Las Vegas Police Serve Search Warrant in Tupac Murder Investigation

Las Vegas police have searched a home in connection with the investigation into the murder of Tupac Shakur.

In a statement shared with Rolling Stone, the LVMPD said “a search warrant was served” in nearby Henderson, Nevada, Monday, July 17. Though the police said the warrant was “part of the ongoing Tupac Shakur homicide investigation,” they declined to offer any further details. “We will have no further comment at this time,” the statement concluded.

The Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, run by the late rapper’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur did not immediately return a request for comment.

Tupac was shot on Sept. 7, 1996, in Las Vegas while en route to a nightclub following a Mike Tyson fight with Death Row Records co-founder Suge Knight. While Knight and Shakur’s car was idling at a stoplight, a white Cadillac pulled up next to their vehicle on the passenger side, and an unidentified gunman fired 14 shots. Shakur was hit four times and died several days later, on Sept. 13, 1996. 

No arrests were ever made in connection to the killing. An early suspect was identified as Orlando Anderson, an alleged Crips gang member with whom Shakur had had a run-in earlier that night after the boxing match. Members of the entourage following Knight and Shakur’s car even told police that Anderson fired the shots. Anderson, however, was eventually killed in an unrelated gang shooting, and no other leads emerged. (Tupac’s death is, of course, tightly tied in the cultural mythos with the murder of Notorious B.I.G. a few months later; that case also remains unsolved.) 

The search warrant served in Henderson is arguably the biggest development in the unsolved homicide in years. Though numerous investigations, books, and pretty wild conspiracy theories have sprouted up over the years, the LVMPD appeared to make little public progress in solving the case.

One of the last times the case garnered a public statement from the LVMPD was in 2018 after former gang member Keefe D (real name Duane Keith Davis) claimed on an episode of BET’s Death Row Chronicles that he knew who killed Shakur. Davis didn’t reveal any names; he also did not deny that Anderson — his late nephew — could have been the killer. 

In response, the LVMPD said, “We are aware of the statements made in a BET interview regarding the Tupac case. As a result of those statements, we have spent the last several months reviewing the case in its entirety. Various reports that an arrest warrant is about to be submitted are inaccurate. This case still remains an open homicide case.”