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- [00:00]
Jen Hatmaker
Hey everyone, I'm Jen Hatmaker, host of the for the Love podcast. Every week I'm joined by my dear friend Amy and we dive into the good stuff. So it's real stories, honest conversations, super inspiring guests who help us make sense of life and love and faith and just this whole messy middle. We talk about career pivots, we talk about parenting, teens and young adults dating again. Hello. And just all the ways we're still becoming. We laugh, we, we sometimes cry. We definitely learn and we certainly don't take ourselves too seriously. So whether you are chasing purpose or you're rebuilding or maybe just trying to keep your plants alive, there is a seat for you at our table. New episodes drop every week, so hit subscribe and come hang out with us on for the Love.
- [00:51]
Gilbert King
Spring is in the air. No, it's not in the air of my house. Litter box stink. That's because we use Pretty Litter and let me tell you, it obliterates odors. We're talk total freshness so you can enjoy all those lovely springtime scents without any of that cat Box funk. Before Pretty Litter, I dreaded cleaning the box. The clumps, the dust, the smell. It was a mess. But Pretty Litter changed the game. It's a non clumping formula that traps odor and moisture. It's ultra absorbent, super lightweight and low dust. One 6 pound bag lasts up to a month. Here's what I love most. It actually helps monitor my cat's health. The litter changes color to alert me to early signs of things like urinary tract infections or kidney issues. That kind of peace of mind? Priceless. Plus it ships free right to your door. So no more hauling giant tubs of litter through the snow or cramming them into the trunk. Pretty Litter helps me keep my house smelling fresh and clean. Try and you'll love it. Go to PrettyLitter.com GoneSouth to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. That's PrettyLitter.com GoneSouth to save 20% on your first order AND get a free cat toy. PrettyLitter.com GoneSouth Terms and Conditions apply. See site for details. The first season of the podcast Bone Valley came out a year after the first season of Gone South. I assumed it was about bones someone found in a valley. The COVID art shows a shirtless man with a mullet and a mustache walking on the shoulder of a highway as the sun either rises or sets behind him. I figured there were three. This man found the bones he'd buried the bones, or they were his bones. Having done this analysis, I gave myself permission not to listen to the show, but after half a dozen people raved about it to me, I gave in. It turns out Bone Valley has nothing to do with Bones. It's about a Florida man named Leo Schofield who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife back in 1987. And it's one of the best narrative podcasts out there. The host, the gravelly voiced writer Gilbert King, won a Pulitzer Prize for his book Devil in the Grove, about the Groveland Four, the four black men who were falsely accused of raping a white woman in Jim Crow era Florida. But in Bone Valley, Gilbert steps into the story himself. He's convinced of Leo's innocence, and as the show progresses, he becomes less a narrator of Leo's case than an advocate for his release. In this way, he's a lot like some of the characters we write about in Gone South. People who find themselves thrust into high stakes situations and are forced to make tough moral decisions. Bone Valley's second season premiered in April of 2025. It picks up where the first season left off, and it seemed like a great opportunity to talk to Gilbert about making the show his transition from writer to podcaster, and the challenges of exonerating an innocent man in Florida.
- [04:03]
Kelsey
So in 2019, I guess it is 2018, 2019, you're working on your next book. I don't know what that book was about, but this guy Judge Scott cupped comes up to you after this reading or presentation you've given and says, hey, I've got this story for you. Tell me about what happened and brought you into Bone Valley. Because it seems like lightning struck in this case.
