Ex-gang leader accused of killing US hip-hop star Tupac Shakur refused bail

A Las Vegas judge has again rejected a request to free an ailing former Los Angeles-area gang leader accused over the 1996 killing of hip-hop star Tupac Shakur, saying she suspects a cover-up related to the sources of the funds for his bond.

The decision from Clark District Court Judge Carli Kierny came after an attorney for Duane “Keffe D” Davis said he would provide additional financial records to prove that Davis and the music record executive offering to underwrite his 750,000 dollar (£566,000) bail are not planning to reap profits from the sale of Davis’s life story and that the money was legally obtained.

“I have a sense that things are trying to be covered up,” Judge Kierny said, adding that she was left with more questions than answers after receiving two identical letters apparently from the entertainment company that music record executive Cash “Wack 100” Jones says wired him the funds.

Judge Kierny said one of the letters was signed with a name that does not have any ties to the company.

Davis has sought to be released since shortly after his September 2023 arrest, which made him the only person to be charged with a crime over a killing that for nearly three decades has drawn intense interest and speculation.

Prosecutors allege that the gunfire that killed Shakur in Las Vegas stemmed from competition between East Coast members of a Bloods gang sect and West Coast groups of a Crips sect, including Davis, for dominance in a genre known at the time as “gangsta rap”.

Judge Kierny previously rejected Davis’s bid to have Jones put up 112,500 dollars (£85,000) to obtain Davis’s 750,000 dollar bail bond, saying she was not convinced that Davis and Jones were not planning to profit. She also said she could not determine if Jones was serving as a “middleman” on behalf of another unnamed person.

Nevada has a law, sometimes called a “slayer statute”, that prohibits convicted killers from profiting from their crimes.

Jones, who has managed artists including Johnathan “Blueface” Porter and Jayceon “The Game” Taylor, testified in June that he wanted to put up money because Davis was fighting cancer and had “always been a monumental person in our community … especially the urban community”.

Davis has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder. Also on Tuesday, Judge Kierny pushed back the start of Davis’s trial from November 4 to March 17.

He and prosecutors say he is the only person still alive who was in a car from which shots were fired into another car nearly 28 years ago, killing Shakur and wounding rap music mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.