGM fight. And then afterwards, well, Dwayne Davis is trying to track down Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight for the beating of his nephew, Orlando Anderson.

4:14He does so in that white-colored Cadillac. So in the prosecution's theory, that white Cadillac is roaming around the streets of Las Vegas looking for Tupac Shakur and Suge Knight. We now have a cream-colored Cadillac being noted going into Suge Knight's residence before the shooting took place. Now, you might be saying, well, what is the story that they're telling here? Was there another cream-colored Cadillac? Are they trying to say it was the same cream-colored Cadillac? These are the questions that SAMF is trying to bring into the mind of the jurors because you have to remember in these cases it is beyond a reasonable doubt.

4:42And questions and confusion are quite often the pathway to reasonable doubt. And then we have another fantastic jury question. These guys are not being paid enough to be coming out with these fantastic questions. They said, did you see the cream-coloured Cadillac leave the residents again to clarify that? And they said yes. Did you see the cream-coloured Cadillac leave? Yes. They all left. There's a whole flurry of other questions that come later, so stay around for that because they were really good. We then have Charlie Mangren on the stand who basically corroborates this account. He was also another overtime officer who was working that night because of the activity that was taking place, the fight and this supposed party that was supposed to take place at Suge Knight's house.

5:20He says he saw 10 to 15 vehicles come in and also a cream-coloured Cadillac. Now, whereas Haidt had said that the Cadillac belonged to Suge Knight, Mangren said that Suge Knight was actually in the BMW, which we know him to have been in because that was the car where the shots were fired into. So there was a little bit of a difference in their accounts, but there was the similarity of there being a light-coloured, cream-coloured, white-coloured Cadillac that they noticed going into Suge Knight's residence and then coming out again. The jury question to Mangren was, could you see the model of the car?

5:49And he said no. The next witness we had on the stand was Dan Long. Now, he's actually a homicide investigator who had the Tupac Shakur case from 2004, and he took it over from Detective Becker, who we previously heard from in this trial. Now, he received the case in 2004, but he was actually there on the 7th of September 1996. He was working in gang enforcement. He was working in Las Vegas. And he noted that he was actually on the strip in Las Vegas. He'd stopped a group of what he called juveniles, young men, because he believed them to be in a gang. And he was supposed to be stopping gang activity that night.

6:20And then he realized they were just a group of young lads. And as he's sort of letting them go, he hears a flurry of shots being fired. Those shots we now know to be the shots that ended Tupac Shakur's life. So he was there that night. But then he leaves, he becomes a homicide investigator, and in 2004, he gets handed the file. Now, he did make clear that when he was handed the Tupac Shakur case, which was a case that had confounded the Las Vegas police, he was actually a rookie. And this was a question as well that came up. Why was the case given to a rookie? And he said, you know, I had access to a lot of other brilliant detectives who I was leaning on, and I was inheriting the case, a case that had already been investigated by other investigators.

6:53So I wasn't starting from scratch. But he was given the case in 2004. Now, here is when we start to hear some of the stuff that Sanft brought up in opening statements. He speaks about there being issues with access to the case. Now, Sanft had brought that up in opening statements saying there's so much corruption in these different police forces that, you know, how can we take any of this seriously when there were issues within the forces about people having access to these files? And Long clarified that it was his lieutenant who was concerned that people within the police force were accessing Tupac Shakur's files, going into it, coming out of it because it was such a famous case and therefore compromising the integrity and the security of that file, which had been going for a very long time since 1996 and was still unsolved.

7:33So we start to hear that narrative coming back in and we know Samft wants that narrative introduced to the jury because reasonable doubt, questioning, you know, how can we take the word of these officers that are calling to the stand when the issues, you know, the issues are internal. The call is coming from inside the house. That's what he's saying. Another part of the testimony that Samft was eliciting from Long on the stand, which is really important to the defense's case, is just how thoroughly actually this was investigated. Anonymous tips, cold calls claiming they had information. He made a long walk through some of the stuff he did to follow up on that.

8:01One of them was they got a cold call saying the gun that was used in the shooting was handed to another gang in Reno just afterwards. And he's looking at this eight years after 1996. He goes to that apartment block. He tries to find an apartment that was in the name of somebody affiliated to the Crips. There was another call that they received saying the gun actually was dropped outside of the window on the Las Vegas Strip on that night in 1996. And he said, you know, on the stand, he had a little chuckle. He was like, I know it's laughable, but we went eight years later and we walked up and down the Strip looking for that gun in 2004, even though this took place in 1996.

8:34And we can see the narrative that's coming here, which is something Sam also introduced in opening statements. If they're investigating this so heavily, if they're trying to corroborate, if they're trying to investigate, if they're taking cold calls and anonymous tips and they're looking into anything and they still haven't found a material fact that places Dwayne Keefe D. Davis in Las Vegas on the night of that shooting. How strong is this case? How can we even be here today? So we're hearing, yes, we investigated everything, every anonymous tip, every cold call that came in, and we wrote it all down.