- [04:30]
Jeremy Scott
You know, I was down there just doing a judicial conference. I get invited, especially in Florida, I get invited to these conferences where they want me to talk about Florida history in the book. And at the end, I'm usually like, signing books for judges and talking to judges and, you know, there's hundreds of them there from all over Florida and. And they all have great stories. You know, you should look into this. You should look into that. And I remember this one judge came up to me and he didn't even talk to me. He just kind of handed me his business card and I flipped it over, and the back of it, you know, I'll never forget this. It said, Leo Scofield. It had his prison number. It said, not just wrongfully convicted, he's an innocent man. And I remember looking at this and I looked up at the judge and he just kind of motioned to call him because there was a line of people waiting. And so I went to dinner that night with, like, a bunch of public defenders, and I said, hey, can I ask you guys something? I was at this book thing with these judges, and one of the judges handed me this, and they passed it around the table, and they were like, are you kidding me? This a judge? There's, like, ethical canons that you're not supposed to criticize. You know, the judicial system in Florida if you're appointed judge. And this guy was saying that this guy was innocent, and he was basically saying they railroaded him. And as it went to, like, the guy at the end of the table, he was from this county, Polk county, and he said, I know this case. You should call him. And that kind of tipped me off because, like, you know, it's Florida, man. I. I'm. I'm aware that there could be crazy judges down there. You know, it's like, you don't just get Florida men getting arrested. They're all over the place. And so I didn't know if this judge was a little kooky or what, but when. When he said he knew the case and said I would call him at that point, I said, you know, there's something to this. And I did call him, and he walked me through the entire case. And it was interesting because, you know, after he told me this, I said, look, I'm working on a book. I can't do anything now because I have a deadline, and I got to get this done. And. And I could feel his disappointment through the phone, you know, and he's like, do me a favor. Just read the transcript. And kind of as a way to get him off the phone, to be honest with you, I. I said, okay, send me the transcript. And I. I'm. True to my word, I started reading it, and I saw it, like, I could see it in the transcript that the prosecutor didn't have a case, and he was really trying to hard to connect the dots. And at that point, I called him back and said, all right, I just saw some stuff there that is probably what you're thinking. And, you know, then he just answered all my questions, and it just became this long process until we finally got to the point where he said, you need to meet Leo. And that's what I did.
- [07:02]
Kelsey
And at what point do you consider making this as a podcast instead of a potential book? Or. I know that at one point you consider writing a feature story about it, but podcasting, as far as I Know was not something you had done previously.
- [07:18]
Jeremy Scott
No, not at all. I mean, I listened to podcasts, so I was aware of the power of them. I remember, like, listening to in the Dark Season 2 serial, all the big ones. I just listened to them, and I was like, these are really powerful ways to tell these stories. And it seemed to be kind of effective in the areas of wrongful convictions. So it was always in the back of my mind, but I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any ideas about how to tell a story through audio. Be honest with you. I'm still learning. Right. Even at this point. It's a foreign way to tell a story for me. So my original intent was just to maybe write something kind of quick because I had a book that I had to get back to. But after I went in and met Leo and. And, you know, you know, showing up in a prison and just talking to somebody, we thought we'd only get an hour with him. They gave us three hours with him, and he. We were able to walk through a lot of the story. And, you know, honestly, I'm pretty skeptical about a lot of these cases and innocence claims. I. I'm just. I just don't want to get burned on them. But I did have a lot of questions about it, and it's a complicated case, and. But after coming away from Leo and, you know, after the judge and people that I talked to, I just. He was so crystal clear in his transparency. And when he talked about the plea deals that he was offered that would have gotten him out in the early 90s, and he turned them down because he could not admit to something he couldn't do that he didn't do. That. That was a really powerful persuader to me. It's been many years now, six or seven years. When I've worked on this case, as much as I've dug into it, nothing ever comes back to him. It always comes back to Jeremy Scott. When I find something new, it always points to Jeremy. And so that was a really powerful beginning to it. Just meeting Leo and thinking, you know what. His voice was so powerful, I don't even know if a book could do it justice. You really need to hear him speak with that kind of conviction. And that was what really won me over. Then we had just had to figure out, well, how do we do this now?
- [09:21]
Kelsey
You then really begin reporting this case in earnest. And one of the things that I came away from the podcast understanding is just how much work you and your co producer or assistant, Kelsey Put into the story. Like, you guys ferociously attacked this story. You've tracked down everybody. Talk to me about the process of once you understand that this is a story you can tell and want to tell and that you believe that Leo's innocent, how you actually went about reporting the story and putting this together as a podcast.
