Speaker 1: Okay, big day. That's let's go to Kilbert, YEP.
Speaker 2: I got everything I need.
Speaker 3: It's September sixteenth, twenty twenty one. Kelsey and I spent
Speaker 3: the night at a Best Western in Okeechobee, Florida. Neither
Speaker 3: of us slept great giving the anticipation, but we pack
Speaker 3: up and hit the road, heading toward Martin Correctional Institution.
Speaker 4: Kenny's toward US four forty one south, US ninety eight south.
Speaker 3: Did you see that sign? Or prayer is the best
Speaker 3: way to meet God? Trespassing is.
Speaker 5: Continue on Florida seven ten east for four miles.
Speaker 3: I think this is really beautiful outier though.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It's been almost three years since we started working on
Speaker 3: this story, and today we will finally be meeting with
Speaker 3: Jeremy Scott. Driving the Martin Correctional Institution. We're in and
Speaker 3: out of cell service range, but every time service returns,
Speaker 3: my phone buzzes. I'm getting messages of support from everyone
Speaker 3: who knows where we're heading. One of the texts is
Speaker 3: from Chrissy. She offers a prediction about Jeremy's mood and disposition.
Speaker 3: I think he'll be sweet, she tells me, and as
Speaker 3: we drive, Kelsey and I are thinking about all of
Speaker 3: the people we've talked to over the past three years,
Speaker 3: people whose lives have been devastated by the violence and
Speaker 3: the grief at the heart of the story. And I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about the people who, despite that, or maybe because
Speaker 3: of that, urged us to keep going, to keep pushing
Speaker 3: and investigating. Like Jesse Som, Michelle's brother.
Speaker 7: I want you guys to find the truth. I mean, whatever,
Speaker 7: and however long it takes, it'll just bring peace to me,
Speaker 7: you know what I mean. And that can leave this
Speaker 7: world knowing that at least it was solved and I
Speaker 7: know for a fact what happened.
Speaker 3: And we're thinking about dan Odie, who has tried not
Speaker 3: once but twice for the murder of cab driver Joseph Lavere,
Speaker 3: a murder Jeremy Scott seems to be responsible for.
Speaker 8: I would love to just show everybody, you know, no
Speaker 8: matter what you think this is, this is really who
Speaker 8: did it?
Speaker 4: Now, Now y'all can rest your thoughts about me, because
Speaker 4: I'm not that way, never been.
Speaker 8: That would be great, Right, we're ten minutes out.
Speaker 9: How are you feeling.
Speaker 3: I feel really good about this. I feel like we've
Speaker 3: done all the preparation. We know so much. It's really
Speaker 3: just going to be about making him feel comfortable and
Speaker 3: just sort of establishing some kind of trust.
Speaker 9: I mean, that's how you're feeling about how it's going
Speaker 9: to go. How are you feeling about the fact that
Speaker 9: we're finally sitting down with this person.
Speaker 3: I don't know. It's like every day I just kept
Speaker 3: checking my email, but you know, now here it is
Speaker 3: an hour away from meeting him, and we're you know,
Speaker 3: we have no none of those kind of emails saying
Speaker 3: it the trips off. So I feel really good.
Speaker 9: That's still all logistical stuff. What I mean, we're sitting
Speaker 9: down with the person who killed Michelle, killed three other people.
Speaker 9: Is you know, to some degree the reason Leo has
Speaker 9: spent the past thirty three years in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think that's probably the reason why
Speaker 3: I'm talking about logistical stuff, because you know, this is
Speaker 3: really painful when you think about it, all the people
Speaker 3: that we've met over the years whose lives have been
Speaker 3: damaged because of what Jeremy did. That's going to be
Speaker 3: the part that you know, it's in the back of
Speaker 3: your mind, but I try to, like, I feel like
Speaker 3: I just want to focus on him and be sort
Speaker 3: of empathic to him so that he's in a talking mode.
Speaker 3: So I'm trying to like put all that stuff in
Speaker 3: a compartment because it's just so painful.
Speaker 6: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: Your destination is on the left. Okay, there's but.
Speaker 10: All right, let me just go up there and take
Speaker 10: a look.
Speaker 9: Well here, it's just hitting me that we are not
Speaker 9: here to meet Leo. We are here doctor Jeremy pulling
Speaker 9: up here and getting everything together. That kind of seems
Speaker 9: routine as we've gone to see Leo so many times, but.
Speaker 2: This is super different.
Speaker 9: Actually getting a little nervous.
Speaker 3: We've been preparing for this interview for the past three weeks,
Speaker 3: but we've been hoping it would happen for the past
Speaker 3: three years, and we've been fishing for advice from anyone
Speaker 3: who'd come to know Jeremy or who'd spoken to him
Speaker 3: in any capacity over the years. We spoke to private
Speaker 3: investigator Pat McKenna, Judge Scott Cupp, and Leo's current lawyers
Speaker 3: Andrew Crawford.
Speaker 11: And Seth Miller.
Speaker 3: They all think that the letters Jeremy's been writing to
Speaker 3: me are an indication that he's ready to open up.
Speaker 3: But it's Leo's advice that resonates with us the most.
Speaker 3: I talked to him on the phone before going in
Speaker 3: to see Jeremy.
Speaker 12: The state has passed us as opponents in the chess game. Yeah,
Speaker 12: I'm not trying to play chess. I'm not trying to
Speaker 12: pin something on him. That's not my objectives. We're out
Speaker 12: the truth, you know, and he's the one that supplied
Speaker 12: the truth, you know. But I would really like him
Speaker 12: to know and feel that myself and those who represent
Speaker 12: me are you know, concerned for his well being as well.
Speaker 13: You know.
Speaker 12: We want to feel safe enough to tell the truth
Speaker 12: to not you know, have to cover things up.
Speaker 3: It's almost exactly like Marty or at Chardy. Same front
Speaker 3: doors and the pathrooms are right across the way. We
Speaker 3: arrive at Martin, and this place looks remarkably similar to
Speaker 3: Hardy CI, where Leo is housed and where we've gone
Speaker 3: through the security.
Speaker 11: Process half a dozen times.
Speaker 3: It's another giant concrete complex surrounded by tall fences and
Speaker 3: lots of barbed wire. We get to security and the
Speaker 3: guards give us the personal body alarms, the little devices
Speaker 3: with the button were supposed to press in an emergency.
Speaker 3: We loop it through our belts and hand over our IDs.
Speaker 3: The warden meets us and leads us to a room
Speaker 3: where the interview will take place. We don't know what
Speaker 3: to expect. We don't know if Jeremy will be shackled
Speaker 3: and cuffed, or if a guard will stay in the
Speaker 3: room with us. I'm not expecting Hannibal Lecter in a
Speaker 3: mask to be wheeled in, but I'm aware that Jeremy's
Speaker 3: attack guards and nurses at various facilities across the state.
Speaker 3: He's known to act out in unpredictable ways. As the
Speaker 3: warden leaves, he tells us to be careful not to
Speaker 3: let the inmate touch the door, because there's a latch
Speaker 3: near the knob that, if flipped, would leave us locked
Speaker 3: in the room.
Speaker 11: Alone with him.
Speaker 3: I can't even tell if he's fucking with us.
Speaker 9: He definitely wasn't fucking with us.
Speaker 6: It's just.
Speaker 3: Well, he just wint of got the impression that they
Speaker 3: were just gonna drop him off in the in the room.
Speaker 3: And that's when I got a little nervous, because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 3: I responsible for Kelsey. He's gonna be sitting in a
Speaker 3: room with kel you know. I don't know how that's
Speaker 3: gonna go. I mean, I try this, we don't need orus.
Speaker 3: This one's better. You know, there was two different kinds
Speaker 3: of chairs there. I'm like, all right, the one that
Speaker 3: locks him in a little bit better. And I was like, well,
Speaker 3: let's just put one with arm rest on there. I'll
Speaker 3: just make it a little bit harder for him to
Speaker 3: jump over the table to get to us. I'm just
Speaker 3: trying to think about this stuff.
