Josh Margolin
Appearances
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
The room that he was allowed to remain in, the room where he was being held, At one point he was held in a bedroom, then he was held in a storage room. It becomes more and more like a cell, basically. Right, and when the fire department and the ambulance comes in the night of the fire, the room that he had been occupying that had the slide bolt lock on the door
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
was a storage room that they described as being roughly eight by nine feet. And that it had some sort of, you know, angular ceiling. Presumably it was like, you know, top floor of the house. And it was, but it gave the effect of really being much more like a cell than a bedroom or a living space.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
No, there were accounts in the local paper, accounts from neighbors that said that the neighbors didn't even know that there was a son in the family. Apparently they knew that there were daughters. And of course begs the question, why is one child in a home treated differently than others? But they see daughters coming and going, but they don't see a son ever.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
You know, police have been, on the one hand, they've been very eager to share the details of the story that the son told about his life in captivity in order to allow them to effectuate the charging and arrest of the stepmother. Mm-hmm. On the other hand, we still don't have a lot of details. And because the victim thankfully has survived, and he is an adult, there are privacy rules.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
So there is a limit to what they're allowed to say about his medical condition and other things. And there's also a limit to what police tend to want to say in general in a case where they have an active prosecution. As best as we can piece this together, it seems that Sullivan, the stepmother of the alleged victim, she has married the alleged victim's father, his biological father.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
The father is somebody who is wheelchair bound at a certain point, seriously debilitated. In the home at various points also, we understand that Sullivan has two daughters who come and go. It's not clear that they lived there, but they're around, they're seen by neighbors. And it's not clear that there was anybody living in the home besides Sullivan and the stepson at the time of the fire.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
All of that is going to come out as the investigation develops and the prosecution gives more information because we know that the father died. It did appear that his father did give the alleged victims some more liberties to be out of the room and to be able to be out in the house, but it's not clear how much that was.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
There's no evidence that the welfare checks continued. That really is one of the terrible parts of this terrible story. And by the way, this is not unique to this one terrible story. We have covered... people held in captivity previously, and we've done extensive work on this issue, and it's almost like these people just fall off the radar. And let's look at this.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
This man slipped through the cracks for 20 years. Look, the National Home Education Legal Defense Association ranks Connecticut as among the least regulated states for parents or guardians that remove their children from classroom education. There are no homeschooling regulations in Connecticut or any system that's in place to monitor students once they're removed from school for any reason.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
And look, there's a statute... that they will point to in Connecticut that requires the parents be able to show that the child is receiving whatever the equivalent is of instruction at a high school system somewhere in the state or nearby or something. But nothing explains how the state can or would enforce that.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
First of all, she's pleaded not guilty. That's the most important thing, very important to know. And she has been released on bail wearing an ankle bracelet. She's not currently incarcerated. Sullivan's lawyers told the ABC station in the area there, WTNH, that the alleged victim's biological father, who has since died, that he was really at fault.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
The lawyer has said, quote, he, meaning the alleged victim, was not locked in the room. She, meaning Sullivan, did not restrain him in any way. She provided food. She provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations, according to the lawyer. And... The lawyer says additionally that the alleged victim's biological father lived there until recently, quote, he was the biological father.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
He was the one who dictated how his son would be raised. We think as the evidence comes out, you will see that she is not the villain she's made out to be.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
And the lawyer saying that when the time comes to go to court, to go to trial, that the evidence will come out and that will be the story that they bring to the jury.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
You know, look. Cops are used to some very, very bad things, as we know, right? They see people at their very, very worst. They see people who love each other, hurt each other. They see terrible things. They see terrible violence and vicious displays. There's the distinct sense of, coming through the police affidavit that they just don't know what the hell happened here.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
Like how could somebody treat somebody else that way, allegedly? That really is the question at the heart of all of these terrible captivity cases. The way the physical description of this alleged victim, it's not like he missed a meal. He said that he was starving every day of his life. that at most he was given two sandwiches and some water.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
Yes, and again, we have to obviously underscore the fact that nobody has been convicted here and that the stepmother is arguing through her attorneys that she didn't commit a crime, but even if there's no crime committed, something happened to this man And he was denied some amount of human dignity and food and outside access and treatment.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
I'm surprised that this man has been willing to say anything, that he's not just trying to hide from the terrible life that he had. And to his credit, you know, he made a statement recently. And let me read some of it to you. He says, please call me S. This is not the name given to me by my parents when I was born.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
