Speaker 1: I was blown away because I'm like, why would his
Speaker 1: fingerprint be in the vehicle? Why would that not have
Speaker 1: been something that had been investigated.
Speaker 2: When police Captain Cinda Williams ran the Prince that had
Speaker 2: been found in Michelle Scofield's car seventeen years ago, she
Speaker 2: wasn't expecting anything, but there was.
Speaker 1: A hit, so I ran a criminal history check on
Speaker 1: Jeremy Scott.
Speaker 2: Now Cinda wasn't really supposed to have run these prints.
Speaker 2: The Michelle Scofield case is under Polk County's jurisdiction, not
Speaker 2: Henry County, where she works, but because of her friendship
Speaker 2: with Chrissy, she decides to look into Jeremy Scott anyway.
Speaker 1: It felt like it was the right thing to do,
Speaker 1: and he had an extensive criminal history. And when I
Speaker 1: say extensive, imediate mostly violent.
Speaker 2: Crime charges of grand theft, burglary, multiple assaults, arson, and
Speaker 2: two arrests for murder.
Speaker 3: Do you mo maness.
Speaker 4: Left to have my fears.
Speaker 3: Soruive sormness in this vasty him rage dansish to the
Speaker 3: word sling stuff to the bone soundings.
Speaker 5: Stuff so.
Speaker 2: Bone Valley Chapter five, bam bam, Who is Jeremy Scott?
Speaker 2: Who is this man whose fingerprints turned up in the
Speaker 2: car Michelle Schofield was driving on the night she was murdered.
Speaker 2: Kelsey and I wanted to find out everything we could
Speaker 2: about him. We started filing record requests.
Speaker 6: We got police reports from both the Sheriff's office and
Speaker 6: the Lakeland Police Department. They documented dozens of Jeremy's arrests
Speaker 6: in Polk County, and we were also able to get
Speaker 6: our hands on Jeremy's psychiatric reports. He was evaluated by
Speaker 6: psychologists while awaiting trial on a homicide charge.
Speaker 2: This homicide charge, Jeremy would eventually be convicted for it.
Speaker 2: We'll get back to that later. But after he was
Speaker 2: found guilty, several of Jeremy's family members testified, pleading with
Speaker 2: the judge and jury to spare Jeremy's life, to sentence
Speaker 2: him to life in prison instead of giving him the
Speaker 2: death penalty. Their testimony about Jeremy's childhood and upbringing paints
Speaker 2: a Scott family portrait that can only be described as
Speaker 2: chaotic and unstable. We started compiling this testimony and other
Speaker 2: documents we've been able to dig up, and we were
Speaker 2: able to make a rough timeline of Jeremy's early life.
Speaker 6: Jeremy was born in Michigan on April twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 6: sixty nine. According to family testimony, his mother, Linda immediately
Speaker 6: rejected him when she brought him home from the hospital.
Speaker 6: Linda didn't want anything to do with him. She was
Speaker 6: fifteen at the time in using drugs, so she left
Speaker 6: him with her parents. So Jeremy's grandparents, Arlene and Stacy Scott,
Speaker 6: they raise him, and Jeremy grows up calling them mom
Speaker 6: and Dad, and they call him Bam Bam because he
Speaker 6: liked to hit stuff. But early in works and Stacy
Speaker 6: struggles with alcoholism, so Jeremy spends much of his early
Speaker 6: years in the care of his aunt Debbie, who's just fourteen.
Speaker 2: Then one day, when Jeremy was two or three, he
Speaker 2: was left without supervision and was hit by a neighbor's car.
Speaker 2: His psych reports say that there was significant injury to
Speaker 2: the right frontal area of his skull. It seems this
Speaker 2: incident may have left Jeremy with lasting brain damage, and
Speaker 2: soon after Jeremy's uncle Tom moved in. Tom pretty severely
Speaker 2: abused Jeremy. He would beat him and call him names.
Speaker 2: According to his aunt Debbie's testimony, when Jeremy starts school,
Speaker 2: sounds like he doesn't do very well. He has to
Speaker 2: repeat kindergarten and he's placed in special education classes.
Speaker 6: And then we get to the mid to late seventies
Speaker 6: and the family starts to relocate down to Florida. They
Speaker 6: were up in Michigan, and they start trickling down to
Speaker 6: various parts of the state, settle in Perry in the
Speaker 6: Florida Panhandle, and also in central Florida, Lakeland, Kissimi, Davenport,
Speaker 6: and Mulberry.
Speaker 2: It's hard to piece together exactly where Jeremy was and
Speaker 2: when and who cared for him. He was being passed
Speaker 2: back and forth between different caregivers, different family members.
Speaker 6: But at some point he ends up back with his mother, Linda.
Speaker 6: Jeremy's aunt, Debbie, says that Linda was beating him with
Speaker 6: belts and with sticks, and the school he was attending
Speaker 6: at that time took notice. They reported the abuse, and
Speaker 6: it seems like at that point Jeremy was removed from
Speaker 6: his mother's care and placed into foster care.
Speaker 2: After fourth grade, Jeremy stops regularly attending school, and by
Speaker 2: eighth grade, he's apparently dropped out of school entirely Somewhere
Speaker 2: in that time he starts getting in trouble with the
Speaker 2: law too. The first arrest we have on recD is
Speaker 2: August nineteen eighty It was for petty theft, burglary, criminal mischief,
Speaker 2: dealing in stolen property, and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle,
Speaker 2: all misdemeanor charges. But he was only eleven years old.
Speaker 2: That's five charges. Around this same time, Jeremy's already living
Speaker 2: on the streets and he asks his sixteen year old
Speaker 2: aunt for money, food, and clothes, which she isn't always
Speaker 2: able to provide.
