December 7, 2022 • 40 mins
How can a justice system allow an innocent man to remain in prison?
Bone Valley explores that maddening question and so much more.
What a thrill to conclude our series on WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS today with Gilbert King, the host of my favorite podcast this year, BONE VALLEY. Gilbert is also the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove. HE has written two other NYT best-selling books and his work covers race, crime, and justice in America.
If you have already listened to BoneValley then you’ll leave hearing some of Gilbert’s behind-the-scenes discussion about the making of the show, and if you have not yet listened then you’ll also love hearing his passion and conviction for this nearly unbelievable story.
BONE VALLEY OVERVIEW
IN 1987, 18-year-old Michelle Schofield was found dead in a phosphate pit in Florida. Two years later, her husband Leo was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Fifteen years later, previously unidentified fingerprints matched Jeremy Scott--a violent teenager who lived nearby. Jeremy has since confessed to Michelle’s murder. Yet Leo Schofield remains behind bars.
+ Learn more about Gilbert’s work, including his three books, here.
http://www.gilbertking.com/
+ Follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/gilbert_king
+ Sign the petition to have Leo’s case reviewed by the Conviction Integrity unit for an
independent review. https://www.change.org/p/transfer-leo-schofield-s-case-to-a-
conviction-integrity-unit-for-independent-review
If you like DIE-ALOGUE, here is how you can support the show:
Subscribe/follow on your podcast app - make sure you get new episodes downloaded!
Leave a five star rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen!
Rate on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/die-alogue-a-true-crime-conversation/id1470890320
Follow the show share it on Instagram and Twitter and tag @diealoguepresents
Become a DIE-HARD on Patreon and receive early, ad-free + bonus episodes! https://www.patreon.com/creator-home
Bone Valley explores that maddening question and so much more.
What a thrill to conclude our series on WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS today with Gilbert King, the host of my favorite podcast this year, BONE VALLEY. Gilbert is also the Pulitzer prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove. HE has written two other NYT best-selling books and his work covers race, crime, and justice in America.
If you have already listened to BoneValley then you’ll leave hearing some of Gilbert’s behind-the-scenes discussion about the making of the show, and if you have not yet listened then you’ll also love hearing his passion and conviction for this nearly unbelievable story.
BONE VALLEY OVERVIEW
IN 1987, 18-year-old Michelle Schofield was found dead in a phosphate pit in Florida. Two years later, her husband Leo was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Fifteen years later, previously unidentified fingerprints matched Jeremy Scott--a violent teenager who lived nearby. Jeremy has since confessed to Michelle’s murder. Yet Leo Schofield remains behind bars.
+ Learn more about Gilbert’s work, including his three books, here.
http://www.gilbertking.com/
+ Follow him on twitter: https://twitter.com/gilbert_king
+ Sign the petition to have Leo’s case reviewed by the Conviction Integrity unit for an
independent review. https://www.change.org/p/transfer-leo-schofield-s-case-to-a-
conviction-integrity-unit-for-independent-review
If you like DIE-ALOGUE, here is how you can support the show:
Subscribe/follow on your podcast app - make sure you get new episodes downloaded!
Leave a five star rating and review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen!
Rate on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/die-alogue-a-true-crime-conversation/id1470890320
Follow the show share it on Instagram and Twitter and tag @diealoguepresents
Become a DIE-HARD on Patreon and receive early, ad-free + bonus episodes! https://www.patreon.com/creator-home
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:32):
Welcome to Dialogue Podcast. I'm yourhost, Rebecca Sebastian, and this is
the show where I kill the smalltalk with the leading voices in crime,
culture and justice. We are concludingour series on wrongful convictions today with Gilbert
King, the host of my favoritepodcast this year, Bone Valley. Gilbert
is also the Pulitzer Prize winning authorof Devil in the Grove. He's written
(00:54):
two other New York Times bestselling books, and his work covers race, crime,
and justice in America. Now,if you've already listened to Bone Valley,
then you're going to love hearing someof the behind the scenes discussion today
about the making of the show andhow the story came to be. And
if you haven't yet listened, thenyou're also going to love it because Gilbert's
passion and conviction for this practically unbelievablestory is palpable, and it was just
(01:19):
such a treat to talk to him. I'm going to play the trailer for
Bone Valley before getting right into theinterview, but here's a quick recap for
anyone who doesn't know the story.In nineteen eighty seven, eighteen year old
Michelle Scofield was found dead in aphosphate pit in Florida. Two years later,
her husband, Leo was convicted andsentenced to life in prison. Fifteen
(01:40):
years later, previously unidentified fingerprints matchedJeremy Scott, a violent teenager who lived
nearby. Jeremy has since confessed toMichelle's murder, yet Leo Scofield remains behind
bars. With that. Let's hearthe trailer for Bone Valley and I want
to thank Gilbert King for killing thesmall talk and listen. This is the
(02:05):
story. It is what it is. You believe or don't believe it.
It's up to you. It willnot change the fact that I'm an innocent
man. Do you my mans.In February nineteen eighty seven, Leo Schofield's
eighteen year old wife, Michelle wentmissing. Left to my fears, I
(02:31):
need to talk to company about findingmy wife. I'm really worried about it.
I can find out. Three dayslater, Michelle was found stabbed to
death off a freeway in Lakeland,Florida. Shouldn't it be your responsibility to
investigate A wait a minute, wehave investigated this thing upside down. No
(02:52):
physical evidence connected Leo Schofield to thecrime, and he said I'm gonna put
you in the electric chair. AndI said, that's what you're gonna have
to do. But I'm not goingto say something that's not true. At
twenty two years old, Leo wasconvicted for his wife's murder and sentenced to
life in prison. Leo Schofield isa cold blooded murderer, and if I
(03:14):
have my way, you'll never getout of prison. But after Leo's conviction,
there were still so many unanswered questions. Always, always, the fingerprints
was a big question in my mind. Obviously somebody was in the car,
somebody knew something. Who was it? What do they know? So I
took the fingerprint and I'm like,all right, who does it come back
(03:36):
to? And he said, aguy named Jeremy Scott, Jerey, Who
the fuck's Jeremy Scott? Have anybodycome part of you? Not murder?
Despite new evidence pointing to Jeremy Scott, Leo Schofield is still in prison.
He's been locked up for the lastthirty four years. You or somebody like
(03:59):
you, it is Leo's last shot. I would just really like another who
did it? I want you guysto find the truth, you know what
I mean? I can believe thisworld, knowing that at least it was
solved. I'm Gilbert King, aPulitzer Prize winning author, and I've spent
the last four years investigating this casewith researcher Kelsey Decker. Together we set
(04:23):
out to uncover the truth behind theconviction of Leo Schofield, but we would
soon learn that Michelle Scofield's murder wasjust the tip of the iceberg, as
our investigation pulled us down into themuch darker world of Jeremy Scott. Don't
enjoys me to you hear the wholestorysps S in this VALI from Lava for
(04:55):
Good Podcasts. This is Bone Valley. Find us on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Gilbert King, Welcome to Dialogue podcast.
(05:16):
Really nice to meet you and haveyou on the show. Oh it's
really nice to be here, Rebecca. Thanks for having me, of course,
and thanks for joining us from Spain. Very cool international interview happening exactly.
I'm just so happy we're talking becauseBone Valley has absolutely become my favorite
podcast I've listened to this year,and it's quickly becoming I'm like too nervous
(05:39):
to even say my favorite of alltime, but it's it's going to be
in my top three, like nodoubt. I don't even know what to
state of that, Rebecca. It'sjust so I listened to them all,
and I'm not saying I'm the arbiterof what's good or not. I'm just
saying that this one has stuck withme in the way that it's gone beyond
telling people are asking people to listen. It's like imploring them, and and
(06:00):
no one has been mad about it. We on dialogue or in a conversation
a series, I'm Wrongful Conviction.So I'm thrilled to have you add to
it. Your work has a theme. You were an author before this podcast,
race Justice, the American criminal justicesystem. Why did you start writing
and thinking so deeply about that?Well, you know, it's one of
(06:23):
those things that one sort of stickswith you. You know, like sometimes
you're working on a history, You'redealing with documents people have passed away,
and this just feels like history.In this particular case, it felt like
I was doing the same kind ofthemes wrongful conviction. Accept It fell more
urgent because someone was sitting in aprison every single day who I felt didn't
(06:43):
belong there. And so there's asense of urgency when you're working on something
like I have to tell this storyright. I have to get it right
because this may be his last chance. And so you feel some kind of
urgency, especially once you you know, finally understand like, oh, this
that was wrongfully convicted. There's someone else who did this, pride,
then it just feels like, well, why are you working on some history
(07:03):
thing when you could be working onsomething that's you know, impacting someone's life
and someone's family's life right now.The urgency of Leo's Schulfield story. And
you know, from a listeners whohaven't yet listened to Bone Valley, and
I've already asked them to do so, I think a lot of people will
have. It's a must listen.And it's happening as we speak. And
it's such a glaring example of howslowly justice moves, even when it's it's
(07:28):
it's just so clearly could be provenbeyond a reasonable doubt that the man they
have for a crime didn't do it. How maddening is it right now for
Leo? With all the buzz andenergy this show has brought to the story
to still be sitting there every day, like, how are you dealing with
that? Kelsey and Leo. Oneof the things I'm constantly thinking about is,
(07:51):
you know, I write back andforth with Leo through an email system
and we calls me all the time, and so we have these conversations and
just sort of see the ebbs andflows of his emotions, like, all
right now, all the episodes areout, what's happening? And you know,
he doesn't hear anything because there wasa hurricane down there and he's kind
of locked away and like resting,the inmates aren't listening. They can't listen,
(08:16):
so he just doesn't know what's goingon. It's like I just poured
my soul out in the podcast that'scome out, and I don't know what
the reaction is. So it's beenreally these ebbs and flows. I can
tell you that since the hurricane hassort of dissipated, they're back to regular
visitation. One of the things that'sreally inspiring to him is how many people
from the outside world, like theguards, the administrators, the outside contractors
(08:39):
who come in and do work withhim. They've come up to him and
said, you know, because theydon't talk about a prisoner's case. They
don't talk about that at all.And so they've come up to him and
said, you know, Leo,I this is I'm paraphrasing him, but
this is pretty much what he said. You know, Leo, I always
thought that you were someone who didn'treally belong in this place, but I
(09:00):
didn't know the details. But I'velistened to your story and now I know
you're innocent, and I just wantto hug you and tell you how sorry
I am that you've been here solong. And that to me is just
you know, for him, it'sit's extraordinarily emotional. But for me to
just hear that and to just hearthat, that's the reaction, the real
world reaction, it's it's it's it'sreally something I have to tell you.
