April 23, 2025 • 49 mins
Some truths never see the light. Gilbert has long believed that Jeremy Scott is responsible for more deaths than the state acknowledges—especially the unsolved murder of a cab driver in Intercession City. He’s tried everything he can think of to bring attention to the case, but the Osceola County Sheriff’s Office will not cooperate.
Then, out of nowhere, a retired detective—the one who led the investigation that resulted in the arrest and eventual acquittal—reaches out to Gilbert, offering to help.
The State finally agrees to reopen the cab driver case, but the lines between author and advocate blur. Gilbert works with Jeremy—an unlikely collaborator—to chase the truth and bring resolution to a family that’s waited decades.
But justice doesn’t always wait. And it doesn’t always come.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Before I ever met Jeremy's former girlfriend, Jamie, before I
knew Jamie and Jeremy had a son together named Justin.
I read carefully through something she said about Jeremy in
a deposition.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, it is November twenty eight, two thousand and five.
You were here in winter Haven, Florida, taking the statement
of Jamie Nellam's n E l amf the office.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
She said something that as far as I could tell,
no one had ever looked into.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
He told me he had killed a taxi cab driver
he was sixteen seventeen at Todd and that he had
gotten away with it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So when I finally got to talk to her, I
asked her about it. One of the things that we
learned about from your deposition was that I think they
asked if you were aware of Jeremy committing any other crimes,
and he said, to you killed the cab driver once.
Can you just walk us through what you remember of
that moment.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Actually, we were at his grandmother's house. He had taken
me to meet his grandmother out in Saint Cloud somewhere
I think it was, and something had happened because Jeremy
was yelling at this guy and he was angry and
he I mean, he was furious with that. I can
remember him being so angry with this guy that he
(01:28):
was yelling at and he had his fist clenched.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Jeremy once told me about this conflict too. It was
between him and his mom's boyfriend. Jeremy said he was
accusing this boyfriend of abusing his mom.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I told him, Pierre touched my mom off, kill him,
And I meant that right. I'm just trying to straight up.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Jamie says she remembers that incident and Jeremy getting very.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Angry and he started a kind of lunge and his
grandmother said something it you need to stop. It's going
to be just like with.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
That cab driver. I think what she was saying, and
she's going to kill him. Don't do that.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
And I think that's what his grandmother was afraid of,
that he was going to hurt this guy. And I
can remember asking him, like, what does she mean about
the cab driver and he said he said nothing, nothing, nothing,
and he kept putting me off, putting me off. Well,
it was middle of the night. I can remember us
laying down and we were on a mattress on the
(02:30):
floor and I was almost asleep, and I can remember
him saying, my grandma thinks I killed a cab driver.
That's how he said it. My grandma thinks I killed
a cab driver. And I didn't say anything, and he said,
(02:50):
are you asleep?
Speaker 6 (02:52):
And I said no. He said, did you hear me?
And I said yeah. I said, did you kill the
cab driver?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
And he said yeah, but it was I got away
with it, and then he won't talk about it anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
If you've been listening since the beginning of this story,
you've heard Jeremy tell me a little about this murder.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
When I called it task to get a drive and
I'm just gonna rob him. But when I pointed to gunad,
I guess it just touch it boom.
Speaker 7 (03:26):
You know, I know it.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Sooner or later, it's going to come back helm me.
I just wait for It's a matter of time.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Jeremy is in prison for life for murdering just one person,
Donald Moorehead, the man who's blood Jamie saw on Jeremy's pants.
Jeremy confessed to police the next day. Then when Kelsey
and I first met him in prison, he confessed to
two more murders. Leo Schofield's wife, Michelle, and a cab driver.
(03:59):
But the State of Florida insists those two confessions are fabrications,
that Jeremy is just seeking attention or manipulating me, a
naive writer who fell for his lies, and through it all,
they maintain their original claims that Jeremy Scott isn't worth
listening to, no matter how much evidence says otherwise. A
(04:27):
Florida prosecutor once told me, the only chance in hell
I have a one day convincing the state to overturn
Leo's conviction is to show them that Jeremy is telling
the truth. No one is going to reopen these murder
cases unless I hand them some undeniable piece of evidence
that corroborates Jeremy's confessions. So that is my mission, and
(04:48):
Jeremy Scott has become my most constant ally, someone I
believe is being more truthful and more credible than the
prosecutors and sheriffs, the ones who failed to properly investigate
them murders Jeremy is confessed to getting away with. That's
why I asked Jeremy for his help. Dear mister King,
(05:10):
he wrote me last year, I'm going to tell you
the whole story, he said, I want you to understand
I can be charged with this murder, and I'm okay
with this. I will never get out, So I'm going
to tell you.
Speaker 8 (05:36):
Do you my manslef to have my feet soruti sorrys.
Speaker 9 (05:53):
In this VASTI seihachish to the warm.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Stuff Bone Valley, Season two, Jeremy, Chapter four, Horse and Buggy.
(06:51):
After Jeremy confessed I'm taping and writing to killing a
cab driver, I brought everything i'd learned to the Ossiola
County Sheriff's office. This was a thirty four year old
unsolved murder, and they said they'd look into it again.
I thought the detectives there would be grateful for the
leads I'd given them, but I was wrong. The Sheriff's
office blew me off. They never got back to me,
(07:13):
and I was banging my head against the wall again.
But then, one morning, after we'd made public everything we'd learned,
I got an unexpected message on Facebook. It was from
Buddy Shepherd, the first detective to arrive at the scene
of the murder. In Shepherd's profile pick, he's wearing a
(07:34):
white cowboy hat. I clicked the message. Mister King, it
has been brought to my attention that you might want
to speak to me. I am Buddy Shepherd, retired staff
inspector of the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. If in fact,
you do, please contact me. Thank you from a big
fan of all your books. I couldn't get anyone from
(07:55):
the Sheriff's office to give me the time of day
with this case, and now the lead detective at the
center of it says he wants to talk.
Speaker 10 (08:08):
Hello, mister Shepherd, how are you?
Speaker 11 (08:11):
A Shepherd's my daddy and he's in dead for three years.
Speaker 9 (08:14):
Now, how are you?
Speaker 12 (08:17):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (08:17):
You're so pretty?
Speaker 11 (08:19):
Watch out, Kogo baby, Now you get going from here.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Buddy's tiny three legged lapdog runs over to us. His
name is Kujo Kujo right.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
Kujo definitely looks like a.
Speaker 7 (08:33):
Oh my god, Kujo baby. Go to the house, honey.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I was surprised Buddy Shepherd wanted to talk to me.
He was the detective who first tried to pin this
murder on a man named Dan Odie. Dan was brought
to trial for the murder twice, and after a hung
jury in the first trial, he was found not guilty
by a jury of his peers, but his name was
still dragged through the mud. And in the first season
(08:59):
of Bone Valley, I talked to several people who told
me Detective Buddy Shepherd threatened them, Like Tanya Dean.
Speaker 13 (09:08):
His name was Buddy Shepherd. I will never I just
got chills. I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
She was a fifteen year old single mother at the
time of the murder, and she said Shepherd pushed her
to tell a false story.
Speaker 13 (09:22):
And I remember telling my dad, Dad, they're making me lie.
They're telling me what I have to say, or they're
going to take my babies.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And then there was dan Odie himself, the man who
faced the electric chair because of Shepherd.
Speaker 12 (09:38):
Oh, Buddy Shepherd, he was just he was bounding, determined
to frighten me.
Speaker 7 (09:42):
He wasn't going to let it go.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So why would Buddy want to talk to me of
all people? And did I want to talk to him?
Buddy had spent some time in jail for threatening a
guy on his front lawn with a gun. I didn't
want to be next. But in his message confirming our visit,
he wrote, I hope you are well, my favorite author. Damn,
this guy really knows how to turn on the Southern Charm.
(10:13):
Not long after that message, Kelsey and I were with
Buddy outside his trailer near Intercession City.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
He wanted to.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Address the accusations against him.
Speaker 11 (10:30):
I didn't step on any laws or rules of evidence
or anything, but they investigated me.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
For the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the accusations
that Buddy Shephard was threatening witnesses to frame dan Odie.
Speaker 14 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I was gonna say, they did an investigation and like
in a week, they cleared you.
Speaker 12 (10:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Sure it was hard, but I wanted to keep Buddy talking.
I asked him if he'd be willing to give us
a tour of the crime scene, to take us back
to April of nineteen eighty seven, the night Joseph Lavera
was killed. Buddy has back problems, so he gets around
with a roll lader, sort of a walker with wheels
that you can sit down and rest if you need to.
Speaker 9 (11:12):
In the back.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I folded up his roll lader and put it in
the trunk. Buddy sat up front with me and Kelsey
sat in the back with her microphone pointed between us.
Speaker 11 (11:21):
If you want to just turn right here and yeah
restricted area. Oh, if we put that up for people
to shoot at.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The area just outside of Intercession City is still pretty rural.
We passed through farmland and prairies with cattle grazing along
the way, so Intercession City. The whole time Buddy was
in the car, I kept wondering why he wanted to
talk to me.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
All these roads in here are named after my family. Really, Yeah,
I saw a Shepherd.
Speaker 9 (11:57):
Street up here, is ain't you?
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Besides Jerry Jeremy, Buddy Shepherd and I are probably the
two people who know more about this case than anyone
else alive. And I'm convinced Buddy knows things I don't,
things nobody else knows. Maybe this former detective who wanted
to convict Dan Odie would now reveal some key piece
of information or evidence to finally prove that Jeremy Scott
(12:21):
was the person who killed the taxi cab driver. I
want him to talk.