- [09:55]
Jeremy Scott
Yeah, well, you know, one of the things is we started talking about making a podcast and started making some pitches, and we had some interest in it. So Kelsey and I ended up just moving to Florida, and we started investigating. And then we didn't really know what we were doing, but we decided the best thing to do is just keep. Keep the microphones on all the time and just kind of record everything. And so in this podcast, you get a lot of us in the car talking about what we're doing next. Frustrations about not being able to reach people, not being able to get records. We were just constantly recording. But it really worked out a lot in our storytelling because I think it was a key thing for us. We wanted to cover the investigative side. So a lot of it is just us sitting around, planning. We got to go out there, driving out there. I hope this person answers the door. But we always had the recording going. And so I think that turned out to be really good, because once we brought it all back to real producers, they were able to find a lot of things and make us a part of the story. And the frustrations and the. The experiences of. Of, you know, trying to get in to see Leo and. And just coming out away from Leo and just being absolutely despondent that we get to leave the prison and he has to stay there, it just. It feels really palpable. I think the thing that this podcast we. The remarkable access we had to people, people were willing to talk to us. And, you know, when you do a story in the 1980s about a murder, and it's. Everybody was teenagers at the time, so they're still around for the most part. And so we were able to track of people and get them to talk about things and even track down, like, the one juror we could find who hadn't passed away, who was, like, 22 at the time. And, you know, Kelsey did that interview by herself. Just went out and met her, and, you know, the first thing she says to Kelsey, well, I didn't think he did it, but I just went along with the others. I mean, that when I show. When I let a prosecutor friend of mine listen to that, she goes, oh, my God. She said the quiet part out loud. Like, you always fear that that's the case. Like, people just go along with the crowd. But when it came time for the death penal, she kind of held firm. And because she was so young, she said the others kind of felt bad for her and they decided to just give him life in prison. I mean, it's just extraordinary to hear somebody say, like, what happened in those deliberations like this. This young woman actually possibly could be the reason Leo Schofield is still alive today is that she held out and the others came along to her story. So we had a lot of moments like that that just totally surprised us in the investigation.
- [12:24]
Gilbert King
Another thing that surprised Gilbert was just how badly Leo Scofield had been failed by the original investigators, the state, even his own defense attorney.
- [12:33]
Jeremy Scott
It was pretty eye opening because a lot of times, like coming from the background I come from where I'm investigating a lot of, like, pre civil rights era crimes like that take place in the 40s and 50s. When you go into the deep south and you look at the power that a sheriff has, you can see that a lot of the wrongful convictions and a lot of these injustices really begin with the sheriff's department. It's just extraordinary that, like, they have that much power and they can just affect so many lives. And really they're the most powerful person in a county, even more powerful than the judges and oftentimes the prosecutors. It all stems from the sheriff. In this particular case, in the 80s, I really found, like, I didn't see the same kind of thing with the sheriff's department. I saw maybe a little bit of what you'd call incompetence. And I. We tried to explain that, that there was a big upheaval in the sheriff's department. A white supremacist sheriff had just been forced out and a lot of people left the department were fired, and it was in turmoil at the exact time of Michelle's death. And so they were kind of shorthanded. They were having a lot of murder cases go unsolved, and it would get back to the state attorney's office. And they were like, looking at this, you know, Michelle Schofield's death, like, why don't we have an arrest in this? It's like 15 months. Like, why is this case going cold? Have you looked at the husband? And I think the prosecutor, John Aguero, came in and just made the case and just started talking to witnesses. And, you know, when I got. When I read that trial transcript, it was very clear to me that what, what his Main witness Alice Scott said happened did not happen on that night. And she was just very confused, obviously, but she was a really bad witness. But, you know, it's like a perfect storm of things often that you see in wrongful conviction cases. Leo's attorney was just ill prepared to fight back. He was just overwhelmed himself by the prosecutor, John Aguero. He couldn't remember names. He didn't do any pretrial depositions or interviews or investigation. He was just kind of winging it. And so what I really saw in this case was the sheriff's office wasn't really complicit in this. I really think they did the best they could and they just couldn't solve it. But when the state attorney came in, the Assistant State attorney, John Aguero, he was the one that made the case. And I think he was definitely manipulating witnesses, he was manipulating testimony. I think he was doing it unethically. And as the case goes on, once Jeremy Scott becomes involved in this case, that's where you see it goes off the rails in terms of, you know, unethical behavior.
