Pod Insights Criminology Introducing: The Crime Scene Weekly About this episode Introducing a new podcast for the true crime-obsessed: "The Crime Scene Weekly," from our friends at ABC Audio. Every Wednesday, "The Crime Scene Weekly" brings you the latest in true crime. ABC News correspondent Brad Mielke sits down with the journalists covering the cases who have direct access to survivors, investigators and families searching for answers. And they're bringing their insights right to you. In this episode, the question of who killed Tupac Shakur has been a mystery for nearly 30 years. Now, the only person ever charged in his murder is speaking out for the first time since his arrest — and changing his story. For more, follow "The Crime Scene Weekly" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Hey Criminology listeners, we're bringing you something special this week. We all know one true crime podcast is never enough. So we wanted to encourage you to check out a new one from our friends at ABC Audio called The Crime Scene Weekly. The Crime Scene Weekly is your guide to all the latest headlines in crime. Each week, ABC News correspondent Brad Mielke sits down with the journalists covering the cases who have direct access to survivors, investigators, and families searching for answers. From the discovery of grisly new cases to breakthroughs in cases we just can't stop
0:41 Speaker 00 talking about, you'll hear the latest developments and the larger context from the people who know these stories the best. This is true crime in real time, revealing what's happening now and what happens next. In this episode, the question of who killed Tupac Shakur has been a mystery for nearly 30 years. Now, the only person ever charged in his murder is speaking out for the first time since his arrest and changing his story. Find The Crime Scene Weekly wherever you listen to podcasts.
1:18 Speaker 01 The question of who killed rap icon Tupac Shakur has been a mystery for nearly 30 years. Well, now, the only person ever charged in his murder is speaking out for the first time since his arrest. Welcome to The Crime Scene.
1:35 Speaker 01 Every week, we talk about the biggest true crime story of the moment with the ABC News reporters who know it best. I'm Brad Mielke. I host ABC's daily news podcast, Start Here. And starting now, I'm bringing you the latest on what's big and what's new in the true crime scene. This week, we're hearing from the man who, for years, put himself at the scene of Tupac's murder and is now changing his story completely. Since his arrest, he had never spoken on camera until he chose to sit down across from ABC's chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin. And Josh is with us now. Hey, Josh.
2:09 Speaker 02 Brad, how are you?
2:10 Speaker 01 I'm OK. Thanks for being here, because this is one of the most infamous murders in rap history, in music history, and it's remained unsolved for nearly three decades. So I guess, take me back to the beginning, like, the night of September 7, 1996. What happened?
2:25 Speaker 02 Tupac Shakur, he was in Las Vegas. He was in a BMW, being driven by Suge Knight, the famous, larger-than-life rap mogul, the leader of Death Row Records, taking us all back to the 90s. And they had just come from a Mike Tyson fight, and Tupac was hanging out the window of the Beamer. They were driving on the strip, off the strip. They had an entourage of cars, both Tupac's security, but also, there were fans, groupies, who were following them in their own cars. It was a whole scene. And remember, it's Vegas on a fight night. So it is loud and big, and the world's eyes are on Las Vegas.
3:09 Speaker 02 And then, at a red light, shots rang out. Before anyone realizes what has happened, Suge Knight, in the driver's seat of the Beamer, is injured. He actually would later say that he thought he was dead or gonna be dead. And Tupac Shakur is injured very, very seriously, gravely, rushed to a hospital, dies later that week.
3:32 Speaker 01 Well, and before we even get into the investigation here, can we also just take a moment to talk about how big of a deal this was at the time? Because it is tough to overstate the influence of Tupac Shakur in this moment. He had just released his album, All Eyes on Me, earlier that year, and that has one of his best-known songs, "California Love."
3:55 Speaker 02 At that time, Tupac Shakur was as big a music act and entertainer as there is. We're talking about Frank Sinatra, for that generation, that's what we're talking about. He was only 25. He had already started appearing in films. He was all over culture. He actually, according to people who know rap music, and by the way, I am not one of those people who know rap music.
4:19 Speaker 01 On the record.