Speaker 11 (12:26):
It was right about in here we pull over to
the side of Old Tampa Highway and park on the
spot where Lavera's body was found in April nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That night, a nearby resident heard gunshots and called police, and.
Speaker 11 (12:45):
He, of course called USh And I was at home
in bed. Yeah, it was like midnight ers, yes, sure,
about mid nine, one o'clock, and they called me immediately
and told me to get down here.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
So I did. What was it like when you got here?
Speaker 11 (13:05):
The body was laying off road, probably about forty or
fifty feet. We had crime scene investigators already there, and
they set up some lights. And I'll never forget. I'll
never forget seeing that boy's eyes.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
That was eerie. His eyes roping, Wow, his eyes roping.
Speaker 11 (13:28):
I could see the whites of his eyes and eating
his pupils.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
And that stays with you, right, it does. It stayed
with me till this day.
Speaker 15 (13:39):
Because it was like a twenty five year old kid, right, Yeah,
he was just really a kid working his butt off
as a taxi cab driver, and nobody should be killed
for doing their job.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Standing there on the side of the road with Buddy,
it became clear there was so much more to the story.
I still needed to understand, Like who was Joseph Laver.
I wanted to know more, so I tried to track
down his ex wife, Janet. I sent her a few messages.
(14:15):
She never responded, but I had a rural address in
southwestern Georgia, that seemed promising. It would be a long drive,
but I had to try. When I pulled up to
the address, I saw an above ground pool in the
front yard with half a dozen kids splashing and laughing
in the water. On the porch, a young woman in
(14:35):
summer clothes stepped out, shielding her eyes from the sun.
I introduced myself and explained that I was looking for Janet.
She seemed wary at first, her eyes narrowing as she
sized me up. The kids in the pool stopped playing
and their laughter faded as they turned to watch this
stranger standing in the yard with a thick Georgian accent.
(14:57):
The young woman finally spoke at It was her mom.
She's at work just up the road, she said, and
even offered directions. A few minutes later, I pulled up
to a small mobile home office situated along a busy
stretch of road. When I walked through the door, the
shopkeeper's bells chimed softly. A middle aged woman behind a
(15:22):
desk looked up and fixed her eyes on me. The
office was quiet and we were alone. I introduced myself, gently,
explaining why I had come to say. She was stunned
would be an understatement. She sat in silence, staring at
me for what felt like minutes. Sometimes reinvestigating a murder
(15:46):
case that's been shelled for more than thirty years can
stir up consequences. I try to tread carefully around. If
there's one thing I've learned following this story to its
farthest edges, is that some people survive by burying their
most traumatic memories just to move on. And then here
I come, a writer with a podcast asking them to
(16:08):
revisit the very past they've worked so hard to leave behind.
As I explained my investigation into Joseph Lavert's death, she
glanced down, her fingers moving across her phone as she
sent a text, still not saying a word. I mentioned
that I'd tried to call her a few years ago,
(16:29):
and she responded bluntly she'd blocked me. I assured her
that I could answer any questions she might have about
the case. A few minutes later, the bells jingled again
as another woman walked in. Her name was Joy, Janet's sister.
After receiving Janet's text, she googled me and decided I
(16:50):
seem legitimate. With Joy's reassurance, Janet's demeanor softened, She relaxed
and eventually agreed to speak with me.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
What was it like when I walked through this door?
Speaker 12 (17:05):
Blew?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
My mom shot me, devastated me. I just just shock.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I explained to Janet that I wanted to understand more
about Joseph, about who he was before he was killed.
I've never seen a picture.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I've been looking forever. I can't find a single picture. Well,
you know, I only had one picture of him. He
didn't like pictures taken. Yeah, he looked he had dark JB.
He had dark hair, skinny JB.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I didn't know that Joseph Lever went by JB.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
A lot of hair, black hair, sick, very sick. Yeah,
it's handsome. Yeah, I mean I'm married, and of course
he was handsome. He loved marshals.
Speaker 16 (17:49):
He had ninja suits, the numb chucks, the stars, the sword.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That was his stuff. I mean, that's what he was
majorly into.
Speaker 16 (18:00):
Yeah, we were like, it was best friends for you know,
and then then we got married and right away we
were having a baby, very quickly. Actually we got married.
He loved the fish too, Oh, yes, loved the fish.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Janet tells me she and JB went fishing the day
before their son was born.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Oh yes, I was nine months pregnant.
Speaker 16 (18:24):
Was out there fishing and freezing cold because christ was
born in December, and we're out there fishing.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I said, what happens if I go in labor?
Speaker 16 (18:31):
They said, we gotta get We got the way till
we finished fishing, and we laughed about it, and then
of course they went labor the next day for eighteen
long hours.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Janet and JB had a son together, a boy named Christopher.
Their marriage ended when Christopher was just two, but they
remained friends, and.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He was a cab driver. Had it only been for
a few months. I had been working there long.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Janet's last comversation with JB was about making plans to
get together the next.
Speaker 16 (19:03):
Day, and so it was talking about going down to
the park and I told him I would make sandwiches
and and we just go down there and have a
pet name and let Chris play and on the swings
and stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And I said, you know, what do you think? And
he said, that's a good idea.
Speaker 16 (19:19):
He said, let's do that, And he said he wanted
to talk to me about something.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
But JB went to his shift that night and never
made it home.
Speaker 16 (19:31):
We got a call I get three o'clock in the
morning that he had been killed, and then I had
to tell Chris.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Then his daddy went to live with Jesus.
Speaker 16 (19:43):
But you know he's too, I said, he went to
live with Jesus. Now we we're not going to see
him no more because you know, trying not to cry.
You know, he's going to live with Jesus. And he
looked at me. Sat there a minute and he looked
at me. He said, how'd he get there? And I
let that him and I said a horse and buggy.
(20:06):
He said a horse and baky, I said yeah. He
jumped down and as hard as he could run to
other than the house, hollering for my brother in law.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
I'm a danny, up, a danny, up Danny and he
said what son? He said, my daddy went to live
with Jesus. And you know what he got there, no
or a horse and buggy. And he was happy because
his daddy rode a horse and buggy.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
At his funeral, Janet learned what jab had wanted to
talk to her about.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
My best friend at the time.
Speaker 16 (20:37):
He said that he was going to tell me that
he loved me, and he wanted us to get back together.
I was like, are you sure, and she said, yes,
He's called me and told me, you know that that's
what he wanted to talk to you about.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But Janet would never have that conversation with the father
of their son.
Speaker 16 (20:57):
You know, he was only two and he loved his
dad and he never had that daddy. You know, he
never had him all his love bad enough he got
shot three times right, and then just left the lay there,
and then nobody ever got to pay.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It's like his life didn't matter.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It was Buddy Shepherd's job to find out who killed JB.
A week after the murder, he had his suspect.
Speaker 11 (21:38):
We had a chalkboard and we wrote down anybody's name
that could have done this. We put dan Odie at
the top of it. Dan Odie was six foot three
and weighed two ten two twenty and I mean a big,
raw boned cow man. I just not big muscle. But
(22:00):
everything was just as tight as it could be in
his arms and his chest. We were investigating dan Odie
right from the very beginning. We had their wrist warrant.
We didn't tell anybody about it, and we come down
here and started following Dan around.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
Dan was in a pickup shuckle. We started falling and.
Speaker 11 (22:18):
He knew we were behind him, but he wouldn't come
into Ostiola County, and so I blocked him off and
I came out with a shotgun on him and we
put him on the ground and arrested him.
Speaker 7 (22:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
We saw that picture in the Orlando sitting on did you. Yeah,
he's like laid out on the ground.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Looking at all the case files, I could never figure
out why Buddy Shepherd set his sights on Dan Odie
for this murder. Buddy just tells me that's where his
investigation led him. What Buddy Shepherd didn't know was that
at the very moment he began investigating who killed JB.
Jeremy Scott was hiding in an abandoned house just a
(23:00):
few blocks away from the crash taxi, waiting for Buddy's
dogs to sniff him out. Jeremy told me this, and
from what Buddy tells me, it sounds like police dogs
had picked up Jeremy sent from a baseball cap that
was left behind in the taxi.
Speaker 11 (23:20):
We had two dogs from the time. They did track
himTo the abandoned house, but they lost him there. Tried
to run a track from the taxi cab even gave
the dog the hat smell. But there have been so
many people running the streets and everything that the dog
got misdirected.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, so the dog thought that whoever did this went
to the abandoned house.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
Yes, sure, okay, yes.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Sir, the dogs got close, but they lost his scent.
Jeremy and I went over this too.
Speaker 17 (23:55):
I talked to the lead detective for that taxi cab
tain Yeah, and he told me that they had the
dogs out and the dogs like lost the scent at
an abandoned house, like they were that close.
Speaker 18 (24:09):
See you know the railroad tracks right there, ye, yeah, yeah,
you know I walked. I walk on the railad track
the Steel park right you know, if bus train comes hit,
you're sick, gonna be going.
Speaker 14 (24:24):
I never heard that before.
