‘I PROVIDED THE GUN THAT KILLED TUPAC SHAKUR — AND MY NEPHEW PULLED THE TRIGGER’: The Murder Confession That Led Las Vegas Police to Raid Gangster Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis
Keffe was in the car that went out on a revenge mission to find Tupac
July 24 2023, Published 3:00 p.m. ET
The former Compton kingpin at the center of last week’s dramatic raid in the unsolved murder of Tupac Shakur confessed he provided the weapon to his nephew — an assassin who ultimately killed the hip-hop legend in a hail of bullets, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
Duane Keith Davis, 60, admitted he was an accomplice to the Sept. 7, 1996 murder of Tupac near the intersection of Flamingo Road and Koval Lane in Las Vegas, prior to being the target of a search of his home.
Davis — better known as Keffe D — is a notorious member of the California-based gang known as The South Side Compton Crips.
Keffe D was in a car that went out on a revenge mission to find Tupac
RadarOnline.com has reviewed hundreds of pages of testimony of Keffe D’s own words, police documents and evidence, and hours of recorded interviews. Now, in a blockbuster exclusive, we can reveal:
—In a secretly recorded 2009 interview, Keffe D told the LAPD that his nephew, the late Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, was the triggerman who riddled Tupac’s body with four .40 caliber rounds;
—The first shot skinned Suge Knight, the Death Row Records boss who was driving the black BMW sedan Tupac was sitting in;
—The motive for the murder was a brawl at the MGM Grand hours earlier during which Tupac, Suge, and other Bloods beat Baby Lane to a pulp after a Mike Tyson fight;
—In retribution, a “livid” Keffe D armed himself with a deadly “crew” of trained street killers with a “do or die” desire “to burn” the “a---- up” of Bloods gangsters;
—They wanted to repeat “Al Capone’s Valentine’s Day Massacre” — the 1929 incident during which seven men were lined up against a wall and gunned down execution-style;
—Keffe D was in the front passenger seat of the Cadillac from which the fatal shots were fired at Tupac;
—Terrence “T-Brown” Brown (aka "Bubble Up") was driving the white Cadillac, while DeAndre “Dre” Smith (aka "Freaky") and Baby Lane were sitting in the back — all members of the same gang;
—Keffe D said the murder weapon, a .40-caliber Glock pistol, was given to him by a “big-time New York player, pimp and hustler” just hours before the execution killing;
Police photos of those said to be involved in the shooting almost 27 years ago
—The cold-blooded killers fled the scene and abandoned the vehicle before fleeing on foot on the famed Strip as ambulances carrying Tupac and Suge raced to Vegas’ University Medical Center;
—The Glock was stashed inside the wheel of the abandoned vehicle minutes after the killing;
—When Keffe D and his entourage went to collect the car the next day to return to Los Angeles, the gun was mysteriously nowhere to be found;
—He and his crew drove the Cadillac back to Compton, where after body shop work, they returned it to a rental company; and;
—Keffe D said Tupac chose the “wrong n-----” to “play with” and that Suge and his crew should have protected him better.
Tupac Shakur was infamously gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996
In a remarkable turn of events, Keffe D delivered the stunning blow-by-blow account — or "another day at the office” as he described it — in his self-published tell-all memoir, COMPTON STREET LEGEND, published in 2019.
It is one of five different confessions the one-time Crips shot caller has made in public to date, RadarOnline.com has confirmed.
The self-confessed criminal has never been charged in the case that became the world's most famous incident of modern street gang warfare.
But as RadarOnline.com reported, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department executed a search warrant on Keffe D on July 17, representing a dramatic escalation in the case thought to have gone cold.
According to a copy of the warrant, the authorities collected a desktop computer, a laptop, a cell phone, a hard drive, eleven .40-caliber bullets, tubs full of photos, 40 ink cartridges, and a copy of the book, among other items.
Police detail what was seized after the raid on the home of Keffe D on July 13
Here, for the first time outside of that book, is Keffe D’s extraordinary confession of what led to the bloody death of Tupac — a chapter-and-verse account of the crime that shook the hip-hop world and could now set the case on a path toward criminal charges after almost 27 years.
“Little did I know, this trip to Vegas, unlike the ones before, would change my life,” wrote Keffe D in the chapter entitled The Main Event.
He recalled checking in at the Caesars Palace Resort and Casino around 5 PM — “we laid back, popped a few bottles, went down to the casino and started gambling big” — before the rest of his crew of Crips arrived in town.
In the 18-person deep entourage was his nephew Baby Lane, he wrote — a “6'3” thug “with an athletic build; he was slim but muscular, a one-punch knockout master.”
While Baby Lane would ultimately pull the trigger on Tupac, Keffe D described his nephew as a “good dude with a big heart.”
Orlando 'Baby Lane' Anderson shot Tupac dead in a hail of bullets from a Glock, according to his uncle Keffe.
After what would be Tyson's final heavyweight championship victory, Keffe and his posse headed to the prearranged meeting place.
“Little by little everybody started showing up except my nephew,” Keffe D recalled. “Then, some 118 East Coast Crips came and told us that they saw some Death Row n----- jump my nephew down by the casino.”
