Lil Durk murder-for-hire trial turns on GPS records and a pair of branded sweatpants

Testimony in the federal murder-for-hire trial of rapper Lil Durk turned this week on forensic detail: GPS records from a rented BMW, a receipt for ski masks bought at a Los Angeles-area REI, and a pair of branded sweatpants that a police detective said broke the case open. The Grammy-winning Chicago rapper, whose legal name is Durk Devontay Banks, is on trial in federal court in Los Angeles alongside two co-defendants on charges including conspiracy to commit murder-for-hire and stalking resulting in death, stemming from a 2022 shooting that killed a young woman near the Beverly Center shopping mall.

Prosecutors say Banks, 33, financed and directed an attempt to kill Tyquian "Quando Rondo" Bowman, a rival rapper, at a Los Angeles gas station on Aug. 19, 2022. Bowman survived; his cousin, 24-year-old Saviay'a "Lul Pab" Robinson, was fatally shot instead. According to a federal grand jury indictment from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Central District of California, Banks faces charges that carry a potential sentence of life in federal prison if he is convicted.

A Bounty Rooted in King Von's Killing

The case traces back to Nov. 6, 2020, when Dayvon Bennett, the OTF rapper known as King Von and a close friend of Banks, was shot and killed by an associate of Bowman's outside an Atlanta hookah lounge. Prosecutors allege Banks, described in court as "consumed with revenge," subsequently financed an effort to kill Bowman in retaliation. Banks founded Only the Family, the Chicago hip-hop collective and label known as OTF, in 2010; prosecutors have characterized it in court filings as an organization whose members engaged in violence to maintain status within the group. The feud between Banks' and Bowman's circles had simmered publicly for years, playing out in diss tracks and social-media taunts long before it reached a Los Angeles courtroom.

Nearly two years passed between Bennett's death and the Beverly Center shooting. According to testimony this week from LAPD Detective Warner Carias, four suspects flew into San Diego on Aug. 18, 2022, bought four black ski masks for $39 apiece at an REI in Woodland Hills, and rented a white BMW M5 that GPS records placed near a property in Encino more than 15 times over six days. The next day, gunmen ambushed Bowman's car at the gas station; when facial-recognition software failed to identify the masked shooters from surveillance footage, Carias testified that he instead traced a pair of "Rats to Riches"-branded sweatpants worn by one suspect to two boutiques on Chicago's South Side, a lead that pointed investigators toward Deandre Wilson, one of Banks' co-defendants at trial.

Two Defendants, Three Witnesses Who Once Stood Beside Them

Banks was arrested near Miami International Airport on Oct. 17, 2024, after investigators learned he had booked a string of international flights; five associates were arrested the same day. "Mr. Banks is charged with orchestrating a cold-blooded murder that resulted in the death of a rival's family member," then-U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in a statement announcing the arrest, which the FBI's Los Angeles field office confirmed the same night.

Of the six people originally charged, three have since pleaded guilty and are now cooperating with prosecutors: Kavon Grant, known as OTF Vonni; Kacey Hester, known as OTF Jam; and Keith Jones, known as Flacka. All three are expected to testify against Banks in the coming days, while Wilson and a fourth defendant, David Lindsey, stand trial alongside him. U.S. District Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald, who is presiding, seated a jury of 12 with four alternates last week; the trial is expected to run roughly three weeks, with jurors also set to hear excerpts of Banks' recorded lyrics that prosecutors argue reference the killing.

The case has reverberated well beyond the six men originally charged. Robinson, a bystander with no reported connection to the underlying feud between Banks and Bowman, was 24 when she was killed; Bowman, who survived the shooting, has continued to record and tour under his Quando Rondo stage name while the case against the men accused of targeting him worked through nearly two years of pretrial motions and delays.

Dueling Accounts of Who Was in Charge

Opening statements on Monday set out sharply different narratives. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Weiner told jurors Banks was "consumed with revenge" and bankrolled the plot against Bowman, according to reporting on the opening arguments. Banks' attorney, Marissa Goldberg, countered that Grant, not Banks, organized the trip, booked the hotels and vehicles, and bought the ski masks, and that Grant turned on Banks only after his own arrest left him searching for leverage.

"They were pressing him about a big fish, and he thought, 'Oh man ... I've got an insurance policy,'" Goldberg told jurors, describing what she said was Grant's calculation once he was in federal custody.

Goldberg's opening, detailed in an account of the proceedings, cast the prosecution's case as built around a cooperating witness with every incentive to implicate a more famous target in exchange for a lighter sentence. Prosecutors have countered that phone records, financial transfers and the detective's forensic trail corroborate the cooperating witnesses rather than depend on them, a point this week's testimony was meant to reinforce.

The case is being watched closely in the music industry for prosecutors' use of Banks' recorded lyrics as evidence of intent, a tactic that drew national attention during the racketeering prosecution of rapper Young Thug in Georgia and one that defense attorneys and free-speech advocates have argued unfairly treats artistic expression as a criminal admission.

What Happens Next

Testimony is set to continue through the week, with the cooperating witnesses expected to testify in detail to Banks' alleged role in directing and financing the shooting. The defense has signaled it will use cross-examination to press each on the plea deals that reduced their own criminal exposure in exchange for cooperation. Trade coverage of the case has noted the trial is expected to run about three weeks, with a verdict unlikely before mid-September.

Banks has been denied pretrial release multiple times since his October 2024 arrest and has remained in federal custody throughout the run-up to trial. A conviction on the murder-for-hire and related racketeering counts added in a later superseding indictment would carry a potential sentence of life in federal prison; an acquittal would close out a case that has stretched nearly two years from arrest to trial for a defendant who built one of hip-hop's most prominent independent labels.