Bone Valley’s Gilbert King on Wrongful Convictions, Redemption & the Fight for Justice

Welcome to Obsessed, where Mika, Tia and I challenge the thoughts that limit you, where we provide the tools for transformation, be prepared to be swept away into the raw power of obsession, unlocking secrets and stories behind the insatiable hunger for growth and change. This is more than just a podcast, this is your story. It is a manifesto for those who refuse to settle, who dare to dream and who are relentless in the pursuit of living a great life. Get obsessed with your life. Forgiveness is huge. Someone's done us wrong. Forgiveness can be everything. A lot of people say forgive, but don't forget our friend Gilbert King has brought to us. This is a second time here. He is the podcaster of Bone Valley, hold surprise winning author. We could go on and on, but I know this story is something you never forget. Mika? Definitely. It's still imprinted in my mind the story of Leo and Gilbert, how you championed being by Leo's side and advocating for him. Now he is home, he's free. Wow, mind blowing. What was that moment like when you're face to face with Leo and he is out in society and not behind bars? That's such a great question because I always felt this guilt about it. I remember telling Leo, look, I know I can change the narrative of your story. I believe that the story we're going to tell is going to be much more accurate than the one the state was telling that led to your incarceration. I don't know if I can change your life or change your case at all. I just know I can change the narrative. I don't know what's going to come after that. Remarkably, he was paroled, I think in large part, to the attention that the podcaster gained. And just eventually the state just said, all right, let's treat him like any other inmate and let him out. He served his time. He's a model inmate. He's not officially exonerated. We did a whole bonus episode about Leo's release from prison, which was about a year ago. We spent the whole day with him, watched him get out of prison and then arrive at his halfway house. It was an overwhelming feeling to see him out in street clothes, out of this place that he'd been for the last 36 years of his life and trying to adjust to the modern times. When he went in, there were no cell phones. There was no internet. It was just a different world back then to just see him out there and introduce to this really strange new world was overwhelming at times. But you just forget about the fact that he's looking across these horizons and saying things like, I've never been able to look that far without looking through chain link in the last four decades. Those are the kind of little details that were remarkable to me just to see him out and not having to have a guard lead him somewhere. It was overwhelming for me. I can't imagine what it was like for him, but he does articulate it much better than I did in our bonus episode. We had a mic on the ride too. You could hear his observations talking to his wife. It's the first time they've ever been in a car together. It really awakened all of us and opened our eyes to what incarceration really felt like because we had to see him free. Can you just for people that don't know Leo's story and your journey together, can you share that briefly with our audience? Sure. The first interesting story was brought to me by a judge who handed me a business card and said Leo Schofields in prison. He's not wrongfully convicted. He's an innocent man. And this judge was trying to get me to look into the case. I was working on another book. It's hard, but that one kind of jumped out at me and I started looking into it a little bit more and I started to realize, wow, I think this guy really might be innocent. At one point I got back to the judge and he said, you should go talk to Leo. I met Leo, spent about three hours with him and I just became convinced. I'd already done a lot of research, but at this point, but I just became convinced by the way he was talking to me that this was not a sociopath who was trying to trick me. He really was innocent. And then when you look into his case, he gets incarcerated and then 17 years into his prison term, these unidentified fingerprints surface to a man who is a known killer in the same area where Leo lived with his wife, Michelle, at the time. And the fingerprints come back to this young man. All of a sudden he confesses, he's forensically linked to the crime, adding details. He did this. And it turns out he was living with this tremendous guilt that something he'd done, he's never getting out of prison himself. Something that he's done, not only took the life of a young 18 year old girl, Michelle Schofield, but incarcerated her husband, Leo, for the last 30 something years. And so I started talking to both men. I became absolutely convinced that they were both telling the truth, but the state of Florida doesn't believe either one of them. And so that's really the conundrum in this case. I'm not only investigating Leo, but now I'm investigating Jeremy