Speaker 18 (24:26):
Yeah, I didn't think it worked, But it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
All these years later, Jeremy Scott is still waiting for
the police to hold him accountable.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I wrote a letter to Jeremy saying, I know it
must be difficult to replace memories from so many years
ago and then write them down in a letter. I
can't imagine how that must feel trying to tell people
all of this and they won't believe you. I just
wanted you to know that I'm listening and I'm grateful
to hear from you. Jeremy wrote back with a letter
(25:19):
unlike anything i'd ever read. I'm going to tell you
the whole story, he wrote. I want you to understand
I can be charged with this murder, and I'm okay
with this. I will never get out, So I'm going
to tell you. What followed was a stream of details
that could not possibly have come from somebody who just
(25:42):
read about this case in the news. I'm going to
read to you what he wrote. Dear mister King, I
might can't remember every little thing, okay, and what I
tell you is true. He explained he'd broken into a
CoP's house and stole a three point fifty seven magnum
(26:03):
pistol he found in a closet. I got a ride
to Kasimi. It was after eleven thirty pm. I was
walking around. I really didn't know what to do. Then
I thought about showing the gun at someone and asked
for their money, like on TV, but there were too
many people around. Then I saw a taxi cab. Jeremy
(26:27):
writes that he got the number and called. When a
cab come to pick me up, I told him that
I wanted to go to Intercession City. I know this
place better than most. I lived there when I was little.
I told him I live on Old Dixie Highway, so
it's real dark out there at night. Once we passed
(26:49):
the last house, I pulled the gun out. When he
saw what I had, I told him to keep driving.
Once I know there ain't any home close by, I
told him to pull over, to turn the car off
and leave the lights on. Then we got out. I
asked him where does he keep the money? That's when
(27:10):
he told me there ain't any because he just came
on and I was the first person he picked up.
JB was lying to Jeremy. His shift was just about
to end, and he'd hidden one hundred and fifty four
dollars in a folded map tucked inside the glove compartment. Outside,
(27:32):
the night was pitch black, the round headlights of the
nineteen seventy seven Dodged Sedan casting faint light along Old
Tampa Highway. JB was staring down the barrel of a
three point fifty seven magnum and this is the part
of the letter where Jeremy describes the murder. I was
(27:53):
pointing the gun at him. I had the damn thing
pulled back and waved it at him. Then all I
remember was hearing this loud boom.
Speaker 9 (28:04):
I look at him, and.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
It seems that he was coming, and I shot him again,
then once more. I'm sure that I shot that gun
three times. It was crazy. I ran to the car
and turned it around and was going real fast until
I got to the stop sign. I turned and went
over the tracks, then turned real fast right. I was
(28:30):
going fast and I couldn't stop it. Then I hit
a car and it hit another, I think. But once
I hit that car, I turned the wheel real fast
and I hit a pole. I remember trying to get
out fast. I got the gun in case. As I
was getting out, I heard and saw two people. Jeremy
(28:52):
writes that he knew one of them, someone named John,
and he says he yelled at them, told him the
car was going to blow, then took off over the tracks.
In his letter to me, Jeremy included a hand drawn
(29:13):
map of the streets of Intercession City, carefully sketching the
exact route he took in the stolen taxigab. After the murder,
he wrote, look at this map. It will show you
the truth. With arrows and lines, Jeremy illustrated how the
taxi ricocheted off a parked car before crashing into a
(29:34):
light pole. He accurately labeled the streets and even drew
figures to represent the witnesses he saw approaching the scene.
He also sketched a path to show the direction he
fled afterward. Nearly every detail matched police reports and witness depositions.
His account went beyond anything that had ever been revealed
(29:57):
in the media coverage of the case. At the end
of his letter, Jeremy wrote, I really want to thank
you for helping me, because I feel it's the right
thing to do. That's why I told you the whole story.
Seems that people listen to you. It turns out that's
not always the case. By the time I got in,
(30:32):
Jeremy's confession verified his connection to Intercession City and how
he was able to corroborate details from the murder of J. B.
Lavere that were never made public. I was feeling incredibly optimistic.
There was no possible way law enforcement could ignore this
new evidence. I took what I had to the Orlando Sentinel,
and they decided to do a front page features story
(30:54):
about my investigation. They even reached out to the Sheriff's
office in advance for a comment, and the sheriff responded
with this, thank you for your patients. As we gathered
the facts. Following the meeting with mister King in twenty
twenty one, the Osceola County Sheriff's Office did re examine
the Lavere homicide case. After a careful review, we did
(31:17):
not find any facts to substantiate the claim that Jeremy
Scott was the killer. We believe, based on the evidence,
Daniel Odie is and was the correct suspect. When I
(31:37):
read their response, I was stunned and furious, and the
more I read, the worse it got. The Asciola Sheriff
publicly smeared Dan's name, once again, calling him a murderer
who had gotten off on a technicality. Let's be clear,
Dan Odie was acquitted because a jury of his peers
found him not guilty of murder. There's nothing technical about that.
(32:03):
Now this had turned into something I couldn't walk away from.
I had waited, trusted, and expected officials to take action
to dig deeper for the truth. The Asciola County Sheriff's
office might have decided to ignore Jeremy's confession and the
evidence I'd gathered, but that didn't mean I was going
to let it go. There were still untapped pass in
(32:24):
my investigation, and now I knew exactly where I had
to go. When the Sheriff's office wouldn't act, I turned
to the prosecutors. Ah, shit, that's terrible. I'm gonna park
this again. I just parked in a really shitty spot.
(32:46):
One of those days, one of those days. How are
you feeling about this, Causie, I feel confident.
Speaker 10 (32:57):
I was already awake when my alarm went off this morning.
I was just already laying in bed thinking about it.
Speaker 9 (33:03):
So this one I actually have a good feeling about it.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I reached out to the Ninth Circuit State Attorney's office,
knowing that they had the authority to conduct their own
investigation into who killed JB. I managed to arrange a
meeting with Chief Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams and two
investigators from his office. He said, just text, send me
a text message when you are downstairs. I'll come to
escort you in. They agreed to meet with me and
(33:30):
Kelsey on a federal holiday, no less because we were closed.
Speaker 7 (33:34):
I will also be dressed more casual than usual.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Please feel free to be casual too late, dude, should
I take off my deck at Then we walked toward
the office and mentally prepare for what should be an
important meeting. We should do a selfie in front of
the courthouse for later. I don't think we need to
do a selfie all right, Okay, I'm gonna do.
Speaker 9 (33:56):
It later after we're victorious.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I guess we can walk over there coming down. They
didn't allow us to record the meeting, but it was
clear from the start that ASA Ryan Williams and his
team were taking this seriously. Kelsey turned on the recorder
again when we stepped outside. When we were presenting to them,
they were curious, asking a ton of questions, really good questions.
(34:20):
But unless they find some physical evidence from a legal standpoint,
it's going to be difficult for them to go forward.
Speaker 10 (34:26):
It made a promise to us to look, which is
much more than we got last time.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, and I believe them. I really do feel like
they were engaged, and they were they want to do
this they just need that physical evidence, and I thought
that was a much more real This could be the
turning point that finally sets the record straight about JB's murder.
We know, and you know, what are the odds that
Jeremy Scott confesses to a murder of a taxi cab
when he's not in prison, when it's a town he
used to live in, and when he can draw a
(34:51):
map showing his exact movements that match every witnesses. I mean,
that's the kind of thing that you know, from a
storytelling point, I'm convinced, but they need physic in order
to go forward, and that's where we are. A few
weeks later, I get an update. Okay, this is a
letter from Ryan Williams from December nineteenth, twenty twenty three.
(35:13):
Good afternoon, mister King. I hope this email finds you
well in the midst of a pleasant holiday season. I
wanted again to reach out on this case and homicide
we discussed back in September. Williams wrote that one of
his investigators search for the physical evidence from the case
at both the Sheriff's office and the county clerk. After
several efforts, we obtained an answer and paperwork indicating that
(35:36):
the physical evidence associated with the case was returned to
the Sheriff's office and was destroyed by them in two
thousand and nine. I have no reason to believe this
destruction was improper in any way, but the bottom line
is that it no longer exists to be tested. The
Osceola County Sheriff's Office destroyed all the physical evidence from
(35:59):
the Joseph of b Lavere homicide, all of it. I
know that there had been a hat, hair samples, a bullet,
twenty two fingerprints on the car. Jeremy Scott left fingerprints
at the other three murders he confessed to. Now there's
no way to know if the prince left behind were his.
(36:20):
Williams was telling me that the sheriff destroyed all of it.
Speaker 10 (36:33):
Well, I mean, honestly, this sucks, but I'm also kind
of like and that gives us more flexibility, you know,
we can go, Yeah, we don't have to hold off
or be polite because the state's looking into it, because
they're obviously not so.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
H I mean, I just feel like there's more to
do here.
Speaker 19 (36:57):
I'm not stopping, all right, talk to you later, bye, Asa.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Ryan Williams encouraged me to keep investigating and told me
to reach out if I uncovered anything significant. I try
everything I can think of. I track down John, the
witness that Jeremy recognized as he was getting out of
the crash taxi. John grew up with Jeremy in Intercession City.
At trial, he testified that it was dan Odie he
(37:44):
saw getting out of the cab. I get John on
the phone, and he remembered all of it. When I
tell him that Jeremy is in prison today for a
different murder, and he confessed to being the one who
killed the cab driver, John says I gotta go and
hangs up the phone. He doesn't say, no, it was
dan Odie. He says, I gotta go. Click. After that,
(38:06):
I went to his house three times, hoping he would
change his mind and agree to talk to me. Every
time I showed up, I saw his brother standing outside.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I'm Gilbert Camp.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
I'm investigating that Jeremy shot died.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
He called me a persistent motherfucker. Oh, but in a
nice way. My brother's still not talking to you.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
He told me he's not all right.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I understand. This was one of those times when I
wished I had the power to subpoena witnesses. Still, there
was one piece of evidence, probably the most important in
the entire case. It had been destroyed by the Sheriff's office,
but I believe there was a way to link it
to Jeremy and to the murder of JB.