4:19 Speaker 02 But according to people who know rap music, he was in the process of changing the genre, which rap was only coming into its own at that point in the mid 90s. Think about it, it really had only developed in the inner cities and was below the surface for, through the 80s and then the early 90s. Tupac was larger than life.
4:39 Speaker 01 And yet, he's also in the middle of what's becoming this intense east coast, west coast rivalry. He's on the west coast.
4:44 Speaker 02 Well, that's, that's the other thing. So you have Tupac is, is rising to this level of stardom and the experts were saying that he was about to launch into like superstardom, like Madonna level stardom at that point. And at the same time, you have to go back in time to what's happening in the world of, of crime and street culture. And that's the stuff I do know. So we're talking about a situation where we have the explosion of the crack wars, the drug wars in the inner cities, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago. Simultaneously, the explosion of the gang wars, the battling between the Crips and the Bloods, the red and the blue.
5:24 Speaker 02 At the same time, you end up having groups of rap artists who are connected to east coast record labels and west coast record labels. And they are feuding, the record labels are feuding. The artists end up getting caught up in the feuding. And then you have the gangs that according to law enforcement, according to the experts, these gangs that are aligned with these individual record labels. So the gangs are part of the feuding. Now, very quickly, you're looking at me and you're saying, wow, that's actually a recipe for violence. And the answer is yes, a lot of money, legitimate money in the music industry.
6:08 Speaker 02 Then there's illegal money floating around through the drugs that are being peddled by the gangs. Then you have the artists. In the midst of this really, really toxic situation, really dangerous, with a lot of guns floating around, Tupac Shakur is gunned down off Las Vegas Boulevard.
6:31 Speaker 02 Tupac is shot point blank. How did the investigation proceed after that? Right after Tupac is gunned down, the investigation starts and it's aggressive. There's just no question about it. It's not a broad daylight homicide because it's nighttime, but it's basically a public homicide of a high-profile celebrity. The cops are all over it. You really have two key witnesses here, including Suge Knight, who lived through the attack and was in the driver's seat. It very quickly, though, becomes obvious to law enforcement that they're going to get no cooperation from anybody that has direct involvement because now we're talking about people who are connected to gangs. There's the code of the streets. We don't talk to the cops.
7:16 Speaker 02 We don't snitch. In fact, later on, Brad, Suge Knight sat down with ABC News and he was asked about the crimes and homicides and all these various things that he knows about. And he was very, very clear that he doesn't get paid to solve homicides. So what happens next? So you have Tupac is gunned down in Vegas. Then a few months later, you have the notorious B I G, Biggie Smalls, who's gunned down in Los Angeles. And so you have the whole culture, the newspapers at the time, radio, TV, everybody's talking about this violent east coast, west coast rap war that has broken out. Ultimately, both of these crimes go unsolved into 2000, 2010,
8:01 Speaker 02 2020, and then finally, something happens. And we don't really, at this point, know what in 2023, but something has happened. A switch has been flipped somehow in Las Vegas and they are going to go and search the home of an alleged former member of the Crips, who happened to move from
8:26 Speaker 02 LA and was now living outside of Vegas in Henderson, Nevada. They were going to search his home. I have to tell you, when I got the phone call from a source saying that we just searched the home of this guy in connection with Tupac. I'm like, you have got to be kidding me. You're telling me that you did a, first of all, what could you possibly be searching for? It's all these years ago. It's 1996. Are you saying that somebody's got a bloody t-shirt or something? What, what do you? My source said, we think it's him. They went ahead. They searched the home of Dwayne Davis. A few months later, they ended up arresting him and he has been in jail awaiting trial ever since. But who is this guy? So Dwayne Davis, he goes by a street named Keefe D.
9:09 Speaker 02 He was a kid who grew up in Compton, California and Los Angeles. And he disputes that he was ever in the Crips. So police and prosecutors say that he was not only a member of the Crips, but that he was a quote unquote shot caller. He was a big deal. He was, he was a leader of the gang. And so if he gave an instruction, that was an instruction that had to be followed. Which he denies, but there we go. He denies that he was ever in the Crips. What he doesn't deny is that after having a pretty good athletic career in high school, because of the neighborhood, because of the crime and the gangs and the drugs and all the various cultural and social ills that we're so familiar with at that timeframe
9:49 Speaker 02 in LA, he falls into the drug trade and he winds up becoming a pretty well-established, high-volume drug dealer in Compton. And he ultimately does go to prison on drug charges. He admits to that and he explains it in a way that's very understandable. That was basically, there was a lack of a future in that area for him. He actually grew up in Compton, California, and that's where Suge Knight is from. And they ended up being on different sides. In the years since, Suge has been reported to be connected to the Bloods, street gang. And Dwayne Davis, Keefy D., who we interviewed, he's reported to have been connected with the Crips street gang.
