Gilbert King

Gilbert King is the writer, producer, and host of Bone Valley, a 9-part narrative podcast about murder and injustice in 1980s central Florida, from Lava For Good and iHeartPodcasts. He is the author of three books, most recently, Beneath a Ruthless Sun. His previous book, Devil in the Grove was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 2013.. Follow him on Twitter here.

For Bone Valley, why were you able to discover new things in this case that had been overlooked before? 
I think because the State of Florida wasn’t really interested in investigating Jeremy Scott, or a search for truth. When Jeremy is questioned by investigators from the State, he’s actually feeling them out about another murder he committed–the 1987 killing of a taxicab driver in Osceola County. He wants to see what they know about it, or if he’s going to be charged. So he actually brings it up in a vague way, but the investigators laugh him off and steer him back to Michelle Schofield’s murder.  To me, those were breadcrumbs–little clues Jeremy was leaving behind about his violent past. So we were able to follow those leads and they paid off. The State of Florida was more interested in protecting their conviction of Leo Schofield, rather than looking into other murders that Jeremy Scott was responsible for, so we were able to investigate people and places they never looked into.  

What was it like when you got the confession?
We had put so much into our investigation of Jeremy Scott that we were already convinced he was responsible for killing taxicab driver Joseph Lavair. We had a lot of evidence. He had even hinted about it in letters he’d written to me. But to be sitting in the room with him, watching his body shift in the chair as he walked us through how he shot the taxi driver, then stole the cab and crashed it into a power pole–that was a surreal moment. We knew, as he began describing all the details, that there was no way he was lying about this, or that he had gotten this information from another source.  Jeremy did this, and it was very clear to us that he felt tortured by his past.  He was confessing because he wanted to come clean. And when he finally told us the story of how he killed Michelle Schofield, you could see and hear his torment as he confessed to us. He was processing memories, and saying things out loud that he’s probably never said to anyone before. 

How was the final podcast different than what you imagined it would be?
We had a very detailed outline of how we wanted the series to be structured.  In truth, we had an overabundance of material and tape–easily enough to do a podcast series on both Leo and Jeremy’s stories. I had been playing around with the idea of doing a parallel narrative on both these men, the way I might have done if I was writing a book. But it just didn’t work in audio, so we had to pivot away from that idea and basically introduce Jeremy Scott halfway through the series.  We also didn’t know how the series would end. We were hoping we’d get to interview Jeremy, and that turned out to be one of the very last interviews we did. And obviously, we thought that interview was so important to the story we wanted to tell, we decided to almost do the whole final episode around Kelsey and I going to visit Jeremy in prison. Until that point, we didn’t really know how Bone Valley was going to end. We had a sense of how we wanted it to feel. But we ended up following Leo’s lead, and he led us to a very powerful and unexpected place.  

Anything from the cutting room floor you can share with us? 
We left a lot on the cutting room floor, which is the way it should be. But there was one exchange, between Jeremy Scott and his grandmother, in a phone call that was taped by the prison. We use part of this conversation at the end of Chapter Four. It’s the first time you’re hearing Jeremy’s voice, and he’s telling his grandmother that two cold case detectives just visited him, telling him that they found his fingerprints in Michelle Schofield’s Mazda.  Jeremy is clearly rattled by the visit, and he’s trying to explain the murder to his grandmother.  At one point, he’s describing what the detectives told him, and Jeremy tells his grandmother, “So then they found, you know, they found all kind of blood and all that shit at their house. That’s what…that’s what got me so fucking confused, right?” To me, that line is telling. The detectives told him that Michelle was stabbed in the trailer and dumped in the drainage canal. Jeremy knew that wasn’t true because he knows where he killed Michelle. That’s why he was confused by what detectives told him. We ultimately felt that explaining the significance of this line would have taken listeners out of the moment of hearing Jeremy talking to his grandma.  It was a powerful conversation on its own, so we left that part of the exchange on the cutting room floor, so to speak.  

Do you think this podcast will impact Leo’s case?  
I’m a big believer in the power of storytelling, and I’ve seen this happen before with my book, Devil in the Grove, which ultimately prompted the State of Florida to reopen the case of the Groveland Four, and to finally exonerate them in 2021. I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but I do believe that people who listen to Bone Valley are going to reach the same conclusion that we did–that Leo Schofield is an innocent man who has been wrongfully incarcerated for the past 35 years. We are already seeing that people are outraged, and many of them are asking what they can do to help correct this injustice.  This is the time when heroes often step up. And that’s exactly what Leo needs right now. Someone heroic, who wants to see the right thing done in this case, and who has the power to see it through.  

What was the hardest moment you had making Bone Valley?
The hardest moments were usually around meeting and interviewing people whose lives were upended by the violent acts of Jeremy Scott.  Hearing Dan Otte reduced to tears as he told us about how his father sold all the cars in his junkyard to pay for Dan’s defense attorney, and how his mother had three strokes during his ordeal, and was convinced she’d never see her youngest son get out of jail.  People like Tracey Slaughter, who described being assaulted by Jeremy when she was just 16 years old, and Jessie Saum, who told us how his sister Michelle’s death had devastated his family.  And of course, knowing that Leo has been in prison for more than three decades for a murder that Jeremy is responsible for…it’s all so heartbreakingly painful to contemplate.  There were many moments like this over the years we spent making Bone Valley. 

If you were going to start another podcast, don’t worry about the logistics or whether or not anyone would like it. Your budget is $1M. What would it be?
Honestly, it would be any story that I’d get to work on with the same team from Lava For Good. As someone who mostly writes books, it’s a pretty solitary life. I’ve never been a part of a collaboration like this before, and I absolutely loved it. We were almost always on the same page together, and everyone working on Bone Valley brought something creatively valuable to the table that made the story better in ways I couldn’t even imagine. And of course, our executive producers, Jason Flom and Kevin Wortis could not have been more supportive. They trusted me to tell Leo Schofield’s story, and they assembled a dream team to help tell it. 

Thanks, Gilbert!