Speaker 6: And then in January of nineteen eighty two, he's arrested
Speaker 6: for grand theft and burglary and those are felony charges.
Speaker 6: Jeremy was twelve, and this is when things become a
Speaker 6: little more serious for him. There are some real repercussions.
Speaker 6: He sent away to Okachobe, the juvenile detention facility in
Speaker 6: South Florida, so he's in and out of Okachobe between
Speaker 6: the ages of thirteen and fifteen.
Speaker 2: After one of Jeremy's stays at Okachobe, he lands in
Speaker 2: a little in Polk County, just outside of Lakeland. It's
Speaker 2: called Eagle Lake. From Jeremy's criminal records and police reports,
Speaker 2: we learn about a murder that took place in this
Speaker 2: area in nineteen eighty five, when Jeremy was just fifteen
Speaker 2: years old. So we tried to track down some of
Speaker 2: the other people whose names we found in the documents.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm out here.
Speaker 2: I'm about to meet with Nancy, and I think her mother,
Speaker 2: Wilma is here. I'm just gonna walk over there right now.
Speaker 2: They're sitting on a picnic bench underneath a tree. Nancy
Speaker 2: and her mom, Wilma, are still living in the area
Speaker 2: where the crime took place. I called them after seeing
Speaker 2: Nancy's name in a witness deposition. I was especially interested
Speaker 2: in talking to them because they said they remember Jeremy. Hello,
Speaker 2: you must be Wilma. We talked on the phone.
Speaker 4: Gilbert, Hi, Nancy, how are you.
Speaker 2: Nancy says she first met Jeremy while he was working
Speaker 2: the rides at the Florida Citrus Festival in nearby winter Haven.
Speaker 2: Nancy was around thirteen years old and Jeremy was fifteen.
Speaker 7: We all went to the fair, and we'd go every
Speaker 7: single night. What kind of fair was it? It was
Speaker 7: just a carnival. You had the sea Dragon. You had
Speaker 7: the Zipper, the one that spends around Himalaya.
Speaker 2: What was Jeremy Scott doing there?
Speaker 7: He was actually running the Sea Dragon.
Speaker 2: And he so he when you were at the fair,
Speaker 2: liked he would be the guy that would put you
Speaker 2: on the rides. That was his job.
Speaker 7: No, he actually was the one that turned it on.
Speaker 7: It was the mechanical part.
Speaker 2: So he was basically a carney.
Speaker 4: A carney.
Speaker 2: Nancy and her friends would see him every night over
Speaker 2: the ten days the festival was in town.
Speaker 7: So when me and the girls got on him, we
Speaker 7: got an extra ride, like, hey, I got that extra ride.
Speaker 2: And when the festival eventually packs up, Jeremy sticks around
Speaker 2: the area.
Speaker 7: I think he just came into town and decided to
Speaker 7: stay for a little bit. He was quiet, I mean,
Speaker 7: like shy, very shy compared to like the average kids.
Speaker 7: And I mean until you got to know you, you know,
Speaker 7: I do know he was like maybe slow. I don't
Speaker 7: know how to better explain him. He just was different,
Speaker 7: you know. I don't know if it's a disability or what.
Speaker 2: Because back then, Nancy grew up with the sense that
Speaker 2: she should protect kids like Jeremy, so she would make
Speaker 2: sure to include him when she and her friends would
Speaker 2: play sports and hang around the park. Jeremy would stay
Speaker 2: over at their house some nights too, he'd crash on
Speaker 2: the couch.
Speaker 7: He was polite because it was like he had respect,
Speaker 7: I guess his best way to say it, because I
Speaker 7: never saw temper out of him or anything.
Speaker 2: But then Jeremy stops coming over to Nancy and Wilma's
Speaker 2: house as often, and Nancy she starts seeing Jeremy with
Speaker 2: one of her neighbors, an ex con by the name
Speaker 2: of Smoky Johnson. Smokey picks up Jeremy while he's hitchhiking
Speaker 2: one day. Smokey is forty six and Jeremy is just fifteen.
Speaker 7: Honestly, I mean, it's really weird that somebody that much
Speaker 7: older would be hanging out with me, you know.
Speaker 2: That spring On April eleventh, nineteen eighty five, Smoky's seventy
Speaker 2: five year old mother, Juel Johnson, was found dead in
Speaker 2: a locked trailer behind her house.
Speaker 7: Well, she lived right around the corner from where we.
Speaker 2: Lived, right and jul Johnson was just like a sweet
Speaker 2: elderly woman.
Speaker 8: I mean, yes, saying that she was a very sweet lady.
Speaker 7: Now that's what I told different people that I knew
Speaker 7: quite well, yeah, that.
Speaker 2: That she's a very sweet lady. Juel Johnson suffered blunt
Speaker 2: force trauma to the head and she was in the torso,
Speaker 2: presumably with the twenty two caliber rifle found at the scene.
Speaker 2: Detective Richard Putnall, the same detective that would work Michelle
Speaker 2: Schofield's murder two years later, conducts the investigation. Detective Putnall
Speaker 2: talks to Jule Johnson's son, Smoky, who says that about
Speaker 2: fifty dollars in rolled coins was taken from the house,
Speaker 2: as well as some large knives. As far as we
Speaker 2: can tell, there are no eyewitnesses to the killing, and
Speaker 2: no one claims to have heard any gunshots. But then
Speaker 2: detective Putnall interviews two teenage girls in the neighborhood and
Speaker 2: the investigation takes a new direction. Thirteen year old Lwanda
Speaker 2: Green and fifteen year old Anne Aldridge tell Detective Putnall
Speaker 2: that they know Jeremy and they remember seeing him on
Speaker 2: his bike just hours after Jewel's murder. They say Jeremy
Speaker 2: had on all new clothes when they saw him, gray jacket,
Speaker 2: gray shirt, gray pants instead of his usual jeans and
Speaker 2: t shirt. He also had a bunch of coins on him.
