The trial for the murder of American rapper Tupac Shakur began in Las Vegas almost 30 years after the crime. The accused was Dwayne Davis, nicknamed Caffey Dee – he previously announced his participation in the death of the artist, but now his defense claims that the former gangster made it all up. RTVI collected the main points of the first week of hearings.
Tupac Shakur (2Pac) was killed in a street shootout on September 7, 1996 in the US gambling capital of Las Vegas (Nevada). The case remained unsolved for many years and was surrounded by a number of conspiracy theories. The scandalous P Diddy (real name Sean Combs) was suspected of eliminating his competitor, and some even believed that 25-year-old Tupac faked his death.
In 2019, Davis, who was one of the leaders of the Los Angeles Crips gang in the 1990s, published memoirs. In them, Caffey Dee said that he and his comrades could not “let go to some gangsters from the recording studio” after they beat his nephew Orlando Anderson. According to Davis, this incident involving Shakur took place at the MGM Grand casino after the Mike Tyson fight, and soon his gang went for revenge.
Davis's memoirs formed the basis of the case, despite the fact that the defense sought to exclude them from evidence. Lawyers for the 63-year-old former gangster said on the first day of the hearing that he allegedly made up everything for the sake of fame and income. Davis, by the way, also told his version of events in many interviews. He was arrested in 2023.
Former Las Vegas police detective Brent Becker testified as a prosecution witness in court. He said that immediately after Shakur's death, law enforcement suspected Davis, Anderson, as well as DeAndre Smith and Terry Brown, but no one could identify them. According to the prosecution, they were in a Cadillac, which drove up to the BMW of Shakur and producer Marion Knight, after which they opened fire on the car.
On the second day of the hearing, jurors were shown the alleged video of Anderson's beating, as well as photographs of Shakur's body. As pathologist Lisa Gavin explained to the court, one of the bullets hit Shakur in the lung, which is why the organ had to be removed, but this did not help save the rapper’s life. Other bullets damaged the intestines, and the artist died after six days in the hospital.
As the Associated Press (AP) notes, some of Shakur's relatives who were present in court walked out during the demonstration of photographs, while others turned away. The artist’s cousin, Zeid Akinyela, told the agency that, on the contrary, he wanted to see his wounds in order to experience a sense of “closure.”
“I believe that these details can help his loved ones and me in particular in our grief. I think we’ve waited 30 years to properly grieve,” Akinyela suggested.
On the fourth day, prosecutors also presented a previously unseen audio recording of Davis' testimony to Los Angeles police. In it, the ex-gangster directly states back in 2008 that Tupac Shakur was shot by his nephew Anderson, who died ten years before this interrogation.
“If this happened on my part [в машине]I would have fired myself,” Davis’ voice sounded on the recording.
The AP calls the audio one of the key pieces of evidence against the idea that Davis made it all up for the sake of fame. Jurors actively took notes during the listening session. By the way, the prosecutor's office does not accuse Davis of pulling the trigger, but considers him the organizer of the murder, for which he could face life imprisonment.
Detective Darin Dupree, who conducted that interrogation, added that Davis also mentioned Diddy in his testimony. According to the defendant, which was retold by a former law enforcement officer, the rapper allegedly offered the gang $1 million to kill Shakur and Knight, but in the end no one received the money. Combs was sentenced last year to four years and two months in prison for transporting people for the purpose of prostitution, but was not formally accused of organizing Shakur's murder.