Speaker 2: It's situated like you.
Speaker 3: I'll probably be exactly like this, like leading in talking
Speaker 3: to him. Decided, Yeah, Jeremy, thanks for coming. Testing one
Speaker 3: two three, Testing one two three. I'm gonna probably if
Speaker 3: he comes in, I'll get up and greet him and
Speaker 3: shake hands, and.
Speaker 4: I think you should.
Speaker 3: It's just tastyated.
Speaker 4: I'm nervous now.
Speaker 3: He ever, buttons.
Speaker 2: Hopefully work.
Speaker 1: Shore.
Speaker 2: You don't want to do this about them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm positive, cause.
Speaker 2: You can't leave me alone in here with them at
Speaker 2: any point.
Speaker 3: No, I'm not going to do it.
Speaker 2: Don't worry if you need to go now go.
Speaker 4: Now understood, sweeps gonna be sweet.
Speaker 14: He should he's coming, Hi, Jermy.
Speaker 3: Bone Valley chapter nine, coming clean.
Speaker 15: Hi, I'm gonna be going around and.
Speaker 2: This is Kelsey.
Speaker 3: Let's think him.
Speaker 16: If you would sit over here and we'll we can
Speaker 16: talk to you.
Speaker 9: He's about six foot, he's pretty slender build, has blue eyes.
Speaker 17: And if you're comfortable with it removing your mask, we're
Speaker 17: fine with that too.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 18: They just made me, made me when he got a shave,
Speaker 18: and still they just made they made me go get
Speaker 18: all this new.
Speaker 4: Clothes on and stuff just for y'all.
Speaker 3: Are you kidding? You know, he's a tall guy, and
Speaker 3: he's obviously can be imposing. And you know, when they
Speaker 3: brought him in, he was not cuffed for some reason.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just I never felt threatened by him.
Speaker 3: I didn't. He did not strike me as someone who
Speaker 3: is going to be dangerous. And I think that was
Speaker 3: his body language, you know, shaking his hand, he just
Speaker 3: kind of like just sort of disappeared into himself. It
Speaker 3: was a very loose handshake. Yeah, all his confidence and
Speaker 3: everything that he might have thought about himself as a
Speaker 3: young man is just gone. I feel felt sorry for
Speaker 3: him really physically looking at him, he just seemed like
Speaker 3: a shell of a of a man at this point.
Speaker 18: Because really gonna do for me? Yeah, I mean, my
Speaker 18: life here.
Speaker 4: Is is just what he did, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how do you like Martin so far? Do you
Speaker 3: feel safer here?
Speaker 18: Not really, but I guess I never feel safe in prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things Kelsey and I had
Speaker 3: discussed in preparation for this interview was the intention to
Speaker 3: follow Jeremy's lead. And everything we'd seen Jeremy had been
Speaker 3: questioned by someone with a specific goal or agenda, a
Speaker 3: detective or a lawyer who wants to get to the
Speaker 3: bottom of something, a prosecutor looking for a particular story.
Speaker 3: We wanted him to know that this would be different.
Speaker 11: Of course, we had things.
Speaker 3: We wanted to find out and leads we'd be itching
Speaker 3: to follow, but we wanted Jeremy to be at ease.
Speaker 3: We wanted to give him the freedom to tell his
Speaker 3: story the way he wanted to tell it. We wanted
Speaker 3: him to know that we were interested in him and
Speaker 3: everything that entails. But that also means that sometimes, in
Speaker 3: the middle of talking about one thing, he might pivot.
Speaker 3: This happened pretty early in the interview. Jeremy casually mentions
Speaker 3: the taxicab driver as he's telling us about an interaction
Speaker 3: he had with his mother's boyfriend back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 18: He knew about it. He knew about the taxicab driver
Speaker 18: because I told him here touch my mom, aw kill him.
Speaker 18: And I meant that, right. I'm just trying to straight up, right.
Speaker 18: I might have been a little drinking at that particular
Speaker 18: day right on, that kind of slipped.
Speaker 3: But we'd been hoping the taxi cab driver would come
Speaker 3: up in conversation. We didn't want it to feel confrontational.
Speaker 3: So when he brings it up, we follow his lead.
Speaker 3: Can you talk a little bit. You mentioned the taxi story,
Speaker 3: and I'm just curious, like how that started. Can you
Speaker 3: just start that from the beginning.
Speaker 18: Well, that happened, right, I haven't Right after Schofield, we
Speaker 18: want to.
Speaker 3: Ask more about Michelle, but for now we keep Jeremy
Speaker 3: talking about the cab driver.
Speaker 18: I mean, you know, like I said, I broke into
Speaker 18: a house. I'm scared to dead. This begun on me,
Speaker 18: you know.
Speaker 3: So Jeremy mentions the same details he'd revealed in his
Speaker 3: letters about finding the gun at a cops house. He
Speaker 3: broke into an old three point fifty seven magnum. But
Speaker 3: then he starts getting into more of a narrative and
Speaker 3: his story it fits with the information we already knew
Speaker 3: about the case.
Speaker 18: So when I called it task and he took me
Speaker 18: down there, and I was just gonna rob him. But
Speaker 18: when I pointed the gun, I guess it just touched it.
Speaker 4: Boom, you know.
Speaker 18: It was it was like midnight. But then I got
Speaker 18: a Task cab turn turned the car around. I was
Speaker 18: kind of speeding, went over the tracks and I turned
Speaker 18: and the car slid, you know because when the old
Speaker 18: yellow taxi cab got they got the old.
Speaker 4: Inches in it.
Speaker 18: But then the car cat sliden, you know, and and
Speaker 18: hit the side of a car, and another car hit
Speaker 18: that car, and the Task cab hit hit the pole
Speaker 18: right and.
Speaker 3: He runs his fingers across the table, drawing the streets
Speaker 3: of Intercession City, and he uses his hands to show
Speaker 3: us the route the taxicab traveled before it crashed, jarring.
Speaker 3: He's hastily drawn tabletop map matches what we've been able
Speaker 3: to piece together. But the most striking parts aren't the
Speaker 3: details Jeremy's describing here. It's the way he's telling it,
Speaker 3: shifting in his seat to mimic the feel of the
Speaker 3: car as it slides into a crash. He's moving his
Speaker 3: body as though he's reliving it. It feels like we're
Speaker 3: in the car with him. I can't imagine a lie
Speaker 3: being so embodied. Jeremy explains how after he hits the pole,
Speaker 3: he jumps out of the taxi and sees a group
Speaker 3: of people moving toward him to see if anyone is hurt.
Speaker 18: But I yelled at I got the car. I said,
Speaker 18: y'all run runs from a blow, right, And everybody just
Speaker 18: took off running. I don't wanted to see my face.
Speaker 18: So that's how it took all.
Speaker 2: Did when you've crashed the cab, you thought it was
Speaker 2: it might blow up.
Speaker 18: Yeah, hit the light bolt, which is like sparking.
Speaker 4: Nobody wants to take a chance.
Speaker 3: This all matches what we know about the case. Witnesses
Speaker 3: told the same story. One of the things we wanted
Speaker 3: to know more about is that black hat found in
Speaker 3: the taxi cab, the one with the skull and the
Speaker 3: Confederate flag that was left on the back seat.
Speaker 11: But we don't even have to bring it up.
Speaker 18: I have a hat, and blonged to my cousin Jason Scott. Right,
Speaker 18: he did now, right, but the head of the namement right,
Speaker 18: and I left it in the car. I gave him
Speaker 18: that kind of much evidence. I said, why would anything
Speaker 18: in my family be in that car?
Speaker 4: Almost straight up about it.
Speaker 3: Jeremy seems shocked he never got caught. After killing the
Speaker 3: cab driver and crashing the cab, he runs off into
Speaker 3: the woods, and he says he hit out in an
Speaker 3: empty house in Intercession City. He laid there for hours
Speaker 3: under a blanket, just waiting for the police dogs to
Speaker 3: come and sniff him out.