Speaker 7 (38:50):
Levere.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Jeremy told me that after he killed JB, he got
behind the wheel of the cab, drove it a mile
away and crashed it into a utility poll. When Buddy
Shepherd arrived at the scene in nineteen eighty seven, he
saw the crashed cab empty after the murderer had gotten
out and run away, and.
Speaker 11 (39:11):
He come barreling down through here. He was, needless to say,
he was hauling Bud.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Former Detective Buddy Shepherd took us to that spot.
Speaker 7 (39:21):
So what did you see.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
When you pull up the like it's the cars right
in there somewhere right.
Speaker 11 (39:25):
Yes, sir, front end of it just demolished pretty well.
When I looked inside, the door was left open on
the drive or see, and I looked in and saw
the cab.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
A black cap left behind by JB's murderer.
Speaker 7 (39:43):
I want to see, Godly man, I'm working from memory.
Speaker 9 (39:48):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 11 (39:50):
It was a rebel flag on the front of it,
a battle flag in a skull and a skull, yes, sir, yes, sir,
And that was the cap. It was dark colored and everything. Yeah,
it got knocked off of him and he didn't grab it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Jeremy mentions the hat in a letter he wrote me.
The hat was given to him by his cousin Jason.
He says, I didn't know that I forgot my hat.
My cousin gave me. The hat was black. We wore
so many hats growing up as kids. We always thought
they were cool hats. If the hat were still around,
(40:24):
the State Attorney's office could test the sweatband for DNA
or compare the hares found inside with Jeremy's. But since
the Ossiola County Sheriff's Office destroyed it, that's no longer
an option. Buddy used to work at the Sheriff's office
and says he knows the guy responsible for destroying the evidence.
Speaker 11 (40:43):
One thing I'm really upset about this whole mess. Wiley
Black had that evidence destroyed.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
We saw that Major Wiley Black supervised the homicide and
Violent Crimes unit at the time the evidence was destroyed.
Speaker 7 (41:03):
It is very upsetting. To me, he had no right
to do that.
Speaker 11 (41:07):
You don't get rid of evidence, you don't get rid
of reports, you don't get rid of any of that.
I'm a murder for fifty years. Fifty fifty years. I
remember it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
While the Sheriff's office may have eliminated the physical evidence,
a clear photograph of the hat still exists in the
case files. I've always wondered if someone in Jeremy's family
might have a photo of either Jeremy or his cousin
Jason wearing that baseball hat. I wrote to Jeremy about it,
and he got back to me right away. He wrote,
(41:41):
you asked me if I had pictures. No, I don't,
but I'm sure there's some out there. Grandma had some,
but when she passed away. I don't know who would
have got them all. She always saved all of them.
But Aunt Debbie, Judy or Mama might have some. I
don't really know. I tried to track down Jason Scott, who,
(42:03):
according to Jeremy, gave him a black baseball cap. Jason
passed away years ago, but I've been texting with Jason's brother, Joshua.
I wanted to show him a picture of the hat.
In person to see his reaction, but we couldn't make
it work. Finally, I decided to text him a photo
of the hat instead, long shot, I wrote, but does
(42:25):
this hat look familiar? A few hours later, Joshua replied, Yes,
I recognize that cap, he wrote, Jeremy and his brother
Dean fought over that cap, but my mom always told
us that cap wasn't fit to wear. The next time
Jeremy called me, I mentioned that I'd spoken with his
cousin Joshua. I wanted to see if Jeremy could confirm
(42:48):
what Joshua had said about the hat, that he and
his brother Royal Dean had fought over it.
Speaker 18 (42:54):
Yeah, I can't. In prison, my brother had it. I
mean that was a hat Jason gave me if I
went to prison.
Speaker 12 (43:01):
The first time.
Speaker 18 (43:02):
Yeah, I got out, my brother had it and I took.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
It back right and we had a big argument about it.
Speaker 9 (43:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, I'm still holding out hope that the family might
find a picture of Jeremy or even his cousin Jason,
wearing that hat. I told Buddy Shepherd more than once
that I believed he went after the wrong man and
dan Odie, and that I was convinced Jeremy Scott had
killed J. B. Levere after showing him all the evidence
(43:31):
I'd uncovered. I just wanted to know if any of
it had made a difference to him.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
Did you know who Jeremy Scott was?
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Because he lived in Intercession City for some time.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
I knew of him. I don't know if I've ever
seen him or spoke to him or nothing. I just
knew him as a kid.
Speaker 12 (43:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I thought when I showed you this and that, I
thought you were going to say you could consider Jeremy
Scott a suspect.
Speaker 11 (43:54):
Yes, I do do, Yeah, I do. Jeremy Scott could
have done it, yeah, no doubt Mamiani could have done it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Even Buddy Sheppard, the detective who led the original investigation,
acknowledges that Jeremy Scott should now be considered a suspect
in the murder of JB. Leavere, And yet I remain
the only person who has ever questioned Jeremy Scott about
this crime. When Kelsey and I visited dan Odie in
(44:26):
twenty nineteen, he eagerly supported our investigation. I promised him
I'd return with everything I uncovered. I had hoped that
with all the police and court records in hand, and
Jeremy helping the piece together, each detail Dan's name could
finally be cleared, and that the clarity and consistency of
Jeremy's memories would solidify the truth behind not just his
(44:50):
confession to j B. Lavere's murder, but to Michelle Schofield's
murder as well. Now, with all the evidence destroyed, it
feels like any chance of giving Dan the piece he
deserves has been stolen for good. And here's what infuriates
me most. To protect the narrative that they targeted the
(45:10):
right men and Dan, Odie and Leo Schofield, the state
is asking the public to swallow a lie that Jeremy
Scott's confessions are just stories, not evidence. I can only
assume these lawmen and prosecutors would rather bury the truth
than admit their case was built on a lie at
(45:31):
the cost of two innocent lives and any semblance of justice.
I dredged all of this back up in an effort
to set the record straight and to find something closer
to true justice. Instead, it's mostly brought more turmoil for
(45:54):
people like JB's ex wife.
Speaker 16 (45:56):
I mean, it's like opening a wound that or that
box that you close up and put on the shelf
and just leave it there. You know, you don't want
to get through those emotions. You don't want to live
that ever again.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
This is one of the painful, unintended consequences of digging
into these old cases. Back in twenty nineteen, when we
interviewed Dan Odie, I promised him I come back with
everything I'd learned in my investigation. There were so many
(46:30):
times over the years when I thought I'd finally be
able to bring him good news that his name had
been officially cleared in the murder of JB. Levere, but
with the Sheriff's office destroying the evidence and dragging his
name to the mud again in the Orlando Sentinel article,
that closure may never come. This wasn't a call I
(46:52):
wanted to make. I was afraid all of this would
create even more pain.
Speaker 18 (46:57):
For Dan No and I just really always wanted to be.
Speaker 14 (46:59):
Able to come back to you and say, all right,
this is it, this is who did it, and there's
going to be charged and your your name will be
officially cleared. And I just sort of wanted to say
I'm sorry that I didn't get.
Speaker 12 (47:09):
There I don't know when I When I got that paper,
I broke down.
Speaker 8 (47:13):
Man.
Speaker 12 (47:14):
I told myself, I thank you guy so much for
taking the time to do what he did. At least
now I got some clothes. You know, I can show
people this pape. Look, I did not do this, no
matter what to think. I did not kill the guy. Yeah,
it meant a lot of people.
Speaker 14 (47:31):
Well, I'll definitely be getting back to you with any
any updates that I can find, because I'm not quitting
on it.
Speaker 12 (47:37):
I sure thank you about it. You're in my heart
and you're in the lie. I appreciate what you did
for me.
Speaker 14 (47:43):
I feel the same dam thank you so much.
Speaker 12 (47:45):
Ah, but you had a good day YouTube.
Speaker 14 (47:48):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Maybe, just maybe, reopening questions about the past can also
lead to something more than heartbreak.
Speaker 13 (48:07):
That was just wanting to help a downtrodden person. Really,
I didn't have any plans to keep writing him like that.
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Do you remember the first letter that Jeremy sent to you?
Speaker 16 (48:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (48:20):
I have it, oh right here, let me see that's
next time. Owe Valley is a production of Lava for
Good podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Our
executive producers are Jason Flam, Jeff Kepler, and Kevin Wortis.
(48:43):
Karen Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Pauley and Hannah
Biel are our producers. Britz Spangler is our sound designer.
Marianne Mchune is our editor. Fact checking by Dania Suleman.
Jeff Cliburn is our head of marketing and Operations. Our
social media director is Ismai Guardrama, our Social media manager
(49:05):
is Sarah Gibbons, and our art director is Andrew Nelson.
Additional research and production by Kelsey Decker. Additional sound recording
by James Johnson. Bone Valley is written and produced by
Me Gilbert King. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and
threads at Lava for Good
Before I ever met Jeremy's former girlfriend, Jamie, before I
knew Jamie and Jeremy had a son together named Justin.
