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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 2: my name is Nol.

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Speaker 3: They call me Ben.

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Speaker 4: We're joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission

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Speaker 4: controlled decads. Most importantly, you are here, and that makes

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Speaker 4: this the stuff they don't want you to know. We've

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Speaker 4: talked about.

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Speaker 5: In the past.

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Speaker 4: We will probably explore this in the future as well.

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Speaker 4: It doesn't matter who you're talking to these days, virtually

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Speaker 4: everyone in the United States can agree some part of

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Speaker 4: the justice system is broken. Criminals go free, Innocent people

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Speaker 4: get locked up for years, for decades for the rest

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Speaker 4: of their lives. When the system fail, the consequences can

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Speaker 4: ruin things for generations. And in today's show, we're examining

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Speaker 4: this phenomenon, continuing our examination through the lens of a

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Speaker 4: subject matter expert fellow conspiracy realist, the award winning author, photographer, podcaster,

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Speaker 4: and reform activist Gilbert King. Gilbert, thanks for coming on

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Speaker 4: the show.

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Speaker 5: Oh great to be here with you, guys. I'm really

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Speaker 5: looking forward to this. Thank you.

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Speaker 2: Oh man. We've been going through your new podcast, Bone Valley,

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Speaker 2: what newish podcast Bone Valley that is available right now

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Speaker 2: for everybody to listen to, and we just couldn't be

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Speaker 2: happier to have you on the show man.

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Speaker 5: No, it's really exciting to see you guys again too.

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Speaker 5: That's great. Yeah.

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Speaker 3: That again refers to a panel that we all did

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Speaker 3: together under the Lava for Good banner at the iHeartRadio

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Speaker 3: headquarters in Atlanta, where Gilbert was one of the expert

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Speaker 3: panelists talking about justice reform and many of the things

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Speaker 3: been set up in the opening and just how so

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Speaker 3: many people fall through the cracks and how perhaps some

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Speaker 3: of the things that we observe as being broken about

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Speaker 3: the justice system are kind of broken by design.

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Speaker 4: And Gilbert, with that live panel in preparation for that

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Speaker 4: at least, was lucky enough to hear all of Bone

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Speaker 4: Valley up to that point, but we were still in

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Speaker 4: media arrests. And what's fascinating about this story in a

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Speaker 4: disturbing way, is that it continues, you know, even after

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Speaker 4: the tape stops rolling. As they say, before we dive

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Speaker 4: into Bone Valley the heart of it, and this continuing saga.

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Speaker 4: There are a couple of background questions we could explore.

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Speaker 4: You know, you have written multiple books Beneath The Restless Son,

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Speaker 4: the Pulitzer Prize winning The Devil in the Grove, as

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Speaker 4: well as the Execution of Willie Francis, and there's a

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Speaker 4: there's kind of a common theme or thread that runs

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Speaker 4: through a lot of your work, right, racial relations, civil rights,

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Speaker 4: the death penalty, the justice system. What inspired this specific

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Speaker 4: focus for you as an investigator, researcher and an author.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, it's really interesting, Ben. I really wouldn't

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Speaker 5: say it was like something intentional. It's just once I

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Speaker 5: started with this book, The Executioner Willie Francis, which was

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Speaker 5: published in two thousand and eight, all of my research

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Speaker 5: just led to other ideas and I was seeing stories

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Speaker 5: like especially the Groveland Four. I found that while I

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Speaker 5: was researching this Louisiana story and I looked into this,

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Speaker 5: I was like, Wow, this is amazing. I'd never heard

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Speaker 5: of this before. It was kind of like a Scottsboro

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Speaker 5: Boys case but in nineteen forty nine in central Florida,

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Speaker 5: and like, I've never heard of it. And I talked

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Speaker 5: to a lot of people in Florida who'd never heard

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Speaker 5: of it. I talked to clerks who clerked for Thurgood

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Speaker 5: Marshall who worked on this case. They hadn't even heard

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Speaker 5: of it, and so I was like, what's happening in

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Speaker 5: this case that we don't know about? Why don't we

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Speaker 5: know about this? And the more research I did, I

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Speaker 5: saw like there was really just some academic papers about it,

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Speaker 5: but it wasn't a case that I thought people should

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Speaker 5: know about. And so like, once I go down that route,

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Speaker 5: I found the next idea beneath the Ruthless Sun that

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Speaker 5: takes place in the same county, and so it just

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Speaker 5: sort of led. One thing led to another. But you know,

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Speaker 5: even working in Florida so much as much as I do,

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Speaker 5: you know, all of that really led to this Bone

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Speaker 5: Valley podcast because I was out there doing book talks

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Speaker 5: about Devil in the Grove and all of a sudden

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Speaker 5: the judge came up to me and started telling me

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Speaker 5: about the Leo Schofield case. So I think it's just

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Speaker 5: my proximity in Florida and the vast amount of injustices

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Speaker 5: in Florida itself that just make it a really fertile

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Speaker 5: ground to.

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Speaker 3: Explore for those that maybe aren't familiar with the podcast yet,

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Speaker 3: And if that's the case, shame on you get on

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Speaker 3: there listen to it right now, because you give us

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Speaker 3: a little bit of the setup of just kind of

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Speaker 3: what makes this Leoscofield case special, or at least something

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Speaker 3: that piqued your interest a little further than what you

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Speaker 3: just mentioned in order to kind of go into a

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Speaker 3: deep dive and explore it in podcast form.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely no, it's you know, it's basically the story

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Speaker 5: of a young man, a hard heavy metal rock and roller,

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Speaker 5: leos go Field, who back in nineteen eighty seven, he's

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Speaker 5: a newlywed. He just gets married to an eighteen year

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Speaker 5: old waitress. They're not even married six months when she disappears.

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Speaker 5: She doesn't come home from her waitress shift, and so Leo,

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Speaker 5: his friends and everybody's family start looking for Michelle for

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Speaker 5: three days, and finally, on the third day, they find

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Speaker 5: her body in a phosphate canal and she's been stabbed

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Speaker 5: twenty six times. Now, there's no real evidence that connects

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Speaker 5: Leo to this murder, so the case kind of stalls

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Speaker 5: for over a year until finally a very aggressive state

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Speaker 5: attorney assistant State attorney comes in and charges Leo, and

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Speaker 5: ultimately Leo is convicted of this murder and sentenced to

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Speaker 5: life in prison. And you know, that's a common story

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Speaker 5: that we hear a lot of innocent men and wrongful convictions.

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Speaker 5: Nothing really there really jumps out at you as unique.

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Speaker 5: What made this story really interesting is that there were

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Speaker 5: some unidentified fingerprints found in the car that Michelle was

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Speaker 5: driving that were never identified, and seventeen years later, while

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Speaker 5: Leo's been in prison, they finally matched these fingerprints and

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Speaker 5: it matches to a young, very violent murderer who lives

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Speaker 5: about a mile away from where Michelle's body was found.

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Speaker 5: And this man ultimately confesses to the murder. And so

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Speaker 5: basically we have this story, why is Leo Schofield still

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Speaker 5: in prison when the man who's forensically linked to the

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Speaker 5: crime scene has confessed to the murder. And that's what

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Speaker 5: I set out to do, is to answer that question,

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Speaker 5: why is Leo Schofield still in prison?

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Speaker 4: And there's a lot of precedent too with this. The

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Speaker 4: person who makes the confession that some detractors will consider

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Speaker 4: disputed right, because I believe he a couple of times

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Speaker 4: went back or gave to mixed signals. But this is

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Speaker 4: something that I think we should highlight for the real

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Speaker 4: cynical people in the crowd today. It is dangerously tempting

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Speaker 4: to say, oh, sure everyone in prison and is innocent, right,

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Speaker 4: But Leo seems particularly unique in this regard, so much

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Speaker 4: so that a judge contacted you, right, is the first

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Speaker 4: person who contacted you? Is it? Is it unusual for

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Speaker 4: a judge to approach a private citizen with a case

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Speaker 4: like that.

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Speaker 5: Absolutely, it has never happened to me. In fact, I

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Speaker 5: was down there doing a book talk and at the

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Speaker 5: end of the talk this it was for a conference

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Speaker 5: for judges, and this judge handed me his business card

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Speaker 5: and it had Leo's name on it and said, not

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Speaker 5: just wrongfully convicted, he's an innocent man. And I remember

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Speaker 5: taking that business card out to dinner that night with

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Speaker 5: some public defenders and I said, you know, what do

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Speaker 5: you think of this, guys? This judge handed me this

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Speaker 5: card at a you know, at a conference today, and

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Speaker 5: they all kind of were puzzled, you know, they said,

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Speaker 5: a judge gave you this, a sitting judge. They're not

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Speaker 5: supposed to do this kind of thing. And then as

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Speaker 5: they passed the card around. One of the one of

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Speaker 5: the public defenders at the end was from Paul County,

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Speaker 5: where this story takes place, and he said, I know

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Speaker 5: this case, you should call him, And that kind of

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Speaker 5: told me that there was something to it, and so,

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Speaker 5: you know, ultimately I ended up reaching out to this

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Speaker 5: judge and he told me, Yep, they framed this guy.

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Speaker 5: I can tell you exactly how they did it. And

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Speaker 5: it's been bothering me for twenty years, and he set

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Speaker 5: out to tell me the whole story, and you know,

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Speaker 5: it was just a fascinating thing that I just could

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Speaker 5: not get involved with. Man.

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Speaker 2: Well, I think when you're listening through the first couple

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Speaker 2: of episodes of Bone Valley, you're really put in the

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Speaker 2: mind and a lot of aspects of the investigators, so

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Speaker 2: the police officers that are having those initial interactions with

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Speaker 2: Leo and Leo's father and the family of Michelle and

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Speaker 2: really trying to put the pieces together. And in my mind,

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Speaker 2: at least I can see and you've illustrated why there

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Speaker 2: was a lot of suspicion about Leo, because certainly his

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Speaker 2: relationship with his wife was not perfect right, and Leo

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Speaker 2: had some issues. But the weird stuff comes around the

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Speaker 2: time that her body is discovered. Can I just want

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Speaker 2: to jump to one particular moment. You can expand on

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Speaker 2: any of that if you want to, but that moment

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Speaker 2: when Officer Richard Katchadorian ends up calling the Schofield family

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Speaker 2: to express his condolences and Leo's father picks up and says,

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Speaker 2: some weird stuff. Could you tell us about that?

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Speaker 5: Yeah, And that was fascinating because we tracked down this

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Speaker 5: officer Richard katch Dort. He reminded ver like it was

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Speaker 5: just yesterday, and he said it was the strangest phone

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Speaker 5: call of his life because he had met Leo and

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Speaker 5: his father a couple of days earlier when they reported

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Speaker 5: Michelle missing, and now he'd seen on the news that

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Speaker 5: Michelle's body was found. So he called over to the

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Speaker 5: Schofields to you know, give his condolences, and Leo's father

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Speaker 5: answered and said something about finding the body, and then

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Speaker 5: he made this comment that you know, God had led

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Speaker 5: him to the body, had this premonition and led him

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Speaker 5: to the body.

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Speaker 2: And you know.

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Speaker 5: This this place where this where Michelle's body was found,

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Speaker 5: is really kind of know, it's off the beaten path

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Speaker 5: a little bit. It's down in this ditch that's well

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Speaker 5: off the road, and so he said, you know, this

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Speaker 5: sounded to me like a confession. It was the strangest

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Speaker 5: phone call of his life. And of course the prosecutor,

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Speaker 5: John Aguero, used that, you know, vision from God, that

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Speaker 5: premonition very heavily in the trial against Leo. I think

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Speaker 5: it was really the major part of his closing argument

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Speaker 5: was how would this guy have a premonition? He had

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Speaker 5: to have known where the body was. And so that's

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Speaker 5: another thing that just makes the case so interesting. You know,

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Speaker 5: you talked about, you know, Leo's relationship with Michelle, and

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Speaker 5: you know that ideally for Leo, he would have had

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Speaker 5: a perfectly happy marriage, but you know, there are two

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Speaker 5: young people, they're very volatile. Leo definitely gets physical with her.

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Speaker 5: You know, we talk about that in the podcast and

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Speaker 5: even he admits it, and you know, and he said,

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Speaker 5: I wasn't a good husband at the time. I was

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Speaker 5: not the same person that I am today. But again,

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Speaker 5: they had no evidence that connected him to a murder.

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Speaker 5: They just had evidence showing that he wasn't a good husband,

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Speaker 5: that he had a temper, that he sometimes fought with Michelle,

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Speaker 5: and witnesses had seen, you know, interactions between them, and

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Speaker 5: so there was a lot of like these I would

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Speaker 5: call him red herrings. But there you know, it's not

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Speaker 5: a perfect case for Leo. You know, he's not an

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Speaker 5: altar boy who just gets wrongfully convicted. You know, he

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Speaker 5: was sort of an easy target really.

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Speaker 4: And this this is something too that's fascinating because the prosecution,

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Speaker 4: we talk about this a little bit in our live panel.

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Speaker 4: The prosecution ignores some evidence, it seems, whether through deliberate

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Speaker 4: action or whether through negligence, and that they're forced to

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Speaker 4: rely on these eyewitness accounts. Could you tell us a

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Speaker 4: little bit about the issues surrounding convictions based on eyewitness testimony.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, well, eyewitness testimony is really not the greatest testimony.

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Speaker 5: We find that out for a lot of the exonerations.

