Diddy named 77 times by prosecutors in Tupac Shakur murder document as suspect accuses him of ordering hit on rapper
RAP mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs faces questions about his alleged involvement in the murder of Tupac Shakur after being mentioned more than 70 times in prosecutors’ latest legal filing.
Combs has been accused by the man currently being prosecuted for the murder – gangster Duane “Keefe D” Davis – of paying $1 million for Tupac’s assassination, according to the latest court papers obtained by The U.S. Sun.
It is not yet known if Diddy will be subpoenaed or even indicted as part of the murder case – as prosecutors hope to finally obtain justice for the iconic rapper, who was gunned down in Las Vegas 27 years ago on September 7, 1996.
The U.S. Sun has reached out to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office for comment on Combs’ alleged involvement in the case.
It is the latest legal headache for Combs, whose houses were raided back in March as part of a federal sex trafficking investigation.
Diddy also faces multiple lawsuits from women accusing him of sexual assault and sex trafficking. He has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
Combs has previously stated he had nothing to do with Pac’s murder – but his representatives did not comment on the latest Tupac filing when approached by The U.S. Sun.
In papers filed on Thursday, Combs is named a total of 77 times by his various pseudonyms including Puffy, Puff Daddy, Puff and his real name Sean Combs.
He is first mentioned as prosecutors explain the “deadly rivalry” which existed between Combs’s Bad Boy Records on the East Coast and Death Row Records on the West Coast, headed up by Marion “Suge” Knight, leading up to Pac’s shooting.
The documents allege that after the shooting, suspect Keefe flew to New York with an Los Angeles police task force to pose undercover and try to gather incriminating evidence against Combs and another gangster Eric “Zip” Martin over the murder.
The documents state: “Task Force Detectives believed they had jurisdiction to investigate a Nevada homicide because Defendant asserted that the conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric “Zip” Martin, and Sean Combs.”
Combs is mentioned again when prosecutors allege: “Defendant [Keefe] has asserted publicly that he only told on himself and wasn’t trying to provide evidence against anyone else in his conversations with police.
“However, this statement belies this claim, as he suggested that Sean Combs paid Eric Von Martin a million dollars for the killings.”
The documents include transcripts and summaries of various police and media interviews given by Keefe before his arrest last year in which he repeats allegations about Combs’s involvement in the murder.
In one summary of a YouTube interview, prosecutors say: “When Sean Combs reaches out to Defendant wondering if South Side Crips were responsible for Shakur’s death by asking, ‘is that us?’, Defendant, beaming with pride, answers, ‘yes.’
I wish I never met Puff Daddy, period. I swear to God…He messed up my life, man.
Keefe D
Combs is then named multiple times as part of a transcript of a “Surreptitiously Recorded Interview” with Keefe carried out by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police in 2009, and included in the 179-page filing.
In the transcript, Keefe alleges he and his gang of South Side Crips were “friends” with Combs and the hip hop mogul wanted Knight and Tupac dead.
He then claims his gangster pals drove by Tupac and Knight in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson fight “accidently” and his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson shot at them both.
Police asked Keefe: “Puffy Combs….Does he play a role in this thing?…” and Keefe replies: “Yeah, I think he did.”
Keefe goes on to allege that Puffy told him and a group of about 45 people how he “would give anything” for Knight’s “head” because he was “scared” of him and also had a problem with Tupac after he had released a diss track about him.
In the same transcript, Keefe also alleges that Combs was discussed the night of the shooting, with Keefe saying: “I knew we was like damn, we can get paid now.”
‘PAID BY PUFFY’
When questioned further and asked by police: “When you said paid, paid by Puffy, right?” Keefe replied “Yeah”, according to the court documents.
Keefe goes on to claim to cops that Combs paid the money due for the Tupac hit to Zip – and didn’t return his calls when he tried to ask for the money to be paid to him.
He then expresses regret that Tupac was dead, and adds: “I wish I never met Puff Daddy, period. I swear to God…He messed up my life, man. I was, I was rich, up under the radar, all that, man…it’s all gone.”
The document was filed by prosecutors in a bid to oppose Keefe’s bail request.
Why it’s taken so long for justice in the Tupac Shakur case
By The Sun’s Senior Reporter Emma Parry, who has been reporting on the Tupac murder for the past 10 years
TUPAC fans have been waiting for justice for the iconic rapper for almost 28 years.
Finally in September 2023 there appeared to be progress with the arrest of Duane “Keefe D” Davis – a former Southside Crip gangster from Compton, LA – who had been telling the world for years that he and his fellow “gang soldiers” were responsible for the hit.
I’ve been reporting on the case for several years and it always appeared pretty cut and dry…Keefe had spent the past decade gaining notoriety by boasting about his alleged involvement in the shooting – now he was finally getting what he deserves. But despite Keefe running his mouth for years, I now believe a guilty verdict in November’s trial is far from guaranteed.
