Speaker 1: The more I talk to Justin, the more it was
Speaker 1: clear he wanted to talk to his dad.
Speaker 2: I just feel like at this point in time, since
Speaker 2: he's already opening up and so I feel like we're
Speaker 2: both writing talk to each other the way.
Speaker 3: Well, I would honestly say it's true. I mean, he
Speaker 3: does talk a lot about his family.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I explained to Justin that Jeremy was on lockdown.
Speaker 3: We've been corresponding with him. I'll just tell you right now,
Speaker 3: he's in sort of in like solitary confinement right now.
Speaker 1: And Jeremy's life was still marked by chaos and violence
Speaker 1: even in prison. At the time. I was the only
Speaker 1: one writing and talking to him.
Speaker 5: He does feel kind of lonely. It's been only recently.
Speaker 1: He was no longer getting any letters from anyone in
Speaker 1: his family. He would say to me, you're the only
Speaker 1: person I talked to, the only person. Jeremy said that
Speaker 1: to me multiple times.
Speaker 2: When he said that no one wrote, I was like, damn,
Speaker 2: because I ain't gonna lie. I got a letter from
Speaker 2: him before. I don't remember what it says.
Speaker 6: I don't have it.
Speaker 2: Well, I never put that effort in.
Speaker 1: I found myself in an unusual position, the bridge between
Speaker 1: a multiple murderer and the thirty five year old son
Speaker 1: he'd never met. I never thought I'd end up here,
Speaker 1: So I want to tell you the story of how
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 4: My man man left to have my face s steps, sir.
Speaker 4: In this vally Sation rage.
Speaker 7: Des fish to the world, things, stuff, soldings.
Speaker 4: Stuff.
Speaker 1: Bone Valley Season two, Jeremy chapter three never turned her
Speaker 1: back on me. Well before Justin reached out to me.
Speaker 1: I got a mid night email from Jeremy. Mister King,
Speaker 1: I have no hard feelings towards you or to society.
Speaker 1: I'll make this short. This will be my last time
Speaker 1: writing to you. The monster in me is coming alive
Speaker 1: one last time. Hope everything works out for you. Goodbye.
Speaker 1: After I got that cryptic message, I didn't hear from
Speaker 1: him again for a while.
Speaker 5: I had no idea where he was.
Speaker 1: Finally I learned he'd been transferred to a different prison,
Speaker 1: and that's when we found out that he'd gotten into
Speaker 1: some kind of trouble.
Speaker 8: This is an inspector paget regarding a an aggravated battery
Speaker 8: that occurred.
Speaker 1: I was able to get the report on the incident
Speaker 1: from the Florida Department of Corrections in a recording of
Speaker 1: the interview.
Speaker 5: With the victim, and who is this inmate?
Speaker 4: Okay, so you woke up to him stabbing you?
Speaker 8: Where was he stabbing you at?
Speaker 5: Okay?
Speaker 4: So he started multiple times? Okay.
Speaker 1: The critical incident summary from the corrections officer on duty
Speaker 1: that night is also heavily redacted. It says, after reviewing
Speaker 1: camera footage, inmate Scott could be seen entering the bathroom
Speaker 1: and retrieving the weapon and approaching inmate Blank's bunk as
Speaker 1: he slept, and proceeded to carry out the assault by
Speaker 1: stabbing inmate Blank numerous times. Inmate Blank was stabbed by
Speaker 1: inmate Jeremy Scott with an improvised ice pick style weapon.
Speaker 1: The inmate that he stabbed survived and was transported to
Speaker 1: a hospital, and Jeremy was put in immediate confinement. It
Speaker 1: was months later, after I found out Jeremy had been
Speaker 1: transferred to a different prison, that I got this letter.
Speaker 1: Dear mister King, I hope you are doing well. As
Speaker 1: for myself, I'm still alive.
Speaker 5: And he's got the exclamation point there.
Speaker 8: He says, I had some trouble. It's all fucked up.
Speaker 8: I don't have shit not even deodorant. I get one
Speaker 8: free letter once a month. Please get back to me
Speaker 8: as soon as you can. Thanks, Jeremy L.
Speaker 3: Scott.
Speaker 1: Jeremy was in solitary confinement at Florida State Prison, and
Speaker 1: at first he could only receive letters, but after a
Speaker 1: few months he was allowed two free telephone.