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Speaker 5: A lot of times, you know, you'll have a very

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Speaker 5: steady witness who doesn't seem to have a bone to pick,

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Speaker 5: and they'll identify somebody and you find out later through

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Speaker 5: DNA that they've just misidentified. In this particular case, there

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Speaker 5: was one witness who lived across the street from Leo

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Speaker 5: and Michelle, and in the initial investigation, she told police

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Speaker 5: that she saw Leo and Michelle come home on the

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Speaker 5: night Michelle disappeared, have a big fight, lots of screaming,

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Speaker 5: and then at one point in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 5: she sees Leo carrying something heavy out to the Mazda,

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Speaker 5: which he places in the back and drives off. She

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Speaker 5: insinuates that this is a body. And now the prosecutor,

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Speaker 5: John Aguero, has finally some kind of evidence, still not physical,

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Speaker 5: direct evidence, but it's circumstantial evidence that shows that, you know,

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Speaker 5: possibly Leo was carrying a body out on the night

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Speaker 5: that Michelle disappeared, and that became a very big part

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Speaker 5: of the trial.

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Speaker 2: Didn't Leo have an alibi for that time?

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Speaker 5: He did, and that was the most disturbing part of this.

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Speaker 5: You know, in Alice Scott, the witness who said she

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Speaker 5: saw the body, she initially told police several times that

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Speaker 5: she was sure that she saw Leo carry this body

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Speaker 5: out between two thirty and three in the morning. Well,

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Speaker 5: at between two thirty and three am, Leo was out

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Speaker 5: making missing persons and he was talking to police at

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Speaker 5: exactly that time across town. So suddenly that two thirty

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Speaker 5: three am, when it gets to the trial, it becomes

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Speaker 5: one or one thirty she changes her story about the timing,

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Speaker 5: and that was really to make sure that Leo's alibi

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Speaker 5: was no longer steady. You know, you could just clearly

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Speaker 5: see that there was some movement around there with the

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Speaker 5: times trying to fit that in, to fit that witness

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Speaker 5: observation that witness Alice Scott later on, you know, it

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Speaker 5: was really disturbing to read in the trial transcripts because

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Speaker 5: her sister in law she said she watched it with

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Speaker 5: her sister in law and they talked about it in

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Speaker 5: the driveway. Well, you know, when police came to the

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Speaker 5: sister law, she shouldn't say anything about that. And later

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Speaker 5: on when it came up that Alice had said this,

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Speaker 5: the sister in law said, no, no, no, no, we

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Speaker 5: did have that conversation. But that was a week or

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Speaker 5: two before Michelle disappeared. It wasn't on the night Michelle disappeared,

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Speaker 5: and so it was clearly she was contradicted very quickly

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Speaker 5: on the stand.

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Speaker 3: You know, in the same way that Ben made the

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Speaker 3: great point of of how easy it is to fall

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Speaker 3: into the trap of like, oh, everyone in prison is innocent,

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Speaker 3: I think it's similarly easy to fall into the trap

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Speaker 3: of all of these types of court cases are railroad

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Speaker 3: jobs or are in some way there's a conspiracy afoot.

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Speaker 3: But I think it's simpler than that, and possibly even

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Speaker 3: more chilling than that. There doesn't need to be a

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Speaker 3: massive conspiracy to pin a crime on the wrong person.

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Speaker 3: It's more about convenience than anything. Can you speak to

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Speaker 3: that about just the way the system is set up

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Speaker 3: to just pin the thing on somebody and it doesn't

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Speaker 3: always matter who the hell it is.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, and that's usually a thing. I mean, I don't

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Speaker 5: want to be you know, I don't want to be

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Speaker 5: vague about this. Like most convictions are rightful convictions, you know,

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Speaker 5: whether through plea deals or court cases. Most of them

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Speaker 5: go pretty smoothly. The justice system does work most of

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Speaker 5: the time, but a lot of them fall through the cracks.

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Speaker 5: And you know, I've talked to prosecutors about this, and

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Speaker 5: one of the major reasons this happens is that prosecutors

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Speaker 5: get this tunnel vision and they start getting all this

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Speaker 5: information from different sources and different witnesses, and they take

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Speaker 5: what fits their theory of the crime. And sometimes you

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Speaker 5: have these, you know, exculpatory evidence or a witness that

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Speaker 5: totally contradicts that they don't want to hear that, and

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Speaker 5: they focus on winning the case, and it really the

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Speaker 5: prosecutor's job is to not win convictions. The prosecutor's job

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Speaker 5: is to seek justice, and so's that sometimes gets lost

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Speaker 5: in the world of egos and careers, and sometimes you

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Speaker 5: have prosecutors that just get that tunnel vision. I talk

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Speaker 5: to a prosecutor who had a full conviction overturned later on,

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Speaker 5: decades later, and he just said to me, you know

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Speaker 5: that that was tunnel vision. I had this evidence, but

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Speaker 5: it didn't fit my theory and I got caught up

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Speaker 5: in it too. And so it definitely happens to your point.

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Speaker 3: It's their job on paper to seek justice, but the

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Speaker 3: way it works out in reality, with the human failings

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Speaker 3: that we all have, they end up maybe going down

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Speaker 3: the wrong road. Is that kind of what you're seeing.

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Speaker 5: That's exactly what happens. And sometimes you know, like you

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Speaker 5: can look at people and you like they in Leo's case,

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Speaker 5: they started out with this what they call bad character

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Speaker 5: evidence never should have been allowed, but Leo's own lawyer

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Speaker 5: was didn't object and that kind of ruined things for Leo.

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Speaker 5: That was one of the reasons he was convicted. His

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Speaker 5: lawyer didn't object to all this bad character evidence. Most

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Speaker 5: of it was temper based, like I saw him punch

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Speaker 5: a wall. I saw him do this kind of stuff.

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Speaker 5: And by that point, you know, I saw him pull

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Speaker 5: Michelle's hair. They started mentioning the twenty one witnesses in

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Speaker 5: a row to start the whole case. It's just too

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Speaker 5: much for a jury to hear poisoning the well kind

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Speaker 5: of absolutely, and you know, the appellate courts have ruled

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Speaker 5: that this is highly prejudicial to juries and that this

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Speaker 5: was have to be really careful about the evidence that

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Speaker 5: was allowed. But this prosecutor, he didn't get any objections,

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Speaker 5: so he just kept going.

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Speaker 4: With it because he was in his mind just doing

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Speaker 4: his job and using what he had available right to

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Speaker 4: argue his side, and he just didn't have that. He

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Speaker 4: didn't have hard evidence, so he had to go with

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Speaker 4: compromising the jury. And this is there's a follow up

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Speaker 4: question here, Gilbert, I know is on a lot of

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Speaker 4: the minds of folks tuning in today. In your experience,

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Speaker 4: does the legal system in general seem opposed to re

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Speaker 4: examining cases where convictions are seriously called into question, And

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Speaker 4: if so, where does that come from.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, this is a really disturbing part. You know, there

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Speaker 5: was a law that was passed around, the Patriot Act,

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Speaker 5: and what it did was it made appellet courts and

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Speaker 5: really limited them like the federal the Feds to come

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Speaker 5: in and look at a case that's been you know,

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Speaker 5: maybe botched on the state side. So they really put

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Speaker 5: many more obstacles in the way of trying to appeal

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Speaker 5: and trying to overturn convictions. And one of the reasons

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Speaker 5: is there's they're embracing this concept of what they call finality.

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Speaker 5: They want to say that once a judge and once

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Speaker 5: a jury has spoken, we really shouldn't go back and

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Speaker 5: examine this anymore. That's more powerful than anything else that

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Speaker 5: could come about. Well, in Leo's case, you have something significant.

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Speaker 5: You have fingerprints, forensic evidence linking a very violent young

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Speaker 5: man to the crime scene, and you also have a confession.

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Speaker 5: And Leo's lawyers all along have said if the jury

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Speaker 5: had been subject to learning that the forensic evidence matched

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Speaker 5: a killer and he has confessed, that would be enough

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Speaker 5: to lead to reasonable doubt in Leo's trial. But because

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Speaker 5: of this finality in the appellate systems, they're able to

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Speaker 5: just say, well, no, Jeremy Scott, the man whose fingerprints

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Speaker 5: were found, he's not a credible witness because he's kind

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Speaker 5: of waffled on it. He denied it. Now he's saying

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Speaker 5: he did it, So you can't trust a single word

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Speaker 5: he says. And you know, my thinking all along was, yeah,

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Speaker 5: you can't trust a thing that anyone says, you have

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Speaker 5: to investigate, and they just shut down that investigation so quickly.

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Speaker 5: They never really investigated Jeremy Scott.

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Speaker 1: To this day.

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Speaker 5: Correct.

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Speaker 4: Correct, We're gonna pause here for a word from our

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Speaker 4: sponsor and we'll be back with Gilbert King.

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Speaker 2: And we've returned.

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Speaker 4: Now that we have the name of this convicted criminal

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Speaker 4: this felon here in the air on the show, maybe

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Speaker 4: we could talk a little bit about Jeremy Scott, because,

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Speaker 4: you know, going to what we said about character witnesses

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Speaker 4: in Leo's case, I assume that there's also no shortage

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Speaker 4: of bad character witnesses for Scott. Could you tell us

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Speaker 4: a little bit more about this guy?

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Speaker 5: Yeah? Absolutely, And that was one of the things that

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Speaker 5: we probably could have done two podcasts on this because

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Speaker 5: we had so much depth unto Jeremy Scott. We went

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Speaker 5: back and investigated his life, and so, you know, we

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Speaker 5: talked to family members, friends, you know, people that he

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Speaker 5: was convicted of crimes with, and really, when you look

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Speaker 5: at Jeremy Scott, he's really the antithesis of Leo. You know,

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Speaker 5: he's poorly educated, he drops out of school at like

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Speaker 5: age ten, starts committing serious felony crimes. He's put in

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Speaker 5: juvenile detention facilities, he sent to foster homes. He's just

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Speaker 5: racking up charges and charges. He sort of separates from

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Speaker 5: his family by the age of twelve. He's living on

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Speaker 5: the streets of Lakeland, homeless, committing crimes, and his life

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Speaker 5: is just really kind of tragic. He you know, I

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Speaker 5: think one of his own family members ran him over

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Speaker 5: with a car and he suffered brain damage. So looking

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Speaker 5: into this man life was pretty disturbing. And we tracked

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Speaker 5: down a lot of people who used to know him

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Speaker 5: back in the day, and the thing they told us

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Speaker 5: was he was extraordinarily violent. He was impulsive, you know,

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Speaker 5: just at the drop of a dime, he would assault people.

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Speaker 5: And you know, we believe that he's killed four people.

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Speaker 5: He's only been held accountable for one of them. He's

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Speaker 5: serving a life term in prison right now. But so

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Speaker 5: this is the Jeremy Scott and Jeremy Scott at the

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Speaker 5: time that Michelle was murdered. He's living on the same street,

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Speaker 5: right down the road from where Michelle was last seen

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Speaker 5: outside of Tom's Restaurant. So you know what's extraordinary about

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Speaker 5: this kid is that if they would have back then

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Speaker 5: they have something called the APHIS system automated fingerprint identification system.

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Speaker 5: It didn't really come around until like nineteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 5: so in nineteen eighty seven they couldn't run these prints

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Speaker 5: through any system. But I'm still confused why they wouldn't

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Speaker 5: have run these by hand because the same detective investigating

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Speaker 5: Michelle Scholfield's death also investigated Jeremy Scott in one of

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Speaker 5: the murders he was accused of, and he knew that

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Speaker 5: this man lived right in the area where Michelle was found.

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Speaker 5: So it just it's strange that they never went back

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Speaker 5: and said, let's look at all the violent known felons

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Speaker 5: living in the area, including Jeremy Scott, who was recently

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Speaker 5: acquitted of a murder.

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Speaker 4: And that's who the EPSR.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, is he in prison at this time already or no.

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Speaker 5: He doesn't go to prison until nineteen eighty nine, which

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Speaker 5: is about a year and a half after Michelle was killed.

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Speaker 5: So after Michelle, he killed two more people killed, he

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Speaker 5: got caught on the last one, and he's serving a

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Speaker 5: life sentence without parole.

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Speaker 3: I just don't understand. Is it a bird in the

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Speaker 3: hand situation? Like? Is it laziness?

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Speaker 5: Like?

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Speaker 3: What the hell this guy? I mean, it just seems

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Speaker 3: like a slam dunk. Why would there be such little

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Speaker 3: effort put into sorting that out? Isn't that literally the

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Speaker 3: job of all concerned? I just don't understand.

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Speaker 5: This is the answer for me. The same prosecutor who

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Speaker 5: put Leo Scholfield in prison also put Jeremy Scott in

436
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:09,239
Speaker 5: prison in nineteen eighty nine. Same prosecutor. So when he

437
00:23:09,280 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 5: finds that Jeremy Scott's prints are found in Michelle's car,

438
00:23:13,640 --> 00:23:17,320
Speaker 5: he can't really do this investigation because it would overturn

439
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:20,439
Speaker 5: the Leo Schofield case, and so he's kind of torn

440
00:23:20,480 --> 00:23:24,119
Speaker 5: by that, and he ultimately decides to have a meeting

441
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 5: with Jeremy Scott. No tape recorders, no witnesses. He talks

442
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:32,240
Speaker 5: to Jeremy Scott, and Jeremy Scott says, yeah, I was

443
00:23:32,280 --> 00:23:34,080
Speaker 5: just a car stereo thief. I had nothing to do

444
00:23:34,119 --> 00:23:37,640
Speaker 5: with the murder. That's what he initially said. And John Aguero,

445
00:23:37,680 --> 00:23:39,000
Speaker 5: the prosecutor, closed the case.

446
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:41,920
Speaker 3: Right, cool, good to go. Thank you for clearing that up, buddy.

447
00:23:42,000 --> 00:23:43,040
Speaker 5: Yes, oh my, I'm.

448
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:47,320
Speaker 4: Especially because there aren't a lot in practice. It doesn't

449
00:23:47,320 --> 00:23:49,800
Speaker 4: seem that there are many consequences for what we would

450
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:52,479
Speaker 4: call prosecutorial misconduct.

