Crime Writing: The Almost New York Times Bestseller

Fourteen years ago, on October 1, 2000, crime writer Cathy Scott's second book, The Murder of Biggie Smalls, was released by MacMillan. A few weeks later, she received a phone call that it had sold enough copies the first week to qualify the hardcover as a New York Times bestseller. It was fantastic news, something every author wants to hear. But with it came bad news too. Read full article

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Remembering Notorious B.I.G. on 14th Anniversary of His Unsolved Murder

by Cathy Scott

"My son's albums, to me, are a celebration of his life." Voletta Wallace, a couple of years after her son's murder on March 9, 1997, said those words in a telephone interview about the murder of Biggie Smalls. She's proud of what her son accomplished in his short life but frustrated that his murder remains unsolved.

Fourteen years after the slaying, the music of Biggie Smalls–a k a Christopher Wallace–is as big as ever. But his murder doesn't appear any closer to being solved than it was shortly after his murder following a VIBE magazine party outside the Petersen Automotive Museum, in Los Angeles, on the eve of the release of Biggie's double-disc album, ironically titled "Life After Death."

No one knows what else Biggie, a New York-based rapper who performed as The Notorious B.I.G., would have accomplished had he not been cut down that fateful March night. He was embraced by his Brooklyn community and rap fans worldwide. What we do know is that Biggie's music, after his death, topped the charts and sold millions of CDs. Like Tupac Shakur before him, Smalls is bigger in death than in life. Biggie was known for his semi-autobiographical lyrics and storytelling and his easy style of rap.

Shakur was killed in Las Vegas six months before Smalls in what some have called eerily similar drive-by shootings. Biggie and Tupac unfortunately became tragic victims of the culture of violence depicted in their lyrics.

Smalls, who died at 24 years old, had been mentoring younger rappers, including hip-hop singer Lil' Kim. On the 14th anniversary of the shooting, Lil' Kim posted her sentiments on Twitter: "On this very day a great soul was laid to rest. Now on this very day we celebrate the rebirth of a beautiful Life! R.I.P Biggie Baby."

Smalls' record producer, Sean "P Diddy" Combs, also took to the pages of Twitter to remember his friend: "Today is #BIGGIEDAY–send me all your videos, links, photos, exclusive content. ALL things BIGGIE so I can tell the world!!"

Spreading the word about her son is music to Mrs. Wallace's ears, to keep her son's legacy alive. But, while Biggie's music keeps his memory on the forefront, his mother, a single mom who worked as a pre-school teacher to support her son, holds out hope his killer (composite sketch, right) will one day be found and brought to justice. Despite the length of time without a named suspect (although a task force in L.A. has been, for several months, looking into the cold case), she keeps the faith.

"I'm not only hoping," Mrs. Wallace told me, "but I am praying that they catch the dog who killed my son. I can't wait. I know that's a trip [to Los Angeles] I'm waiting to take ... to look the murderer in the face."

Cathy Scott's book, The Murder of Biggie Smalls, is a biographical and true crime account of his life and death.

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The Millionaire's Wife

by Cathy Scott

On a rainy morning in the fall of 1990, a gunman, in broad daylight, caught up with George Kogan as George walked home from a Manhattan Upper East Side market. The shooter pumped three slugs into his back. Seven hours later, George was dead.

From the start, the prime suspect was the estranged wife of George Kogan, because, in part, George had $4 million worth of insurance on his life, and Barbara was the beneficiary. Yet, it would take nearly two decades to solve the murder. George, who had turned 49 the month before the killing, was gunned down as he approached the lobby doors of his East 69th Street apartment building, where he lived with his young girlfriend.

Manuel Martinez, an attorney with a small law practice who mostly handled eviction cases, once represented Barbara and eventually was charged and convicted of hiring a hit man to kill Barbara’s husband. It 's a love triangle and a hit-for-hire, and the story fascinated me.

It's also a sad story, because, in the end, everyone lost, including George's two sons, who were in college at the time of the murder, and who lost their father to murder and, ultimately, their mother to prison.

Nineteen years long years after the death of her husband, Barbara Susan Kogan was indicted for the murder of her husband, but not until she had spent every penny of the insurance payout, the last of which went toward her defense.

I’ve spent the last year piecing together this book. It’s titled THE MILLIONAIRE'S WIFE: The True Story of a Real Estate Tycoon, his Beautiful Young Mistress, and a Marriage that Ended in Murder. And while it is my eighth book, it is one of the toughest I’ve ever written.

