ALL EYES ON SLAY
Cops take new look at Tupac case after TV fess
Las Vegas police say they’ve spent the last few months reinvestigating the murder case of Tupac Shakur, but no arrests are imminent.
The agency issued the statement this week after former gang member Keffe D gave an on-camera confession to BET’s “Death Row Chronicles” documentary series, released in February.
In the interview, Keffe D, whose real name is Duane Keith Davis, said he was in the front seat of a white Cadillac in Las Vegas in 1996 when someone in the backseat opened fire on a black BMW carrying Shakur, 25, and Death Row boss Suge Knight — killing Shakur.
“Going to keep it for the code of the streets. It just came from the backseat, bro,” Keffe D said in the interview when asked the identity of the shooter.
The two men in the backseat were identified as Keffe D’s nephew Orlando Anderson and DeAndre Smith. Anderson was previously named a prime suspect in the case. He denied being the gunman and died in a gang shootout in Compton, Calif., in 1998.
The Keffe D interview sparked ongoing calls for action on the part of law enforcement. A Change.org petition calling on Las Vegas police to declare the case “cleared” reached a goal of 2,500 signatures on Thursday.
“We are aware of the statements made in a BET interview regarding the Tupac case. As a result of those statements we have spent the last several months reviewing the case in its entirety,” the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in the statement obtained by the Daily News.
“Various reports that an arrest warrant is about to be submitted are inaccurate. This case still remains an open homicide case,” the new statement, first obtained by KVVUTV on Wednesday, said.
The Keffe D claims were previously reported in the 2011 book “Murder Rap” from former LAPD detective Greg Kading.
Kading led an LAPD task force investigating the shooting deaths of “All Eyez on Me” rapper Shakur and of the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G. the following year. The ex-cop wrangled a confession out of Keffe D as the Crips member feared facing charges for a different crime.
His personal copy of the confession was heard in a documentary based on his book.
“You get a very strong sense that he’s speaking very genuinely and transparently. He comes across as telling the story as someone who was there. The fluidity is very natural,” Kading previously told the Daily News.
“What really convinced us it was true was all the corroboration,” he said. “He told us things that he couldn’t (have) known unless he was actually a participant in the murder.”
Keffe D said he was willing to go on camera with BET because he’s dying.
“People have been pursuing me for 20 years, I’m coming out now because I have cancer, and I have nothing else to lose,” he said in the interview. “All I care about now is the truth.”