451
00:23:52,000 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 3: That comes up on the panel a lot. And I

452
00:23:54,200 --> 00:23:56,160
Speaker 3: wanted to ask you about that. Is there a certain

453
00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:00,920
Speaker 3: I don't know, feeling of security that these prosecutors have

454
00:24:01,119 --> 00:24:06,040
Speaker 3: that maybe keeps them from not checking themselves before they

455
00:24:06,160 --> 00:24:07,959
Speaker 3: wreck themselves in this constituation.

456
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:12,080
Speaker 5: You know, this is the problem a prosecutor can you know,

457
00:24:12,720 --> 00:24:16,119
Speaker 5: withhold evidence and you know, let's say, let's say he

458
00:24:16,160 --> 00:24:19,240
Speaker 5: finds a confession to a murder and he's like, I

459
00:24:19,280 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 5: don't like that doesn't fit my thing. I'll just push

460
00:24:21,119 --> 00:24:23,080
Speaker 5: that to the side and hide that from the defense

461
00:24:23,080 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 5: and everybody, and later on it's uncovered under a Brady

462
00:24:26,400 --> 00:24:29,080
Speaker 5: it's a Brady violation. You had exculpatory evidence that you

463
00:24:29,119 --> 00:24:32,159
Speaker 5: didn't disclose. The worst thing that ever happens is the

464
00:24:32,200 --> 00:24:35,320
Speaker 5: case gets a retrial or an appellate court will overturn

465
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 5: the verdict. And the worst thing that ever happens to

466
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:40,240
Speaker 5: a prosecutor is he might get his name in the

467
00:24:40,280 --> 00:24:44,119
Speaker 5: footnotes of that decision saying the prosecutor aired by withholding

468
00:24:44,160 --> 00:24:46,240
Speaker 5: evidence and then he goes on to do the next case.

469
00:24:46,560 --> 00:24:49,480
Speaker 5: So there's like zero accountability. And I find this like

470
00:24:49,920 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 5: impossible to believe because the power that these prosecutors have

471
00:24:54,119 --> 00:24:56,919
Speaker 5: to ruin someone's life and to send them off to

472
00:24:57,000 --> 00:24:59,600
Speaker 5: possibly the electric chair, which is what Leo was facing,

473
00:25:00,040 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 5: I'd like, yeah, and to know that you're never going

474
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:05,520
Speaker 5: to have any accountability. This will never nobody will ever

475
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:07,640
Speaker 5: hear about this. It'll just show up as a little

476
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:10,560
Speaker 5: footnote and a pellet decision. So it gives them even

477
00:25:10,600 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 5: more power to know that they can't be held accountable

478
00:25:12,840 --> 00:25:13,320
Speaker 5: for doing that.

479
00:25:13,680 --> 00:25:15,520
Speaker 2: Do you mind if we take our own footnote really

480
00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 2: quick and just have you explain to us what Old

481
00:25:19,119 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 2: Sparky is.

482
00:25:20,720 --> 00:25:24,640
Speaker 5: Sure. Old Sparky was the name of the electric chair

483
00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:27,800
Speaker 5: and it was kept up at Rayford State Prison in

484
00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:31,159
Speaker 5: northern Florida. And you know, one of the things that

485
00:25:31,280 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 5: was unusual for Leo is that when Leo was arrested,

486
00:25:35,040 --> 00:25:39,120
Speaker 5: he was arrested by a detective and the prosecutor, John Aguero,

487
00:25:39,640 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 5: and he was up in Massachusetts. They brought him back

488
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 5: down to Florida to face charges, and Leo says, I

489
00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:48,520
Speaker 5: looked over and I saw that the prosecutor, John Aguero

490
00:25:49,119 --> 00:25:52,480
Speaker 5: was wearing an old, sparky tie clasp, holding his tie

491
00:25:52,480 --> 00:25:54,639
Speaker 5: to his shirt. And he says, you know, don't you

492
00:25:54,680 --> 00:25:57,240
Speaker 5: think that's kind of morbid? And Aguero said.

493
00:25:57,119 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 4: No, I don't talk about the the tunnel, right. And

494
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,520
Speaker 4: to add on with the direction that you're going at,

495
00:26:05,920 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 4: there are some profoundly frightening statistics that are in the

496
00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 4: very first episode of Bone Valley that you mention. You

497
00:26:16,840 --> 00:26:19,879
Speaker 4: mentioned pretty early on to establish the states. Here you

498
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,399
Speaker 4: talk a little bit about capital punishment, the history of

499
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:28,880
Speaker 4: capital punishment in the United States, in context of Florida's

500
00:26:30,200 --> 00:26:34,800
Speaker 4: known struggle and problem with wrongful convictions. Could you tell

501
00:26:34,880 --> 00:26:38,359
Speaker 4: us a little bit about what makes Florida so singular

502
00:26:38,560 --> 00:26:39,360
Speaker 4: in these cases?

503
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:44,000
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is actually a staggering statistic. So since the

504
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:47,720
Speaker 5: US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in nineteen seventy six,

505
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 5: Florida had sent ninety nine people to the electric chair

506
00:26:52,119 --> 00:26:58,640
Speaker 5: or to lethal injection. In that same period, thirty prisoners

507
00:26:58,760 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 5: on death row were found to be innocent and exonerated

508
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:06,040
Speaker 5: by DNA, so they were completely innocent. So you look

509
00:27:06,080 --> 00:27:10,359
Speaker 5: at that, that's one out of every four convictions basically

510
00:27:11,040 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 5: is a wrongful conviction. And that's just in the death

511
00:27:13,600 --> 00:27:16,040
Speaker 5: penalty cases where they have a lot of eyes on

512
00:27:16,080 --> 00:27:19,720
Speaker 5: these cases and different appeals. So you can imagine what

513
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 5: it's like in the typical first degree or second degree

514
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:24,480
Speaker 5: murder where it's not a death penalty case. I would

515
00:27:24,480 --> 00:27:28,399
Speaker 5: imagine that the statistics or even worse in that case.

516
00:27:28,400 --> 00:27:31,160
Speaker 5: So Florida is the worst when it comes to getting

517
00:27:31,240 --> 00:27:31,639
Speaker 5: it wrong.

518
00:27:32,359 --> 00:27:36,359
Speaker 4: So just mathematically, that would mean would you say, knowing

519
00:27:36,400 --> 00:27:41,159
Speaker 4: that context, that it is possible or even probable that

520
00:27:41,240 --> 00:27:44,000
Speaker 4: some innocent people have been executed by the state of Florida.

521
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:46,760
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it is. I was looking into a

522
00:27:46,880 --> 00:27:52,440
Speaker 5: case Jesse Taferro, who was executed, and after his execution

523
00:27:53,040 --> 00:27:55,480
Speaker 5: it looked like they were able to find some exculpatory

524
00:27:55,480 --> 00:27:58,119
Speaker 5: evidence on that one. So yeah, it wouldn't surprise me.

525
00:27:58,160 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 5: And I'll tell you I go back into the forty

526
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,680
Speaker 5: and fifties, I can point to some cases that I'm

527
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:07,600
Speaker 5: almost positive that innocent men have been, you know, executed

528
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:10,439
Speaker 5: by the state of Florida. The problem going back in

529
00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 5: the forties and fifties is the records are really scarce.

530
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:16,320
Speaker 5: You know, back in the day, if you couldn't afford

531
00:28:16,480 --> 00:28:18,960
Speaker 5: a lawyer, you'd get one appointed to you, but they

532
00:28:19,040 --> 00:28:22,280
Speaker 5: wouldn't necessarily keep a transcript, and so there's really no

533
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:25,360
Speaker 5: way to appeal anything. You don't have anything, any language

534
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:28,560
Speaker 5: to appeal. And so I'm positive that innocent men have

535
00:28:28,640 --> 00:28:30,440
Speaker 5: been executed in Florida.

536
00:28:30,920 --> 00:28:35,120
Speaker 2: Jeez, well, let's stay on that, because I think there's

537
00:28:35,160 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 2: a legacy not only in Florida, but in a lot

538
00:28:38,280 --> 00:28:42,360
Speaker 2: of places in the US of I don't know how

539
00:28:42,400 --> 00:28:44,120
Speaker 2: best to put this, but I'm going to say a

540
00:28:44,280 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 2: need for cheap labor. So let's go to something you

541
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:53,120
Speaker 2: set up beautifully in episode two, Like go listen to

542
00:28:53,160 --> 00:28:55,960
Speaker 2: Bone Valley episode two if you haven't heard it. You

543
00:28:56,080 --> 00:29:00,800
Speaker 2: set up the history of Polk County there in Florida,

544
00:29:00,240 --> 00:29:07,040
Speaker 2: the phosphate mining industry that grew there, and the need

545
00:29:07,160 --> 00:29:11,800
Speaker 2: basically for ridiculously cheap labor to have people working those

546
00:29:11,880 --> 00:29:14,120
Speaker 2: mines and getting that phosphate out of the earth. Just

547
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,320
Speaker 2: can you take us through some of that and why

548
00:29:16,640 --> 00:29:19,480
Speaker 2: there might be a motive to have warm bodies in

549
00:29:19,520 --> 00:29:19,960
Speaker 2: a prison.

550
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean you could. This is one of

551
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:27,240
Speaker 5: the things that you definitely see like this chain of events.

552
00:29:27,400 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 5: So at the end of slavery, you have reconstruction and

553
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:33,960
Speaker 5: at the same time is when all this phosphate is

554
00:29:34,000 --> 00:29:36,960
Speaker 5: discovered in the soils in Florida. So this is a

555
00:29:37,040 --> 00:29:40,720
Speaker 5: huge industry. Florida is responsible for like three quarters of

556
00:29:40,760 --> 00:29:44,160
Speaker 5: the world's phosphate. It's a huge industry in central Florida.

557
00:29:45,080 --> 00:29:48,480
Speaker 5: At the end of slavery, they have all these people

558
00:29:48,640 --> 00:29:51,400
Speaker 5: who are no longer slaves, and so what do they do.

559
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 5: That's the birth of the mass incarceration. So you have

560
00:29:54,920 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 5: these Jim Crow laws that are written in any kind

561
00:29:57,880 --> 00:30:01,360
Speaker 5: of violation like trespassing, loitering. They throw these guys in

562
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 5: prison and then they say all right, now you've got

563
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,440
Speaker 5: to work. And the state of Florida charges the phosphate

564
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:12,760
Speaker 5: industry money and they give them free bodies, free labor.

565
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:15,320
Speaker 5: And so this is something that just sort of makes

566
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 5: up for slavery and a lot of businesses. You see it,

567
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:19,880
Speaker 5: you know in the north and you see it with

568
00:30:19,920 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 5: the steel in the sugar plantation exactly. And you can

569
00:30:24,320 --> 00:30:26,600
Speaker 5: go and google these photographs of men who are like

570
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 5: literally handcuffed in black and white, you know, and they

571
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:32,760
Speaker 5: have really minor offenses, but they have to work off

572
00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:35,680
Speaker 5: their you know, work off their fines for free labor.

573
00:30:35,760 --> 00:30:39,000
Speaker 5: Under like heavy Guard. They're locked in cells and guys

574
00:30:39,000 --> 00:30:40,600
Speaker 5: with rifles on the plate.

575
00:30:40,680 --> 00:30:43,600
Speaker 3: In place of an overseer, you now have a prison

576
00:30:43,640 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 3: guard or a warden overseeing the whole thing. And it's

577
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 3: basically a for profit operation. It's I have the longest

578
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:51,840
Speaker 3: time just thought it was like I hear two people

579
00:30:51,920 --> 00:30:53,840
Speaker 3: joking about, oh, you're going to stay up license plates

580
00:30:53,840 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 3: and things like that, and I thought that was the

581
00:30:55,640 --> 00:30:57,440
Speaker 3: extent of it, you know, Oh, it's a way of

582
00:30:57,520 --> 00:30:59,920
Speaker 3: like learning a skill or whatever, you work in the

583
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 3: mess hall. No, it's so much deeper and more elaborate

584
00:31:03,520 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 3: and left up. Yes, it's just and I mean, yeah,

585
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:10,200
Speaker 3: does this happen in other countries, Gilbert?

586
00:31:10,680 --> 00:31:13,640
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, it does happen in other countries. I

587
00:31:13,640 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 5: mean something, you look at other countries and you'll see

588
00:31:15,520 --> 00:31:18,120
Speaker 5: some justice things. You go, wow, the United States isn't

589
00:31:18,160 --> 00:31:20,560
Speaker 5: really that bad, but there's no other country that has

590
00:31:20,600 --> 00:31:23,840
Speaker 5: the mass incarceration problem that we have, and that's you know,

591
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:28,160
Speaker 5: they sort of outloaded this outlaw, this debt slavery, you

592
00:31:28,160 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 5: know that the kind of stuff that you see forced

593
00:31:30,240 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 5: labor in the nineteen thirties. But you know, it just evolves,

594
00:31:33,680 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 5: it changes into something that's just more palpable for people

595
00:31:36,680 --> 00:31:39,160
Speaker 5: to wrap their minds around. But you know, you're still

596
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:42,040
Speaker 5: getting cheap, cheap labor from prisons.

597
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,640
Speaker 4: One hundred percent. And then also, I just want to

598
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:48,120
Speaker 4: go back to something you said, Gilbert, to emphasize for

599
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:52,360
Speaker 4: anyone who's unfamiliar with this forced labor practice and the

600
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 4: evolution of the prison system and modern policing from it,

601
00:31:56,960 --> 00:32:02,960
Speaker 4: is the the low threshold for crimes that you would

602
00:32:02,960 --> 00:32:05,840
Speaker 4: put you in there. I remember reading cases of people

603
00:32:05,920 --> 00:32:09,440
Speaker 4: being locked away for years on chain gangs or on

604
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:13,640
Speaker 4: labor camps for the crime of loitery, which could be

605
00:32:13,680 --> 00:32:18,000
Speaker 4: as simple as what just standing in a spot.

