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Tupac Murder - Will Keffe D’s Own Words Convict Him? · Murder Files Unsealed

0:00
Speaker 1: I want you to imagine, just for a second, a
0:02
puzzle box. But it's not like, you know, just any
0:05
puzzle box. It's one that has been sitting on the
0:08
collective coffee table of the entire world for almost three decades.
0:12
Speaker 2: Right, everybody knows about.
0:13
Speaker 1: It, exactly. It's a box that practically everyone has picked up,
0:16
you know, shake and scrutinized, theorized about. But it's been
0:20
glues shut for so long that society just sort of,
0:24
I mean, we just accepted we would never ever see
0:27
what was actually inside.
0:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, it becomes part of the cultural furniture at that point,
0:30
I mean, it transforms from a solvable criminal problem into
0:34
well basically a modern myth.
0:35
Speaker 1: A myth.
0:36
Speaker 2: Yes, you just resign yourself to the idea that this
0:39
is a mystery that will ultimately outlive you.
0:41
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this, because what if one day
0:45
someone just casually strolls into the room, picks up that
0:47
legendary box and just pops it open.
0:50
Speaker 2: And not just anyone, Right, The.
0:52
Speaker 1: Wildest part isn't that it finally opened. It's that it
0:55
wasn't you know, some master detective who finally cracked the
0:58
forensic code. It was the prime suspect himself.
1:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, a guy who just couldn't resist bragging to anyone
1:03
who would listen.
1:04
Speaker 1: Literally, anyone bragging about how he glued the box shut
1:08
in the first place.
1:09
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate paradox of human ego. I mean,
1:11
the desire for an audience completely overwriting fundamental self preservation.
1:16
Speaker 1: It's wild. So today we are opening that box. We're
1:19
looking at a twenty seven year old cold case that
1:22
is so universally famous, so deeply embedded in American pop
1:26
culture history, that genuinely felt like it belonged to mythology
1:30
rather than the active criminal justice system.
1:33
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, everyone knows the name.
1:34
Speaker 1: We are talking about the September seventh, nineteen ninety six
1:37
murder of music icon Tupac Shakur. For twenty seven years,
1:42
his family, his fans, and law enforcement.
1:44
Speaker 2: Just waited for a break and waited and waited.
1:47
Speaker 1: Yeah. So today the mission of this deep dive is
1:49
to explore the absolute mind bending twist of how the
1:53
man now standing trial for orchestrating this historic crime might
1:57
just be taken down by his own desperate need to
1:59
tell his story.
2:00
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating situation, and we are pulling heavily from
2:04
some just phenomenal legal analysis to guide us through this maze.
2:07
Speaker 1: Yes, we have some great source material today.
2:09
Speaker 2: We do Jesse Weber over at the Long Crime Network.
2:12
He hosts a show called Sidebar, and he did this brilliant,
2:15
really granular dissection of the upcoming trial of Dwayne Davis.
2:19
Speaker 1: Who the entire world knows as keft.
2:21
Speaker 2: Right, Keffyde. We're talking about a sixty year old former
2:25
gang shot caller heading to a Las Vegas courtroom for
2:28
what is easily the most scrutinized case in the city's history.
2:31
Speaker 1: Well without a doubt, and to really understand the sheer
2:34
surrealism of where we are right now, we have to
2:37
start by looking at one of the most bizarre arrest
2:39
moments I have ever heard described.
2:41
Speaker 2: It is truly something else.
2:42
Speaker 1: So let's set the stage. It is September twenty twenty three.
2:45
We are twenty seven years to the month from the
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nineteen ninety six drive by shooting on the Vegas Strip.
2:51
Las Vegas Metropolitan Polease Shriff Kevin mcmanhill steps up to a.
2:54
Speaker 2: Podium and if you listen to that press conference, you
2:56
can just feel the physical gravity in the room.
2:59
Speaker 1: You really can. He repeats the phrase, He says twenty
3:02
seven years, twenty seven years. He announces that his criminal
3:06
apprehension team has finally arrested sixty year old Dwayne Keith Davis.
3:10
Decades of institutional frustration finally culminating in ancuffs.
3:13
Speaker 2: Yeah. And when you hear an official of that rank
3:16
repeat a time frame like that, he's not just stating
3:19
a fact, No, not at all. He is emphasizing the
3:22
incredible psychological burden the department has carried. I mean, this
3:26
wasn't just a cold case sitting in a filing cabinet
3:28
somewhere right gathering dust, exactly. It was a highly visible,
3:33
globally recognized failure of the justice system to provide a closure.
3:38
Every single year on the anniversary, the Las Vegas Police
3:41
were reminded that they just couldn't.
3:43
Speaker 1: Solve this, which makes the actual arrest so crazy, because,
3:47
you know, if you try to picture the arrest of
3:49
a suspect in a globally scrutinized decades old murder like
3:54
what comes to mind.
3:54
Speaker 2: You'd expect a massive raid, exactly.
3:57
Speaker 1: You expect doors getting kicked in at dawn, You expect
3:59
flash bangs, people screaming or at the very least a
4:02
suspect who is terrified covering his face with a jacket
4:05
as he shoved into the back of a cruiser.
4:07
Speaker 2: But the bodycam footage of Keffide's apprehension, which Jesse Webber
4:11
highlighted in his breakdown, it completely shatters that expectation.
4:15
Speaker 1: Completely doesn't even look like an arrest.
4:17
Speaker 2: It defies every single behavioral expectation of a murder apprehension.
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It really does.
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Speaker 1: So the officers approach him while he's just out and about.
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They casually ask him if he's out for a morning
4:27
walk and kefd He doesn't flinch, he doesn't.