Speaker 5: Calls a week, one for five minutes and one for
Speaker 5: thirty Hello.
Speaker 6: This is a prepaid call from an inmate at a
Speaker 6: Florida Department of Corrections institutions.
Speaker 1: Jeremy was living alone in a cell sharing a floor
Speaker 1: with other inmates who were also in disciplinary confinement. They
Speaker 1: call it close management or CM. An officer brings the
Speaker 1: phone to him in his cell he can hear me.
Speaker 1: At first, we just talked about how he was holding
Speaker 1: up in solitary.
Speaker 6: OK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good, I just didn't He started calling me almost
Speaker 1: every week.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I also wanted to let you know. I looked
Speaker 6: into the tablet too, and.
Speaker 1: After a while I asked him to tell me about
Speaker 1: the stabbing incident.
Speaker 6: He wrote me a note and said that they might
Speaker 6: lock you up for a while.
Speaker 9: Well, I told you that because that stabbing I did
Speaker 9: already hit on me and I found out about.
Speaker 1: It He said he'd gotten into trouble with some inmates,
Speaker 1: found out someone had put a hit on him and
Speaker 1: that he was in immediate danger.
Speaker 6: How'd you find out that he was coming after you?
Speaker 9: Work is round, you know, and all they got to
Speaker 9: do is said cold.
Speaker 1: Inmates at different prisons send coded messages to each other.
Speaker 2: In prison.
Speaker 1: Jeremy claims that another inmate in his dorm with a
Speaker 1: contraband phone had seen a code numbers or an emoji
Speaker 1: or something with Jeremy's picture, and Jeremy said he'd been
Speaker 1: in prison long enough to know what that meant.
Speaker 5: He was a marked man.
Speaker 9: They knew while I was coming. They knew, well, well,
Speaker 9: I looked like everything.
Speaker 1: Jeremy said, he knew the guy that was supposed to.
Speaker 9: Come after him, and I know who his dud was, right,
Speaker 9: And when I heard what you're going to do?
Speaker 2: Right, I just smacked him.
Speaker 1: He said he was just laying there with one eye
Speaker 1: open until the guy.
Speaker 9: Fell asleep, because I know he'd wait for me to
Speaker 9: go to sleep, right, I'll hy away, so I know
Speaker 9: it was something going to happen. It was going down, you.
Speaker 2: Know, by me being in prison all these years, I
Speaker 2: ain't stupid.
Speaker 5: This is Jeremy's side of the story. Anyway.
Speaker 1: There's video of Jeremy getting up from his bunk and
Speaker 1: going into the bathroom. He grabbed the weapon, went over
Speaker 1: to the bunk where his would be attacker had fallen asleep.
Speaker 1: He started stabbing him. The feeling I got from Jeremy
Speaker 1: about this is that he wasn't proud of what he did,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't ashamed of it. He was telling me
Speaker 1: I had to do this to survive in here, and
Speaker 1: he said, I stabbed him, but I.
Speaker 5: Didn't kill him.
Speaker 9: I could ask acutey, I could have could have put.
Speaker 2: It right in his heart.
Speaker 1: When I got that note from Jeremy that the monster
Speaker 1: was coming alive one more time, it was terrifying. And
Speaker 1: then to learn that he actually waited in the dark
Speaker 1: in his prison dorm for someone to fall asleep so
Speaker 1: he could stab him, it made me a little sick.
Speaker 5: Just what am I doing?
Speaker 1: Why do I stay in touch with him? Up to
Speaker 1: this point, most of my communication with Jeremy had been pragmatic.
Speaker 1: I wrote to him with questions and sent him a
Speaker 1: few stamps. He wrote me back with information that helped
Speaker 1: confirm he was the man who murdered Leo Schofield's wife.
Speaker 1: Now I was talking to him every week, sometimes twice,
Speaker 1: and about all kinds of things. It used to be
Speaker 1: that the only phone calls I got from prison were
Speaker 1: from Leo. Leo was the person at the center of
Speaker 1: this story. Leo was the guy I kept in touch with.
Speaker 1: Now I started to worry what would Leo think of
Speaker 1: my recent telephone calls with the man who confessed to
Speaker 1: murdering Michelle. The first time I talked to Leo about
Speaker 1: the fact that I was continuing a dialogue with Jeremy Scott.
