Go behind the scenes with me as I talk with Bone Valley co-hosts Gilbert King and Kelsey Decker about the making of their award-winning audio documentary series. (2023 Ambie winners for Best Reporting and Best Documentary Podcast) The podcast has been called anything from "one of the best of 2022" to "the best true crime podcast ever" by outlets ranging from The New Yorker to Slate to The Atlantic. The New York Times continues to report on developments in the case Bone Valley explores — the wrongful conviction of Leo Schofield, who has been in prison for the murder of his wife, Michelle, for 35 years. So do other publications from around the world. To create a good work of narrative nonfiction, let alone a great one, requires phenomenal reporting, story structuring and writing skills. Gilbert King is a master. He’s written several books about wrongful convictions, including Devil in the Grove, which won a Pulitzer. But Bone Valley is King's first foray into audio journalism. It would take him on a wild ride into a new world of sound-designed, multi-voiced, intimate storytelling. He would grow a whole new set of skills, from writing for the ear, to voicing narration, to writing and producing collaboratively. So collaboratively, in fact, that over the course of the four-year investigation, Bone Valley would be heavily shaped by King’s researcher-turned-producer-turned-co-host, Kelsey Decker. She was only 23 when King hired her. She had no idea of the explosive nature of what she was about to get into. Nor of how their story would have the potential – maybe – to help an innocent man get out of a prison he should never have been in. Neither did King. There's a ton to learn here about how to have an intentional "sound vision" from the start, and how that vision translates into the use of language, tone of voice, sound design, and editorial choices about what to put in and what to leave out. There's also a lot to learn about character development and the role empathy played for Kelsey and Gilbert as they considered how to report on this story and how to shape the writing and the sound. The Podcast Academy has nominated Bone Valley for three Awards of Excellence in Audio (The Ambies): best documentary, best reporting, and best hosts. At the third annual Ambies, Gilbert King and Kelsey Decker and the Bone Valley team won for Best Reporting and Best Documentary Podcast. This episode includes discussions of murder and sexual assault, so listen with care.
If you like this episode, you’ll also like Episode 3:
Cinematic Storytelling with Crime Show’s Emma Courtland
and Episode 1: Emotional Bravery on Last Day with Stephanie Wittels Wachs.
Scroll down for takeaways you can use from today’s show.
About the creators
Gilbert King and Kelsey Decker are the team behind Bone Valley, a groundbreaking, 9-episode true crime podcast from Lava For Good. The series explores the case of Leo Schofield, a man convicted of murder in a gross miscarriage of justice. King, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Devil in the Grove, and Decker, a producer with a background in sociology and oral history, came together in a four-year quest to peel back the layers of Schofield’s case, uncovering startling new evidence and chilling confessions that are a call to action for long-awaited justice and redemption.
Takeaways from Gilbert King and Kelsey Decker
1. Does your idea need to be told in audio? Bone Valley did.
As storytellers, we have many formats to choose from. So how do you know when your idea is well-suited to audio, versus a book, a film, or a video? As an author, King’s first instinct was to write a longform article about Leo Schofield’s case. But as soon as he and Decker talked with Leo, they realized that the story begged for audio. “The power of their voices made us pivot,” King says. “I don't think they would have been the same in print. I love the way their voices break and crackle and emote.”
2. Start with a sound vision
Second, you may have noticed that King and Decker had a pretty clear “sound vision” for Bone Valley. I always remember producer John Barth saying, in episode 2, “You have to have a distinctive sound vision.” When he develops a new show, he imagines the kind of listener he wants to attract. That determines what the show needs to sound like. In Bone Valley, the two producers made sure to simply lay out fact after fact, so the listener couldn’t escape the conclusion or emotion. They used both sound design and language to create a work of narrative nonfiction and made sure not to sensationalize or cheapen the story. Furthermore, Decker could hear how the narration should sound in her head. She and other producers directed King to voice the narration to match that sound. And sound designer Britt Spangler attended story conferences – and helped shape the scripts from the start.
3. Podcasts are a team sport
Gilbert King won a Pulitzer for his book Devil in the Grove. So you might imagine he had nothing else to learn as a writer. But he’d never done a podcast before. His early drafts were written for the page, with too much narration, and quotes, which don’t work in audio. When he and Decker hooked up with the production company Lava for Good, he learned from their producers how to write for the ear.
Subscribe to Sound Judgment, the Newsletter
Want more of this kind of audio storytelling analysis? Sign up for our Sound Judgment newsletter and join subscribers from NPR, PRX, PRPD, Stanford, Spotify and more.