Speaker 2: He told them that his grandfather just died and left
Speaker 2: him fifty dollars. He showed the coins and said, this
Speaker 2: is all I have left. He had a red bag
Speaker 2: with him and said there's a big knife in there.
Speaker 2: Not long after Juel Johnson is killed, Jeremy stops by
Speaker 2: Nancy's place.
Speaker 7: He just swung by the house to tell us why. Like,
Speaker 7: the conversation was really really short, not like where he
Speaker 7: was before that, you know, he laughed or whatever. It
Speaker 7: was just different. He just said that we wouldn't get
Speaker 7: to see him no more. He was staying away because
Speaker 7: he was in trouble.
Speaker 2: After I interviewed Nancy and Wilma at the ballpark, they
Speaker 2: tell me to follow their car and they'll point out
Speaker 2: Juel Johnson's house. And this is really roll back.
Speaker 9: Here a lot less houses, just a little farmhouse.
Speaker 4: And it's cattle. Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 2: I can see the little shed in the back under tree.
Speaker 2: That's where I think they found the body of jul Johnson.
Speaker 2: Investigators weren't able to lift any prince from the rifle
Speaker 2: found at the crime scene. Whoever shot Juel Johnson must
Speaker 2: have wiped down the weapon afterwards, but they were able
Speaker 2: to lift fingerprints from a coin wrapper and Jewel's broken eyeglasses.
Speaker 2: The Polk County Sheriff's Office compares the prince to Jeremy's.
Speaker 2: It's a match. Jeremy Scott, now sixteen, becomes the lead
Speaker 2: suspect in the murder of Jewel Johnson. Three weeks after
Speaker 2: the killing, Jeremy's arrested and charged with first degree murder.
Speaker 2: At his arraignement, the judge, who spent years presiding over
Speaker 2: juvenile cases recognizes Jeremy's name. He tells reporters he wasn't surprised.
Speaker 2: He says, quote, this was one of those situations in
Speaker 2: which there was nothing the system could do.
Speaker 4: Jeremy was in jail, and he was a young man,
Speaker 4: very immature, very mentally I'm gonna say mentally disturbed in
Speaker 4: the sense that he had a number of mental illnesses.
Speaker 4: He was a severely abused child. You know, he was
Speaker 4: cutting himself quite a bit in the jail.
Speaker 2: This is Austin meslank who was an attorney with the
Speaker 2: Public Defender's Office. Meslanic was assigned to represent Jeremy in
Speaker 2: the murder of Jule Johnson.
Speaker 4: I mean the state was seeking the death penal to you,
Speaker 4: because this was before the United States Supreme Court had
Speaker 4: ruled the juveniles were not eligible for the death penalty,
Speaker 4: and you know, in Polk County at that time, the
Speaker 4: state went for the death penalty just about every case.
Speaker 10: He was young, he was difficult, sometimes he was cooperative,
Speaker 10: sometimes he wasn't.
Speaker 2: This is Tony Maloney. She's the investigator from the Public
Speaker 2: Defender's Office. She was assigned to Leo Schofield's case in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, before Leo dropped them and hired Jack
Speaker 2: Edmund instead. But before all that, back in nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 2: she was assigned to Jeremy Scott's defense in the Jule
Speaker 2: Johnson murder.
Speaker 10: It was hard for him to stay on tasks for
Speaker 10: any period of time, and then even when he did,
Speaker 10: it was sort of like, you know, is he really
Speaker 10: connecting the dots here? Not out of touch with reality,
Speaker 10: but an inability to calmly control.
Speaker 2: At trial, the state presents a pretty simple case. They
Speaker 2: say that while Smokey Johnson is at work, Jewel catches
Speaker 2: Jeremy trying to steal her rolls of coins. She tells Jeremy,
Speaker 2: she's calling the sheriff, so he hits her over the
Speaker 2: head and shoots her with a rifle. But the public
Speaker 2: defenders did witness interviews and brought in a mental health
Speaker 2: expert to defend Jeremy at trial, and you put on.
Speaker 4: A pretty aggressive defense, Yes, we did.
Speaker 2: Jeremy takes the stand at trial and says that it
Speaker 2: was Smoky Johnson who killed his own mother. Jeremy says
Speaker 2: he was a witness to the killing. He said it
Speaker 2: happened after Smoky and Jewel argued about smoking weed. Several
Speaker 2: jurors said that they didn't think Jeremy killed Juel Johnson
Speaker 2: because he didn't seem intelligent enough to remove his fingerprints
Speaker 2: from the murder weapon. Smokey, on the other hand, had
Speaker 2: done some time for selling, and he apparently didn't come
Speaker 2: across too well at trial. That's how in September nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty five, Jeremy Scott is acquitted of Juel Johnson's murder.
Speaker 2: The state never prosecuted Smoky because of the strength of
Speaker 2: his alibi. Multiple co workers testify that he was at
Speaker 2: work at the time his mother was murdered. Juel Johnson's
Speaker 2: murder is still considered unsolved to this day, but the
Speaker 2: state of Florida didn't seem too happy about Jeremy's acquittal,
Speaker 2: so they weren't so quick to release him. While Jeremy
Speaker 2: was in the jail awaiting trial, he lit his mattress
Speaker 2: on fire. So after he's acquitted in the Jewel Johnson murder,
Speaker 2: he's held in the Polk County jail for the arson
Speaker 2: charge that happened months before. To me and Kelsey, though
Speaker 2: it seems like Jeremy literally got away with murder, I think.