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Speaker 2: Run, He's just chatting with them.
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Speaker 1: He's chatting. He actually tells the officers, Hey, Keith Metro,
4:36
please come over here. He is literally directing the traffic
4:39
of his own murder arrest.
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Speaker 2: The transcript of that bodycam audio shows an incredible, almost
4:45
chilling casualness. I mean, he calls the arresting officer.
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Speaker 1: Buddy, Yeah, thanks, buddy, come on over here. Appreciate your cooperation.
4:51
Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: He is thanking a SWAT apprehension team for cooperating with him.
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Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
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Speaker 1: He gets better. They ask if he has anything on
4:59
his person, and he can actually replies, phone and water.
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He even asked for a drink because he's thirsty.
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Speaker 2: Just zero panic zero.
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Speaker 1: And then this is the part that stopped me in
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my tracks. The officers ask, so what they got you
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for man, and Kefidie, without missing a beat, replies, biggest
5:15
case in Las Vegas history.
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Speaker 2: He knows exactly what this is.
5:19
Speaker 1: He knows. When the cops clarify that this warrant is
5:22
from September seventh, nineteen ninety six, his response is simply, wow,
5:26
that's a long time. That's a long time away. Sure
5:29
took him a while.
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Speaker 2: Took him a while, I mean wow, right, and he.
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Speaker 1: Tells him point blank, I ain't worried about it.
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Speaker 2: Let's pause on that demeanor for a second, because it
5:36
sets the psychological baseline for everything we're going to discuss today.
5:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, we have to talk about this.
5:41
Speaker 2: The complete lack of a fight or flight response in
5:44
a situation like this is just highly abnormal. You have
5:47
to ask why is a sixty year old man who
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is suddenly and violently faced with spending the rest of
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his natural life in a concrete box for a world
5:56
famous murder completely unbothered.
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Speaker 1: Honestly read the transcript, it sounds like he's being pulled
6:01
over for an expired registration tag, not a historic homicide exactly.
6:06
Speaker 2: And the psychological reasoning behind this reaction is that he
6:09
has been living with this reality and actively publicly discussing
6:12
this reality for years.
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Speaker 1: Right, He hasn't been hiding it, No, not at all.
6:16
Speaker 2: When a dark secret loses its secrecy, it often loses
6:19
its terror for the person holding it. He had likely
6:23
built up this impenetrable false sense of.
6:25
Speaker 1: Immunity because he'd been getting away with it for so long.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he had walked the streets for twenty seven years
6:30
without handcuff. In his mind, the statute of limitations on
6:34
the universe catching up to him had expired, even though
6:37
we know the legal statute for murder never does.
6:40
Speaker 1: Never, there is no expiration date on murder. It is
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hubris in its purest, most distilled form. He survived so
6:48
long he genuinely believed he was untouchable.
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Speaker 2: That's exactly it, invincibility.
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Speaker 1: But to truly grasp why kef D felt that untouchable,
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we can't just look at nineteen ninety six or twenty
6:58
twenty three. We have to rewind and the tape way
7:00
further back.
7:01
Speaker 2: We have to go back to the beginning, right, We
7:03
have to look.
7:03
Speaker 1: At his origins, because this wasn't just some random street
7:06
criminal who happened to be on the Veiguest Strip at
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the wrong time.
7:09
Speaker 2: No, the roots of this entire tragedy are incredibly deep
7:12
and geographically concentrated.
7:14
Speaker 1: Jesse Weber's breakdown dives into Keftyd's background with the South
7:18
Side Compton Crypts, and what stood out to me is
7:21
how Kefty describes his entry into this life.
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Speaker 2: It's very telling.
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Speaker 1: It is. He doesn't frame it as some dramatic conscious
7:28
choice where he weighed his options and decided to break
7:31
the law. He frames it as an inevitability.
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Speaker 2: Right, a foregone conclusion.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's quoted saying it was just a family thing.
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He uses this phrase, the culture energy coming up.
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Speaker 2: The culture energy.
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Speaker 1: Yeah. He says there was no formal initiation, no getting
7:46
jumped in or anything like that. He was essentially born
7:49
into this infrastructure by the time he was ten or
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eleven years old.
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Speaker 2: And that phrase culture energy is vital to unpack. It
7:56
frames the entire environment of something atmospheric, like the weather,
7:59
exactly like the weather. It's not a club he applied to.
8:02
It's the air he breathed from childhood. When someone is
8:05
embedded in an environment where extreme violence and gang loyalty
8:09
or the baseline of existence before they even hit puberty,
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their entire moral and survival compass is calibrated differently, differently.
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Speaker 1: Than someone looking at this case from the outside.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, it normalizes things that the rest of society would
8:23
find completely.
8:24
Speaker 1: Horrifying, which totally makes sense. But here is where the
8:27
backstory drops a detail that honestly gave me chills.
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Speaker 2: The football connection.
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Speaker 1: Yes, the sidebar analysis reveals that keffad and Marian Sooge Night,
8:37
the infamous towering head of death row records the man
8:42
who is driving the exact car Tupac was shot in.
8:46
They go way way back.
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Speaker 2: This is one of those historical footnotes that completely reframes
8:51
the narrative of this crime. It really is they.
8:53
Speaker 1: Played youth football together at Greater Compton and it wasn't
8:56
just passing in the hallways. Kevity's uncle and his dad
9:00
were the coaches of the team.
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Speaker 2: His own family.
9:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. According to Kaffe d Souge, Knight was overweight as
9:05
a kid, so he couldn't play with his own age group.
9:08
He had to play up a division with the older kids,
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which put him right alongside Keffid.
9:12
Speaker 2: You really have to take a step back and look
9:14
at the broader implications of that. It completely shatters the
9:17
illusion of the random, faceless gang war.