I read carefully through something she said about Jeremy in
a deposition.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Good morning, it is November twenty eight, two thousand and five.
You were here in winter Haven, Florida, taking the statement
of Jamie Nellam's n E l amf the office.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
She said something that as far as I could tell,
no one had ever looked into.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
He told me he had killed a taxi cab driver
he was sixteen seventeen at Todd and that he had
gotten away with it.
Speaker 1 (00:45):
So when I finally got to talk to her, I
asked her about it. One of the things that we
learned about from your deposition was that I think they
asked if you were aware of Jeremy committing any other crimes,
and he said, to you killed the cab driver once.
Can you just walk us through what you remember of
that moment.
Speaker 4 (01:06):
Actually, we were at his grandmother's house. He had taken
me to meet his grandmother out in Saint Cloud somewhere
I think it was, and something had happened because Jeremy
was yelling at this guy and he was angry and
he I mean, he was furious with that. I can
remember him being so angry with this guy that he
(01:28):
was yelling at and he had his fist clenched.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Jeremy once told me about this conflict too. It was
between him and his mom's boyfriend. Jeremy said he was
accusing this boyfriend of abusing his mom.
Speaker 5 (01:42):
I told him, Pierre touched my mom off, kill him,
And I meant that right. I'm just trying to straight up.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Jamie says she remembers that incident and Jeremy getting very.
Speaker 4 (01:54):
Angry and he started a kind of lunge and his
grandmother said something it you need to stop. It's going
to be just like with.
Speaker 6 (02:03):
That cab driver. I think what she was saying, and
she's going to kill him. Don't do that.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
And I think that's what his grandmother was afraid of,
that he was going to hurt this guy. And I
can remember asking him, like, what does she mean about
the cab driver and he said he said nothing, nothing, nothing,
and he kept putting me off, putting me off. Well,
it was middle of the night. I can remember us
laying down and we were on a mattress on the
(02:30):
floor and I was almost asleep, and I can remember
him saying, my grandma thinks I killed a cab driver.
That's how he said it. My grandma thinks I killed
a cab driver. And I didn't say anything, and he said,
(02:50):
are you asleep?
Speaker 6 (02:52):
And I said no. He said, did you hear me?
And I said yeah. I said, did you kill the
cab driver?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
And he said yeah, but it was I got away
with it, and then he won't talk about it anymore.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
If you've been listening since the beginning of this story,
you've heard Jeremy tell me a little about this murder.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
When I called it task to get a drive and
I'm just gonna rob him. But when I pointed to gunad,
I guess it just touch it boom.
Speaker 7 (03:26):
You know, I know it.
Speaker 5 (03:29):
Sooner or later, it's going to come back helm me.
I just wait for It's a matter of time.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Jeremy is in prison for life for murdering just one person,
Donald Moorehead, the man who's blood Jamie saw on Jeremy's pants.
Jeremy confessed to police the next day. Then when Kelsey
and I first met him in prison, he confessed to
two more murders. Leo Schofield's wife, Michelle, and a cab driver.
(03:59):
But the State of Florida insists those two confessions are fabrications,
that Jeremy is just seeking attention or manipulating me, a
naive writer who fell for his lies, and through it all,
they maintain their original claims that Jeremy Scott isn't worth
listening to, no matter how much evidence says otherwise. A
(04:27):
Florida prosecutor once told me, the only chance in hell
I have a one day convincing the state to overturn
Leo's conviction is to show them that Jeremy is telling
the truth. No one is going to reopen these murder
cases unless I hand them some undeniable piece of evidence
that corroborates Jeremy's confessions. So that is my mission, and
(04:48):
Jeremy Scott has become my most constant ally, someone I
believe is being more truthful and more credible than the
prosecutors and sheriffs, the ones who failed to properly investigate
them murders Jeremy is confessed to getting away with. That's
why I asked Jeremy for his help. Dear mister King,
(05:10):
he wrote me last year, I'm going to tell you
the whole story, he said, I want you to understand
I can be charged with this murder, and I'm okay
with this. I will never get out, So I'm going
to tell you.
Speaker 8 (05:36):
Do you my manslef to have my feet soruti sorrys.
Speaker 9 (05:53):
In this VASTI seihachish to the warm.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Stuff Bone Valley, Season two, Jeremy, Chapter four, Horse and Buggy.
(06:51):
After Jeremy confessed I'm taping and writing to killing a
cab driver, I brought everything i'd learned to the Ossiola
County Sheriff's office. This was a thirty four year old
unsolved murder, and they said they'd look into it again.
I thought the detectives there would be grateful for the
leads I'd given them, but I was wrong. The Sheriff's
office blew me off. They never got back to me,
(07:13):
and I was banging my head against the wall again.
But then, one morning, after we'd made public everything we'd learned,
I got an unexpected message on Facebook. It was from
Buddy Shepherd, the first detective to arrive at the scene
of the murder. In Shepherd's profile pick, he's wearing a
(07:34):
white cowboy hat. I clicked the message. Mister King, it
has been brought to my attention that you might want
to speak to me. I am Buddy Shepherd, retired staff
inspector of the Osceola County Sheriff's Office. If in fact,
you do, please contact me. Thank you from a big
fan of all your books. I couldn't get anyone from
(07:55):
the Sheriff's office to give me the time of day
with this case, and now the lead detective at the
center of it says he wants to talk.
Speaker 10 (08:08):
Hello, mister Shepherd, how are you?
Speaker 11 (08:11):
A Shepherd's my daddy and he's in dead for three years.
Speaker 9 (08:14):
Now, how are you?
Speaker 12 (08:17):
Oh?
Speaker 7 (08:17):
You're so pretty?
Speaker 11 (08:19):
Watch out, Kogo baby, Now you get going from here.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Buddy's tiny three legged lapdog runs over to us. His
name is Kujo Kujo right.
Speaker 9 (08:30):
Kujo definitely looks like a.
Speaker 7 (08:33):
Oh my god, Kujo baby. Go to the house, honey.
Speaker 1 (08:37):
I was surprised Buddy Shepherd wanted to talk to me.
He was the detective who first tried to pin this
murder on a man named Dan Odie. Dan was brought
to trial for the murder twice, and after a hung
jury in the first trial, he was found not guilty
by a jury of his peers, but his name was
still dragged through the mud. And in the first season
(08:59):
of Bone Valley, I talked to several people who told
me Detective Buddy Shepherd threatened them, Like Tanya Dean.
Speaker 13 (09:08):
His name was Buddy Shepherd. I will never I just
got chills. I'll never forget that.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
She was a fifteen year old single mother at the
time of the murder, and she said Shepherd pushed her
to tell a false story.
Speaker 13 (09:22):
And I remember telling my dad, Dad, they're making me lie.
They're telling me what I have to say, or they're
going to take my babies.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
And then there was dan Odie himself, the man who
faced the electric chair because of Shepherd.
Speaker 12 (09:38):
Oh, Buddy Shepherd, he was just he was bounding, determined
to frighten me.
Speaker 7 (09:42):
He wasn't going to let it go.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
So why would Buddy want to talk to me of
all people? And did I want to talk to him?
Buddy had spent some time in jail for threatening a
guy on his front lawn with a gun. I didn't
want to be next. But in his message confirming our visit,
he wrote, I hope you are well, my favorite author. Damn,
this guy really knows how to turn on the Southern Charm.
(10:13):
Not long after that message, Kelsey and I were with
Buddy outside his trailer near Intercession City.
Speaker 7 (10:20):
He wanted to.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Address the accusations against him.
Speaker 11 (10:30):
I didn't step on any laws or rules of evidence
or anything, but they investigated me.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
For the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigated the accusations
that Buddy Shephard was threatening witnesses to frame dan Odie.
Speaker 14 (10:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I was gonna say, they did an investigation and like
in a week, they cleared you.
Speaker 12 (10:49):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Sure it was hard, but I wanted to keep Buddy talking.
I asked him if he'd be willing to give us
a tour of the crime scene, to take us back
to April of nineteen eighty seven, the night Joseph Lavera
was killed. Buddy has back problems, so he gets around
with a roll lader, sort of a walker with wheels
that you can sit down and rest if you need to.
Speaker 9 (11:12):
In the back.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
I folded up his roll lader and put it in
the trunk. Buddy sat up front with me and Kelsey
sat in the back with her microphone pointed between us.
Speaker 11 (11:21):
If you want to just turn right here and yeah
restricted area. Oh, if we put that up for people
to shoot at.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
The area just outside of Intercession City is still pretty rural.
We passed through farmland and prairies with cattle grazing along
the way, so Intercession City. The whole time Buddy was
in the car, I kept wondering why he wanted to
talk to me.
Speaker 7 (11:50):
All these roads in here are named after my family. Really, Yeah,
I saw a Shepherd.
Speaker 9 (11:57):
Street up here, is ain't you?
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Besides Jerry Jeremy, Buddy Shepherd and I are probably the
two people who know more about this case than anyone
else alive. And I'm convinced Buddy knows things I don't,
things nobody else knows. Maybe this former detective who wanted
to convict Dan Odie would now reveal some key piece
of information or evidence to finally prove that Jeremy Scott
(12:21):
was the person who killed the taxi cab driver. I
want him to talk.
Speaker 11 (12:26):
It was right about in here we pull over to
the side of Old Tampa Highway and park on the
spot where Lavera's body was found in April nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
That night, a nearby resident heard gunshots and called police, and.