Speaker 1: It wasn't really sure how Leo would feel, but Leo
Speaker 1: told me Gilbert, I'm proud of you.
Speaker 10: We're out the truth, you know, and he's the one
Speaker 10: that supplied the truth, you know. But I would really
Speaker 10: like him to know and feel that myself and those
Speaker 10: who represent me are, you know, concerned for his well
Speaker 10: being as well.
Speaker 1: Jeremy continued to help me corroborate that his account of
Speaker 1: what he'd done to Michelle was the truth, that Leo
Speaker 1: was innocent, and one of my letters to them, I wrote,
Speaker 1: You've been so helpful to me and my investigation, and
Speaker 1: I think you could help me understand a few more
Speaker 1: things that I'm still not very clear on. In our calls,
Speaker 1: he would answer most of my questions.
Speaker 6: You know what I want to ask you something. Jamie
Speaker 6: said that you used to hang out behind the mall,
Speaker 6: the Lakeland Mall.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's we created what was that there?
Speaker 6: Like benches or something like where'd you hang out in
Speaker 6: our cars?
Speaker 10: You know?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 1: Florida prosecutor once advised me that if I want this
Speaker 1: reporting a one day exonerate Leo, I need to prove that.
Speaker 5: Jeremy Scott is credible. So that's one reason I.
Speaker 1: Wanted to keep my conversations with Jeremy going about Michelle
Speaker 1: and about another murder.
Speaker 5: He told me he committed.
Speaker 2: You know, we did get here of this music, you know,
Speaker 2: and we got beer or something, you know.
Speaker 6: And that is that the Jeremy, Is that the same
Speaker 6: place that you hit the gun?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And Jeremy was giving me good information. I was
Speaker 1: able to source it and corroborate it with gards I had.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why I hate that gun. Eh.
Speaker 9: Yeah, she would. She wouldn't looking for it, couldn't find it.
Speaker 9: When I saw her looking as sore she lives, I
Speaker 9: went and got it, moved it. Yeah, I knew somebody
Speaker 9: somebody had saw him.
Speaker 11: And put it there.
Speaker 1: In one of his letters to me, it's clear Jeremy
Speaker 1: was still thinking about Michelle. He wrote, they know Leo
Speaker 1: didn't do it. Hell, he been locked up for thirty
Speaker 1: five years. The state don't want people to really know.
Speaker 1: During the course of my conversations with Jeremy, Leo was
Speaker 1: finally able to get out of prison. He wasn't exonerated.
Speaker 1: He was still a convicted felon in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the state, but he was paroled and he was now
Speaker 1: in a half way house in Tampa. So I told
Speaker 1: Jeremy about it and told him Leo believes that a
Speaker 1: big part of why he's out is because of you
Speaker 1: and your willingness to be honest about what you'd done.
Speaker 1: Jeremy didn't say much, but I could tell he felt
Speaker 1: like he'd done something good. It was a strange place
Speaker 1: for me to be in between these two guys, both
Speaker 1: of them caring.
Speaker 5: About each other in a way.
Speaker 1: It's what gave me permission to continue the conversations, even
Speaker 1: when they weren't explicitly about the cases I was investigating.
Speaker 6: Hello, Hello, Hey, oh, Jeremy, you're there.
Speaker 1: He always seemed to call when I was at the office,
Speaker 1: so I'd see it pop up on my phone saying Rayford, Hey,
Speaker 1: good to hear from you. I always picked it up
Speaker 1: if I saw it, I just say, all right, half
Speaker 1: hour time for Jeremy.
Speaker 6: You don't have any glasses right now?
Speaker 9: No, I'll borrow my knick door neighbors glasses.
Speaker 6: Okay, Now we got to get you some new glasses.
Speaker 6: If Gus hurt my eyes, oh yeah, that's not good.
Speaker 6: You gotta get the right ones.
Speaker 1: From the very start, I was excited to get his calls.
Speaker 6: All right, can you hear me?
Speaker 5: Like, wow, all right, this is going to be interesting.
Speaker 6: What's the name of that author again? Just just spell
Speaker 6: it out again?