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Speaker 1: Oh completely.
9:20
Speaker 2: This wasn't two massive, anonymous corporate entities clashing in Las
9:24
Vegas over record sales. This was intimately devastatingly.
9:29
Speaker 1: Personal personal on a neighborhood level.
9:31
Speaker 2: Exactly, these were two kids who sweated on the same
9:34
peewee football field. Kaffade's own family coached suge night. They
9:40
learned how to take hits together.
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Speaker 1: It is structurally like a tragic Shakespearean play.
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Speaker 2: That's a great comparison.
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Speaker 1: I mean, you have these two young kids running around
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in oversized helmets playing Kiwi football and Compton totally unaware
9:53
that decades later their lives are going to violently collide
9:57
and define one of the most infamous fatal rival in
10:00
American history.
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Speaker 2: The intimacy of their shared history is exactly what makes
10:04
the eventual betrayal and violence so much darker. When the
10:07
leaders of these rival factions Death Row and mob Piro
10:10
on one side, the south side Compton crips on the other.
10:13
When they eventually look at each other across a casino floor,
10:16
they aren't just seeing generic enemies, you.
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Speaker 1: Know, They're seeing the kid from the neighborhood, right.
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Speaker 2: They are seeing ghosts from their own childhoods. They know
10:22
each other's families, they know each other's capabilities. There is
10:26
just no anonymity to hide.
10:28
Speaker 1: Behind, which brings up a critical question. How do two
10:32
former football teammates end up on opposite sides of a
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deadly street war in Vegas?
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Speaker 2: How does it escalate to that point?
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Speaker 1: How do you get from a youth football field in
10:41
Compton to a hail of bullets on Flamingo Road. The
10:45
analysis points to the events of one single incredibly violent night,
10:50
September seventh, nineteen ninety six.
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Speaker 2: This is the catalyst. Everything prior to this was just kindling,
10:55
but this specific night was the spark that ignited the
10:57
whole powder keg.
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Speaker 1: So we are in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand
11:01
Garden Arena. The atmosphere is totally electric because it's a
11:04
Mike Tyson fight night.
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Speaker 2: And if you know anything about pop culture in the
11:07
mid nineties, a Tyson fight in Vegas was the absolute
11:09
center of the universe.
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Speaker 1: Everyone who was anyone was there. Now both factions are present.
11:15
On one side, you have Death Row records in mab Peru,
11:17
heavily represented by Tupac, Shakur and suge Knight. On the
11:21
other side, you have members of the South Side Compton Cripps,
11:24
which includes Keffi d and his nephew, a man named
11:27
Orlando Anderson.
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Speaker 2: So you have two heavily entrenched, historically rival groups occupying
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the exact same high adrenaline, highly charged space. The proximity
11:38
alone is dangerous.
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Speaker 1: It's a recipe for disaster. And as both groups were
11:42
leaving the fight filtering out into the casino, members of
11:45
Death Row spot Orlando Anderson standing near an elevator bank
11:49
inside the MGM Grand right, just standing there, just standing there.
11:52
And what happens next is caught on hotel security footage,
11:56
footage that the whole world is probably seen on the news.
11:58
Speaker 2: At this point. Yeah, it's iconic footage in the worst way.
12:01
Speaker 1: Tupac wearing this highly visible chiny Satiny shirt, alongside sus Knight,
12:06
who is described as a massive presence in a brown suit,
12:09
approach Orlando Anderson and without much hesitation, they just start
12:13
kicking and punching him right there by the elevator.
12:16
Speaker 2: It's a full on beat down, a full.
12:18
Speaker 1: On beatdown before hotel security finally intervenes and breaks it up.
12:22
Speaker 2: From a legal perspective, this specific piece of grainy security
12:25
footage is foundational to the prosecution's entire theory of motive.
12:29
It's the why exactly in a murder trial you want
12:33
to establish the why. Undeniably, this video is the why
12:36
caught on tape.
12:37
Speaker 1: But hold on because looking at this from the outside,
12:40
the level of hubris here is staggering to me. I mean,
12:44
why on earth would you risk a massive physical brawl
12:49
in the middle of a heavily surveiled Las Vegas casino.
12:52
Speaker 2: It is hard to comprehend for the average person.
12:55
Speaker 1: You are some of the most famous, recognizable people on
12:58
the planet. At that exact moment, you are surrounded by tourists, cameras,
13:02
and private security, and you just openly assault a rival
13:05
gang member in the lobby.
13:07
Speaker 2: It speaks perfectly to that concept of perceived invincibility we
13:10
mentioned earlier, which often infects people at the absolute peak
13:13
of their.
13:13
Speaker 1: Influence, like they're above the law.
13:15
Speaker 2: Exactly when individuals achieve a certain critical mass of wealth, fame,
13:21
and street power simultaneously, the normal boundaries of consequence seem
13:25
to vanish for them. They operated as if the MGM
13:28
Grand Casino floor was just an extension of their own
13:31
private territory.
13:32
Speaker 1: Wow, that's a dangerous mindset.
13:35
Speaker 2: It is, But that single moment of unchecked bravado acted
13:38
as the spark that would ignite a highly calculated retaliation
13:42
in the specific culture they were operating within. The culture
13:45
energy KEFD describe an assault like that. A public humiliation
13:50
of a family member and gang affiliate demands a response.
13:53
It's required, It is absolutely non negotiable right.
13:56
Speaker 1: And assault demands a response. You don't just walk away
13:58
from a public beating in that world. And the response
14:01
the south Side Compton Crips allegedly delivered was meticulously brutally planned.
14:07
Let's trace the retaliation, which the State of Nevada argues
14:10
was entirely orchestrated by kef D.