9:01And this is another thing. We wrote it all down in a police report. This is what Long testified to. And previously, Sampson got him to talk about police reports and why they're important, why it's important to document the work that you've done. And then Long says, those officer reports don't exist anymore. And this is something else that Sampson brought up in opening statements, once again, speaking to the idea of corruption and lack of credibility. How can we listen to these law enforcement agencies when police reports are going missing? People are accessing police reports who shouldn't be. The integrity, the safety, the structure, the security, it's not there.

9:30So why should we take the word of these witnesses who are on the stand? And Long says, yeah, we moved from one hard drive, I think it was hard drive H to hard drive F. And while that happened, these reports got lost. So he couldn't look at them today to refresh his memory before testifying. Nobody's been able to see them as they don't exist anymore. Then there was this story about a gun that the LA Sheriff's Office had called Long about, saying Compton Police Department discovered a gun in 1998. They didn't have, you know, it was dissolved. Compton Police Department was dissolved and they didn't have the time to test it.

10:02But we are pretty adamant that this is the gun that was used to kill Tupac Shakur. And Long said he went to Los Angeles. He retrieved the gun. He sent it off to ballistics and was pretty quickly told this is not the gun. It doesn't match the shell casings. It's not a Glock 40. and that story kind of just was left out there. But if you remember back to opening statements, Sampson said these law enforcement agencies are so corrupt that they're lying to each other. He said the LA Sheriff's Office lied to Las Vegas Metro about having found the gun to see what they do. Once again, all of these comments about law enforcement agencies, all of these comments about the security of files, missing files, fake guns, ballistic testing that leads nowhere, goes to the idea, how can you trust what they're saying when the call or the issue was coming from inside the house?

10:50And if you start asking that question, you know, you're a hop skip and a jump away from reasonable doubt. That's what Sam's trying to do. And then we find out that Long was actually there in those 2009 interviews. Now, remember, we heard a lot of audio in this trial, a lot of Dwayne Keefidi Davis talking about Dwayne Keefidi Davis. Those 2008 interviews that were a result of the proffer agreement and then the 2009 ones. and you could hear Long on those recordings. He's the one who keeps saying to Dwayne Davis, I'm trying to corroborate what you're saying. I can hear what you're telling me. I'm trying to corroborate it.

11:19So we heard his side of what took place in 2009 and he said he was very surprised when he walked in the room and Dupree was in there along with Davis and his attorney, Wayne Higgins. He said this wasn't usual for, I didn't think he was going to confess to anything because his attorney was there, but he says he does start talking. And then Sam picks up on this and says, how much of what he said did you actively try and corroborate? And Long says, I tried to corroborate a lot of it. Now, at some point, you were able to learn some information. From Mr. Davis? Yes. Yes, sir. When you came back, did you corroborate any of the information?

11:54I tried. He said Orlando Anderson was checked into the hospital that night in Las Vegas after the shooting because of what happened at the MGM, the beating that he took. He said he went to the hospital and tried to find those records. He went to try and find where the Cadillac was rented from in Los Angeles. He couldn't find anything. He said he quote never found anything of a Cadillac being registered under a name that was linked to Dwayne Davis or a Cadillac white Cadillac being rented at all. He goes through and Sam is trying to bring out once again. Yeah, Dwayne Davis told you all this stuff.

12:23He sat down and told you we know what he told you because we've heard it. We've heard all of it. But you tried to corroborate and it led nowhere. You actually weren't able to substantiate or stand up a single thing that Dwayne Davis said in those 2009 interviews. And he said, yeah, I wasn't. And then this comes to cross examination. because that is obviously a very harmful narrative for the prosecution because they're basically saying this is the third detective in a row. He's giving everything he's got. He's following every anonymous tip. He's walking up and down the flipping strip in Las Vegas eight years after the event looking for a gun that somebody told him possibly might be there.

12:56This guy is being diligent and he still didn't find anything. So they asked him, what was your intent? My intent was to drive back to Las Vegas, type up a warrant for an arrest, clear it with the district attorney and have Mr. Davis arrested for murder. And obviously that being said to the jury, that is not what the defence were looking for today. And now Long does go on to clarify that the DA refused to raise charges and then there was a conversation about there potentially being a proffer and then these pieces of the puzzle started to make sense of why Dwayne Davis was in there with his attorney and why he was talking freely and why this couldn't be used against him.

13:32We of course know it eventually is because we're here today in 2026. but for the prosecution the most important part of his testimony there was saying after this man told me what he says he did I wanted to arrest him. I sat in a room with him and I thought he was criminally responsible for the murder of Tupac Shakur. That's not what the defense wanted so we get redirect. So you get direct, cross, then redirect, then recross, then re-re-redirect, then up and down, up and down in this trial and Sam wants to bring it back to his point, his narrative, the one that is favorable to the defendant. Did you ever verify any of the information that Dwayne Davis gave you?