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: Well, he talked a lot about how in solitary reading
Speaker 1: is the only thing I can do. If I don't
Speaker 1: have any books, all I can do is sit.
Speaker 5: Here and think.
Speaker 1: And I know those were really dark moments for him.
Speaker 2: So he would tell me what he likes to read,
Speaker 2: all right, Mark, his last name is g R.
Speaker 10: E A E Y.
Speaker 1: So I started sending him paperbacks.
Speaker 6: Okay, great, okay, good, And he.
Speaker 1: Likes James Patterson and Stephen King. He likes some Western writers.
Speaker 1: I send him Game of Thrones.
Speaker 9: It don't make no sense how they kill all them
Speaker 9: kids of like that I know.
Speaker 7: And now the only one that left is is.
Speaker 9: The two girls and yeah, one little boy. Yeah, and
Speaker 9: they cripple in the cripple Key, which he's gonna become
Speaker 9: some mills.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he becomes a really big part of it.
Speaker 1: Later, I was mostly sending things that my kids had read,
Speaker 1: because Jeremy had only gone through the fourth grade in school.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to just keep sending him the same authors,
Speaker 1: so I sent him The Hunger Games to mix things
Speaker 1: up for him.
Speaker 9: Remember that serious you sent me? Yeah, that was pretty
Speaker 9: That was a pretty good series too, told me they
Speaker 9: got it on a TV too.
Speaker 6: Oh really, I didn't even know that. I'll check it out.
Speaker 1: Books have a way of building empathy. They let you
Speaker 1: step into someone else's life for a little while, and
Speaker 1: I wanted Jeremy to experience that too, to escape the
Speaker 1: reality of being locked in a prison cell, even for
Speaker 1: a moment. I could see how reading relaxed him, how
Speaker 1: it opened him up. Our conversations became more honest, and
Speaker 1: as I got to know this side of Jeremy. I
Speaker 1: started to see him differently. The more we talked, the
Speaker 1: more I understood he didn't want to be the violent
Speaker 1: person he'd been in the past. He wanted to be better.
Speaker 1: Maybe just by talking with him, I could help him
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 9: Books pretty good. I still want to read the rest
Speaker 9: of them, Will the Will the Time series, But man's
Speaker 9: a lot. That's a lot of books there. They got
Speaker 9: eighteen books in that series.
Speaker 10: Really, I think I only read five of them so far.
Speaker 10: I think, yeah, but.
Speaker 2: One, two, three, four, and five.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you're going in order then, okay.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Ever since I came back over here, like everything's been
Speaker 9: going wrong for me.
Speaker 2: I can't gas for no reason. They spraying that pepper spray.
Speaker 10: They ain't doing nothing.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Jeremy was in a really, really dark place, and
Speaker 1: when I pick up the phone, I recognize that today would.
Speaker 5: Just be a listening day.
Speaker 2: Now my ship has stolen and and and it gotta
Speaker 2: be something. That's something going on, some kind of something's
Speaker 2: going on here. I don't want to stand this year.
Speaker 8: I gotta go to medical.
Speaker 9: I gotta get I gotta get a chest run on
Speaker 9: me because I got.
Speaker 2: I got a not in my stomach.
Speaker 1: He was having some real health problems, losing a lot
Speaker 1: of weight.
Speaker 9: And I asked the male nurse about it. Right, he say,
Speaker 9: he's said it could be it could be a hernia, right,
Speaker 9: or it could be a tumor.
Speaker 6: Is rais on your stomach because it's really low or higher.
Speaker 9: It's it's like that, not it's like it's right. It's
Speaker 9: like maybe two inches above my navel.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's right there, right in the middle of my cut, okay.
Speaker 6: And it hurts when I touch it, oh ship, all right?
Speaker 2: And when when I lay down.
Speaker 9: I can see I can see my ribs cages.
Speaker 12: Oh man, Jeremy, are they like you see a doctor?
Speaker 12: Are they gonna get you to see a doctor?
Speaker 9: They're gonna I don't like to do it now because
Speaker 9: you know they they they they charge you five dollars
Speaker 9: every time you go up there to see a doctor.
Speaker 9: And you know they're gonna charge a five dollars. His
Speaker 9: nurse and she's gonna write it on this. She put
Speaker 9: a report into the doctor. Then you gotta wait a
Speaker 9: couple of weeks, maybe a month, you know, see your
Speaker 9: name pops up, you know, hey.
