Tupac’s murder: solved at last?

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:09Today, finally, a conviction for one of Tupac's killers.

0:24It's September 1996 and we are at a Nas concert at the Nassau Coliseum in Queens, New York The show has been halted midway through for some big breaking news

0:486 days earlier, Tupac Shakur had been shot in a drive-by ambush in Las Vegas. He was just 25, and already one of the biggest artists in America.

1:05He'd just released a huge album, All Eyes On Me, which spawned two number one singles.

1:22He'd worked with some of hip-hop's greatest.

1:33and starred in Hollywood films. I see you finally decided to join us. Make a dress. It seemed he could do anything. You would? I put it down. I put it down. If it's about rap music, if it's about acting, whatever, I try to get, I want to get into the head seat, to the front seat. So I do what I got to do to get to the front seat. I got to excel at it. It can't be a small thing. And then he died. For 30 years, no one has been held to account for his murder. Meanwhile, his legend has only grown, along with the conspiracies surrounding his death. Then, on Monday afternoon, in a Las Vegas court, came a resolution.

2:13Of sorts. I find the defendant, Dwayne Keith Davis, as follows. Count one, murder with use of a deadly weapon. Guilty of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon. dated this 31st date of August 2026. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is this your verdict as read? So say you won, so say you all? Yes.

2:37From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pitt. Today in Focus, the life, death and legacy of Tupac Shakur.

2:47William Shaw, in the late 1990s, you were spending a lot of time in Los Angeles researching your book Westsiders about the West Coast hip-hop scene. And you actually met Tupac, didn't you? Take us back there. What was it like? I did on a couple of occasions, actually. Yeah, I was being sent to interview him by an American magazine. First time was actually in the Beverly Hills Hotel, in this swanky, swanky restaurant, just after he got out from his prison sentence up in Dannemora Prison. So we were at this restaurant having a meal, and he's like, look, look over there, he's going. and it was Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins.

3:23And of course, he was a huge Anthony Hopkins fan. So it was a bizarre contrast for him. And he was, you know, he sat, I almost remember the sort of like peach coloured tablecloths and the fine cutlery. And it was just this bizarre conversation talking about his time in prison and then putting this luxury life in Los Angeles. So remind us what he was in prison for. So he was serving a prison sentence for sexual assault on a young woman, a sentence, I think, from between 18 months to four years he was going to serve. and it had been allegedly a very brutal assault, and the judge specifically said it was a brutal assault on a young woman.

3:58He always denied it, and he was out on appeal from the prison in Dannemora. Suge Knight basically bailed him out with all the money he was making from the record business. He really wanted Tupac on his label, so he got him out of prison literally with money. Yeah, and Suge Knight's real name, Marion Suge Knight, was the boss of Death Row Records, which he co-founded with Dr Dre and others, And it was a massive label in the 90s. They had artists like NWA, Snoop Dogg, people like that. Yeah. So Tupac was finally out of prison. He was leading his best life, really. He was leading his perfect sort of life, the one that he'd yearned for for a long time, where he had a great position to make a lot of music, a lot of people around him.

4:41And here I was in the Beverly Hills Hilton having a very posh dinner with him and quoting Robert Frost's poetry at me because he was an incredibly erudite man. Came from a very rich cultural kind of family. Give me a characterisation of your childhood. How would you describe what it was like growing up? I was the total opposite of what I am right now. I was quiet, withdrawn, I read a lot, I wrote poetry, I kept a diary. His mother was Afeni Shakur, one of the Black Panthers. She had been tried in the 70s, I think, as one of the sort of principal Black Panthers. and had called him Tupac Amaru Shakur, naming him after these South American kings.

5:25Something which he regarded as, he was proud of, but he also kind of regarded as a massive burden. And obviously everybody at school took piss out of him because he was called Tupac, One Pack or whatever. They just, and he had, so he had to carry around this thing of coming with this incredible political legacy of his shoulder of black resistance. His mother had then descended into kind of a terrible period of cocaine addiction. He was carrying a lot, but he was also incredibly well-read and understood a lot of the history around that. So you met Tupac in 1995. How big a star was he by that point?

5:59He was becoming massive at that point. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome acclaimed rap artist and Grammy nominee, Tupac.