14:07And long responded saying, quote, I couldn't. And then Sam asks a really interesting question. He said, were you getting any calls from anybody else or anybody else admitting to this? Anybody else saying that they are responsible for the death, for the murder of Tupac Shakur? And he said, yeah, we had hundreds of calls. We had people calling and saying it was Bill Clinton who did it. We had people calling and saying it was them who did it. There was a lot. There was quite a few. I mean, I had information that Bill Clinton had him killed. I mean, there was a... No, we did not fail. There was a lot of calls, a lot of people claiming to have been involved.

14:48And you can see what Sam is trying to do here. He's saying, what is the difference between the directed mission of Dwayne Keefe D. Davis and the directed mission of these people who are calling you up on the phone? You can't corroborate any of the facts that Dwayne Davis has given you. You've tried and you have failed. You can't even place him in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting. You can't place these people that are calling you on the phone in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting. So materially, what is the difference? And that is a question that is very important for the defense to have go in front of the jury because you start saying, what are the differences?

15:17And Long said, you know, the way that we determine whether they're telling the truth or not is if we can stand up any of the facts that they're giving, if they know any of the surrounding information. He was like, a lot of people just didn't have a clue what was going on that night. So they're just calling up. They're crazy. They're wasting our time. And then Sam says once again, but you couldn't corroborate any of what Dwayne Davis had told you. And he says no. But in recross, the prosecution got long to clarify that he had inherited this file from other detectives, that a lot of the work had already been done and there was a lot in there that could already be cross-referenced that lined up with other people's stories of the white Cadillac and the gun and Orlando Anderson and the MGM, that all of that narrative already existed around Dwayne Davis.

15:53So he wasn't starting from scratch and trying to establish that himself. He was trying to cross-reference, corroborate, substantiate and stand up. what Dwayne Davis was telling him extra in those 2009 interviews. And you can hear him saying it on the tape. Who did you tell? Did you tell anyone you did this? Because we're trying to corroborate it. We're really trying to... Did you tell somebody? Did you tell your brothers, your sisters, your family that you got the gun? I mean, but the question I'm left here asking is, why don't anybody just call up Foxy Brown? Because he kept saying Foxy Brown was in the car with Eric Zip Martin.

16:22Just bell Foxy Brown. Hello, Foxy. Did you see this geezer on the night? I mean, I... and if I'm asking that question, and no doubt you might be asking that question, then those 12 everyday American jurors might be asking those questions. But we do know some of the questions they are asking, because they said jury questions at the end of the long testimony. Did you ever interview Suge Knight? He said, I tried to interview him. I actually had a partner who played football with him who promised me he could get an interview. But once he got Suge on the end of the phone, Suge hung up immediately. We know that he doesn't like to talk much, so that tracks.

16:58One of the other questions from the jury was, do you know which arm Orlando Anderson had injured after the attack at the MGM? That's a good question, because one of those arms had to fire the gun. And he said, no, I don't know which arm. Another question from the jury was, were you able to verify or confirm that Keefe D, Dwayne Keefe D Davis, was in the car on the night of 7th September 1996? And he responds, long response, saying yes, by Mr. Davis admitting it to me. at which point Sanft in what we on now re-re-redirect re-re-redirect Sanft stares just to clarify you have no actual facts outside of what Dwayne Kepi-D Davis told you that corroborate that that stand that up and Long responded no I don't and Sanft said I pass the witness your honour and the defence rests so what is happening tomorrow tomorrow we have kind of a day off here this jury instruction so this is when the defence and the prosecution get together to agree upon the instructions of law that should be given to the jury.

17:58So before the jury go away and deliberate, the judge will tell them, you need to consider this, you don't need to consider that. You should take this into consideration and this you should ignore. So they go over and they agree that the correct jury instructions are going to be given. We have closing arguments on Monday. I mean, for the DITI trial, it was five hours each. I don't know if we're going to get five hour long closing arguments. I kind of hope not. But we've got closing arguments on Monday and then the jury's out. And they're deliberating. And then this case that's taken 30 years to get here will finally have an answer or we'll have a hung jury because we could have a hung jury.

18:30That is a possibility. But whatever happens, I'll be here waiting. I'm sure they'll return jurors notes. When we get a jurors note passed back, we will fire back into the courtroom and wait to see if they've come up with a verdict. As soon as we have a verdict, I'll have it for you right here on this channel. But for now, that's it for this episode of Tupac Murder Child from BBC Sounds with me, Anushka Matanda-Dawati. make sure you turn on those push notifications and you subscribe. You do not want to miss a thing. And I'll see you guys on Tuesday.

19:22Get more with BBC Podcasts wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favourite shows like Evil Genius, Good Bad Billionaire and You're Dead to Me with a subscription to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon Music subscription.