Speaker 8: That's sort of a bitch, arrowing a bunch of people's lives.
Speaker 2: This is Lee Underwood. We reached out to him because
Speaker 2: he was a close friend to Michelle Schofield's back in
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 8: She was a very very very special friend of mine,
Speaker 8: like a sister.
Speaker 2: It was Michelle who gave him his nickname, Lee the Flea,
Speaker 2: and she named.
Speaker 11: Me that.
Speaker 8: Basically as I was always playing to lead the polis
Speaker 8: and that name is stuck would mad till today.
Speaker 2: We tracked Leave the Flee down in Wisconsin, and as
Speaker 2: we were talking, the interview took an unexpected turn.
Speaker 8: You didn't know Jeremy Scott, did you. I was in
Speaker 8: jail with them back in eighty Sorry.
Speaker 2: We checked this and Lee is a little off on
Speaker 2: the year based on arrest records. The cops finally caught
Speaker 2: up with Lee in nineteen eighty five. They locked him
Speaker 2: up in the Polk County JA on charges of well
Speaker 2: fleeing police, and Lee tells us one of his cellmates
Speaker 2: then was Jeremy Scott. Lee was there when Jeremy set
Speaker 2: his mattress on fire, and he remembers when Jeremy was
Speaker 2: acquitted of killing jul Johnson.
Speaker 8: I don't know how he got off of it. He
Speaker 8: get bragged to everybody in the cell about doing it.
Speaker 8: This guy was crazy. He'd like make a shank like
Speaker 8: a jail knife out of a razor right around the jail,
Speaker 8: cutting people just at random. This kid was crazy and
Speaker 8: he had a look in his eye just like like
Speaker 8: he wasn't right.
Speaker 2: Jeremy is convicted on the arson charge and shipped off
Speaker 2: to state prison. By the time he's released, it's December
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty. Leo and Michelle Schofield have been married for
Speaker 2: about four months. They're living in the little trailer near
Speaker 2: Comby Settlement. They're going to church. Leo's playing music and
Speaker 2: Michelle has yet to start her job at Tom's restaurant.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott is back on the streets, and this time
Speaker 2: he's in Lakeland.
Speaker 8: Hi.
Speaker 12: I'm Jason Flamm, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
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Speaker 9: Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
Speaker 9: a philanthropic community that partners with America's boldest change makers
Speaker 9: to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems,
Speaker 9: including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos is one
Speaker 9: of those change makers. At the age of twenty three,
Speaker 9: Weldon was arrested for a first time offense of selling
Speaker 9: weed to a confidential informant. At the time, he was
Speaker 9: a budding musician spending time with artists like Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Pink,
Speaker 9: and Gnase. His entire life was ahead of him when
Speaker 9: he was sentenced to a mandatory fifty five years in
Speaker 9: federal prison without the possibility of early release. After serving
Speaker 9: thirteen years, a bipartisan effort led to him getting officially pardoned.
Speaker 9: Upon his release, he founded the Weldon Project, a nonprofit
Speaker 9: working to create better outcomes for those still in prison
Speaker 9: that funds social change and provides financial aid for all
Speaker 9: those who were still serving time for cannabis related offenses.
Speaker 9: Weldon Angelos is one of the many entrepreneurs partnering with
Speaker 9: Stand Together to drive solutions in education, health care, poverty,
Speaker 9: and criminal justice. To learn more about the War on Drugs,
Speaker 9: listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 9: or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 13: Let's see, this is just kind of describing Lakeland, how
Speaker 13: it all came to be.
Speaker 2: We're at Heide's Eeman's house looking through boxes. Heidi, her
Speaker 2: sister Wendy, and their parents were living in Lakeland when
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott entered their lives. Heidie's parents were professors, her
Speaker 2: dad taught Greek, and her Mom taught English, and for
Speaker 2: a while in the nineteen eighties they took in local
Speaker 2: teenagers they called throwaway kids who'd been kicked out or
Speaker 2: were living on the streets. The Zeemans offered them a
Speaker 2: place to stay.
Speaker 13: My dad was he was a writer. He just wrote,
Speaker 13: so when he passed away, there were just boxes and
Speaker 13: boxes of writing. So as I was pulling everything out,
Speaker 13: I was trying to decide, you know, what was what.
Speaker 13: And I came across this and I was like, oh,
Speaker 13: my gosh, like this is the story of all the kids.
Speaker 13: So it was pretty neat. And then I found Mom's
Speaker 13: notebook and I was like, oh, this is really cool
Speaker 13: that they both wrote the kids' stories.
Speaker 2: The Zeemans first started taking in kids living on the
Speaker 2: street when Heidi's sister Wendy started dating a boy named
Speaker 2: Mike Jason.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I've been on the streets when I was fourteen
Speaker 14: because my brother and I got didn't get along, so
Speaker 14: you know, I just felt like I was the black
Speaker 14: sheep of the family, so I left. I was scared
Speaker 14: I was going to die. Honestly, living on the streets,
Speaker 14: didn't know where you're going to eat. You wore the
Speaker 14: same clothes all the time, and uh, it was struggle.
Speaker 2: Heidi and Wendy's parents let Mike live with them, and
Speaker 2: then they start letting some of Mike's friends who also
Speaker 2: had nowhere else to go into their house.
Speaker 13: And then before you knew it, it was like, you know,
Speaker 13: there were so many kids and they just they would.
Speaker 2: Sleep wherever they could fit at the Zeeman's house, in
Speaker 2: the garage, on couches or on the living room floor.
Speaker 2: When they ran out of floor space and couch space,
Speaker 2: someone might sleep on the recliner.
Speaker 5: And then I kind of became part of the family.
