Tupac’s Father Says a Verdict Cannot Settle the Questions Around His Son’s Death

For Billy Garland, the conviction of Duane “Keffe D” Davis does not close the book on Tupac Shakur’s death. In a new interview with The Art of Dialogue, Tupac’s biological father reacts to Davis’ conviction in Las Vegas and to public comments Garland believes have treated his son’s killing as spectacle rather than tragedy.

Garland speaks from the position of a parent who watched his son’s death become one of hip-hop’s defining mysteries. He describes Davis’ joking references to the 1996 shooting as deeply disrespectful, particularly after years in which the case has been revisited through documentaries, memoirs, interviews and internet speculation. For Garland, the pain is not abstract: it is tied to a son he knew for only a limited period of his life and lost at 25.

The interview arrives days after a Las Vegas jury found Davis guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon. Prosecutors argued that Davis organized a retaliatory attack after Tupac and Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight were involved in a confrontation with Davis’ nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, at the MGM Grand earlier that night. Davis was not accused of firing the fatal shots. The prosecution’s case centered on his repeated accounts placing him inside the white Cadillac from which the gunfire came and describing his role in obtaining or passing along the weapon. He is scheduled to be sentenced on October 13, 2026.

Garland’s reaction makes clear why the verdict has not produced uncomplicated closure. The jury resolved a criminal case, but it did not answer every question that has followed Tupac’s death since September 7, 1996. Garland continues to question the accepted account of who fired the shots and whether Davis’ public statements tell the whole story. Those views are his own and have not been established as findings in court, but they help explain the emotional force of his response after the conviction.

He also revisits Tupac’s final days, including his belief that doctors thought there was a chance his son could survive the shooting. Garland raises concerns about Tupac’s condition in the hospital and describes observations that have continued to trouble him since the rapper died six days after being wounded. The comments are personal recollections, not new medical findings presented in the trial, but they reveal how the official timeline has never fully settled Garland’s private doubts.

The history between father and son adds another layer to the conversation. Garland, a former Black Panther, was absent for much of Tupac’s childhood and was not the father figure Tupac publicly associated with his upbringing. That role was more closely connected to Mutulu Shakur, Afeni Shakur’s husband and an important influence in Tupac’s early life. Garland and Tupac reconnected as adults, including after Tupac was shot in New York in 1994, but their relationship had little time to develop before Tupac’s death.

Garland later recalled a final phone conversation in which Tupac invited him to spend Thanksgiving with the family. They never got that chance. The detail gives the new interview its weight: Garland is not discussing a distant cultural symbol, but a son whose life was interrupted before a complicated relationship could become something more settled.

That is why the Davis verdict lands differently for Garland than it does for the broader public. Tupac’s murder has long been consumed as a piece of hip-hop mythology, complete with rivalries, theories and competing versions of the night. Garland’s testimony pulls the story back toward its human center. A conviction may establish legal responsibility, but it cannot restore the conversations father and son never finished or erase the grief that has followed the family for three decades.