True crime books, my friend and colleague Kathryn Casey recently reminded me, are not easy to write. As a journalist, I’ve been trained to chase the story, go to the scene, find sources, get documents, land interviews--anything and everything to flesh out the story. True crime books take real perseverance, especially in cases that are about to go to trial and when those on either side of the case are skittish about talking.

I was scheduled to interview Barbara, with her attorney, before her arrest. But, soon after, a warrant for her arrest was issued and her attorney instead arranged for her surrender. It was disappointing, and, while difficult, I love a challenge, plus I was lucky.

After I went on a radio show and talked about the case and after posting or two an article updating the case on Women in Crime Ink, family members on both sides of the case contacted me. I also was able to speak several times with the deputy district attorney as well as three defense attorneys. And a generous reporter who had covered the crime 19 years early shared with me what he recalled. And a doorman at George’s building, where George had been killed nearly two decades earlier, was particularly helpful and walked me through the crime scene. Several people at the courthouse were helpful as well, as were a couple of NYPD police officers. And E.W. Count, a crime writer in New York City, on two occasions became my eyes and ears in a Manhattan courtroom.

For the research part of books, I approach them in the same way I do news stories--digging for clues, links, and, especially, documentation and confirmations via paperwork and those I interview. For every book, I invariably contact mortuary personnel and verify college degrees with universities; this case was no different. Thank goodness the records were fairly easy to find, despite the passage of time. Fact-checking our own stories is part of the deal.

For newspaper and magazine articles, I got into Lexis-Nexis to pull up the original articles and, at the same time, stumbled on some relevant federal court documents. Early on, writer/author Sue Russell pulled a couple of articles from Lexis-Nexis for me. After that, I did pay-as-you-go searches (a great service for research). The one thing, however, I could not find was George Kogan’s obituary. I knew there had to be one, and, ultimately, getting creative with search words (“slaying” instead of “murder” worked in this case), I found it. It was a real prize, because it was loaded with the detail I had been looking for--when and where George was buried, who officiated, who attended, and who did not.

When it came to police and court records, that got tricky. As soon as Barbara appeared in court, I filed a Freedom of Information Act form; it was ignored. So, with the help of attorneys, a defendant’s family members and a journalism student working on a class paper (and whose professor was friends with the defense), I was able to get the complete court files, trial transcripts, copies of depositions, a transcript of a surveillance telephone conversation, statements from witnesses from the scene of the crime, a list of witnesses and evidence, and a roster of jurors.

Then, the reading began. I pored through documents. It became a matter of learning who the characters and players were--and there were lots. Because two defendants were charged three years apart, it made the story more complicated. So I tried to boil it down and tell the story chronologically, as it had unfolded.

Deciding where to start a book is always a challenge. With The Murder of Biggie Smalls (a k a Notorious B.I.G., I began with Biggie, at age 15, sitting in a Brooklyn police precinct, crying for his mother after an officer detained Biggie and a friend for questioning to see if they were witnesses to a murder in a Bed-Stuy neighborhood. To me, that scene at the precinct spoke volumes about Biggie, whose real name was Christopher Wallace. He was not the street thug, like Tupac Shakur, who came of age on the mean streets of the Jungle housing project in Oakland, Californai. Biggie, conversely, was a mama’s boy, and his mother was a school teacher who sent Biggie to Jamaica every year to spend the summer with his grandfather, an ocean away from Brooklyn.

In Murder of a Mafia Daughter, after I went to victim Susan Berman’s Beverly Hills home, in Benedict Canyon, and met a neighbor who’d been the one to alert police that something was awry next door, I began the book with the neighbor awakening to Susan’s dogs running loose, on Christmas Eve morning, in his front yard.

With the Kogan case,  after traveling to New York City several times, the way the killer stalked George as he made his way home from a neighborhood market became a vivid picture to me, and I began the book with the morning he died.

I love the cover of this book, because it captures the feel of that fateful morning. So, it is with pride and pleasure that I give you, the reader, a sneak peek at the cover of The Millionaire’s Wife, released here, on Women in Crime Ink. When the book comes out later this year, I’ll give you a heads up.