14:13
Speaker 2: This is where the premeditation really comes into focus.
14:15
Speaker 1: According to the investigation details, Jesse Weber highlighted Keffy's reaction
14:19
to his nephew being beaten wasn't just blind anger, is immediate,
14:22
tactical planning.
14:23
Speaker 2: He transitioned instantly from a bystander at a fight to
14:27
a general managing a battlefield. The emotion was immediately channeled
14:32
into logistics.
14:33
Speaker 1: The breakdown of the timeline is chilling. Yeah, So he
14:35
devises a plan. He obtains a firearm. He gets into
14:39
a white Cadillac with three other men, Terence Brown, DeAndre Smith,
14:44
and his nephew, the victim of the casino beating Orlando Anderson. Right,
14:48
they group up, and the timeline states that at some
14:50
point while they are in the cadillac, Keffeedy takes the
14:53
gun he obtained and provides it to the passengers in
14:56
the rear seat of the vehicle.
14:57
Speaker 2: Now, I want you to pay very close attention to
14:59
that detail. Physical transfer of the weapon from the front
15:01
seat to the back.
15:02
Speaker 1: Yes, passing the gun. So they start hunting. They drive
15:06
west on Flamingo Road near Coval and they spot the target,
15:10
a black BMW. Souje Night is driving. Tupac Shakur is
15:13
in the passenger seat.
15:14
Speaker 2: Right at the intersection.
15:15
Speaker 1: Yep, the white cadal like turns around, pulls up alongside
15:18
the passenger side of the BMW and immediately opens fire
15:21
into the car.
15:22
Speaker 2: Now this is where the legal framework of this entire
15:24
trial hinges, and it's a point of frequent misunderstanding for
15:28
the general public when they watch the news. The prosecution
15:31
is not alleging that kefi d pulled the trigger, right.
15:34
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people miss that. They aren't
15:36
saying his finger was on the gun that fired the
15:38
fatal shots into the BMW.
15:40
Speaker 2: Correct. They are arguing that he was the shot caller,
15:44
he orchestrated the attack, he secured the vehicle, he supplied
15:47
the weapon the planner exactly. And under Nevada law, which
15:51
strongly mirrors the law in most US states, the concept
15:54
of aiding and a betting comes into play. If you
15:58
aid a bet, council, encourage, or hire another person to
16:02
commit a crime, you are equally as guilty as the
16:05
person who committed the physical act.
16:06
Speaker 1: Let me break this down with an analogy, because I
16:08
think it really helps clarify just how ironclad this legal
16:11
concept is. Please do imagine a bank robbery. If you're
16:15
the guy who sketches the blueprints of the bank vault,
16:18
hands the lock picks to the safecracker, and then sits
16:20
outside behind the reel of the getaway car with the
16:23
engine running.
16:24
Speaker 2: Right, you're the orchestrator.
16:25
Speaker 1: It does not matter one single bit that you never
16:29
set foot inside the bank. It doesn't matter that you
16:31
didn't personally scoop the cash into the canvas bag. Under
16:35
the law, you are going down for bank robbery exactly
16:38
the same as the guy who held the teller at gunpoint.
16:41
Speaker 2: That is the perfect analogy. And this Nevada aiding in
16:44
a betting law is absolutely crucial to the state's case
16:47
because it entirely neutralizes what would otherwise be kefd's main
16:51
line of defense.
16:52
Speaker 1: Because his defense would be I didn't shoot anyone exactly.
16:56
Speaker 2: The defense strategy would naturally be to stand in front
16:58
of a jury and say, look at the evident, since
17:00
my client didn't shoot anyone. But the aiding and a
17:02
betting statute shifts the entire burden of proof for the prosecution.
17:06
Speaker 1: It changes the whole game.
17:07
Speaker 2: It does the state doesn't have to answer the messy, complicated,
17:11
historically debated question of who exactly fired the gun from
17:15
the backseat of that.
17:16
Speaker 1: Cadillac, which has been debated for twenty seven years.
17:18
Speaker 2: Right, they only have to answer who planned the mission?
17:21
Speaker 1: But wait, that raises a massive logistical problem.
17:24
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely it does.
17:25
Speaker 1: How do police prove who planned a secret mission nearly
17:29
three decades after the fact. I mean, how do you
17:32
prove orchestration from nineteen ninety six when the men in
17:34
the car are mostly dead or not talking. You don't
17:37
have wire taps. You don't have text messages from the nineties.
17:39
Speaker 2: No, you don't, but you don't need wiretaps when the
17:42
suspect willingly hands you the script. Oh man, they just
17:45
listen to the suspect himself.
17:47
Speaker 1: Right, Here's where it gets really interesting, because for decades
17:52
this case just lay there, completely dormant. Now, right after
17:56
the shooting, according to Kefidi's own accounts, Souge Knight told
18:00
the police to keep the nephew, referring to Orlando.
18:03
Speaker 2: Anderson right pointing the finger early on.
18:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, suits was basically pointing the finger at the Southside
18:07
crips from day one. But the police couldn't make anything stick,
18:10
witnesses wouldn't cooperate, the case went cold, and then years
18:14
later Kefadig just started talking.
18:16
Speaker 2: He became his own worst enemy, entirely voluntarily.
18:20
Speaker 1: He went on what I can only describe as a
18:22
media tour of self incrimination. The legal breakdowns list a
18:25
stunning trail of breadcrumbs he left for law.
18:27
Speaker 2: Enforcement, a very public trail.
18:29
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, he released a published memoir called Compton
18:32
Street Legend. He did a highly publicized video interview with
18:35
Urban City. Before that, he did recorded interviews in two
18:39
thousand and eight and two thousand and nine with a
18:41
retired LAPD detective named Greg Cating.