6:15I'm not a massive hip-hop head, weirdly enough. I was really interested in the whole hip-hop scene around Los Angeles at the time. And so I was chasing around, asking my editor, can I interview hip-hop stars? Because I was really fascinated with what was going on in that West Coast hip-hop scene, which you have to remember at the time was quite reviled by a lot of the East Coast. Then suddenly you've got these people like Tupac moving from the East to the West to be with that sort of new energy, which was a very narrative-based rap. And so he was suddenly blown up into the biggest rap star in the States at the time.

6:53Tell me about the West Coast world of LA that he entered into when he moved over. I mean, I moved to Los Angeles to report on what was going on there because it became really obvious when the first of the gangster rappers McCann coming through that something very bizarre and very dark was happening in Los Angeles. And Los Angeles was the first city to really take the focus away from New York in the hip-hop scene. The West Coast scene was narrative, and they're describing all these kind of outrageous murders. And when it was first reported over here, people really took it on as a kind of, oh, they're just making up these really violent gangster fantasies.

7:29And then I went to interview people. I remember interviewing Coolio. And of course, Coolio was sort of like thought of as pop rap. Gangster's paradise.

7:41I said to him, have you ever seen a dead body? And he began to list all the people he'd seen killed, actually witnessed murders of. And at that point, the penny started to drop that this was a real cataclysm going on in Los Angeles. And the Reagan legacy was to cut a lot of welfare to the inner cities. And that had thrown people on the black economy, which meant car washes, all those sort of things like that, but also a lot of drug sales. Other gangs can't come here and sell dope in your area. You control this area. They're the infamous LA gangs, known across the country for their violent criminal activity, drive-by shootings, drug dealing, and fierce turf rivalry.

8:22The place had really become balkanized. And there's a really interesting sort of cultural logic you can follow in Los Angeles from this ghetto that had been established when workers were invited there in the 40s and 50s to work in all the factories and the industrial Los Angeles and then the Jim Crow laws that forced them into these ghettos and the decline in standard of life and the competition between individual neighbourhoods for basic resources which kind of fed into these gang conflicts which eventually ended up being labelled in the in the colours wars of the bloods Why being a gang? What's in it for you?

8:55What's in it? I mean, you get killed, right? Yeah. You mean some of your friends have been killed? Yeah. What a simple cause. What's the simple cause? Of being a blood. Going down with the blood. And this was a maelstrom. At the time, I can remember just looking at murder figures and thinking these are absolutely outrageous and trying to do the calculations. And I was working out that in America, during that period that I was there, if you compared it to the Vietnam War, the death rates amongst the African-American population were between 150 % and 200 % higher than the entire Vietnam Cull. And the real point, I think, what Tupac was going into was it was an open wound at the time of this horrendous amount of death rate happening on those streets around really geographically not a huge part of California.

9:45You've described so vividly the violent world that Tupac found himself in. Did he get involved in any of that gang culture or was he just rapping about it? No, he got involved in it. He got involved with the Mob Pyroos, which was from Suge's neighbourhood. They were surrounding him as bodyguards and stuff like that. So he was sort of like, he was around those people. They were the sort of people that were surrounding him when he was in Can-Am Studios. He admitted himself he had a very fragile sense of his own masculinity. When we went to Can-Am Studios and he was talking about that, he was just surrounded by it and we He's playing me tracks from the upcoming album.

10:18He was talking a lot about that, about his need not to be challenged and his need to prove himself as a man. And he's talking about his father a lot and his upbringing because he didn't know his father. And another person who his mother lived with was supposedly his father and he believed it was his father. Then he found his biological father. He was really messed up by a lot of that. And he said, I cannot, if somebody challenges me and says, says, you know, in any kind of way, challenges, I have to fight. And he said, this is weird and I shouldn't be doing it. I know. But he was in that kind of mindset.

10:51I mean, he was a young man in his 20s. Interesting that he was self-aware enough to recognise that. Definitely. He was definitely self-aware about that sort of thing. I mean, he was kind of slightly horrified, but he also, you know, he said it has a kind of, you know, he was talking about how his, you know, in his dreams, he'd wake up gnashing his teeth and stuff like that. And he knew there was something completely unresolved in him about all that stuff. And, you know, I think that was shared by a lot of young men at the time. And I don't know how well that works psychologically, but there was obviously a huge amount of absent fatherhood within that sort of community.

