Whoa! Who knew this previously cold case would get so hot?
For those who missed it, there was — against all odds — an arrest was made late last year for the shooting of Tupac Shakur. 27 years after the drive-by, a gangbanger named Duane “Keefe D” Davis was charged with murder with use of a deadly weapon. He was a person of interest nearly from the start, but it took over two decades to get the indictment.
Keefe D was a well-known member of the South Compton Crips, but he was also a friend of rappers Eazy-E and Sean “Diddy” Combs. Folks have wondered about Diddy’s involvement in the shooting for many years as well due to the rivalry between his East Coast Bad Boy Records and Pac’s West Coast outfit, Death Row Records, run by the infamous Suge Knight. But there was never anything concrete. Now that prosecutors have Keefe D, they may have a witness against Puff!
According to new court docs obtained by The US Sun, Keefe D told authorities it was Diddy who paid for the hit! A MILLION DOLLARS, no less!
Related: Diddy Allegedly Threatened To See Vibe Editor ‘Dead In The Trunk Of A Car’
The documents describe a harrowing incident in which Keefe flew to New York City for a Los Angeles police task force — going undercover to try to gather evidence on Combs and gangster Eric “Zip” Martin:
“Task Force Detectives believed they had jurisdiction to investigate a Nevada homicide because Defendant asserted that the conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric ‘Zip’ Martin, and Sean Combs.”
Whoa! Keefe D apparently later tried to deny being a snitch:
“Defendant [Keefe] has asserted publicly that he only told on himself and wasn’t trying to provide evidence against anyone else in his conversations with police.”
However, per prosecutors, he had already very much told on Diddy and Zip:
“However, this statement belies this claim, as he suggested that Sean Combs paid Eric Von Martin a million dollars for the killings.”
The docs include a summary of a YT interview given by Keefe in which he implicates Diddy:
“When Sean Combs reaches out to Defendant wondering if South Side Crips were responsible for Shakur’s death by asking, ‘Is that us?’ Defendant, beaming with pride, answers, ‘Yes.'”
“Is that us?” Us. As in Diddy, too! But there’s more. A lot more.
Also included in the docs? In 2009, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police carried out a “Surreptitiously Recorded Interview” with Keefe in which he mentions how the Crips were “friends” with Diddy, who wanted Suge and Tupac dead. In that interview he outright admits he and some pals “accidentally” passed Suge and Tupac’s car on the road after that Mike Tyson boxing match. Like, they just happened to pass one another. Wild.
Keefe then said, per the docs, that he and his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson opened fire on the car. When police ask straight up, “Puffy Combs… Does he play a role in this thing?” Keefe replies:
“Yeah, I think he did.”
He recalls Diddy telling a room full of about 45 guys, many gang members, he “would give anything” for Suge Knight’s “head” — because he was “scared” of the producer. That and he was pissed off at Tupac over a diss track. Yeesh. After the shooting, Keefe says in the recording, he and his pals believed Diddy would pay them:
“I knew we was like damn, we can get paid now.”
Cops ask, “When you said paid, paid by Puffy, right?” Keefe answers:
“Yeah.”
And before you wonder if this was a misunderstanding, Keefe says Diddy did pay — only he paid his pal Zip instead! Keefe told cops he tried to get the money for himself, since he was the one who pulled the trigger, but Diddy ghosted him. He said he regretted killing Tupac and complained:
“I wish I never met Puff Daddy, period. I swear to God…He messed up my life, man. I was, I was rich, up under the radar, all that, man…it’s all gone.”
Geez.
It should be noted Keefe D has also claimed anything he previously said about being involved in Tupac’s shooting, such as in interviews on YouTube or in the book Compton Street Legend, was just a fictional account, made up to grift money. Does that make sense why he’d lie to the cops though?? In a “Surreptitiously Recorded Interview”??
All of this was part of a filing by prosecutors to oppose Keefe’s bail request. Wild that they mentioned Diddy so many times in it… Was it incidental??
We’ll have to see what prosecutors believe and what they don’t — and mostly what they think they can prove about Diddy. In all, per the Sun, he’s mentioned in these new docs a whopping 77 times. You do NOT want to be mentioned in murder trial documents even once.
Of course, as previously mentioned, the rumor of Diddy’s involvement in Tupac’s murder has been around for years. And so have the rapper’s denials! He told AllHipHip.com in 2008 after the story of Keefe’s accusation first came out:
“This story is beyond ridiculous and completely false. Neither Biggie nor I had any knowledge of any attack before, during or after it happened. It is a complete lie to suggest that there was any involvement by Biggie or myself.”
The LA Times even took down their story and published a retraction, writing:
“An article and related materials published on the Los Angeles Times website on March 17, 2008 have been removed from the site because they relied heavily on information that The Times no longer believes to be credible.”
Obviously no criminal charges were ever filed against Diddy in relation to the killing. Clearly they’ve never thought there was enough credible evidence against Combs. Hell, maybe they never bought Keefe D’s story completely to begin with. But they do think they have enough to prosecute him now. But Diddy? That’s a different story.
This is all resurfacing, of course, after the many accusations against Diddy which have surfaced in the past few months. His homes in Los Angeles and Miami were raided by Homeland Security, reportedly as part of an investigation into possible sex trafficking, drugs, and guns. Was he also guilty of murder for hire? One of the most famous killings of all time??
[Image via MEGA/WENN.]