18:43
Speaker 2: The sheer volume of his public statements is staggering for
18:46
an unsolved murdered suspect. Most people who get away with
18:49
a crime of this magnitude take it to the grave.
18:51
He took it to a publishing house.
18:53
Speaker 1: He really did. And it's not just that he talked,
18:55
it's the specific granular words he uses. In the Urban
18:59
City interview, he discribed I was pulling up to the
19:00
black BMW and he says Tupac was acting like he
19:03
was in a parade, in a parade, Yeah, hanging out
19:06
the window, hollering, highly visible. He says, they rolled up
19:09
on the side of him, saw Tupac looking like he
19:11
was reaching for something, and Keffidi literally says on tape
19:14
this is his quote. We got We was the first ones,
19:17
luckiest one. I guess hit that corner. Gave a little
19:20
Chase Boom Boom book in case one. I guess it's
19:22
a chilling casualness about taking a human life. And retired
19:26
LAPDE detective Greg Kating's assessment of those two thousand and
19:29
eight and two thousand and nine interviews is legally damning.
19:32
Speaker 2: What did he say? Kating stated that kefd quote put
19:35
himself squarely in the middle of the conspiracy. He admitted
19:39
to acquiring the gun, giving it to the shooter in
19:42
the back seat, and being physically present in the vehicle
19:45
while they hunted their targets.
19:46
Speaker 1: Okay, I have to ask about this because it breaks
19:48
my brain. Sure, why would he confess to an LAPD
19:51
detective In two thousand and eight, The analysis mentions he
19:55
thought he was protected by a proffer agreement. Now, I thought,
19:59
if you talk to cops under an agreement like that,
20:02
they couldn't use your words against you. Yeah, how is
20:04
this suddenly admissible in a murder trial?
20:07
Speaker 2: It's a great question, and it's where the nuances of
20:09
the law catch people off guard. A proffer agreement sometimes
20:13
called a queen for a day agreement.
20:15
Speaker 1: Queen for a day for that.
20:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's basically a written contract between a suspect and prosecutors.
20:21
The suspect agrees to tell the government everything they know
20:23
about a crime, and in exchange, the government agrees not
20:26
to use those specific statements against them in their direct case.
20:30
In chief, it's a tool to gather intelligence.
20:33
Speaker 1: So he thought he had to get out of jail
20:34
free card exactly.
20:36
Speaker 2: But here is the massive catch. That immunity is highly conditional.
20:41
Cool if you later get on a witness stand and
20:44
tell a different story, or if you go out and
20:46
publicly adopt those statements in a commercial setting, like say
20:50
publishing a for profit memoir or doing monetized podcast interviews,
20:54
you breach the conditions of that protection.
20:57
Speaker 1: Wait, really, so you avoid the contract?
20:59
Speaker 2: Yes, you can't tell the tops a secret under protection
21:02
and then sell that same secret to the public for
21:04
cash and expect the police to just sit on their
21:07
hands by broadcasting it. He essentially waived his own immunity.
21:11
Speaker 1: Wow. So, if you're the defense lawyer looking at this
21:14
absolute mountain of audio, video and published text of your
21:18
client confessing to being the shot caller, what on earth
21:21
is your strategy? How do you defend a man who
21:24
wrote a book about his own crime.
21:26
Speaker 2: It is an uphill battle, to say the least.
21:28
Speaker 1: The breakdown from sidebar lays out the defense's strategy, and
21:31
it's basically just a storyteller defense.
21:33
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating, if somewhat desperate, legal maneuver because it
21:37
requires asking the jury to disbelieve their own eyes and ears.
21:40
Speaker 1: His lawyers are expected to argue that the twenty nineteen
21:43
book Compton Street legend is heavily fictionalized. They're going to
21:47
say it's exaggerated street low. They argue it was all
21:51
done for one simple reason, to make.
21:53
Speaker 2: Money with the profit motive.
21:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, Keffi himself recently told the Las Vegas news station
21:59
that it goes writer wrote the book, that he never
22:01
even bothered to read it, and that he only confessed
22:04
to Greg Cating originally because he thought he was legally
22:07
protected and saw a chance to cash in on the
22:09
Tupac misology.
22:10
Speaker 2: And this leads to one of the most bizarre tactical
22:12
moves by the defense team in recent legal memory.
22:15
Speaker 1: Yes, the ditty subpoena. I had to read this part
22:19
three times to understand it.
22:20
Speaker 2: It's very convoluted, it really is.
22:22
Speaker 1: The defense has reportedly tried to subpoena music vogul sean
22:25
Ditty combs now, typically U subpoena a high profile person
22:29
to confirm an alibi or support your client's story bright usually,
22:32
but no, the defense wants a subpoena Diddy to deny
22:36
allegation that Kefty made against him in the past.
22:38
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate forty chess move, and it's incredibly risky.
22:42
Speaker 1: So why would a defense lawyer invite a billionaire to
22:45
testify against their own client. The goal is to put
22:48
Ditty on the stand solely so he can say kefd
22:51
is lying about me.
22:53
Speaker 2: It sounds counterintuitive totally.
22:55
Speaker 1: The defense hopes that by proving Kefty lied about Ditty,
22:58
they can prove to the jury that Kefty is a habitual,
23:01
pathological liar who makes up grand stories about celebrities just
23:05
to gain street cred and sell books. Therefore, if he
23:09
lied about Diddy, he's probably lying about orchestrating the Tupac
23:12
murder too.
23:13
Speaker 2: This strategy raises a massive question about the era we
23:16
live in. We are looking at a modern phenomenon where
23:19
the pursuit of fame, clout chasing on podcasts, and lucrative
23:22
book deals crashes head first into the very rigid unforgiving
23:26
reality of the criminal justice system.