Scott. And that's really the season one and season two of Bone Valley. It all comes together in these investigations. At what point during your investigation, did you feel like you were sitting on something explosive that could change the course of Leo's case? From the time that the judge gave you the business card and said, you should go visit Leo. What was the spark? I think there was lots of road signs along the way. Every time I'd find something new in my investigation, it always pointed to Jeremy Scott. It never pointed to Leo. So the new things that I would learn, something a new witness would tell me, something I'd see in the reports that wasn't brought out of trial. It just always had the same effect. This makes Jeremy Scott look like he's telling the truth. And it just seemed that Leo was framed by the prosecutor. And so it just kept coming back. So that was one of the things I noticed a pattern like it never comes back to Leo. It always comes to Jeremy. The real moment though was when we sat down with Jeremy Scott and he consented to be interviewed in prison in 2021. I was convinced with what Leo was telling me about swearing about his innocence and the things that he couldn't know because he wasn't there for that. Jeremy Scott seemed to have all the answers from the other side. And all of the remorse that the state had expected Leo to show in parole situations where they said he never takes accountability. He never admits his guilt. How can you let him out? It's because he's had a claim of innocence that he refuses to go back on. All the remorse that you'd expect from Leo was coming from Jeremy. Jeremy was feeling tremendously guilt ridden of things he'd done in his past. He was willing to talk about them, adding so much more depth and detail to the story. I became absolutely convinced that Jeremy Scott was being just as truthful as Leo was about what happened that night. That really opened up my eyes, especially when Jeremy would say things like, how did it make you feel about these things that you'd done? And he would say, this is my punishment. I go to bed at night and I see the faces of the people I killed. And that's not an easy thing to live with. And you could tell you weren't dealing with a sociopath. He was tremendously empathic. He felt bad for the families of the people he's hurt. I mean, I think that really just weighed on me a lot. And that's what was the breakthrough moment. Did you ever fear that your work might interfere with due process or be ignored by the system meant to serve justice? Yeah, that was a big concern because it takes a lot to overturn a wrongful conviction. The state's response to everything we put out in new stories has always been what jury has spoken and it's been upheld in the appellate courts. My stance on that is every single wrongful conviction that's happened in the United States and there have been hundreds of them, whether it's from new DNA evidence, an exonerase, a suspect, they all have the same thing in common. They've been convicted by jury and they've had those appellate decisions upheld in the courts. There's nothing new to say that like a jury has spoken and the courts have appellate. There are certain cases that come along that bring remarkable new evidence that's really hard to deny. And when you have someone who's forensically tied to a crime scene and who's also confessed in detail, that's pretty significant new evidence. And to see how that was ignored and just brushed off by the state and the judges, I think is just an abomination of the justice system and it needs to be corrected. And I still have full confidence that day will come. But for right now, at least Leo's out of prison, but he can at least try and build a life, even though he's still considered a convicted murderer in the eyes of the state. And it's a story, right? Gilbert, it's a story of exoneration. It's a story of criminal justice. It's also a story of forgiveness. You have taken so many listeners, so many readers through these stories. What has been your biggest takeaway? What has been your biggest reward for doing this? Because I'm not saying you're getting paid like nobody necessarily was paid. Like the courts aren't paying you. I don't think Leo is paying you. There must be some reward in this story, just as a journalist and truth seeker. Yeah. And there really is. Thank you for asking that because honestly, I'm fortunate enough that I can make a living doing the kind of work that I love, which is reporting on these injustices and taking a long time to do them. It's a real benefit to the way that I work, which is I don't have a tight deadline. I can explore these over a long period of time and hopefully get it right. The greatest reward is to see the stories that I take on have consequences and actually change things. In my book, Devil and the Grove was published. There began to be some momentum. People were reading it and saying, we got to fix this. This is a perfect case of a rawful conviction that's destroyed the lives of people, taken the lives of people and ruined the lives of the