Speaker 2: Rob Morales was one of the teens staying at the
Speaker 2: Zeeman house. Rob also went by spot because you had
Speaker 2: this one patch of white on a head full of
Speaker 2: black hair.
Speaker 5: I flipped on the couch because I didn't have any
Speaker 5: pits to go. Well, that's where I met Jeremy.
Speaker 2: It's the summer of nineteen eighty eight, the summer that
Speaker 2: Leo Schofield is arrested in charged with the murder of
Speaker 2: his wife Michelle. Jeremy Scott, homeless, finds his way into
Speaker 2: the Zeman House in Lakeland. He's nineteen years old now,
Speaker 2: but he's already had a couple of stints in state prison.
Speaker 2: Spot describes Jeremy as impulsive and violent.
Speaker 5: Usually every time you know, we met up, we're either
Speaker 5: getting into a fight with someone else, or you know,
Speaker 5: he was always the first to come to gun.
Speaker 15: He made me nervous.
Speaker 2: This is Tracy Slaughter that summer nineteen eighty eight. She's sixteen,
Speaker 2: she's dating Spot, and she and Wendy Zeeman are almost inseparable.
Speaker 15: That was the Death Leopard summer. And you walk around
Speaker 15: with your gray boombox and you keep slipping it back
Speaker 15: and forth. Wendy and I would walk and we would walk,
Speaker 15: and we would walk. We would walk everywhere. And you
Speaker 15: had to have your your Bouga Shelle necklace on, and
Speaker 15: you had to have your your black leather like a
Speaker 15: stretchy leer targ type pants that had looked like they
Speaker 15: were satiny looking, you know, and then some type of
Speaker 15: bright tangerine top or something like that. That was that summer,
Speaker 15: and I associate all of that with this.
Speaker 2: This is a summer Tracy would never forget. As Tracy's
Speaker 2: hanging out at the Zeeman house, she sees Jeremy coming
Speaker 2: and going with his friend Cheryl. Cheryl is about ten
Speaker 2: years older than Tracy, and she has a car. One night,
Speaker 2: Cheryl takes Tracy and Wendy Zeman out for a ride, So.
Speaker 15: We went and she bought a bottle of Segrum seven
Speaker 15: don't drink it.
Speaker 16: To this day.
Speaker 2: Then Cheryl says, we need to go pick up Jeremy,
Speaker 2: and that's what they do.
Speaker 15: I knew that I didn't want him to be there,
Speaker 15: that's all. That was just my feeling, because then Cheryl
Speaker 15: also let him drive, and we thought that was odd
Speaker 15: because she relinquished her vehicle over to him. And I
Speaker 15: remember when we stopt the be convenience storage by the
Speaker 15: second model of Seagram seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Jeremy drops off Wendy and Cheryl at the Zeman house.
Speaker 2: He drives off with Tracy for coffee to sober her
Speaker 2: up before taking.
Speaker 14: Her home, and then it all just went to help
Speaker 14: him there.
Speaker 2: Tracy tells me that instead of taking her home, Jeremy
Speaker 2: drives her to a wooded area off a two lane road.
Speaker 2: It's dark, there aren't any street lights, and very little traffic.
Speaker 2: She doesn't go into detail, but she makes it clear
Speaker 2: that Jeremy sexually assaulted her that night. She says she
Speaker 2: can remember laying in the sand on the side of
Speaker 2: the road and hearing a car drive by without stopping.
Speaker 15: I was sixteen years old, and then that was my
Speaker 15: welcome into the world.
Speaker 2: Around the same time, Heidie Zeman starts noticing that her
Speaker 2: sister Wendy is not really acting like herself.
Speaker 13: It was obvious there was something wrong.
Speaker 2: One day, Jeremy's in the house and the Zeman's here
Speaker 2: Wendy scream.
Speaker 13: He walked in on her one day in the shower
Speaker 13: and she ripped the shower curtain off and started screaming,
Speaker 13: and so, you know, we kind of knew that was
Speaker 13: such a violent reaction that she had to him. You know,
Speaker 13: you could tell something had happened.
Speaker 2: Wendy tells her mom that not long before the shower incident,
Speaker 2: Jeremy had raped her. Jeremy didn't want to be thrown
Speaker 2: out of the house, so we tried to keep Wendy quiet.
Speaker 13: From my understanding, he told her that if she if
Speaker 13: she told anybody, or if she did anything, he would
Speaker 13: kill her. And so I think she was just terrified
Speaker 13: fourteen year old girl.
Speaker 2: The Zeemans do kick Jeremy out of the house, and
Speaker 2: now they're left to figure out what to do next.
Speaker 2: They're devastated about what Jeremy did to Wendy, but the
Speaker 2: Zeemans as a family, basically decide that they were not
Speaker 2: going to report Jeremy's sexual assault. They just didn't want
Speaker 2: to expose their fourteen year old daughter to an investigation
Speaker 2: in a trial. And Wendy Zeman wouldn't seem to recover
Speaker 2: from the trauma that happened so early in her life.
Speaker 4: What did she do afterwards?
Speaker 13: She never did anything after that. She never went back
Speaker 13: to school, she was never ablem beholding job. She got
Speaker 13: to the point where she didn't want to leave the house.
Speaker 13: I mean, she was just so paranoid about everything and everybody,
Speaker 13: and it just got worse through the years.
Speaker 2: And then there's Tracy.
Speaker 15: If I say that something I did today was because
Speaker 15: of him, I'm allowing him to control my life, and
Speaker 15: I'm allowing him to attack me and be ugly to me.
Speaker 15: Every single time that I allow him to take part
Speaker 15: of my life, I'm not giving him. He's gotten all
Speaker 15: for me, he's ever getting from me.