Speaker 6: They can have nobody, you know, yeah, yeah, oh man,
Speaker 6: all right, that's horrible.
Speaker 1: At the time I was getting all these phone calls
Speaker 1: from Jeremy, I found out that for the first time
Speaker 1: he'd found someone on the inside that he could trust.
Speaker 6: Hey, sorry, okay, cool, I'm so glad you called me, Zach.
Speaker 6: How you doing that?
Speaker 5: I'm yeah, Actually, this is Oscar Smith.
Speaker 1: Turns out Oscar went to theological school with Leo while
Speaker 1: they were both at Hardy CI.
Speaker 11: On the front Road. He actually sat next to me
Speaker 11: right in front of the class the first It's.
Speaker 1: A class that you can get a degree from within
Speaker 1: the prison. From what I understand, Oscar and Leo graduated
Speaker 1: at the top of their class.
Speaker 11: Eventually, of course, became almost inseparable wherever you see.
Speaker 1: After Leo got released, some of the graduates were spread
Speaker 1: throughout the prison system to serve as pastors for other inmates.
Speaker 1: Oscar was transferred up to Florida State Prison where Jeremy was.
Speaker 11: Somebody asked who we were, so I was explaining to
Speaker 11: them who we were, as film ministers, and.
Speaker 1: He mentions that he came from Hardy CI.
Speaker 11: And then I heard a voice and he said, you
Speaker 11: guys are from Hardy and I kind of looked over
Speaker 11: then I said yeah, and he asked me, he said,
Speaker 11: do you know Leo Schofield And I said, yes, me
Speaker 11: and they were pretty close, and he goes, I'm Jeremy
Speaker 11: Scott Oscar.
Speaker 1: Knows exactly who this is. He's very familiar with Leo's case.
Speaker 11: And I'm like, I'm looking at him in the wing
Speaker 11: that he's in. It's all open sale. It's just like
Speaker 11: open bars, so I actually can see him.
Speaker 10: Face to face.
Speaker 11: The really the only thing that stands between me and
Speaker 11: him is just some steel bars. At the time, I
Speaker 11: was like, CROs my heart, just thank I paused for
Speaker 11: a minute and I said, actually, I know quite a
Speaker 11: bit about you, sir, and I said I've talked to Leo.
Speaker 10: I said, I know who you are.
Speaker 11: He was like okay. And the next thing he told me,
Speaker 11: he said, listen, Leo's innocent. He goes, I killed his
Speaker 11: wife and now nobody wants to listen.
Speaker 9: He said you Jeremy's cut said, asked me right, and
Speaker 9: shug Miami. He was one of the ones that worked
Speaker 9: with Leo over there.
Speaker 1: Jeremy was impressed that somebody close to Leo was still
Speaker 1: willing to talk to him and be kind to him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there was a lot of guys praying for you,
Speaker 6: including you know, Leo obviously.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember thinking like this is a relief in
Speaker 1: a way that now there's someone on the inside who
Speaker 1: can keep an eye on Jeremy.
Speaker 6: How did he look to you when you first saw him.
Speaker 11: He's he's thinned, you know. I mean anytime Uran confinement
Speaker 11: or something like that, there's a tendency of losing weight
Speaker 11: just because the trays that come back there aren't always
Speaker 11: the best trays. You know, the breads, you know, laying
Speaker 11: in beans and so it's all mushy and stoppy, and
Speaker 11: so you know, it's just yeah, so you have a
Speaker 11: tendency to eat less. So I mean he was thin,
Speaker 11: looked frail. You know, he seemed to be in decent spirits.
Speaker 11: You know, it wasn't like he was really distraught or
Speaker 11: anything else like that.
Speaker 1: But I mean Oscar told me that once a week
Speaker 1: he goes up on that wing and talks to Jeremy.
Speaker 11: I walked up there two weeks ago and he had
Speaker 11: a gash on his head. He was literally bleeding from
Speaker 11: his head and I'm looking at Jeremy and he was frazzed. Well,
Speaker 11: it kind of had tears in his eyes. He had
Speaker 11: a split basically on his forehead, but a little bit
Speaker 11: more towards the top of his head. And so I
Speaker 11: knew there was something going on. You know, they can't
Speaker 11: reach one another or they can't do whatever. So I
Speaker 11: don't know if it was self inflicted, because he was
Speaker 11: angry at something, and I have no idea.