I am choosing a new name for myself and I will use that name as I reclaim control over my life and my future. My name is my choice and it is the first of many choices I will make for myself now that I am free. And he goes on. Much has already been said that tells part of the story of the abuse I endured. Someday, perhaps my whole story will be told.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
overarching in the story. The details here are just so disturbing. And in reading the police affidavit, Typically, police affidavits are dry recitations of fact, and it made me wince, the words on the page. It really is terrible. So a fire was reported at this home in Waterbury, Connecticut. Waterbury is a midsize community on the outer rim of the New York City commuting zone in Connecticut.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
It's got a pretty long, well-known history in the Northeast, was an industrial community. There are some nice parts, some less than nice parts, but it's been rated over the years as a nicer community to live in. So... Fire is reported on February 17th, 2025. This is the night that the fire breaks out in the home in Waterbury and 911 is called. And the fire department comes out.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
It turns out that it's Kimberly Sullivan, who ultimately is charged. And we actually have audio of that 911 call.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
Okay, so panic there. So panic, and firefighters arrive, as you'd expect, and they put the fire out, and there's substantial damage. And, you know, they heard the report in the 911 call that there was a son who was somehow injured in the fire. They get there, and they find a son, and he weighs about 70 pounds.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
So they're thinking that it's a young kid, but pretty quickly they realize this is somebody who is sick. severely emaciated. Now, there are physical things that they're not going to be able to tell immediately just upon finding him there on the floor in the house. But really quickly, once they get him to the ambulance, it is obvious that something else is going on here.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
And they're able to ultimately speak to him. You know, he had suffered some smoke inhalation. So at that point, he really wasn't able to communicate well. But fairly quickly, they realized that what they saw was their eyes weren't fooling them. This is somebody who was severely emaciated.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
This is somebody whose body was going into physical failure, something called a wasting syndrome, where basically the human body begins to shut down and waste away. In the police reports, there's a comparison, the way that he looks to a Holocaust survivor, like all those terrible images that we saw when the concentration camps were liberated in World War II. You said he's 70 pounds. How old is he?
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
He was 31 at the time. He's since turned 32, but he had allegedly been in captivity, according to police reports, since the fourth grade, since he was... 11 years old, we're talking about 20 years of being in captivity. I mean, it's the most awful tale of the tape that I could give you. Apparently all of the teeth in his mouth had rotted. And so the teeth are breaking off.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
He hadn't showered for the estimate is one or two years. Wow. What do police say they find in the house? Most importantly, for what happens next, the police very quickly see that the door is removed from the room where the man had allegedly been held captive. And the door has what appears to be a slide bolt lock.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
They also allegedly find holes in the door and the door frame suggesting that there had been locks, other locks over the course of time. And very clearly in the police affidavit, they say this slide bolt lock is a lock meant to keep somebody in, not to keep somebody out. So this, according to police in a very, very detailed document,
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
This was a situation where the person, this man who had been kept in this room, was kept captive and unable to control his goings and comings.
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The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
ultimately to prosecutors and to the public that the man is fairly clear headed. Certainly his educational level is that of a child. And they talk about his cognitive abilities are that of a child because he basically stopped learning in any real way in the fourth grade. So there are certainly issues, but, but,
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
he really goes into describing a clear-headed plan that develops in the short period of time before the fire is set and the 911 call is placed. So he had a thing of hand sanitizer that he had gotten his hands on. He also had some paper that he had gotten from the house because there were portions of time
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
of varying lengths where he was allowed out of the room at different times of the day or the week to do chores. He had found an old lighter and he kept the lighter secretly somehow. And that's not described by police to this point. He keeps the lighter. So out of desperation on this final fateful day, he decides he is going to light this fire.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
He tells police, he decides that he needs to not only light the fire so that it creates smoke in the house to like set off a smoke detector or something. He needs to light it and let it rage somewhat and catch things on fire in his room so as to be serious enough that his stepmother would be forced to call the fire department.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
Otherwise, he fears that he just would be setting a fire that would be quickly extinguished tamped down and it would have- You need to get out of control to the point where you need outside help. Outsiders need to come. Outsiders need to come.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
As I'm hearing this and reading these documents, it's pretty highly developed for somebody who is allegedly kept in starvation conditions, no contact with anybody else. You know, it's a testament, I think, to the human brain, to the will to live, to the whole fighting for survival mentality
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
of a human being that he comes up with this strategy that ultimately is, is remarkably successful because the outsiders have to come in. The 911 call is placed. The outsiders have to come in. They see it. He has to get medical care. And for the first time in, in God knows how long he's exposed to outsiders to whom he's able to tell this terrible story to, right?
