Keefe D says Diddy had no role in the Tupac Shakur murder trial

Keefe D has denied that Diddy had any role in the killing of Tupac Shakur, in a jailhouse interview with reporter Vanessa Murphy for 8 News Now. Asked directly whether Diddy was involved in Tupac's September 1996 murder in Las Vegas, Keefe D answered, "No, ma'am. I don't think so at all."

That denial reverses a claim Keefe D made on tape in 2008, when he said Diddy had offered him $1 million to kill Tupac and Suge Knight. A judge has ruled that prosecutors may use that 2008 recording during Keefe D's own trial, after rejecting his argument that investigators had promised him immunity.

AllHipHop has previously reported that Keefe D said he sent an associate, Eric "Von Zip" Martin, to collect the alleged payment, and that Martin denied receiving it before another associate later told Keefe D that Martin had in fact been paid and kept the money for himself. Keefe D has said losing out on that payment was part of what pushed him to cooperate with investigators about the killing.

During a 2022 interview on the Art of Dialogue YouTube channel, Keefe D had publicly appealed to Diddy for help, referencing the nickname "Brother Love" and asking him to show some love. His latest denial offers no explanation for how it squares with those earlier statements, leaving two sharply different accounts from the same man on the record.

Diddy has denied any involvement in Tupac's death, has never been charged in connection with the murder, and was never publicly named a suspect by Las Vegas police. Keefe D, for his part, also denied killing Tupac or the Notorious B.I.G. in the same interview. Prosecutors instead accuse Keefe D himself of supplying the gun and directing retaliation after Tupac fought Orlando Anderson inside the MGM Grand.

It comes during a busy stretch of hip-hop legal news around Diddy and the Tupac Shakur case: Diddy recently accused Lil Rod of feeding stolen footage to a 50 Cent documentary, and the Tupac Shakur murder trial itself opened in Las Vegas later that month. Jury selection in Keefe D's own trial over Tupac's killing began August 10, and he faces life imprisonment without parole if convicted of orchestrating the murder.