The stepbrother of rapper Tupac Shakur, who was famously shot and killed in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas 30 years ago, has filed a new wrongful death lawsuit against the sole suspect charged in the killing and claims new evidence points to a broader conspiracy behind the rapper’s murder.
Rapper Tupac Shakur in March 1994.
Getty Images
Maurice Shakur, who made music with his stepbrother in hip-hop groups Outlawz and Thug Life in the 1990s, filed suit in Los Angeles County Superior Court late Tuesday claiming grand jury transcripts and a Netflix documentary about allegations against Sean "Diddy" Combs have revealed a “broader, more complex conspiracy to murder Tupac that involved much more than mere retaliation for a prior altercation.”
The shots that killed Tupac were fired from a White Cadillac containing Duane Davis, Terrence Brown, Orlando Anderson and DeAndre Smith, and the new evidence reportedly includes grand jury transcripts alleging that people were involved beyond those who were in the car.
The lawsuit also references allegations made in “Sean Combs: The Reckoning" by high-level executives within Combs’ record label alleging the musician put a $1 million hit out on Tupac and Death Row Records producer Suge Knight (allegations Combs has denied).
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and names Duane Davis, who is expected to stand trial this summer on a charge of first-degree murder in Tupac’s death, and other unnamed defendants identified only as “John Does 1-100.”
The lawsuit says the prosecution has not been able to clearly identify the roles of everyone involved but vowed to "amend this Complaint to state the true names and capacities of the Doe Defendants” when more information is obtained through discovery.
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“One thing is certain: there remain individuals who were involved in Tupac’s murder who, for 30 years, have not been held accountable for their crimes,” the complaint reads. “This action seeks to change that.”
The death of Tupac Shakur is one of the most famous unsolved murders in American history. After rising to stardom in the mid-1990s with singles including “Dear Mama" and “California Love,” Shakur was shot multiple times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas while riding in a car with Knight. He died one week later. Investigators quickly learned that, shortly before the shooting, Tupac and his entourage had been involved in an altercation with Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, a member of the Southside Crips, at the MGM Grand down the street. The most widely accepted theory is that the shooting was direct revenge for the MGM altercation, and investigators initially arrested Anderson for the shooting but he was never charged (he was killed in an unrelated gang shooting two years later). The case gained new momentum in the 2000s after Davis, Anderson's uncle, confessed to his role in the killing to a police task force and later, in a 2018 documentary and 2019 book, publicly discussed his involvement. In his book and subsequent interviews, Davis admitted to being in the Cadillac, said he supplied the weapon and said that his nephew was the gunman. In 2023, police executed a search warrant at Davis’s wife’s home and he was charged with murder later that year.
Davis' trial is set to begin on Aug. 10 in Las Vegas.
Duane "Keefe D" Davis, 60, appears in a Las Vegas court on October 19, 2023 for his arraignment on murder charges in the death of rapper Tupac Shakur.
POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Tupac’s death has spawned dozens of conspiracy theories over the last three decades. Perhaps the most enduring theory is that he is still alive and living in Cuba, speculation that has been fueled by the release of posthumous albums and a supposedly “fake” autopsy photo. Some speculate that Knight himself (who took one bullet in the shooting) orchestrated the killing to stop Tupac from leaving Death Row Records and to profit from his posthumous work. He has strongly denied the claim. Other claims center around the intense East Coast-West Coast gang feud of the 1990s, and others speculate the U.S. government was somehow involved.
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