families. That's the thing you don't see is how a rawful conviction can really ripple outward and destroy families and communities. And they think the girls in four, that was from the 1940s, they're all long gone. Something like an exoneration is not going to bring them back to life, but it can do a couple of things. It can clear the names of the families who've been living in shame with these accusations for decades. And it also improves the integrity of the criminal justice system. So for the state of Florida to come in and just say, we got this wrong and we're willing to admit it, I believe that improves the integrity of the system. That's huge too, because all the defense attorneys I talked to for a state to overturn a conviction, it's almost impossible. It really is. And I feel like it shouldn't come down to storytellers making a difference. This lawyer's had access to the same evidence and stories, but the system becomes so daunting. And it's this concept of finality. People just don't want to. The jury's already spoken, it's been to the courts. Let's just let this one go. It's time to move on. Well, it's not time to move on. We got confessions and serious evidence and these things need to be dealt with. It's unfortunate that storytellers are making a difference in this way, but I respect the fact that people are willing to look back even though it's a story that might be the impetus behind correcting this injustice. That's been the greatest reward pictures on our website of Leo hugging me when he gets out of prison. I'll take that feeling over any literary award any day. It means so much more on a human level to me to just know that I believe in a story so much and that it made a difference in someone's life for the better. And I think that's exactly what happened with Leo and with the family members of the Golden Four. Again, not going to bring any of their family members back to life, but for what's possible to at least clear their names just means the world to me as a writer. So that's the greatest reward for that. And Julie, I forgot the first part of your question. Maybe Mika forgot as well. You're doing, okay, I hope I didn't interrupt you. How can people make a living at doing what you do and change live? You're just doing something so big and so grand. I just need to know those secrets so you can hire me. I think what is the factor for my work is that I go in. This is a hard thing to tell Leo. Look, I'm taking on your story, but it's going to take me years. You tell that to a man in prison and it's can you hurry up a little bit? There's no guarantee that anything is going to make a difference. But the fact that I have so much time enables me to wait. You've said that a couple of times. You have so much time. What the heck? A lot of times I'll have a book and the deadline is not for five years. So I have four years of research to do. And that's how I worked the same thing happened with the podcast. It took four years to get it off the ground and out there. Not everyone has that luxury, but I need that much time to get these stories right, to do the level of investigation. I obsess over these things. The thing I really love is the investigation and the research. I really love going over every single document, spreadsheets and databases and interviewing hundreds of people and just finding something that's like, Oh, I didn't realize it when I started this project. But that right there in that document, that means something. We should look into that. It's like being detected going back in time and trying to solve something. That's what really motivates me. I never get tired of that. I see cases that I just there's too many cases and not enough time to be honest with you. But I love that part of the work. If you can be in love with waking up in the morning and saying, I got to dig into this, there's an innocent man sitting in prison. I know he's innocent. I got to prove it. It's something that motivates you. The storytelling part comes later because you wouldn't be involved in it unless it's a really good story. With this story, like all the other ones I take on, I think they're really interesting. How can these two men both be connected to the same murder? And these two guys are arriving at the same version of the truth. And yet the state of Florida doesn't believe either one of them. That frustrates me, but it also really motivates me to figure this out. That's the insane part. You got someone claiming innocence, and then you have someone saying, I did it and nobody believes either story. It's insane. The way it unfolded is like these fingerprints were found in the car, but at the time they didn't have the database, the technology to match the fingerprints. So they just sat unidentified for 17 years until they could be run through the system. Jeremy Scott, like once those fingerprints were run, they interviewed him and he denied it for a couple of years, and then he finally confessed to it. But that gave the state the reason to say he first he said he didn't do it. Now he's saying he's do. You can't believe it