(09:22):
It's it's a really it's you know, it's a burden and a gift to
carry in a lot of ways.That's a great way to put it.
It's so bittersweet. So this wholestory starts with you getting a tip from
a judge, which is a prettyincredible and you know, compelling way to
start looking into someone's innocence. Butwas there a defining moment for you at
any point in the investigation where youknew without a doubt, was one piece
(09:43):
of evidence or one conversation with aperson that you just said there is no
more doubt, like I'm one hundredpercent sure he's innocent, And what was
it. Yeah, I'm trying tothink of like the exact moment. I
can sort of remember certain moments like, well, honestly, when a judge
comes to you and says this guyis innocent, it sets off alarmed bills.
Listen. Yeah, And like thatnight I went to dinner with some
(10:05):
public defenders and I was like,hey, what do you think of this?
This judge came up to me.I showed him the card. He
say, he's saying that this guyin Polk County was wrongthy convicted. He
said he was framed. I knowhow they did. I can tell you
exactly how it happened. And theseguys were passing around. I could just
see their eyes kind of lit up, like a judge rocus, you know,
they were very surprised. And thenI finally got to a public defender
(10:26):
in Polk County. He looked atit and he just kind of looked at
me. And he goes, Iknow this case, you should call him.
I felt like he was telling melike, all right, this was
a bad case too, and soyou know, but I'm a skeptical person.
I asked Judge couple a lot ofquestions. I started talking to his
lawyers at the Innocence Project, gettingall this information that I think it was
after I met Leo that that wasthe moment where I recognized because I had
(10:50):
in my head like if this paytries to mislead me or just lie to
me, I'm just I'm not goingto get bold in this product. And
he was never that way. Hewas always transparent. So another new avenue
for you is podcasting. And there'sa lot of shows like Bone Valley and
the ones I've covered just in thisseries. You know, the System came
out with Kim Kardashian, there's manyothers. I'm wondering how you feel about
(11:13):
this alternative path to finding justice forpeople who are possibly wrongfully incarcerated. Yeah,
and this is all really new tome, and I honestly do not
believe you can set out to dothis and say like I'm going to do
the podcast, I'm going to tellthe truth and then he's going to be
exonerated. You can't do that.I did that with Devil in the Grove
and it took ten years after itwas published, just sort of come to
(11:35):
this moment, and you know,Grant, I think it's a little different
when you have, you know,four young men who are wrongsly accused of
this crime, but everybody's dead andpostumus. Now there's not this sense of
urgency. I think people just thebook grew and its started to catch on
politically, and people said, Iwant to do something to correct this injustice
and really out of my hands assomeone who you know, as a storyteller,
(12:00):
I can put it out there,but I can't really force anything.
I can't make anything happen. Ithas to be people have to come together
and say we need to fix thispolitical people. It's just one of these
things that's an organic movement, andI just don't think it's a realistic path
towards correcting and injustice. However,I believe that the criminal justice system has
(12:22):
become so difficult to correct wrongful convictionsbecause of some of the laws that have
been passed. Storytelling is one ofthe big things that does work in these
cases. Bringing to bring attention tothese injustices. And I've been fortunate enough
to have like politicians, lawmakers,judicial people reach out to me and say,
(12:43):
you know, I'm going to tryand do something with this. I'm
going to try and talk to someof the people I know. And that's
what it really takes. I mean, I really do feel like when I
talk to Leo, I'm like,Leo, it's out there now. There's
like not much more I can reallydo at this point, and you know,
the judicial system is spoken, sowe just have to sort of hope
from miracles. But I think that'sthe craziest part is that we wait right
(13:05):
now and it seems like his fateis resting in this circuit judge's hands right
now. Yeah, it is restingin his hands, but there are also
some other hands. I have it. There's a clemency board that's made up
of governor to Santis and it's fourcabinet members. That's another pathway, but
it gets a little bit tricky becauseyou have a governor who looks like he's
running for president, so maybe hedoesn't want to be the one who's exonerating
(13:28):
convicted murderers at this time in hislife, and so that's a little bit
tricky with Leo. It's like,there's no doubt this is an innocent man.
It's been in prison, I mean, and they're for thirty five years.
Because it's just really hard to understandthat it can be so clear to
so many people and someone can stilljust day after day stay in prison.
(13:50):
What do you think it needs tohappen in terms of humanity or the law
so we can help people in thissituation, like Leo Schofield. Yeah,
I mean, there's there's definite thisculture in a prosecutor's office. You know,
the job of the prosecutor is toseek justice, not to win convictions,
right, and that's spelled out veryclearly. I mean some of them
have to take olds to define thatand to state that that's what their intentions
(14:13):
are going to be. But it'snot obviously not the case in reality.
And some of the times you getto these places where you know, like
maybe all the evidence that I bringin that shows that Jeremy Scott is the
killer they can look at they oh, well that's not admissible in court because
we've already passed it. We're notin the appellet stage. We're not in
the trial stage. That's not admissible. Okay, So then you look at
(14:35):
all these things that can't come intothe case, and to me, that's
ridiculous. I mean, one ofthe great things about a conviction and tegut
review that is they can start fromscratch and just say, all right,
forget the trial, Let's look atall the evidence. Let's go out and
reinterview some of these witnesses. Ifwe think something was wrong there, let's
start from scratch. If there's aclaim of innocence, let's look at that
from scratch. Okay. The wholecase hinges on this one witness, Alice
(14:58):
Scott, who claims he saw somethingfrom across the street. You know,
when we look into that, youknow, her very first statement to the
police said that all this happened betweentwo thirty and three am. That's what
her original report to the police.One, Well, Leo is accounted for
at two thirty because he's with Michelle'sfather at two thirty, and at three
o'clock he's talking to Depping, he'sin a parking lot. That's all recorded,
(15:22):
so it could not be that he'sin two places at once. So
what happens once this gets massaged bythe state attorney. That starts getting moved
back to now it's like closer toone thirty, all right, and everything
gets moved around, so like whenyou look at the evidence, it just
doesn't make any sense of it.All hinges on this one witness who really,
I frankly think has no credibility.Later on, she would say things
(15:45):
change her testimony, She couldn't stickto the same story. This is really
the one person who put Leo Schofieldin prison, This one witness. Just
think if a conviction had taken herview and it would come along, they
would say, all right, well, she's obviously not credible. What other
evidence is there? This case isthrown out very quickly, right, And
then you get to the part that'sbefore even Jeremy Stott even gets involved in
(16:06):
this. You know, it's maddening, it really really is. And I'll
never forget one of the things thathe said to me much later on.
And Leo says things to you sometimesthat don't really register until you think about
them later, And in this particularcase, he goes now he's trying to
say thank you for staying involved inmy story and for telling the story the
(16:26):
podcast hadn't come out yet, andhe said to me, Gilbert, there's
nothing I can give you to thankyou for everything you've done. But there
is one thing I can give you, and I hope you understand the meaning
of this. He goes, Iwill give you my word and promise you
you're never going to have to worryabout this coming back on you and something
going sideways on you. And that'sgoing to change the way you feel about
(16:49):
this case and about me. Youwill never have to worry about that because
I've given you the truth. Andit was just one of those things,
like, you know, you'd haveto be Laurence Olivier or the most psychopathic
person in the world to deliver thatkind of message exactly. You said you
were a skeptic, and I thinkthat serves the story well too. One
of the things he also said tous, you know, early on,
(17:11):
you know, he's like Gilbert,like, just think about you know,
like you're you're at age twenty one, but you've obviously gone on to you
know, do all these things.You've written books, you've had a family,
you've done all these things. Butimagine if your life was just going
back to like one really awful partof your you know, adolescents as a
twenty one year old person, andthat's all anybody would ever talk about you
(17:34):
that has defined your life. AndI just remember thinking, yeah, there's
things at twenty one like I wouldn'twant that to be my defining moment in
life. But the truth is it'snot his defining. Like he is a
person in prison who's a role model, a leader, he's respected by everybody.