- [15:08]
Kelsey
While we're talking about Jeremy, tell me how you first spoke with him.
- [15:13]
Jeremy Scott
Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing about this, and this is just when I'll just give you a little bit of background on the case. So, you know, Leo Schofield is convicted in 1989, and there's these mysterious fingerprints that are in the car that have never been identified. Back back then, they didn't have an APHIS system, the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, where you could just run them through a computer and maybe get a hit. Back then, it all had to be done manually. And these fingerprints didn't match Leo, they didn't match Michelle, they didn't match anybody who really should have been in that. They were just seen as unidentified. Seventeen years after Michelle's murder, while Leo's been in prison, they finally run them through the APhI system and they get a hit. And it matches a young man who lived about a mile away from Leo and Michelle, who was a convicted murderer, who's extraordinarily violent. And he was known to be out of prison at the time in this same area, living in a trailer with his grandmother, like, less than a mile from where Michelle disappeared. And John Aguero brings him into his office with no witnesses, no tape recorder. And they sit in an office and he interviews Jeremy Scott and he comes away with a story that Jeremy Scott's fingerprints are in that car because he's a. He steals car stereos. And it was just unfortunate that he just happened to be a murderer, a convicted murderer who steals car stereos and left his fingerprints in the car of a woman who had been murdered just right shortly before that. And they try to explain it's just bad luck, it's just a coincidence. But some reason, a judge buys that and denies Leo a new trial. And so what happens in the aftermath of that, as time passes by, is John Aguero passes away. And Jeremy Scott is angry. He said, I had a deal with him. I stuck to that story about the car stereos. He was going to help me with his parole. Now nobody's helping me. And so he confesses to killing Michelle. He says, I'm the one that did it. Another evidentiary hearing happens, and they just say, well, you can't believe a word he said. He first, he denied it. He's off his medication, so he's sounding kind of crazy, but they just basically say, throw the baby out with the bathwater. You can't believe a word he says. Just get rid of it. And. And that's how it dies for Leo. I mean, he's got a man whose fingerprints forensically connected to the car, a known murderer who has confessed. But the way the state has argued it, they were able to persuade judges to go along with their story. And, you know, to me, I started investigating Jeremy Scott. I was really curious about that. I started writing him letters after Leo had no more legal options left. And he ignored me for many, many months. And then finally I got a letter from him that was just kind of blew me away. It's like I've been keeping my damn mouth shut for 31 years. I have a story to tell, but nobody wants to listen. And he just kind of left it at that. Wrote him back. I said, I want to listen. I want to talk to you about the state attorney's office and what. You know. And that was the hook, I think, that got him, because he was very bitter about that. And so finally we were able to get into prison and talk to him. And, you know, it was just a very different kind of interview. It's not. He's used to being questioned by interrogators and police and lawyers asking leading questions. And that was not the way we wanted to go into it. And so that's how we ultimately got to him. I just. Just by saying, you know, we want to listen to your story. And he was receptive to that, and he allowed us. He signed a document saying he would be willing to talk to us and let us into the prison and that was, you know, really came down to the final episode of Bo Valley.
- [18:56]
Kelsey
And at some point in your conversations with Jeremy and in the course of your investigation, you discover that he's probably guilty of another murder.