Speaker 18: I know it sooner later, it's going to come back
Speaker 18: helm me. No, I just wait for It's a matter
Speaker 18: of time.
Speaker 3: But the dogs and the deputies they never come. Nothing
Speaker 3: comes back on him, and it's unclear if it ever will.
Speaker 3: Jeremy is now given a full confession to the murder
Speaker 3: of Joseph Laver, a confession to a thirty five year
Speaker 3: old cold case. It's a remarkable moment, but given everything
Speaker 3: we've been through, everything we've seen, not a terribly surprising one.
Speaker 3: He'd already spontaneously confessed to his girlfriend Jamie Nellams more
Speaker 3: than three decades ago, and his brother, Royal Dean seemed
Speaker 3: to be aware of it too. Jeremy had casually brought
Speaker 3: it up to two investigators from the State as though
Speaker 3: he was trying to see what they knew, But the
Speaker 3: investigators laughed him off, and in a letter he'd written
Speaker 3: to me, Jeremy had revealed some seriously incriminating information about
Speaker 3: the murder. We'd taken this evidence to the Ninth Circuit
Speaker 3: State Attorney's office in the Osceola County Sheriff's Office more
Speaker 3: than once. Even before this full confession, I thought for
Speaker 3: sure we'd collected enough to convince someone in power to
Speaker 3: look into the physical evidence collected from the crime scene.
Speaker 3: I mean, during the original investigation of the murder, fingerprints
Speaker 3: were lifted from the taxi cab and hair was plucked
Speaker 3: from the seats. The fingerprints and the hare could match
Speaker 3: to Jeremy, but the Sheriff's office never got back to
Speaker 3: us about whether or not they test the evidence, or
Speaker 3: if it still exists, whether the state will do anything
Speaker 3: to officially close this case, clearing dan Odie's name and
Speaker 3: bringing closure to the family of Joseph Lavere. That's yet
Speaker 3: to be seen. And in the meantime, here's Jeremy freely
Speaker 3: admitting to the unsolved murder. He's coming clean, but if
Speaker 3: nothing comes of it, it won't be the first time
Speaker 3: in Jeremy's life that his efforts to tell the truth
Speaker 3: were disregarded by the State of Florida.
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Speaker 5: Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
Speaker 5: a philanthropic community that partners with America's boldest change makers
Speaker 5: to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems,
Speaker 5: including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos is one
Speaker 5: of those change makers. At the age of twenty three,
Speaker 5: Weldon was arrested for a first time offense of selling
Speaker 5: weed to a confidential informant. At the time, he was
Speaker 5: a budding musician spending time with artists like Tupac, Snoop Dogg, Pink,
Speaker 5: and Gnase. His entire life was ahead of him when
Speaker 5: he was sentenced to a mandatory fifty five years in
Speaker 5: federal prison without the possibility of early release. After serving
Speaker 5: thirteen years, a bipartisan effort led to him getting officially pardoned.
Speaker 5: Upon his release, he founded the Weldon Project, a nonprofit
Speaker 5: working to create better outcomes for those still in prison
Speaker 5: that funds social change and provides financial aid for all
Speaker 5: those who were still serving time for cannabis related offenses.
Speaker 5: Weldon Angelos is one of the many entrepreneurs partnering would
Speaker 5: stand together to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and
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Speaker 5: listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 5: or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: For a few minutes, I just want to talk about
Speaker 3: John Aguero. Part of our investigation is into.
Speaker 6: Some of the things that we said.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask Jeremy about the meeting he'd had
Speaker 3: with the prosecutor in two thousand and five. That was
Speaker 3: the meeting that motivated John Aguero to close the investigation
Speaker 3: into Jeremy for the murder of Michelle Schofield. During that meeting,
Speaker 3: Jeremy was brought from state prison into John Aguero's office.
Speaker 3: There were no witnesses present, and Aguero did not record
Speaker 3: the meeting, so we only have John Aguero's account, the
Speaker 3: one he testified to at Leo's evidentiary hearing in twenty ten.
Speaker 3: Now I want to hear Jeremy's side of the story.
Speaker 3: What kind of things do was Aguero telling you? When
Speaker 3: they said, oh, we found your fingerprints in this car?
Speaker 3: How that will come out?
Speaker 4: He said, what was What was you doing with car?
Speaker 18: I said, I break in cars, I mean, and the
Speaker 18: ain't no secret what I do on the streets, you know.
Speaker 18: I told them basically everything I tell everybody else. What
Speaker 18: I couldn't use, I'm throw in the trash, you know,
Speaker 18: clean the car out the best I could.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 4: That's why I said.
Speaker 18: I was probably when they said it pump run and
Speaker 18: only a shield, But that's when I jerk dack stereo
Speaker 18: out in there.
Speaker 3: Jeremy, do you remember anything about John Aguero offering you immunity.
Speaker 18: He offered to sit on my hearing. He said, well
Speaker 18: he has he has a.
Speaker 4: Lot of influence.
Speaker 18: Pro hearing calm and it never happens.
Speaker 17: But he didn't mention immunity, like, he didn't say, no,
Speaker 17: if you confess right now to killing Michelle, we won't
Speaker 17: charge you.
Speaker 2: You have immunity. He never said anything like that.
Speaker 4: No, he won't do that. He won't do that, So
Speaker 4: he didn't.
Speaker 3: He didn't. You didn't ever hear him say that you
Speaker 3: have immunity.
Speaker 18: Okay, Oh he said it was I'm gonna be sitting
Speaker 18: on your hearing. He said, what I say on that
Speaker 18: hearing goes long ways, and he said, it's your freedom,
Speaker 18: and that's that's enough for me.
Speaker 3: We asked Jeremy about immunity three times because we want
Speaker 3: to be sure he understands. This is an important point.
Speaker 3: The state has really on this story about John Aguero's
Speaker 3: offer of immunity so heavily to prove that Jeremy is
Speaker 3: just a car stereo thief and not a murderer, because
Speaker 3: they reason if Jeremy really killed Michelle Schofield, he certainly
Speaker 3: would have said so when offered immunity. But we're not
Speaker 3: sure that Jeremy understands what immunity is, and he has
Speaker 3: no recollection of any such offer from Aguero. Again, we've
Speaker 3: tried and Leo's lawyers have tried to request documentation for
Speaker 3: this alleged immunity offer, but the state has never produced anything.
Speaker 3: Jeremy remembers John Aguero offering a different kind of help
Speaker 3: that if Jeremy stuck to his stereo theft story, Aguero
Speaker 3: would help him with his parole. But that's not all
Speaker 3: Jeremy says happened in John Aguero's office.
Speaker 2: Did he did he ever ask you all about Michelle Blake?
Speaker 2: Did he ask you?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I killed I told him I killed him.
Speaker 2: You said, total in the in the office when he
Speaker 2: was asking about my.
Speaker 18: Fingerprints, That's where I told him at when I told
Speaker 18: him straight up, I said, I told him I had
Speaker 18: something to do it.
Speaker 4: And he still didn't believe me.
Speaker 3: And he wasn't recording you or anything.
Speaker 4: They're just me and him in office station, this me
Speaker 4: and you.
Speaker 3: Jeremy says that in that same meeting, Aguero showed him
Speaker 3: aerial photos of the canal, and even though Michelle's body
Speaker 3: can't be seen from that high above, Jeremy says he
Speaker 3: pointed to the exact spot in the photo where her
Speaker 3: body was found.
Speaker 18: They showed me some pictures that the case of Michelle.
Speaker 18: I had to point out areas to him where the
Speaker 18: body was at, you know, because where the body was
Speaker 18: at the only person put it there.
Speaker 4: It is the person that put it there.
Speaker 18: And I stressed that because I've seen the helicopter pictures
Speaker 18: from both and I'm looking at him. I mean, he
Speaker 18: had him all laid out. There's no way you can't describe.
Speaker 18: You can't describe nobody in that lake and I and
Speaker 18: I pointed out to him.
Speaker 4: That's how I know it.