He's you know, think about itthis way, and this is the
thing I've had to learn to thinkabout it. If you believe that he's
(17:56):
innocent, he's been in prison forthirty five years for killing his wife,
and let's just let's just assume thathe is innocent to survive that and to
carry this spirit to go forward andto help people in the prison. It's
a remarkable human being you're looking at. And that's just if you astealment.
He's innocent, and so like,obviously I do believe he's innocent. So
(18:17):
he is a remarkable person and that'show I choose to look at him.
When he talks to me on thephone and writes letters to me about his
feelings and thoughts, like I recognizeI'm talking to a remarkable person. Truly,
he truly is. And for anybodywho listens to Bone Valley and also
feels he's innocent, there is apetition. I don't know if it's ended.
Oh it's still out there, sochange that work. It's going to
(18:38):
be out there and okay, peepingit out there. So the Innocence Project
of Florida put out a petition tohave his case transferred to a conviction integrity
unit. And I mean seems likethe least they could do. There's a
(19:07):
lot of podcasts that are very dryand do a great job making sure that
we are always centering the victim appropriatelyand that's so important, but sometimes explicitly
stating the gravity of what we sawand how important it is to give Michelle's
Schofield a voice and an identity.It's a little not condescending, but it
(19:30):
just, I don't know, itexpects too little of the audience. Yeah,
and honestly, you know, that'sa really great point. And I
have to tell you, like,it's a complicated story because if you think
about it, here's a man inprison for convicted for murdering his wife,
and we start the whole series withhim giving his version of what happened before
we get to the States version ofhow this happened. So we have basically
(19:52):
three different versions of Michelle's death.We start out with Leo's version, and
he you know, there's parts wherehe doesn't know what happened, so he
can describe what he's doing around townif you believe him, he doesn't have
any information about that stuff. Thenwe start with the States version, which
is this timeline and all the thingsthat happened, and all the parents are
liars. They're in on this murderconspiracy. They you know, become accessories
(20:15):
to murder. They're out, they'renot actually out looking for Michelle, they're
trying to create a fake alibi,and like, let doesn't really make a
lot of sense. And then ultimatelywe get to Jeremy's story and that's a
totally different version of that. Andso there is the sort of this Rascheman
structuring of the narratives, three differentversions of Michelle's death, and we're leaving
it to listeners to decide what theyreally believe. I think, you know,
(20:37):
in answering your question, we tooka lot of our leads from Leo
and Leo really. You know,after a while, we begin to understand
that, you know, he's stillmourning his dead wife, and he is
in prison because of her death,and there's this really complicated, you know,
process that he has to go through. He was the one who was
(20:57):
really the most with Michelle's legacy andwho Michelle was first. He was guiding
that and ultimately got us reaching outto Michelle's friends, Michelle's brother, all
of them spoke to us, andso we really we didn't really try to
force it. We really wanted herto be a real character in it because
she is, and so we didn'tfeel like we had to manipulate anything or
(21:18):
force anything. It was right therefor us. Yeah, you think about
the adolescent brain and all that happensafter the age of twenty five, and
what happened to him, and thento go to prison to reconcile her death,
her violent death, and your ownincarceration and you're innocent. That's a
complicated web to navigate. I'm curioushow you feel about this being marketed as
(21:41):
a true crime podcast. I'm atrue crime podcaster, though I think I
live more in the criminal justice world. That's more of the conversation I'm interested
in, but obviously it's the vehiclethat gets stories like this to an audience.
How do you feel about true crimeas a genre. Yeah, well,
I can just tell you, likeI grew up as a young kid
into true crime. I was reallyme and my mom were really into true
(22:03):
crime, talk about this all thetime, and I remember growing up this
before your time, But I grewup in New York and there was the
Son of Sam story, which wasso captivating to me because it encompassed journalism
and true crime. And I justremember this moment like waking up like did
Son of Sam strike again? Andfinding out that he did, and rushing
out to get the newspaper and seeingthat, you know, Son of Sam
(22:26):
had written these letters to the columnistsJimmy Breslin, and he was talking about
motive and what was driving him,and there was nothing more exciting to me.
And then to figure so many yeardecades later, here I am with
Jeremy Scott. We're corresponding together,and then we're going to meet him.
So, you know, to answeryour question, I have a fondness for
(22:48):
true crime. It's a really bigpart of my life and early memories of
just reading those kind of books beforepodcasts, reading your books and watching movies.
I look at it now, it'slike I like, using a crime
story is a narrative, and Istill do that in my books even when
I'm doing history. Devil the Growthis really a crime story. It's about
you know, these crimes. Insome way, I think you can look
(23:10):
at the true crime element is kindof this trojan horse. You're gonna come
in with this true crime element,but you're going to get a lot more.
You're going to learn about the criminaljustice system. In my books,
You're going to learn about race inAmerica, the law on how it's changed.
And I think there's a lot learnabout the criminal justice system today that
people are really not familiar with,especially that post conviction reliefs side of it.
(23:30):
I think they're inextricably linked. AndI think it's you know, it's
a complicated genre, but it's it'sit's progressing, it's changing. I think
the genres expanding to include more,and I think the average person knows about
things like Brighty violations and you know, wrongful convictions because of great podcasts.
I want to go back to Kelseyfor a minute, because I feel like
(23:52):
there's two stories happening in the pot. While there's a lot of stories happening,
or a lot of themes, Ishould say, but like one of
them is your and her experience goingthrough this, because what turns you know,
you kind of halt one project,a book you're working on, to
take a look at this. Itturns into several years and you guys are
on the field doing everything together,side by side, and she starts off.
(24:15):
You know, she's she's obviously verycompetent and a great researcher and a
great she's you know, on thefield with you, doing a great job,
but she's nervous about approaching Jerry Hill. You're thinking about Great Hill,
former state attorney, right, yeah, the former state attorney. So you
know, throughout the episodes, she'slike, I feel like you just feel
like I saw just subtle growth inher and just a little more confidence.
(24:37):
And again she's doing a lot ofthis for the first time, and you
could not be with her the daythat she actually encounters Jerry Hill for whatever
reason, I can't remember. Youweren't there. You had to be somewhere
else. And so she's there andit was this moment where she approaches him
respectfully asks him about the case.He responds, and she gently but accurately
(25:00):
corrects him because he has some ofthe facts wrong. And she's so confident
in her research and her work thatthere was like nothing she had ever needed
to be nervous about. And itwas like, I just thought that was
like this amazing secondary arc. Itwas like the arc of Kelsey. And
I just saw her like come intoher own and be like, Wow,
she's killing it right now, Likeshe just got this moment and it was
(25:21):
just so good. Did you feelthat and see that as well? Yeah,
Rebecca, I can tell you likeI had to I had to give
a talk in New York that dayand it was my schedule. There's no
way missed this, right, Yeah, So it just happens to me the
day it's like a big snowstorm.She has to go down there on her
own and do this interview with likethis is one of those unscheduled interviews.
So it's like we don't have informasion, they won't talk to us. The
(25:42):
only way we have it we knowhe's going to be there. Maybe which
talked to him in the hallway.It was a lot to expect her.
She'd done a few interviews on herown, but I knew this was just
a tremendous She's she's already like alittle bit nervous and anxious about this stuff
already, and now she's the spileson hers. But I have to tell
you, like, I mean myexperience with that, just because she sent
(26:03):
me to take like a couple hoursafterwards, and I started listening to it,
and my reaction, I wish youcould see it. I was just
like, oh my god, shedid it. And there was one I
knew it. I knew she wasgoing to do it because I knew she'd
be nervous when she approached him.But once she started talking about the facts
of the case, I'd been onthat side before where she just nope,
(26:23):
that's not how it happened. Itcorrects it. And so I I there
was honestly a time where I feltsorry for this guy because I said,
you can't hang with Kelsey on this. He is not going to be able
to get away with saying the usualgarbage that you know that because she won't
let him. She just will correcthim right away. And that's exactly how
it happened. And you know,we did a lot of preparation. But
(26:44):
a lot of that preparation that wedid for that interview was like, if
he goes in this direction, gohere, give him a softball answer,
you know, a question first,get him started, but then get to
this stuff. And you could justfeel his like desperation, like he's thinking,
here's this young girl who's you know, I'll talk to her. I
have to go wrong here, andshe knows the case, you know,
better than him, better than me. She's not gonna let him off the
book. And I just knew,like you could hear him start breathing,
(27:07):
was isn't it your responsibility to investigate? Now? Wait, a met a
little lady. You know he didone of those kind of things, and
I'm like, oh, don't littlelady Kelsey, that's not going to work
for you either. Yeah, heunderestimated her and it was beautiful, and
honestly, if I would have beenthere, I don't think I could have
done better than that. Is thereanything you learned about wrongful convictions that surprised
(27:32):
you that maybe my audience and listenersdon't know, or that we get wrong
about wrongful convictions? Well, youknow what, I think one of the
things like because of my background inhistory, I know about these things from
the nineteenes, warts and fifties whenit's totally different criminal justice. Sure,
so I just fustume everything is goingto be better, not necessarily the case,
and I think the way it's beendescribed to me, like if you
get arrested and charge with a crimeand you go to trial, you're innocent
(27:56):
until proven guilty. Once you reachthat post conviction phase, you are now
guilty unless proven innocent. So thebar is just totally different now, and
there's just all these protections built inin order to preserve finality and preserve the
verdict of the jury. Right,it looks like it's Jeremy Scott. Right,
he confessed to it later on,like that he did this. Everything
(28:18):
he said lined up the stuff thathe should not have known he knew about.