10:31 Speaker 02 So Suge and Davis are on opposite sides of the gang wars.
10:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, like there have been various reports over the years, like the LA Times has talked about how Suge might hire known blood members. Um, how does Keefy D. get wrapped up in the Tupac case?
10:46 Speaker 02 There's a really strange winding road that brings us to how Keefy D. winds up in jail and charged with Tupac's homicide. The authorities in Los Angeles in the 2000s are getting to the point where they are taking another crack at trying to solve the homicide of notorious B.I.G., which occurs in Los Angeles after Tupac. They end up building a drug case against Keefy D.
11:14 Speaker 01 In the Biggie thing?
11:14 Speaker 02 In the Biggie thing. As the story goes, they end up getting him cornered on the drug charges, and they give him an out. If you cooperate with us, we will give you a sort of a get out of jail free card, kind of an immunity kind of deal. There are a lot of particulars, and there's a lot of fighting over what actually went into this negotiation, but that's the rough outline of it, that there was this offer of immunity in return for information.
11:40 Speaker 01 So it seems like then, according to police, Keefy D. made his admissions as part of what's known as a proffer agreement, right? So you can't be prosecuted for what you say. What did he tell the cops then? Like, what is the information?
11:51 Speaker 02 He basically told the cops, I don't know anything about Biggie, but I know about Tupac. I can give you info on the Tupac hit in Las Vegas. So that's 2008. Then 2009, the Las Vegas police are given access to Keefy D., to Dwayne Davis, on the basis of the discussion from 2008. He says to us that he thinks he has immunity, so whatever he says can't be used against him. When he meets with Las Vegas police in 2009, he basically repeats the same story.
12:18 Speaker 01 And what does he say?
12:19 Speaker 02 Davis basically says that there was a car that he was in. He's sitting in the front passenger side. There's a driver, and then there are two people behind him in the backseat in that car. They had come from the MGM. After the Tyson fight, there was some sort of a fight between patrons at the casino. Tupac somehow was involved in this fight. On the other side was Orlando Anderson. Orlando Anderson was reported to be a member of the Crips. Tupac was allegedly, according to law enforcement, he was with members of the Bloods.
13:02 Speaker 02 So that's where the gang thing, you know, circles back into the story. He's in this car with Keefy D after the fight and they want payback. So they go looking for Tupac. They end up finding him coincidentally on this road off the strip where he ends up stopping at this light. And they find him because there are so many groupies and fans who are following the car being driven by Suge Knight with Tupac hanging out the window. They find him, they see him. So according to Keefy D, car that he's in with Orlando in the backseat pulls up alongside the car and shots ring out.
13:46 Speaker 02 Prosecutors ultimately charge that because he was the quote unquote shot caller, he called the shot. The gun was handed to the backseat. The gun is then fired because the car with Suge and Tupac needed to be fired upon in an act of revenge for the earlier fight.
14:09 Speaker 01 Well, and Orlando Anderson had denied being the shooter, but now he can't even speak for himself because he died two years after that shootout. This does allegedly place Keefy D at the scene of the crime though, right? And Keefy D is apparently telling this to prosecutors. And that's not even the only time he speaks about this, right? Like he's been on record about this several times.
14:25 Speaker 02 Right, so Keefy D puts himself on record with authorities twice, 2008, 2009. Then additionally, over the course of time from 2009 to 2023.
14:38 Speaker 02 He repeats this story several times. In one now famous clip in a documentary about death row records, he puts himself in the car and he talks about how this shooting went down, but he doesn't want to actually say who the trigger man was. He says he's going to keep that for the code of the streets. In another interview, he does actually give more information. He ultimately releases a memoir where he's one of the co-authors, a memoir of his life, and he talks about this.