Speaker 3: Jeremy Scott claims he confessed to the murder of Michelle
Speaker 3: Schofield to assist in state Attorney John Aguero in two
Speaker 3: thousand and five when he was confronted with the fingerprint evidence,
Speaker 3: and according to Jeremy, Aguero told him he didn't want
Speaker 3: to hear it. But you're very insistent. Aguero knew about
Speaker 3: this all along.
Speaker 4: He knew it.
Speaker 18: He knew it was going to fall out like this.
Speaker 18: He knew, he knew everything, but he didn't care. But
Speaker 18: when when, you know, well when when when it brought
Speaker 18: something up to him and didn't he didn't want to
Speaker 18: hear that.
Speaker 3: We can never know whether this conversation actually happened or not,
Speaker 3: because John Aguero didn't record the meeting, and Aguero is
Speaker 3: no longer alive. So what was John Aguero hoping to
Speaker 3: accomplish in that room alone with Jeremy. Why would a
Speaker 3: prosecutor go into a room with someone like Jeremy Scott
Speaker 3: without a witness and without a tape recorder unless for
Speaker 3: some reason he doesn't want to create a record of
Speaker 3: that conversation. Why do you think the state will not
Speaker 3: believe your confession?
Speaker 18: And I don't think it ain't that they don't believe me.
Speaker 18: They don't want to They don't want to bring all
Speaker 18: that back out undercover, you know, because I think there
Speaker 18: probably is more stuff that married underneath that Guerrero still
Speaker 18: and they just ain't never went and looking because if
Speaker 18: you had to open him some of them cases, I mean,
Speaker 18: you had to really investigate the prosecutor.
Speaker 4: That's what he needs to be doing.
Speaker 18: Yeah, Prosecutor's gonna go do what they gotta do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's like it's like.
Speaker 18: It's like they knew that they knew when they brought
Speaker 18: me in that day, they knew I had something to
Speaker 18: do with that, But like they ain't got time to,
Speaker 18: you know, to go through all these paperworking Yeah.
Speaker 4: They're just trying to cover it up.
Speaker 18: Because all it is is gonna open more doors, and
Speaker 18: he's gonna open more doors.
Speaker 6: Yah h.
Speaker 15: M m.
Speaker 3: From where I was sitting, I could see him doing
Speaker 3: a lot of fidgeting, and when when the conversation got
Speaker 3: a little more difficult, he would definitely like start scratching
Speaker 3: his arms and his hands. And at one point I
Speaker 3: looked and I saw it. His fingers were sort of
Speaker 3: facing me, and I remembered he had hate h a
Speaker 3: te across his knuckles, and you could see him sort
Speaker 3: of scratching that.
Speaker 9: Well, I just reminded Gilbert that he has love on
Speaker 9: the other hand, and you know, we'd seen that before
Speaker 9: on documents, that he had these tattoos. And I think
Speaker 9: there are a couple of times where hate is maybe
Speaker 9: the only tattoo mentioned, but you know, he does have
Speaker 9: love on the other hand.
Speaker 3: Your sort of letters started out saying you you came
Speaker 3: back to Perry in Christmas eighty six.
Speaker 18: And I stayed up there till to January. You know,
Speaker 18: I left, I started walking back towards Pope County, that's
Speaker 18: where I hang out at and I went back down
Speaker 18: there and Brown February that's about about the time it
Speaker 18: starts pouring down a rain and that's when that's when
Speaker 18: when I ran into Michelle. It was February, it was
Speaker 18: raining that night. But that's well, that's what all of again.
Speaker 2: Could you tell us that story?
Speaker 4: I found a good story to talk about it.
Speaker 3: No, it's not. And you know what you're detailed in
Speaker 3: the letter was was really very detailed. And you talked
Speaker 3: about the gas station, and we just figured to hear
Speaker 3: it in your.
Speaker 18: Words, Yeah, this is a case. It should never happen.
Speaker 18: It was just one of them out of flute things,
Speaker 18: out of air, raining, starving, no place sleep.
Speaker 9: Then we started kind of getting into the Michelle stuff.
Speaker 9: And as soon as that happened, you know, he had
Speaker 9: they have their like cloth face masks that are made
Speaker 9: out of the same material as their prison uniforms. So
Speaker 9: he had his face mask in his hand and he
Speaker 9: started like folding it, you know, wrapping the strings, and
Speaker 9: I could just tell he was starting to get anxious.
Speaker 9: He knew, you know, the kind of stuff we were
Speaker 9: going to be asking about.
Speaker 3: So you walking down like Coumby road and you come
Speaker 3: into this gas station and.
Speaker 4: You know, I was sitting, I was sitting there at
Speaker 4: the bar.
Speaker 18: She was on the phone talking to somebody and when
Speaker 18: she got all she had I needed phone. I said no,
Speaker 18: She said, why you all? You know, just ringing?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 4: I said, God will ride, you know? So she gave
Speaker 4: me a ride.
Speaker 3: He said in one of your letters that she was
Speaker 3: nice to you.
Speaker 4: She was nice, gave me a ride.
Speaker 18: And oh.
Speaker 4: That's why.
Speaker 18: That's where it hurts me more. M Girls like that, don't.
Speaker 18: Girls like they don't don't don't pick up people.
Speaker 3: Why do you think she picked you up? And were
Speaker 3: you were a stranger to hers?
Speaker 18: I don't think I was. Apparently because she's she, she
Speaker 18: wanted to pick up anybody. Why that's what's been bothered me.
Speaker 18: Apparently we know each other first, you know, a glance
Speaker 18: or a brand at a party or something or a
Speaker 18: school or whatever.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: Hm hm, what did you tell Did you tell her
Speaker 3: you want to take you somewhere? Or how did you just?
Speaker 18: I asked her to take me down in North Colombe.
Speaker 3: Did you guys talk about anything in the car as
Speaker 3: you're riding. I'm just kind of quiet because it was
Speaker 3: a short ride to where you were going. So what
Speaker 3: happens when you take her back into that area.
Speaker 18: I further apologized to her, but she went screaming and
Speaker 18: panicing and stuff, and that's that's one of them. I
Speaker 18: guess I lost it.
Speaker 4: Then.
Speaker 3: Was she saying anything to you or.
Speaker 18: Just she just screamed and that was it. She ain't
Speaker 18: saying every word.
Speaker 3: You mentioned that she was hitting you. How did that happen?
Speaker 18: You know, because she she's in a driver receipt right,
Speaker 18: You just just like.
Speaker 3: Not enough to really. But one of the things I
Speaker 3: wanted to ask you about is and you wrote in
Speaker 3: one of your letters that at one point she tried
Speaker 3: to drive away.
Speaker 4: Well that's I think that's what really.
Speaker 18: Put the put the car in the heat really because
Speaker 18: when she did I reached around her and grat that
Speaker 18: that ship and couldn't couldn't park.
Speaker 4: And that was the last of that.
Speaker 2: So when you say you lost it, what do you
Speaker 2: mean by that?
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 18: Went sight. I'm not a very good person. Is in
Speaker 18: the site department.
Speaker 4: I got history.
Speaker 9: From where I was sitting. I could see that his
Speaker 9: his whole arm was just scar tissue. He had so many,
Speaker 9: probably like hundreds of cut marks on his arms, which
Speaker 9: is something we knew that you know, he had that
Speaker 9: and that that was something he did. But you know,
Speaker 9: sitting there, I yeah, well, I was trying not to stare.
Speaker 2: You said you apologized to her. Huh you said you
Speaker 2: apologized to What did you apologize.
Speaker 4: From what I'm doing?
Speaker 2: What were you doing?
Speaker 4: Still was going to steal the car.
Speaker 18: But then when she went down, that moved stuff and
Speaker 18: I really got panic. M and that's when I had
Speaker 18: that that that that that knife, it's just like a
Speaker 18: it's a honey knife. They come in twins. They have
Speaker 18: belonged to my uncle's kids. I took one of them,
Speaker 18: but I didn't think anything that would do that much
Speaker 18: damage because they knew they ain't been sharp, and.