And we get to the finality ofthis and we reach out to the
State Ferry's office and the Shark's officein Ossiola County and they're like, well,
we know that Dan Odie is thereal killer. The jury just got
it wrong, but he's the realmurderer. They basically smeared this guy who's
been acquitted of murder because it didn'tsit there narrative, so they don't expect
(28:42):
sinality at all. They respected whatit fits there, you know, position
that they have a conviction that theycan stand by. But if it's an
acquittal they don't agree with, they'rehappy to smear someone who's been acquitted by
a jury of his peers. Sothat that hypocrisy just really bothers me to
no end. I can't believe Iforgot to mention that you both low key
(29:02):
solved another murder while you know,pursuing the story with Leo, Like that's
very much worth mentioning, and wasjust another jaw dropping moment during the show
where I'm like, oh, theyjust, oh, okay, they just
solved a murder and absolved this manand upheld his reputation before we move on.
I was trolling your twitter just toprep for our interview, and I
(29:25):
saw a member of law enforcement tweetrecently, and his tweet is right here.
It says I've been in law enforcementnearly thirty years, driving a squad
car most of that time. There'sno telling how many podcasts I've listened to.
That being said, Bone Valley istruly one of my favorite experiences to
date. Great job, Gilbert King. That has to feel amazing for someone
inside law enforcement. Does it feelgood or is it complicated? I guess
(29:47):
I should ask, Yeah, that'sa really great way. Friend. You're
asking some really amazing questions that Idon't think about very often, so I
have to really asks them as I'mgoing. But it does feel good in
a way because one of the thingsI really want to do it when I
started this podcast was like, Idon't want to make it so that every
single law enforcement goes, oh,this is this is a biased you know,
saying I want them to look atthis like everybody else and to look
(30:11):
at that as a human being.And so that's that's really motivating for me.
And I've had that happened quite abit. I've had judges, lawyers,
prosecutors get back to me and say, this guy's innocent. I can
tell you know, this story isreally this needs to be known more and
and it's an injustice and I hopesomething happens, you know. And I've
had that from a lot from theside that you would normally think that might
(30:33):
be a little skeptical about this.You know, it's coming from all different
areas, not just regular listeners topodcasts, people who read books, but
it's also happening to you know,people who work in law enforcement or work
in you know, the state attorney'soffice. Is that come back to me
and say, you know, Ican't go on the record here, but
I know what you're doing and you'reright, and so I just feel like
(30:55):
that's important. It's important for me, it's important for Leo, it's important
for the whole his whole case.To make sure that I do this right
and not cut corners, not youknow, take on sensational elements that sort
of favorite I really wanted the wholestory. You did not cut corners.
You and Kelsey are some of themost thorough research and investigators I've heard.
(31:17):
And also, what's brilliant about notonly the work you did, but what
you chose to include. And that'ssomething I'd love to talk a little about.
There's so many moments that could havebeen cut that you left in.
What guided you in that process ofstorytelling? You know, I had to
say, I don't know anything abouta podcast. I know how to tell
a story, and I written thescript before we started production, and I
look back at that script, Iundertaking awful. It's just awful. It
(31:40):
would not work. And so whatit really came down to is the team
that we had at Lava that wasjust so experienced at this We were all
on the same page. It wasone of the most one of the greatest
collaborative efforts I've ever been involved inmy entire life. And so I felt
like, you know, Kelsey andI worked on the script, we knew
the story really well, but wesort of handed it over to our senior
producer Kara and Britt the sound Desireand Rocks the ender, and they really
(32:06):
made magic happen. And I'm I'mtrying to I'm not trying to, you
know, just blow smoke in allthese directions. I'm telling you, this
is exactly what happened. There weremoments that I was listening saying with the
music and with the edits and thechoices that they were making with our sound
like because things I didn't think wouldever work inside, you know, Like
I'll give you an example. Youknow, there's a moment in episode two
(32:29):
where we come back from the evidenceroom and you know, it's we're looking
at pictures of Michelle, who we'vegotten to know, her family, we've
gotten to know Leo, and nowwe see her on an office autopsy table
with all of the wounds exposed,and it's pretty difficult to look at.
And you know, Kelsey's never doneanything like that before. I have,
but you know, even still forme, it was powerful. And we
(32:50):
come back to do a debriefing inthe car and she just couldn't talk.
She just started crying. And youknow, we kept we kept threecorders running
for everything because we were so unconfidentof anything to do. We just just
keep it running. We'll come backto late yeah, exactly. And you
know, and I wasn't sure,and they said, look, this is
(33:12):
a really powerful moment. It's areally honest moment. It's not something that's
manipulated. It's not it's a realmoment and it works. And both Kelsey
and I were like, well,it was definitely real, that really happened.
But is it is it going beyondjournalism? Is it? Is it
too much manipulation? I didn't reallyknow, and I trusted them and they
were right on every single time.And there were moments that I think,
(33:34):
you know, there's times where Kelsey'sasking me about my feelings and you know,
I'm like of a different generation.It's I'm like, what feelings,
Let's move on, you know,and those are but they love those moments.
And I feel like as long asit's satisfied the whole team and they
all felt on board, they couldconvince me that things I wouldn't normally think
of would go. So I reallyhave to do really give credit to the
team. They just had such greattaste and sound and content that I just
(34:00):
really trusted them so dips in thisvaive. He's a true artist. I
mean, we obviously learned from thebeginning that he's a musician. And the
other beautiful part of this podcast isthe song, the theme song, Oh
I'm so glad you said that.Again, this goes back to our sound
(34:22):
designer, Brit Spangler, who justlike figured out a way to incorporate the
music in a way that we justgave her a CD of Leo's stuff and
just left it to her and shejust, you know, and I want
to listen to that song. Now, even after she did this, she
selected that song. I listened tothe lyrics of that song and it takes
a lot of different kind of meaningto me. You know, the one
(34:44):
who's holding the stars. At onepoint, Leo says in the podcast,
he says, you know, Jeremy'sthe one who's holding the knights, and
you look at the lyrics actually kindof you know, it's obviously a spiritual
thing about God. You know,I want to know your revelations. I
want to know who you are there. So there's part of that song that
just makes me think of Jeremy,like, who did this to my wife?
(35:06):
You know, like you're the onewho has the control here, You're
the one who has the truth.It was just took on a stronger meeting
and I credit that to like Agana creative team. Yeah, it's very,
very layered. It's a very beautifuland hunting song. And again just
one of I don't usually remember themesongs of podcasts, with the exception of
the serial like that will never leaveus ever, but this one's definitely stayed
(35:27):
with me. Are you working ona case, a new story and is
it anything you can share yet?Well, I have that book that I
had to put aside in order todo Leo's case. That's been a couple
of years now, and I've beenworking on that again a little bit,
just going back to my research,and but I'll just tell you I have
really was so fond of working withthis team and this collaboration and working on
(35:52):
something more immediate that I think allof us want to do it again.
We just want to work together again. And so there I have no ending
of cases that are interesting. Iget them from people all the time,
and most of them were in Florida, just because of my connections down there
and my conversations. I'm always doingpublic speaking, always meeting with lawyers,
judges, and so I know there'sa lot or as the third biggest state,
(36:15):
you know, it's like there's alot going on down in Florida.
Yet it really is, and there'sno ending that. So I don't really
want to so quickly move out ofthat area because it's really that's a really
fruitful place for me. But Ijust I don't know if this sounds crazy
to you, but I just Igot the bug of just working with a
team that I'm not done with it. I really enjoyed it so much.
(36:37):
I think everything got better because ofeveryone's contributions, Kelsey from the sound designer,
from Machenior editor together and even thestaff above us. And again I'm
not trying to just say all thesenice things. But we have this team
at Lava that was just so trustfuland just said, we have people in
place, you guys do the work, and I just feel like that that
(36:58):
I want to stay with this teamand work in that in that way because
it's been things that were good tostart with got so much better because of
them. I realized that collaborative effortwas just the reason. Well, I'm
thrilled to hear it, and Iknow anyone who listens to Bone Valley will
be too. And Jason Flom wason with Maggie Freeling a couple of weeks
ago, so I know they justdo such good work at Lava for good
(37:19):
and just I'm such a fan.So you are in great company there and
you gave them the best material andthen they just kept working with it.
I mean it really, it's likea beautiful thing you presented to them and
they just finished it and it's it'sincredible. I can't wait to hear what
you guys do next. Oh yeah, well I'll tell you what the next
one in whatever we do next time, it is not going to take four
years. Bastard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah,
(37:44):
people will we'll get ancy, we'llget impatient. Well, before you go,
Gilbert, I do ask all myguests before they leave. We talk
a lot about justice on dialogue,and I'd love to know how you define
it. Well, you know,I think that you know. One of
the things I'm I'm really conscious ofis like this two levels of justice for
people who have money and can afforda defense and others who don't. And
(38:07):
I think one of the biggest surprisesin this entire Bone Valley case that I
learned was that, you know,everybody was telling Leo in prison, you
need a private attorney. You can'ttrust your life to these public defenders.