Speaker 1: Oscar was worried about Jeremy's mental health.
Speaker 6: Oscar told me, you busted your head open. What happened?
Speaker 12: Oh?
Speaker 2: They lost my property. They threw all my stuff away.
Speaker 11: They did.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they threw all my stuff away.
Speaker 6: I got nothing.
Speaker 11: The books you should me?
Speaker 9: Yeah, before both.
Speaker 2: I ain't got to redo they are they were in
Speaker 2: my property name, I ain't got nothing. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: everything I owned with my lagger's gone.
Speaker 11: God?
Speaker 2: Hey can you.
Speaker 6: Yeah? You want more? Poor boot of the gray man?
Speaker 9: Hey, I ain't never.
Speaker 2: I ain't never got to redo other ones.
Speaker 6: I'll just send you to do. I'll just send you
Speaker 6: the same ones. If you didn't get him, I'll just
Speaker 6: send the same ones to you.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 6: Did you ever see a doctor about your stomach?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: I still ain't seen him.
Speaker 1: I was still pressing Jeremy for answers, but I could
Speaker 1: feel myself getting pulled into his life in ways I
Speaker 1: never expected, helping him navigate his health issues, trying to
Speaker 1: reconnect him with family he hasn't heard from in years.
Speaker 6: I'll tell you this. I I talked to Joshua. Do
Speaker 6: you remember him?
Speaker 11: Who?
Speaker 6: Joshua? He's Jason's brother, Oh, my cousin. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And then there were.
Speaker 1: Moments when I heard something else in him, a flash
Speaker 1: of who he might have been, a childhood memory that.
Speaker 5: Makes him laugh.
Speaker 9: And the only other person he might be still around
Speaker 9: is John Scott. Johnny Scott as my oldest cousin.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I don't know him at all. I'll look into him.
Speaker 9: One got me into crime?
Speaker 6: Oh really?
Speaker 2: First I ever did a crime was with him? What
Speaker 2: kind of crime we We saw a truck? Oh okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's not a criminal. That was something we did when
Speaker 2: we were we were thirteen years old.
Speaker 11: That ain't that.
Speaker 2: I think I might have been nine or ten.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, I think you haven't arrested ten, So you
Speaker 6: started pretty well.
Speaker 1: One day I got this letter from Jeremy. It says,
Speaker 1: mister King, I almost forgot to ask you. You have
Speaker 1: asked me about my family. I just I don't understand
Speaker 1: why they stopped writing me. My aunt Debbie, of all people,
Speaker 1: I tried writing her but heard nothing. Maybe you can
Speaker 1: find out. I really would like to know I missed them.
Speaker 1: Thank you, mister King. He's lost his whole family. He
Speaker 1: hasn't had contact with them for over a decade, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, listen, I'm trying to talk to them too.
Speaker 1: I'll try to find out. I had no luck with
Speaker 1: Jeremy's aunt Debbie, so I reached out to some family
Speaker 1: members who were close to her. I finally got in
Speaker 1: touch with her son, Joshua, Jeremy's cousin. I set up
Speaker 1: a time to meet with him, and at the last
Speaker 1: minute he said he had COVID. He was very apologetic,
Speaker 1: he said, I'm so sorry, it's just not a good time.
Speaker 1: So I kept texting him and he ended up telling
Speaker 1: me some bad news news I knew Jeremy was going
Speaker 1: to take hard.
Speaker 12: Well, yeah, I've been I've been in touch with with
Speaker 12: josh We've just had a hard time connecting.
Speaker 6: I think he got COVID or something like that.
Speaker 2: So do you know if anybody else died in my family?
Speaker 2: I don't.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, I do, Jeremy, and I'm sorry to tell
Speaker 12: you this, but Josh said that Debbie died a couple
Speaker 12: of years.
Speaker 9: Ago, that mama, yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 12: He said it was like Christmas Eve and twenty twenty one,
Speaker 12: and he said, he said, I don't even know if
Speaker 12: Jeremy knows yet.
Speaker 10: I didn't.
Speaker 2: No, you know, me and her a close.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I know.