15:07 Speaker 01 And this is in 2019, right? So he's implicating himself in writing then?
15:11 Speaker 02 Right, and so after the arrest and as we're trying to investigate the investigation, and we spent a long time doing this, going back and forth to Las Vegas, to Los Angeles, interviewing all these various people who are directly involved. We were trying to figure out, first of all, why didn't they charge him back in 2009? If he confessed then, it seems kind of like law and order that the first thing you do is go arrest the guy, right? So we wanted to find out what was going on with that. But he subsequently gives these additional accounts, confirming his account originally, that he was there in the car. So Vegas police, it turns out in all those years, they were following this case. Vegas police knew about the confession, obviously, that was made.
15:56 Speaker 02 They believed that Kefi D. was somebody they could charge for this crime, that he wasn't necessarily the trigger man, but he had this role as the shot caller in the car. And so they spent all of these years trailing him, figuratively. What did he say? Where did he say it? Where are the breadcrumbs? Can we place him here? Can we get confirmations there?
16:19 Speaker 01 I was like, why don't you just charge him? But they want confirmation, they want something stronger than just one guy saying one thing.
16:24 Speaker 02 Exactly. They were concerned that if they arrested him then and proceeded with just his confession, if the confession, for whatever reason, got thrown out of court, they'd have no case. So their strategy was, let's wait, let's watch, let's build the case using the map that he was creating for detectives. And that's what they did. And it went year after year after year, until finally, Las Vegas Police, the homicide bureau, and prosecutors came to an agreement. Aha, we have enough. We have a solid case. Even if we lose the confession, we think we can get a conviction. Let's charge it.
17:07 Speaker 01 And we're going to take a quick pause right here, but we will be back with Josh Margolin right after the break.
17:15 Speaker 01 And so that leads us to when they raid his home in what 2023.
17:18 Speaker 02 So when police come to raid a home with a search warrant, in many ways, that's basically a press conference. That's a public act. They're kind of announcing to the world what they're up to. So they had most of their case locked down, at least the case that they believed they could proceed with. There were a couple of I's they wanted to dot, T's they wanted to cross. They did want to see if he had any guns in the home and if any of those guns might match ballistics for the shooting, that would be icing on the cake. But yes, so that brings them to the raid and then soon after the raid, they proceed with the arrest.
17:51 Speaker 01 So he gets arrested in 2023. He's not spoken to anybody on camera, Josh, until you. So like, what happened here?
17:59 Speaker 02 We have been wanting to be able to interview him since he was arrested. It was clear almost from the get go that they were going to use his own words against him. He was going to be his own worst enemy. The key witness for the prosecution was going to be the guy charged himself. So we obviously wanted to find out, hey, man, why did you say all this stuff? They're going to hang you for it. We had not been able to get access. You know, look, lawyers, they don't want their clients talking before trial. They certainly don't want them talking to news organizations because they're worried, you know, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Well, anything you say can
18:40 Speaker 02 and will be used against you. So they don't want any of that happening. But finally, Keefe D said that he would meet with us and we got special permission to have an in-person interview, not just a Zoom. We were going to be able to interview him one-on-one, sitting in the same room. So we went to Las Vegas with our cameras all ready to go. At the appointed time, the corrections officers escorted him into the room.
19:15 Speaker 03 Morning. I'm Josh Markle with ABC News.
19:19 Speaker 01 What happened?
19:20 Speaker 02 So we sit down with him, we spend about an hour with him, he talks about a whole range of things. Importantly, Brad, he tells us that he didn't do it, that he is innocent. He says that he was not even in Las Vegas at the time that Tupac was killed.
19:33 Speaker 01 Wait, but he said he... then what is that dude... what's that with the story he told everyone?
19:37 Speaker 02 I... and we got into a lot of stuff. Let me first say this. We spent a lot of time talking with him, everything from his history in Compton to the fact that even though he says that he didn't kill Tupac and wasn't part of the killing of Tupac, that Tupac's killing has actually caused a huge problem for his life ever since it happened, which, I mean, look, if he's innocent and he's sitting in jail for a crime he didn't commit, it's bad. But we went through it and he had a lot of answers.
