Tupac Shakur passed away on September 13, 1996, six days after being shot four times in the chest by a gunman in a white Cadillac at a stoplight in Las Vegas. A 2002 investigation by the Los Angeles Times revealed that uncooperative witnesses and a lack of thorough investigation into gang-related motives led to an unresolved homicide case.
The first segment of this prominent investigation, authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chuck Philips, offered a detailed examination of the identity of Shakur’s killer. Philips provided evidence suggesting that the Southside Crips, a gang from Compton, California, were responsible for the murder. Shakur was affiliated with the Mob Piru Bloods, a street gang that frequently clashed with the Crips over territory and personal grievances. One such incident involved Shakur and his Bloods bodyguards assaulting Crips member Orlando Anderson in the lobby of a venue hosting a Mike Tyson fight. Philips argued that this altercation motivated Anderson to seek retaliation from his gang, which they agreed to carry out.
Additionally, Philips claimed that Shakur’s rival, New York rapper Notorious B.I.G. (born Christopher Wallace), supplied the firearm and had previously offered to pay the Crips for Shakur’s assassination. The feud between the two had intensified to the point where Wallace allegedly offered $1 million for the hit. Philips’s report indicated that Anderson used Wallace’s .40-caliber Glock to execute the murder. Both Anderson and Wallace were killed within two years of Shakur’s death.
Philips’s investigation relied on interviews with several informants who disclosed information about the case on the condition of anonymity. While the detailed presentation and logical structure of the report received commendation, it faced criticism for depending on unnamed sources, especially those implicating two deceased individuals whose claims remain unverified.
In 2023, Duane Davis, a witness to Shakur’s shooting, was arrested and charged with murder following a grand jury indictment in Nevada. Davis, also known as Keffe D, has stated in a memoir and interviews that he was in the white Cadillac with Shakur during the shooting.