word he says, and they just throw it all out with the bath water. But my thinking is if he would have confessed first, let's just say it got mixed up. When Jeremy Scott would have confessed first and wrote a letter to the prosecutor's office, what's the first thing the prosecutor is going to say? That's fine. You can confess all you want. Are you forensically tied to the crime scene? And he is. He's also forensically tied to the crime scene. So at that point, if it happened in that order, I have no doubt that Leo would be exonerated. But because it happened in the opposite order of that, it gave the courts some time to evaluate the evidence, come up with this idea that Jeremy is untrustworthy. He said he did it, but he also said he didn't do it. You can't believe anything. Let's just not go near this case. And that's what happened to Leo. They didn't want to really investigate it. They just wanted to destroy Jeremy's credibility. That was an easier way to protect the conviction of Leo Schofield. Wow. So the truth is evident though, Gilbert, why do you think the state continues to fight to uphold convictions rather than to correct them? I think it's a combination of things. In order to tell this story, I had to go hard on the prosecutor's office. Sometimes it's the police and the detectives that are getting it wrong or framing a suspect. And then they handed over the prosecutor and mistakes are made. In this case, it was a prosecutor who was putting this case together, making unethical choices in the prosecution of Leo Schofield. I had to really expose that and go hard at that office with proof of what they were doing. And that kind of boxes them in a little bit and it makes them defensive. And they're not really so willing to admit their past wrongs. So I think maybe they've just doubled down so hard that it's not going to be something they'll ever do comfortably. That's why I think the case needs to be taken out of that. Or else another conviction and tag review to another court to look at it freshly and get it out of that circuit because the circuits already proven themselves untrustworthy, in my opinion. Amazing. Incredible. So many things. The juxtaposition of you having Jeremy and Leo on two separate seasons. Powerful. I just read an article on the reconciliation between the two. Were you a part of that as well? Yeah, it was season two. We were already reporting on it. We'd already done most of the episodes. And Leo in January had gotten a pretty bad motorcycle accident and really brittle colada bones. He was bedridden for three months. Some guy that gets out of prison and within the year he gets this horrible. If there's anybody who can deal with that, Virtree, it's definitely Leo. He's just got the right spirit and the right spiritual commitment. I just went down to visit him and see him say hello. I wanted to play some tape that I'd gotten from a conversation I had recently with Jeremy. Jeremy's been calling me since I interviewed him in 2021. We stay in touch. He writes to me all the time and he's never denied killing Michelle. He's stuck to that story. He's been very honest with me about other murders he's committed, willing to talk about with me. I've maintained that relationship. And while I was visiting Leo in Florida, Jeremy called me right while I was standing at his bed and I'm like, it was Leo. You're not going to believe this, but Jeremy's calling me right now. Do you want to talk to him? They never spoke. And I got Jeremy on the phone. I said, Jeremy, I don't know how you feel about this, but I'm here with Leo. Do you guys want to talk? They both agreed. It was just this remarkable conversation. Leo, the Leo you've come to know from Bone Valley, he's extraordinarily graceful. He's a very spiritual man. And he said, Jeremy, I forgive you with all my heart. I want to thank you. I believe that by you speaking out and telling the truth is a reason that I'm no longer in prison and I just have a great deal of respect for you for doing that. And I thank you, my family, thanks you. And Jeremy was dumbstruck by it. He's standing at a pay phone around other prisoners and he apologizes to Leo and thanks him for forgiving him. It's just this beautiful moment between them. You can see Leo rise to who he is. Jeremy is struggling in solitary confinement. He's had some issues in prison and Leo is just like being his mentor. You could tell who Leo was in prison. He's the guy that's helping these guys who are downtrodden and experiencing hardship. And Leo just falls into this mentorship role. It was just so emotional for me because Jeremy's I never thought I'd change my life around. Please pray for me. And Leo says, I'll never stop praying for you, Jeremy. After that call, Jeremy called me back because he was shocked by what had happened. And I said, how did Leo's words make you feel? He said, it just made me feel so good like hearing him be free because I'm the guy that's ruined his life. I'm the reason he was in prison. You can't fake that. This is who these guys are. And they're the people I've known over the last several