606
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:20,480
Speaker 5: Just standing around. I'll tell you one law that will

607
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:23,960
Speaker 5: blow you away. In the nineteen forties and fifties, there

608
00:32:24,000 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 5: was a law on the book called the worker Fight Law,

609
00:32:26,840 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 5: and basically it was a law designed to give the

610
00:32:29,120 --> 00:32:33,400
Speaker 5: sheriff the power to ride around his county the sheriff

611
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,600
Speaker 5: is always the most powerful person in a county in

612
00:32:35,640 --> 00:32:39,239
Speaker 5: the South, almost always, and it gave the sheriff the

613
00:32:39,280 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 5: ability to, you know, if he saw two people stand,

614
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:44,560
Speaker 5: two black men standing on the side of a road,

615
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 5: and he could pull up to them, and if they

616
00:32:47,480 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 5: were not in the armed services and they were not

617
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,840
Speaker 5: working that day, he could arrest them and throw them

618
00:32:52,880 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 5: in jail and have to have them work off their fines.

619
00:32:55,880 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 5: And they got fines, and the sheriff, by law, was

620
00:32:59,280 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 5: able to keep the money from the fines personally, not

621
00:33:02,800 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 5: for his department personally. So you had all these sheriffs

622
00:33:06,160 --> 00:33:08,960
Speaker 5: who were absolutely incentivized to go around and they could

623
00:33:09,000 --> 00:33:10,760
Speaker 5: go up to a black man on a Sunday who

624
00:33:10,760 --> 00:33:13,440
Speaker 5: maybe worked six days that week, and if he wasn't

625
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 5: in the arm service, he could arrest them. And now

626
00:33:15,640 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 5: you've taken away the breadwinner and you throw these guys

627
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:20,400
Speaker 5: in the cell. And then you call up the Orange

628
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:22,719
Speaker 5: Groves and you say, I got nine bodies and they

629
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:24,720
Speaker 5: can work for free, and they got to pay off

630
00:33:24,760 --> 00:33:27,480
Speaker 5: their fines. To me, this was on the books in

631
00:33:27,520 --> 00:33:30,800
Speaker 5: the nineteen forties and fifties called work or fight, And

632
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 5: so that's that's the kind of like legacy that you have.

633
00:33:34,600 --> 00:33:37,840
Speaker 5: It's left over from like like you, like you said,

634
00:33:37,920 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 5: Noul the overseers from slavery.

635
00:33:42,200 --> 00:33:46,560
Speaker 4: And that's the thing. So if we go to if

636
00:33:46,600 --> 00:33:49,040
Speaker 4: we understand you know that Faulkner was right when he

637
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,480
Speaker 4: said the past, is it really the past? And we

638
00:33:51,560 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 4: see the echoes of the consequences of this, it takes

639
00:33:56,320 --> 00:33:59,880
Speaker 4: me to something really interesting that you've you touch on

640
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,880
Speaker 4: throughout Bone Valley. And there's a moment where you say,

641
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:07,240
Speaker 4: in multiple moments where you point out, you know, this

642
00:34:07,320 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 4: case is different because we're kind of cooking live we're

643
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:15,400
Speaker 4: working with live fire, We're we're not constrained to merely

644
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 4: scant written records or whatever written records we can find.

645
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:22,960
Speaker 4: You're talking to people who are still alive, still active

646
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:29,480
Speaker 4: in regards to the Schofield case, And we have to ask,

647
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:32,839
Speaker 4: how was that different? What were the pros, what were

648
00:34:32,880 --> 00:34:38,359
Speaker 4: the potential cons of exploring a story that still had

649
00:34:38,400 --> 00:34:39,320
Speaker 4: not been finished.

650
00:34:40,239 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, this is a really great question because

651
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 5: you know, when I originally started this project, I wasn't

652
00:34:44,719 --> 00:34:46,920
Speaker 5: thinking about podcasts. I was thinking, you know, I'm a writer.

653
00:34:47,000 --> 00:34:50,319
Speaker 5: I generally don't write a podcast. I wasn't really I'd

654
00:34:50,320 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 5: listened to some at that point, but I really didn't

655
00:34:52,360 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 5: know much about them. And I was thinking about writing

656
00:34:55,239 --> 00:34:58,320
Speaker 5: a long feature story about Leo's case and the appellate

657
00:34:58,400 --> 00:35:00,759
Speaker 5: system and why is he still in prison? But as

658
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:03,040
Speaker 5: we were down there investigating, you know, we go down

659
00:35:03,040 --> 00:35:06,080
Speaker 5: and we interview Leo and he's a phenomenal storyteller, and

660
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:08,239
Speaker 5: then you know, all the lawyers are talking to us,

661
00:35:08,400 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 5: the witnesses are talking to us, and we're getting these

662
00:35:10,480 --> 00:35:12,839
Speaker 5: great stories, and I said, you know what, we should

663
00:35:12,880 --> 00:35:15,200
Speaker 5: be recording this for a podcast like this is just

664
00:35:15,200 --> 00:35:18,359
Speaker 5: something really intimate. It was so different from what I'm

665
00:35:18,440 --> 00:35:21,040
Speaker 5: used to because usually I'm dealing with cases in the forties,

666
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,520
Speaker 5: everybody's dead. I'm just looking at old transcripts and documents.

667
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:26,640
Speaker 5: Here I'm talking to people who live through it, and

668
00:35:26,680 --> 00:35:29,279
Speaker 5: they're telling me, you know, in many cases, a very

669
00:35:29,320 --> 00:35:31,840
Speaker 5: different story than what I saw in the transcript. And

670
00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:35,359
Speaker 5: so there was like a mystery involved and the sincerity

671
00:35:35,400 --> 00:35:39,439
Speaker 5: of people and just how they were touched by these

672
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,239
Speaker 5: tragedies and this violence. That was the one thing I

673
00:35:42,280 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 5: really took away from this, just talking to people who's,

674
00:35:44,960 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 5: you know, their lives were ruined by this case, you know,

675
00:35:47,560 --> 00:35:53,640
Speaker 5: a family members murdered, a family members wrongfully imprisoned, and

676
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:57,720
Speaker 5: fighting for this for justice for decades. There was something

677
00:35:57,760 --> 00:36:00,719
Speaker 5: about the audio side of this and just hearing these

678
00:36:00,800 --> 00:36:03,480
Speaker 5: voices crack and the pain in the voice that just

679
00:36:03,520 --> 00:36:06,239
Speaker 5: doesn't quite equate when you're writing these out and.

680
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:09,439
Speaker 2: They become a quote on the page, and let's let's

681
00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:11,200
Speaker 2: go ahead and take a moment to shut out your

682
00:36:11,560 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 2: co host, co creator Kelsey.

683
00:36:13,800 --> 00:36:16,600
Speaker 5: Yeah, Kelsey was like, you know, I often refer to

684
00:36:16,680 --> 00:36:19,360
Speaker 5: as like the conscience of this story. You know, she's,

685
00:36:19,719 --> 00:36:22,799
Speaker 5: you know, this young woman's her first job out of college,

686
00:36:23,239 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 5: and you know, she finds herself, you know, starting out

687
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:28,319
Speaker 5: as my researcher, and then we pivot over to the

688
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:30,600
Speaker 5: Schofield case, and you know, we're going down and all

689
00:36:30,600 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 5: of a sudden, she's got to learn how to do

690
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:35,279
Speaker 5: audio and be a recordist, and you know, we're just

691
00:36:35,280 --> 00:36:38,359
Speaker 5: sort of learning on the job. Deep water. Yeah, it

692
00:36:38,400 --> 00:36:40,680
Speaker 5: was really deep water, and you know it didn't come

693
00:36:40,719 --> 00:36:42,840
Speaker 5: easy to us, I'll tell you that. But you know,

694
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:44,880
Speaker 5: we spent so much time down there and got to

695
00:36:44,920 --> 00:36:47,319
Speaker 5: know so many people that we became parts of their

696
00:36:47,360 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 5: lives and they just they all of a sudden just

697
00:36:49,400 --> 00:36:51,880
Speaker 5: forgot about the microphone, and it was just a very

698
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:56,040
Speaker 5: became very casual conversations and helping us learn and but

699
00:36:56,160 --> 00:36:58,600
Speaker 5: Kelsey was just an amazing person to have along with

700
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:00,839
Speaker 5: it was it was really like, you know, we were

701
00:37:00,920 --> 00:37:04,640
Speaker 5: just both like investigating and reading and just so intensely

702
00:37:04,800 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 5: absorbed in this story. It was just a really exciting

703
00:37:08,080 --> 00:37:10,520
Speaker 5: thing to be able to work with someone young who's

704
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 5: not jaded like me, who hasn't seated at all.

705
00:37:13,520 --> 00:37:17,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great dynamic in this show. I want

706
00:37:17,200 --> 00:37:20,000
Speaker 2: to just really quickly, guys, I want to talk about

707
00:37:20,000 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 2: another one of these tactics that was used a lot

708
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 2: of times to get somebody either to confess or just

709
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 2: to get him in deeper waters within the legal system,

710
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:32,920
Speaker 2: maybe even if they were innocent. And that's the lie

711
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:37,160
Speaker 2: detector test. Because you point out in the show that

712
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:40,480
Speaker 2: Leo himself, he's the one who said, Hey, give me

713
00:37:40,520 --> 00:37:42,799
Speaker 2: a lie detector test. I will prove to you that

714
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:45,160
Speaker 2: I had nothing to do with this, and he willingly

715
00:37:45,640 --> 00:37:48,440
Speaker 2: gets it one of these administered to him. Tell us

716
00:37:48,440 --> 00:37:50,279
Speaker 2: about what happened there, you know.

717
00:37:50,320 --> 00:37:52,960
Speaker 5: That's one of the things I think the wrongfully convicted

718
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:55,359
Speaker 5: are probably the most naive people in the criminal justice

719
00:37:55,400 --> 00:37:58,320
Speaker 5: system because they all I've talked to so many of them,

720
00:37:58,520 --> 00:38:01,400
Speaker 5: people who have been exonerated, And one of the common

721
00:38:01,440 --> 00:38:03,680
Speaker 5: themes that arises when you talk to these guys is

722
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:05,840
Speaker 5: they never want a lawyer because they like, I have

723
00:38:05,880 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 5: nothing to hide, I'll talk, I want to help you,

724
00:38:08,200 --> 00:38:11,640
Speaker 5: and so, you know, normal people I think would figure like, oh,

725
00:38:11,760 --> 00:38:14,560
Speaker 5: just lawyer up, because you never know, like that's a

726
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 5: common phrase you hear, like, don't start talking anyone unless

727
00:38:17,400 --> 00:38:19,680
Speaker 5: you have a lawyer, especially if you're innocent. It's the

728
00:38:19,680 --> 00:38:22,080
Speaker 5: best time to get a lawyer. But Leo just felt like,

729
00:38:22,120 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 5: you know, I'll talk to the detectives multiple times, I

730
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:27,719
Speaker 5: think more than a dozen times. He never brings a

731
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:31,800
Speaker 5: lawyer in, and he's trying to prove it that he's innocent,

732
00:38:31,880 --> 00:38:33,719
Speaker 5: and he's trying to help them. And at one point

733
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:35,440
Speaker 5: he says, you know, give me a polygraph if you

734
00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 5: think that will help. I happily take a polygraph, and

735
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,799
Speaker 5: so they arrange it for him, and you know, polygraphs

736
00:38:40,800 --> 00:38:43,959
Speaker 5: are really interrogated tools. You know, they're not really there's

737
00:38:43,960 --> 00:38:46,720
Speaker 5: no science behind They're not admissible in the court of law,

738
00:38:47,120 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 5: but they're used in a way like they'll ask a

739
00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:53,280
Speaker 5: couple questions and then the administrator will say you failed,

740
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:56,120
Speaker 5: and a lot of times people start changing their answers,

741
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:58,440
Speaker 5: and that's what they use it for, is to is

742
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 5: to put some pressure on It's it's like psyops basically.

743
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,239
Speaker 3: I mean, it's essentially to psyche them out or to

744
00:39:04,440 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 3: sort of like gaslight them into playing into the hands

745
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:09,799
Speaker 3: of the interrogator, right exactly.

746
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:12,400
Speaker 5: And you know, there's no real metric that to look at,

747
00:39:12,480 --> 00:39:15,520
Speaker 5: like whether somebody failed. You can measure anxiety, but you

748
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 5: can't measure truth with these machines.

749
00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,480
Speaker 3: And lot oftimes, these folks are of lower education and

750
00:39:20,480 --> 00:39:24,560
Speaker 3: perhaps they can be manipulated into believing that this is ironclad,

751
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:26,360
Speaker 3: you know, and then I mean, I don't know. It

752
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,279
Speaker 3: just makes me mad to think of the way these

753
00:39:29,320 --> 00:39:31,240
Speaker 3: tools are used to manipulate people.

754
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:34,000
Speaker 5: That's sorry, Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. In fact, you know,

755
00:39:34,040 --> 00:39:36,920
Speaker 5: we talked to Jeremy Scott about it, and you know, Jeremy,

756
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,920
Speaker 5: I think is somebody you would you know, has a

757
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:43,839
Speaker 5: low IQ, he's got some brain damage, and you know,

758
00:39:43,920 --> 00:39:47,520
Speaker 5: he's absolutely convinced that lie detectors are the absolute truth detectors,

759
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:49,520
Speaker 5: and he says, I want to take a lie detector

760
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,800
Speaker 5: to prove that. You know, he wants to prove himself.

761
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:54,640
Speaker 5: I won't. I won't get into it as part of

762
00:39:54,680 --> 00:39:57,479
Speaker 5: the show. But yeah, I think people all the time

763
00:39:57,520 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 5: think this is a legitimate thing, and sometimes it's suspects themselves.