That they're going to ruin your case. They're overworked, over schedules. The
public defenders in Polk County were stillgood. They were just experienced. And
(38:29):
I just grew this great respect tothe work that public defenders do. They
know the system, they know thejudges, they know the law, and
yet you know, you bring inthis better call Saul guy who's flashy shoot
from his hip. What kind ofdefense do you think you're going to get
there? But that's that was thething that I learned, is that public
defenders, especially in this circuit wereso talented and so good that you know
(38:50):
it's just Leo says, it's thegreatest mistake of his life that he pulled
the case from the public Defender's office. So that's one of the things I
just learned having met so many publicdefenders, how much they care about this
and how hard they're willing to workfor someone that they believe is wrongly convicted.
That's incredible. They are the unsungheroes, some of them in our
system for sure. Well, Gilbert, thank you so much for killing the
(39:13):
small talk with me today, andplease everybody go listen to Bone Valley.
Can't wait to hear what you donext. I hope to meet in person
someday. Loved, Rebecca, thiswas such a great interview, and I
really thank you for this really carefulBostel questions. It really means a lot.
Thanks for killing the small talk.Dialogue is a yellow tape media production
edited by Jason Ussrie and produced andhosted by me Rebecca Sebastian. Please be
(39:37):
sure to subscribe to Dialogue, atrue crime conversation wherever you listen to podcasts,
and follow us on social media.We are at Dialogue Pod across all
platforms. You can also drop mea note or a guest suggestion, or
sign up for my newsletter at RebeccaSebastian dot com. Be sure to join
me every Wednesday for a new episodeand another killer conversation.
Welcome to Dialogue Podcast. I'm yourhost, Rebecca Sebastian, and this is
the show where I kill the smalltalk with the leading voices in crime,
culture and justice. We are concludingour series on wrongful convictions today with Gilbert
King, the host of my favoritepodcast this year, Bone Valley. Gilbert
is also the Pulitzer Prize winning authorof Devil in the Grove. He's written
(00:54):
two other New York Times bestselling books, and his work covers race, crime,
and justice in America. Now,if you've already listened to Bone Valley,
then you're going to love hearing someof the behind the scenes discussion today
about the making of the show andhow the story came to be. And
if you haven't yet listened, thenyou're also going to love it because Gilbert's
passion and conviction for this practically unbelievablestory is palpable, and it was just
(01:19):
such a treat to talk to him. I'm going to play the trailer for
Bone Valley before getting right into theinterview, but here's a quick recap for
anyone who doesn't know the story.In nineteen eighty seven, eighteen year old
Michelle Scofield was found dead in aphosphate pit in Florida. Two years later,
her husband, Leo was convicted andsentenced to life in prison. Fifteen
(01:40):
years later, previously unidentified fingerprints matchedJeremy Scott, a violent teenager who lived
nearby. Jeremy has since confessed toMichelle's murder, yet Leo Scofield remains behind
bars. With that. Let's hearthe trailer for Bone Valley and I want
to thank Gilbert King for killing thesmall talk and listen. This is the
(02:05):
story. It is what it is. You believe or don't believe it.
It's up to you. It willnot change the fact that I'm an innocent
man. Do you my mans.In February nineteen eighty seven, Leo Schofield's
eighteen year old wife, Michelle wentmissing. Left to my fears, I
(02:31):
need to talk to company about findingmy wife. I'm really worried about it.
I can find out. Three dayslater, Michelle was found stabbed to
death off a freeway in Lakeland,Florida. Shouldn't it be your responsibility to
investigate A wait a minute, wehave investigated this thing upside down. No
(02:52):
physical evidence connected Leo Schofield to thecrime, and he said I'm gonna put
you in the electric chair. AndI said, that's what you're gonna have
to do. But I'm not goingto say something that's not true. At
twenty two years old, Leo wasconvicted for his wife's murder and sentenced to
life in prison. Leo Schofield isa cold blooded murderer, and if I
(03:14):
have my way, you'll never getout of prison. But after Leo's conviction,
there were still so many unanswered questions. Always, always, the fingerprints
was a big question in my mind. Obviously somebody was in the car,
somebody knew something. Who was it? What do they know? So I
took the fingerprint and I'm like,all right, who does it come back
(03:36):
to? And he said, aguy named Jeremy Scott, Jerey, Who
the fuck's Jeremy Scott? Have anybodycome part of you? Not murder?
Despite new evidence pointing to Jeremy Scott, Leo Schofield is still in prison.
He's been locked up for the lastthirty four years. You or somebody like
(03:59):
you, it is Leo's last shot. I would just really like another who
did it? I want you guysto find the truth, you know what
I mean? I can believe thisworld, knowing that at least it was
solved. I'm Gilbert King, aPulitzer Prize winning author, and I've spent
the last four years investigating this casewith researcher Kelsey Decker. Together we set
(04:23):
out to uncover the truth behind theconviction of Leo Schofield, but we would
soon learn that Michelle Scofield's murder wasjust the tip of the iceberg, as
our investigation pulled us down into themuch darker world of Jeremy Scott. Don't
enjoys me to you hear the wholestorysps S in this VALI from Lava for
(04:55):
Good Podcasts. This is Bone Valley. Find us on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Gilbert King, Welcome to Dialogue podcast.
(05:16):
Really nice to meet you and haveyou on the show. Oh it's
really nice to be here, Rebecca. Thanks for having me, of course,
and thanks for joining us from Spain. Very cool international interview happening exactly.
I'm just so happy we're talking becauseBone Valley has absolutely become my favorite
podcast I've listened to this year,and it's quickly becoming I'm like too nervous
(05:39):
to even say my favorite of alltime, but it's it's going to be
in my top three, like nodoubt. I don't even know what to
state of that, Rebecca. It'sjust so I listened to them all,
and I'm not saying I'm the arbiterof what's good or not. I'm just
saying that this one has stuck withme in the way that it's gone beyond
telling people are asking people to listen. It's like imploring them, and and
(06:00):
no one has been mad about it. We on dialogue or in a conversation
a series, I'm Wrongful Conviction.So I'm thrilled to have you add to
it. Your work has a theme. You were an author before this podcast,
race Justice, the American criminal justicesystem. Why did you start writing
and thinking so deeply about that?Well, you know, it's one of
(06:23):
those things that one sort of stickswith you. You know, like sometimes
you're working on a history, You'redealing with documents people have passed away,
and this just feels like history.In this particular case, it felt like
I was doing the same kind ofthemes wrongful conviction. Accept It fell more
urgent because someone was sitting in aprison every single day who I felt didn't
(06:43):
belong there. And so there's asense of urgency when you're working on something
like I have to tell this storyright. I have to get it right
because this may be his last chance. And so you feel some kind of
urgency, especially once you you know, finally understand like, oh, this
that was wrongfully convicted. There's someone else who did this, pride,
then it just feels like, well, why are you working on some history
(07:03):
thing when you could be working onsomething that's you know, impacting someone's life
and someone's family's life right now.The urgency of Leo's Schulfield story. And
you know, from a listeners whohaven't yet listened to Bone Valley, and
I've already asked them to do so, I think a lot of people will
have. It's a must listen.And it's happening as we speak. And
it's such a glaring example of howslowly justice moves, even when it's it's
(07:28):
it's just so clearly could be provenbeyond a reasonable doubt that the man they
have for a crime didn't do it. How maddening is it right now for
Leo? With all the buzz andenergy this show has brought to the story
to still be sitting there every day, like, how are you dealing with
that? Kelsey and Leo. Oneof the things I'm constantly thinking about is,
(07:51):
you know, I write back andforth with Leo through an email system
and we calls me all the time, and so we have these conversations and
just sort of see the ebbs andflows of his emotions, like, all
right now, all the episodes areout, what's happening? And you know,
he doesn't hear anything because there wasa hurricane down there and he's kind
of locked away and like resting,the inmates aren't listening. They can't listen,
(08:16):
so he just doesn't know what's goingon. It's like I just poured
my soul out in the podcast that'scome out, and I don't know what
the reaction is. So it's beenreally these ebbs and flows. I can
tell you that since the hurricane hassort of dissipated, they're back to regular
visitation. One of the things that'sreally inspiring to him is how many people
from the outside world, like theguards, the administrators, the outside contractors
(08:39):
who come in and do work withhim. They've come up to him and
said, you know, because theydon't talk about a prisoner's case. They
don't talk about that at all.And so they've come up to him and
said, you know, Leo,I this is I'm paraphrasing him, but
this is pretty much what he said. You know, Leo, I always
thought that you were someone who didn'treally belong in this place, but I
(09:00):
didn't know the details. But I'velistened to your story and now I know
you're innocent, and I just wantto hug you and tell you how sorry
I am that you've been here solong. And that to me is just
you know, for him, it'sit's extraordinarily emotional. But for me to
just hear that and to just hearthat, that's the reaction, the real
world reaction, it's it's it's it'sreally something I have to tell you.
(09:22):
It's it's a really it's you know, it's a burden and a gift to
carry in a lot of ways.That's a great way to put it.