Speaker 4: You know, they just got It's just it.
Speaker 18: It happened so fast, Yeah, because once it happened, it
Speaker 18: just happened so fast.
Speaker 3: He doesn't get into the stabbing that much. He just says,
Speaker 3: I don't know how many times I stabbed or I
Speaker 3: lost it, and he just doesn't want to talk about it.
Speaker 3: And I think it's trauma, that's that's. I just think
Speaker 3: that he's finding some self defense mechanism to sort of
Speaker 3: block out the worst parts of his memory. Because you
Speaker 3: could tell how upsetting they were to him, and that
Speaker 3: was kind of surprising to me, Like this hardened. You know,
Speaker 3: killer who's been in prison, who's seen it, the worst
Speaker 3: violence of anybody I'll ever meet. And you know, he
Speaker 3: was emotional and he was definitely getting upset, and it
Speaker 3: I almost felt like we had a responsibility to sort
Speaker 3: of protect him, to not go to far.
Speaker 9: He'd also gotten agitated in the past when people have
Speaker 9: tried to press him to get more into that, and
Speaker 9: I didn't want to, you know, upset him and lose
Speaker 9: our chance to to talk to him further.
Speaker 18: When I dragged her out of the car put her
Speaker 18: on him, there was at like a plastic wrap around
Speaker 18: down by the creek, So I wrapped wrapped in up
Speaker 18: in that slid down by the creek and that and
Speaker 18: put a plot box over it so it could be seen.
Speaker 3: Jeremy says that after wrapping Michelle and plastic, he dragged
Speaker 3: her body into the water then took the Masda.
Speaker 18: So I got in the car and if we try
Speaker 18: to go up by an I four and got half
Speaker 18: way and it stoleed up.
Speaker 2: So when you went on, I for where were you headed?
Speaker 4: Oh? My family?
Speaker 18: I got family living during Kasimi so I do a
Speaker 18: lot of walking between Cassimi and pok County.
Speaker 2: But then the car stalled out. Was it like smoking or.
Speaker 4: Making It's just like it's just stalled out. It's like,
Speaker 4: you know, when you're running an engine too much.
Speaker 3: And so Michelle's car just stopped running. And Jeremy says
Speaker 3: the detectives must not have looked closely at the car
Speaker 3: on the side of the I four, because he says
Speaker 3: if they had, they would have asked the questions that
Speaker 3: Kelsey and I had been asking ourselves, questions the state
Speaker 3: never bothered with.
Speaker 4: I was a car partner.
Speaker 18: Why that's all it was was still, you know, because
Speaker 18: putting too much gas on and try and move it
Speaker 18: and it stalled out.
Speaker 4: That's my car still stayed.
Speaker 3: There when you were driving and the car broke down
Speaker 3: and you mentioned something about finding a towel and using
Speaker 3: that to wipe white everything.
Speaker 18: Now that I used that was that was tossing up
Speaker 18: in the in the bag, that was thrown it in
Speaker 18: a trash can. So but they still should have found
Speaker 18: a lot of evidence. They should have found all that.
Speaker 18: Instead it's just a fanger print. What about my my
Speaker 18: what about my shoeprint? And the gas pump. Yeah, what
Speaker 18: about the steering wheel, the seats. See, they ain't do.
Speaker 4: The proper job.
Speaker 3: Here we are inside a prison interviewing the man who
Speaker 3: is claiming responsibility from Michelle Schofield's murder, and he's listing
Speaker 3: all the ways the state of Florida failed to investigate
Speaker 3: his crime. I think about the evidence that was found
Speaker 3: but was never tested. The hair is found on the
Speaker 3: car and on Michelle's body, and the scrapings from beneath
Speaker 3: her fingernails. But by the time Jeremy was linked to
Speaker 3: the Mazda, much of the untested evidence had been destroyed
Speaker 3: or degraded. And at the same time, Jeremy says he
Speaker 3: did make an attempt to clean up. You know, it
Speaker 3: is interesting what you're saying, because they did. They never
Speaker 3: found any of the Schofield prints in the car. They
Speaker 3: weren't there, So it sort of fits that you wiped
Speaker 3: it down. Were you pretty careful about that or.
Speaker 4: That particular night there?
Speaker 17: Oh?
Speaker 18: Good, ikick, I want probation, right, so I had to
Speaker 18: be careful.
Speaker 3: We've gone through Leo's story from the night Michelle went
Speaker 3: missing and the States version that was presented to the jury,
Speaker 3: but now we're able to piece together Jeremy's story through
Speaker 3: what he's telling us, what he's written to us through letters,
Speaker 3: and what he's told Leo's lawyers in the past. It's
Speaker 3: the night of February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven. Jeremy
Speaker 3: comes upon a young woman using the payphone at a
Speaker 3: gas station on Cumby Road. He'd been drinking Thunderbird wine
Speaker 3: that night, and he admits that wine makes him violent.
Speaker 3: It's drizzling out and he's broke, and the young woman
Speaker 3: sees him standing there. She says, I know you. Jeremy
Speaker 3: doesn't recognize her, but it's Michelle Schofield. He says he's
Speaker 3: not good with faces, and he guesses she must remember
Speaker 3: him from a party or something. When she asks if
Speaker 3: he needs the phone, he says no, he needs a ride.
Speaker 3: Just up Comby Road. Jeremy gets in the passenger seat
Speaker 3: of the Mazda and gives Michelle directions. He asks her
Speaker 3: to take him to a trailer park on North Cumby Road,
Speaker 3: but they drive past it.
Speaker 11: Instead.
Speaker 3: He directs her a little further onto State Road thirty three,
Speaker 3: then has her turn right onto a dirt road through
Speaker 3: a cut in the tree line. There are no houses
Speaker 3: back here, Michelle tells him. Jeremy makes some kind of comment,
Speaker 3: this is where people come to make out at He's
Speaker 3: thinking maybe he can get laid, but Michelle tells him
Speaker 3: she's married. Jeremy fumbles in his jacket pocket. He says
Speaker 3: he reaches for his cigarettes, but his knife falls out.
Speaker 3: He must have threatened her. Whether it was to steal
Speaker 3: her car or to rape her, it's unclear, but Jeremy says.
Speaker 3: Michelle sees the knife and panics. She tries to drive away,
Speaker 3: but he slams the car into park. She starts hitting him,
Speaker 3: and that's when Jeremy says he lost it and he
Speaker 3: attacked her for whatever reason. Jeremy either can't or won't
Speaker 3: elaborate on the actual act itself. He says he doesn't
Speaker 3: remember how many times he stabbed her. He also says
Speaker 3: the stabbing took place in the car, but listening to
Speaker 3: him tell it, I got the sense that the stabbing
Speaker 3: began in the car. Michelle managed to open the door,
Speaker 3: and Jeremy says she fell out onto the dirt where
Speaker 3: her blood was found. I killed her, he says, and
Speaker 3: he leaves it at that. Jeremy says that after the attack,
Speaker 3: he wrapped Michelle up in some plastic he found nearby
Speaker 3: and dragged her down to the canal. Then he put
Speaker 3: a piece of plywood on top of her to protect
Speaker 3: her from the snakes.
Speaker 11: And gaiters, he says.
Speaker 3: He then gets back in the car and sees ten
Speaker 3: dollars in the center console, which he pockets. He smokes
Speaker 3: a cigarette, then takes off in the Mazda. He drives
Speaker 3: about half a mile north and merges onto I four.
Speaker 3: He gets six or so miles east when the Mazda
Speaker 3: stalls out and he's forced to pull over. Once the
Speaker 3: car grinds to a stop, Jeremy grabs something like a towel,
Speaker 3: he says, and he starts wiping the car down to
Speaker 3: remove his fingerprints. There's a gas station off the exit
Speaker 3: ramp at the top of the hill, so Jeremy heads
Speaker 3: there with the towel and the knife. It's late and
Speaker 3: the gas station is closed, but he sees a dumpster
Speaker 3: and buries the knife in the towel in the trash.