764
00:40:01,560 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 4: And even forensic evidence or the procedures used to obtain

765
00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,839
Speaker 4: it have been called in this serious question increasingly, right,

766
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,799
Speaker 4: Like things can get missed or things can get kind

767
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:20,359
Speaker 4: of purposely put to the side. When you experience these things,

768
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:25,239
Speaker 4: you're experiencing them firsthand as an interested citizen. But you

769
00:40:25,320 --> 00:40:27,520
Speaker 4: are not. You know, you are not the sheriff of

770
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:31,000
Speaker 4: Polk County, right, And I don't think anybody on this

771
00:40:31,080 --> 00:40:34,920
Speaker 4: call would want to be to be fair, But as

772
00:40:35,120 --> 00:40:41,560
Speaker 4: as someone who with firsthand experience addressing these issues, what

773
00:40:41,719 --> 00:40:45,080
Speaker 4: do you think more people, more members of the public

774
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:49,640
Speaker 4: need to know about the US justice system.

775
00:40:50,560 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 5: Yeah? And you know this is interesting because I go

776
00:40:52,520 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 5: around and do a lot of talks and a lot

777
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:59,839
Speaker 5: of times I'm speaking to judges, public defenders, the prosecutor's officess.

778
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 5: I do a lot of these kind of talks, and

779
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:04,200
Speaker 5: I meet a lot of people. And you know, one

780
00:41:04,239 --> 00:41:06,640
Speaker 5: of the things I think it's important for me to

781
00:41:06,680 --> 00:41:09,359
Speaker 5: say this because I often meet a lot of young

782
00:41:09,360 --> 00:41:11,960
Speaker 5: people who are in the prosecutor's office, who are starting

783
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:15,840
Speaker 5: their careers as prosecutors, and they always make a point

784
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 5: to tell me, you know, like we read your books,

785
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:22,400
Speaker 5: we follow these stories. It's really important to us because

786
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:26,000
Speaker 5: we're on the front lines of wrongful convictions. We're the

787
00:41:26,000 --> 00:41:28,680
Speaker 5: ones who can stop a bad case from the start.

788
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:30,560
Speaker 5: And I always make a point to say, you know,

789
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:33,000
Speaker 5: no one is ever going to do a book or

790
00:41:33,000 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 5: a podcast about a prosecutor who stopped a wrongful conviction

791
00:41:37,120 --> 00:41:40,160
Speaker 5: at the very early stages because there's nothing interesting. That's

792
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:43,239
Speaker 5: the way the justice system is supposed to work. But

793
00:41:43,360 --> 00:41:45,319
Speaker 5: I think that's one of the things I found, like

794
00:41:45,360 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 5: when I go around speaking and meeting a lot of

795
00:41:47,719 --> 00:41:51,319
Speaker 5: these prosecutors, like most of them, the overwhelming majority of

796
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:54,440
Speaker 5: them do not want a wrongful conviction in their office.

797
00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:56,640
Speaker 5: They don't want anything to do with this, and so

798
00:41:56,800 --> 00:41:59,239
Speaker 5: I think they're paying a lot more attention. You know,

799
00:41:59,280 --> 00:42:01,400
Speaker 5: some of these things tend to happen in the dark.

800
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:04,200
Speaker 5: We don't you know, the typical violent crime, we really

801
00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:06,680
Speaker 5: don't know all the details. The public doesn't see them.

802
00:42:06,880 --> 00:42:10,279
Speaker 5: They certainly don't follow the appellate process. So a lot

803
00:42:10,280 --> 00:42:12,680
Speaker 5: of this stuff happens in the dark. By shining a

804
00:42:12,680 --> 00:42:15,400
Speaker 5: bright light on it with like a book or a podcast,

805
00:42:16,280 --> 00:42:18,560
Speaker 5: I think it puts people, you know, on blast a

806
00:42:18,600 --> 00:42:21,479
Speaker 5: little bit, and they don't want to be seen as, oh, man,

807
00:42:21,680 --> 00:42:24,520
Speaker 5: that case got out of control and I'm involved in it.

808
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 5: They don't want to be that person anymore. So I

809
00:42:26,520 --> 00:42:30,320
Speaker 5: think these stories are really important to tell because they

810
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:33,359
Speaker 5: show police and prosecutors, and you know, it's not just that.

811
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:37,080
Speaker 5: Sometimes it's just a bad defense attorney. You know, in

812
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:39,799
Speaker 5: Leo's case, he had a defense attorney who did no

813
00:42:39,920 --> 00:42:43,160
Speaker 5: preparation and just completely dropped the ball. Later fell on

814
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:45,359
Speaker 5: his sword for Leo, but it was too late.

815
00:42:46,040 --> 00:42:51,000
Speaker 4: You said something really interesting there, Gilbert, regarding the idea

816
00:42:51,239 --> 00:42:55,880
Speaker 4: of messaging out of letting the public know what's happening,

817
00:42:55,960 --> 00:43:00,319
Speaker 4: because I'm sure if most people were asked so the

818
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:05,040
Speaker 4: justice system not convict innocent people wrongfully, they I would

819
00:43:05,120 --> 00:43:07,480
Speaker 4: like to think that the majority of people would say, yeah,

820
00:43:07,640 --> 00:43:12,200
Speaker 4: they innocent folks shouldn't go to jail. Something else, very

821
00:43:13,280 --> 00:43:17,279
Speaker 4: very new happens in cases like this. Unlike cases during

822
00:43:17,320 --> 00:43:21,399
Speaker 4: the forties and the fifties into the sixties, humanity now

823
00:43:21,440 --> 00:43:25,080
Speaker 4: resides in the era of endless information and social media.

824
00:43:25,200 --> 00:43:27,520
Speaker 4: So there are a lot of ground swelled movements for

825
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:31,959
Speaker 4: all sorts of cases, all sorts of miscarriages of justice.

826
00:43:32,000 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of things like Leo's case, dot com and

827
00:43:35,080 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 4: there are a lot of you mentioned social media groups

828
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:41,959
Speaker 4: that have united together behind this movement in general. What's

829
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 4: your take on this which is sometimes called the court

830
00:43:44,360 --> 00:43:47,160
Speaker 4: of public opinion that might be misleading. What are the

831
00:43:47,200 --> 00:43:50,160
Speaker 4: potential pros or cous of these kind of modern day

832
00:43:50,560 --> 00:43:51,640
Speaker 4: movements for justice.

833
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I think it's really important for the

834
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:56,920
Speaker 5: word of mouth to get out about these stories. And

835
00:43:57,160 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 5: I think it's just such a great moment in time

836
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:01,600
Speaker 5: where a podcast can reach so many people. I really

837
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:03,960
Speaker 5: don't know that if I had written a book about this,

838
00:44:04,080 --> 00:44:05,759
Speaker 5: I don't think it would have reached the amount of

839
00:44:05,760 --> 00:44:08,759
Speaker 5: people and gotten the amount of immediate attention. A book

840
00:44:08,840 --> 00:44:11,399
Speaker 5: just doesn't have that kind of power. You know, when

841
00:44:11,400 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 5: I wrote Devil in the Grove, nothing really happened in

842
00:44:14,320 --> 00:44:16,799
Speaker 5: that case for seven years after the book came out.

843
00:44:16,840 --> 00:44:18,800
Speaker 5: Then people started reading it and saying we got to

844
00:44:18,840 --> 00:44:21,880
Speaker 5: do something about this, and it later led to the exonerations,

845
00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 5: but that took years and years and years. In this case,

846
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:28,160
Speaker 5: it was almost instantly. People were listening, tweeting about it,

847
00:44:28,400 --> 00:44:30,799
Speaker 5: letting each other know. I know, there was a lot

848
00:44:30,800 --> 00:44:34,240
Speaker 5: of writing to the governor, writing you know, letters of support,

849
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,880
Speaker 5: signing petitions. It just really kept it in the news,

850
00:44:37,920 --> 00:44:40,239
Speaker 5: and the more people that heard about, you know, the

851
00:44:40,360 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 5: angrier they got about this conviction. You know, in terms

852
00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:45,799
Speaker 5: of like the court of public opinion, one of the

853
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:49,520
Speaker 5: things that you know, sometimes prosecutors will say, we don't

854
00:44:49,560 --> 00:44:52,799
Speaker 5: want to you know, participate with your investigation. We don't

855
00:44:52,800 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 5: want to talk. We prefer to do our talking in

856
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:59,080
Speaker 5: the court, not the court of public opinion, And so

857
00:44:59,120 --> 00:45:02,160
Speaker 5: they don't want to necessarily engage with me, which I

858
00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:05,440
Speaker 5: find it kind of interesting because there's plenty of television

859
00:45:05,480 --> 00:45:07,759
Speaker 5: shows out there, like about catching the bad guy, and

860
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,600
Speaker 5: these prosecutors always go on those. But the minute there's

861
00:45:10,640 --> 00:45:13,239
Speaker 5: any question about, oh, you know, is this not going

862
00:45:13,320 --> 00:45:14,880
Speaker 5: to be about the genius we did to catch the

863
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 5: bad guy and no, it's actually gonna be about you know,

864
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 5: a wrongful conviction, then they suddenly clam up and don't

865
00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:23,319
Speaker 5: want to talk. And you know, getting back to that

866
00:45:23,640 --> 00:45:26,560
Speaker 5: problem where you know, the prosecutors are not held accountable.

867
00:45:27,040 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 5: You know, they sort of look down on the court

868
00:45:29,480 --> 00:45:32,120
Speaker 5: of opinion as if it's not legitimate for some reason

869
00:45:32,360 --> 00:45:34,920
Speaker 5: the media. You know, if I was to write a

870
00:45:34,960 --> 00:45:38,080
Speaker 5: book about say the Groveland Four, which I wrote like

871
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:41,400
Speaker 5: ten years ago, and in the course of my research,

872
00:45:41,520 --> 00:45:44,120
Speaker 5: I found evidence that these men had confessed to the

873
00:45:44,160 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 5: crime that I was trying to say they were innocent of,

874
00:45:46,800 --> 00:45:48,759
Speaker 5: and I said, geez, that doesn't fit my story. I'm

875
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:51,719
Speaker 5: burning that paper and throwing it away or hiding it.

876
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:54,319
Speaker 5: And then say, years later somebody finds out and says,

877
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,560
Speaker 5: Gilbert King had the confessions in his hands, but he

878
00:45:57,640 --> 00:45:59,680
Speaker 5: hid them from the public in his book because it

879
00:45:59,719 --> 00:46:03,880
Speaker 5: didn't his story. I would like probably have that book

880
00:46:03,920 --> 00:46:06,040
Speaker 5: pulled from the shelves, and I probably have a really

881
00:46:06,080 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 5: difficult time writing another book. So why am I being

882
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:13,320
Speaker 5: held more accountable than a prosecutor who's actually ruining someone's

883
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:16,759
Speaker 5: life with a wrongful conviction. So I don't really necessarily

884
00:46:16,840 --> 00:46:20,279
Speaker 5: say that there's no pressure in public media or it's

885
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 5: not as legitimate as the courts. I find. It's just

886
00:46:23,320 --> 00:46:26,560
Speaker 5: a different the fifth of state. It's just a different medium,

887
00:46:26,560 --> 00:46:28,480
Speaker 5: but it can be just as legitimate as what happens

888
00:46:28,480 --> 00:46:29,279
Speaker 5: in the court. Well.

889
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:32,120
Speaker 3: Also it depends on whether you care about your reputation

890
00:46:32,280 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 3: or not, or you have one in the first place.

891
00:46:34,480 --> 00:46:37,000
Speaker 3: I mean, so much stuff on the internet is just chatter,

892
00:46:37,160 --> 00:46:40,359
Speaker 3: and you know, the headline is what sells. And as

893
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:42,359
Speaker 3: you know, Ben and Matt and I always point out,

894
00:46:43,160 --> 00:46:45,040
Speaker 3: it's really hard to get people to pay as much

895
00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,320
Speaker 3: attention to a retraction as it is to a sexy

896
00:46:47,320 --> 00:46:50,799
Speaker 3: headline that can literally wreck somebody's life. And then all

897
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:53,920
Speaker 3: of a sudden, opes are bad. But now because journalistic

898
00:46:54,000 --> 00:46:56,839
Speaker 3: you know, ethic standards if there ever were any, which

899
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 3: I know there were, but now it seems like, oh,

900
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,440
Speaker 3: that's out the window, because everyone just competing with the

901
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,000
Speaker 3: quickest you know click, you know, the person that gets

902
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:06,239
Speaker 3: the story out there the quickest. And so you know,

903
00:47:06,320 --> 00:47:08,480
Speaker 3: truth be Dan, we got to be first to market.

904
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 3: And then again, those retractions don't really read quite as

905
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:13,839
Speaker 3: as sexily, you know.

906
00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 5: So you're absolutely right about that. And you know, like

907
00:47:16,000 --> 00:47:18,560
Speaker 5: the one thing I like I start these cases, well,

908
00:47:18,600 --> 00:47:20,279
Speaker 5: this one came to me from a judge, right, but

909
00:47:20,800 --> 00:47:23,480
Speaker 5: you know, so it had some credibility going into it,

910
00:47:24,040 --> 00:47:26,680
Speaker 5: but you know, I'm really suspicious. I really just do

911
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:28,600
Speaker 5: not want to get burned on these things. And so

912
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:30,319
Speaker 5: I I, you know, went down. I wanted to talk

913
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,719
Speaker 5: to Leo, and I spent hours with him. And you know,

914
00:47:33,800 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 5: I'm not saying like I'm a fortune teller and I

915
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:38,080
Speaker 5: can see truth that in someone's eyes or you know,

916
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:42,399
Speaker 5: have hunches, but you know, there was Leo was extraordinarily

917
00:47:42,480 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 5: open to me, and I remember thinking like, if this

918
00:47:45,320 --> 00:47:48,000
Speaker 5: guy ever misleads me or lies to me, and I

919
00:47:48,520 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 5: just kind of done. I don't want to deal with

920
00:47:50,360 --> 00:47:52,480
Speaker 5: that kind of a case where I feel like I'm

921
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 5: not being truthful. And and so he's always, you know,

922
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 5: always been transparent. And you know, even in the other

923
00:47:59,160 --> 00:48:01,879
Speaker 5: the other case when another one of Jeremy's murders, where

924
00:48:01,920 --> 00:48:05,839
Speaker 5: this young man was wrongfully accused, you know we've when

925
00:48:05,920 --> 00:48:07,920
Speaker 5: visited him, and you know, you could just tell the

926
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,120
Speaker 5: parallels between him and Leo. Both of them were like,

927
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:14,000
Speaker 5: please look into my case. I want you to figure

928
00:48:14,040 --> 00:48:16,040
Speaker 5: this out. You know, I feel like people still believe

929
00:48:16,040 --> 00:48:18,839
Speaker 5: I'm guilty, and and so you know, these guys are

930
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:21,480
Speaker 5: as transparent as ever, just find whatever you want out

931
00:48:21,760 --> 00:48:23,560
Speaker 5: And I would think, you know, if I got acquitted

932
00:48:23,600 --> 00:48:25,799
Speaker 5: of a murder and some and I really did it,

933
00:48:25,880 --> 00:48:29,399
Speaker 5: and some reporter journalists showed up and wanted to reinvestigate,

934
00:48:29,440 --> 00:48:31,000
Speaker 5: I'd be like, yeah, no thanks, I'm I'm.