20:05 Speaker 04 I'm innocent. I ain't killed nobody and I'm being held against my will. I'm supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight, enjoying life with my kids.
20:15 Speaker 01 How does he explain the memoir, the interviews, that like he has said in public, "Yeah, I was there on the night"?
20:22 Speaker 02 He explains them in different ways. He goes back and he says first, the confessions that he gave to law enforcement, he thought that he had an immunity deal, that he is free and clear from any of that stuff being entered and used against him.
20:38 Speaker 01 There was like this proffer, we're like, "You tell us what you know". He thinks he's saying that with immunity, so he can't be charged for it later anyway.
20:45 Speaker 02 A hundred percent. That's what he's saying. So then the question is, why would you lie if you're being interviewed by police and nothing can be used against you? He says that there was this drug case that had been built against him, and it was not only against him, but there were dozens of other possible defendants. And so he told the lie because there was no penalty for lying, he just lied to save people from going to jail.
21:13 Speaker 04 They was gonna arrest 48 people. It would've been selfish of me to let everybody go down because of me.
21:20 Speaker 02 That's his first explanation about why he told the story confessing.
21:25 Speaker 01 Okay, but he didn't just tell it to law enforcement.
21:27 Speaker 02 Well, right. And then he says the reason why he repeated it in interviews down the road, he says he told that story for money. It was basically entertainment. People wanted to hear the story. So he told the story, he says, in terms of the memoir, he says, not only did he not participate in writing it, he didn't actually read it.
21:50 Speaker 04 A guy wrote that book, a lot of his game, details of my life. Told him I played football with Suge. You know what I'm saying? That's all I told him.
22:00 Speaker 01 This is interesting to me because we've talked in the past about prosecutors holding the words of people in the music world against them. And the artist will say like, oh, that's just my public persona. It doesn't mean it's the truth. Usually, in that case, we're talking about songs and lyrics. This is a memoir that Kiefie D presented as nonfiction, right? And now he's changing his story. Does he say what he thinks happened then? Like, does he point the finger at anyone?
22:20 Speaker 02 He points the finger at somebody that we have interviewed, a guy named Reggie Wright Jr., who is a former Compton police officer who ultimately had worked for Suge Knight, doing some security. Reggie is well aware that Kiefie D has tried to point the finger at him in the past, and he has a pretty detailed explanation about why that's not accurate and how he feels about that. He's very disturbed by it, he says.
22:49 Speaker 01 And Reggie actually spoke to ABC News last year, and he denied this. He said, "I didn't have anything to do with that. It was one of the worst days of my life when I heard that it happened." But, I mean, back to Kiefie D, how does he respond to that?
23:01 Speaker 02 Kiefie D's got a pretty elaborate type of response. He first says he was not even in Las Vegas at the time. He was home in Los Angeles. He says that there are... Dozens of witnesses who can corroborate his alibi. He also talks about how he's assured that even though he doesn't like the way that law enforcement works in Las Vegas, that his original confessions to law enforcement are covered by immunity and that even if he gets convicted in Las Vegas, he's confident the appeals courts will ultimately reverse any kind of conviction because immunity is immunity is immunity.
23:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, I was gonna say, what's next then for Keefe D legally?
23:44 Speaker 02 So there's a bunch of different things in the legal system that he's facing. First off, Keefe D was involved in a jailhouse fight and he has since been charged with battery. Oftentimes, a jailhouse fight really won't go to trial. They plead it out. It's kind of secondary. Certainly, somebody who's facing murder charges, a small jailhouse battery accusation is kind of minor. In this case, prosecutors are pushing for either a plea where he admits to it, or they want to convict him at trial. And prosecutors have the strategy in mind that if they can use the jailhouse fight to show that Keefe D is a violent guy, that helps build their case.
24:26 Speaker 01 Once you convict him of something violent, now that's public record that he's done something violent. He could do other things that are violent.
