Front Burner - A Tupac killing arrest. What took so long?

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

It's been 27 years since rapper Tupac Shakur was shot near the Las Vegas Strip, dying in hospital less than a week later. No charges were ever laid – that is, until Friday, when the police arrested long-time suspect Duane "Keefe D" Davis. Today, author and journalist Santi Elijah Holley explains how the Shakur legacy continues, and weighs in on the question we're all asking about the investigation: what took so long?

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. He had already survived one near-fatal shooting, but he couldn't survive a second. Pro-plagued rapper and actor Tupac Shakur is dead at the age of 25, just about a week after sustaining four bullet wounds last Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Police now fear retaliation and worry the crime may never be solved. It's been 27 years since Tupac was killed near the Las Vegas Strip. And as those years passed without an arrest, it seemed like that's how it would stay. But in July, Vegas police suddenly revived the case. Investigators searched the home of the last living suspect. Then, on Friday, officials announced an arrest and an indictment. It has often been said justice delayed is justice denied, but not in this case. Dwayne Keefe D. Davis was actually an early suspect in the investigation. He said he was in the car the fatal shots were fired from.

And recently, he's been telling that story in documentaries and in a book he wrote. You said the shots came from the back. Who shot Tupac? They came from the cold of the streets. It just came from the back seat, bro. Today, we're going to be taking a look at what brought this investigation back and why some believe that Tupac's legacy and ties to Black liberation fighters might be a reason why it took so long for police to make an arrest. I'm talking to Santi Elijah Hawley. He's an LA-based journalist and the author of An American Family, The Shakurs, and the nation they created. Hi, Santi. Welcome to Front Burner. Hey, thanks for having me.

So I wanted to start by going back to one of the most infamous nights in music history. It's September 7th, 96 in Las Vegas, and Mike Tyson's just taken the WBA heavyweight title. He's knocked out Bruce Seldon in under a couple of minutes. He's wobbly. You can always punch. And that's it. It's over in the first round. The fight's over.

The crowd spills out into the lobby of the MGM Grand. And then what happens? And then it's sort of chaotic. I mean, Tupac and his whole entourage, they're feeling great. They're partying. They're excited, feeling very celebratory. Mike Tyson's a friend of Tupac's, so he's just celebrating his friend's victory. At this point, though, they see some people who are rivals, rivals of the Death Row Records entourage.

And one person in particular who attempted to rob a Death Row gold medallion chain from one of Tupac, Suge Knight's entourage, one of their associates. So Tupac takes it upon himself to go and beat this guy up, to stomp him. And I guess we should point out, at this point, Tupac is signed to Suge Knight's label, Death Row. Ain't no other record company out there that sold as many records as we did. We outsold Bad Boy, LaFaze, every black record label out there. We outsold them in one year. And I'm a convict. So Tupac went back to his hotel for a bit.

But then he left for a nightclub with Suge Knight. Tupac and Suge were driving together in Suge's BMW in a convoy of cars. And then they stop at a stoplight. And what happens? At this point, another car pulls up beside them at the red light a white cadillac and there's four people in the car and one person in that car sticks his hand out the window he's holding a gun and he starts blasting into the other car into the bmw two pockets hit multiple times should night gets grazed with a bullet should night manages

to pull the car away this It's pandemonium. And then Suge crashes the BMW. You know, he's got blown out tires. He's bleeding. Tupac is bleeding. I'm driving, telling him I'm going to get to the hospital, kick back. Pac looked at me and said, you know what?

You need the doctor more than me. You don't want a shot in your head. And we laughed the whole time going to find out I went of the hospital that's the conversation we had it wasn't pock was a man the whole time it wasn't that he was like oh i'm shot he cracking jokes he's like yeah they shot me but you shot in your head look at you tupac eventually gets rushed to you know emergency room at the hospital he's put into a medically induced coma he's in and out of consciousness.

