LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — For a quarter century, police say they have known of Duane "Keefe D" Davis's involvement in the murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur.
However, they lacked evidence to charge him with anything—until Friday, September 29 when police finally arrested him.
The 60-year-old is a longtime self-professed leader of the South Side Compton Crips.
According to a Nevada grand jury indictment, Davis was big in the drug trade which elevated his status within the gang.
He rose to infamy as the only living witness to Tupac's killing in the suspect vehicle.
Just a few days prior to the shooting near the Las Vegas Strip, the South Side Crips took the chain from a Death Row Records label member at the Lakewood Mall in California.
Death Row Records had ties to a rival gang, "The Mob Piru" in Compton. That lead to an incident with Davis's nephew Orlando Anderson in Las Vegas.
We talked to Lietenant Jason Johansson with LVMPD Homicide. He said members of Death Row Records spotted Orlando near an elevator bay inside the MGM and at that time they began to kick and punch him.
"Little did anyone know that it is this incident right here that would lead to the retaliatory shooting and death of Tupac Shakur," Johansson continues.
According to Metro police, after the beating, Davis then devised the plan to retaliate.
Police say he and his nephew drove up next to the BMW carrying Death Row's CEO Suge Knight and Tupac—that's when shots rang out.
No arrest was ever made in the murder of the rap icon, until an indictment from the Nevada Grand Jury was returned this past Friday.
Davis faces one count of open murder with a gang enhancement.
"We have an aiding and abetting statute, which provides that if you help somebody commit a crime, you can be equally as guilty."
Channel 13 first reported back in 2021 during our special report "Lost Soul: 25 Years Since the Murder of Tupac Shakur" that in 2009 and 2010, retired LA police detective Greg Kading was looking for information from Davis about the killing of east coast rapper Notorious BIG.
Kading says Davis was facing 25 years in prison on a case they built against him.
Instead, Davis confessed to giving his nephew Orlando Anderson the gun to shoot Tupac.
But the confession was under a proffer agreement, meaning it could not be used against him.
"It's a legal tool that we use in interviews which allows somebody to have the comfort of knowing that they're not talking themselves into jail," said Kading.
That was until he started talking about it during interviews and in his 2019 memoir, leaving the door wide open for law enforcement to charge Davis with the murder.
"He thought that he had some type of immunity. And so he went out there and boasted. Now it's come back to haunt him."
