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