A former gang leader went on trial Monday in Las Vegas over the decades-old murder of rapper Tupac Shakur, one of America’s most high-profile unresolved killings.

The proceedings, expected to last about a month, will likely not settle who fired the shots that killed the hip-hop legend on the night of September 7, 1996, while he was in Las Vegas to watch a Mike Tyson boxing match.

Prosecutors instead aim to show that the defendant, Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former leader of the South Side Compton Crips street gang, ordered the killing and supplied the gun used in the drive-by shooting.

Davis, 63, faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon, with an allegation that the crime was meant to promote a criminal gang, and could face life in prison without parole if convicted.

The killing of Shakur, also known as 2Pac, remains one of America’s most debated cold cases, feeding decades of speculation among music fans over who was responsible and why.

The rapper, who died at 25, was a central figure in a hip-hop rivalry pitting the East Coast against the West Coast, known for hits like “California Love” and “All Eyez on Me.”

Shakur was riding in a car driven by Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight after the pair attended the Tyson fight at the MGM Grand casino when a white Cadillac pulled up alongside them and gunfire erupted.

Davis’s Own Memoir Helped Revive The Decades-Old Case

The trial will revisit the rivalry between Death Row Records, the Los Angeles label Knight founded, and Bad Boy Records, the East Coast label run by Sean “Diddy” Combs and home to Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, who was murdered in March 1997.

Prosecutors say Death Row Records was protected by Mob Piru, a Los Angeles gang tied to the wider Bloods alliance, with which Knight was affiliated, while Bad Boy had hired Davis’s South Side Compton Crips as bodyguards.

After the Tyson fight, Knight and Shakur beat up Davis’s nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, in retaliation over an alleged assault on a Death Row employee, and prosecutors say Davis sought revenge that same night.

The case sat unsolved for decades due to a lack of evidence, until it was revived by the 2019 publication of Davis’s memoir, in which he recounted being in the front seat of the Cadillac and handing a pistol to those in the back seat, though he did not say who fired the fatal shots.

Those revelations, consistent with remarks Davis had previously made to reporters, eventually led to his arrest in September 2023. Everyone else believed to have been in the Cadillac that night has since died.

Davis has since pleaded not guilty, telling ABC News in a March 2025 prison interview: “I’m innocent. I ain’t killed nobody. Never did ever kill nobody. They don’t have no evidence against me. They can’t even put me in Las Vegas.”

He now says he was in Los Angeles the night of the killing and claims his memoir, co-written with a ghostwriter, exaggerated events to boost book sales.

His lawyers unsuccessfully sought to keep the book, along with remarks he made in a 2008 police interview as a witness to the killing, out of the trial.

Jury selection is expected to take about a week, and whatever the verdict, it is unlikely to satisfy those close to Shakur.

In May, the rapper’s stepbrother, Maurice Shakur, filed a wrongful death lawsuit in civil court, arguing that individuals involved in the killing have evaded accountability for 30 years.

The suit cites a recent documentary in which Davis told police that Combs, now imprisoned himself, offered him $1 million to kill Shakur.