Speaker 2: After Jeremy sexually assaulted her, she stopped talking to her
Speaker 2: best friend Wendy and stopped going to the Zeeman's house.
Speaker 2: She just wanted to move on. Tracy still lives in
Speaker 2: Polk County. She's got her own children now, and I
Speaker 2: got the impression that she's happily married and doing well.
Speaker 2: Her friend, Wendy Zemon wasn't so lucky. Her mental and
Speaker 2: physical health continued to decline, and she died of heart
Speaker 2: failure in twenty fifteen at the age of forty one.
Speaker 2: Tracy had no idea that Wendy had her own traumatic
Speaker 2: experience with Jeremy Scott. We were the ones to break
Speaker 2: the news to her more than three decades later.
Speaker 15: I felt bad after you told me that Wendy had
Speaker 15: passed and stuff like that. I was like, maybe I
Speaker 15: should have continued being her friend. I didn't know that
Speaker 15: he affected her, and she didn't know he affected me,
Speaker 15: so you know what I mean. So I kind of
Speaker 15: felt I still kind of feel like shit, but there's
Speaker 15: none I can do about it. It is what it
Speaker 15: is at this point.
Speaker 2: So the Ziemans had their hearts in the right place.
Speaker 2: According to their youngest daughter, Heidi, her parents did make
Speaker 2: a difference in the lives of some of the kids,
Speaker 2: like Spott, who had a successful military career, and returned
Speaker 2: to Lakeland to thank mister and missus Zemon for all
Speaker 2: their help. But some of the throwaway kids that went
Speaker 2: through the Zeeman house weren't as lucky as spot. Many
Speaker 2: of the ended up dead or in prison, and the
Speaker 2: Zeeman's older daughter, Wendy, paid the price for her parents'
Speaker 2: good intentions. Mister Zeeman died a year after his daughter Wendy.
Speaker 2: His younger daughter, Heidi, went through his possessions and she
Speaker 2: came across all of his papers and writing, as well
Speaker 2: as the journal he was keeping back in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 13: So he starts off with the kids who passed away. Yeah,
Speaker 13: so he starts off with Harry, which she was so
Speaker 13: attached to Harry.
Speaker 16: So Aaron Louis.
Speaker 2: Mister and Missus Zemon tried to keep track of them
Speaker 2: all to record some details about each life. To them,
Speaker 2: they weren't throwaways, they were children who had fallen through
Speaker 2: the cracks.
Speaker 13: And then this is the part, like I said, that
Speaker 13: talks about Jeremy. When he talks about Jeremy, he even says,
Speaker 13: I'm not going to give him his own story because
Speaker 13: I'm not going to give him the satisfaction of giving
Speaker 13: him his own story because of what he did.
Speaker 2: In his journal, mister Zieman acknowledges Jeremy's troubled life, but
Speaker 2: he also goes on to say that Jeremy, upset about
Speaker 2: being kicked out of the house, cut the brakes on
Speaker 2: Missus Zeeman's car, But mister Zeeman writes that murder attempt
Speaker 2: was not successful. After Jeremy Scott left so much destruction
Speaker 2: in his wake, he took off with another boy who
Speaker 2: was living at the Ziemans. His name is Larry Bryan Hall,
Speaker 2: but he goes by Brian for a little while. Brian
Speaker 2: moves into a small place with Wendy's ex boyfriend Mike.
Speaker 14: Jeremy and him were what he's going off in the
Speaker 14: evening at nighttime when Brian stayed at my place.
Speaker 2: Mike seems concerned because he knew Brian could easily get
Speaker 2: caught up with the wrong people like Jeremy.
Speaker 14: He was trying to figure out how to survive, and
Speaker 14: he followed people. I just think he didn't know any better.
Speaker 14: He would just do whatever somebody said to do.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 14: That was one of the things Brian told me. He
Speaker 14: said he was scared of him.
Speaker 2: Brian eventually moves out of Mike's apartment and goes off
Speaker 2: with Jeremy. But Jeremy and Brian have nowhere to live.
Speaker 2: They're staying wherever they can, sometimes in abandoned buildings. They
Speaker 2: start breaking into houses together. Spots still in the area too,
Speaker 2: and he hears the Jeremy and Brian are hanging out
Speaker 2: in downtown Lakeland at night around Lake Morton.
Speaker 5: Okay, well, Late Morton used to be a oh I
Speaker 5: gotta put this a gay pickup zone.
Speaker 17: Oh, okay, so that was I hate to get graphic.
Speaker 2: It's okay, it's okay.
Speaker 5: So at that time, what happened was anybody that was
Speaker 5: looking to get money, you would hang out at the
Speaker 5: lake at night, and then somebody would drive around the
Speaker 5: lake and if they flashed their lights, that meant that
Speaker 5: they were looking. And then you would flash your lights,
Speaker 5: which meant that, yes, you were available, so they would
Speaker 5: do whatever they wanted, you know, and then they'd pay
Speaker 5: you forty or fifty bucks. And then if you stayed
Speaker 5: out there long enough, you know, you can get you know,
Speaker 5: three or four people at night.
Speaker 9: So he was kind of a hustler.
Speaker 2: Yes, according to Spot, Jeremy was targeting gay men, usually
Speaker 2: he'd rob them, and these men were not likely to
Speaker 2: contact law enforcement, not if they had to explain to
Speaker 2: police why they were cruising around Lake Morton. This is
Speaker 2: what Jeremy and Brian were up to on Halloween night
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight. It's about three am and they're hanging
Speaker 2: out by the lake. Jeremy's been drinking and they call
Speaker 2: a middle aged gay man named Donald Morehead. Jeremy's been
Speaker 2: with him before, and Donald drives over to pick the
Speaker 2: two teenagers up in his Chevy Bretta. He brings Brian
Speaker 2: and Jeremy back to his trailer in Lakeland. They're drinking
Speaker 2: and smoking, and Donald ends up falling asleep naked in
Speaker 2: a rocking chair.