Speaker 3: He crosses the highway to hitchhike back to Lakeland, but
Speaker 3: when he sees the Mazda again, he decides to steal
Speaker 3: the stereo.
Speaker 11: He can't pry it out, so he.
Speaker 3: Steals the equalizer mounted to the dash below it, and
Speaker 3: he takes the speakers from the back. He makes it
Speaker 3: back to Lakeland somehow and falls asleep in an abandoned trailer.
Speaker 3: There are several parts of Jeremy's story that stand out
Speaker 3: to me because they match other evidence I've seen or
Speaker 3: piece together. At times, he offers an explanation for things
Speaker 3: the state never even attempted to explain. For one, the
Speaker 3: state never presented a theory about why the car was
Speaker 3: found on the eastbound side of I four miles outside
Speaker 3: of Lakeland, but Jeremy does. After killing Michelle, he says
Speaker 3: he was headed toward Kassimi, where he had family. That's
Speaker 3: the direction the Mazda was heading. That's also the direction
Speaker 3: he would drive the following year in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: when he went to his mom's trailer after killing Donald
Speaker 3: Morehead and stealing his Chevy Bretta. The state doesn't dwell
Speaker 3: on the Mazda's condition or location. It's Jeremy who accounts
Speaker 3: for this and describes what it felt like driving the
Speaker 3: vehicle as it broke down. And then there's the evidence
Speaker 3: Jeremy left in the car. One of his fingerprints was
Speaker 3: lifted from inside of the driver's side window. Another fingerprint
Speaker 3: was found in the back of the vehicle where the
Speaker 3: speakers were. It was on a receipt near the downy
Speaker 3: bottle that was smeared with Michelle's blood. I've spent so
Speaker 3: much time studying the photos taken from the crime scene.
Speaker 3: I've tried to piece together the events based on the
Speaker 3: location of the blood stains, the drag marks in the dirt,
Speaker 3: and the location of Michelle's body. Michelle's blood is pooled
Speaker 3: in the dirt. The stains are where the driver's side
Speaker 3: of the Mazda would be if it turned onto the
Speaker 3: narrow dirt road beside the canal. So the location of
Speaker 3: the bloodstains are consistent with Jeremy's telling that after he
Speaker 3: stabbed her, she opened the door and fell out of
Speaker 3: the car. I think Jeremy then got out of the car,
Speaker 3: came around to her side, and continued to stab her
Speaker 3: in that spot, I think that's where she was killed.
Speaker 3: That's where most of her blood was found. There are
Speaker 3: drag marks leading from the bloodstains to the canal, and
Speaker 3: coins a quarter a nickel and a penny in the
Speaker 3: dirt alongside the path of the drag marks. They must
Speaker 3: have fallen from Michelle's pockets while Jeremy.
Speaker 11: Was dragging her.
Speaker 3: Jeremy says he wrapped Michelle's body in plastic. Police never
Speaker 3: collected any plastic from the scene, but if you look
Speaker 3: at the crime scene photos, you can see several plastic tarps,
Speaker 3: just like Jeremy describes, right there among the garbage, but
Speaker 3: they weren't taken into evidence. If Jeremy's telling the truth,
Speaker 3: one of those plastic sheets may have had Michelle's blood
Speaker 3: on it or Jeremy's fingerprints. And there's another thing in
Speaker 3: those police photos that caught my eye. A pack of
Speaker 3: Marlborough cigarettes. Were you smoking too? You said something about
Speaker 3: going in the car.
Speaker 4: And smoke, Yeah, I Smarts cigarettes.
Speaker 3: Back man, what kind of cigarettes did you smoke?
Speaker 4: Marlborough's?
Speaker 3: Okay, this pack of Marlborough's wasn't far from the bloodstains
Speaker 3: and the drag marks. And again it was photographed like evidence,
Speaker 3: but it was never taken in, never processed for fingerprints.
Speaker 3: Why did police photograph this pack of Marlborough's but not collected.
Speaker 3: There's one other thing that I've been hung up on
Speaker 3: these past three years. No one, none of Michelle's family,
Speaker 3: none of her friends or coworkers, ever claimed to have
Speaker 3: seen her or spoken with her in the hours following
Speaker 3: that final nine to forty five pm phone call that
Speaker 3: she made to Leo from the payphone at Sparky's gas station.
Speaker 3: If Leo supposedly killed Michelle in a fit of rage
Speaker 3: right after his twelve forty three am phone call to
Speaker 3: the Polk County Sheriff's office, where was Michelle during those
Speaker 3: three hours after she called Leo? She said she'd be
Speaker 3: right over, but she never showed so who was she with?
Speaker 3: What was she doing? The state could not produce a
Speaker 3: single witness to answer these questions about Michelle's whereabouts. After
Speaker 3: hearing Jeremy's version of events, the answer seems pretty obvious
Speaker 3: to me. Michelle never made it to Leo that night
Speaker 3: because she ran into Jeremy Scott. He approached her at
Speaker 3: the payphone, and then minutes later she was dead. That's
Speaker 3: why no one else can claim they heard from her
Speaker 3: or saw her within those three hours. Jeremy Scott was
Speaker 3: the last person to see Michelle Schofield alive. What was
Speaker 3: going through your mind? After you did all this and
Speaker 3: you took the car, where were you thinking, like, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna just drive back to Kasimi or.
Speaker 4: I'll be honest with you. That's my whole point.
Speaker 18: I wasn't thinking, because if I was, I would have
Speaker 18: never even and done what I did. That's something that
Speaker 18: should never happen. It wasn't planning. That shouldn't that shouldn't
Speaker 18: never happen. I should have swallowed up pride and went
Speaker 18: to it one time, went to Salvation Army. Everybody was,
Speaker 18: you know, February reigning. I wannt to know a whole lot
Speaker 18: of a whole lot I could think about it. I
Speaker 18: mean back then, when you're young, you don't be thinking
Speaker 18: that's the thing.
Speaker 4: Until it's over with, and then then reality hiss you.
Speaker 18: Then years go by, and that's when really the reality
Speaker 18: really hiss you. Yeah, cause cause you c I have
Speaker 18: to live with this every day.
Speaker 2: Can you describe that? What does it like to live.
Speaker 4: With the.
Speaker 13: Uh?
Speaker 4: It's sound a girl's feeling? Well this way? This just
Speaker 4: put it anyway.
Speaker 18: I I dream, I wake up, I turn over, I say,
Speaker 18: I see a dead body seeking next to me. I
Speaker 18: see with dead bodies every night when I go to bed.
Speaker 18: I that's I punishment. That shit gets me so scared.
Speaker 18: I sleep with it every night.
Speaker 4: Drug me. That's not a good sight.
Speaker 3: M Is that part of the reason that you're talking
Speaker 3: to us, But you're just thinking about these things I've been.
Speaker 18: I've been, it's been getting it's been one that come
Speaker 18: out though, you know, it's just a matter of time
Speaker 18: because if I don't say now, it's not guaranteed.
Speaker 4: I'm i'm 'a i'm'a i'm'a.
Speaker 18: Walk down that sidewalk and I'm waked out getting stabbed up,
Speaker 18: you know, because you don't know what's gonna happen out here.
Speaker 18: You know, you know, cause man might put a hit
Speaker 18: on you, and it.
Speaker 2: It feels important to you to to talk about it.
Speaker 4: It it it, it does.
Speaker 18: I mean, it ain't gonna never, ain't gonna change. I
Speaker 18: mean it can change. It ain't gonna change nothing from me,
Speaker 18: but it can change something for her, you know, ain't
Speaker 18: know she ain't here but for her family though.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things we did last is it's just
Speaker 2: if you if you ever think about Michelle.
Speaker 18: Now, I do all the time. I pray for her
Speaker 18: every day. For me, when I lay down. I sleep
Speaker 18: with her, can't get out, can't get away. That's a nightmare.
Speaker 2: What do you pray about, M?
Speaker 18: I just pray for a lot of things. Her bad spirits.
