Duane "Keefe D" Davis, the man charged in the 1996 murder of rap icon Tupac Shakur, allegedly spoke about his role in the killing on several recorded phone calls from prison, and Las Vegas prosecutors now plan to introduce those recordings at trial, the New York Post reported.
The recordings reportedly capture Davis discussing "intricate details about how it happened" while talking about potential film and television projects tied to his story. If admitted as evidence, the tapes could become a centerpiece of the prosecution's case when trial begins August 10 in Las Vegas.
Davis has pled not guilty. His attorney, Michael Sanft, played down the significance of the recordings. But the broader pattern here is hard to ignore: a defendant who spent years publicly discussing his alleged involvement in one of the most infamous unsolved murders in American history, who now insists none of it was real.
The prison phone recordings are only the latest in a long string of statements linking Davis to Shakur's murder. Before his 2023 arrest, Davis had spoken openly about the killing in multiple settings, police interviews, television appearances, and a memoir he titled "Compton Street Legend."
He allegedly confessed to his involvement in two separate police interviews. He discussed the case in TV interviews. He tried to sell the rights to his memoir to networks and production companies. By any reasonable measure, Davis treated his alleged role in a murder as a brand.
AP News reported that prosecutors have documented a pattern of confessions stretching back more than a decade. Davis spoke to a federal and LAPD task force, to Las Vegas police in 2009, in a 2017 BET documentary, and in his 2019 book. Prosecutors filed over 160 pages of written transcripts and a DVD as evidence against his bail release, arguing he was the "shot-caller" in the killing and shows no remorse.
Prosecutor Binu Palal wrote that Davis "confessed over and over again that he is responsible for the murder of Tupac Shakur."
Now, facing a murder charge, Davis claims those admissions were "done for entertainment purposes and to make money." He also asserts he received immunity under a 2008 FBI agreement. His defense has tried to recast years of public statements as performance, a man chasing fame, not confessing to a crime.
Sanft, Davis's lawyer, has not hidden his frustration with his client's public conduct. He took issue with what he described as Davis's "craving for fame," including the memoir and the interviews that preceded his arrest.
Sanft told reporters:
"Do I agree with him writing the book and doing all these interviews? No."
That is a remarkable admission from a defense attorney, essentially conceding that his own client's behavior created the evidentiary mess now confronting the defense. Sanft added that he wants to win and is committed to doing the best job he can for Davis, but his public comments suggest a lawyer working uphill against a mountain of his client's own words.
On the prison recordings specifically, Sanft pushed back on their value. He argued that if the state has to rely on that kind of information to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, "they've got a huge problem." He also suggested prosecutors might ultimately decide they don't need the recordings.
"And I've seen the state before, they'll listen to the phone calls, but it's sort of like, 'Nah, we don't care. We don't need them.'"
That framing cuts both ways. If prosecutors don't even need the tapes because they already have so much other evidence, transcripts, documentaries, a published memoir, police interview confessions, that hardly helps the defense.
Judge Carli Kierny has scheduled a pre-trial hearing for June 30 to ensure both sides are ready for the August 10 trial date. The hearing will likely address whether the prison phone recordings are admissible, among other evidentiary questions.
The case has moved slowly. Shakur was killed in September 1996, nearly three decades ago. Davis was not arrested until 2023, despite years of public statements that, prosecutors argue, amounted to repeated confessions. The gap between those statements and the eventual arrest raises its own questions about the pace of justice in high-profile cases.
Confessions and their legal weight have been at the center of several recent criminal cases. In another matter involving a confessed killer navigating the court system, the legal proceedings that followed a defendant's own admissions proved just as complicated as the original crime.
A Las Vegas legal source indicated that the District Attorney's office believes Davis admitted to being involved in the crime during the recorded prison phone calls. The source added that Davis insisted it was his "first amendment right" to talk about Tupac. That argument, that discussing your alleged role in a murder is constitutionally protected speech, even from a jail phone, will likely face scrutiny from the court.
The core tension in this case is not complicated. Davis spent years monetizing his alleged connection to one of the most high-profile murders in modern American history. He wrote a book about it. He sat for interviews. He pitched TV deals. He spoke to police. He appeared in a documentary.
Then he got arrested and said none of it was true.
The pattern is familiar in an era when defendants sometimes treat criminal notoriety as content. The case of Rex Heuermann, who reportedly confessed to his ex-wife about killing eight women, illustrates how statements made outside a courtroom can become the most damaging evidence inside one.
Davis's defense will have to convince a jury that a man who told the FBI, local police, a national television audience, and his own book readers that he was involved in Tupac Shakur's murder was lying every single time, and that he was lying again on recorded prison phone calls where he allegedly discussed the killing in detail.
That is a steep hill. Sanft is a capable attorney, and every defendant deserves vigorous representation. But the sheer volume of Davis's own statements creates a problem that no amount of legal maneuvering can easily erase.
In other recent cases, defendants who admitted guilt have faced swift consequences. A FedEx driver who pled guilty to the capital murder of a seven-year-old saw his courtroom confession become the defining moment of his case. Davis's situation is different in structure, he now denies what he previously said, but the underlying principle holds: words have weight, especially when they describe how someone died.
If the prison recordings are admitted, jurors in Las Vegas will hear a defendant allegedly discussing his involvement in a murder while simultaneously trying to sell the story for profit. They will also have access to years of prior statements, police interviews, media appearances, a published memoir, all telling roughly the same story Davis now calls fiction.
The prosecution's argument is straightforward: Davis told the truth when he thought it would make him famous and rich. He changed his story only when it threatened to make him a convicted murderer.
The defense will argue the opposite, that Davis is a man who exaggerated for attention and profit, and that his statements lack the reliability required for a criminal conviction. Sanft has framed the prosecution's reliance on these recordings as a sign of weakness, not strength.
The case also raises uncomfortable questions about how long it took the system to act. Davis was making public statements about the killing for years before anyone charged him. The Gilgo Beach serial killer case similarly exposed how long serious crimes can go unresolved even when evidence accumulates in plain sight.
Tupac Shakur was killed almost thirty years ago. His family and fans have waited decades for accountability. Whether the August trial delivers it will depend, in large part, on whether a jury believes a man who told everyone he was involved, until he was finally held to account for saying so.
When you spend years telling the world you did it, you don't get to act surprised when the world finally listens.