- [19:08]
Jeremy Scott
Yeah. Well, it's interesting because, like, when we were going through, like, one of the depositions of his girlfriend at the time, when his fingerprints showed up in that car, they. Leo's lawyers started investigating, and they. They reached out to Jeremy's former girlfriend, and in a very casual remark, the lawyer asked, you know, did you know of any other crimes that Jeremy's committed? And she just casually says, well, he told me once that he killed a taxicab driver, but he got away with it. He was like, 16 or 17 at the time. And when I read that, I was like, nobody's looked into that. Like, I'm looking into that. And we started looking to, you know, unsolved cab driver killings. Couldn't really find anything. And the reason we couldn't find it is because they found someone and they tried to convict someone who was clearly innocent. And so I wasn't showing up on our radar because we were looking for unsolved, because we knew we'd never got caught. And as I looked into, I saw, well, there's a town that Jeremy used to live in at one point, and he was connected to that thing. And I was like, he's saying he killed a cab driver. Everything kind of makes sense. Like, he was out of prison at the time. And then in one of his letters, I didn't even bring it up. He said, it's just like with the cab driver. Nobody wants to listen. I killed Leo Schofield's wife. And so, you know, when we got into the prison, we started talking to him about that, and he just told us the whole story about it, how he gotten away with it. And believe me, Jeremy Scott has about an 80 IQ. He's got, you know, he's got some brain damage from an injury as a young. A young man. He's not a mastermind criminal. When you look at the stories he tries to tell, when they're. When he's lying, he can't keep them straight. But when he's telling the truth, his narratives are impeccable. He remembers a lot of the details, and that was one thing I noticed. He walked us through both Michelle's murder and the cab driver's murder, and they were so filled with detail and, like, things that really checked out. Also, I think the thing with Jeremy is, and this is the kind of thing that I think it's kind of unique. He has a lot of the remorse that the state says Leo doesn't have. Leo shows up at a parole hearing. They say, how can you let this man back into society? He's never had any accountability. He doesn't show any remorse. He's never said he's sorry. Jeremy Scott has remorse. He feels tortured by these killings. He says, as I get older, it gets worse. I go to bed seeing the faces of the people I kill. We think he's killed four people. He's forensically connected to three of those murders. I believe if there was a real investigation into the fourth one, you would find him forensically connected. He's not making these stories up.
- [21:51]
Gilbert King
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- [23:10]
Emma Greed
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- [24:10]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [24:49]
Gilbert King
As Gilbert points out, in Bone Valley, Jeremy had initially denied killing Michelle Schofield. But years later, after his fingerprints were found in her car, Jeremy says he confessed to the lead prosecutor, John Aguero. The problem was the meeting wasn't recorded and Aguero never told anyone what Jeremy said. Aguero later claimed the conversation never happened. Years passed before anyone learned about it.
- [25:17]
Kelsey
I think one of Jeremy's theories that he conveys to you is that this prosecutor, John Aguero, knew that Leo was innocent but covered it up because it would just create too many problems and, as he says, open too many doors. What do you think about that theory?
- [25:34]
Jeremy Scott
I mean, I think he's absolutely right. When I show this case, I haven't consulted with a lot of people, academics, law professors, defense lawyers, prosecutors. I've talked to a lot of people and you know, single handedly they all come to the same conclusion, like this is a wrongful conviction. It's very obvious that Jeremy Scott is the killer. I think when you listen to season two, there is no doubt. When you come away with like what the truth is in this case, it's just, you know, it's like one of these things. When you have a wrongful conviction, it takes a mountain to overcome them. But you know, in this case you have extraordinary new evidence. You have fingerprints connecting a known killer to the crime scene and a confession that mentions details that are not known by anybody except who the killer would be. But to have this, the state attorney's office just kind of double down thinking they got this right. It's kind of absurd on the face of it, to be honest with you. I often think about this. What if it had been reversed? And what if Jeremy had confessed first? What if he just blurted out that I killed a woman back in 1987? The prosecutor at that point would say, well, that's all great, but what's the evidence connecting you to the crime scene? And there are fingerprints in the car of the crime. I think it would have turned out completely differently had it gone in that order, but it went in a different order. And so the fingerprints came. They put a story in place while I used to steal car stereos. That's why I was there. And now you're confessing, but you lied under oath last time. We can't believe a word you said. And that's how it played out for Leo. And it's just tragic, in my opinion.