Speaker 12: I was hoping to talk to her, and I just
Speaker 12: I'm sorry that I'm the one that have to tell
Speaker 12: you that, but I just found out, and I was
Speaker 12: trying to think about who I could maybe.
Speaker 6: Have you talk to about that, But you are from her. Yeah,
Speaker 6: she died a couple of.
Speaker 2: Years turned her back on me there because it was
Speaker 2: for a Grandma came to seeing me. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: he always killed me out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know she, I know she was important and
Speaker 6: she I know she raised you.
Speaker 1: Before I met Jeremy's son, Justin, I didn't think anyone
Speaker 1: else from Jeremy's family was ever going to write him,
Speaker 1: much less call or visit. I had tried to be
Speaker 1: a bridge between Jeremy and his family, but I'd failed.
Speaker 11: Talking about his aunt Debbie and speaking to him about that.
Speaker 11: He was worried about his own death. He doesn't want
Speaker 11: to be buried in a prison cemetery.
Speaker 1: The Florida State Prison Cemetery at Rayford doesn't get many visitors.
Speaker 1: The gravestones are simple gray concrete slabs in the ground,
Speaker 1: each anchored by silver metal plates produced by inmates in
Speaker 1: the prison's license tag plant. They're embossed with the inmates name,
Speaker 1: prison number, and date of death. That's it. You don't
Speaker 1: see any flowers laid on top. It's the final resting
Speaker 1: place for inmates who died in custody and are unclaimed
Speaker 1: by family members. Some of the men buried here were
Speaker 1: strapped to old Sparky Florida's electric chair or a gurney
Speaker 1: where they were executed by lethal injection. Jeremy knows he's
Speaker 1: never getting out of prison, but the idea of being
Speaker 1: buried on prison grounds seems to bother him more than
Speaker 1: anything He's aid.
Speaker 11: But Oscar, I don't want to be buried here, he
Speaker 11: goes not' I don't know how you know to go
Speaker 11: about that. And I asked him, I says, well, if
Speaker 11: you have any family, I said, the best bet would
Speaker 11: be for you to try to contact them somehow, some way,
Speaker 11: because if nobody is willing to take responsibility for the body,
Speaker 11: then they have no other recourse but to, you know,
Speaker 11: bury you in a prison cemetery because you're a ward
Speaker 11: of state.
Speaker 1: There would have to be someone out there who cares
Speaker 1: enough to claim Jeremy's body. When Jeremy's son, Justin asked
Speaker 1: me to help him talk to his dad, I was wary,
Speaker 1: but also intrigued. I knew if I told Jeremy there
Speaker 1: was a family member who wanted to talk to him,
Speaker 1: he would be uplifted, and the idea that it was
Speaker 1: his son, I could only imagine the excitement he'd feel.
Speaker 1: So I told Jeremy that his son wanted to write
Speaker 1: to him. Jeremy told me he would write to Justin,
Speaker 1: and while I waited for them to find their first
Speaker 1: words for each other, I headed back to Florida. I
Speaker 1: wanted to make one final attempt to put my hands
Speaker 1: on evidence that could prove without a doubt that Jeremy
Speaker 1: Scott was telling the truth about what he'd done.
Speaker 2: And we had two dogs from the time he did
Speaker 2: lead him to the abandoned house, but they lost him there.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the dog thought that whoever did this went
Speaker 1: to the abandoned house.
Speaker 5: Yes sure, okay, Yes sure, that's next time.
Speaker 1: Bone Valley is a production of LoVa for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Jason Flom, Jeff Kepler, and Kevin Wordis. Karen Krnhaber
Speaker 1: is our senior producer. Jackie Pauley and Hannah Biel are
Speaker 1: our producers. Britz Spangler is our sound designer.
Speaker 5: Marianne McCune is our editor.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Dania Suleman. Jeff Cliburn is our head
Speaker 1: of marketing and operations. Our Social media director is Ismati Guardrama,
Speaker 1: Our Social Media manager is Sarah Gibbons, and our art
Speaker 1: director is Andrew Nelson. Additional research and production by Kelsey Decker.
Speaker 1: Additional sound recording by James Johnson. Bone Valley is written
Speaker 1: and produced by me Gilbert King. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok,
Speaker 1: and threads at Lava for Good