11:22There was also other amazing things in that community. I mean, the extended family network in a lot of those African-American communities in Los Angeles was phenomenal and strong. But, you know, there was a query about what was causing male violence. And at the time, a lot of the explanation was going on to absent fatherhood and Tupac certainly believed that was a major part of his own psyche. I needed a male influence in my life and these were the males. The other males who could have been a more positive influence on me were too scared to come where I was or they didn't have the money or they didn't have the heart or whatever.

11:54So Tupac had already been the victim of gun violence in 1994 because that is when he was shot five times and robbed in New York in the lobby of Quad Recording Studios. He survived and he long believed that it was all a set up by figures in the music industry. Did he seem kind of paranoid or hypervigilant when you met him? So we drove from the restaurant to Can-Am Studios and I'm pretty sure I was in Tupac's Jaguar. Yeah, I was in and he was he had this Jaguar. It was an open top Jaguar. So I was driving down the streets with Tupac and a car backfired and he flinched. And I noticed that and he talked about it afterwards.

12:32And he said, I said, did you think that was a gunshot? And he said, yeah. So he was kind of, you know, he was primed and he was laughing about it afterwards. But yeah. And he was only 25 when he died. Yeah. Shocking, isn't it? What had he achieved in such a short career? I mean, I think even before his death, he had become an iconic and incredibly charismatic. he was one of the most beautiful men of the time i mean he was incredibly he was really gorgeous you know i met so many other sort of female pop star uh hip-hop stars who kind of was him yeah me and tupac we had a thing you know he was he attracted people because he was a great actor as well and that's kind of forgotten he did a couple of films where his acting is really great and i'm sure if he'd lived his acting career would have carried on because the camera loved Tupac.

13:20And that might have been a way out of for this kind of very confrontational life that he'd got himself stuck into. Let's talk about the 7th of September 1996. Chakor was shot four times after leaving the Mike Tyson boxing match in Las Vegas in a car driven by Marion Suge Knight, the head of his label, Death Row Records. When did you first hear that Tupac had been shot and then when he subsequently died a few days later. I remember hearing that evening and I can remember being aware because it took a while for the importance of it to to register in here but having been in Los Angeles you kind of thought this is going to be huge and this is going to really affect people a lot.

13:58When I heard that Tupac died I was cooking in a restaurant. It was a sports bar so there was a big TV screen and we all just kind of watched it just like you know just dazed. A lot of people that worked at the job that I worked at didn't understand Tupac I didn't understand the music so we're looking at us like what's what's wrong what's the big deal get over it and it's like nah this is a really fucked up day for the longest it becomes a cultural moment doesn't it a death of somebody or other who seems to embody so much of the zeitgeist at the time especially when he dies by the very thing he's talking about I mean I do remember I just want to say that when we were in the studio that same day, the first time I met him, he said, I know I'm going to die in violence.

14:44And I said, you know? And he said, yeah, I know. And that wasn't an extraordinary thing to say in some ways, because a lot of young men did. But on the other hand, he also kind of, he clearly wasn't running away from some of that conflict at the time.

15:04Jessica Hill, you're a reporter for the Associated Press and you have been in court in Nevada in the past few weeks covering the trial of the only man to ever be charged in connection with Tupac's murder. Set the scene for us. What was it like being there and just how big a deal has it been? Yeah, for sure. So it's definitely a big deal. People have thought about this for close to 30 years, tons of people have shown up, you know, some very dedicated fans from all over the country have taken a bus or flown just to, you know, be part of this trial. Tupac's family has been present during the entire trial as well.

15:39And there's just a lot of tension sometimes throughout the whole trial process. But, you know, a lot of people have talked about how this could finally come to a resolution after 30 years. It's been a major, notorious cold case for so long. So tell me about the man who's been on trial, Dwayne Davis. He, by his own account, is a former L.A. gangster and a drug dealer from Compton. He's 63 years old now and was charged with effectively orchestrating Tupac's murder and handing the gun to the person who shot him, which under Nevada law constitutes a murder charge. Yeah, so Dwayne Davis, also known as Keefy D., is a self-proclaimed former gang leader at the Southside Compton Crips.

16:17His defense attorneys say that he has left the narcotics trade and worked like a normal job for several years until illness forced him to retire. And so take us back to the 7th of September, 1996. So almost 30 years ago, the day that Tupac was shot. Remind us what happened that day. Yes. So Tupac was in town for the Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand. And then he got into an altercation with Dwayne Davis's nephew, Orlando Anderson. And after that, they had left. And apparently, allegedly, Orlando Anderson had informed Dwayne Davis through some of other members of the gang that he had been beaten up.