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Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur Cold Cases Heat Up

by Cathy Scott

A couple weeks ago, I sat down with CNN's anchor/reporter Ted Rowlands and producer Michael Cary to talk about the Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls murders. In Anderson Cooper's resulting blog post, Rowlands and Cary quoted a former Los Angeles Police Detective as saying, “Suge Knight ordered the hit [on Biggie Smalls]."

Smalls, 24, Brooklyn-born Christopher Wallace and also known as the Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in L.A. while driving away from a VIBE magazine album release party at the Petersen Automotive Museum on March 9, 1997. Investigators suspect the killer was a lone gunman in an early model Chevy Impala who opened fire on Biggie's Suburban in a drive-by. Witnesses described the gunman as a thin-faced African-American man wearing a suit and a bow-tie.

The accusations toward Knight, who at the time ran Death Row Records, were from the mouth of one Russell Poole, who was one of many detectives who once worked on the Smalls murder investigation. Poole added, when he spoke with the CNN crew, that he believes the murder was organized by Reggie Wright Jr., who headed security for Death Row.

Poole went on to say he believes Knight ordered the murder of Tupac Shakur as well, even though Poole never worked on the Tupac investigation, after Shakur, 25, was gunned down in September 1996 near the Las Vegas Strip.

Bold words. The problem, however, with Poole's statements, which have become almost a mantra for him, is that there isn't a scintilla of evidence pointing to Knight as either committing or ordering the murder of Biggie Smalls. The LAPD launched both criminal and internal investigations into just that, to no avail. And Biggie Smalls' mother, Voletta Wallace, in 2006 sued the city of Los Angeles and the LAPD for a cover-up and sloppy handling of her son's case. 

Investigators have long suspected that Biggie was killed because of an East Coast/West Coast rivalry between the rappers, who were from opposite coasts, which they have said may have caused the death of Shakur six months earlier. Wallace's family's suit against the LAPD was dismissed in 2010. Still, Voletta Wallace has said many times she has faith that her son's killer will one day be brought to justice.

But Detective Derrick Parker, a veteran of the NYPD specializing in hip-hop related crimes, told People magazine, "No disrespect to the LAPD," says the police officer nicknamed the "hip hop cop," "but every time they get a new set of detectives on it, it fizzles out. They lose a lot."

Poole is one of those officers who rotated in and out of the Smalls case. If Knight is, in fact, responsible for Smalls' murder, where's the evidence? Bring it forward. I'm not saying Knight is a Boy Scout. Far from it. It's common knowledge that he grew up on the streets of Compton and was a member of the Mob Piru gang.

And it's not as if the cops haven't tried to get Knight. In the aftermath of both murders, police in a variety of jurisdictions have hauled him into both county jails and prison for everything from outstanding traffic warrants, possession of marijuana, and violation of parole. He served time. But he has never been identified by the LAPD or the Las Vegas police as a person of interest, let alone a prime suspect, in either murders.

I was told by a source about a year and a half ago that a multi-task force had been formed to look into both Smalls' and Tupac's murders as a part of an in-depth gang probe. So far, the members of that task force have been silent. When the task force eventually winds up its work, maybe we'll then see whether Poole's words ring true. Until then, and without evidence, it's an empty accusation.  

Knight, who was behind bars serving out a parole violation at the time Smalls was killed, has denied he had anything to do with the murder. And Reggie Wright has also said he had nothing to do with the killing. 

As for an LAPD cover-up, Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks, who was chief of police at the time of the Smalls murder, said, simply, that allegations of a police cover-up are "absurd." 

Click here to read CNN's blog.

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Real or Rumor? Tupac's Murderer Charged.

by Cathy Scott 

It always amazes me when I see a rumor picked up by a media outlet, regardless of how small that outlet is. So I was once again surprised a couple weeks ago when I got an e-mail from a TV producer asking about an arrest in the 13-year-old murder case of platinum-selling rapper Tupac Shakur.

I put on my sleuth cap and started digging. This is what was first reported, from Backseat Cuddler, a gossip site that got Tupac fans and the hip hop world hyped up:

BREAKING NEWS - Tupac Shakur Killer Has Been Arrested In Las Vegas

I just received a message from my source in Las Vegas that Tupac Shakur’s killer has been arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Tupac died on September 13, 1996. On the night of September 7, 1996, Shakur was shot four times in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. He died six days later of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest at the University Medical Center. Tupac Shakur was a rapper, actor, and social activist. Story developing…..