years. At the end of the conversation, we actually had a little kind of jinx moment. I thought the phone had turned off. I thought it was done. It was still recording. And like you could hear me and Leo talking and Leo doesn't get any more real like that. I just talked to the guy who murdered my wife and he says, today was the test. I always know that I wanted to forgive him, but like I never thought I could actually go through with it. And I did it. And we just had that conversation that we didn't even think was being recorded. So it was just really interesting. It is so cool. Yeah, it frames the whole season because in season one, you hear Leo Leo's the only one who showed any empathy for Jeremy Scott in this whole story. The state beats him up. The defense. Everybody is just the police. Think he's crazy. I just they don't treat him like a human being. Leo is the only one in episode one of season two. He says, I just want Jeremy to know the kind of love I know because I have friends and family and supporters and Jeremy has none of that. My prayer for him is that he someday can experience love the way I have. And that's what season two is all about. People who heard Jeremy in season one confessing and struggling with his punishment for his past and his son coming back into his life. Now people coming into his life and actually caring about him, random people who just heard the podcast. That was really the spirit of season two. And it goes in a very different direction. But I think people find it is emotionally powerful as anything in season one because you're seeing it from a very different side and a very human side. It becomes a part of humanity that I'm really proud to have documented in this story. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to hear you give her like I'm feeling so emotional and it's such an amazing uplifting way, seeing the spirit of humanity and hearing the humanity that Leo will show Jeremy. What toll has this story taken on you personally? Because you've been with the story for several years. Has it changed how you see people, institutions or yourself? Yeah, I wouldn't say it took a personal toll. There were times when you're something this dark, going into these areas, trying to get to the truth. A lot of times you see this cycle of poverty and pain in these communities. And it just hits you. Lovely people who extremely smart, extremely caring, but they've had relatives in prison or there are women who've gotten pregnant at 13 or 14. And you just see the challenges that they have in their lives. But you also get to see who they are as people, how they've met these challenges and survived and some cases thrive. Jeremy's son coming out of the woodwork. Jeremy's never met him. He got his girlfriend pregnant right at the time that he went to prison. So he's never really held his child in his arms. He wrote letters for years when the child was young, but they were family protected him from Jeremy. They didn't want him talking to him. So that relationship fell away. He never met his son. Now, from listening to the podcast, his son has come back into his life. He's 35 years old and he wants to know about his father. He basically said, what can you tell me? I want to know about my father. And that really became the impetus of season two. All of a sudden you have Jeremy and his son, Justin, writing to each other after all these years, eventually they're going to meet. Jeremy's a grandfather and finding out that his son didn't go down any of the same roads that Jeremy went in. He's this beautiful, I call him a kid, he's 35, but he feels like a kid to me in a lot of ways and never having known a father. And he's very realistic. He's, I know my father's never getting out of prison and he probably shouldn't. Can he be redeemed? That's the question. And the answer is yes, he can be redeemed. He's doing the things in prison. I think if you're a prosecutor, you say, this guy has killed multiple people. What can he do positively in his life? Take accountability, reach out to the people he hurt and let them know the truth. Let them know he regrets everything and he's willing to give closure to these families. That's the best you can expect from him. He's doing that and he wants family in his life. He's motivated by telling the truth and coming clean about his past because he doesn't want to be that person that he was. And this is a chance for him to reconnect with family, which is all he has in his life and he's getting that now. I've had people from the prison system, executives, who spent decades in the prison system in Florida writing me letters saying, you have no idea the impact that this makes. It makes for the prisons a better place if they can have those connections because they're better human beings prison system. And it means a lot to do the kind of storytelling that you're doing. That's one of those letters that meant the world to me to get. That's another one of those rewards as well as the hugs from people who are affected by this. I think it's amazing, Gilbert. I remember you said that