Speaker 18: M I mess with the spirits too much. But now,
Speaker 18: as far as Michelle, she was just at a wrong time,
Speaker 18: wrong place, and everything happens.
Speaker 4: When you're young and not think can she deserves better
Speaker 4: than that.
Speaker 18: And she she'll get it. I think once this gets
Speaker 18: cleared up, she can breast. But first far as Leo,
Speaker 18: I don't I don't need to speak for.
Speaker 4: For this case. Yeah, Leo, Leo, Leo.
Speaker 18: And because of all of all things, he's innocent on
Speaker 18: this one.
Speaker 2: Hm. I.
Speaker 18: I've been trying to help him, doing everything I could. MH,
Speaker 18: I'm trying to help you out, but they don't want
Speaker 18: me to help him out. Man, man have been in
Speaker 18: prison thirty three years.
Speaker 4: He needs to be up.
Speaker 18: That man ain't doing nothing. He's innocenter.
Speaker 3: We sat down with Leo before we interviewed Jeremy. He
Speaker 3: has a copy of one of the letters Jeremy wrote
Speaker 3: to me. It meant more to Leo than I could
Speaker 3: have known. Leo now carries it around with him folded
Speaker 3: up and tucked into the pocket of his blue prison uniform.
Speaker 3: You know that I received a letter from Jeremy a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I carried around in my pocket every day except today.
Speaker 8: They don't let me bring anything here.
Speaker 3: What did you think of it?
Speaker 8: Well, obviously I believe that he's the murder of my life.
Speaker 8: I believe he's also been trying to say that for
Speaker 8: a long time.
Speaker 3: The letter that Leo carries with him is one of
Speaker 3: the first letters I received from Jeremy. It says, in part,
Speaker 3: dear mister King, I don't know what it is that
Speaker 3: you want to know about Polk County prosecutors. They lied.
Speaker 11: That's why I told the whole truth.
Speaker 3: About Leo Schofield. And I had also told them things
Speaker 3: that a killer would know. Leo didn't kill his wife.
Speaker 3: I did.
Speaker 8: I read those words Leo didn't kill his wife. I
Speaker 8: did very simple verb. When I first read it. I'm
Speaker 8: not kidding. I had chills, and I get chills every
Speaker 8: time I do it, because he's nothing like I was expecting.
Speaker 4: He's not the.
Speaker 8: Three headed monster that had to have done something like
Speaker 8: this to someone as wonderful and beautiful as Michelle was.
Speaker 8: You have to be a monster to do that, and
Speaker 8: he's not. He's just a pathetic human being that's been
Speaker 8: messed up.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 8: He's had a really rough go as I'm sure you're
Speaker 8: aware of now, even in the prison, and I do
Speaker 8: believe he's sorry. But it just shows you that he
Speaker 8: has a halt. He does have a halt. You know
Speaker 8: that he's not a monster. He's not what I was
Speaker 8: looking for. You know, I've always wanted the truth, and
Speaker 8: I thank him for the truth. We both, in different worlds,
Speaker 8: needed redemption over the same issue.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 8: When I look in the mirror, I got to look
Speaker 8: at a man who let his wife get murdered, you know,
Speaker 8: and at some point I needed redemption. I needed to
Speaker 8: be rebuilt into something that I could live with, you know.
Speaker 8: And I see Jeremy in that same light, you know,
Speaker 8: in a different frame, a different storyline. You know, he's
Speaker 8: he's the he's the one who put all this into play.
Speaker 8: You know, he's the man holding the knife, and so
Speaker 8: he needs his own redemption, you know, And you know what,
Speaker 8: I thank God for that. I thank God for that,
Speaker 8: because without that, I don't think we have a get
Speaker 8: to the bottom of it. And very few people know
Speaker 8: the truth.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 8: Now there's a bigger story to tell, you know, and
Speaker 8: where it goes from here, we'll see.
Speaker 3: It's been more than three years since Judge Scott cup
Speaker 3: first handed me his business card, three years since I
Speaker 3: first read the words.
Speaker 11: He'd written on the back, Leo.
Speaker 3: Schofield not just wrongfully convicted, He's an innocent man. In
Speaker 3: the time since, Kelsey and I have spent twenty plus
Speaker 3: hours sitting across a table from Leo in a cinderblock
Speaker 3: prison room, listening to him talk about the moments of
Speaker 3: his adolescence that came to define his entire life. I
Speaker 3: have dozens of letters and emails from him, and we
Speaker 3: talk regularly on the phone, and I'm in constant touch
Speaker 3: with his family. Leo's daughter, Ashley is now a mother
Speaker 3: with two baby boys. Today, Leo's grandsons visit him on
Speaker 3: that same patch of grass outside the visitation pavilion where
Speaker 3: he says he raised Ashley. Even the guards at Hardy
Speaker 3: who know Chrissy and Ashley and the boys, they tell
Speaker 3: us they don't want to see Leo's grandsons grow up
Speaker 3: visiting the prison. They know Leo needs to be home
Speaker 3: when Leo had opportunities to have his case reviewed in court.
Speaker 3: I shared in his hope for justice, and when those
Speaker 3: opportunities were to I.
Speaker 11: Shared in the heartbreak.
Speaker 3: With no realistic legal options left to pursue, Leo's waiting
Speaker 3: on his next parole hearing, where once again Leo will
Speaker 3: refuse to apologize for a crime he did not commit,
Speaker 3: and once again the state will argue against his parole
Speaker 3: because of this. So he's waiting on parole and he's
Speaker 3: waiting on this story to come out. I'm acutely aware
Speaker 3: of the hope this project has given Leo and his family.
Speaker 11: It's conflicting.
Speaker 3: I believe in his story, and I'm honored to be
Speaker 3: able to tell it, but I also know that there
Speaker 3: are no guarantees it'll make any difference in Leo's life.
Speaker 3: I wish I could make those promises, but I know
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 8: I don't even want to say thank you anymore, Gilbert,
Speaker 8: I can't say any of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but it's my heart.
Speaker 3: No, we wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in this, Gilul.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't be here if you didn't believe in this stuff.
Speaker 8: I would not be here if you did not believe
Speaker 8: in this stuff. And I am dead serious about that
Speaker 8: because I am tired. I am tired. I don't carry
Speaker 8: just my hurt. I carry the hurt of my family.
Speaker 8: I carry a ton of hurt of the men that
Speaker 8: I serve here. I mean, every single one of them
Speaker 8: come to me every day. When are you getting on
Speaker 8: her here? You know what I mean? And I carry
Speaker 8: a lot and it's heavy, It's freaking heavy, and sometimes
Speaker 8: I get hopeless. Sometimes I feel like it's getting so
Speaker 8: far away and I'm going in the wrong direction.
Speaker 3: And it's just the feeling.
Speaker 8: I'm not saying that it is, you know, in this confession,
Speaker 8: just it's like how many times do I got to
Speaker 8: hear it? How many times does he have to say it?
Speaker 3: I get it. But we're putting this story together and.
Speaker 8: I think, I just don't want you to underplay your part. No,
Speaker 8: you can't. My life depended on it. You gave me
Speaker 8: the hope, Gilbert, that's the truth.
Speaker 3: You gave me. This s guy knows Scott felt like
Speaker 3: he gave you hope one time, and he did and
Speaker 3: he did.
Speaker 8: Yeah, But you know what, it's the relationship that I
Speaker 8: have with him that sustains me.
Speaker 3: Even now.
Speaker 8: I love that man. He's a brother to me. I
Speaker 8: love that man, and I'm not going to let him down,
Speaker 8: and I'm not.
Speaker 3: Going to let you down.
Speaker 8: And I'm sustained that way. So it doesn't matter what happens.
Speaker 8: It matters that people have bonded. You know, we've become
Speaker 8: a family of sorts. That matters. That matters, It counts
Speaker 8: because it's all I got, That's it, and you know what,
Speaker 8: it's all I need, that's all I need.