935
00:48:32,600 --> 00:48:34,480
Speaker 2: And with that, we're going to take a quick break.

936
00:48:34,520 --> 00:48:37,040
Speaker 2: Here a word from our sponsors, but we'll be right

937
00:48:37,080 --> 00:48:44,719
Speaker 2: back with more from Gilbert King and Bone Valley.

938
00:48:47,000 --> 00:48:49,960
Speaker 4: And we've returned. Let's get back with Gilbert.

939
00:48:50,719 --> 00:48:53,560
Speaker 2: Well, I want to tell you something that personally has

940
00:48:53,600 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 2: given me a lot of anxiety after listening to Bone Valley.

941
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:00,120
Speaker 2: That is the nine to one to one call that

942
00:49:00,200 --> 00:49:04,400
Speaker 2: Leos Schofield makes on the night that Michelle is missing.

943
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:07,360
Speaker 2: And that's because I think a lot of us and

944
00:49:07,920 --> 00:49:10,239
Speaker 2: I personally feel like one of the first things I

945
00:49:10,239 --> 00:49:13,160
Speaker 2: would do if I was in that situation is call

946
00:49:13,239 --> 00:49:16,560
Speaker 2: nine to one one and just try and get as

947
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:20,200
Speaker 2: much information to them as possible, right whatever emergency services

948
00:49:20,239 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 2: are available in my area, get someone looking immediately. But

949
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:26,960
Speaker 2: the tape of that nine to one one call ends

950
00:49:27,040 --> 00:49:30,319
Speaker 2: up being part of the reason that Leoscofield is looked

951
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:33,239
Speaker 2: at as a suspect. So just could you tell us

952
00:49:33,239 --> 00:49:35,399
Speaker 2: a little bit about that about why because it really

953
00:49:35,440 --> 00:49:36,080
Speaker 2: freaks me out.

954
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, this is a horrible call to listen to,

955
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:41,840
Speaker 5: because you can really listen to it two ways. You

956
00:49:41,840 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 5: can listen to the way the defense wants you to

957
00:49:43,600 --> 00:49:45,520
Speaker 5: hear it, and you can listen the way the prosecutor

958
00:49:45,560 --> 00:49:47,919
Speaker 5: wants to hear it. And you can tell he makes

959
00:49:47,960 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 5: this call and he's he gets transferred over the jail

960
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,439
Speaker 5: because Michelle didn't have a driver's license at the time,

961
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:55,400
Speaker 5: and he was afraid they might have picked her up

962
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,319
Speaker 5: and maybe put her in jail for driving without a

963
00:49:57,360 --> 00:50:01,040
Speaker 5: license because it had happened once before. And so you

964
00:50:01,080 --> 00:50:04,759
Speaker 5: could just tell he's just absolutely panicked trying to find

965
00:50:04,800 --> 00:50:07,839
Speaker 5: his wife. She's like now more than three hours late.

966
00:50:08,280 --> 00:50:10,279
Speaker 5: And you can hear him talking to his friend while

967
00:50:10,280 --> 00:50:12,880
Speaker 5: he's on hold waiting. His friend, Vince's right there, and

968
00:50:12,880 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 5: he goes, she does this to me all the time.

969
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:16,640
Speaker 5: I'm so pissed off. I can't believe if she walks

970
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:18,600
Speaker 5: through that door right now, I'm gonna be so pid

971
00:50:18,680 --> 00:50:21,000
Speaker 5: He's saying these kind of things. He's like, you know

972
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 5: how I flip out about things? Yeah, exactly, And the

973
00:50:24,280 --> 00:50:28,080
Speaker 5: prosecutor uses this against Leo, saying he's hopping mad, and

974
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:30,279
Speaker 5: he just takes off from that, and within an hour

975
00:50:30,360 --> 00:50:33,440
Speaker 5: he has stabbed Michelle twenty six times. But you know,

976
00:50:33,520 --> 00:50:36,799
Speaker 5: I listen to it, and you know, I just think

977
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,480
Speaker 5: it's another one of these stories. He's just so frustrated

978
00:50:39,520 --> 00:50:42,759
Speaker 5: because every time he files a missing person report, they

979
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:45,640
Speaker 5: don't take it seriously. They never go out and do anything.

980
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,719
Speaker 5: And he's like, nothing's wrong. She's eighteen, she never came

981
00:50:48,719 --> 00:50:50,799
Speaker 5: home from work, She's supposed to be home, and you

982
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:54,480
Speaker 5: could just feel the anxiety and the distress in his voice.

983
00:50:54,600 --> 00:50:56,520
Speaker 5: That's the way I heard it. I did not hear

984
00:50:56,560 --> 00:50:58,360
Speaker 5: it the way the prosecutor wanted you to hear it.

985
00:51:00,400 --> 00:51:03,520
Speaker 4: And there's also, you know, there's there're the moments where

986
00:51:03,640 --> 00:51:08,840
Speaker 4: he and his dad are functioning as a missing person's patrol,

987
00:51:09,080 --> 00:51:12,200
Speaker 4: right and they're feeling you know, it's happened to people

988
00:51:12,239 --> 00:51:16,080
Speaker 4: in the past. Right across the United States, you might

989
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:20,399
Speaker 4: call in a missing person's and the information that any

990
00:51:20,480 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 4: law enforcement agency will give you often is if this

991
00:51:24,120 --> 00:51:27,840
Speaker 4: person is over eighteen, what's the line of these Gilbert.

992
00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:31,560
Speaker 4: We can at best suggest that they can in touch with.

993
00:51:31,920 --> 00:51:33,480
Speaker 5: If we find her, we can tell her to get

994
00:51:33,520 --> 00:51:35,120
Speaker 5: in touch with you. But that's all we can do,

995
00:51:35,280 --> 00:51:37,279
Speaker 5: you know. But they're not even looking, and that was

996
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 5: like the most frustrating thing for Leo. And you know,

997
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:42,239
Speaker 5: they're really not supposed to look. She is eighteen, and

998
00:51:42,320 --> 00:51:44,879
Speaker 5: you know, it's most of the time in these kind

999
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:47,759
Speaker 5: of cases, you know, somebody turns up later, especially like

1000
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:50,200
Speaker 5: a teenager or a young person like that, so they

1001
00:51:50,520 --> 00:51:52,920
Speaker 5: don't have the same kind of panic that Leo has.

1002
00:51:53,200 --> 00:51:56,920
Speaker 5: So the search really comes down to Leo, his family,

1003
00:51:57,400 --> 00:52:00,719
Speaker 5: Michelle's family, their friends, and they're just out doing these searches.

1004
00:52:01,320 --> 00:52:03,839
Speaker 5: What really shakes the case open is that on day

1005
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:06,680
Speaker 5: two they find her car on the side of a highway,

1006
00:52:07,040 --> 00:52:10,479
Speaker 5: So now they're able to retrace the car's path back

1007
00:52:10,520 --> 00:52:13,000
Speaker 5: to where Michelle went missing, and that's how they end

1008
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:15,440
Speaker 5: up finding the body. You know, the worst thing that

1009
00:52:15,480 --> 00:52:18,200
Speaker 5: ever happened to Leo is his father actually found the

1010
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:21,359
Speaker 5: body and made that statement that God led me to her,

1011
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:25,239
Speaker 5: because that puts so much suspicion, and the prosecution just

1012
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:28,759
Speaker 5: used that against him like constantly throughout the case.

1013
00:52:29,080 --> 00:52:31,520
Speaker 4: And you have to wonder, you know, what if the

1014
00:52:31,560 --> 00:52:34,759
Speaker 4: defense had someone who said God told me Leo didn't do.

1015
00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 4: This is a divine statement admissible on one side of

1016
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 4: the court but not the other.

1017
00:52:40,520 --> 00:52:43,479
Speaker 5: It just right, I mean, that's yeah, it's staggering because

1018
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:46,280
Speaker 5: you know, this is a very like rural southern place.

1019
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:49,360
Speaker 5: It's very religious, and those kind of statements are not uncommon.

1020
00:52:49,440 --> 00:52:52,479
Speaker 5: I mean, I saw one guy on Twitter said, who's

1021
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:55,840
Speaker 5: commenting about the podcast? He says, great Leo spent thirty

1022
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:57,879
Speaker 5: five years in prison because his father is the kind

1023
00:52:57,920 --> 00:53:00,080
Speaker 5: of guy that said, God, help me find my car key,

1024
00:53:00,480 --> 00:53:03,680
Speaker 5: you know. And you know it's clear that he didn't

1025
00:53:03,719 --> 00:53:06,240
Speaker 5: have a premonition. The state tried to make it sound

1026
00:53:06,320 --> 00:53:08,840
Speaker 5: like he was telling everyone he had this premonition. He

1027
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:11,040
Speaker 5: led police to the body. That's not how it happened.

1028
00:53:11,080 --> 00:53:13,479
Speaker 5: He found the body and then he said, oh God

1029
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:15,800
Speaker 5: led me there, you know, which is that's fairly common,

1030
00:53:15,840 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 5: believe it or not.

1031
00:53:17,320 --> 00:53:21,000
Speaker 4: And okay, so this is one of the many many

1032
00:53:21,080 --> 00:53:23,920
Speaker 4: cases you get. You also mentioned that you hate to

1033
00:53:23,960 --> 00:53:27,360
Speaker 4: have to turned out a case. How often do people

1034
00:53:27,400 --> 00:53:28,479
Speaker 4: approach you for help?

1035
00:53:29,640 --> 00:53:32,920
Speaker 5: Well, they approached me a lot before Bone Valley, and

1036
00:53:32,960 --> 00:53:35,560
Speaker 5: now I swear it's like, you know, several of them

1037
00:53:35,600 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 5: a week, and they're horrible to read because you know,

1038
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:41,920
Speaker 5: we're all aware that there's spent so many exonerations in

1039
00:53:41,960 --> 00:53:44,360
Speaker 5: this country based on DNA, I think the three hundred

1040
00:53:44,400 --> 00:53:47,280
Speaker 5: something we're up to now, or you know, innocent people

1041
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:50,200
Speaker 5: have been freed from prison, and so you get these

1042
00:53:50,560 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 5: letters from the mother saying, I just listened to your podcast.

1043
00:53:54,239 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 5: I have to tell you about my son. He's wrongfully

1044
00:53:56,480 --> 00:54:00,200
Speaker 5: incarcerated for this crime. And you know, there's only so

1045
00:54:00,239 --> 00:54:02,200
Speaker 5: many stories I can tell. These things take me like

1046
00:54:02,280 --> 00:54:04,960
Speaker 5: four or five years, and so I have to look

1047
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,040
Speaker 5: at every element of it, and you know, so it's

1048
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,400
Speaker 5: kind of heartbreaking to be able to not like just

1049
00:54:10,480 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 5: take these on. You know, I'm not the Innocence Project.

1050
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:15,920
Speaker 5: I'm just a storyteller, and so that that's been a

1051
00:54:15,960 --> 00:54:18,200
Speaker 5: really that's one of the downsides of this is just

1052
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:20,880
Speaker 5: you know, disappointing people because you know they may be

1053
00:54:21,040 --> 00:54:24,959
Speaker 5: absolutely right, but for whatever reason, the case takes place

1054
00:54:25,000 --> 00:54:27,200
Speaker 5: in a different state. I prefer to work in Florida

1055
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:29,959
Speaker 5: if I can. Sometimes it's not my kind of things,

1056
00:54:30,080 --> 00:54:33,560
Speaker 5: I might refer it to somebody else. But it's heartbreaking

1057
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:35,440
Speaker 5: to get these kind of letters. I get them from

1058
00:54:35,440 --> 00:54:38,080
Speaker 5: prisoners as well, and you know they're just kind of

1059
00:54:38,120 --> 00:54:41,040
Speaker 5: desperate pleas like I'm innocent, and you know, you know,

1060
00:54:41,120 --> 00:54:43,239
Speaker 5: I can't tell if they're true or not, but it

1061
00:54:43,280 --> 00:54:44,919
Speaker 5: wouldn't surprise me if they were true.

1062
00:54:46,719 --> 00:54:50,040
Speaker 2: Can you tell us about the One Who's Holding the

1063
00:54:50,080 --> 00:54:52,440
Speaker 2: Stars and how did that come about?