Keefe describes in great detail in his memoir Compton Street Legend what went down the night Pac was shot, extracts from which The U.S. Sun has published.
He claimed that he was offered a million dollars by rapper Diddy to “handle” Tupac and Suge Knight and when he and his Crip gangsters came across the pair driving near the Strip in Las Vegas on September 7, 1996, Keefe alleged he passed the gun to his nephew Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson who took the shot. Keefe said if Pac had been on his side: “I would have blast”.
Keefe repeated the claims multiple times over the years, on YouTube channels, documentaries, and even in taped confessions to police, when he believed he could not be prosecuted. In one confession to the LAPD, Keefe appeared completely remorseless telling detectives: “We didn’t give a f**k…The ambulance [for Tupac] was parked right here next to us. That s**t was as funny as a motherf**ker.”
The Sun has been publishing stories about Keefe’s self confessed involvement in the crime since 2018.
I sent many links to his confessions to Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, asking them why this man had not been arrested yet. They would thank me for the info but say that they could not comment because the case was still active. From the outside, it looked like no action was being taken at all.
We spoke to former detectives involved in the case and documentary makers who all felt utterly frustrated at the lack of progress in the case. We even published a plea from former LAPD detective Greg Kading, who had probed the murders, urging Las Vegas cops to arrest Keefe, back in 2020.
For years, the case appeared to have been forgotten and ignored, to be left forever unsolved.
But finally, in the summer of 2023, we got word from our sources that there had been a huge development in the case. A secret grand jury was due to be held on whether or not Keefe should be indicted. I was dubious at first but around the same time a house in Henderson, Nevada, linked to Keefe, was raided in July as part of the Tupac investigation.
Things were heating up.
Later that summer, behind closed doors, jurors listened to hours of testimony from former cops, detectives, and coroners involved in the Tupac case and gangsters and associates of Keefe’s and Pac’s from back in the day. They were shown graphic photos of Tupac’s bullet-ridden body. After days of evidence, they decided there was enough evidence to prosecute Keefe.
Once the secret documents were released I poured over the transcripts. While interesting, many of the witnesses were telling stories they’d heard second-hand. None of the prosecution witnesses had a clear look at who shot Pac. One witness Devonta Lee claimed another gangster called Big Dre took the shot – not Orlando. Maybe things weren’t as clear-cut as I first thought.
Keefe was then arrested on September 30, 2023 at his home. Bodycam footage we obtained from the scene showed Keefe bragging to cops even as he was handcuffed in the back of a police car – telling officers he was involved in the “biggest case in Las Vegas history”.
Following Keefe’s multiple appearances in court, he seems to have lost much of that bravado and now cuts a sad, lonely figure.
Suffering from various health problems as a result of cancer, he’s struggling to cope with the brutalities of jail life and can’t get together enough money to afford his bail. He feels some of his old Southside Crip associates – men he handed wads of cash to in his glory days, have just abandoned him.
Keefe is now desperate to get out of jail, and his defense stems is leaning on his claim that he completely made up his involvement in the Tupac murder for fame and money. He saw other people cashing in on the murder so he thought he would too. He reckons his confessions to police were all lies – he made it up because he was under a plea deal and thought it would help him beat his other charges.
And, according to his lawyer Carl Arnold, he wasn’t even in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting. Arnold remains convinced he will see his client walk free and their secret weapon could be former Death Row Records boss Suge.
As the only other person still alive from either car, Suge, currently in prison for a fatal hit and run, would be a key witness. Suge is the only person still alive who knows what went down – he saw the shooter. While he’s said he won’t testify at the November trial, Suge has claimed in a TMZ interview from prison that Orlando was not the shooter, which again throws into doubt Keefe’s version of events.
Keefe and his lawyer are hoping they might be able to change his mind and persuade him to testify for the defense. And Suge holds the power to blow the prosecution’s case apart.
And if Keefe walks free, will there ever be justice for Pac?
Keefe’s $112,500 bail bond was rejected last month over concerns about the source of the money – music producer Cash “Wack 100” Jones -and whether he and Keefe had been discussing selling the gangster’s life story to TV producers.
A bail reconsideration hearing in the case will take place on Tuesday.
Keefe’s lawyer Carl Arnold has not yet commented on the latest filing by the prosecution.
But previously he had told The U.S. Sun that he was optimistic Keefe would be freed at his next hearing – and stated that the former gangster should be allowed to make money from TV and movie deals before his trial in November.
The U.S. Sun first reported allegations that Diddy paid $1 million to have Tupac murdered last October and then exclusively released an explosive audio tape of Keefe’s claims earlier this year.