That prompted “Gossip Headlines” to print this reaction, which, in turn, prompted three pages of comments from readers:

Arrest Made?

OMG, OMG, O-M-G, if this is true, hip-hop is about to go into a tailspin!!! According to BackSeatCuddler, Tupac Shakur’s killer has been arrested in Las Vegas, Nevada!!! It was there in Sin City 13 years ago (September 13 marked the 13th anniversary) where the legendary rapper was shot 4 times while sitting in the passenger seat of Suge Knight’s BMW after leaving a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand Hotel. Tupac died six days later from respiratory failure and cardiopulmonary arrest caused by multiple gunshot wounds. See Original Story For More.

Wow, I thought to myself, how could I have missed that one? Maybe it had to do with Notorious B.I.G.’s case, I thought. And that was odd too, because Las Vegas reporters would have been all over the story. A source wasn’t listed in the postings. So I checked TV and print sites and there were no mentions of an arrest. Then I reached out to my law enforcement contacts in Las Vegas and Nevada.

“No,” said a source in the Los Angeles area, “there haven't been any arrests in the Tupac and Biggie cases here.”

Then I called the homicide unit of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and talked with a spokesperson. “There haven’t been any arrests in that case,” she said.

I put out a few more feelers. I came up empty. The only news involving Tupac, who, besides being a rapper, was an actor and poet, is that the Tupac Amaru Shakur Foundation, which Tupac’s mother, Afeni Shakur, runs, is partnering with Woodruff Library to prepare Tupac’s writings and papers for scholarly research. The Tupac Shakur Collection is currently housed within the Woodruff Library's Archives and Special Collections Department. It features Tupac’s handwritten lyrics, personal notes and fan correspondence, among other items.

Meanwhile, the rumor about an arrest in Tupac's case coincided with the 13th anniversary of his murder. As a result of the anniversary and the rumor, record sales for Tupac’s music went through the roof. And sales for books about Tupac took off too. The warehouse manager at Huntington Press, my publisher for The Killing of Tupac Shakur, said sales had jumped and orders from Amazon.com were especially high.

Other than that, it's been fairly quiet on the Tupac front. So much for a “developing story.”

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Tupac Shakur Case Revisited

by Cathy Scott 

As the 13th anniversary approaches of rapper Tupac Shakur’s murder in a drive-by shooting near the Las Vegas Strip at age 25, the media come out in droves to cover it. TV news magazines started weeks ago on their pieces. All want to help solve the crime.

In the mix is the third edition of my book, The Killing of Tupac Shakur. In this edition, I’ve included new interviews and never-before-released information on the case. Also new to this edition is an exclusive interview, with first-hand background and information, with Reggie Wright, owner of Wright Way Security, the firm that provided security for Tupac’s record distributor, Death Row Records (since renamed Tha Row).

Wright and his security team were on duty the night of the killing. Also interviewed for the new edition were Kevin Hackie, a cop-turned-bodyguard for Wright Way who once worked for the Compton Police Department, and Leila Steinberg, a one-time manager for Tupac.
As each anniversary rolls by, reporters invariably ask me the same question. “Will Tupac’s murder ever be solved?” And my answer has typically been, “I don’t think so.”

Now, however, new information is surfacing from law enforcement indicating that they’re looking at new information about two South Side Crips members. It appears it may be the break everyone has been looking for in the case--considered the highest-profile murder investigation in the history of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. The latest details in the investigation are also in the upcoming third edition of my book, due out by the mid-September anniversary.

In the many years since Tupac’s murder, much has happened. To wit, Notorious B.I.G. (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls) was killed six months later. Biggie’s murder, like Tupac’s, has not been solved. In the aftermath, others have died as well. Orlando Anderson, a Southside Crips gang member out of Compton, long believed to be the shooter in the Tupac case, was cut down in a shootout. Also dead are Jerry Bonds and Bobby Finch, who were named by Compton police as the gang members riding inside the white Cadillac with Anderson when Tupac was shot.

A fourth man,Davion Brooks--also a person of interest and widely believed to be a passenger in the Cadillac--co-ran a studio in Las Vegas called A&D Records, short for Armed and Dangerous, until 2003, when he was arrested for the federal offense of trafficking drugs to local street gang members. Brooks now sits in the Terminal Island federal penitentiary in California with a scheduled release date of July 2013. A fifth man, Terrence Brown, known as T-Brown, was named early on in a Compton Police affidavit as having been in the Cadillac with Tupac’s assailant. None has yet to be officially linked to Tupac’s murder. The book’s third edition breaks down that night in a minute-by-minute time line, supplying the information needed for readers to decide how the murder went down.