Connect with Gilbert King
Connect with Kelsey Decker
The episode discussed on today’s Sound Judgment:
Bone Valley, Episode 5: Bam Bam
A note about Sound Judgment: We believe that no podcast host does good work alone. All hosts rely on their producers, the hidden hands that enable a host to shine. We strive to give credit to every podcast producer whenever it’s possible to do so.
Bone Valley’s team is:
Executive Producer Kevin Wortis
Producers Kara Kornhaber and Britt Spangler
Sound designer Britt Spangler
Story editor Ruxandra Guidi
Bone Valley is produced by Lava for Good.
Connect with Sound Judgment
Elaine welcomes genuine connections on LinkedIn.
Visit Podcast Allies to learn about our individual and team training; podcast development consulting; podcast production services; podcast host coaching; and podcast producer coaching.
Speaking: To hire Elaine to speak at your event, email allies@podcastallies.com.
Help us find and celebrate today’s best hosts!
Share your Sound Judgment dream guest with us. Who’s your favorite podcast host? Drop us an email at allies@podcastallies.com. Because of you, that host may appear on Sound Judgment.
Say Thank You
Leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
On the show page on your phone, scroll to the bottom of the episodes. Click on the stars to rate; click on “Write a Review” to tell us what you think!
Credits
Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies, LLC.
Host: Elaine Appleton Grant
Project Manager: Tina Bassir
Sound Design and Audio Editing: Andrew Parrella
Illustrator: Sarah Edgell
This transcript was auto-generated from an audio recording. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:00:00
Sometime last fall, I began hearing rumblings about this new podcast, Bone Valley. People were saying it wasn't just good, it was infuriating. One of the best podcasts they'd ever heard. That it was a show anyone who cared about injustice had to listen to. And so I did. In the first episode, the gravelly voice of Bone Valley host Gilbert King introduced me to a young rock and roller, Leo Schofield. It's the 80s, he's living in Florida, and he is in love. His 17 year old girlfriend, Michelle is the most beautiful girl he's ever met, and he can't believe she's chosen him. But she has.
When she is 18, they get married. Before the year is out, she will be dead. So starts Bone Valley, the nine part saga of how Leo Schofield wound up in a Florida prison for the murder of his young wife. Outlets from The New Yorker to Slate to The Atlantic have called it everything from the best podcast of the year to the best true crime podcast ever. More importantly, it has left millions of listeners outraged at a justice system gone very far wrong.
Welcome to the Bone Valley episode of Sound Judgment, where we investigate just what it takes to become a beloved podcast host by pulling apart one episode at a time together. I'm Elaine Appleton Grant.
I am a big fan of tightly told, immersive narrative nonfiction. To create a good work of narrative nonfiction, let alone a great one, requires phenomenal reporting, story structuring, and writing skills. Gilbert King is a master. He's written several books about wrongful convictions, including Devil in the Grove, which won a Pulitzer. But Bone Valley is his first foray into audio journalism. It would take him on a wild ride into a new world of sound designed, multivoiced, intimate storytelling. He would grow a whole new set of skills, from writing for the ear to voicing narration to writing and producing collaboratively. So collaboratively, in fact, that over the course of the four year investigation, Bone Valley would be heavily shaped by King's researcher turned producer turned cohost, Kelsey Decker. She was only 23 when King hired her. She had no idea of the explosive nature of what she was about to get into, nor of how their story would have the potential, maybe, to help an innocent man get out of a prison he should never have been in. Neither did King. And neither saw this coming, either. The Podcast Academy has nominated Bone Valley for Three Ambies, their award for excellence in audio, for best documentary, best reporting and best hosts.
One last Thing storytellers. This episode includes discussions of murder and sexual assault, so listen with care.
Welcome Kelsey and Gilbert. I really can't tell you how thrilled I am to have you here.
Gilbert King 00:03:22
It's so nice Elaine. We've been listening to your interviews, so this is an honor to be here. So thank you.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:03:27
My pleasure entirely. I always start by asking my guests to share an episode that they either loved or found particularly challenging to make, as you know. When you emailed your choice, Gilbert, you said you and Kelsey really like episode five, which is called Bam Bam, which is a deep dive into a new character. I don't think Jeremy has been introduced at that point. Right.