Speaker 11 (12:45):
He, of course called USh And I was at home
in bed. Yeah, it was like midnight ers, yes, sure,
about mid nine, one o'clock, and they called me immediately
and told me to get down here.
Speaker 7 (13:01):
So I did. What was it like when you got here?
Speaker 11 (13:05):
The body was laying off road, probably about forty or
fifty feet. We had crime scene investigators already there, and
they set up some lights. And I'll never forget. I'll
never forget seeing that boy's eyes.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
That was eerie. His eyes roping, Wow, his eyes roping.
Speaker 11 (13:28):
I could see the whites of his eyes and eating
his pupils.
Speaker 7 (13:32):
And that stays with you, right, it does. It stayed
with me till this day.
Speaker 15 (13:39):
Because it was like a twenty five year old kid, right, Yeah,
he was just really a kid working his butt off
as a taxi cab driver, and nobody should be killed
for doing their job.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Standing there on the side of the road with Buddy,
it became clear there was so much more to the story.
I still needed to understand, Like who was Joseph Laver.
I wanted to know more, so I tried to track
down his ex wife, Janet. I sent her a few messages.
(14:15):
She never responded, but I had a rural address in
southwestern Georgia, that seemed promising. It would be a long drive,
but I had to try. When I pulled up to
the address, I saw an above ground pool in the
front yard with half a dozen kids splashing and laughing
in the water. On the porch, a young woman in
(14:35):
summer clothes stepped out, shielding her eyes from the sun.
I introduced myself and explained that I was looking for Janet.
She seemed wary at first, her eyes narrowing as she
sized me up. The kids in the pool stopped playing
and their laughter faded as they turned to watch this
stranger standing in the yard with a thick Georgian accent.
(14:57):
The young woman finally spoke at It was her mom.
She's at work just up the road, she said, and
even offered directions. A few minutes later, I pulled up
to a small mobile home office situated along a busy
stretch of road. When I walked through the door, the
shopkeeper's bells chimed softly. A middle aged woman behind a
(15:22):
desk looked up and fixed her eyes on me. The
office was quiet and we were alone. I introduced myself, gently,
explaining why I had come to say. She was stunned
would be an understatement. She sat in silence, staring at
me for what felt like minutes. Sometimes reinvestigating a murder
(15:46):
case that's been shelled for more than thirty years can
stir up consequences. I try to tread carefully around. If
there's one thing I've learned following this story to its
farthest edges, is that some people survive by burying their
most traumatic memories just to move on. And then here
I come, a writer with a podcast asking them to
(16:08):
revisit the very past they've worked so hard to leave behind.
As I explained my investigation into Joseph Lavert's death, she
glanced down, her fingers moving across her phone as she
sent a text, still not saying a word. I mentioned
that I'd tried to call her a few years ago,
(16:29):
and she responded bluntly she'd blocked me. I assured her
that I could answer any questions she might have about
the case. A few minutes later, the bells jingled again
as another woman walked in. Her name was Joy, Janet's sister.
After receiving Janet's text, she googled me and decided I
(16:50):
seem legitimate. With Joy's reassurance, Janet's demeanor softened, She relaxed
and eventually agreed to speak with me.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
What was it like when I walked through this door?
Speaker 12 (17:05):
Blew?
Speaker 3 (17:05):
My mom shot me, devastated me. I just just shock.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
I explained to Janet that I wanted to understand more
about Joseph, about who he was before he was killed.
I've never seen a picture.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
I've been looking forever. I can't find a single picture. Well,
you know, I only had one picture of him. He
didn't like pictures taken. Yeah, he looked he had dark JB.
He had dark hair, skinny JB.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
I didn't know that Joseph Lever went by JB.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
A lot of hair, black hair, sick, very sick. Yeah,
it's handsome. Yeah, I mean I'm married, and of course
he was handsome. He loved marshals.
Speaker 16 (17:49):
He had ninja suits, the numb chucks, the stars, the sword.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
That was his stuff. I mean, that's what he was
majorly into.
Speaker 16 (18:00):
Yeah, we were like, it was best friends for you know,
and then then we got married and right away we
were having a baby, very quickly. Actually we got married.
He loved the fish too, Oh, yes, loved the fish.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Janet tells me she and JB went fishing the day
before their son was born.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
Oh yes, I was nine months pregnant.
Speaker 16 (18:24):
Was out there fishing and freezing cold because christ was
born in December, and we're out there fishing.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
I said, what happens if I go in labor?
Speaker 16 (18:31):
They said, we gotta get We got the way till
we finished fishing, and we laughed about it, and then
of course they went labor the next day for eighteen
long hours.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Janet and JB had a son together, a boy named Christopher.
Their marriage ended when Christopher was just two, but they
remained friends, and.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
He was a cab driver. Had it only been for
a few months. I had been working there long.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Janet's last comversation with JB was about making plans to
get together the next.
Speaker 16 (19:03):
Day, and so it was talking about going down to
the park and I told him I would make sandwiches
and and we just go down there and have a
pet name and let Chris play and on the swings
and stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
And I said, you know, what do you think? And
he said, that's a good idea.
Speaker 16 (19:19):
He said, let's do that, And he said he wanted
to talk to me about something.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
But JB went to his shift that night and never
made it home.
Speaker 16 (19:31):
We got a call I get three o'clock in the
morning that he had been killed, and then I had
to tell Chris.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Then his daddy went to live with Jesus.
Speaker 16 (19:43):
But you know he's too, I said, he went to
live with Jesus. Now we we're not going to see
him no more because you know, trying not to cry.
You know, he's going to live with Jesus. And he
looked at me. Sat there a minute and he looked
at me. He said, how'd he get there? And I
let that him and I said a horse and buggy.
(20:06):
He said a horse and baky, I said yeah. He
jumped down and as hard as he could run to
other than the house, hollering for my brother in law.
Speaker 3 (20:14):
I'm a danny, up, a danny, up Danny and he
said what son? He said, my daddy went to live
with Jesus. And you know what he got there, no
or a horse and buggy. And he was happy because
his daddy rode a horse and buggy.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
At his funeral, Janet learned what jab had wanted to
talk to her about.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
My best friend at the time.
Speaker 16 (20:37):
He said that he was going to tell me that
he loved me, and he wanted us to get back together.
I was like, are you sure, and she said, yes,
He's called me and told me, you know that that's
what he wanted to talk to you about.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But Janet would never have that conversation with the father
of their son.
Speaker 16 (20:57):
You know, he was only two and he loved his
dad and he never had that daddy. You know, he
never had him all his love bad enough he got
shot three times right, and then just left the lay there,
and then nobody ever got to pay.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
It's like his life didn't matter.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
It was Buddy Shepherd's job to find out who killed JB.
A week after the murder, he had his suspect.
Speaker 11 (21:38):
We had a chalkboard and we wrote down anybody's name
that could have done this. We put dan Odie at
the top of it. Dan Odie was six foot three
and weighed two ten two twenty and I mean a big,
raw boned cow man. I just not big muscle. But
(22:00):
everything was just as tight as it could be in
his arms and his chest. We were investigating dan Odie
right from the very beginning. We had their wrist warrant.
We didn't tell anybody about it, and we come down
here and started following Dan around.
Speaker 7 (22:14):
Dan was in a pickup shuckle. We started falling and.
Speaker 11 (22:18):
He knew we were behind him, but he wouldn't come
into Ostiola County, and so I blocked him off and
I came out with a shotgun on him and we
put him on the ground and arrested him.
Speaker 7 (22:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
We saw that picture in the Orlando sitting on did you. Yeah,
he's like laid out on the ground.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Looking at all the case files, I could never figure
out why Buddy Shepherd set his sights on Dan Odie
for this murder. Buddy just tells me that's where his
investigation led him. What Buddy Shepherd didn't know was that
at the very moment he began investigating who killed JB.
Jeremy Scott was hiding in an abandoned house just a
(23:00):
few blocks away from the crash taxi, waiting for Buddy's
dogs to sniff him out. Jeremy told me this, and
from what Buddy tells me, it sounds like police dogs
had picked up Jeremy sent from a baseball cap that
was left behind in the taxi.
Speaker 11 (23:20):
We had two dogs from the time. They did track
himTo the abandoned house, but they lost him there. Tried
to run a track from the taxi cab even gave
the dog the hat smell. But there have been so
many people running the streets and everything that the dog
got misdirected.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
Okay, so the dog thought that whoever did this went
to the abandoned house.
Speaker 7 (23:45):
Yes, sure, okay, yes.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
Sir, the dogs got close, but they lost his scent.
Jeremy and I went over this too.
Speaker 17 (23:55):
I talked to the lead detective for that taxi cab
tain Yeah, and he told me that they had the
dogs out and the dogs like lost the scent at
an abandoned house, like they were that close.
Speaker 18 (24:09):
See you know the railroad tracks right there, ye, yeah, yeah,
you know I walked. I walk on the railad track
the Steel park right you know, if bus train comes hit,
you're sick, gonna be going.
Speaker 14 (24:24):
I never heard that before.