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
So they tell the story as this man, as a child, had been going to school. And the captivity starts as just extreme deprivation for, as a result of him taking food that he wasn't supposed to have in the home. Now, this is obviously according to what he told police. So in elementary school, he gets disciplined, locked in his room.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
And there's already some amount of poor treatment, allegedly, that he's suffering through as a result of taking food he wasn't allowed to take. But what ends up happening is people start asking questions. At that point, he was showering every day or two. He's going to school. He's going to school. Okay. But what's happening is, as you'd expect, he's at school and questions are being asked.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
He was deprived of food, allegedly. So he was asking classmates for food. He was taking classmates' food. He was taking food out of the garbage. This is unbelievable. Obviously not typical, I want your Hershey bar kind of behavior. Right, right. And so the child welfare agency in Connecticut ended up going to the house a couple of times. And it's that...
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
that leads to the man being kept at home and in captivity and not being allowed to go to school. Okay, so it's at this point then that the parents take him out of school. Right. It's not understood right now what leads the alleged captivity and abuse to start when it actually started, other than this issue of him taking food that the stepmother didn't want him to have.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
But we do know, according to the police, What changed in the fourth grade to take him from going to school and interacting with other people to the point of being held alone in captivity.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
Well, there's something of a routine according to the police reports. So what we understand is that his days would end seven o'clock, 7.30 at night. And that's when he would go to sleep and it was fitful sleeps. He wasn't well fed ever. So obviously he wasn't sleeping well. From his description of the room to police, it's not clear that there was even a bed in there.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
At a certain point, there was a black and white television, he said, but he's in the room, 7, 7.30 at night. He sleeps till somewhere between 3 and 4.30 is when he wakes up each day. And some days he's allowed out to do chores. Those chores vary in the length of time he's out of the room, like from 15 minutes on some days to as much as two hours.
20/20
The Crime Scene: 20 Years in Captivity
There was some discussion that at a point he was allowed to clean the stepmother's car outside in the driveway. So he was actually outside. But for the most part, he describes a life of just counting the cars that go by. Wow. So that's how he would spend his days. And it seems that over the course of the years, the conduct grew more extreme.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
And so that leads us to when they raid his home in, what, 2023? So when police come to raid a home with a search warrant, in many ways, that's basically a press conference. That's a public act. They're kind of announcing to the world what they're up to. So they had most of their case locked down, at least the case that they believed they could proceed with.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Tupac Shakur. He was in Las Vegas. He was in a BMW being driven by Suge Knight, the famous larger than life rap mogul, the leader of Death Row Records. Taking us all back to the 90s. And they had just come from a Mike Tyson fight. And Tupac was hanging out the window of the Beamer. They were driving on the strip, off the strip.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
There were a couple of I's they wanted to dot, T's they wanted to cross. They did want to see if he had any guns in the home. And if any of those guns might match ballistics for the shooting, that would be icing on the cake. But yes, so that brings them to the raid. And then soon after the raid, they proceed with the arrest.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So like what happened here? We have been wanting to be able to interview him since he was arrested. It was clear almost from the get-go that they were going to use his own words against him. He was going to be his own worst enemy. The key witness for the prosecution was going to be the guy charged himself. So we obviously wanted to find out, hey man, why did you say all this stuff?