It's so bittersweet. So this wholestory starts with you getting a tip from
a judge, which is a prettyincredible and you know, compelling way to
start looking into someone's innocence. Butwas there a defining moment for you at
any point in the investigation where youknew without a doubt, was one piece
(09:43):
of evidence or one conversation with aperson that you just said there is no
more doubt, like I'm one hundredpercent sure he's innocent, And what was
it. Yeah, I'm trying tothink of like the exact moment. I
can sort of remember certain moments like, well, honestly, when a judge
comes to you and says this guyis innocent, it sets off alarmed bills.
Listen. Yeah, And like thatnight I went to dinner with some
(10:05):
public defenders and I was like,hey, what do you think of this?
This judge came up to me.I showed him the card. He
say, he's saying that this guyin Polk County was wrongthy convicted. He
said he was framed. I knowhow they did. I can tell you
exactly how it happened. And theseguys were passing around. I could just
see their eyes kind of lit up, like a judge rocus, you know,
they were very surprised. And thenI finally got to a public defender
(10:26):
in Polk County. He looked atit and he just kind of looked at
me. And he goes, Iknow this case, you should call him.
I felt like he was telling melike, all right, this was
a bad case too, and soyou know, but I'm a skeptical person.
I asked Judge couple a lot ofquestions. I started talking to his
lawyers at the Innocence Project, gettingall this information that I think it was
after I met Leo that that wasthe moment where I recognized because I had
(10:50):
in my head like if this paytries to mislead me or just lie to
me, I'm just I'm not goingto get bold in this product. And
he was never that way. Hewas always transparent. So another new avenue
for you is podcasting. And there'sa lot of shows like Bone Valley and
the ones I've covered just in thisseries. You know, the System came
out with Kim Kardashian, there's manyothers. I'm wondering how you feel about
(11:13):
this alternative path to finding justice forpeople who are possibly wrongfully incarcerated. Yeah,
and this is all really new tome, and I honestly do not
believe you can set out to dothis and say like I'm going to do
the podcast, I'm going to tellthe truth and then he's going to be
exonerated. You can't do that.I did that with Devil in the Grove
and it took ten years after itwas published, just sort of come to
(11:35):
this moment, and you know,Grant, I think it's a little different
when you have, you know,four young men who are wrongsly accused of
this crime, but everybody's dead andpostumus. Now there's not this sense of
urgency. I think people just thebook grew and its started to catch on
politically, and people said, Iwant to do something to correct this injustice
and really out of my hands assomeone who you know, as a storyteller,
(12:00):
I can put it out there,but I can't really force anything.
I can't make anything happen. Ithas to be people have to come together
and say we need to fix thispolitical people. It's just one of these
things that's an organic movement, andI just don't think it's a realistic path
towards correcting and injustice. However,I believe that the criminal justice system has
(12:22):
become so difficult to correct wrongful convictionsbecause of some of the laws that have
been passed. Storytelling is one ofthe big things that does work in these
cases. Bringing to bring attention tothese injustices. And I've been fortunate enough
to have like politicians, lawmakers,judicial people reach out to me and say,
(12:43):
you know, I'm going to tryand do something with this. I'm
going to try and talk to someof the people I know. And that's
what it really takes. I mean, I really do feel like when I
talk to Leo, I'm like,Leo, it's out there now. There's
like not much more I can reallydo at this point, and you know,
the judicial system is spoken, sowe just have to sort of hope
from miracles. But I think that'sthe craziest part is that we wait right
(13:05):
now and it seems like his fateis resting in this circuit judge's hands right
now. Yeah, it is restingin his hands, but there are also
some other hands. I have it. There's a clemency board that's made up
of governor to Santis and it's fourcabinet members. That's another pathway, but
it gets a little bit tricky becauseyou have a governor who looks like he's
running for president, so maybe hedoesn't want to be the one who's exonerating
(13:28):
convicted murderers at this time in hislife, and so that's a little bit
tricky with Leo. It's like,there's no doubt this is an innocent man.
It's been in prison, I mean, and they're for thirty five years.
Because it's just really hard to understandthat it can be so clear to
so many people and someone can stilljust day after day stay in prison.
(13:50):
What do you think it needs tohappen in terms of humanity or the law
so we can help people in thissituation, like Leo Schofield. Yeah,
I mean, there's there's definite thisculture in a prosecutor's office. You know,
the job of the prosecutor is toseek justice, not to win convictions,
right, and that's spelled out veryclearly. I mean some of them
have to take olds to define thatand to state that that's what their intentions
(14:13):
are going to be. But it'snot obviously not the case in reality.
And some of the times you getto these places where you know, like
maybe all the evidence that I bringin that shows that Jeremy Scott is the
killer they can look at they oh, well that's not admissible in court because
we've already passed it. We're notin the appellet stage. We're not in
the trial stage. That's not admissible. Okay, So then you look at
(14:35):
all these things that can't come intothe case, and to me, that's
ridiculous. I mean, one ofthe great things about a conviction and tegut
review that is they can start fromscratch and just say, all right,
forget the trial, Let's look atall the evidence. Let's go out and
reinterview some of these witnesses. Ifwe think something was wrong there, let's
start from scratch. If there's aclaim of innocence, let's look at that
from scratch. Okay. The wholecase hinges on this one witness, Alice
(14:58):
Scott, who claims he saw somethingfrom across the street. You know,
when we look into that, youknow, her very first statement to the
police said that all this happened betweentwo thirty and three am. That's what
her original report to the police.One, Well, Leo is accounted for
at two thirty because he's with Michelle'sfather at two thirty, and at three
o'clock he's talking to Depping, he'sin a parking lot. That's all recorded,
(15:22):
so it could not be that he'sin two places at once. So
what happens once this gets massaged bythe state attorney. That starts getting moved
back to now it's like closer toone thirty, all right, and everything
gets moved around, so like whenyou look at the evidence, it just
doesn't make any sense of it.All hinges on this one witness who really,
I frankly think has no credibility.Later on, she would say things
(15:45):
change her testimony, She couldn't stickto the same story. This is really
the one person who put Leo Schofieldin prison, This one witness. Just
think if a conviction had taken herview and it would come along, they
would say, all right, well, she's obviously not credible. What other
evidence is there? This case isthrown out very quickly, right, And
then you get to the part that'sbefore even Jeremy Stott even gets involved in
(16:06):
this. You know, it's maddening, it really really is. And I'll
never forget one of the things thathe said to me much later on.
And Leo says things to you sometimesthat don't really register until you think about
them later, And in this particularcase, he goes now he's trying to
say thank you for staying involved inmy story and for telling the story the
(16:26):
podcast hadn't come out yet, andhe said to me, Gilbert, there's
nothing I can give you to thankyou for everything you've done. But there
is one thing I can give you, and I hope you understand the meaning
of this. He goes, Iwill give you my word and promise you
you're never going to have to worryabout this coming back on you and something
going sideways on you. And that'sgoing to change the way you feel about
(16:49):
this case and about me. Youwill never have to worry about that because
I've given you the truth. Andit was just one of those things,
like, you know, you'd haveto be Laurence Olivier or the most psychopathic
person in the world to deliver thatkind of message exactly. You said you
were a skeptic, and I thinkthat serves the story well too. One
of the things he also said tous, you know, early on,
(17:11):
you know, he's like Gilbert,like, just think about you know,
like you're you're at age twenty one, but you've obviously gone on to you
know, do all these things.You've written books, you've had a family,
you've done all these things. Butimagine if your life was just going
back to like one really awful partof your you know, adolescents as a
twenty one year old person, andthat's all anybody would ever talk about you
(17:34):
that has defined your life. AndI just remember thinking, yeah, there's
things at twenty one like I wouldn'twant that to be my defining moment in
life. But the truth is it'snot his defining. Like he is a
person in prison who's a role model, a leader, he's respected by everybody.
He's you know, think about itthis way, and this is the
thing I've had to learn to thinkabout it. If you believe that he's
(17:56):
innocent, he's been in prison forthirty five years for killing his wife,
and let's just let's just assume thathe is innocent to survive that and to
carry this spirit to go forward andto help people in the prison. It's
a remarkable human being you're looking at. And that's just if you astealment.
He's innocent, and so like,obviously I do believe he's innocent. So
(18:17):
he is a remarkable person and that'show I choose to look at him.
When he talks to me on thephone and writes letters to me about his
feelings and thoughts, like I recognizeI'm talking to a remarkable person. Truly,
he truly is. And for anybodywho listens to Bone Valley and also
feels he's innocent, there is apetition. I don't know if it's ended.