- [27:11]
Kelsey
It really is. And you really convey that in the podcast, too. And obviously, people should listen to the show in its entirety, because it's amazing. But what does Leo tell you about how he committed that crime? And how convincing was that for you when you first heard it?
- [27:28]
Jeremy Scott
It's interesting. I don't know if you followed the Murdaugh trial, but it was really interesting. At the very end, the judge, in sentencing, he mentioned that in his 22 years in the criminal justice system, he'd never seen a murder, even a confessed murder, talk about that moment where he pulls the trigger, does the killing, and. And that's the same thing with Jeremy. Jeremy will talk about it. He'll get you right up to the moment, and you can see his guilt and his. The trauma that he experiences. And he just says, I just lost it. And then he quickly transfers to how he disposed of the body and what he did next and all those details. He doesn't like to talk about the actual killing, which to me is very telling in a way, because it would be very easy if you were making this up, to just say, oh, I stabbed there a bunch of times. It was horrible. You know, like. But he won't even go there. But he describes being homeless, being drunk one night, walking the streets. It's raining out. And he comes across a gas station, and he sees a woman on the phone, and he approaches her, and he. She says, why are you all wet? Do you need the phone? And he Says, no, I need a ride. And I said to Jeremy, did you recognize her? And he said, no, I didn't recognize her. But she said she knew me from somewhere. And I thought that was a really interesting detail for someone to say, because he could have said, yeah, I recognize her from the neighborhood. We talked for a while, and she gave me a ride. But he said, I didn't recognize her at all, but she said she knew me. And so that's how he got in the car. And, you know, everybody we talked to said Michelle was like that. If she'd known somebody who was wet and needed a ride, she would have done it. And he took her to a place that he was known to hang out on. It was a place that his girlfriend said he used to take her there for sex. He knew it very well. And he drove Michelle back there, and he said, I asked him to talk about the conversation. And he said, well, she pulled back there, and she says, there's no cars back here. And he says, no, this is like a lover's lane kind of place. And she said, well, I'm married. And she got scared, and she. He pulled a knife out, and she tried to drive away, and he slammed the car into park, and she started hitting him, and that's when he attacked her. And, you know, he describes it after he killed her, he put her in plastic because there's a lot of garbage in the scene. And he dragged her body down into the water. And he said, I put some plywood over her so that to protect her from the gators and the stakes. He said, and that's how she was found with this plywood on top of her. But. But the one detail that really stuck. Stuck out to us was he mentioned. And nobody. He'd never mentioned this before. When she tried to drive away, he slammed the car into park. And that car. After he killed her, he took the car. And he said, I started driving back to where my mom lived in that same direction, which in his other murders, that's what he did after the crime. He stole a car and went back to his mom's house. And he was heading that way, and the car broke down on him. And when the car was later analyzed, it said the flex plate had cracked. One of the ways you can crack a flex plate is by slamming a moving vehicle into park. It sort of sets off this transmission, like stress. And that explains kind of what happened to that car. It was abandoned there. State never had any theory about that. They never understood why the car was way out there. Jeremy had the reason and it, it was consistent. So a lot of the things that he mentioned, the size of the knife, where he got the knife, what he did with the knife afterwards, where he disposed of it, how he had wiped the fingerprints down in the car the first time. That's why they found they couldn't find Leo or Michelle's fingerprints. He wiped it down. But on his way back after getting rid of the knife, he, he said, you know, I ought to steal the stereo. And so he did go back into the car and steal the stereo. And it's very interesting when he testified about this under oath the second time, he said John Aguero told him to tell the same story about stealing the stereo. Just leave out the part about killing Michelle. And that's what he did. But he said that story's true. I did steal the stereo, but I also killed Michelle.
