Diddy‘s legal woes continue to mount. Eight months after ex Cassie Ventura sued the Bad Boy Records mogul for sexual assault and abuse, causing a cascade of lawsuits to follow, the embattled rapper is being implicated in the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur.
While many have long suspected he’s been involved, Diddy has maintained his innocence. But according to the U.S. Sun, new court documents reveal Diddy is accused of paying $1 million for Shakur’s assassination by suspect Duane “Keefe D” Davis, who was arrested for the murder last year. However, it’s still unknown if Diddy will be subpoenaed or indicted as part of the case.
In papers filed on Thursday (July 18), Diddy is named 77 times by his various pseudonyms: Puffy, Puff Daddy, Puff and his government name, Sean Combs. He’s first mentioned as prosecutors explained the “deadly rivalry” that existed between Bad Boy Records on the East Coast and Death Row Records on the West Coast, headed up by Marion “Suge” Knight, prior to Shakur’s shooting.
The docs allege that after the shooting, Davis flew to New York with a Los Angeles police task force to go undercover in an effort to gather incriminating evidence against Diddy and Eric “Zip” Martin over the murder.
“Task Force Detectives believed they had jurisdiction to investigate a Nevada homicide because Defendant asserted that the conspiracy to commit the murder began in California between Defendant, Eric ‘Zip’ Martin, and Sean Combs,” the docs read in part. “Defendant [Keefe] has asserted publicly that he only told on himself and wasn’t trying to provide evidence against anyone else in his conversations with police. However, this statement belies this claim, as he suggested that Sean Combs paid Eric Von Martin a million dollars for the killings.”
In one of the transcripts, Davis reportedly alleges he and some of the South Side Crips were “friends” with Diddy, who wanted Knight and Shakur dead. He also claims the Crips drove by Shakur and Knight in Las Vegas after a Mike Tyson fight “accidentally” and his nephew, Orlando “Baby Lane” Anderson, shot at them both.
Police asked Davis, “Puffy Combs….Does he play a role in this thing?…” and Davis replied, “Yeah, I think he did.” Davis said Diddy told him and a group of about 45 people how he “would give anything” for Knight’s “head” because he was “scared” of him and also had a problem with Shakur after he had released a diss track about him.
In the same transcript, Davis says Diddy was discussed the night of the shooting, with Davis saying, “I knew we was like damn, we can get paid now.”
Police asked, “When you said paid, paid by Puffy, right?” to which Davis replied, “Yeah,” according to the court documents. Davis concluded, “I wish I never met Puff Daddy, period. I swear to God…He messed up my life, man. I was, I was rich, up under the radar, all that, man…it’s all gone.”
Prosecutors filed the docs in a bid to oppose Davis’ latest bail request. His $112,500 bail bond was rejected last month over concerns about the source of the money—Wack 100— and whether he and Davis are attempting to sell his life story to TV producers.