You know, organs are failing. And eventually six days later, he's taken off life support and pronounced dead September 13th. And the police investigated this and there were a ton of witnesses too, right? And I want to get to the most recent developments in this investigation a little later, but for now, can you take me through just in broad strokes, what happened right after the shooting? What kind of progress did the police make with the investigation initially? Yeah. Las Vegas police, and also working with other police departments, claimed that they really had no leads. They had no cooperation from witnesses. I mean, obviously, a lot of witnesses, a lot of people involved had their own reasons for not cooperating with police.

That's just who they were. They just didn't trust the police and just didn't want to be seen as ratting anybody out or snitching. But there were many other witnesses. It wasn't just, you know, gang-affiliated people who were there who didn't want to talk to police. There was other witnesses around in the car behind Tupac and Suge's car, camera footage. The investigation really didn't go anywhere. They talked to very few witnesses. They knew that Tupac was involved

in this very public beatdown of this guy, but they still just did not really make any arrests or sort of follow that, you know, that lead. The case sits there for a long time, untouched. And before we get to the recent developments, I guess I was hoping you could take us back into the legacy Tupac was part of before he was killed. Because in addition to the world losing a major hip-hop star, at a deeper level, he was also the scion of this really interesting family. You know, there were major players in the black power movement. And I think it's important to understand that because part of the reason a lot of people feel like Tupac never got a fair shake from law enforcement, including this decades long

murder investigation was because of that. So who, who were Tupac's family? Who are the Chigurs? Yeah, absolutely. And that's really important to keep in mind. Tupac was, a lot of people just think of him as a gangster rapper or he's an actor. You know, he's an entertainer. He came from a family who were very involved in Black liberation from the 60s into the 70s and on into the 80s. His mother, Afeni, was an influential

Black Panther in New York in the late 60s. My mother was a Black Panther and she was really involved in the movement, you know, just Black people bettering themselves and things like that. My mother took, actually, it's like she actually did take me through life. His stepfather, Mutulu, was a leader and organizer in the 70s, and people around him and his family raised him with stories of Black liberation, Black self-determination. They told him stories about the FBI's COINTELPRO program and government repression and government infiltration and police violence and Black power. So when he grew up, he was expected, his mother expected him to sort of continue that tradition, to use what he had grown up with, and to sort of teach a new generation about these influential, powerful stories and also sort of like kick off the Black Power movement again. Right.

When he even went off into hip hop and to rap, I mean, rap music was still kind of a new genre. And he was really, he was good at it. You know, he was talented. He loved hip hop. And he thought he was going to use hip hop to reach people. He was going to use this medium to reach his peers. What the rap audience ain't ready for is a real person. I'm coming out.

I'm 100% real. I ain't compromising Nathan. His early lyrics were about the Black Panthers. Armed with the knowledge of the place keeping, no one will ever oppress this race again. No Malcolm X in my history text, why's that? Because he tried to educate and liberate all Blacks. About political prisoners, police harassment. He got me trapped, can barely move the city streets

without a cop harassing me, searching me, then asking my identity. Hands up, throw me up. So he really thought that he could combine these two things to sort of carry on this message. No, it's interesting, too, because I think panthers were part of some high profile violent incidents. And sometimes that gets used to label them or dismiss them as terrorists. But the goals of the Black Panthers and of Tupac's relatives were about something grander than that, right? Yeah. And again, it's sort of the same

arguments against Tupac that was used against the Black Panthers, just saying it's all violence and they're all just glorifying violence and weapons. But really, no, that was self-defense for one small part of who the Black Panthers were. They were about feeding the community, feeding hungry schoolchildren, providing healthcare to the community, free health care, organizing tenants against exploitative landlords. A lot of times people today just sort of see those pictures of them holding guns and thinking, oh, they're just talking about violence. But really, what they were doing sort of when the cameras weren't around was providing sickle cell anemia testing. Tupac knew that there's much more to the Black Panthers than people were being taught, if being taught at all, about what they were doing.

