Cathy Scott

Cathy Scott is a bestselling American true crime author and investigative journalist whose work has appeared on the *Los Angeles Times* and *New York Times* bestseller lists. She wrote the biographies *The Killing of Tupac Shakur* and *The Murder of Biggie Smalls*, both of which sold well in the U.S. and U.K., and she was the first journalist to report Shakur's death. Raised in La Mesa, California, she later lived in Mission Beach, California, raising her son, Raymond Somers Jr., as a single parent. Her hip-hop books examine the drive-by shootings that killed the two rappers six months apart during the so-called West Coast-East Coast feud. Each book is dedicated to the rappers' mothers. She is currently working on a biography of the late true crime writer Ann Rule.

Scott was born in San Diego, California. She attended Helix High School in La Mesa and Grossmont College, then earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Redlands in 1990. Her mother, Eileen Rose Busby, is an author; her father, James Scott, was a Senior Olympics winner who helped pioneer racquetball. Her grandparents include California artist Esther Rose and Frank Rose, a sports writer for a Minnesota newspaper in the 1920s. She is the niece of Russian Orthodox hieromonk Seraphim Rose. Her brother, J. Michael Scott, is a scientist and author, and her twin sister, Cordelia Mendoza, works as an antiquarian and appraiser.

As a teenager, Scott wrote poetry and worked on her high school yearbook. Her first full-time newspaper job was as a reporter for the *Beach & Bay Press* in 1987, and she also freelanced for the *Mira Mesa Scripps Ranch Sentinel*. After winning a Best of Show journalism award from the San Diego Press Club, she became business editor of the *La Jolla Light*. She then moved to the daily *Vista Press* before working as a correspondent for the Associated Press and *The San Diego Union-Tribune*. She was a member of the San Diego Press Club.

In 1993, she moved to the Mojave Desert to cover crime for the *Las Vegas Sun*, where she stayed until 1998. She then freelanced for *The New York Times* and Reuters while writing true-crime books. Her first book, *The Killing of Tupac Shakur*, was released by Huntington Press on the first anniversary of Shakur’s death, with a 25,000-copy first printing and a second edition in 2002. It reached number 2 on the *Los Angeles Times* bestseller list in paperback nonfiction in June 2000. *The Murder of Biggie Smalls* made the *New York Times* bestseller list in nonfiction hardcover that October.

Scott and fellow journalist Jeff German were at the scene of the 1997 murder of mob associate Herbert “Fat Herbie” Blitzstein in Las Vegas and were the first to break the national story in the *Las Vegas Sun*. Her article for *George* magazine was included in the 2005 anthology *Tupac: A Thug Life*. She also contributed to *The Big Book of Social Media* (2010) and *Masters of True Crime* (2012). She has coached writers at the Flathead River Writers Conference and San Diego State University’s Writers’ Conference.

She taught journalism and advanced magazine writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for five years until September 2005, when she traveled to New Orleans as an embedded reporter for Best Friends Animal Society to cover animal rescues after Hurricane Katrina. After returning, she joined Best Friends as a staff writer. She served as Nevada State Sunshine Chair for ten years until 2007 and sat on the Society of Professional Journalists Sunshine Committee. From 2005 to 2007, she wrote a column called “Crime & Punishment” for *Las Vegas CityLife*.

Her sixth book, *Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned*, with photos by Clay Myers and a foreword by Ali MacGraw, came from her four months on the Gulf Coast covering the largest animal rescue in U.S. history. Her seventh book, *The Rough Guide to True Crime*, was released in August 2009 and featured at BookExpo America 2009. She spoke at the 2008 National Book Festival on the National Mall, hosted by First Lady Laura Bush, and at the 2011 No More Homeless Pets National Conference and the 2012 Vegas Valley Book Festival.

In January 2011, Anderson Cooper’s 360° blog quoted Scott saying that failing to secure the shooting scene and interview witnesses immediately doomed the Tupac and Smalls investigations. Her work has appeared in *The New York Times*, *The New York Times Magazine*, *New York Post*, *George*, *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, she discussed the verdict in the David Viens case. She appeared twice on the public-access show *Connie Martinson Talks Books* in 2000 and 2003 to discuss her book *Murder of a Mafia Daughter* and the unsolved killing of Susan Berman.