16:56And in order to get retaliation, they decide to try to find Tupac Shakur and Marion Suge Knight. Yeah. And Suge Knight, of course, was the boss of Death Row Records, which signed Tupac among many other very famous rap artists at the time. Yes. Dwayne Davis and three other people, they had gone to a club where Tupac was going to perform and waited around for Tupac and Marion Shugnight. They did not come. And so then they left and went to a liquor store. And then on their way, after leaving the liquor store, they had run into Tupac, Shakur, and Marion Shugnight in their BMW. and they were at like a red light near the Las Vegas Strip and a white Cadillac pulled up to the side and shots were fired from this white Cadillac at Suge Knight and obviously Tupac Shakur.

17:47Suge Knight survived his injuries and Tupac Shakur died six days later. Crucially for this case, Dwayne Davies is the only living witness from the car from which shots were fired at Tupac Shakur. He was riding in the Cadillac with his nephew Orlando Anderson. and some others. And in the other car was Tupac and his record label boss, Suge Knight. Yes, that is correct. And I think what was so fascinating about this trial was the evidence that the prosecution used to convict Davis, because it wasn't forensics or CCTV or anything like that, was it? It wasn't even people who saw him at the scene. There was kind of nothing conventional at all, actually.

18:25Yeah, so prosecutors made this pretty clear from the beginning during jury selection that the kind of evidence that jurors will be seeing is different from, you know, a murder case that might be happening right now. We're not seeing blood that was found at the scene that connects Davis to this crime. There's something like that. There's very little, you know, physical evidence that we've seen so far. Yeah. But what there was, was Davis's own words. And he wrote a memoir called Compton Street Legend, which I imagine he now regrets. It came out in 2019. And he talked in detail in this book about the day that Tupac was shot.

18:57Tell me about it. Yeah. So in this book, he actually co-authored it with Yusuf Jha. And the defense has said, you know, there's no way to know which parts he has written versus which parts Davis has written. But the book kind of goes into Davis's background, his growing up in Compton, how he joined and got involved in the Southside Compton Crips. And then it goes into some pretty lengthy detail about what happened that night from his perspective. He has like called it in media interviews, like the real truth of what happened. he describes you know what what i just said you know going to las vegas that night he was also there to see the mike tyson fight um he had gotten it through like a scalper different tickets for him and his friends um he talked about hearing that his nephew was beaten up and then how they need to get you know revenge he had said something about like you know we couldn't let any like studio rap wannabes do us like that and we had to you know get revenge and my nephew was just a kid he described how he passed the gun to the back seat um his like segments kind of vary depending on which interview it is or the book in the book he doesn't say who actually pulled the trigger he just kind of says that he tossed it to someone in the back in other interviews that he's done with police he has said that it was his nephew that did actually pull the trigger yeah i mean i was just looking at some quotes from the memoir and it's pretty unambiguous and as you as you said that he's distancing himself from this book now.

20:25I'm just going to read a few quotes from there. So one of the stories ends, the moral of this story is that real gangsters are nothing to fuck with. Them jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something to their ass. I mean, what do you make of those kind of statements? Yeah, I mean, it's pretty blatant in this, like how he was feeling at the time and his like justification, allegedly, if we believe if what he says is true. There is one part of the book too, where he said like he regrets what has happened and that, you know, he feels bad for Tupac's mother. And you've referred to a few interviews that he has given over the years.

21:00So was it not simply the memoir that the prosecutors used to say that he was guilty of his part in the murder? Yeah, that's correct. Prosecutors have really relied on previous statements that he's given. In 2008, he participated in a proper agreement. So it allowed him to talk to them without fear of being prosecuted for what he said in this interview.

21:25And so in that interview, he gave a similar story as to what he said in the book. That actually became like a major part of this whole trial and like leading up to the trial was whether or not this interview could be used during the trial when in fact this agreement was that what he said here couldn't be used against him. However, prosecutors argued that that agreement kind of went out the window when he decided to make public statements and decide to write the book. And then throughout the trial, we've seen a bunch of different interviews with the media, some documentary folks that were, you know, making murder rap, for instance.