you enjoy the process of investigations and research, looking at every crevice related to the case and you're obsessed with it. It gives you a thrill. It just satisfies this huge curiosity in its problem solving. And then on the end of that completion, you're getting these unexpected rewards like Jeremy's son. And you've got people writing you letters and expressing their gratitude. And it's a lot. It's overwhelming in such an amazing way to be getting the rewards as well as satisfying this burning desire to begin the research in the first place. What do you think of that? It makes me think if I was younger, I don't know if I'd have the same outlook on this. But having gone through some things and seen cases evolve based on the writing I've done on these stories, I think it made me really evaluate what do I want to do in life? What do I want to accomplish? Storytelling is a big part of it. But I also want there to be some kind of change that comes from it. And I look back like sometimes that doesn't really fly in the face of what journalism is supposed to be about. Journalism is supposed to be nonpartisan, not an advocate. You're just reporting the story. But I look back at the people that I'd buy or mentioned Ida B. Wells, who, you know, investigated lynchings 100 years ago. She wasn't just investigating the lynching. She was trying to get past these bills that made anti-lynching bills. She was trying to change the public perception of this. We can't accept this. These are human lives. And I think you just can't look at it. Oh, there's both sides to every story. Emmett Till, yeah, he got lynched. He did whistle at a white woman. Lynching is wrong and it's OK to take a stance on this. I feel that wrongful convictions are wrong. If it's the government using its power to put an innocent man in prison, that needs to be corrected. I don't just want to tell the stories. I want to, like, tell them in a way that inspire other people to get involved, because there's nothing really I can do after telling the stories. And what I love about that is it gives individuals out there can do something. I may have told you this story before, but there was a 20 year old student at the University of Florida studying devil in the Grove in a history class. He was emotionally moved by it. He started doing his own research and said this needs to be corrected. He went to his local state representatives, said, you guys got to fix this. Run enough bells, got a few answers and started this momentum. And that's what led to the pardons of the Grove and boys. This one student in a class was inspired by my work, but took it another level further. I think it led to a groundswell of support beyond him, but he started it. His name is Josh from Kenner, a rammin. He wrote to me early on, asked me a bunch of questions about the book and was inspired to act. That inspires me, too. Now, Leo's case, there's a senator in Florida by the name of Jonathan Martin, who's the chair of the Criminal Justice Committee. He's a huge fan of the podcast. He believes that Leo Schofield is innocent and has taken it on his mantle to proclaim Leo's innocence and try to affect change. He testified at Leo's parole hearing. Think about that. An elected senator shows up at a parole hearing to testify for a man. Yeah, it was just like, that's the kind of spirit that I really want to be involved in, where people from all sides of the political spectrum, all walks of life can come together and say, we need to fix this. And I give a great deal of credit to the state of Florida, hopeful and optimistic that the same thing is going to happen to Leo Schofield. Is what happened to the Grove and boys, as Leo likes to say, Gilbert, let's just hope it's not posthumously. And I said, yeah, we're working on that, Leo. Your story is about compassion. You are giving a story to someone like Jeremy Scott, someone who is a confessed murderer, multiple time murderer. A lot of people don't have any compassion for people like that. But if you dig deep in what you did in your podcast, you dug deep into his background. He only, I think, sixth or eighth grade education, pretty much on the streets, like living in abandoned houses, found a girlfriend who probably was missing something, she believed in him for a couple of years. Storytelling connects us as listeners and readers. We do have compassion, even though we don't necessarily want him to be free. We understand his story and everybody has a story. And that is what you're doing, Gilbert. That is the amazing part that you are adding a layer of compassion to whatever story we go through, no matter how heinous it is. I struggle with this, too, because I'm like, how close do I want to get to Jeremy Scott? I just want to know enough about the story in the case. I don't really want to get involved with him personally. But then something happened. Wait, he calls you all the time. You guys are best friends. The only one he calls. Yeah. But in the beginning, I don't want to get involved in this. I wasn't sure. I had a relationship with Leo, but that was different. I