Speaker 18 (24:26):
Yeah, I didn't think it worked, But it didn't work.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
All these years later, Jeremy Scott is still waiting for
the police to hold him accountable.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
I wrote a letter to Jeremy saying, I know it
must be difficult to replace memories from so many years
ago and then write them down in a letter. I
can't imagine how that must feel trying to tell people
all of this and they won't believe you. I just
wanted you to know that I'm listening and I'm grateful
to hear from you. Jeremy wrote back with a letter
(25:19):
unlike anything i'd ever read. I'm going to tell you
the whole story, he wrote. I want you to understand
I can be charged with this murder, and I'm okay
with this. I will never get out, So I'm going
to tell you. What followed was a stream of details
that could not possibly have come from somebody who just
(25:42):
read about this case in the news. I'm going to
read to you what he wrote. Dear mister King, I
might can't remember every little thing, okay, and what I
tell you is true. He explained he'd broken into a
CoP's house and stole a three point fifty seven magnum
(26:03):
pistol he found in a closet. I got a ride
to Kasimi. It was after eleven thirty pm. I was
walking around. I really didn't know what to do. Then
I thought about showing the gun at someone and asked
for their money, like on TV, but there were too
many people around. Then I saw a taxi cab. Jeremy
(26:27):
writes that he got the number and called. When a
cab come to pick me up, I told him that
I wanted to go to Intercession City. I know this
place better than most. I lived there when I was little.
I told him I live on Old Dixie Highway, so
it's real dark out there at night. Once we passed
(26:49):
the last house, I pulled the gun out. When he
saw what I had, I told him to keep driving.
Once I know there ain't any home close by, I
told him to pull over, to turn the car off
and leave the lights on. Then we got out. I
asked him where does he keep the money? That's when
(27:10):
he told me there ain't any because he just came
on and I was the first person he picked up.
JB was lying to Jeremy. His shift was just about
to end, and he'd hidden one hundred and fifty four
dollars in a folded map tucked inside the glove compartment. Outside,
(27:32):
the night was pitch black, the round headlights of the
nineteen seventy seven Dodged Sedan casting faint light along Old
Tampa Highway. JB was staring down the barrel of a
three point fifty seven magnum and this is the part
of the letter where Jeremy describes the murder. I was
(27:53):
pointing the gun at him. I had the damn thing
pulled back and waved it at him. Then all I
remember was hearing this loud boom.
Speaker 9 (28:04):
I look at him, and.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
It seems that he was coming, and I shot him again,
then once more. I'm sure that I shot that gun
three times. It was crazy. I ran to the car
and turned it around and was going real fast until
I got to the stop sign. I turned and went
over the tracks, then turned real fast right. I was
(28:30):
going fast and I couldn't stop it. Then I hit
a car and it hit another, I think. But once
I hit that car, I turned the wheel real fast
and I hit a pole. I remember trying to get
out fast. I got the gun in case. As I
was getting out, I heard and saw two people. Jeremy
(28:52):
writes that he knew one of them, someone named John,
and he says he yelled at them, told him the
car was going to blow, then took off over the tracks.
In his letter to me, Jeremy included a hand drawn
(29:13):
map of the streets of Intercession City, carefully sketching the
exact route he took in the stolen taxigab. After the murder,
he wrote, look at this map. It will show you
the truth. With arrows and lines, Jeremy illustrated how the
taxi ricocheted off a parked car before crashing into a
(29:34):
light pole. He accurately labeled the streets and even drew
figures to represent the witnesses he saw approaching the scene.
He also sketched a path to show the direction he
fled afterward. Nearly every detail matched police reports and witness depositions.
His account went beyond anything that had ever been revealed
(29:57):
in the media coverage of the case. At the end
of his letter, Jeremy wrote, I really want to thank
you for helping me, because I feel it's the right
thing to do. That's why I told you the whole story.
Seems that people listen to you. It turns out that's
not always the case. By the time I got in,
(30:32):
Jeremy's confession verified his connection to Intercession City and how
he was able to corroborate details from the murder of J. B.
Lavere that were never made public. I was feeling incredibly optimistic.
There was no possible way law enforcement could ignore this
new evidence. I took what I had to the Orlando Sentinel,
and they decided to do a front page features story
(30:54):
about my investigation. They even reached out to the Sheriff's
office in advance for a comment, and the sheriff responded
with this, thank you for your patients. As we gathered
the facts. Following the meeting with mister King in twenty
twenty one, the Osceola County Sheriff's Office did re examine
the Lavere homicide case. After a careful review, we did
(31:17):
not find any facts to substantiate the claim that Jeremy
Scott was the killer. We believe, based on the evidence,
Daniel Odie is and was the correct suspect. When I
(31:37):
read their response, I was stunned and furious, and the
more I read, the worse it got. The Asciola Sheriff
publicly smeared Dan's name, once again, calling him a murderer
who had gotten off on a technicality. Let's be clear,
Dan Odie was acquitted because a jury of his peers
found him not guilty of murder. There's nothing technical about that.
(32:03):
Now this had turned into something I couldn't walk away from.
I had waited, trusted, and expected officials to take action
to dig deeper for the truth. The Asciola County Sheriff's
office might have decided to ignore Jeremy's confession and the
evidence I'd gathered, but that didn't mean I was going
to let it go. There were still untapped pass in
(32:24):
my investigation, and now I knew exactly where I had
to go. When the Sheriff's office wouldn't act, I turned
to the prosecutors. Ah, shit, that's terrible. I'm gonna park
this again. I just parked in a really shitty spot.
(32:46):
One of those days, one of those days. How are
you feeling about this, Causie, I feel confident.
Speaker 10 (32:57):
I was already awake when my alarm went off this morning.
I was just already laying in bed thinking about it.
Speaker 9 (33:03):
So this one I actually have a good feeling about it.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
I reached out to the Ninth Circuit State Attorney's office,
knowing that they had the authority to conduct their own
investigation into who killed JB. I managed to arrange a
meeting with Chief Assistant State Attorney Ryan Williams and two
investigators from his office. He said, just text, send me
a text message when you are downstairs. I'll come to
escort you in. They agreed to meet with me and
(33:30):
Kelsey on a federal holiday, no less because we were closed.
Speaker 7 (33:34):
I will also be dressed more casual than usual.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Please feel free to be casual too late, dude, should
I take off my deck at Then we walked toward
the office and mentally prepare for what should be an
important meeting. We should do a selfie in front of
the courthouse for later. I don't think we need to
do a selfie all right, Okay, I'm gonna do.
Speaker 9 (33:56):
It later after we're victorious.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
I guess we can walk over there coming down. They
didn't allow us to record the meeting, but it was
clear from the start that ASA Ryan Williams and his
team were taking this seriously. Kelsey turned on the recorder
again when we stepped outside. When we were presenting to them,
they were curious, asking a ton of questions, really good questions.
(34:20):
But unless they find some physical evidence from a legal standpoint,
it's going to be difficult for them to go forward.
Speaker 10 (34:26):
It made a promise to us to look, which is
much more than we got last time.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, and I believe them. I really do feel like
they were engaged, and they were they want to do
this they just need that physical evidence, and I thought
that was a much more real This could be the
turning point that finally sets the record straight about JB's murder.
We know, and you know, what are the odds that
Jeremy Scott confesses to a murder of a taxi cab
when he's not in prison, when it's a town he
used to live in, and when he can draw a
(34:51):
map showing his exact movements that match every witnesses. I mean,
that's the kind of thing that you know, from a
storytelling point, I'm convinced, but they need physic in order
to go forward, and that's where we are. A few
weeks later, I get an update. Okay, this is a
letter from Ryan Williams from December nineteenth, twenty twenty three.
(35:13):
Good afternoon, mister King. I hope this email finds you
well in the midst of a pleasant holiday season. I
wanted again to reach out on this case and homicide
we discussed back in September. Williams wrote that one of
his investigators search for the physical evidence from the case
at both the Sheriff's office and the county clerk. After
several efforts, we obtained an answer and paperwork indicating that
(35:36):
the physical evidence associated with the case was returned to
the Sheriff's office and was destroyed by them in two
thousand and nine. I have no reason to believe this
destruction was improper in any way, but the bottom line
is that it no longer exists to be tested. The
Osceola County Sheriff's Office destroyed all the physical evidence from
(35:59):
the Joseph of b Lavere homicide, all of it. I
know that there had been a hat, hair samples, a bullet,
twenty two fingerprints on the car. Jeremy Scott left fingerprints
at the other three murders he confessed to. Now there's
no way to know if the prince left behind were his.
(36:20):
Williams was telling me that the sheriff destroyed all of it.
Speaker 10 (36:33):
Well, I mean, honestly, this sucks, but I'm also kind
of like and that gives us more flexibility, you know,
we can go, Yeah, we don't have to hold off
or be polite because the state's looking into it, because
they're obviously not so.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
H I mean, I just feel like there's more to
do here.
Speaker 19 (36:57):
I'm not stopping, all right, talk to you later, bye, Asa.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Ryan Williams encouraged me to keep investigating and told me
to reach out if I uncovered anything significant. I try
everything I can think of. I track down John, the
witness that Jeremy recognized as he was getting out of
the crash taxi. John grew up with Jeremy in Intercession City.
At trial, he testified that it was dan Odie he
(37:44):
saw getting out of the cab. I get John on
the phone, and he remembered all of it. When I
tell him that Jeremy is in prison today for a
different murder, and he confessed to being the one who
killed the cab driver, John says I gotta go and
hangs up the phone. He doesn't say, no, it was
dan Odie. He says, I gotta go. Click. After that,
(38:06):
I went to his house three times, hoping he would
change his mind and agree to talk to me. Every
time I showed up, I saw his brother standing outside.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
I'm Gilbert Camp.
Speaker 5 (38:17):
I'm investigating that Jeremy shot died.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
He called me a persistent motherfucker. Oh, but in a
nice way. My brother's still not talking to you.
