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Tupac Shakur's accused killer was out for 'revenge', jury hears

AFP · back to the audit

Rapper Tupac Shakur was shot dead in an act of gang revenge ordered by a mobster who later boasted of it, jurors heard Monday, as one of America's most anticipated trials got under way, 30 years after the murder.

Duane "Keffe D" Davis, a one-time leader of the South Side Compton Crips, one of a patchwork of gangs that ran parts of Los Angeles in the 1990s, ordered the killing after his nephew had been beaten by a rival mob, prosecutor Binu Pilal told a Las Vegas court.

Davis, 63, denies all charges in the trial, which could last over a month. If convicted, he faces possible life in prison without parole.

In the book, he recounted that he was in the front seat of the Cadillac and that he handed a pistol to those in the back seat. But he does not say who opened fire on Shakur. Everyone else who was in the Cadillac that night is now dead.

Davis has since backtracked, insisting the claims were bluster and were created by a ghostwriter to sell books. He has pleaded not guilty.