1064
00:54:53,400 --> 00:54:56,560
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's really interesting because you know, Leo was in

1065
00:54:56,560 --> 00:54:58,600
Speaker 5: a heavy metal band. He said, you know, playing guitar

1066
00:54:58,840 --> 00:55:01,239
Speaker 5: was his life. And when he gets to prison at

1067
00:55:01,320 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 5: Hardy Correctional Institute, they're able to form a band, and

1068
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:07,279
Speaker 5: so he ends up teaching another guy who just comes

1069
00:55:07,320 --> 00:55:10,160
Speaker 5: in how to play guitar. They have a drummer, they

1070
00:55:10,200 --> 00:55:13,480
Speaker 5: have a bass player, they all sing, and so they

1071
00:55:13,600 --> 00:55:17,760
Speaker 5: put together this album to raise money for a victim

1072
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:20,440
Speaker 5: of a murder in Florida, I believe it was Florida,

1073
00:55:20,840 --> 00:55:23,840
Speaker 5: the Tutthill Foundation, And so to raise money, they did

1074
00:55:23,880 --> 00:55:26,319
Speaker 5: a CD of all their songs, and Leo and his

1075
00:55:26,360 --> 00:55:30,719
Speaker 5: partner Kevin Herrick, they write these very religious songs because

1076
00:55:30,719 --> 00:55:33,480
Speaker 5: they're both very religious men now, but they're very much

1077
00:55:33,520 --> 00:55:35,919
Speaker 5: in the spirit of heavy metal. They sound like real

1078
00:55:36,040 --> 00:55:38,799
Speaker 5: rock and roll. And one of the songs that Leo

1079
00:55:38,840 --> 00:55:41,320
Speaker 5: and Kevin had written was The One Who's Holding the Stars?

1080
00:55:41,600 --> 00:55:43,560
Speaker 5: And it's kind of a heavy metal version of it,

1081
00:55:44,280 --> 00:55:47,879
Speaker 5: and so we use it in the ninth episode when

1082
00:55:47,920 --> 00:55:50,319
Speaker 5: I go to the prison, and you can hear Leo's version.

1083
00:55:50,600 --> 00:55:53,799
Speaker 5: But it became our theme song. And we had a

1084
00:55:53,840 --> 00:55:55,840
Speaker 5: band called Lee Bob and the Truth from the West

1085
00:55:55,880 --> 00:56:00,799
Speaker 5: Coast recorded their own version slightly different, very and that

1086
00:56:00,880 --> 00:56:03,840
Speaker 5: became the theme And God, it's just it gives it

1087
00:56:03,960 --> 00:56:07,480
Speaker 5: such a distinct sound, and the lyrics are just so,

1088
00:56:08,080 --> 00:56:10,360
Speaker 5: you know, they resonate about you know, the valley and

1089
00:56:10,400 --> 00:56:13,080
Speaker 5: the tier and you're the one who's holding the stars.

1090
00:56:13,120 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 5: And sometimes you could look at that as God. I

1091
00:56:15,680 --> 00:56:18,960
Speaker 5: sometimes look at it as that's Jeremy Scott. He's holding

1092
00:56:19,040 --> 00:56:22,680
Speaker 5: all the cards. He's the one holding the knife, and Leo,

1093
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:26,600
Speaker 5: you know, is really dependent on Jeremy to come out

1094
00:56:26,640 --> 00:56:28,719
Speaker 5: and be truthful about what happened that night.

1095
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:34,520
Speaker 3: I had one quick final question on my end. I recently,

1096
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:36,760
Speaker 3: I think we all probably did watch the new season

1097
00:56:36,800 --> 00:56:39,160
Speaker 3: of Black Mirror, which I think is a really excellent

1098
00:56:39,880 --> 00:56:44,600
Speaker 3: critical critique of culture and communications and you know, the

1099
00:56:44,600 --> 00:56:46,160
Speaker 3: Internet and the way things have kind of spun out

1100
00:56:46,160 --> 00:56:48,319
Speaker 3: of control with technology. There's a really great episode that's

1101
00:56:48,320 --> 00:56:53,200
Speaker 3: sort of Lampoon's true crime. It's called Locke Henry, I

1102
00:56:53,239 --> 00:56:56,720
Speaker 3: believe if that's the name of the town and Scotland,

1103
00:56:56,880 --> 00:56:58,600
Speaker 3: and I don't want to give anything away about it,

1104
00:56:58,600 --> 00:57:00,239
Speaker 3: but it's just check it out if you're to it.

1105
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:03,800
Speaker 3: Definitely something because it just it just shows how, you know,

1106
00:57:03,880 --> 00:57:08,160
Speaker 3: there's this thirst, you know, for exploiting the misery of others,

1107
00:57:08,200 --> 00:57:10,840
Speaker 3: you know, for the entertainment of the masses. Because in

1108
00:57:11,520 --> 00:57:13,960
Speaker 3: podcast space, I think it's something that we've all just

1109
00:57:14,040 --> 00:57:19,000
Speaker 3: seen explode. And you know, I'm not here to criticize

1110
00:57:19,000 --> 00:57:21,160
Speaker 3: anybody's taste or the kind of stuff anybody wants to make,

1111
00:57:21,200 --> 00:57:24,080
Speaker 3: but it does seem to me like these wrongful conviction

1112
00:57:24,280 --> 00:57:27,840
Speaker 3: stories are not the same as just retreading a murder

1113
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:31,240
Speaker 3: and retreading horrible things that families have gone through for

1114
00:57:31,280 --> 00:57:33,720
Speaker 3: the purposes of like telling the story and making a buck.

1115
00:57:33,800 --> 00:57:36,280
Speaker 3: I just wanted to get a sense of your perspective

1116
00:57:36,440 --> 00:57:40,240
Speaker 3: as someone who investigates these things, where that drive comes from,

1117
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:41,960
Speaker 3: and if you have any thoughts about the sort of

1118
00:57:41,960 --> 00:57:45,800
Speaker 3: maybe the broader, more prurient version of what true crime

1119
00:57:46,000 --> 00:57:46,640
Speaker 3: has become.

1120
00:57:47,200 --> 00:57:50,440
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, I grew up reading a

1121
00:57:50,440 --> 00:57:53,560
Speaker 5: lot of true crime and I remember distinctly when I

1122
00:57:53,600 --> 00:57:55,680
Speaker 5: was young and the Son of Sam murders living in

1123
00:57:55,680 --> 00:57:59,919
Speaker 5: New York, and just the immediacy, this is before social media,

1124
00:58:00,720 --> 00:58:03,480
Speaker 5: like the headlines on the daily news. Son of Sam

1125
00:58:03,560 --> 00:58:06,600
Speaker 5: strikes again in New York, and like all of a sudden,

1126
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:09,760
Speaker 5: the killer is writing to Jimmy bresl and the columnist

1127
00:58:09,880 --> 00:58:11,720
Speaker 5: and telling him he's going to strike again and giving

1128
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:14,840
Speaker 5: him clues. And I remember just being so fascinated with

1129
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:17,720
Speaker 5: that criminal element of it. As I got older and

1130
00:58:17,760 --> 00:58:20,320
Speaker 5: as I started writing my own books, I think one

1131
00:58:20,360 --> 00:58:22,160
Speaker 5: of the things that really stuck with me is I

1132
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:26,080
Speaker 5: still use true crime or crime as the narrative. I

1133
00:58:26,080 --> 00:58:28,480
Speaker 5: almost look at it as like the Trojan horse. I'm

1134
00:58:28,520 --> 00:58:30,840
Speaker 5: going to give you the narrative, and it's based in crime,

1135
00:58:31,280 --> 00:58:33,800
Speaker 5: but I'm really telling a very different story, whether it's

1136
00:58:33,840 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 5: you know, about civil rights and race in the nineteen forties,

1137
00:58:38,120 --> 00:58:42,000
Speaker 5: whether it's you know, post brown versus Board racial relations

1138
00:58:42,040 --> 00:58:44,720
Speaker 5: and some of the crimes that happened then, and even

1139
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:46,880
Speaker 5: in Bone Valley, you know, it's not so much about

1140
00:58:47,040 --> 00:58:50,840
Speaker 5: Michelle's murder. It's really more about how does a wrongful

1141
00:58:50,880 --> 00:58:53,800
Speaker 5: conviction happen? How does a man who has all this

1142
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:57,240
Speaker 5: evidence pointing to somebody else remain in prison. And so

1143
00:58:57,400 --> 00:58:59,720
Speaker 5: that's really what I wanted to do with this story

1144
00:58:59,840 --> 00:59:03,600
Speaker 5: was really just focus on those questions. But you know,

1145
00:59:03,640 --> 00:59:05,480
Speaker 5: there is a crime element to it, and I don't

1146
00:59:05,520 --> 00:59:07,920
Speaker 5: really back away from that because I think it's one

1147
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:10,240
Speaker 5: of those things that gets people involved in the story

1148
00:59:10,480 --> 00:59:12,120
Speaker 5: and you come away saying, Wow, I just learned a

1149
00:59:12,160 --> 00:59:13,960
Speaker 5: lot about a pellet law. I just learned about a

1150
00:59:13,960 --> 00:59:17,120
Speaker 5: lot about you know this and how the courts work,

1151
00:59:17,160 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 5: and those are the things that really interest me. So

1152
00:59:19,520 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 5: I think you can use crime to get there.

1153
00:59:21,080 --> 00:59:23,600
Speaker 3: Oh, no question saying I don't want to come off

1154
00:59:23,640 --> 00:59:26,680
Speaker 3: something like I'm you know, coming down on true crime

1155
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:29,320
Speaker 3: as a genre. I just think there are versions of

1156
00:59:29,360 --> 00:59:32,280
Speaker 3: it that are more exploitive than others, and I think

1157
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,000
Speaker 3: that don't have that Trojan horse element and that really

1158
00:59:35,000 --> 00:59:37,440
Speaker 3: are just there to kind of titillate and shock, you know,

1159
00:59:37,560 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 3: rather than actually teach somebody something or have sort of

1160
00:59:40,040 --> 00:59:44,880
Speaker 3: an aspect of I don't know, humanity to them. So

1161
00:59:45,120 --> 00:59:46,960
Speaker 3: I just wanted to say I think it's great the

1162
00:59:47,040 --> 00:59:48,920
Speaker 3: kind of work that you're doing and the way that

1163
00:59:49,000 --> 00:59:52,120
Speaker 3: you do sort of sneak the vegetables into the spaghetti sauce.

1164
00:59:52,160 --> 00:59:53,880
Speaker 5: You know, it's a great way to put it. But

1165
00:59:53,920 --> 00:59:55,880
Speaker 5: you're you're absolutely right. I totally agree with you.

1166
00:59:56,000 --> 00:59:59,080
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's something I'd like to echo that point

1167
00:59:59,200 --> 01:00:02,000
Speaker 4: as a person well thinks Bone Valley is a very

1168
01:00:02,080 --> 01:00:07,520
Speaker 4: human exploration and it's education about a process, right. And

1169
01:00:07,920 --> 01:00:11,400
Speaker 4: if we were to say it's about crime, then I

1170
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:16,520
Speaker 4: would caution people from thinking it is solely about one crime.

1171
01:00:16,840 --> 01:00:20,600
Speaker 4: It is an in depth examination, but along the way

1172
01:00:20,640 --> 01:00:23,480
Speaker 4: we're talking about the other crimes, like the crime of

1173
01:00:23,520 --> 01:00:29,520
Speaker 4: wrongfully convicting someone. And when we first spoke regarding this,

1174
01:00:29,680 --> 01:00:34,920
Speaker 4: we were coming together right before a milestone in the

1175
01:00:35,000 --> 01:00:38,160
Speaker 4: Leo Schofield case. We don't want to get too too

1176
01:00:38,240 --> 01:00:41,800
Speaker 4: much into that. You'll have to listen to the podcast

1177
01:00:42,240 --> 01:00:45,560
Speaker 4: to learn the ins and outs. But Gilbert, were you

1178
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:49,320
Speaker 4: expecting for there to be bonus episodes of the show

1179
01:00:49,400 --> 01:00:53,240
Speaker 4: coming out when you started research and production or when

1180
01:00:53,240 --> 01:00:55,240
Speaker 4: you decided it should be a podcast.

1181
01:00:55,800 --> 01:00:57,920
Speaker 5: No, you know, we really didn't have any idea about that.

1182
01:00:58,000 --> 01:01:00,200
Speaker 5: I think we sort of ended, you know, the way

1183
01:01:00,240 --> 01:01:02,600
Speaker 5: we did at the end of episode nine, and you know,

1184
01:01:02,840 --> 01:01:05,680
Speaker 5: asking the question again, you know, this may be the

1185
01:01:05,720 --> 01:01:08,120
Speaker 5: closest to justice we ever get. You know, why is

1186
01:01:08,200 --> 01:01:11,360
Speaker 5: Leo Schofield still in prison? I think one of the

1187
01:01:11,360 --> 01:01:14,440
Speaker 5: things about the Bonus episodes was that it started to

1188
01:01:14,560 --> 01:01:16,800
Speaker 5: you know, we knew Leo had a parole hearing coming up,

1189
01:01:17,080 --> 01:01:19,440
Speaker 5: and we knew that, you know, this podcast had now

1190
01:01:19,480 --> 01:01:21,680
Speaker 5: reached millions of people, and there was sort of an

1191
01:01:21,720 --> 01:01:24,800
Speaker 5: outrage and locally they were feeling it. Within the state

1192
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:27,680
Speaker 5: of Florida, they were feeling it. It was getting a

1193
01:01:27,720 --> 01:01:31,720
Speaker 5: lot of attention. People were writing was it was clearly

1194
01:01:31,800 --> 01:01:34,959
Speaker 5: something was different. And you know what else was really

1195
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:39,320
Speaker 5: interesting was Judge Cupp who quit and resigned his seat

1196
01:01:39,360 --> 01:01:43,040
Speaker 5: on the bench to represent Leo. So he comes out

1197
01:01:43,080 --> 01:01:45,320
Speaker 5: of you know, giving up his seat on the bench

1198
01:01:45,520 --> 01:01:48,800
Speaker 5: and becomes Leo's defense attorney. And so like, the parole

1199
01:01:48,800 --> 01:01:52,400
Speaker 5: hearing now has this really urgency to it, and so

1200
01:01:52,520 --> 01:01:54,400
Speaker 5: we sort of cover all that and you know, it

1201
01:01:54,440 --> 01:01:56,280
Speaker 5: was just last month. We show up at the hearing

1202
01:01:56,760 --> 01:01:58,880
Speaker 5: and you know, you can listen to the episode, it's

1203
01:01:58,920 --> 01:02:02,280
Speaker 5: like a roller coast of emotions for me personally, for

1204
01:02:02,360 --> 01:02:05,480
Speaker 5: everybody involved in the podcast, for Leo, for everyone who

1205
01:02:05,560 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 5: was there. It was extraordinarily emotional, and you know, We

1206
01:02:09,520 --> 01:02:11,640
Speaker 5: never expected that to be a part of the series,

1207
01:02:11,680 --> 01:02:14,080
Speaker 5: but that's just the way it sort of developed, I

1208
01:02:14,120 --> 01:02:17,640
Speaker 5: think because the podcast had these listeners who really cared

1209
01:02:17,680 --> 01:02:23,720
Speaker 5: about it, and they put pressure on the state of Florida.