He suggested the smackdown was in retaliation for a weeks-prior incident at Lakewood Mall, in Calif., during which Baby Lane snatched a gold necklace of another gangster, Trevon Lane — which had been a personal gift from Suge.
Wrote Keffe D: “We rushed up out of the cafe and went to find Baby Lane. We saw him inside the MGM minutes after they had jumped him. By the time we got there Suge, Pac and their crew had already left.”
“When I asked him what happened, he said, “Them Death Row n----- rushed me. One of them n----- from the Lakewood Mall was running with the boy that started that s---.”
Keffe D Davis confessed in a YouTube video to his role in the double shooting
The crew immediately decided they were determined to handle the matter themselves, he said.
We couldn’t let no record company studio gangsters do us like that. Had they lost their f------ rapping’ a-- minds? On top of that, Puffy had already talked to em about helping him out with the problem he was having with them n-----. That was a double whammy! Then you add on top of that the fact that we helped Suge with the money to get his record business going, And the n---- gonna bite the hands that fed him? Add insult to injury cause Suge still hasn’t paid Boss Man his money back, got too big for his britches and stopped taking Boss Man’s calls. Strike three honey, you’re out!!!
Keffe D said his crew knew Suge and followers were headed to Club 662 for a Death Row after-fight party — and “Pac (was) supported be there too.”
“The intelligence was from reliable source as some of the younger homeys from our set had been stationed in Vegas selling dope — a satellite operations of sorts,” he added.
“Alright homeys,” Keffe D commanded. “That’s where we’re going then, Club 662.”
South Side had not gone down to Vegas thinking about Marion ‘Suge’ Knight or Tupac Shakur; we were out there to do what he had been doing in Vegas for years: eat, drink. And be merry! When conversations would come up about a million-dollar bounty on the heads of Suge Knight and Tupac Skater, that was business. But after Tupac, Suge and then Death Row n----- jumped on my nephew Baby Lane, the s--- became ominously personal.
Keffe D said he connected with a “big-time New York player, pimp and hustler” and jumped into his car at valet, asking the rapper Foxy Brown to exit.
Inside, the car was a hidden compartment that “he opened up, reached in, and pulled a black .40 Block out. He turned to me and said, ‘It’s time to get the money.' Zip [a New York based pal] handed me the 17-shot pistol which I promptly put down the back waist of my pants.”
With weapon in hand, Keffe D told his crew: “Get in the car you came in, let’s roll.”
Suge Knight was involved in a fist fight in the lobby of a Las Vegas hotel, the supposed motive for murder
They left the casino parking lot and headed directly to Club 662 where, according to Keffe D, they laid in wait in the back parking lot.
Their intent was obvious, Keffe D acknowledged.
We had three vehicles, three to four people in each, ready to burn their a---- up. My crew was Do or Die. All my young games had already been shot at least once, so their street experience turned them into some stone cold killers. They learned not to wait to get shot but to be the shooter. They had the mentality of, ‘It’s either them or me, and it’s ain’t gonna be me.’
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Keffe D and his crew waited for an hour and a half without any sign of the Knight or Tupac before he ordered them to “move out.”
“One-by-one, the drivers started their engines and slowly crept out of the back parking lot,” he recounted.
He said it was “lucky” that Tupac and Suge failed to show because “it would have been like Al Capone’s Valentine’s Day Massacre if they had.”
Tupac died from his wounds six days after the shooting
Instead, the crew went to a Liquor Barn store to get Cristal and Dom Perignon champagne before making their way to Carriage House, a Las Vegas hotel where they had rented a few rooms as a “kickback spot.”
“It was not that we were over what happened to Baby Lane, it’s just we couldn’t control when them n----- were going to show up,” he said.
hakur was struck by four .40 caliber rounds fired from a Glock: two in the chest, one in the arm, and one in the thigh
At the Liquor Barn, Keffe D had become concerned that some of whom he was rolling with were too scared to carry out the mission.
So, Keffe D jumped in the front seat of another car in the squad, the Cadillac.
“I pulled out the Block that Zip had given me and tossed it in the backseat,” he described.
“After our pit stop at the Liquor Barn, we continued toward the Carriage House. As we were driving, the two vehicles that were with us got caught at the traffic light, but we kept rolling.
“A few blocks down we were sitting at the light and who the f--- did we see? The Death Row caravan hit the concern with Tupac hanging out the window of a Black, luxury BMW waving to his fans. People on the streets were screaming, ‘Tupac! Tupac! We love you Tupac!’”
Keffe D said the Bloods “jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something”
Keffe D recalled:
Bubble Up busted a U-Turn and hit the gutter lane on their a----. As they sat in traffic, we slowly rolled past the long line of luxury cars they had in the caravan, looking into each one until we pulled up to the front vehicle and found who we were seeking.
Like two rams locking horns, Suge and I looked each other dead in the eye. Our eyes locked. The terrified expression on Suge’s face read: “Damn. Them n-----!’ No words exchanged, the time for talking had passed, the s--- was about to go down!
“The next few seconds happened so quickly,” Keefe D explained. “The s--- was on!”