Speaker 3 (38:26):
He told me he's not all right.
Speaker 1 (38:30):
I understand. This was one of those times when I
wished I had the power to subpoena witnesses. Still, there
was one piece of evidence, probably the most important in
the entire case. It had been destroyed by the Sheriff's office,
but I believe there was a way to link it
to Jeremy and to the murder of JB.
Speaker 7 (38:50):
Levere.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
Jeremy told me that after he killed JB, he got
behind the wheel of the cab, drove it a mile
away and crashed it into a utility poll. When Buddy
Shepherd arrived at the scene in nineteen eighty seven, he
saw the crashed cab empty after the murderer had gotten
out and run away, and.
Speaker 11 (39:11):
He come barreling down through here. He was, needless to say,
he was hauling Bud.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Former Detective Buddy Shepherd took us to that spot.
Speaker 7 (39:21):
So what did you see.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
When you pull up the like it's the cars right
in there somewhere right.
Speaker 11 (39:25):
Yes, sir, front end of it just demolished pretty well.
When I looked inside, the door was left open on
the drive or see, and I looked in and saw
the cab.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
A black cap left behind by JB's murderer.
Speaker 7 (39:43):
I want to see, Godly man, I'm working from memory.
Speaker 9 (39:48):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 11 (39:50):
It was a rebel flag on the front of it,
a battle flag in a skull and a skull, yes, sir, yes, sir,
And that was the cap. It was dark colored and everything. Yeah,
it got knocked off of him and he didn't grab it.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Jeremy mentions the hat in a letter he wrote me.
The hat was given to him by his cousin Jason.
He says, I didn't know that I forgot my hat.
My cousin gave me. The hat was black. We wore
so many hats growing up as kids. We always thought
they were cool hats. If the hat were still around,
(40:24):
the State Attorney's office could test the sweatband for DNA
or compare the hares found inside with Jeremy's. But since
the Ossiola County Sheriff's Office destroyed it, that's no longer
an option. Buddy used to work at the Sheriff's office
and says he knows the guy responsible for destroying the evidence.
Speaker 11 (40:43):
One thing I'm really upset about this whole mess. Wiley
Black had that evidence destroyed.
Speaker 1 (40:53):
We saw that Major Wiley Black supervised the homicide and
Violent Crimes unit at the time the evidence was destroyed.
Speaker 7 (41:03):
It is very upsetting. To me, he had no right
to do that.
Speaker 11 (41:07):
You don't get rid of evidence, you don't get rid
of reports, you don't get rid of any of that.
I'm a murder for fifty years. Fifty fifty years. I
remember it.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
While the Sheriff's office may have eliminated the physical evidence,
a clear photograph of the hat still exists in the
case files. I've always wondered if someone in Jeremy's family
might have a photo of either Jeremy or his cousin
Jason wearing that baseball hat. I wrote to Jeremy about it,
and he got back to me right away. He wrote,
(41:41):
you asked me if I had pictures. No, I don't,
but I'm sure there's some out there. Grandma had some,
but when she passed away. I don't know who would
have got them all. She always saved all of them.
But Aunt Debbie, Judy or Mama might have some. I
don't really know. I tried to track down Jason Scott, who,
(42:03):
according to Jeremy, gave him a black baseball cap. Jason
passed away years ago, but I've been texting with Jason's brother, Joshua.
I wanted to show him a picture of the hat.
In person to see his reaction, but we couldn't make
it work. Finally, I decided to text him a photo
of the hat instead, long shot, I wrote, but does
(42:25):
this hat look familiar? A few hours later, Joshua replied, Yes,
I recognize that cap, he wrote, Jeremy and his brother
Dean fought over that cap, but my mom always told
us that cap wasn't fit to wear. The next time
Jeremy called me, I mentioned that I'd spoken with his
cousin Joshua. I wanted to see if Jeremy could confirm
(42:48):
what Joshua had said about the hat, that he and
his brother Royal Dean had fought over it.
Speaker 18 (42:54):
Yeah, I can't. In prison, my brother had it. I
mean that was a hat Jason gave me if I
went to prison.
Speaker 12 (43:01):
The first time.
Speaker 18 (43:02):
Yeah, I got out, my brother had it and I took.
Speaker 5 (43:05):
It back right and we had a big argument about it.
Speaker 9 (43:09):
You know.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
Yeah, I'm still holding out hope that the family might
find a picture of Jeremy or even his cousin Jason,
wearing that hat. I told Buddy Shepherd more than once
that I believed he went after the wrong man and
dan Odie, and that I was convinced Jeremy Scott had
killed J. B. Levere after showing him all the evidence
(43:31):
I'd uncovered. I just wanted to know if any of
it had made a difference to him.
Speaker 7 (43:36):
Did you know who Jeremy Scott was?
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Because he lived in Intercession City for some time.
Speaker 7 (43:41):
I knew of him. I don't know if I've ever
seen him or spoke to him or nothing. I just
knew him as a kid.
Speaker 12 (43:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
I thought when I showed you this and that, I
thought you were going to say you could consider Jeremy
Scott a suspect.
Speaker 11 (43:54):
Yes, I do do, Yeah, I do. Jeremy Scott could
have done it, yeah, no doubt Mamiani could have done it.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
Even Buddy Sheppard, the detective who led the original investigation,
acknowledges that Jeremy Scott should now be considered a suspect
in the murder of JB. Leavere, And yet I remain
the only person who has ever questioned Jeremy Scott about
this crime. When Kelsey and I visited dan Odie in
(44:26):
twenty nineteen, he eagerly supported our investigation. I promised him
I'd return with everything I uncovered. I had hoped that
with all the police and court records in hand, and
Jeremy helping the piece together, each detail Dan's name could
finally be cleared, and that the clarity and consistency of
Jeremy's memories would solidify the truth behind not just his
(44:50):
confession to j B. Lavere's murder, but to Michelle Schofield's
murder as well. Now, with all the evidence destroyed, it
feels like any chance of giving Dan the piece he
deserves has been stolen for good. And here's what infuriates
me most. To protect the narrative that they targeted the
(45:10):
right men and Dan, Odie and Leo Schofield, the state
is asking the public to swallow a lie that Jeremy
Scott's confessions are just stories, not evidence. I can only
assume these lawmen and prosecutors would rather bury the truth
than admit their case was built on a lie at
(45:31):
the cost of two innocent lives and any semblance of justice.
I dredged all of this back up in an effort
to set the record straight and to find something closer
to true justice. Instead, it's mostly brought more turmoil for
(45:54):
people like JB's ex wife.
Speaker 16 (45:56):
I mean, it's like opening a wound that or that
box that you close up and put on the shelf
and just leave it there. You know, you don't want
to get through those emotions. You don't want to live
that ever again.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
This is one of the painful, unintended consequences of digging
into these old cases. Back in twenty nineteen, when we
interviewed Dan Odie, I promised him I come back with
everything I'd learned in my investigation. There were so many
(46:30):
times over the years when I thought I'd finally be
able to bring him good news that his name had
been officially cleared in the murder of JB. Levere, but
with the Sheriff's office destroying the evidence and dragging his
name to the mud again in the Orlando Sentinel article,
that closure may never come. This wasn't a call I
(46:52):
wanted to make. I was afraid all of this would
create even more pain.
Speaker 18 (46:57):
For Dan No and I just really always wanted to be.
Speaker 14 (46:59):
Able to come back to you and say, all right,
this is it, this is who did it, and there's
going to be charged and your your name will be
officially cleared. And I just sort of wanted to say
I'm sorry that I didn't get.
Speaker 12 (47:09):
There I don't know when I When I got that paper,
I broke down.
Speaker 8 (47:13):
Man.
Speaker 12 (47:14):
I told myself, I thank you guy so much for
taking the time to do what he did. At least
now I got some clothes. You know, I can show
people this pape. Look, I did not do this, no
matter what to think. I did not kill the guy. Yeah,
it meant a lot of people.
Speaker 14 (47:31):
Well, I'll definitely be getting back to you with any
any updates that I can find, because I'm not quitting
on it.
Speaker 12 (47:37):
I sure thank you about it. You're in my heart
and you're in the lie. I appreciate what you did
for me.
Speaker 14 (47:43):
I feel the same dam thank you so much.
Speaker 12 (47:45):
Ah, but you had a good day YouTube.
Speaker 14 (47:48):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Maybe, just maybe, reopening questions about the past can also
lead to something more than heartbreak.
Speaker 13 (48:07):
That was just wanting to help a downtrodden person. Really,
I didn't have any plans to keep writing him like that.
You know.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
Do you remember the first letter that Jeremy sent to you?
Speaker 16 (48:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (48:20):
I have it, oh right here, let me see that's
next time. Owe Valley is a production of Lava for
Good podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Our
executive producers are Jason Flam, Jeff Kepler, and Kevin Wortis.
(48:43):
Karen Kornhaber is our senior producer. Jackie Pauley and Hannah
Biel are our producers. Britz Spangler is our sound designer.
Marianne Mchune is our editor. Fact checking by Dania Suleman.
Jeff Cliburn is our head of marketing and Operations. Our
social media director is Ismai Guardrama, our Social media manager
(49:05):
is Sarah Gibbons, and our art director is Andrew Nelson.
Additional research and production by Kelsey Decker. Additional sound recording
by James Johnson. Bone Valley is written and produced by
Me Gilbert King. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and
threads at Lava for Good
Host
Gilbert King
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