The murder of hip hop legend Tupac Shakur has been left unsolved for decades. However, with the first date of his murder trial occurring yesterday (August 17th), the truth behind the tragedy may finally be revealed. Former gang leader Duane “Keffe D” Davis has been accused of allegedly orchestrating the murder of Tupac hours after the rapper’s altercation with Davis’s nephew, Orlando Anderson. Davis has since pleaded not guilty and has denied all accusations, per NME.

​Tupac was shot on September 7 of 1996, as he was traveling from a Mike Tyson boxing match, when a car pulled up beside him and opened fire. Six days later, he died from his injuries.

​On the first day of trial, the prosecution used Davis’s 2019 memoir Compton Street Legend to prove the former gang leader’s alleged involvement. In it, Davis claims he was a passenger in the car that shot at Tupac and provided his nephew with the gun used in the incident.

​“Let’s be clear, Duane Davis did not pull the trigger,” Chief Deputy District Attorney Binu Palal said. “But he did plan the shooting in retaliation for the beating of his nephew. Remarkably, you will learn that from Duane Davis himself.”

​The defense has refuted these claims and says that the accusations against Davis stem from a “biased, sloppy and incomplete” police investigation into the murder. Davis himself claimed that many aspects of his memoir were fictionalized to boost sales.

​The witnesses that testified on the first day of the trials included Garry Dale, a former member of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, and Ingrid Stokes, who allegedly ran into Tupac on the night of his murder.

​As an officer on the force at the time of the killing, Dale detailed how he rode in the ambulance with the rapper and how Tupac refused to share any details about who could’ve been involved. In Stokes’s testimony, she recalled driving behind Tupac’s car with a friend in hopes of going to the same club as him. During this attempt, however, she explains how a car behind them allegedly tried to get in front of them. This caused her and her friend to pull over out of concern, and they eventually heard gunshots.

​The trial is scheduled to proceed in the coming weeks.