23:28
Speaker 1: It's a collision of two worlds exactly.
23:30
Speaker 2: Kefty wanted to trade his freedom for notoriety. He wanted
23:33
to be known as the man who took down a
23:35
legend up until the exact moment he realized that title
23:38
comes with a life sentence.
23:39
Speaker 1: But the judge in this case has already dealt a
23:41
massive blow to this I'm just a storyteller defense.
23:44
Speaker 2: Yes, a very significant ruling.
23:46
Speaker 1: Jesse Weber noted that the judge rule that regardless of
23:49
who physically typed the words in the book, whether it
23:51
was a ghostwriter, an editor, or Kefty himself, Kefty adopted
23:56
those statements as his own. He put his name on
23:59
the cover, went on press tours to promote it.
24:01
Speaker 2: Legally speaking, the court is saying you cannot reap the
24:04
financial and social rewards of a confession for years and
24:08
then cry fiction only when the handcuffs come out. The
24:11
adoption of the narrative is viewed as ownership of the narrative.
24:14
Speaker 1: You can't have it both ways. Let's push back on
24:17
the defense's premise for a second, though. If they want
24:20
a jury to believe that Kefty is truly just a
24:22
misunderstood storyteller, a harmless older guy who spuns some tall
24:27
tales to pay the rent. His off camera behavior while
24:30
awaiting trial paints a very different, highly manipulative, and frankly
24:34
dark picture.
24:35
Speaker 2: It really undermines their whole narrative.
24:37
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the jailhouse drama because this completely shatters
24:40
that harmless facade.
24:42
Speaker 2: Jehoss behavior is where the rubber meets the road. It
24:44
strips away the pr strategy and shows the jury who
24:47
the descendant is right now today.
24:49
Speaker 1: So Kefty is in custody and he was granted a
24:51
seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars bond. The funds for
24:55
this bond allegedly came from a music manager named Cash Jones,
24:59
who's also known in the hip industry as Whack.
25:01
Speaker 2: One hundred Right, a substantial amount of money.
25:03
Speaker 1: But posting bond isn't just about someone handing over a
25:06
giant check to the court. There's immense PaperWorks, signatures, and
25:10
collateral required. And this is where the recorded jail calls
25:14
between Keft and his wife become absolutely incredible pieces of
25:18
evidence for the prosecution.
25:20
Speaker 2: Jailhouse calls are historically a gold mine for prosecutors because
25:23
inmates frequently forget or their arrogance makes them disregard that
25:28
every single word spoken on those phones is being recorded
25:31
and monitored.
25:32
Speaker 1: Always recorded. According to the transcript of Keft testifying about
25:35
these specific calls, his wife came down to the jail
25:38
on his birthday, June fourteenth, to discuss finalizing the bond,
25:42
but she refused to sign.
25:43
Speaker 2: The paperwork, just flat out refused.
25:45
Speaker 1: Yep. Why because she didn't like cash Jones. She told
25:48
Kefy she didn't trust him, her family had historical problems
25:51
with him, and she wasn't signing her name to anything
25:54
attached to him.
25:55
Speaker 2: So think about this power dynamic for a second.
25:57
Speaker 1: Okay, you have a.
25:58
Speaker 2: Man who used to orchestrate street now sitting in a cell,
26:02
completely powerless, faced with his wife blocking his only path
26:06
to freedom. Look at how he reacts to that loss
26:10
of control.
26:11
Speaker 1: It's extremely telling to manipulate her into signing the pavers.
26:15
Keffid absolutely trashes the guy who is putting up three
26:19
quarters of a million dollars.
26:20
Speaker 2: For him, the guy trying to help him.
26:22
Speaker 1: Yes, he tells his wife on the recorded line that
26:25
Cash Jones doesn't actually have that kind of money, that
26:27
it's all a fake show for the media. And when
26:30
he is later asked on the stand by a prosecutor
26:32
why he said those horrible things to his own wife,
26:35
Keffi d says, I was just telling her to throw her,
26:38
get her off my back. I wanted to come home.
26:40
Speaker 2: And then comes the quote.
26:41
Speaker 1: He literally testifies under oath, and this is a direct quote,
26:45
I am in a life situation, and I will say
26:47
anything to save my life.
26:49
Speaker 2: Let that sink in. I will say anything to save
26:51
my life. If you are a prosecutor, you are taking
26:54
that quote, blowing it up on a giant poster board
26:56
and leaving it in front of the jury for the
26:58
entirety of your closing arguments because.
27:00
Speaker 1: It completely undercuts his own defense precisely.
27:03
Speaker 2: It synthesizes perfectly how the prosecution will use all of
27:07
this jailhouse behavior. It portrays a highly calculating, deeply manipulative
27:12
man who is willing to lie to absolutely anyone, the media,
27:17
the police, the financial backers, and even his own wife
27:20
on his own birthday to get exactly what he wants
27:22
anyone If he openly admits on the stand that he
27:25
will say anything to save his life, right now, why
27:28
should a jury believe his current claim that the book
27:31
was just a fiction meant to make a few dollars.
27:33
He has established himself as an opportunistic liar when backed
27:37
into a corner man.
27:38
Speaker 1: That is so true, and the manipulation isn't the only
27:41
thing caught on tape.
27:42
Speaker 2: No, there's more.
27:43
Speaker 1: The legal analysis details him complaining bitterly about the conditions
27:46
in the Clark County jail. But it's not just general complaints.
27:50
He complains about eating processed food, saying they don't sell
27:53
fresh fruit.
27:53
Speaker 2: Fresh fruit.
