`Monster' Caught -- Media-Savvy Gang Member Arrested Signing Autographs

LOS ANGELES - He has been a best-selling author, a killer, a thug and a thief. Until this week, he was a wanted man.

So what was outlaw Monster Kody, aka Kody Scott, doing when the police closed in Monday?

The author of "Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member" was standing on the porch of a South Central home, signing autographs.

Scott just can't help himself. He's never been able to shake his fondness for attention, even while on the lam.

The ex-con of the literary set has been running since March, when he allegedly punched his parole officer and fled his Riverside County home.

Police said he often stayed with fans during the past two months. He also kept in constant touch with his agent and the director of a film being made from his book.

Scott, 32, even gave several interviews in exile, including a front-page Los Angeles Times article earlier this month.

"The word we got on the street was that he was armed and that he wouldn't be taken alive," said Sgt. Andrew Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department. But the hype turned out to be just that.

Scott did run from officers Monday, only to burst into a neighboring home and find the back door locked. Trapped, he surrendered without incident.

In 1992, publishers fell all over themselves trying to buy Scott's expletive-laden, gory manuscript. Atlantic Monthly Press eventually paid a reported $200,000 for the hardcover rights alone.

His book, complete with his defiant, gun-toting photograph, landed in bookstores the next year. Esquire magazine published the first chapter. "60 Minutes" interviewed him behind bars.

Written in Pelican Bay State Prison, the autobiography chronicled murders, drugs, stabbings, robberies and alcoholism in South Central.

As a member of the Crips, Scott earned the exalted title of "O.G." - original gangster. He got his nickname from a police officer, who after viewing the kicked-in face of a Scott victim, said only "a monster" could have done it.

He was paroled in 1995 after serving four years for armed robbery and possession of an assault weapon. He returned to his wife and child at their Riverside home, a house he had bought specifically to escape the gangland lure of his boyhood neighborhood. But ironically, it was that same old neighborhood where he was caught.

After the arrest, Scott said he "wanted to go back to prison and write some more."