A white Cadillac on the strip, gang members from rival labels, a Glock .40 passing hands. Boom, boom, boom.
Saturday, September 7th, 1996. After attending the Mike Tyson/Bruce Seldon fight, Tupac Shakur was shot four times while sitting in a BMW at the intersection of Flamingo and Koval, just a block off the Vegas Strip. A white Cadillac pulled alongside the BMW, and multiple shots were fired—four hitting Tupac. Six days later, on Friday, September 13th, he’s dead.
How does a high-profile murder happen in Vegas? Not broad daylight, but close. In one of the most populated, policed, and surveilled cities in the country, on fight night, with the shooter getting away—it doesn’t just defy explanation, it suspends disbelief.
No solid leads. Just a wide range of conflicting theories. One suggested it was retaliation for a fight in the MGM Grand lobby, just hours before Tupac was shot. Security footage shows Tupac and his entourage attacking a man later identified as Orlando Anderson. Investigators didn’t buy it. Las Vegas police Lieutenant Larry Spinosa stated, “At this point, Orlando Anderson is not a suspect in the shooting of Tupac Shakur.” According to a Los Angeles Times article, police discounted Anderson due to the short time between the brawl and the shooting.
Last year, Las Vegas police arrested Duane “Keffe D” Davis, Orlando Anderson’s uncle, for his alleged role in Tupac’s murder. Keffe D had already confessed to the killing in a 2019 memoir and online interviews—confessions that led directly to his arrest. But as his trial approaches on November 4th, he denies everything. His defense? The confession was just fiction—stories spun for profit. Nothing real, an arrest built on a story.
The events in Vegas—witness testimony, surveillance footage, conspicuous gaps in evidence, and an arrest based on confession—show that facts alone aren’t enough to solve this case. Even when the facts seem clear, as in the footage of Orlando Anderson after the fight, surrounded by Los Angeles and Compton police:
What are they doing in Vegas, out of jurisdiction, after a Tyson fight, standing in the MGM Grand? Isn’t that Compton officer Bobby Ladd, facing Orlando? LA detective Greg Kading, by the elevator bank? County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Reggie Wright Sr., arms crossed at the edge of the crowd? And Kevin Gaines, in a white hat, in plain view? The same men who would later pin Tupac’s murder on Orlando—standing right there in front of him, as if the whole night was already written.
Now, 28 years later, this show opens on the same day—a Saturday, September 7th. The 2024 calendar mirrors 1996 exactly, the same day, the same date. It feels like more than a coincidence—it feels like a conspiracy. It doesn’t just remind us of the unanswered questions from that night—it provides an answer.
Detective Russell Poole, who spent years working on this case and the murder of Notorious B.I.G., once said, “You got to think to yourself, ‘Who could do this and get away with it? Cops.’” Poole died suddenly of a heart attack in 2015 while discussing the case at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
Clynton Lowry is an artist based in New York and Los Angeles. He is the creator and editor of Art Handler, as well as the founder of Jobs.art, an international listings website for the art community.
Lowry received his MFA in Painting from Yale School of Art and his BA in English from UC Berkeley.