To many, Shakur was not just another ghetto kid who had made it big in the rap industry. He continues to be an inspiration, 13 years after his death, not only because of his music, but also for his ability to reach youth of all races. Whatever Shakur was, it’s indisputable that in both life and death, he took the rap industry by storm. 

And now, with a team in place taking a fresh look at the case, the killers may very well be brought to justice and the questions surrounding Tupac’s murder, including untold conspiracy theories, may finally be answered.

For Las Vegas record producer David Wallace, who met Tupac at a party hosted by Death Row, Tupac's record distributor, about a year before the killing, Tupac’s music will live on, regardless of whether his murder is ever solved. “He was an artist,” Wallace said. “You can’t just sing to somebody. You have to sing through them. Man, when Pac sang, he was real about it.”

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INTRODUCING CATHY SCOTT & SHERYL McCOLLUM

Women in Crime Ink is pleased to introduce two new regular contributors: True Crime Author Cathy Scott and Crime Analyst Sheryl McCollum.

Cathy Scott is a best-selling author and award-winning journalist who's received more than a dozen awards from news organizations in California and Nevada. Her work—which has appeared in The New York Times, Reuters, George magazine, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, The New York Times Magazine, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Las Vegas Sun—has taken her to Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Panama. Dividing her time between San Diego and Las Vegas, Cathy also writes fulltime for Best Friends Animal Society's magazine and Web site. She is a member of the Authors Guild and the Society of Professional Journalists' national Speakers Bureau. She has served as the Nevada chairwoman of the Society of Professional Journalist’s Sunshine Committee, which works to keep government records open to the public. At the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Cathy was an adjunct journalism instructor for five years, a position she gave up to stay on the Gulf Coast for nearly four months to cover the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Cathy is perhaps best known as the author of seven nonfiction books, including the Los Angeles Times best-seller The Killing of Tupac Shakur as well as the critically acclaimed The Murder of Biggie Smalls. Her other crime titles include Death in the Desert: The Ted Binion Homicide Case and Murder of a Mafia Daughter: The Life and Tragic Death of Susan Berman. Cathy's latest, The Rough Guide to True Crime, is being released August 31. She is currently finishing the case of Barbara Kogan, a Manhattan millionaire's widow who was indicted late last year for the contract murder of her husband nearly two decades ago. The book is scheduled for release by St. Martin’s Press True Crime Library in spring 2010.

Cathy has appeared on Unsolved Mysteries, Oxygen network’s “Snapped,” the Discovery Channel, CourtTV, CNN, MTV, Uncovered TV, Talk Books, and National Public Radio.

Women in Crime Ink is also welcoming Atlanta-based Sheryl McCollum, renowned crime analyst and college professor. She is the Director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute. Under Sheryl's direction, the Institute has been responsible for helping renew interest in cases that were deemed unsolvable. Sheryl has been involved in a number of notable investigations, including the disappearances of Natalee Holloway, Chandra Levy, and Amber Hagerman, as well as historical cases such as the Atlanta Child Murders and the Moore's Ford Bridge Lynching.

Sheryl is also the Director of a Metro Atlanta Cold Case Crime Analysis Squad. During the 1996 Olympic Games, Sheryl was Coordinator for the Crisis Response Team, which planned and trained for four years and responded to the Centennial Olympic Park Bombing, providing victim services through the criminal trial seven years later. In the wake of 9/11, Sheryl was Director of the Georgia team that was sent to the Pentagon in Washington, DC (aftermath at left). She is a POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) Certified Instructor, a Hostage Negotiator, a Crime Scene Technician, and a First Responder. Holding two Master’s Degrees, one in Policing and one in Criminal Justice, Sheryl is also a college professor, teaching Criminal Investigation, Crime Scene, and Forensics.

You can watch her as a regular guest expert on Nancy Grace. Sheryl has also been featured on Fox and Friends and CNN. Most recently, she is co-host of the new program "Fugitive Fridays" on the The Levi Page Show.

Read Sheryl's first piece for Women in Crime Ink on Thursday. And you can expect Cathy's first post a week from tomorrow, on July 23rd.

Please join us in welcoming our newest contributors!

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