knew Leo was innocent. Here's a guy who I know is guilty. He was killed several people. What do I do in here? And I just, it's complicated, but there were times when I would send him stamps and he would write me letters and ask him questions about other murders he's committed and he was writing that. But then as this developed, I started sending him books because he was in solitary confinement and had nothing. He only learned to read Death Row in prison. I started sending him books and we would talk about the books together. He was stepping into these worlds and talking about the characters. I sent him Game of Thrones and he would talk about the Stark children and how he couldn't believe the author had killed off these children. And we was talking about John Snow and the things that meant something to him in the book and he got emotional about it. And I felt like he was speaking to me in a more honest way and a more empathic and compassionate way himself. And when I started going back to Leo's case and talking to him about murders that he committed, I found that he was thinking about families of the victims and the people he'd heard in a more honest way. And it was really hard not to feel something for him, to know how much he struggled with this. And it's easy, not easy. He is in solitary confinement a lot where he gets out two hours a week for like showers and wreck, right? But he's in four four walls. He's enclosed in this thing. And if he doesn't have the correspondence and books, it means everything to him. I became lifeline to him. And I took that really seriously. I don't want to take advantage of him. I don't want to lie to him. He knows what I'm doing. He believes that people were coming to him and writing to him from the podcast, including this housekeeper in Florida, Mary, who's a very big part of season two, becomes his friend and starts sending him magazines and talking to him. They have a motherly son relationship where she's asking him about his health, trying to get him new eyeglasses because his vision is bad and things like that. And she becomes in his life and very compassionate and a trusted part of her life for years. And so we were able to document that relationship. And I think it was a really special gathering, as Justin says, people coming together to take care of one another. And that's exactly what happened in this story. I haven't really gotten any negative comments or responses about this. I have a lot of comments from people who said I never thought I would feel any bit of sympathy or empathy, but I feel like I understand the story fuller now. And that's all we're really trying to do is just show the humanity behind these kinds of stories instead of making everything a black and white world. There's a lot in the gray that's really interesting. Wow. This is better than fiction. I'm ready for the Oscar or the film to begin production. I know we talked about that a little bit on your last visit to the podcast. Where are we so far? It's currently in development. There's some really serious people who have won Oscars and very big awards working on this. Well, that's the idea to bring this story to life because of season two. It's much richer. Bone Valley. One ends it. I wouldn't say unsatisfying way from a storytelling point of view, but it's frustrating because it ends with we got to the truth. You've heard the truth and nothing is going to come of this. These two men basically agree what happened. But that's not enough. Leo is going to spend the rest of his life in prison as is Jeremy Scott. And what happened in season two, you realize that while there's really more to this story and the fact that these two guys eventually come together and have a conversation about the past is just so powerful and so spontaneous. There's nothing that feels really set up about it. It's not planned. I love that because I feel like Bone Valley itself is just very real. There's nothing phony about it. Sometimes it's very unpoliced or outside talking to people. Sirens going by or in prisons. It's noisy. It's not like a controlled studio environment. But I think people realize that and like that. And I think people have come to really like the characters in this story, like the judge who was willing to step off the bench and represent Leo again. Think about that, that commitment to just I'm stepping off the bench. I'm changing my career to become Leo's lawyer. I think people really respond to the passion of the people in the story. So we have seen this journey of Gilbert King. What is next for Gilbert? What is next for Jeremy? What is next for Leo? And how can we take action and be advocates like you are? I was down at the University of Georgetown and they have a program called Making an Exhilaration. They take students and study cases of possible wrongful convictions. I look to the young people for inspiration because I can see their passion. These young students are like, that guy is innocent and he shouldn't be in prison. We have to do something. They don't realize people have spent years on these things without