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,[1][2] and was the first to report Shakur's death.
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.
[9] 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.
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.
[20] Her sixth book, Pawprints of Katrina: Pets Saved and Lessons Learned, with photos by Clay Myers and foreword by actress Ali MacGraw,[21] was a result of Scott's four months on the Gulf Coast writing about the largest rescue of animals in U.S.
[28] 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.
[32] She appeared on three Oxygen network "Snapped" segments concerning murder cases involving women and on Unsolved Mysteries about the Tupac Shakur investigation.
[34] Las Vegas CityLife newspaper named Scott's 2003 release, Murder of a Mafia Daughter, "Pick of the Week" in February of that year.
[36] Her eighth book, The Millionaire's Wife, about the 1990 contract murder of businessman George Kogan,[37] was released by St. Martin's Press True Crime Library in March 2012.
[40] The memoir, Freeway Rick Ross: The Untold Autobiography, was launched at the Eso Won Bookstore in Los Angeles on June 17, 2014, to a standing-room-only crowd.
[41] In May 2014, Scott lodged a complaint with YouTube over a re-created image included in rapper Wyclef Jean's music video "April Showers."
"[47] In March 2015, her book Unconditional Honor: Wounded Warriors and Their Dogs, with photos by Clay Myers and foreword by Bill Walton, was released by Globe Pequot Press.
"[52] Clark scrutinized the death of Rebecca Zahau, whose body was discovered outside the mansion of her boyfriend Jonah Shacknai,[51] which Scott blogged about for Forbes.