Speaker 11: But the robbery, everything just happened, been such a even
Speaker 11: after all these years, still uncomfortable to you and talk about.
Speaker 2: Here's Brian Hall. He's serving a life sentence at Hardy
Speaker 2: Correctional Institution. He's thin, sunken eyes, and graying hair. He
Speaker 2: tells us what happened in the trailer with Jeremy.
Speaker 11: Waited until Donald was asleep and was looking for money
Speaker 11: and things in the house or the trailer, and then
Speaker 11: the last thing I was expecting was that he was
Speaker 11: gonna kill him.
Speaker 2: Brian didn't go into great detail, but according to the
Speaker 2: testimony he gave in court, here's what happened. Jeremy woke
Speaker 2: Brian up early in the morning on November first. He
Speaker 2: was searching Donald's trailer for cash. Jeremy tells Brian that
Speaker 2: they'll need to kill Donald so he doesn't turn them in.
Speaker 2: And then Jeremy picks up a glass bottle of grape
Speaker 2: juice and repeatedly hits Donald over the head with it.
Speaker 2: Donald slumps out of the rocking chair, but is making
Speaker 2: some gurgling noises, so Jeremy strangles him with a telephone cord.
Speaker 2: Jeremy then wipes down the grape juice bottle and places
Speaker 2: it back in the fridge. Brian Hall is the only
Speaker 2: person we know of who actually saw Jeremy Scott kill someone.
Speaker 11: And he did it in such a way that this
Speaker 11: seemed like you had swat a fly. Just just didn't
Speaker 11: seem to have any concern or conscience on it.
Speaker 2: What were you thinking while you were sitting there and
Speaker 2: watching this happen.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 11: Just like an out of body experience. I was just
Speaker 11: in fear of seeing something that you didn't think someone
Speaker 11: was capable of doing It was just a side of
Speaker 11: him that I didn't see. Sometimes you find out more
Speaker 11: and more as time goes on about people that you
Speaker 11: never knew. You never knew him like you thought you
Speaker 11: knew him.
Speaker 2: After killing Donald, Brian and Jeremy steal his Chevy. They
Speaker 2: take off to a town called Davenport, about thirty miles
Speaker 2: east in Polk County. Jeremy's mother and stepfather live there,
Speaker 2: and his brother lived close by. But when a police
Speaker 2: helicopter starts circling over the neighborhood, Jeremy runs off into
Speaker 2: the woods. Deputies are in pursuit now, and Jeremy surrenders.
Speaker 2: He leads them to his mom's trailer, where Brian is sleeping.
Speaker 2: The two teenagers are arrested and taken into custody in
Speaker 2: early November of nineteen eighty eight. By this time, Leo
Speaker 2: Schofield is sitting in the Polk County jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 2: The same prosecutor in Leo's case is assigned to prosecute
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott and Brian Hall. The man with the electric
Speaker 2: chair tie clip. Assistant State Attorney John Aguero. Aguero offers
Speaker 2: Brian a deal. He says he'll take the death penalty
Speaker 2: off the table if Brian testifies to what he saw
Speaker 2: Jeremy do. Brian takes the deal. He's sentenced to life
Speaker 2: in prison and testifies against Jeremy. The jury recommends life
Speaker 2: in prison for Jeremy, but Aguero convinces the judge to
Speaker 2: override the jury's recommendation. The judge agrees, and Jeremy Scott
Speaker 2: is sentenced to death. A reporter for the Tampa Tribune
Speaker 2: is sitting in the courtroom watching Jeremy as the sentence
Speaker 2: is read. She writes that she sees Jeremy, who is
Speaker 2: handcuffed with his legs shackled, glance back at his crying grandmother.
Speaker 2: As Jeremy is led away, he too begins to cry.
Speaker 2: Smokey Johnson was also in the courtroom during sentencing. Smokey
Speaker 2: is convinced Jeremy got away with killing his mother, Juel
Speaker 2: Johnson and four years prior, so he shows up at
Speaker 2: Jeremy's hearing for satisfaction, he says. Smokey tells the reporter
Speaker 2: what goes around comes around. A few years later, the
Speaker 2: Florida Supreme Court overturns Jeremy's death sentence, citing factors such
Speaker 2: as his borderline intelligence, emotional instability, and a childhood rife
Speaker 2: with abuse. So, at twenty three years old, Jeremy comes
Speaker 2: off death row and begins serving a life sentence for
Speaker 2: the murder of Donald Morehead without any possibility for parole.
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott is now locked up for good.
Speaker 1: So I picked up the telephone and I contacted Polk
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 2: It's two thousand and four. Jeremy and Leo have both
Speaker 2: been serving more than fifteen years in prison. When Cinda
Speaker 2: Williams finds out the fingerprints in Michelle Schofield's car match
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott sind de seize Jeremy's rap sheet, theft, assault, arson, vagrancy, burglary.
Speaker 2: The list goes on topped off by two first degree murders,
Speaker 2: acquitted of one, convicted of the other.
Speaker 1: And so I spoke to a sergeant and I told him, listen,
Speaker 1: this is something that has come to light here. I
Speaker 1: understand it is not you know, our jurisdiction or our investigation,
Speaker 1: but I need to give you this information because I
Speaker 1: feel it's important. This print was run. It came back
Speaker 1: to an individual named Jeremy Scott. I think you guys
Speaker 1: need to probably look at this. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you've ever looked at it before. Here's the information.