One of the really compelling things about Tupac was that he always seemed to be straddling two worlds or multiple worlds. He had a really hard childhood, serious grinding poverty. His mom eventually struggled with drug addiction. But then he also attended a high school for the arts where he did ballet and wrote poetry and later he called himself a nerd so this guy with a lot of dimensions what is it that you find original and powerful about the messages in his music it's just wild you know like i i was a tupac fan back when he

was still alive so in the in the 90s and when I was listening to him, there's a way that a lot of people listen to him. It's just like, you know, just bump into the party. He just seems like he's just this wild, you know, dude who just says whatever he wants and does whatever he wants. Later, you know, later as I got older and I started, you know, sort of becoming more involved with social justice and racial justice issues. And I became a writer and journalist and I was sort of exploring these things.

And I came back to Tupac because I was old enough and sort of mature enough to now recognize what he was talking about back in those days. He was beyond what a lot of us were even thinking about at the time or talking about. The only time we chill is when we kill each other. It takes guilt to me real time to heal each other. And although it seems evident, we ain't ready to see a black president. It ain't a secret, no concealed fact. The penitence we've packed and it's filled with black. And if we don't, we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies. And since a man can't make one, he has no right to tell a woman when and where to create

you know i think why people are today like myself and others are finding their way back to tupac or at least have never really left i mean they're just like he's still gaining new fans today yeah it's because he really did speak from the heart and he he had his own faults but he really spoke to this theme that has been running, you know, from his parents' day and from the Black Panthers days in the 60s and 70s and to today. I mean, we're still facing the same issues and that's why it feels like it's always very prescient even to today's because it just feels like this timeless thing that we're

just going through over and over again, but we don't really have people like him who knew what they were talking about, but were able to speak to us directly, like as equals, as peers. It's a bit of an aside, but coming out on the train today, I was listening to the track Mortal Man on Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly. And there's a really interesting part at the end where he's like spliced in an original interview with Tupac from way back in the day. And then it makes it sound like he's actually talking to Tupac.

Would you consider yourself a fighter at heart or somebody that only reacts when they back us against the wall? I like to think that at every opportunity I've ever been threatened with resistance, it's been met with resistance. And not only me. It's so interesting to see that kind of acknowledgement. There's definitely that legacy that he's picked up on, right? Yeah, definitely.

I mean, I think more than anything with Kendrick, I think what he's addressing on that track is struggling with having this new sort of huge platform, people listening to you, and you are now sort of huge platform, people listening to you. And, you know, you are now sort of in the spotlight, but you have a lot of your own mental health issues to deal with. People are looking to you for answers, you know, the same way that they were with Tupac and now, you know, with Kendrick and not really knowing how to deal with this new sort of

responsibility. a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you.

Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Cops. One of the things that interests me too is that Tupac really struggled to project a sense of street cred, right? Like he got called a fake thug, a fake gangster by other rappers. This idea he kind of wasn't hard enough for the stuff he rapped about. But then, you know, he did get involved in a bunch of violent incidents.

He shot a couple of off-duty cops in Atlanta. Rapper Tupac Secure appeared in municipal court this morning after his attorney entered a plea of not guilty to two counts of aggravated assault in connection to the shooting of two off-duty... Those charges were dropped because they had been drinking and one of them was using a gun from a drug bust. And he was also convicted of sexual assault. He spent almost a year in prison. According to the criminal complaint, on November 18th at the Parker Meridian Hotel, the rap star and three friends took turns forcing the woman to engage in oral sex. Prosecutors told Judge George Roberts that the woman accusing Shakur

has been receiving drop-the-case-or-else threats. So he did take part in hard things. He was a violent guy and that violence complicates his legacy. I guess I've always been curious why he fell into that. I don't, you know, I won't necessarily, he was say he was a violent person. He was, I mean, like I said, he was a traumatized person. He was flawed. He was really, really hot tempered. He found himself at the center of a lot of violent incidents. You know, he would just get into fights with people, unprovoked.

