{"id":1038237,"date":"2026-09-02T05:25:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1038237\/"},"modified":"2026-09-02T05:25:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T05:25:14","slug":"he-investigated-tupacs-murder-keffe-d-verdict-feels-like-vindication","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1038237\/","title":{"rendered":"He Investigated Tupac’s Murder. Keffe D Verdict \u2018Feels Like Vindication’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tGreg Kading paced the floor of his Southern California living room Monday, a bottle of champagne at the ready, as he waited for a courtroom livestream to carry the verdict in the Tupac<\/a> Shakur murder trial. The former Los Angeles police detective led a task force that investigated the unsolved killings of Shakur and Christopher \u201cNotorious B.I.G.\u201d Wallace, and he\u2019s widely credited with helping crack the decades-old Shakur case.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen jurors returned after just three hours and convicted former Compton gang leader Duane \u201cKeffe D\u201d Davis<\/a> of first-degree murder in the 1996 drive-by shooting of Shakur<\/a>, Kading popped the cork with his wife and adult son. They \u201cpolished off the whole bottle\u201d in celebration, Kading tells Rolling Stone.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was really kind of surprised, shocked even, that it came back that quickly,\u201d Kading says, speaking by phone. \u201cWhen they gave the guilty verdict, I was just like, finally, yes. [The jurors] really got it. They were able to see through all the smoke, to see this case for what it is: Basically, Keffe talked himself into prison.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKading, 63, is among a small group of people most responsible for setting in motion the events that ultimately put Davis in the defendant\u2019s chair for the closely watched two-week trial. In 2008, he and another task force detective, Daryn Dupree, suspected Davis knew something about the killing of the Notorious B.I.G. and approached him in his garage with an offer. Davis could potentially avoid a life sentence in a separate drug trafficking case by cooperating and telling investigators what he knew.<\/p>\n

\n\tDavis denied any role in Biggie\u2019s killing. But then, according to Dupree\u2019s testimony at trial, he startled the detectives by saying, \u201cWe did the other one.\u201d Davis later sat for a surreptitiously recorded and highly pivotal proffer interview<\/a> with his lawyer present. On the recording, Davis described riding in a car with three other men, including his nephew Orlando \u201cBaby Lane\u201d Anderson, when they spotted Shakur in a black BMW driven by Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight<\/a> in Las Vegas on Sept. 7. 1996. Davis said he passed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to the back seat before Anderson opened fire amid an escalating feud between Davis\u2019 South Side Compton Crips and the Mob Piru Bloods, a rival gang associated with Shakur and Knight.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe proffer meant Davis\u2019 statements during the interview couldn\u2019t be used as evidence in a criminal case. But after Kading left the LAPD in 2010, disillusioned by the effective dismantling of the task force, he published a book titled Murder Rap: The Untold Story of the Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur<\/a> Murder Investigations. The self-published book revealed contents of Davis\u2019 confession and led to a documentary. Prosecutors argued Monday that Kading\u2019s disclosures angered Davis. They said Davis couldn\u2019t resist trying to reclaim the narrative by speaking out in a BET docuseries<\/a> and on the popular hip-hop shows The Art of Dialogue and VladTV.<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce Davis gave his account publicly, he waived his right to the protections of his proffer, the judge on his trial eventually ruled. He was arrested in 2023 and has been in custody ever since. His sentencing is set for Oct. 13.<\/p>\n

\n\tKading was on standby as a potential witness during the trial, so he avoided watching the testimony, he said. After learning he would not be called, he tuned in for closing arguments and heard a prosecutor push back against defense claims that Kading was a \u201cdisgraced\u201d former officer who had \u201cstolen\u201d his investigative files when he left the department.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s no evidence that Greg Kading did anything wrong,\u201d Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo told the jury in some of his final comments before they started deliberating. \u201cAs a private citizen, he wrote a book like every other ex-cop who had a high-profile case.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\tKading says he greatly appreciated DiGiacomo\u2019s statements. And when the jury verdict came, he was relieved and gratified. \u201cIt feels like vindication,\u201d Kading said. \u201cWe\u2019re never going to be able to overcome all the ridiculous conspiracy theories. So many people have lost the ability to think critically. But now it\u2019s etched in stone for all of history that this is not an unsolved case. It\u2019s a prosecuted case with a conviction, and so there\u2019s justice. It sets history straight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe says while the defense\u2019s \u201cfalse allegations\u201d against him felt \u201cpersonal,\u201d there was little he could do because they were made in court, where lawyers are generally protected from defamation claims for their statements. \u201cObviously I didn\u2019t steal the file. If I had stolen the files, there would have been consequences,\u201d Kading says. He made copies of investigative materials, he explains, and an Internal Affairs investigation later found the allegation that he stole anything \u201cpatently false.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKading also disputes the defense claim that he broke a promise to Davis by publishing his book. \u201cThere was never an agreement we were going to keep everything secret,\u201d he says. \u201cWe never promised Keffe D any kind of anonymity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKading says Davis is the one who ultimately undermined the protections of the agreement by speaking publicly about the killing himself. \u201cHis understanding of it all absolutely backfired on him,\u201d Kading said.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Kading learned that prosecutors had played the entire 2008 interview in court, he said the experience was \u201ca little bit bittersweet.\u201d He was not embarrassed, exactly, but he maintained he did not know the meeting was being recorded and would have conducted it more formally if he had. \u201cEverybody\u2019s talking at the same time. You can\u2019t make half the stuff out,\u201d he said. \u201cBut thank God it was recorded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKading also rejected defense arguments that the prosecution\u2019s account was implausible because Davis was not immediately killed in retaliation and because Knight later paid Anderson to testify on his behalf at a probation violation hearing. Kading says the \u201cpolitics of gang life\u201d were more complicated than that. Davis retreated to the safety of his Compton neighborhood, where he had protection, he explains. Knight, meanwhile, knew he and Death Row Records were \u201cspiraling down\u201d after Shakur\u2019s death and had a more immediate interest in avoiding prison for a probation violation, Kading says.<\/p>\n

\n\tKnight \u201ccalculated that he had to play nice with an enemy and even pay an enemy\u201d so he could \u201cfirst take care of the business of keeping [himself] out of prison,\u201d Kading says. <\/p>\n

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\n\tLooking back, everything that happened led to the right result, eventually, in his mind. \u201cI have no regrets whatsoever, none,\u201d he says. \u201cEverything worked out as good as I could possibly imagine. If I didn\u2019t go public with the case, Keffe D never talks. And if he never talks, we never get a prosecution. It\u2019s really weird how everything needed to happen the way it did for us to get where we are today. Keffe D could be in prison on drug charges, and that would be it. Tupac\u2019s case would still be out there just floating around in the stratosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKading says he now works in the field of private investigations and life is good. \u201cCosmically, what happens when you take a stand for truth, and you take a stand for justice, and when you are willing to maybe even take risks in order to pursue those things, it somehow pays dividends,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you try to live as righteously as you can, somehow the universe blesses you in return.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Greg Kading paced the floor of his Southern California living room Monday, a bottle of champagne at the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1038238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[29],"tags":[69714,171,975,15732,107627,31838,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1038237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-courts-and-crime","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-suge-knight","tag-tupac","tag-tupac-shakur","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117199786874050129","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1038237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1038237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1038238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1038237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1038237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1038237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}