any progress. It's frustrating and it's hard work. And sometimes it's not alone to be the one thing that's going to help you. Passion is not going to be a factor sometimes. Sometimes you just need something else running into these students and seeing their passion. You don't want to dampen that passion because that's the stuff that really does make a difference. Somebody caring. And I try to remember that all the time. I try to go into these cases like somebody young and totally altruistic. Something can be done to fix this. I'm going to try. And I think just caring about something like that. People come to see your passion. They keep they see that the case inside out. You have your beliefs, but they also know that you're not going to be judging them. You're going to listen to them. People are going to be heard. And I think those are the kind of things that really matter to people. Sometimes just spending months with people, not recording. How are you doing? Just checking in with you because I'm still working on this story and they see your commitment to it. And they say, I want to help this guy. Sometimes it takes years, but sometimes they agree to talk. Jeremy's girlfriend was a perfect example. I tried to get her to talk to me for years. I knew she knew a lot because she was with Jeremy at the time of these crimes. And sure enough, that's exactly what she remembered. And so she's a really big part of season two. But it's really painful for her to recount these memories. Her first boyfriend as a 17 year old girl is a killer. She wasn't living on the streets. She had money. She had a safe roof over her head. How is she drawn to Jeremy? How does that happen to you? She explains that being a shy wallflower, getting the attention from this kid at a teen dance club. And the next thing you know, their boyfriend girlfriend, what was that like for you? And she tells these harrowing stories about Jeremy showing up at her house with love on his pants and a stolen car and saying, get in. And she's, I knew if I got in, I'm going to get killed. I'm going to lose my life. And she gets in and she describes that. And at the time she's pregnant with Justin. Justin is learning about this part of his family life, too, which he never knew because his mom would never talk about it. But they agreed to talk about it in the podcast for each other. It's just a strange combination. But I just think that kind of passion and long term commitment to a story is what's really necessary to take on a case like this. Incredible. Is there going to be a season three? Oh, yes, there is. Yeah, we're working on some stuff right now. And it's all connected in that Bone Valley universe. It's all coming from this area and from my reporting and from people I've talked to that lead me to other stories. So, yeah, we're working on that. And we should have some stuff fairly soon, actually. It's all stuff that really hits you in the heart as well as in the mind. I feel like that's really important to the storytelling. I love people just saying, I just bawled my eyes out. I got so mad. I want people to feel these stories. And this riveting the way that you share these stories. Gilbert King, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Devil in the Grove. Amazing podcast called Bone Valley. If you haven't listened to it, we'll put the link in. I'm actually going to ask Gilbert if we can play an episode on our ourselves feed. I'm not sure if you can, but I'm totally fine with that. I'll hook you up with the people you need to talk to. People need to hear this. It will give extra exposure. Playing the story. It is riveting. I am a crime junkie, but there is this layer of story that will fascinate you the way you go in and interview the family. Talking to the sun, starting from season one with Leo talking to Chrissy, talking to all the main players in this case. You do not leave a stone unturned. I would love for our community to hear this and be as obsessed as we are. I think word of mouth is like the greatest thing when somebody who could just say, I'm vouching for this, you got to listen to this. That's been our greatest asset and spreading the word about it. So that's really great news. And thank you for that. I'm going to go for it. I love you. Don't tell your wife that. Okay. We'll keep it on the dialogue. I was kidding. He never listens this far into the episode. He'll never hear it. But I always tell Mika, I have a little crush on Gilbert King because I want to know what you're doing. Mika, I think we have had an amazing conversation for sure. Yes. Sorry, I said that. She's embarrassed. This has been phenomenal. Thank you so much for being on our show. Honestly, I'm looking forward to re-listing another episode of Obsessed. We're obsessed with you. Show your love by rating, reviewing, subscribing and sharing with your friends. Every time you share, you are changing someone else's life. Until we meet again, get obsessed with your life. If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe. It really does help the show to grow. Thank you for listening.