Eminem's ex on sister's overdose: 'Half of me is gone'
She watched her twin sister date, then twice marry rap superstar Eminem -- yet she died this week in poverty, from an apparent overdose of heroin.
A woman found dead this week in a squalid mobile home in Warren after what authorities said was a heroin overdose "was my sweet, beautiful sister who lost her way," said Kim Mathers, the ex-wife of rap music superstar Eminem.
Mathers left the tribute for her twin sister, 41-year-old Dawn Marie Scott, on the Internet remembrance page of a Macomb Township funeral home.
"Half of me is gone -- I kept a light lit for her, hoping she'd find her way back to me," Mathers wrote on the website of Lee-Ellena Funeral Home, where Scott's funeral is set for 10 a.m. Saturday.
While the tribute hinted at Scott's lifelong struggle with substance abuse, its loving tone belied the sisters' roller-coaster relationship, which included the sisters' mother, Kathy Sluck, having Scott arrested in December 2006, a Free Press report said at the time. The complaint was for child abduction and vehicle theft after Scott drove off in her parents' Lincoln Navigator with her then 7-year-old son, after losing parental rights to her sister and Eminem, the report said.
Scott grew up in the same neighborhood as Eminem and watched as her twin sister first dated, at age 14, then was married twice to the budding musician they'd first known as Marshall Mathers.
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But unlike Mathers and her twin, Dawn Marie Scott never escaped from the poverty of the Warren trailer parks where the trio spent their youth. She was found dead Tuesday of an apparent heroin overdose, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said. After receiving a 911 call from Scott's boyfriend, police arrived at 5:10 a.m. to find her slumped over, unable to be revived, he said.
Scott had recently been released from a 45-day stint in Macomb County Jail “for substance abuse,” Fouts added. Her booking photo, labeled "Macomb County Sheriff Office," shows a woman with unkempt hair and looking old beyond her years.
Police also found a 92-year-old woman “emaciated and lying on two urine-soaked mattresses,” Fouts said. She apparently was living with the elderly woman and the woman’s 67-year-old daughter, Fouts said. Emergency personnel took the emaciated older woman to the hospital for observation, he said.
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Scott had a well-publicized history of drug abuse, leading Marshall and Kim Mathers years ago to adopt Scott’s daughter, Alaina, and to care at various time for her two sons, according to Free Press reports. Scott's boyfriend told police Tuesday that Scott had been using cocaine and heroin, Fouts said. Results of toxicology testing, to determine the cause of death, won’t be known for weeks, but “our police are saying probably a drug overdose, and likely heroin,” Fouts said.
“This is all where Eminem grew up,” he added. A spokesman for Eminem’s recording firm could not be reached Thursday night.
The website Celebrity Net Worth ranked Eminem, also known as Slim Shady, as No. 6 last year among the Top 50 Richest Rappers, with an estimated $190 million in net worth. Eminem, a Rochester Hills resident, grew up in Detroit just south of 8 Mile Road. He divorced Kim Scott Mathers for the second time in 2006.
The mayor termed Scott’s death “kind of a tough ending” and blamed it on the nation’s mushrooming heroin epidemic, widely reported over the last decade to have spread from urban areas like Detroit into suburbs and even small rural towns.
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Many law enforcement officials and substance abuse experts blame the proliferation of heroin addiction and overdose deaths on increased access to opioid painkillers, prescribed by doctors and dentists for pain control in sports injuries, oral surgery and chronic conditions.
Users – often youths, the experts say – typically become addicted to the painkilling prescription drugs, then switch to heroin because it’s far cheaper and readily available on the streets without a prescription.
“I’m a jogger and I’ve had all sorts of injuries, but I won’t take those drugs,” Fouts said, referring to opioid painkillers such as Vicodin, Oxycontin and codeine.
“You read the warnings on those and you say, forget it,” Fouts said.