But I don't think that complicates his legacy because he was a complicated person and he admits to it. You know, he admitted to being, you know, flawed. Like he was not a perfect spokesperson, perfect role model by any means. Instead of a role model, I want to be a real model. What I want you to do is to listen. And I'm telling you, in my album, in the movie, in this interview, hopefully I show people mistakes I made and they don't have to make that same mistake. You know, that's part of his conflict in trying to just be himself and be a young man. I mean, he was young and he was still dealing with

a lot of family issues and family trauma. And all of a sudden now he's starring in movies with Janet Jackson. What's your name? Lucky. Lucky. And he's touring the world and making money. And he's like on the cover of magazines. Like you said, so going back to him,

not, you know, not, not having that background of being like a hard person, you know, he always was sort of overcompensating for that. You know, he really wanted to show that he was a tough guy now he could hang that he could you know roll with anybody he knew he couldn't he was i mean he was at his heart you know he was an actor so he was sort of playing this role of of being a tough guy yeah um because that's

what he looked up to that's what he like really wanted to have the support from he also wanted their protection but a lot of times he would just act like make knee jerk reactions because he was just, he just felt like he had to prove himself. So Tupac was shot five times in a Manhattan studio in 1994 and he survived. And this kind of set the stage for the East coast, West coast rivalry. Something led to his murder.

And he eventually came to believe that his friend Biggie, the notorious B.I.G., betrayed him. But as you said, Tupac didn't survive the shooting in 96 in Las Vegas and no arrests were ever made. But then this July, police in Las Vegas suddenly executed a search warrant for a home connected to a guy named Dwayne Davis, who goes by the handle Keefy D. So who's Keefy D? He was affiliated with the Southside Crips in Compton, Los Angeles. He and everybody in the car that night were associated, affiliated with the Southside Crips, who had a rivalry with Death Row and Death Row Associates because they were the Death Row security team and other people that were involved with them were members of Mob Piru Bloods. So it was just sort of a gang rivalry

that spilled over into Las Vegas that night. They were there to watch the fight too. And they just got caught. Their paths just crossed with Tupac and Shud and them. So why do you think they're going after Kifidi now? I mean, to go back a little bit, Dwayne Davis is the only person still alive who was in the white Cadillac. And for years, and this is why a lot of people are now really mystified about why this arrest happened now, is because Dwayne Davis has been saying for years that he was in the car, that he was the one that called the shots, that passed the gun to the shooter. the shots that passed the gun to the shooter he's been saying this for years he's said this in podcasts he said this on youtube interviews he wrote he wrote a book he wrote a memoir in 2019 saying i was in the car this is what happened i passed the gun to the guy you know in the back seat seeing all on the news like damn i got away that was duane keefie davis's reaction after tupac's murder, recounted during a podcast.

Davis, who now calls Henderson home, had his house raided by Metro back in July and was arrested on Friday. So a lot of us are just a little curious, you know, a little wondering why not until July of this year did Las Vegas police say, Not until July of this year did Las Vegas police say, now's the time. We've got to go in there and collect some evidence. They collected some magazines and some computer hard drives, some photographs, some bullet casings, just random stuff that he had in the house. So now that Kifidi is charged with murder, investigators aren't calling him the shooter, but instead they're calling him the shot caller. aren't calling him the shooter, but instead they're calling him the shot caller. You said in the book, at this point in my life, I can say that I have a deep sense of remorse for what happened to Tupac. However, I stand firm on the point that Tupac, Suge Knight, and the rest of those dudes didn't have any business putting their hands