He added: “Tupac made an erratic move and began to reach down beneath his seat. It was the first and only time in my life that I could relate to the police command, ‘Keep your hands where I can see them.’ Instead, Pac pulled out a strap, that’s when the fireworks started. One of my guys from the backseat grabbed the Glock and started busting; back.”
Las Vegas police have long been criticized for never making an arrest in the decades old case
Based on Keffe D’s account, the two assailants in the back were Baby Lane and Freaky, although, in the book, he never identified the shooter as either.
“The first shot skinned Suge in his head,” Keffe D said.
“I heard stories that Suge supposedly used Tupac as a shield when the bullets started flying. But that’s some bull---. Suge was already wounded; he was the first one that got touched.”
As the rounds continued flying, Keffe D ducked down so that he wouldn’t get hit.
When the shooting stopped, we boned out, and a white Chrysler Sebring full of young ladies was following us. Their window quickly got shot out, so they stopped. The interesting thing to me was with all them rough a-- n----- they were supposed to have with them, none of them did a damn thing and tied to come after us. There were a lot of shots let off in both directions.
When the shots settled, Keffe D said, a couple of people in their car had fragments and glass in their hair – but none had been hit.
While Suge made a U-Turn back onto the Las Vegas Strip, Keffe D and his crew abandoned their Cadillac for fear police — and others in the Death Row crew — would be on the lookout.
Having ditched the car, they absconded on foot and watched as two ambulances passed by right in front of them on the Strip: the first with Tupac in it and the medics working frantically to provide medical attention.
A second, not too far behind, had Suge in it.
Keffe D’s self-published tell-all led to the police raid at his home on July 13
Gloated Keffe D: “The moral of the story, real Gangsters are nothing to f--- with!”
It’s a ruthless way of life, one that I’ve lived for the majority of my life. Some gangster rappers have glamorized and glorified the life like it’s cool and something to strive for. They have a lot of people’s minds twisted. The truth of the matter is gang bangin’ and acting like a thug ain’t no joke.
“For us, Vegas was another day at the office,” he added. “It may sound cold-hearted, but from a street perspective, the killings of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls would be considered nothing more than collateral damage. As a result, the hip-hop world has lost two of its most talented and revered musical artists and icons.
“At this point in my life, I can say I have a deep sense of remorse for what happened to Tupac. He was a talented artist with tons of potential to impact the world. I hate that Tupac’s family, friends and fans, especially his mother, Afeni Shakur, had to go through the pain of losing her son. It’s terrible losing people like that; I know the pain too well.
“However, I stand firm to the point that Tupac, Suge Knight and the rest of the n----- didn’t have any business putting their hands on my beloved nephew, Baby Lane. Period. Then jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something to their a--.”
He added:
Tupac chose the wrong game to play and the wrong n---- to play with. Suge and them should have done a better job of protecting that dude because they knew who the f--- we were and the kind of s--- we were capable of. Tupac may not have known, but Suge and his peeps definitely knew. Tupac was a puppy that got swallowed up by some ferocious sharks. He shouldn’t have ever got involved in that bull---- of trying to be a thug.
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“South Side Crips earned some stripes on the collar from street n----- due to the Tupac shooting,” Keffe D concluded.
“But it generated too much attention and put us under a microscope by law enforcement that would not cease and eventually brought us down. It was a big loss for everybody involved.”
Tupac's car was left riddled with bullets following the hit; in 2020, it was auctioned off
The next day, on the drive back to Los Angeles, Keffe D “laced” his nephew Bobby Lane “with the game.”
He told him: “Don’t tell nobody what happened! Not even your mama!!! Don’t say a motherf------ thing.
Though Keffe D never named Baby Lane in COMPTON STREET LEGEND as pulling the trigger, he tattled elsewhere.
In one confession on the documentary Murder Rap, Keffe D elaborated and said he passed the gun to his friend DeAndre "Dre" Smith, who refused to take it.
Describing the killing, he said: “I gave it (a gun) to Dre and Dre was like 'no, no, no’ and Lane was like – popped the dudes.
“He leaned over and rolled down the window and popped them.”
What’s more, during a recorded interview with LAPD homicide officer Greg Kading and federal agents in 2019, Keffe D ratted out Baby Lane to save himself from drug charges.
Kading, who has since retired, wrote a book about the case, and quoted the taped conversation as follows:
Detective Kading: So Orlando shot across Dre?
Keffe D: “He leaned over, and Orlando rolled down the window, and popped him. If they would have drove on my side, I would have popped them. But they was on the other side.”
Federal Agent: “Where does [Baby Lane] get the gun from?”
Keffe D: “A little secret compartment that popped up.”
Federal Agent: “In the armrest?”
Keffe D: “Yeah.”
Detective Kading: “Was it a Glock?”
Keffe D: “Yeah.”
Detective Kading: “.40?”
Keffe D: “Yeah. And I ain't ever told nobody that story, man.”
Baby Lane was shot to death in Compton in 1998 following a gun battle that left two other men dead. He died considered to be the prime suspect in the murder of Tupac, but was never charged.
Greg Kading during his time at the LAPD task force, during which obtained the confession from Keffe
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