Who Killed Tupac Shakur?

Tupac Shakur died on September 13, 1996, six days after a gunman in a white Cadillac shot him four times while at a stoplight in Las Vegas. His murder was long believed to be gang-related, with Orlando Anderson of the Southside Crips widely suspected of being the trigger man. Shakur’s homicide became one of the most high-profile unsolved cases in the United States. In 2023, however, Duane Keith (“Keffe D”) Davis, an uncle of Anderson, was arrested in connection with Shakur’s death. He was found guilty in 2026.

Los Angeles Times investigation and possible motive

In 2002 the Los Angeles Times published an exhaustive investigation into the killing of Shakur. It determined that uncooperative witnesses and minimal pursuit of gang-related leads resulted in the failure to solve the case. The first part of this widely read investigation, written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chuck Philips, provided an in-depth analysis of the identity of Shakur’s murderer. Philips presented evidence that the Southside Crips, a gang from Compton, California, executed the killing. Shakur was tied to the Mob Piru Bloods, a street gang that often battled with the Crips over territory and personal slights. One such slight resulted in Shakur and his Bloods bodyguards beating Crips member Orlando Anderson in the lobby of a Mike Tyson prizefight venue. This event, Philips argued, prompted Anderson to go to his fellow gang members and demand retaliation, which they agreed to follow through with.

Furthermore, Philips posited that Shakur’s rival and New York rapper Notorious B.I.G., whose legal name was Christopher Wallace, provided the gun and had previously offered to pay the Crips if they successfully killed Shakur. His feud with the rapper had escalated such that Wallace offered to pay the Crips $1 million for the murder. Philips’s article stated that Anderson used Wallace’s .40-caliber Glock pistol to carry out the hit. Both Anderson and Wallace were killed within two years of Shakur’s death.

Philips’s reporting was based on interviews with a series of informants who agreed to disclose their knowledge about the case in exchange for anonymity. While praised for its detailed presentation and logical structure, Philips’s Los Angeles Times investigation was criticized for its reliance on unnamed sources, particularly those who implicated two deceased individuals: Anderson and Wallace, both of whom had denied involvement in the murder.

Arrest and trial

In 2023 Duane Keith Davis was arrested and charged with murder, following an indictment by a grand jury in Nevada. He pleaded not guilty. Davis, known as Keffe D, had claimed in a memoir and interviews that he was in the white Cadillac alongside Shakur when the shooting occurred. During his trial, which began in August 2026, Davis recanted his claims. Later that month he was found guilty of first-degree murder. He was not accused of shooting Shakur but of providing the gun that was used and orchestrating the hit. Davis was later sentenced to 40 years to life in prison.