- [31:44]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [32:15]
Emma Greed
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- [32:20]
Jeremy Scott
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- [32:22]
Emma Greed
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- [32:27]
Jeremy Scott
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- [32:36]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [32:49]
Gilbert King
By this point, Gilbert had recorded Jeremy Scott's confession. He had no doubt that Jeremy killed Michelle Scofield. And yet, while they're producing the podcast, Leo Schofield's parole is denied for the craziest of reasons because the prosecutors misrepresented the facts. During the parole hearing, the state said Michelle's blood was found in her husband Leo's trailer. In fact, none of Michelle's blood was found in Leo's trailer. But the record went uncorrected. Then the former state's attorney testified that Leo Schofield had confessed to killing his wife. In fact, Leo never confessed to killing his wife. The state's Attorney had misspoken. But when Gilbert spoke to one of the parole commissioners afterwards, the guy believed Leo had confessed. It was one reason he denied Leo's parole. All of this put Gilbert in a very tough position. Leo Schofield, Leo's family, his wife's family, even Jeremy Scott began counting on Gilbert's podcast to set the record straight and free Leo. In four years of doing this podcast, I've never faced anything like that. I asked him how he handled was.
- [33:59]
Jeremy Scott
Like, I remember having a conversation with Leo, and I said, leo, look, I've been working on your case for five years now. Four years, I think it was at the time. And I said, I don't know what's going to happen, and I don't know where your hope lies, but the one thing I can tell you is I think we've changed the narrative of your story. I don't think anyone listening to this is going to believe the state's theory about how this crime took place anymore. And so I remember him. Him after that just saying, like, I don't know how I can thank you for this. And I remember he said to me, I can't give you anything. The only thing I can give you is the knowledge that this is never going to come back and bite you on their ass. Like, you're never going to have to worry about, oh, my God, here's the evidence we've been missing. It is Leo. He said you'd never have to worry about that. And the way he looked me in the eyes and said that it was a connection that I felt at that point, that, like, we have an understanding here. And so I knew I had the truth on my side. It was just make sure that this story is delivered in an emotional way that impacts people. The way I felt it and the way we all felt it.
- [35:05]
Gilbert King
Bone Valley's first season came out in September 2022. It took a minute to catch on, but then it blew up. People in other state attorneys offices in Florida told him it had become mandatory listening in their office. But Gilbert wondered, would it actually help Leo get released? He'd seen the impact of storytelling before. After his book Devil in the Grove won the Pulitzer, Senator Marco Rubio called for the state of Florida to pardon the Groveland four, calling what happened to them a horrifying injustice. Two years later, a Florida judge posthumously exonerated them.
- [35:41]
Jeremy Scott
I was drawing strength from that because that wasn't done through the judicial system. It was done from a story. And I believe Leo's story was just as powerful and sure Enough. This. There was a senator in Florida who was the chair of the Criminal Justice Committee, and he had listened to the podcast, and, you know, Leo was up for another parole. And his response was like, forget parole. This guy needs to be exonerated. And so he personally showed up at Leo's parole hearing and argued for Leo's release. That's kind of unprecedented. The head of the criminal justice beat, he was actually the technically, the boss of the parole commissioners. He was arguing to. And so that we knew that the story was reaching the right places. And now Senator Jonathan Martin is one of Leo's biggest advocates. He's really spearheading the effort to see that Leo gets exonerated. And, you know, I do believe it's going to happen. And I think, you know, it is the power of storytelling. You know, Leo says to me, like, Gilbert, I just don't want this to be like the Groveland Four, where it's posthumous. I want it while I'm alive. And like, saying, doing what we can, Leo. Doing what we can.