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
They're going to hang you for it. We had not been able to get access. You know, look, lawyers, they don't want their clients talking before trial. They certainly don't want them talking to news organizations because they're worried, you know, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Well, anything you say can and will be used against you.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So they don't want any of that happening. But finally... Kifidi said that he would meet with us and we got special permission to have an in-person interview, not just a Zoom. We were going to be able to interview him one on one sitting in the same room. So we went to Las Vegas with our cameras all ready to go. At the appointed time, the corrections officers escorted him into the room.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
What happened? So we sit down with him. We spend about an hour with him. He talks about a whole range of things. Importantly, Brad, he tells us that he didn't do it, that he is innocent. He says that he was not even in Las Vegas at the time that Tupac was killed. Wait, but he said he... Then what does that do with the story he told everyone? And we got into a lot of stuff. Let me first say this.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
We spent a lot of time talking with him, everything from his history in Compton to the fact that even though he says that he didn't kill Tupac and wasn't part of the killing of Tupac, that Tupac's killing has actually caused a huge problem for his life ever since it happened, which, I mean, look, if he's innocent and he's sitting in jail for a crime he didn't commit, that's bad.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
But we went through it and he had a lot of answers.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He explains them in different ways. He goes back and he says, first, the confessions that he gave to law enforcement. He thought that he had an immunity deal, that he is free and clear from any of that stuff being entered and used against him.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
That's what he's saying. So then the question is, why would you lie if you're being interviewed by police and nothing can be used against you? He says that there was this drug case that had been built against him. And it was not only against him, but there were dozens of other possible defendants. And so he told the lie because there was no penalty for lying.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He just lied to save people from going to jail.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
They had an entourage of cars, both Tupac's security, but also there were fans, groupies, who were following them in their own cars. It was a whole scene. And remember, it's Vegas on a fight night. So it is loud and big and... The world's eyes are on Las Vegas. And then at a red light, shots ring out.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
That's his first explanation about why he told the story confessing. Okay. But he didn't just tell it to law enforcement. Well, right. And then he says the reason why he repeated it in interviews down the road, he says he told that story for money. It was basically entertainment. People wanted to hear the story.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So he told the story, he says, in terms of the memoir, he says not only did he not participate in writing it, he didn't actually read it.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Like, does he point the finger at anyone? He points the finger at somebody that we have interviewed, a guy named Reggie Wright Jr., who is a former Compton police officer who ultimately had worked for Suge Knight doing some security. Reggie is well aware that Keefy D has tried to point the finger at him in the past, and he has a pretty detailed explanation about why that's not accurate. And
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
how he feels about that. He's very disturbed by it, he says.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Kifidi's got a pretty elaborate type of response. He first says he was not even in Las Vegas at the time. He was home in Los Angeles. He says that there are dozens of witnesses who can corroborate his alibi.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He also talks about how he's assured that even though he doesn't like the way that law enforcement works in Las Vegas, that his original confessions to law enforcement are covered by immunity, and that even if he gets convicted in Las Vegas, he's confident the appeals courts are will ultimately reverse any kind of conviction because immunity is immunity is immunity.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Yeah, I was going to say, what's next then for Kifidi legally? So there's a bunch of different things in the legal system that he's facing. First off, Kifidi was involved in a jailhouse fight and he has since been charged with battery. Oftentimes, a jailhouse fight really won't go to trial. They plead it out. It's kind of secondary.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Certainly, somebody who's facing murder charges, a small jailhouse battery accusation is... kind of minor in this case prosecutors are pushing for either a plea where he admits to it or they want to convict him at trial and prosecutors have the strategy in mind that if they can use the jailhouse fight to show that Keefy D is a violent guy. That helps build their case.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Exactly, because just the part of the defense so far has been that even though Keefy might have had drug and other kinds of crimes in his history as a young man, that as an older man, he's no longer a threat to the community. So what prosecutors want to do is they want to show that a guy who's over 60 and has survived cancer, that he's still a threat because he's still violent. So that's the goal.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So he's going to face trial on that count in April 2025. That's the first thing. Second thing is that the judge has set a tentative trial date for February 2026 on the Tupac homicides. Originally, the Tupac homicide was supposed to go to trial this year, first half of this year.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
But the judge, acknowledging the vast amount of evidence, the fact that we're talking about a lot of old files, older people, some complexities, obviously, A lot of people that are connected to the case are no longer alive. The judge gave them a delay until February 2026. And so we're fully expecting that's what the future holds.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Before anyone realizes what has happened, Suge Knight in the driver's seat of the Beamer is injured. He actually would later say that he thought he was dead or going to be dead. And Tupac Shakur is injured very, very seriously, gravely, rushed to a hospital.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
KVD has tried to get out of jail, to get bailed out and to await trial. from home. The judge has been reluctant to go along with that. She's taken issue with the bail packages, quote unquote. It's what they call them, the money that would be supporting the bail. So she's made him sit in jail. That's another thing that he has taken issue with and he raised in our interview.
