Cathy Scott

Cathleen Scott (born c. 1950) is a Los Angeles Times and New York Times bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist who penned the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom, and was the first to report Shakur's death. She grew up in La Mesa, California, and later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr. Her hip-hop books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called the West Coast-East Coast war. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers. She is currently writing a biography of the late true crime author Ann Rule.

Early life and education

Scott was born in San Diego, California. She attended Helix High School in La Mesa, California, Grossmont College and graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Redlands in 1990.

Scott is the daughter of author Eileen Rose Busby and James (Jim) Scott, a Senior Olympics winner who helped pioneer and develop the game of racquetball. She is the granddaughter of California artist Esther Rose and Frank Rose (a sports writer at the Two Harbors, Minnesota, newspaper in the 1920s), and niece of Russian Orthodox hieromonk Seraphim Rose. Her brother is scientist and author J. Michael Scott. Her twin sister, Cordelia Mendoza, is an antiquarian and appraiser.

Career

Scott wrote poetry as a teenager and worked on the Helix High School yearbook during her senior year. Her first full-time newspaper position was as a reporter for the Beach & Bay Press in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach, in 1987. She also freelanced for the Mira Mesa Scripps Ranch Sentinel. She then became business editor of the La Jolla Light weekly newspaper after winning a Best of Show journalism award out of 1,200 entries from the San Diego Press Club. She then moved to a daily paper, the Vista Press, in North San Diego County, part of William McPherson Papers. She left the Vista Press to string as a correspondent for the Associated Press and The San Diego Union-Tribune. While reporting in San Diego, she was a member of the San Diego Press Club.

In 1993, she moved to the Mojave Desert as a crime beat reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, where she worked until 1998, then freelanced for The New York Times and Reuters News Service and wrote true-crime books and biographies. While still at the Sun, in 1997, her first book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur, was released. Huntington Press released the book on the first anniversary of Shakur's death, issuing a 25,000-copy first printing, according to Publishers Weekly, with a second edition released in 2002. The Killing of Tupac Shakur was number 2 on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list in paperback nonfiction the week of June 11, 2000. The Murder of Biggie Smalls the same year made The New York Times bestseller list in nonfiction hardcover the week of October 15, 2000.

Scott and fellow journalist Jeff German were at the murder scene and the first reporters to break the national story in the Las Vegas Sun of the gangland killing in 1997 of Las Vegas and Chicago Outfit mob associate Herbert “Fat Herbie” Blitzstein in Las Vegas.

Scott's article, first published in George magazine, was included in the 2005 anthology Tupac: A Thug Life, a compilation of national magazine writers released by Plexus Publishing. She contributed to two other anthologies, The Big Book of Social Media (Yorkshire Publishing 2010) and Masters of True Crime (Prometheus Books 2012).

Scott has coached writers, including at the Flathead River Writers Conference in Montana and San Diego State University's Writers' Conference.

Scott taught journalism and advanced magazine writing for five years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas School of Journalism until September 2005, when she traveled to New Orleans as an embedded reporter for Best Friends Animal Society to cover animal rescues in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for its magazine and website. On her return from Louisiana, she hired on with Best Friends as a staff writer. She sat as the Nevada State Sunshine Chair for ten years, until 2007, and on the Society of Professional Journalists Sunshine Committee.

From 2005 through 2007, Scott wrote a column titled "Crime & Punishment" for the alternative weekly Las Vegas CityLife.

Her sixth book, Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned, with photos by Clay Myers and foreword by actress Ali MacGraw, was a result of Scott's four months on the Gulf Coast writing about the largest rescue of animals in U.S. history. Her seventh book, The Rough Guide to True Crime, a title in the Rough Guides series of books, was released in August 2009 and featured at BookExpo America 2009.

She spoke at the 2008 National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. She was a speaker at the 2011 No More Homeless Pets National Conference. and at the 2012 Vegas Valley Book Festival.

In January 2011, Anderson Cooper's 360° blog included Scott in an update on the Tupac and Smalls cases, quoting her as saying that "the failure to secure the actual scene of the shooting and interview witnesses immediately doomed the investigation."

Her work has appeared in The New York Times when she worked as a Times correspondent for 11 years and a stringer for Reuters, as well as in The New York Times Magazine, New York Post, George magazine, Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun.

On KTTV's "Good Day L.A." in March 2013, Scott discussed the verdict against chef David Viens in the disappearance of his wife Dawn.