27:54
Speaker 1: Yes. He specifically calls out the faked potatoes and faked milk,
27:58
citing that it's terrible for his health as next to
28:00
cancer patient.
28:01
Speaker 2: The irony is almost too thick. There is a profound,
28:04
almost illusional sense of entitlement there. He is awaiting trial
28:08
for orchestrating one of the most infamous murders in American history,
28:12
and he is deeply personally offended by the culinary standards
28:16
of the county jail.
28:17
Speaker 1: It shows a complete disconnect from the gravity of his situation,
28:20
a total disconnect. It's wild, but it gets much darker
28:24
than complaining about fake potatoes. The analysis outlines a portrait
28:28
of violence that is very much active in the present day.
28:32
Speaker 2: This is where it gets really problematic for the defense.
28:34
Speaker 1: In other recorded jail calls, he drops the harmless old
28:38
man routine entirely and uses incredibly threatening language. He says
28:42
to someone on the phone, you can't go as hard
28:44
as I can. I do dirty. You know what I'm saying.
28:46
I get dirty, I get dirty. Yeah. He talks about
28:48
wanting to go in and start whooping some and boasts
28:51
about being crafty.
28:52
Speaker 2: This is present tense aggression. The defense wants to pain
28:55
him as a relic of a bygone era. You know,
28:57
a man reflecting on a violent youth he left behind.
29:00
But this is a man currently threatening violence and asserting
29:03
his dominance while incarcerated.
29:05
Speaker 1: And he actually backed those threats up. This isn't just
29:08
tough talk on the phone.
29:09
Speaker 2: Oh, he acted on it.
29:10
Speaker 1: The breakdown reveals that in April twenty twenty five, while
29:14
sitting in jail awaiting trial for the murder of Tupac
29:17
Keffied was found guilty of battery by a prisoner and
29:21
challenged to fight the jury foreman literally read the verdict
29:25
out loud, guilty on both counts.
29:28
Speaker 2: That battery conviction is an absolute nightmare for his defense strategy.
29:32
Speaker 1: Hasso.
29:33
Speaker 2: Well, if Keffidi decides to take the stand in his
29:35
own defense during the murder trial, which is always a
29:38
gamble but sometimes necessary if you claim you were just
29:40
telling stories, the prosecution can use a prior conviction to
29:44
impeach his credibility ah I see, especially a recent violent
29:48
conviction like battery by a prisoner. It makes it nearly
29:51
impossible for his lawyers to paint him as a peaceful
29:54
older man. It proves to the jury that he is
29:56
still fundamentally prone to violence.
29:58
Speaker 1: So let's look at the chessboar this courtroom. As the
30:00
trial approaches. You have a defendant whose character is under
30:03
intense fire. His own published words have been weaponized against him,
30:07
and his jailhouse behavior is undermining whatever credibility he had left.
30:11
Speaker 2: It's a bleak picture for the defense.
30:13
Speaker 1: The defense has to make some incredibly high stakes, almost desperate,
30:17
strategic gambles. Let's talk about the logistics of this trial,
30:21
specifically regarding the witnesses.
30:24
Speaker 2: Trying a twenty seven year old case presents massive logistical
30:27
hurdles for both sides, but the evaporation of witnesses over
30:30
three decades is the most significant challenge.
30:33
Speaker 1: The missing witnesses are a huge factor here. As we
30:36
mentioned earlier, Orlando Anderson, Keffid's nephew and the alleged shooter
30:41
or at least a passenger in the Cadillac, died in
30:43
a separate gang related shooting in nineteen ninety eight.
30:46
Speaker 2: Right very early on.
30:47
Speaker 1: The legal analysts note that this makes it very easy
30:50
for Kefidi to point the finger at him. You can
30:52
blame a dead man all day long. He can't take
30:55
the stand to defend himself or contradict your story.
30:58
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate convenience scapegoat. But the other missing witness
31:01
is even more significant because it creates a massive hurdle
31:04
for the prosecution.
31:05
Speaker 1: We have to talk about sus Knight, the man driving
31:08
the BMW, the target of the shooting, and the only
31:11
other living eyewitness to what happened inside that car on Flamingo.
31:14
Speaker 2: Road, the only one left right.
31:16
Speaker 1: Sous Knight is currently serving a twenty eight year prison
31:18
sentence in California for an entirely unrelated fatal hit and
31:23
run incident, and he has made it adamantly aggressively clear
31:28
that he refuses to testify in this trial. Refuses completely
31:31
Jesse Webber quotes him telling a news network that getting
31:34
on the witness stand is quote worse than taking a
31:37
gun and shooting that man in the head. He says
31:40
his loyalty to Tupot can never be compromised, and he
31:43
flat out refuses to be responsible for sending another man
31:46
to prison for the rest of his life.
31:47
Speaker 2: That is a staggering, almost incomprehensible adherence to the code
31:51
of the streets. To maintain that level of silence and
31:54
refusal to cooperate with the state even while sitting in
31:57
a prison cell for nearly three decades himself, shows how
32:00
deeply ingrained that culture energy we talked about earlier really is.
32:04
Speaker 1: Well, wait, explain the mechanics of this to me, sure,
32:06
How does a prosecutor secure a murder conviction when the
32:09
only living eyewitness to the drive by shooting, the guy
32:12
who is literally sitting next to the victim v and Milly,
32:15
refuses to cooperate or identify the attackers. Doesn't the defense
32:19
just say the victim won't even say my client did it.
32:22
Speaker 2: It makes it incredibly difficult, but not impossible. And this
32:26
is exactly why the circumstantial evidence we've been discussing the memoir,
32:30
the media interviews, the recorded jailhouse calls is the entire
32:34
backbone of the state's case.