Oh it's still out there, sochange that work. It's going to
(18:38):
be out there and okay, peepingit out there. So the Innocence Project
of Florida put out a petition tohave his case transferred to a conviction integrity
unit. And I mean seems likethe least they could do. There's a
(19:07):
lot of podcasts that are very dryand do a great job making sure that
we are always centering the victim appropriatelyand that's so important, but sometimes explicitly
stating the gravity of what we sawand how important it is to give Michelle's
Schofield a voice and an identity.It's a little not condescending, but it
(19:30):
just, I don't know, itexpects too little of the audience. Yeah,
and honestly, you know, that'sa really great point. And I
have to tell you, like,it's a complicated story because if you think
about it, here's a man inprison for convicted for murdering his wife,
and we start the whole series withhim giving his version of what happened before
we get to the States version ofhow this happened. So we have basically
(19:52):
three different versions of Michelle's death.We start out with Leo's version, and
he you know, there's parts wherehe doesn't know what happened, so he
can describe what he's doing around townif you believe him, he doesn't have
any information about that stuff. Thenwe start with the States version, which
is this timeline and all the thingsthat happened, and all the parents are
liars. They're in on this murderconspiracy. They you know, become accessories
(20:15):
to murder. They're out, they'renot actually out looking for Michelle, they're
trying to create a fake alibi,and like, let doesn't really make a
lot of sense. And then ultimatelywe get to Jeremy's story and that's a
totally different version of that. Andso there is the sort of this Rascheman
structuring of the narratives, three differentversions of Michelle's death, and we're leaving
it to listeners to decide what theyreally believe. I think, you know,
(20:37):
in answering your question, we tooka lot of our leads from Leo
and Leo really. You know,after a while, we begin to understand
that, you know, he's stillmourning his dead wife, and he is
in prison because of her death,and there's this really complicated, you know,
process that he has to go through. He was the one who was
(20:57):
really the most with Michelle's legacy andwho Michelle was first. He was guiding
that and ultimately got us reaching outto Michelle's friends, Michelle's brother, all
of them spoke to us, andso we really we didn't really try to
force it. We really wanted herto be a real character in it because
she is, and so we didn'tfeel like we had to manipulate anything or
(21:18):
force anything. It was right therefor us. Yeah, you think about
the adolescent brain and all that happensafter the age of twenty five, and
what happened to him, and thento go to prison to reconcile her death,
her violent death, and your ownincarceration and you're innocent. That's a
complicated web to navigate. I'm curioushow you feel about this being marketed as
(21:41):
a true crime podcast. I'm atrue crime podcaster, though I think I
live more in the criminal justice world. That's more of the conversation I'm interested
in, but obviously it's the vehiclethat gets stories like this to an audience.
How do you feel about true crimeas a genre. Yeah, well,
I can just tell you, likeI grew up as a young kid
into true crime. I was reallyme and my mom were really into true
(22:03):
crime, talk about this all thetime, and I remember growing up this
before your time, But I grewup in New York and there was the
Son of Sam story, which wasso captivating to me because it encompassed journalism
and true crime. And I justremember this moment like waking up like did
Son of Sam strike again? Andfinding out that he did, and rushing
out to get the newspaper and seeingthat, you know, Son of Sam
(22:26):
had written these letters to the columnistsJimmy Breslin, and he was talking about
motive and what was driving him,and there was nothing more exciting to me.
And then to figure so many yeardecades later, here I am with
Jeremy Scott. We're corresponding together,and then we're going to meet him.
So, you know, to answeryour question, I have a fondness for
(22:48):
true crime. It's a really bigpart of my life and early memories of
just reading those kind of books beforepodcasts, reading your books and watching movies.
I look at it now, it'slike I like, using a crime
story is a narrative, and Istill do that in my books even when
I'm doing history. Devil the Growthis really a crime story. It's about
you know, these crimes. Insome way, I think you can look
(23:10):
at the true crime element is kindof this trojan horse. You're gonna come
in with this true crime element,but you're going to get a lot more.
You're going to learn about the criminaljustice system. In my books,
You're going to learn about race inAmerica, the law on how it's changed.
And I think there's a lot learnabout the criminal justice system today that
people are really not familiar with,especially that post conviction reliefs side of it.
(23:30):
I think they're inextricably linked. AndI think it's you know, it's
a complicated genre, but it's it'sit's progressing, it's changing. I think
the genres expanding to include more,and I think the average person knows about
things like Brighty violations and you know, wrongful convictions because of great podcasts.
I want to go back to Kelseyfor a minute, because I feel like
(23:52):
there's two stories happening in the pot. While there's a lot of stories happening,
or a lot of themes, Ishould say, but like one of
them is your and her experience goingthrough this, because what turns you know,
you kind of halt one project,a book you're working on, to
take a look at this. Itturns into several years and you guys are
on the field doing everything together,side by side, and she starts off.
(24:15):
You know, she's she's obviously verycompetent and a great researcher and a
great she's you know, on thefield with you, doing a great job,
but she's nervous about approaching Jerry Hill. You're thinking about Great Hill,
former state attorney, right, yeah, the former state attorney. So you
know, throughout the episodes, she'slike, I feel like you just feel
like I saw just subtle growth inher and just a little more confidence.
(24:37):
And again she's doing a lot ofthis for the first time, and you
could not be with her the daythat she actually encounters Jerry Hill for whatever
reason, I can't remember. Youweren't there. You had to be somewhere
else. And so she's there andit was this moment where she approaches him
respectfully asks him about the case.He responds, and she gently but accurately
(25:00):
corrects him because he has some ofthe facts wrong. And she's so confident
in her research and her work thatthere was like nothing she had ever needed
to be nervous about. And itwas like, I just thought that was
like this amazing secondary arc. Itwas like the arc of Kelsey. And
I just saw her like come intoher own and be like, Wow,
she's killing it right now, Likeshe just got this moment and it was
(25:21):
just so good. Did you feelthat and see that as well? Yeah,
Rebecca, I can tell you likeI had to I had to give
a talk in New York that dayand it was my schedule. There's no
way missed this, right, Yeah, So it just happens to me the
day it's like a big snowstorm.She has to go down there on her
own and do this interview with likethis is one of those unscheduled interviews.
So it's like we don't have informasion, they won't talk to us. The
(25:42):
only way we have it we knowhe's going to be there. Maybe which
talked to him in the hallway.It was a lot to expect her.
She'd done a few interviews on herown, but I knew this was just
a tremendous She's she's already like alittle bit nervous and anxious about this stuff
already, and now she's the spileson hers. But I have to tell
you, like, I mean myexperience with that, just because she sent
(26:03):
me to take like a couple hoursafterwards, and I started listening to it,
and my reaction, I wish youcould see it. I was just
like, oh my god, shedid it. And there was one I
knew it. I knew she wasgoing to do it because I knew she'd
be nervous when she approached him.But once she started talking about the facts
of the case, I'd been onthat side before where she just nope,
(26:23):
that's not how it happened. Itcorrects it. And so I I there
was honestly a time where I feltsorry for this guy because I said,
you can't hang with Kelsey on this. He is not going to be able
to get away with saying the usualgarbage that you know that because she won't
let him. She just will correcthim right away. And that's exactly how
it happened. And you know,we did a lot of preparation. But
(26:44):
a lot of that preparation that wedid for that interview was like, if
he goes in this direction, gohere, give him a softball answer,
you know, a question first,get him started, but then get to
this stuff. And you could justfeel his like desperation, like he's thinking,
here's this young girl who's you know, I'll talk to her. I
have to go wrong here, andshe knows the case, you know,
better than him, better than me. She's not gonna let him off the
book. And I just knew,like you could hear him start breathing,
(27:07):
was isn't it your responsibility to investigate? Now? Wait, a met a
little lady. You know he didone of those kind of things, and
I'm like, oh, don't littlelady Kelsey, that's not going to work
for you either. Yeah, heunderestimated her and it was beautiful, and
honestly, if I would have beenthere, I don't think I could have
done better than that. Is thereanything you learned about wrongful convictions that surprised
(27:32):
you that maybe my audience and listenersdon't know, or that we get wrong
about wrongful convictions? Well, youknow what, I think one of the
things like because of my background inhistory, I know about these things from
the nineteenes, warts and fifties whenit's totally different criminal justice. Sure,
so I just fustume everything is goingto be better, not necessarily the case,
and I think the way it's beendescribed to me, like if you
get arrested and charge with a crimeand you go to trial, you're innocent
(27:56):
until proven guilty. Once you reachthat post conviction phase, you are now
guilty unless proven innocent. So thebar is just totally different now, and
there's just all these protections built inin order to preserve finality and preserve the
verdict of the jury. Right,it looks like it's Jeremy Scott. Right,
he confessed to it later on,like that he did this. Everything
(28:18):
he said lined up the stuff thathe should not have known he knew about.
And we get to the finality ofthis and we reach out to the
State Ferry's office and the Shark's officein Ossiola County and they're like, well,
we know that Dan Odie is thereal killer. The jury just got
it wrong, but he's the realmurderer. They basically smeared this guy who's
been acquitted of murder because it didn'tsit there narrative, so they don't expect
(28:42):
sinality at all. They respected whatit fits there, you know, position
that they have a conviction that theycan stand by. But if it's an
acquittal they don't agree with, they'rehappy to smear someone who's been acquitted by
a jury of his peers. Sothat that hypocrisy just really bothers me to
no end. I can't believe Iforgot to mention that you both low key
(29:02):
solved another murder while you know,pursuing the story with Leo, Like that's
very much worth mentioning, and wasjust another jaw dropping moment during the show
where I'm like, oh, theyjust, oh, okay, they just
solved a murder and absolved this manand upheld his reputation before we move on.
I was trolling your twitter just toprep for our interview, and I
(29:25):
saw a member of law enforcement tweetrecently, and his tweet is right here.
It says I've been in law enforcementnearly thirty years, driving a squad
car most of that time. There'sno telling how many podcasts I've listened to.