20/20
The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
It's a little bit hard to say. First off, I cover crime and I still am stunned and unpleasantly surprised that it took so long for law enforcement to be able to make an arrest in this kind of a case. It is a different time. You didn't have the ubiquity of traffic cameras and cell phone cameras. 1996 is a whole different era when it comes to technology. So you didn't have all of that.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
You didn't have people on Twitter immediately saying, hey, this person just got shot on the street. But if we were to take this back in time, let's say, God forbid, that Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
At that time, Tupac Shakur was as big a music act and entertainer as there is. We're talking about Frank Sinatra. For that generation, that's what we're talking about. He was only 25. He had already started appearing in films. He was all over culture. He actually, according to people who know rap music, and by the way, I am not one of those people who know rap music. On the record.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
But according to people who know rap music, he was in the process of of changing the genre, which rap was only coming into its own at that point in the mid-90s. Think about it. It really had only developed in the inner cities and was below the surface through the 80s and then the early 90s. Tupac was larger than life.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Well, that's the other thing. So you have Tupac is rising to this level of stardom and the experts were saying that he was about to launch into like super stardom, like Madonna-level stardom at that point. And at the same time, you have to go back in time to what's happening in the world of crime and street culture. And that's the stuff I do know.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So we're talking about a situation where we have the explosion of the crack wars, the drug wars in the inner cities, New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago. Simultaneously, the explosion of the gang wars. the battling between the Crips and the Bloods, the Red and the Blue.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
At the same time, you end up having groups of rap artists who are connected to East Coast record labels and West Coast record labels. And they are feuding. The record labels are feuding. the artists end up getting caught up in the feuding. And then you have the gangs that according to law enforcement, according to the experts, these gangs that are aligned with these individual record labels.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So the gangs are part of the feuding. Now, Very quickly, you're looking at me and you're saying, wow, that's actually a recipe for violence. And the answer is yes. A lot of money, legitimate money in the music industry. Then there's illegal money floating around through the drugs that are being peddled by the gangs. Then you have the artists.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
In the midst of this really, really toxic situation, really dangerous situation, With a lot of guns floating around, Tupac Shakur is gunned down off Las Vegas Boulevard. Tupac is shot point blank. How did the investigation proceed after that? Right after Tupac is gunned down, the investigation starts and it's aggressive. There's just no question about it.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
It's not a broad daylight homicide because it's nighttime, but it's basically a public homicide of a high profile celebrity. The cops are all over it. You really have two key witnesses here, including Suge Knight, who lived through the attack and was in the driver's seat.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
it very quickly though becomes obvious to law enforcement that they're going to get no cooperation from anybody that has direct involvement because now we're talking about people who are connected to gangs There's the code of the streets. We don't talk to the cops. We don't snitch.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
In fact, later on, Brad, Suge Knight sat down with ABC News and he was asked about the crimes and homicides and all these various things that he knows about. And he was very, very clear that he doesn't get paid to solve homicides. So what happens next? So you have Tupac has gone down in Vegas. Then a few months later, you have the notorious BIG, Biggie Smalls, who's gone down in Los Angeles.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
And so you have the whole culture, the newspapers at the time, radio, TV, everybody's talking about this violent East Coast, West Coast rap war that has broken out. Ultimately, both of these crimes go unsolved into 2000, 2010, 2020. And then finally, something happens. And we don't really at this point know what in 2023, but something has happened. A switch has been flipped.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
somehow in Las Vegas, and they are going to go and search the home of an alleged former member of the Crips, who happened to move from LA and was now living outside of Vegas in Henderson, Nevada. They were going to search his home. I have to tell you, when I got the phone call from a source saying that we just searched the home of this guy in connection with Tupac,
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
I'm like, you have got to be kidding me. You're telling me that you did a... First of all, what could you possibly be searching for? It's all these years ago. It's 1996. Are you saying that somebody's got a bloody t-shirt or something? My source said, we think it's him. They went ahead. They searched the home of Dwayne Davis. A few months later, they ended up arresting him.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
And he has been in jail awaiting trial ever since. But who is this guy? So Dwayne Davis, he goes by a street named Keefy D. He was a kid who grew up in Compton, California in Los Angeles. And he disputes that he was ever in the Crips. So police and prosecutors say that he was not only a member of the Crips, but that he was a quote unquote shot caller. He was a big deal.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He was a leader of the gang. And so if he gave an instruction, that was an instruction that had to be followed. Which he denies, but there we go. He denies that he was ever in the Crips. What he doesn't deny is that after having a pretty good athletic career in high school, because of the neighborhood, because of the crime and the gangs and the drugs and everything,
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
