Jurors on Thursday heard Duane “Keffe D” Davis tell detectives in 2008 that his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson fired the shots that killed rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996.
Davis, who claimed he was also in the car with his nephew, is accused of orchestrating the killing of the 25-year-old rapper in Las Vegas.
At the time of the interview with detectives in Los Angeles County, Davis’s nephew had been dead for a decade.
Davis, 63, alleged that the white Cadillac he and Anderson were in with two other men pulled up alongside a car with Shakur inside, along with Death Row Records head Marion “Suge” Knight, according to a livestream of the trial from Law&Crime.
“If we would have been on my side, I would have blasted,” Davis told detectives.
Instead, Knight’s car was on the other side, so Davis alleged that he passed his gun back to Deandre “Big Dre” Smith. But Smith didn’t want it, according to Davis.
“So Orlando shot across Dre?” an investigator asked.
Davis, who has pleaded not guilty to one count of murder with use of a deadly weapon, alleged that Anderson, who was in the back seat, took the weapon and started firing shots.
“He leaned over on the window. He rolled down the window, popped ’em,” Davis replied. “If they drove on my side, I would have popped ’em, know what I’m saying. But they was on the other side.”
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Davis alleged that Knight looked directly at him as the gunfire began, while Shakur attempted to try to climb into the back seat of the car.
Davis, who has been jailed since his arrest in September 2023, went on to say that Knight tried to duck but was too large to get out of the way of the gunfire and was struck.
He believed that Knight had been shot in the head. But Knight survived and Shakur was hit multiple times. He died in the hospital a week after the shooting.
“We did what we had to do,” Davis said of the shooting in the 2008 interview.
The transcript of the audio recording was displayed on a screen for jurors in the court room to watch.
Prosecutors told jurors in opening statements that they would lean heavily on Davis’s own admissions in interviews with police and on podcasts, as well as the 2019 memoir he co-authored, Compton Street Legend: Notorious Keffe D’s Street-Level Accounts of the Tupac and Biggie Murders, Death Row Origins, Suge Knight, Puffy Combs, and Crooked Cops.
In his 2019 memoir, which described Davis’s life as a leader of a Crips gang sect in Compton, he said he obtained a .40-calibre handgun and handed it to Anderson in the back seat of a car, from which he and authorities say shots were fired at Shakur in another car.
Davis previously told the FBI that his nephew was not involved in the shooting of Shakur and speculated that Knight or Sean “Diddy” Combs was involved.
Davis’s lawyer has called the prosecution’s narrative “fiction” and said Davis was “full of crap” when he told stories of his involvement, and that authorities knew it. He argued investigators failed to back up the statements his client made with evidence.
Prosecutors allege Shakur was killed to avenge Shakur’s entourage attacking Davis’s nephew Anderson a few hours earlier at the MGM Grand after a Mike Tyson fight.
In March 2025, Davis, who is the only suspect ever charged in the killing of Shakur, spoke out for the first time, insisting that he is “innocent.”
In a jailhouse interview with ABC News, Davis said he should be at home watching his grandchildren grow up instead of waiting to stand trial in the notorious Las Vegas murder of Shakur.
“I’m innocent,” Davis said in an hour-long meeting at the Clark County Detention Center. “I did not do it. They don’t have nothing. And they know they don’t have nothing.
“They can’t even place me out here. They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing.
“I ain’t killed nobody. Never did, never killed nobody.”
Davis said he has tried to turn his life around and described himself as a “good man.”
“I did everything they asked me to do. Get new friends. Stop selling drugs. I stopped all that,” he said in reference to police and prosecutors. “I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight at one of my f—ing grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”
Davis also claimed that he has “never read the book,” in reference to his 2019 memoir and said that his co-author took artistic liberties he had nothing to do with.
“I just gave him details of my life,” Davis said. “And he went and did his little investigation and wrote the book on his own.”
— with files from The Associated Press
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