32:36
Speaker 1: They have to rely on it.
32:37
Speaker 2: They do without Suge Night, the state has no direct
32:40
victim testimony to put a human face on the terror
32:43
of that night. They have to rely entirely on the
32:45
perpetrator's own desperate need for attention. Kefet's ego has to
32:49
become the state's star witness.
32:51
Speaker 1: His ego is the star witness. That is an incredible
32:54
way to phrase it. And recognizing how fragile but emotionally
32:58
charged this case is, Keffide's defense made a massive strategic
33:03
maneuver regarding how this trial will end.
33:06
Speaker 2: This was a highly calculated legal calculus, and it speaks
33:09
to how unique this case is.
33:10
Speaker 1: Jesse Weber detailed that Keffedy formally waived his right to
33:13
have the jury sentence him. To be clear, the jury
33:16
will still decide if he is guilty or innocent.
33:18
Speaker 2: Right, the guilt phase is still a jury, But if
33:20
he is.
33:20
Speaker 1: Convicted of first degree murder, the jury's job is done.
33:24
The judge alone will decide the punishment. The judge actually
33:27
went over the options with him in open court to
33:29
make sure he understood a conviction carries either twenty years
33:33
to life, twenty to fifty years, or life without the
33:36
possibility of parole. Plus there are gang and deadly weapon
33:40
enhancements that will be left entirely up to the judge's discretion.
33:44
Speaker 2: To understand why a defense attorney would advise a client
33:47
to waive a jury sentencing, you have to look at
33:50
the immense emotional weight of this specific cultural.
33:53
Speaker 1: Moment because of who the victim is exactly.
33:56
Speaker 2: Tupac Shakor is not just a murder victim. He is
33:58
a global icon. He is widely viewed as a martyr
34:02
of nineties hip hop. If a jury of everyday citizens
34:05
convicts the man responsible for his death, they are going
34:08
to be driven by a massive emotional tide.
34:10
Speaker 1: They'll want justice for Tupac.
34:11
Speaker 2: The psychological desire to avenge Tupac Or to deliver the
34:15
maximum possible punishment for stealing a cultural legend from the
34:18
world could easily sway a jury to hand down life
34:21
without parole without a second thought.
34:23
Speaker 1: Right a jury might act on raw emotion and the
34:25
weight of history, whereas a judge is bound by cold,
34:29
hard statute.
34:30
Speaker 2: Precisely a judge is far more likely to stick strictly
34:33
to the statutes, mitigating factors and legal precedent. Judge sentence
34:37
people every day. They are less likely to be swept
34:40
up in the mythology of the victim.
34:41
Speaker 1: It's a pragmatic choice.
34:42
Speaker 2: It is a massive gamble by the defense taking the
34:45
power out of the hands of the public. But given
34:47
the victim's fame, it is perhaps Kevdi's only logical play
34:50
to avoid dying in prison if he is convicted.
34:53
Speaker 1: It is a fascinating legal chess move in a game
34:56
that has lasted nearly thirty years. And as we synthesize
34:59
all of this, it brings us to the core of
35:02
why dissecting this case matters so much.
35:04
Speaker 2: It's bigger than just one case.
35:05
Speaker 1: It really is. This isn't just a story about a
35:07
tragic nineteen ninety six drive by on Flamingo Road. It
35:10
is a profound, sprawling study of human ego. It's a
35:14
look at how the desire for notoriety, the desperate need
35:17
to be known as a legend in your own mind,
35:20
can outlast the statute of limitations, which by the way,
35:22
does not exist for murder.
35:23
Speaker 2: You can outrun the police for decades. You can outrun
35:26
rival factions, but you rarely outrun your own pride.
35:29
Speaker 1: So true we have to remind everyone, as the legal
35:32
analysis clearly states that Dwayne Keftiegen Davis has pleaded not
35:37
guilty and is legally presumed innocent until proving guilty in
35:41
a court of law. Always important to state, but his
35:44
current situation, sitting in a cell complaining about the food
35:47
while awaiting trial for the biggest case in Las Vegas history,
35:50
serves as a stark, glaring reminder for all of you listening.
35:54
Speaker 2: It's a cautionary tale.
35:55
Speaker 1: Think about the things you put out into the world.
35:58
Your words, your boasts, your attempts to shape your own
36:01
narrative in books, on podcasts, or on social media. They
36:05
have permanent weight. You cannot easily erase what you've proudly
36:08
published when the context suddenly changes and a detective is
36:12
reading your own book back to you.
36:13
Speaker 2: The digital and physical footprints of our own egos are
36:16
often the most durable evidence we leave behind.
36:19
Speaker 1: And that leaves us with a final provocative thought to Mullover.
36:22
We live in an incredibly true crime obsessed culture.
36:25
Speaker 2: Right now, oh absolutely obsessed.
36:27
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to monetize their past, tell their side of
36:30
the story, get a lucrative book deal, or sit down
36:33
for a viral podcast interview. If a twenty seven year
36:36
old mystery like the murder of Tupac Shakur can be
36:40
blown wide open simply because the prime suspect wanted to
36:43
be famous for.
36:44
Speaker 2: It, it makes you wonder.
36:45
Speaker 1: It does how many other cold cases are just sitting
36:48
there in filing cabinets right now, waiting for the perpetrator
36:51
to finally step up to a microphone and convict themselves.
36:54
Speaker 2: It makes you wonder how many of those glued shut
36:57
puzzle boxes are still out there with the person who's
37:00
sealed them, just waiting for the right host to ask
37:02
them how they.
37:02
Speaker 1: Did it exactly. The box sits there in the dark
37:05
for twenty seven years, and all it takes is a
37:07
little bit of pride to pop it wide open.