Speaker 2: Then she calls Leo's wife, Chrissy.
Speaker 16: I couldn't believe it. I was expecting a tow truck
Speaker 16: driver and instead they match a killer.
Speaker 17: Realistically, what would the case look like had this state
Speaker 17: known it at the time.
Speaker 2: Scott Kupp hears the news from his wife Cinda that night,
Speaker 2: and he's thinking from a legal perspective that Leo would
Speaker 2: never be in prison if these prints in Michelle Schofield's
Speaker 2: Mazda had been properly investigated back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 17: This prosecutor, this police agency, they knew all too well
Speaker 17: about who Jeremy Scott was, and if part of their
Speaker 17: initial investigation was the identity of those prints to Jeremy Scott,
Speaker 17: that's where the investigation would have gone. I mean, Aguerra
Speaker 17: was a good prosecutor. I mean he convicted Leo with nothing.
Speaker 17: Imagine what he could have done with Jeremy Scott.
Speaker 2: After getting a match on the fingerprints. There's a celebratory dinner.
Speaker 2: That's what Chrissy's up to. When she gets a call
Speaker 2: from Leo, she doesn't want to tell him anything on
Speaker 2: the phone, though she's going to visit him in the morning.
Speaker 2: She wants to tell him in person, so instead she
Speaker 2: hands the phone over to Scott Cup. Cup had been
Speaker 2: trying to stay out of Leo's case. He'd only agreed
Speaker 2: to represent Chrissy, but now he sees that there's evidence
Speaker 2: someone else may have killed Michelle. Until this moment, Leo
Speaker 2: and Cupp had never spoken before, and now Cup can't
Speaker 2: hide his excitement.
Speaker 18: He says to me, I'm going to get you out
Speaker 18: of there in ninety days, buddy, my wife was giddy.
Speaker 18: He was giddy, and this is my mom's feeling.
Speaker 17: I magravated the shit.
Speaker 18: I'm like, you gotta fucking be kidding me, you know,
Speaker 18: he sounds half lit. I'm in a prison and my
Speaker 18: emotions are now exploding.
Speaker 2: The next morning, Chrissy comes to the prison and meets
Speaker 2: with Leo in the visitation room.
Speaker 16: So I sit down and I say, we have a
Speaker 16: match on the fingerprints and give him a name. And
Speaker 16: at the time, I didn't realize how difficult that was
Speaker 16: going to be for him. It was very painful. His
Speaker 16: first reaction was to put his head down and cry.
Speaker 18: I've had this mantle of a murderer on my shoulders
Speaker 18: for all these years, you know, And to come out
Speaker 18: and say, we got the guy's we got him. He's
Speaker 18: forensically linked, we know who it is.
Speaker 16: He's a murderer, and.
Speaker 18: All this other stuff, and I'm saying, that's the guy
Speaker 18: who murdered my life, you know what I mean.
Speaker 17: So there was so much.
Speaker 18: It's just it was an explosion of stuff and I
Speaker 18: got I was, I was, I was really mad, and
Speaker 18: it took me some days too long.
Speaker 17: To get control of.
Speaker 2: When Sindon notifies the Polk County Sheriff's Office about the Prince,
Speaker 2: a new investigation into Jeremy Scott is opened. Two cold
Speaker 2: case detectives from the Polk County Sheriff's Office are sent
Speaker 2: to interview Jeremy in prison. They tell him that his
Speaker 2: prints were found inside the car of Michelle Schofield, who
Speaker 2: was murdered eighteen years ago. They asked Jeremy what he knows.
Speaker 2: Jeremy says he doesn't know anything about a murder, but
Speaker 2: if his fingerprints are in the car, maybe he'd broken
Speaker 2: into it. He tells them he must have stolen a
Speaker 2: half dozen car stereos while he was living on the streets,
Speaker 2: but he's clearly shaken. Soon after the detectives leave, Jeremy
Speaker 2: calls the only person he's in contact with outside of prison,
Speaker 2: his grandmother, Arlene, and this call is recorded by the
Speaker 2: Florida Department of Corrections.
Speaker 18: Grandma, I want you to listen carefully.
Speaker 19: All right, all right, I'm listening.
Speaker 5: Has anybody come tward to you?
Speaker 19: What murder? Murder?
Speaker 5: Murder?
Speaker 19: Who got murdered some girl back in eighty seven, eighty seven.
Speaker 18: When we lived on Combe Road.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they said they found the girl's body in the lake.
Speaker 19: Lor right, Well just tell them you don't know nothing,
Speaker 19: and I ain't seen nothing, heard nothing, and just leave
Speaker 19: you alone for they coming back. Grandma, Well just tell
Speaker 19: him you don't know nothing. But they call him back, Grandma.
Speaker 19: They ain't got no proof, so they got all that
Speaker 19: could have been anybody too, right, What I mean, m
Speaker 19: damn cops. All they do is frame vapl Oh Lord,
Speaker 19: they're prom stupid. I hate god damn cops. Son of
Speaker 19: a pictures. I hate them, girl, they come to get me.
Speaker 2: Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 2: in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Jason Flam and Kevin Wordiskaen Krnhaber is our senior producer.
Speaker 2: Brit Spangler is our sound designer. Roxandra Greedy is our editor.
Speaker 2: Fact checking by Maximo Anderson. Our producer and researcher is
Speaker 2: Kelsey Decker. Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars,
Speaker 2: is performed by Lee Bob and The Truth. It was
Speaker 2: written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hardy
Speaker 2: Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is written and produced by me
Speaker 2: Gilbert King. You can follow the show on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 2: and Twitter at Lava for Good. To see photos and
Speaker 2: documents from our investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content,
Speaker 2: visit Lava Forgood dot com slash Bone Valley