Cathy Scott's Book on the Tupac Murder Comes Out

Original: “Book chronicling Shakur murder set to hit stores” · Las Vegas Sun · Debra D. Bass · September 4, 1997

For ten months, Cathy Scott wrote in every spare minute. The police reporter for the Las Vegas Sun pulled together everything she knew about Tupac’s murder and the investigation. On September 4, 1997, her own paper previewed the result: The Killing of Tupac Shakur.

A cold tally, then platinum

Small Las Vegas publisher Huntington Press released the book on September 8, 1997, exactly one day after the anniversary of the shooting. The Sun article opens provocatively. It calls Tupac by his birth name, Lesane Parish Crooks, and draws a cold tally of his life. Then it turns: this man was a platinum-selling star and a respected actor, and his death was as controversial as his life. One small correction to the original is needed here: by today’s accounts Tupac was hit four times, not three.

Publisher Anthony Curtis praises Scott’s material as unique; the national media, he says, always ended up coming to her with their questions. Scott herself stays modest and stresses that she is no investigator. Still, she closes her author’s note with a hard verdict that the Sun quotes: “Someone has gotten away with murder.”

The detective won’t read it

Las Vegas police shrugged it off. Sgt. Kevin Manning, who led the investigation for Metro Police, had no interest in the book. Asked whether he thought it would be fair, he answered: “You’re assuming I’m going to read it.” He had no plans to.

Police, Manning said, had all the facts and knew pretty well what had happened. The real problem was witnesses who would not testify. No book would change that.

27 years to an indictment

Scott’s book became one of the standard works on the case, partly because of an autopsy photo that caused trouble a few days later (see Publisher defends the Shakur photo).

Manning’s claim that police knew what had happened reads differently today. The case went 27 years without charges. Only in September 2023 was Duane “Keffe D” Davis arrested. On August 31, 2026, a Las Vegas jury found him guilty of first-degree murder (not final; as of October 2026). The verdict rested mainly on his own statements, not on new witnesses from Tupac’s circle.