That sentence feels strange to write. Tupac was shot on September 7, 1996, after leaving a Mike Tyson fight in Las Vegas, and he died six days later. For almost 30 years, his murder sat in that strange category of famous crimes that seemed like they might simply never be resolved. Theories, books, documentaries, gang rumors—and still no murder conviction. Until today.

This distinction matters: the jury did not determine that Davis fired the shots into the BMW carrying Tupac and Death Row Records founder Marion "Suge" Knight. Prosecutors argued that Davis organized the retaliation. Hours before the shooting, Tupac, Knight, and others had attacked Davis' nephew, Orlando Anderson, inside the MGM Grand. According to prosecutors, Davis then obtained a .40-caliber handgun, gathered members of the South Side Compton Crips, and went looking for Tupac or Knight. Someone in the Cadillac opened fire. Tupac was hit several times; Knight was wounded but survived.

Under Nevada law, prosecutors did not need to prove that Davis personally fired the weapon—only that he participated in the plan that resulted in the murder. The jury agreed after deliberating for less than three hours.

There is something almost unbelievable about how this case eventually came together. Davis spent years talking about it—in law-enforcement interviews, documentaries, a 2019 memoir. Prosecutors played recordings in which he described being in the Cadillac, obtaining the gun, and passing it toward the back seat. His defense argued those stories were exaggerated or fabricated, that he had spent years making himself look more important because there was money and notoriety in being associated with one of the most famous unsolved murders in American music. That is an extraordinary defense: the prosecution says your previous confession is true, and your defense says you were lying when you confessed. The jury believed the prosecution.

There is now a murder conviction in Tupac's killing—that is enormous. But the verdict does not necessarily settle who physically fired the gun. Davis previously said Orlando Anderson took the weapon and fired after another man in the back seat declined. Anderson was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998 and was never charged in Tupac's murder. Other people connected to the Cadillac have also died. So the case may have finally established legal responsibility without ever producing a trial of the person who actually pulled the trigger. After almost 30 years, that may be as close to a complete answer as this case is ever going to get.

That may be why today's verdict feels so strange. Eventually "Who killed Tupac?" stopped sounding like an ordinary homicide question and became cultural shorthand. Then, decades later, one of the people allegedly involved spent enough time publicly talking about what happened that investigators finally had a path back into the case. Davis was arrested in 2023; three years later a jury convicted him. There is something reassuring about a cold case surviving that long. Witnesses disappear, investigators retire, public attention moves on. But the case itself doesn't necessarily disappear with them.

The murder of Christopher Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G., six months after Tupac's death remains unsolved. Ironically, the Biggie investigation helped revive the Tupac case: Davis was interviewed by a federal task force in 2008 when he began talking about Tupac, and those conversations eventually became evidence against him. So one of hip-hop's great unsolved murders helped investigators finally get a conviction in the other.

Nearly three decades after Tupac Shakur died, somebody has finally been held criminally responsible for his killing. That isn't quite the same as finally knowing every detail of who shot Tupac. But after 30 years of rumors, theories, and unanswered questions, it is something I wasn't sure we would ever see.

Read the BBC's coverage of the verdict.

Read the Los Angeles Times' detailed account of the trial and verdict.

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