Tonight, Season 1 of USA Network’s scripted true crime series “Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and The Notorious B.I.G.” will end with an episode titled “Unsolved?” That sounds about right for creator Kyle Long, who believes it is actually pretty obvious what happened here. At least in the case of the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.
“I would say, in regards to the Tupac murder, I think it’s — you know — very clear what happened,” Long told TheWrap in an interview last week. “There’s elements of it that are questionable, but certainly Keffe D and the Southside Crips killed Tupac Shakur. And it is outrageous that Keffe D is not in jail. And that should be in the article.”
“In the [‘Unsolved’] finale, when you see why the whole Keffe D thing, how he had immunity and that — long story short, in real life and in the television show, he had immunity to make this confession to the task force,” Long said of the Southside Crips member and the late Orlando Anderson’s uncle, real name Duane Keith Davis. “When the task force fell apart he still had immunity.”
“But this guy, this year — no one is talking about this, but I guess people just don’t care about Tupac Shakur, a young black man — he, this guy goes on a documentary this year and tells a version of the same story, he tries to go all cute and say, ‘I don’t know who triggered there,’” Long said. “But he talked about being in the car with the Crips, they specifically went to hunt [Tupac] down and then Tupac gets shot, you just have to say who pulled the trigger.”
However, Long says it ultimately “doesn’t matter that he doesn’t say who pulled the trigger.”
“He went live on television and confessed to being an accessory to murder and the Las Vegas PD, as far as I know, is doing nothing about it,” Long continued. “And I just think it’s outrageous. I just don’t understand it. It makes me upset. And it’s just crazy town to me. It is so wild that a guy can — and I don’t know what kind of lawyer he has telling him to go on this television show and talk about it, but you know, it’s crazy. So that’s my rant about Keffe D and the Tupac murder, like to me, that murder, you could go arrest someone for that right now.”
Long is referencing an episode of BET’s “Death Row Chronicles” docuseries which aired in February and featured interviews with Davis and former LAPD detective Greg Kading about Shakur’s murder.
Kading, who wrote the book “Murder Rap: The Untold Story of Biggie Smalls & Tupac Shakur Murder Investigations,” is one of the key characters in the show “Unsolved” (played by Josh Duhamel), as he led investigations into the murders of Shakur and Christopher Wallace aka Biggie Smalls. He is also a co-executive producer on the USA series.
Multiple attempts by TheWrap to reach Davis for comment for this story were unsuccessful. All phone calls made to numbers associated with Davis went unreturned or led to disconnected lines. Emails sent to addresses associated with Davis and his relatives went unanswered. Both BET and NBCUniversal did not have current contact information for Davis. Attempts to locate contact information for Davis through arrest records and to reach Wayne Higgins — an attorney who is listed in court documents as having previously represented Davis — were also unsuccessful.
“Unsolved” chronicles the stories of the police investigations led by Kading (Josh Duhamel) and Detective Russell Poole (Jimmi Simpson) into the murders of Tupac Shakur (Marcc Rose) and Biggie Smalls (Wavyy Jonez).
Long penned the script and executive produces along with director Anthony Hemingway (“The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”) and Mark Taylor.
See a clip of Davis on the “Death Row Chronicles” above.
The season 1 finale of “Unsolved” airs Tuesday at 10/9 c on USA.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this story.