24:32 Speaker 02 Exactly, because just the part of the defense so far has been that even though Keefe might have had drug and other kinds of, you know, crimes in his history as a young man, that as an older man, he's no longer a threat to the community. So what prosecutors want to do is they want to show that a guy who's over 60 and has survived cancer, that he's still a threat because he's still violent. So that's the goal. So he's going to face trial on that count in April 2025. That's the first thing. Second thing is that the judge has set a tentative trial date for February 2026 on the Tupac homicide. Originally, the Tupac homicide was supposed to go to trial this year, first half of this year.
25:15 Speaker 02 But the judge, you know, acknowledging the vast amount of evidence, the fact that we're talking about a lot of Old files, older people, some complexities. Obviously, a lot of people that are connected to the case are no longer alive. The judge gave them a delay until February 2026. And so we're fully expecting that's what the future holds. KPD has tried to get out of jail, to get bailed out and to await trial from home. The judge has been reluctant to go along with that. She's taken issue with the bail packages, quote unquote. It's what they call them, the money that would be supporting the bail. So she's made him sit in jail. That's another thing that he has taken issue with and he raised in our interview.
25:59 Speaker 01 And so at the end of all this, it's been nearly three decades. You've got one guy in jail awaiting the first trial that we've seen in this murder. What does the legacy of this murder in this particular case end up being?
26:10 Speaker 02 It's a little bit hard to say. First off, I cover crime and I still am stunned and unpleasantly surprised that it took so long for law enforcement to be able to make an arrest in this kind of a case. I mean, it is a different time. You didn't have the ubiquity of traffic cameras and cellphone cameras and all this. 1996 is a whole different era when it comes to technology. So you didn't have all of that. You didn't have people on Twitter immediately saying, hey, this person just got shot on the street. But if we were to take this back in time, let's say, God forbid, that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin had been shot and killed on the streets of Las Vegas and Los Angeles, I have to think that those cases might have been solved more quickly.
26:56 Speaker 01 Right. To which cops in Las Vegas and in LA have repeatedly said, like, we have had real issues to confront here. We've had the code of the streets. We've had this sort of code of silence. And yet, like you said, so many questions throughout all of this. Josh Margolin, our chief investigative reporter, thank you so much.
27:10 Speaker 02 Thanks, Brett.
27:15 Speaker 01 Now, let's quickly hit up the other big stories in the world of true crime this week. First up, in Waterbury, Connecticut, you might have heard of this, a woman has been arrested for holding her stepson in captivity at their home for over 20 years. The male victim was discovered when police responded to a report of an active fire at a residence. The victim told first responders that he had intentionally set that fire, saying, "I want my freedom." He further alleged he had been held captive by his stepmom since he was approximately 11 years old. Police said he had been forced to endure prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment. In Winnipeg, Canada, authorities announced recently that after an exhaustive search,
27:56 Speaker 01 the remains of 39-year-old Morgan Harris had been recovered from a landfill. You might remember that last year, Jeremy Skibitzky was charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of four Indigenous women, but not all the bodies had been found. Despite the pressure that local Indigenous groups have continued to place on law enforcement, Morgan Harris is just the second victim whose remains have been located. Lastly, down in St. Petersburg, Florida, a couple has been charged with the kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Miranda Corset, who was reported missing on February 24. Investigators believe this couple, 35-year-old Stephen Gress and 37-year-old Michelle Brandis, first met Corset on a social media platform on Valentine's Day. Police allege she stayed
28:40 Speaker 01 at their home for a few days and then was killed sometime between the 20th and 24th after some sort of dispute broke out between the three of them. On March 8, Michelle Brandis turned herself and her partner over to the police. They didn't have to go far to find Gress, who was already in jail on the unrelated charges of drug possession and threatening Brandis with a harpoon. Both suspects have been charged with first-degree murder, and so far, there have been no pleas, no statements by either defendant.
29:10 Speaker 01 All right, that'll do it for our very first episode of The Crime Scene. Thank you so much for being with us. The Crime Scene Weekly is a production of ABC Audio. Produced by Nora Ritchie and Mig Fiero. Our supervising producer is Suzie Lu. Mixing by Mig Fiero. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Tara Gimble, Madeline Wood, Josh Margolin, and Sasha Pesnick. Josh Kohan is our Director of Podcast Programming. Laura Mayer is our Executive Producer. I'm Brad Mielke. I'll see you next time at The Crime Scene.
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