- [36:52]
Gilbert King
Leo was finally granted parole in April of 2024 after serving 35 years for the murder of his wife. Gilbert said he was placed in a transition program where former inmates are expected to take accountability for their crimes. Leo, of course, was innocent. At the same time, he'd had a volatile relationship with his wife, Michelle. That was one of the reasons a jury had convicted him. He used the program to acknowledge that.
- [37:19]
Jeremy Scott
And, you know, he said to me something really interesting. He said, you know, I never really got a chance to properly grieve my wife's death because I was on the defense the whole time. I was fighting for my own life, and I never really had it before. And that was a hard thing for him to come to terms with. The fact that, you know, his relationship with Michelle was something that the jury could use against him to convict him. And so taking accountability for that, for that relationship was really a big part of his progress to that. But, you know, last year, he was ultimately released into a halfway house. He got a job as an auto mechanic and just, you know, living life. But, you know, he still lives under the conviction, felony conviction, and that, you know, comes with parole. He has to always check in whenever he has to leave the county, whenever he wants to go somewhere. He is kind of like prison without bars. I think I've heard it described.
- [38:13]
Gilbert King
But Leo's parole wasn't the only thing to come out of Bone Valley's first season. A few months after it aired, Jeremy Scott's son Justin, contacted Gilbert. Justin had never met his father before. He never even heard his voice. He grew up thinking his dad was a monster. But Bone Valley changed his mind. He tells his story in season two. Another unexpected outcome of the podcast was that Gilbert forged a relationship with Jeremy. They exchanged letters and talked about books. Gilbert also served as a kind of liaison between Jeremy and Leo. Leo, it turns out, has forgiven Jeremy for what he did. And Gilbert let Jeremy know that.
- [38:54]
Jeremy Scott
And ultimately, we decided to go forward with this season because. And I'll just tell you, it's not a spoiler. It's out there. But I was visiting Leo. He's in his hospital bed. And Jeremy called me at that moment, and I was like, leo, I don't know what to do here. Jeremy's calling. Should I pick it up? And he said, yeah. And I said, jeremy, I just want to tell you I'm standing here with Leo right now, and do you guys want to talk? And I gave Leo the phone, and that's like the last episode. I won't get too much into it, but Leo was Leo, the graceful, empathic person. And Jeremy is just the person that I come to know him as, as being extraordinarily remorseful. And they have this unbelievable conversation between them. And when you listen to it, it's so raw, it's so unplanned. You know, at times, they're talking over each other, but it's from the two men that I've come to know over these years being themselves and having this conversation. And it was extraordinary. And it just. I think it was just one of those things, like everything in this story really comes from Leo. I think Jeremy has been affected by Leo and Leo's grace and forgiveness and the people around him, Justin, all of them are just so moved by who Leo was and how he could feel this way towards the man who killed his wife. And, you know, ultimately it comes down to, like, you know, you're not getting the truth in the verdict. You're not getting the truth in the courtroom. You're getting the truth between these two men who have forged the truth between them. They understand the truth of what happened that night when Michelle's life was taken. And it becomes more powerful than anything you can have in a courtroom. You recognize that you've just heard the truth, and it doesn't match what the judicial system has come up with.
- [40:59]
Gilbert King
If you have information, story tips, or feedback you'd like to share with the Gone south team, please email us at gone south podcastmail.com that's gonesouthpodcastmail.com and for bonus content, you can follow us on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram @ the end. Gone south podcast. You can also sign up for our newsletter on substack. Gone south with Jed Lipinski Gone south is an Odyssey original podcast. It's created, written, and narrated by me, Jed Lipinski. Our executive producers are Jenna Weiss Berman, Matty Sprung, Keyser, Tom Lipinski, Lloyd Lockridge, and me. Our story editors are Tom Lipinski, Matty Sprung, Keyser, and Joel Lovell. God south is edited by Chris Basel and Perry Crowell. It's mixed and mastered by Chris Basel. Production support from Ian Mont and Sean Cherry. Special thanks to J.D. crowley, Leah Rees, Dennis, Maura Curran, Josephina Francis, Kurt Courtney, and Hilary Shuffle.