That being said, Bone Valley istruly one of my favorite experiences to
date. Great job, Gilbert King. That has to feel amazing for someone
inside law enforcement. Does it feelgood or is it complicated? I guess
(29:47):
I should ask, Yeah, that'sa really great way. Friend. You're
asking some really amazing questions that Idon't think about very often, so I
have to really asks them as I'mgoing. But it does feel good in
a way because one of the thingsI really want to do it when I
started this podcast was like, Idon't want to make it so that every
single law enforcement goes, oh,this is this is a biased you know,
saying I want them to look atthis like everybody else and to look
(30:11):
at that as a human being.And so that's that's really motivating for me.
And I've had that happened quite abit. I've had judges, lawyers,
prosecutors get back to me and say, this guy's innocent. I can
tell you know, this story isreally this needs to be known more and
and it's an injustice and I hopesomething happens, you know. And I've
had that from a lot from theside that you would normally think that might
(30:33):
be a little skeptical about this.You know, it's coming from all different
areas, not just regular listeners topodcasts, people who read books, but
it's also happening to you know,people who work in law enforcement or work
in you know, the state attorney'soffice. Is that come back to me
and say, you know, Ican't go on the record here, but
I know what you're doing and you'reright, and so I just feel like
(30:55):
that's important. It's important for me, it's important for Leo, it's important
for the whole his whole case.To make sure that I do this right
and not cut corners, not youknow, take on sensational elements that sort
of favorite I really wanted the wholestory. You did not cut corners.
You and Kelsey are some of themost thorough research and investigators I've heard.
(31:17):
And also, what's brilliant about notonly the work you did, but what
you chose to include. And that'ssomething I'd love to talk a little about.
There's so many moments that could havebeen cut that you left in.
What guided you in that process ofstorytelling? You know, I had to
say, I don't know anything abouta podcast. I know how to tell
a story, and I written thescript before we started production, and I
look back at that script, Iundertaking awful. It's just awful. It
(31:40):
would not work. And so whatit really came down to is the team
that we had at Lava that wasjust so experienced at this We were all
on the same page. It wasone of the most one of the greatest
collaborative efforts I've ever been involved inmy entire life. And so I felt
like, you know, Kelsey andI worked on the script, we knew
the story really well, but wesort of handed it over to our senior
producer Kara and Britt the sound Desireand Rocks the ender, and they really
(32:06):
made magic happen. And I'm I'mtrying to I'm not trying to, you
know, just blow smoke in allthese directions. I'm telling you, this
is exactly what happened. There weremoments that I was listening saying with the
music and with the edits and thechoices that they were making with our sound
like because things I didn't think wouldever work inside, you know, Like
I'll give you an example. Youknow, there's a moment in episode two
(32:29):
where we come back from the evidenceroom and you know, it's we're looking
at pictures of Michelle, who we'vegotten to know, her family, we've
gotten to know Leo, and nowwe see her on an office autopsy table
with all of the wounds exposed,and it's pretty difficult to look at.
And you know, Kelsey's never doneanything like that before. I have,
but you know, even still forme, it was powerful. And we
(32:50):
come back to do a debriefing inthe car and she just couldn't talk.
She just started crying. And youknow, we kept we kept threecorders running
for everything because we were so unconfidentof anything to do. We just just
keep it running. We'll come backto late yeah, exactly. And you
know, and I wasn't sure,and they said, look, this is
(33:12):
a really powerful moment. It's areally honest moment. It's not something that's
manipulated. It's not it's a realmoment and it works. And both Kelsey
and I were like, well,it was definitely real, that really happened.
But is it is it going beyondjournalism? Is it? Is it
too much manipulation? I didn't reallyknow, and I trusted them and they
were right on every single time.And there were moments that I think,
(33:34):
you know, there's times where Kelsey'sasking me about my feelings and you know,
I'm like of a different generation.It's I'm like, what feelings,
Let's move on, you know,and those are but they love those moments.
And I feel like as long asit's satisfied the whole team and they
all felt on board, they couldconvince me that things I wouldn't normally think
of would go. So I reallyhave to do really give credit to the
team. They just had such greattaste and sound and content that I just
(34:00):
really trusted them so dips in thisvaive. He's a true artist. I
mean, we obviously learned from thebeginning that he's a musician. And the
other beautiful part of this podcast isthe song, the theme song, Oh
I'm so glad you said that.Again, this goes back to our sound
(34:22):
designer, Brit Spangler, who justlike figured out a way to incorporate the
music in a way that we justgave her a CD of Leo's stuff and
just left it to her and shejust, you know, and I want
to listen to that song. Now, even after she did this, she
selected that song. I listened tothe lyrics of that song and it takes
a lot of different kind of meaningto me. You know, the one
(34:44):
who's holding the stars. At onepoint, Leo says in the podcast,
he says, you know, Jeremy'sthe one who's holding the knights, and
you look at the lyrics actually kindof you know, it's obviously a spiritual
thing about God. You know,I want to know your revelations. I
want to know who you are there. So there's part of that song that
just makes me think of Jeremy,like, who did this to my wife?
(35:06):
You know, like you're the onewho has the control here, You're
the one who has the truth.It was just took on a stronger meeting
and I credit that to like Agana creative team. Yeah, it's very,
very layered. It's a very beautifuland hunting song. And again just
one of I don't usually remember themesongs of podcasts, with the exception of
the serial like that will never leaveus ever, but this one's definitely stayed
(35:27):
with me. Are you working ona case, a new story and is
it anything you can share yet?Well, I have that book that I
had to put aside in order todo Leo's case. That's been a couple
of years now, and I've beenworking on that again a little bit,
just going back to my research,and but I'll just tell you I have
really was so fond of working withthis team and this collaboration and working on
(35:52):
something more immediate that I think allof us want to do it again.
We just want to work together again. And so there I have no ending
of cases that are interesting. Iget them from people all the time,
and most of them were in Florida, just because of my connections down there
and my conversations. I'm always doingpublic speaking, always meeting with lawyers,
judges, and so I know there'sa lot or as the third biggest state,
(36:15):
you know, it's like there's alot going on down in Florida.
Yet it really is, and there'sno ending that. So I don't really
want to so quickly move out ofthat area because it's really that's a really
fruitful place for me. But Ijust I don't know if this sounds crazy
to you, but I just Igot the bug of just working with a
team that I'm not done with it. I really enjoyed it so much.
(36:37):
I think everything got better because ofeveryone's contributions, Kelsey from the sound designer,
from Machenior editor together and even thestaff above us. And again I'm
not trying to just say all thesenice things. But we have this team
at Lava that was just so trustfuland just said, we have people in
place, you guys do the work, and I just feel like that that
(36:58):
I want to stay with this teamand work in that in that way because
it's been things that were good tostart with got so much better because of
them. I realized that collaborative effortwas just the reason. Well, I'm
thrilled to hear it, and Iknow anyone who listens to Bone Valley will
be too. And Jason Flom wason with Maggie Freeling a couple of weeks
ago, so I know they justdo such good work at Lava for good
(37:19):
and just I'm such a fan.So you are in great company there and
you gave them the best material andthen they just kept working with it.
I mean it really, it's likea beautiful thing you presented to them and
they just finished it and it's it'sincredible. I can't wait to hear what
you guys do next. Oh yeah, well I'll tell you what the next
one in whatever we do next time, it is not going to take four
years. Bastard. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fair. Yeah,
(37:44):
people will we'll get ancy, we'llget impatient. Well, before you go,
Gilbert, I do ask all myguests before they leave. We talk
a lot about justice on dialogue,and I'd love to know how you define
it. Well, you know,I think that you know. One of
the things I'm I'm really conscious ofis like this two levels of justice for
people who have money and can afforda defense and others who don't. And
(38:07):
I think one of the biggest surprisesin this entire Bone Valley case that I
learned was that, you know,everybody was telling Leo in prison, you
need a private attorney. You can'ttrust your life to these public defenders.
That they're going to ruin your case. They're overworked, over schedules. The
public defenders in Polk County were stillgood. They were just experienced. And
(38:29):
I just grew this great respect tothe work that public defenders do. They
know the system, they know thejudges, they know the law, and
yet you know, you bring inthis better call Saul guy who's flashy shoot
from his hip. What kind ofdefense do you think you're going to get
there? But that's that was thething that I learned, is that public
defenders, especially in this circuit wereso talented and so good that you know
(38:50):
it's just Leo says, it's thegreatest mistake of his life that he pulled
the case from the public Defender's office. So that's one of the things I
just learned having met so many publicdefenders, how much they care about this
and how hard they're willing to workfor someone that they believe is wrongly convicted.
That's incredible. They are the unsungheroes, some of them in our
system for sure. Well, Gilbert, thank you so much for killing the
(39:13):
small talk with me today, andplease everybody go listen to Bone Valley.
Can't wait to hear what you donext. I hope to meet in person
someday. Loved, Rebecca, thiswas such a great interview, and I
really thank you for this really carefulBostel questions. It really means a lot.
Thanks for killing the small talk.Dialogue is a yellow tape media production
edited by Jason Ussrie and produced andhosted by me Rebecca Sebastian. Please be
(39:37):
sure to subscribe to Dialogue, atrue crime conversation wherever you listen to podcasts,
and follow us on social media.We are at Dialogue Pod across all
platforms. You can also drop mea note or a guest suggestion, or
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