all the various cultural and social ills that we're so familiar with that timeframe in LA, he falls into the drug trade and he winds up becoming a pretty well-established high volume drug dealer in Compton. And he ultimately does go to prison on drug charges. He admits to that and he explains it in a way that's very understandable.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
That was basically, there was a lack of a future in that area for him. He actually grew up in Compton, California, and that's where Suge Knight is from. And they ended up being on different sides. In the years since, Suge has been reported to be connected to the Bloods street gang. And Dwayne Davis, Keefy D, who we interviewed, he's reported to have been connected with the Crips street gang.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So Suge and Davis are on opposite sides of the gang wars.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
There's a really strange winding road that brings us to how Kifidi winds up in jail and charged with Tupac's homicide. The authorities in Los Angeles in the 2000s are getting to the point where they're taking another crack at trying to solve the homicide of Notorious B.I.G., which occurs in Los Angeles after Tupac. They end up building a drug case against Keith E.D., In the biggie thing.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
In the biggie thing. As the story goes, they end up getting him cornered on the drug charges and they give him an out. If you cooperate with us, we will give you a sort of get out of jail free card, kind of an immunity kind of deal. There are a lot of particulars, and there's a lot of fighting over what actually went into this negotiation.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
But that's the rough outline of it, that there was this offer of immunity in return for information.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He basically told the cops, I don't know anything about Biggie, but I know about Tupac. I can give you info on the Tupac hit in Las Vegas. So that's 2008. In 2009, the Las Vegas police are given access to Kifidi, to Dwayne Davis, on the basis of the discussion from 2008. He says to us that he thinks he has immunity. So whatever he says can't be used against him.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
When he meets with Las Vegas police in 2009, he basically repeats the same story. And what does he say? Davis basically says that there was a car that he was in. He's sitting in the front passenger side.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
there's a driver and then there are two people behind him in the back seat in that car okay they had come from the mgm after the tyson fight there was some sort of a fight between patrons at the casino tupac somehow was involved in this fight On the other side was Orlando Anderson. Orlando Anderson was reported to be a member of the Crips.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Tupac was allegedly, according to law enforcement, he was with members of the Bloods. So that's where the gang thing circles back into this story. He's in this car with Keefy D after the fight, and they want payback. So they go looking for Tupac. They end up finding him coincidentally on this road off the strip where he ends up stopping at this light.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
And they find him because there are so many groupies and fans who are following the car being driven by Suge Knight with Tupac hanging out the window. They find him. They see him. So according to Keefy D, car that he's in with Orlando in the backseat, pulls up alongside the car and shots ring out. prosecutors ultimately charge that because he was the quote-unquote shot caller, he called the shot.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
The gun was handed to the back seat. The gun is then fired because the car with Suge and Tupac needed to be fired upon in an act of revenge for the earlier fight.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
Right. So Kifidi puts himself on record with authorities twice, 2008, 2009. Then additionally- Over the course of time from 2009 to 2023, he repeats this story several times. In one now famous clip in a documentary about death row records, he puts himself in the car and he talks about how this shooting went down, but he doesn't want to actually say who the trigger man was.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
He says he's going to keep that for the code of the streets. In another interview, he does actually give more information. He ultimately releases a memoir titled, where he's one of the co-authors, a memoir of his life, and he talks about this. And this is in 2019, right? So he's implicating himself in writing them. Right.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
And so after the arrest, and as we're trying to investigate the investigation, and we spent a long time doing this, going back and forth to Las Vegas, to Los Angeles, interviewing all these various people who are directly involved, we were trying to figure out, first of all, why didn't they charge him back in 2009?
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
If he confessed then, it seems kind of like law and order that the first thing you do is go arrest the guy, right? So we wanted to find out what was going on with that, but he subsequently gives these additional accounts confirming his account originally that he was there in the car.
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
so vegas police it turns out in all those years they were following this case vegas police knew about the confession obviously that was made they believed that kifi d was somebody they could charge for this crime that he wasn't necessarily the trigger man but he had this role as the shot caller in the car
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
and so they spent all of these years trailing him you know figuratively what did he say where did he say it where are the breadcrumbs can we place him here can we get confirmations there i was like why don't you just charge him but they won't confirm they want something stronger than just one guy saying one thing exactly they were concerned that if they arrested him then and proceeded with just his confession if the confession for whatever reason got thrown out of court they'd have no case
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The Crime Scene: Tupac Murder Suspect Speaks Out
So their strategy was, let's wait, let's watch, let's build the case using the map that he was creating for detectives. And that's what they did. And it went year after year after year until finally... Las Vegas police, the Homicide Bureau, and prosecutors came to an agreement. Aha, we have enough. We have a solid case. Even if we lose the confession, we think we can get a conviction.