Speaker 3: Leo is trying to reassure me that he's going to
Speaker 3: be okay regardless of what happens after the story comes out,
Speaker 3: because after thirty five years, he knows better than to
Speaker 3: hope for anything more. From the state of Floridaber of
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, Leo is going to be playing a
Speaker 3: concert one afternoon at Harty with his band, The Watchers.
Speaker 3: We couldn't get permission to record, but I decided to
Speaker 3: fly down for the concert anyway, knowing what it would
Speaker 3: mean to Leo to have me there. I just wanted
Speaker 3: to see him with his bandmates and the men in
Speaker 3: his congregation, his brothers. The assistant warden meets me at
Speaker 3: security and escorts me to the God behind bars building.
Speaker 3: As we're walking, I see a flyer posted to a
Speaker 3: wall announcing the concert the Watchers. It reads with special
Speaker 3: guest Gilbert King. Once I get inside, I see Leo
Speaker 3: surrounded by his brothers. They're all in their prison blue
Speaker 3: uniforms with white stripes down the pants. He comes over,
Speaker 3: We hug, and he introduces me to his bandmates. They
Speaker 3: all tell me they've been passing around the same taped up.
Speaker 11: Of my book, Devil on the Grove.
Speaker 3: It's a book I sent to Leo more than three
Speaker 3: years ago. They all thank me for looking into Leo's case.
Speaker 3: Inside this building, the inmates move around freely, joking and
Speaker 3: drinking coffee. There are very few guards. You get the
Speaker 3: sense that nobody's really worried about the men here, who
Speaker 3: continue to file in for the concert. Before the Watchers
Speaker 3: take the stage, Leo says he wants to show me something,
Speaker 3: so he leads me and the assistant warden through the
Speaker 3: library to a door in the back. It's the war Room,
Speaker 3: that small gray room tacked with prayer requests, the place
Speaker 3: where Leo came, in his darkest of times, to pray
Speaker 3: for Jeremy Scott, trying to forgive him. Leo steps inside
Speaker 3: and gets noticeably choked up. He knows, I'm aware of
Speaker 3: the story that in twenty sixteen, just a few days
Speaker 3: after tacking up his prayer request for Jeremy Scott, Leo
Speaker 3: received the news that Jeremy confessed to killing Michelle. But
Speaker 3: the assistant warden is new and as Leo begins to
Speaker 3: explain the significance of this room to him, he catches himself,
Speaker 3: realizing this story is too long and complicated for a
Speaker 3: stranger to absorb, so he just tells us that the
Speaker 3: inmates are lucky to have a place and a program
Speaker 3: like this at Hardy, and the assistant warden seems pleased
Speaker 3: to hear it. As we move toward the stage, I
Speaker 3: meet Leo's longtime friend, cellmate and songwriting partner Kevin Herrick.
Speaker 3: Leo taught him to play guitar more than twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: when Kevin first came to Hardy. Kevin also tells me
Speaker 3: Leo taught him how to be a man and a
Speaker 3: man of God, he says. Leo takes the stage and
Speaker 3: picks up the mic to rousing applause. There's a full
Speaker 3: drum set and a keyboard in amps ready to go.
Speaker 3: Leo's got reading glasses on and he's carrying a leather
Speaker 3: bound Bible in his hands. He tells the crowd that
Speaker 3: it's not God's plan for them to be destroyed in
Speaker 3: this prison, and he begins a sermon on self worth
Speaker 3: and dignity. Then Leo points to me in the audience.
Speaker 3: He might not look at but this man is a
Speaker 3: friggin bulldog, he says, And then he tells the story
Speaker 3: about how Judge Scott Kupp handed me a business card
Speaker 3: with Leo's name on it, and how Kelsey and I
Speaker 3: have been investigating his case for years. I stand up,
Speaker 3: not expecting this, and say something about storytelling and how
Speaker 3: honored I feel to be invited to share this time
Speaker 3: with them, before giving the mic back to Leo. Leo's
Speaker 3: glasses come off and the music begins. Inmates clap and
Speaker 3: sing along with hands outstretched. Some of these men have
Speaker 3: been here for decades, men who mentored Leo when he
Speaker 3: first arrived in the system. They're dancing. Leo's boss from
Speaker 3: maintenance is here. Even the guards are clapping and moving
Speaker 3: to the music.
Speaker 16: You hear mad man laughs, sorrows, damn sorry, M'sta.
Speaker 3: The lyrics may be spiritual, but the sound is pure
Speaker 3: nineteen eighties rock. Leo and Kevin are trading solos, shredding
Speaker 3: their two guitars, dueling it out. Leo's working up a sweat,
Speaker 3: leaning on Kevin's shoulder. The two men are laughing and
Speaker 3: nodding encouragement at each other. It's not hard for me
Speaker 3: to imagine Leo, the teenager with long black hair, his
Speaker 3: shirt off, standing on some flatbed truck in the woods
Speaker 3: in Polk County, playing for free beer with his old
Speaker 3: band Rhino. Michelle is there too, She's dancing by the bonfire, cheering.
Speaker 11: On the band.
Speaker 3: Maybe I imagine they'd have made it to the Lakeland
Speaker 3: Civic Center someday to open for Iron Maiden or def Leppard.
Speaker 11: But that life and those dreams.
Speaker 3: Disappeared thirty five years ago on a cold, damp night
Speaker 3: in February of nineteen eighty seven, when Jeremy Scott took
Speaker 3: Michelle's life and the State of Florida took Leo's freedom.
Speaker 3: After the show, I left the prison and I had
Speaker 3: a few hours to kill before getting to the airport
Speaker 3: in Orlando, so I took the back roads for one
Speaker 3: more drive through Bone Valley. The sun was beginning to
Speaker 3: set on the phosphate capital of the world, casting a
Speaker 3: golden hue on the towering gypsum stacks in the distant horizon.
Speaker 3: I went past Tom's Restaurant where Michelle worked, and the
Speaker 3: gas station on Cumby Road where she spoke her very
Speaker 3: last words to Leo over an old payphone. I went
Speaker 3: by the trailer park right up the road where Jeremy
Speaker 3: used to stay with his grandmother, then onto State Road
Speaker 3: thirty three, passing that drainage canal hidden behind palmetto bushes.
Speaker 3: I turned onto I four and passed the exit ramp
Speaker 3: where Shells Masda broke down, and the gas station on
Speaker 3: the hill where a cheap knife with a compass on
Speaker 3: the handle once laid buried in a dumpster, never to
Speaker 3: be found. I wanted one more look at all the
Speaker 3: places in Bone Valley, the places Kelsey and I have
Speaker 3: visited and revisited and thought about every day for the
Speaker 3: past three years, Places that are still seared into Leo's
Speaker 3: mind thirty five years later. For now, this is where
Speaker 3: the story has to end. Leo Schofield and Jeremy Scott
Speaker 3: have settled on the truth of what happened on that
Speaker 3: February night back in nineteen eighty seven. There's nothing more
Speaker 3: to say unless the state of Florida decides to write
Speaker 3: the final chapter. This may be the closest Leo Schofield
Speaker 3: ever gets to true justice himself and for Michelle.
Speaker 6: Do you, my maness, have to have my feels? Saw
Speaker 6: Ruse de sarralists in this vastiity, I see relation, I
Speaker 6: know water.
Speaker 4: A breach.
Speaker 6: Despage to the world who solding the stor.
Speaker 4: To the worms.
Speaker 3: Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 3: in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive producers
Speaker 3: are Jason Flahm and Kevin Wordis. Carrick Kornhaber is our
Speaker 3: senior producer. Britz Spangler is our sound designer. Roxandra Guidi
Speaker 3: is our editor. Fact checking by Maximo Anderson. Our producer
Speaker 3: and researcher is Kelsey Decker. The One Who's Holding the
Speaker 3: Stars is performed by Lee Bob and the Truth. It
Speaker 3: was written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick and was
Speaker 3: performed during this episode by the watchers at Florida's Hearty
Speaker 3: Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is written and produced by me
Speaker 3: Gilbert King. You can follow the show on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 3: and Twitter.