on my beloved nephew, Baby Lane, period. Then jumping on my nephew gave us the ultimate green light to do something to their ass exactly but this took so long like you mentioned police said that witnesses didn't cooperate is there something else you'd point to that can explain why it took so long yeah and this is i don't know this is just my personal opinion which also i happen to share with a lot of people who have been following this case and who are longtime Tupac fans. And I believe and many other people believe that the Las Vegas police really never took this investigation seriously, took this murder investigation seriously because of who Tupac was. Because Tupac was always a very vocal critic of police, just policing in general, crooked police especially, and just crooked court system and he really i mean in

his music and his interviews just who he was by being a shakur and by being the son of these people who also were very critical of policing i think it wasn't high on their list especially when they just wrote it off as being some gang violence that really is not a priority to them you know that's i mean that's that's all speculative but it also is i don't know how else to explain why you know 27 years have gone on with no arrests or leads when you know it's a murder you know like this a murder of a very high profile entertainer you know this would normally just get high priority just you know this would this should have been wrapped up years ago or at least have arrests, have a couple trials,

at least make some attempt. There's various conspiracies that for years people are going to come up with their own theories about who was involved, who was behind it, who was covering it up, was Suge involved, were the police implicated. In my opinion, I just think they just never really took it seriously. It's, it should not have taken even half this long. And I should probably underscore that KVD hasn't been found guilty of these charges yet, but if there are eventual convictions in this case, what do you think that would mean for Tabak's family? They've waited so long for some form of justice. Yeah. And really it's, and really, what's heartbreaking is that

Tupac's mother, Faini, died in 2016 without seeing any closure. Mutulu Shakur died just this year, in July, without seeing any closure. Tupac's brother, Moprim, and his sister, Setua, they are

hopeful, as we all are, that there will actually be a conviction, but also skeptical, like I am are that there will actually be a conviction but also skeptical like i am that there will be a conviction but also just this isn't really it doesn't feel like justice it feels like justice would be to know why it took so long this information has been out there what took so long it's a type of victory you know um it's bittersweet still stay tuned i miss my brother so um you know i i i i'm glad something's happening you know those answers would help more than just a you know keefie d being sent to prison would be all you know it's all fine and well but it's he's been allowed to be free all this time and you know give interviews and just live his life quietly.

So, yeah, definitely kind of want more than just a conviction. We want actually some, you know, some better answers. In terms of legacy, Tupac's legacy, these conversations he brought into the mainstream in those relatively early days of hip-hop, things like police things that he was talking about. And it's hard to think that we'll ever have anybody like him again, because all the factors that were really involved with creating somebody like Tupac, I mean, just the person he was and his history. And I think that's why his legacy, I mean, there's still books being written about him and published about him. There's still documentaries being made about him. This year he received his Hollywood Walk of Fame star.

There's a museum exhibit that was dedicated to him here in LA. It's because he's more than just an entertainer. People who know him, or at least know his work, recognize that he's more than just an entertainer. Like he actually really spoke to, for a lot of us. He spoke for us who, you know, grew up poor or who, you know, grew up underprivileged people who struggled with, you know, personal trauma, mental health issues, people just,

he spoke to like a lot of our just sort of deeper just needs and wants and desires and, you know, also just our aspirations. So all this thing, like, I feel like even with his murder was so heartbreaking at the times it's felt like such a bad, such a, such a, we lost more than just him. We expected so much more from him, but in the years that have come and just to see that people still embrace him and still find their way to him you know it's very it's very heartening because it sort of shows that it wasn't just a flash in the pan kind of you know it died with him like his message and his his work lives on so even regardless of the conviction uh what happens with this even you know all these years that there was no arrests and no real movement, that didn't really change what he meant to us, you know, and it won't continue, you know,

it won't make any difference. Like his legacy is his legacy, regardless of, you know, who gets put behind bars, you know, that is sort of, that's sort of inconsequential to his work and his legacy. Thank you so much. Santi, it's been great talking to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. Santi, it's been great talking to you. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. All right, that's all for today. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. I'm Damon Fairless,

and I'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.