Cathy Scott is an American true crime writer and investigative journalist, born and raised in San Diego, United States growing up in nearby La Mesa, California. She later moved to Mission Beach, California, where she was a single parent to a son, Raymond Somers Jr.
Scott, a graduate of the University of Redlands, is a Las Vegas-based journalist and author best known for penning the biographies and true crime books The Killing of Tupac Shakur (Huntington Press, ISBN 0-929-71220-X) and The Murder of Biggie Smalls (St. Martin's Press, ISBN 0-312-26620-0), both bestsellers in the United States and United Kingdom. booksinprint.com: Home Aarons Books UK bestsellers list The books are based on the drive-by shootings that killed the rappers six months apart in the midst of what has been called a West Coast-East Coast rap war (see East Coast-West Coast hip hop rivalry). Scott's hip hop books are each dedicated to the rappers' mothers. In 2005, an article first published in George, was released in the 2005 book Tupac: A Thug's Life, a compilation of national magazine writers. She regularly coaches writers, including at the Flathead River Writers Conference in Montana.
Scott, who wrote poetry as a teenager, worked on the Helix High School yearbook her senior year. But her first full-time newspaper position wouldn't happen for 22 years, when she took a position as a reporter at the Beach & Bay Press in Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. 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, then moved to a daily paper, the Vista Press, in North San Diego County. She left the paper 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. She moved to the Mojave Desert as a crime beat reporter for the Las Vegas Sun, where she worked until 1998, and then went onto freelancing for the New York Times, Reuters news service and writing true crime books and biographies. While still at the Sun in 1997, her first book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur, was released.
Her sixth book, Pawprints of Katrina, Wiley::Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned was a result Scott's nearly four months on the Gulf Coast writing about the largest rescue of animals in U.S. history. Tylertown revisited Her latest book, The Rough Guide to True Crime, was released in August 2009.
She was a participant in 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.
Scott taught journalism and advanced magazine writing for five years at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas's 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 Web site. When she returned, she hired on with Best Friends as a staff writer. AuthorsBio She sat as the Nevada State Sunshine Chair for 10 years until 2007 and on the Society of Professional Journalists' Sunshine Committee.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Post, George magazine, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor,San Diego Union-Tribune and Las Vegas Sun. She has appeared on three Oxygen network "Snapped" segments about murder cases involving women and Unsolved Mysteries about the Tupac Shakur case. In 2010, she appeared in the Discovery Channel's documentary, "On the Case with Paula Zahn: Death in the Desert" about the Ted Binion trial.
Her eighth book, about the 1990 contract murder of George Kogan, is scheduled for release by St. Martin's Press in early 2011.
Scott is a regular contributor to Women in Crime Ink, described by the Wall Street Journal as "a blog worth reading."
Scott is the daughter of the late Eileen Rose Busby, Eileen Rose Busby; writer, world traveler and antiques expert | The San Diego Union-Tribune an author, and the late James 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), the niece of the late Russian Orthodox Hieromonk Father Seraphim Rose, sister of scientist and author Dr. J. Michael Scott, and twin sister of antiques expert Cordelia Mendoza.