1210
01:02:22,240 --> 01:02:25,920
Speaker 4: And that's pressure that continues in the modern day. The

1211
01:02:25,960 --> 01:02:30,080
Speaker 4: story of Leo's schofield is not yet finished, as Gilbert

1212
01:02:30,120 --> 01:02:33,080
Speaker 4: you can be the first to assure us. I think

1213
01:02:33,280 --> 01:02:35,520
Speaker 4: one of the big questions that a lot of listeners

1214
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:39,040
Speaker 4: have now is where they can learn more, not just

1215
01:02:39,120 --> 01:02:44,960
Speaker 4: about Bone Valley, but about your previous past and future work.

1216
01:02:45,800 --> 01:02:48,640
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean it's interesting. I mostly focus in Florida.

1217
01:02:49,160 --> 01:02:51,160
Speaker 5: The last couple of books I've written, Devil in the

1218
01:02:51,160 --> 01:02:54,000
Speaker 5: Grove and Beneath the Ruthless Sun, are set in central Florida,

1219
01:02:54,480 --> 01:02:57,800
Speaker 5: not too far away from Polk County, where Leo's story

1220
01:02:57,840 --> 01:03:01,600
Speaker 5: takes place, and I think Central is a really fascinating place.

1221
01:03:01,640 --> 01:03:05,920
Speaker 5: There's a there's an expression you get in Florida that says,

1222
01:03:06,280 --> 01:03:09,640
Speaker 5: you know, the further north you get, the further south

1223
01:03:09,680 --> 01:03:11,880
Speaker 5: you get, and that's like, you know, you look at

1224
01:03:11,880 --> 01:03:14,800
Speaker 5: you're starting in Miami, which is this multicultural, like the

1225
01:03:14,880 --> 01:03:19,120
Speaker 5: capital of Latin America basically and once you start going north,

1226
01:03:19,240 --> 01:03:21,760
Speaker 5: you know, you get into that central Florida, it's cowboy hats,

1227
01:03:21,760 --> 01:03:24,480
Speaker 5: it's cattle. It looks like you're in Texas. I mean,

1228
01:03:24,600 --> 01:03:27,080
Speaker 5: as far as the eyes can see these prairies, you don't.

1229
01:03:27,120 --> 01:03:28,840
Speaker 5: It doesn't look like the Florida that you see on

1230
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:32,200
Speaker 5: the postcards. And so that part of Florida has just

1231
01:03:32,240 --> 01:03:35,080
Speaker 5: sort of always been off the radar. And I've had

1232
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:37,160
Speaker 5: so many people say, like, come on, this is like

1233
01:03:37,200 --> 01:03:39,439
Speaker 5: a half hour outside of Disney World. How bad could

1234
01:03:39,440 --> 01:03:41,360
Speaker 5: it be. I'm like, come on down with me, and

1235
01:03:41,400 --> 01:03:43,200
Speaker 5: we'll go a half hour outside of Disney World, and

1236
01:03:43,280 --> 01:03:44,320
Speaker 5: you tell me what you see.

1237
01:03:44,520 --> 01:03:47,000
Speaker 3: The whole Florida man narrative. I mean, we've talked about that,

1238
01:03:47,240 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 3: and I mean, obviously, I'm sure you know as a researcher,

1239
01:03:49,560 --> 01:03:51,600
Speaker 3: you and you know about all the Sunshine laws and

1240
01:03:51,760 --> 01:03:53,840
Speaker 3: the way things get reported. Is is that something that

1241
01:03:53,840 --> 01:03:55,920
Speaker 3: you've run into and you're reporting or do you find

1242
01:03:55,960 --> 01:03:58,600
Speaker 3: stories like through that kind of transparency?

1243
01:03:58,840 --> 01:04:01,240
Speaker 5: Oh? Yeah, I gotta say the great thing about Florida

1244
01:04:01,320 --> 01:04:03,360
Speaker 5: is the Sunshine Laws, Like you can get just about

1245
01:04:03,360 --> 01:04:06,280
Speaker 5: everything you want. Florida keeps great records and they give

1246
01:04:06,320 --> 01:04:09,080
Speaker 5: them out. So like I could probably find some really

1247
01:04:09,080 --> 01:04:11,920
Speaker 5: interesting cases in Alabama and Mississippi, but I can't always

1248
01:04:11,920 --> 01:04:14,360
Speaker 5: get the records and the access to the inmates. So

1249
01:04:14,440 --> 01:04:17,280
Speaker 5: that's what really helps me a lot is these Sunshine Laws,

1250
01:04:17,280 --> 01:04:20,600
Speaker 5: and hopefully those things were strong enough to last, because

1251
01:04:20,600 --> 01:04:22,480
Speaker 5: I think it's been a really valuable thing for the

1252
01:04:22,480 --> 01:04:24,880
Speaker 5: State of Florida. And I just want to add one thing.

1253
01:04:25,120 --> 01:04:27,560
Speaker 5: I do spend a lot of my time beating up

1254
01:04:27,560 --> 01:04:30,560
Speaker 5: the State of Florida criminal justice system, but I do

1255
01:04:30,640 --> 01:04:32,840
Speaker 5: want to say in their defense that you know, in

1256
01:04:32,880 --> 01:04:37,040
Speaker 5: the past, these gross injustices that I've laid out, for

1257
01:04:37,080 --> 01:04:39,560
Speaker 5: instance and Devil on the Grove, the State of Florida

1258
01:04:39,600 --> 01:04:42,240
Speaker 5: has acknowledged it and corrected it. And I see that

1259
01:04:42,360 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 5: in the State of Florida, and I see that. I

1260
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:47,760
Speaker 5: want to make sure people understand, like I don't see

1261
01:04:47,760 --> 01:04:51,439
Speaker 5: that so much in Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama, where

1262
01:04:51,440 --> 01:04:54,760
Speaker 5: these gross injustices from the past are being corrected. So

1263
01:04:54,800 --> 01:04:58,200
Speaker 5: I give Florida a little bit of credit. As heinous

1264
01:04:58,240 --> 01:05:01,240
Speaker 5: as some of these wrongful convictions are, that they have

1265
01:05:01,360 --> 01:05:04,160
Speaker 5: shown in the past that they are willing to correct them.

1266
01:05:04,560 --> 01:05:07,040
Speaker 2: Have you ever spent much time in Clearwater. I feel

1267
01:05:07,040 --> 01:05:10,200
Speaker 2: like there might be a story about real estate and clearwater.

1268
01:05:10,360 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 5: Maybe, Yes, there's a question. You know, there's no end.

1269
01:05:14,800 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 5: There's no shortage of those kind of stories, especially near

1270
01:05:17,240 --> 01:05:18,000
Speaker 5: the coasts. You know.

1271
01:05:19,920 --> 01:05:23,520
Speaker 4: You can also check out Gilbert King dot com to

1272
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:27,840
Speaker 4: learn more about not just Bone Valley but Bone Valley news,

1273
01:05:28,000 --> 01:05:31,720
Speaker 4: current and ongoing developments in the Leo Schofield case. We

1274
01:05:31,840 --> 01:05:37,480
Speaker 4: mentioned leoskase dot com to learn more. You can also Gilbert.

1275
01:05:37,520 --> 01:05:39,320
Speaker 4: I hope this isn't a step too far. If you

1276
01:05:39,400 --> 01:05:42,840
Speaker 4: go to the website and you have a lead some

1277
01:05:42,920 --> 01:05:46,040
Speaker 4: insiders for following questions. There is a way to contact

1278
01:05:46,080 --> 01:05:47,000
Speaker 4: Gilbert directly.

1279
01:05:47,440 --> 01:05:51,320
Speaker 5: Absolutely, and anybody can contact me. I answer everybody. I'm

1280
01:05:51,320 --> 01:05:54,600
Speaker 5: not John Grisham, where I'm getting millions of respect letters

1281
01:05:54,640 --> 01:05:57,240
Speaker 5: like that. I answer everybody. So yeah, feel free.

1282
01:05:58,280 --> 01:06:01,000
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for your time today with

1283
01:06:01,160 --> 01:06:05,440
Speaker 4: a Skilbert And as we say, you know only we

1284
01:06:05,640 --> 01:06:09,360
Speaker 4: really only do interviews or hang with guests when we

1285
01:06:09,440 --> 01:06:11,400
Speaker 4: believe in the work. And I think we can all

1286
01:06:11,440 --> 01:06:15,000
Speaker 4: agree that what you were doing is profoundly important, directly

1287
01:06:15,040 --> 01:06:17,200
Speaker 4: for the case of Leo Schofield, but also for the

1288
01:06:17,240 --> 01:06:21,440
Speaker 4: case of the doubtlessly thousands, thousands of people who are

1289
01:06:21,480 --> 01:06:22,880
Speaker 4: currently waiting for justice.

1290
01:06:23,400 --> 01:06:26,760
Speaker 5: Well, thanks, guys, I really enjoyed this conversation so much

1291
01:06:26,840 --> 01:06:28,560
Speaker 5: and I can't thank you enough for having me on

1292
01:06:29,640 --> 01:06:31,000
Speaker 5: what a ride.

1293
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:33,240
Speaker 4: There is something we should tell everybody in the interest

1294
01:06:33,280 --> 01:06:37,000
Speaker 4: of full transparency. Guys. There are developments that happen with

1295
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:40,479
Speaker 4: Bone Valley that we leave to Gilbert and the show.

1296
01:06:40,520 --> 01:06:42,440
Speaker 4: You'll have to tune in to learn about them.

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01:06:42,840 --> 01:06:47,520
Speaker 2: Definitely. It's one of those shows that once you begin it,

1298
01:06:47,600 --> 01:06:50,800
Speaker 2: you get fully engrossed, like I couldn't pull myself away.

1299
01:06:51,160 --> 01:06:52,720
Speaker 2: I don't know about you guys when I was listening,

1300
01:06:52,760 --> 01:06:54,920
Speaker 2: so I would just highly recommend checking it out if

1301
01:06:54,920 --> 01:06:56,840
Speaker 2: you get a chance. And what a great guy.

1302
01:06:57,360 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, just our artists. I mean you can tell his

1303
01:06:58,920 --> 01:07:02,280
Speaker 3: passionate about what he is investigating. He's not just doing

1304
01:07:02,360 --> 01:07:04,680
Speaker 3: it for attention. I mean it's something that he truly

1305
01:07:04,720 --> 01:07:07,200
Speaker 3: believes in and he's got a goal is just to

1306
01:07:07,240 --> 01:07:10,840
Speaker 3: try to shed light on these cases that are grossly

1307
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:15,760
Speaker 3: underreported in many ways. So thank you to Gilbert for

1308
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:16,400
Speaker 3: your time.

1309
01:07:17,480 --> 01:07:21,520
Speaker 4: And now we pass the torch to you, fellow conspiracy realist.

1310
01:07:21,640 --> 01:07:23,880
Speaker 4: What do you think not just about this case, but

1311
01:07:24,040 --> 01:07:27,440
Speaker 4: do you have any other examples of what appear to

1312
01:07:27,480 --> 01:07:31,120
Speaker 4: be miscarriages of the American justice system And what do

1313
01:07:31,160 --> 01:07:34,000
Speaker 4: you think this story can tell us all about the

1314
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:37,160
Speaker 4: justice system in the United States overall. We'd love to

1315
01:07:37,160 --> 01:07:39,160
Speaker 4: hear your thoughts. Come be a part of the show

1316
01:07:39,200 --> 01:07:41,720
Speaker 4: with us. We try to be easy to find online.

1317
01:07:42,040 --> 01:07:46,360
Speaker 3: Conspiracy Stuff is the handle that we go by on Facebook, Twitter,

1318
01:07:46,640 --> 01:07:51,360
Speaker 3: and YouTube. Conspiracy Stuff show on Instagram and TikTok.

1319
01:07:51,640 --> 01:07:56,160
Speaker 2: We have a phone number one eight three three stdwytk.

1320
01:07:56,320 --> 01:07:59,440
Speaker 2: It's a voicemail. Leave us one. Please give yourself a

1321
01:07:59,440 --> 01:08:01,880
Speaker 2: cool nick name, and then you've got three minutes say

1322
01:08:01,880 --> 01:08:03,840
Speaker 2: whatever you'd like. Just at some point let us know

1323
01:08:03,880 --> 01:08:05,959
Speaker 2: if we can use your name and voice on the air.

1324
01:08:06,240 --> 01:08:08,160
Speaker 2: If you don't want to do that, hey, why not

1325
01:08:08,280 --> 01:08:09,840
Speaker 2: send us a good old fashioned email.

1326
01:08:10,000 --> 01:08:31,960
Speaker 4: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.

1327
01:08:32,120 --> 01:08:34,160
Speaker 2: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production

1328
01:08:34,280 --> 01:08:38,800
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1329
01:08:38,880 --> 01:08:42,160
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.