Gilbert King 00:03:53
His name has just been introduced at the end of episode four. So episode five starts out with, who is Jeremy Scott? And that's why we really love this so much, is because it was taking us away almost into another podcast, a totally different part of Lakeland, and a totally different cast that we had to sort of figure out.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:04:11
Yeah. And so I have a clip just to sort of set the stage for listeners who have not yet heard Bone Valley.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:04:19
Gilbert King: Who is Jeremy Scott? Who is this man whose fingerprints turned up in the car Michelle Schofield was driving on the night she was murdered. Kelsey and I wanted to find out everything we could about him. We started filing record requests.
Kelsey Decker: We got police reports from both the Sheriff's Office and the Lakeland Police Department. They documented dozens of Jeremy's arrests in Polk County. And we were also able to get our hands on Jeremy's psychiatric reports. He was evaluated by psychologists while awaiting trial on a homicide charge.
Gilbert King: This homicide charge... Jeremy would eventually be convicted for it. We'll get back to that later. But after he was found guilty, several of Jeremy's family members testified, pleading with the judge and jury to spare Jeremy's life. To sentence him to life in prison instead of giving him the death penalty. Their testimony about Jeremy's childhood and upbringing paints a Scott family portrait that can only be described as chaotic and unstable. We started compiling this testimony and other documents we've been able to dig up, and we were able to make a rough timeline of Jeremy's early life.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:05:37
You can't help but listen after that clip, and we'll dig into the episode in a minute. Tell us a little bit more about, at this point in the series, what you know about Jeremy and why you wanted to choose this episode. What is it about this episode that you loved so much?
Gilbert King 00:05:56
Yeah. And I'll just start by saying, like, we hint at these fingerprints that were found in Michelle Schofield's car, but they were never identified. And so we go through the whole case, and at the end of episode four, we figure out how these fingerprints finally came to be identified. They match a man who has an extraordinarily violent history, and he lives in the same basic neighborhood as Leo and Michelle. And so episode five is just our journey into discovering, well, who do these fingerprints belong to, and who is this man? And I will just say this was really Kelsey's doing. Kelsey did a lot of the background into Jeremy Scott, and she really handled all the psychiatric reports in the early life, and she's really the one that really put together this particular part of the story.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:06:39
Kelsey, his story, as we'll get into, is really hard to hear in so many different ways. You have a background in sociology and oral history.
Kelsey Decker 00:06:52
Yes.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:06:54
I'm curious what part of that background you called upon in doing the research and uncovering Jeremy's life.
Kelsey Decker 00:07:03
Yeah, I mean, I was just really interested to dig into Jeremy's background. We knew he was linked to these violent crimes, but I just had a sense that people don't just become criminals out of the blue. He experienced a lot of pain and suffering in his life and very, very early in his life. Leo was really the person, too, who kind of showed us his own empathy for Jeremy and what he'd been through. So that was always something I wanted to pursue, is, you know, making sure that that was a piece of the story as well, understanding where he came from.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:07:43
You know, this is such a big part of Bone Valley is how much empathy comes through for the main characters. So Leo, who's in prison for a murder of his wife, Michelle Schofield. Jeremy, who becomes our suspect, but all of the minor characters, and there's a raft of other characters. I mean, if you were going to do a movie, it was like hundreds. And the empathy comes through in a way that has gotten everybody, you know, the New York Times, New Yorker, The Atlantic, everybody commenting on that piece of it, and it certainly moved me quite a bit. So talk about that decision to go, this is fundamental.
Gilbert King 00:08:34
Yeah, that's a really great question because it really gets to a part of our preparation for the story. I'll just say that I think that we ended up the way this story sounds and the way it unfolds and all the empathy is really just us following Leo Schofield's lead. He's like the moral backbone of this story, strangely enough, and we followed his lead because he's the only one in this story, as we're reporting, who has any empathy for Jeremy Scott. And he talks about, I was searching for a monster for all these years. A monster. Only a monster could have done this to this beautiful young woman. And Jeremy Scott's not a monster. He's a pathetic human being who's been abused, thrown in and out of the system. We really just followed Leo's lead and went with the feel of the way Leo made us feel and made us think about this story.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:09:20
Which is remarkable. You're an author, Gilbert, and this totally could have been and may yet be, we don't know, a book. But you chose a podcast. So tell me about that decision. Where were you when you thought, oh, a podcast. I'll do a podcast. Not another Pulitzer Prize winning book. Possibly. Maybe.
Gilbert King 00:09:50
It's another great question because I think I originally started this process as thinking, I'm going to have to go write something about it. And I was thinking maybe like a long form feature story about this case for the Marshall Project or Politico or ProPublica, something like that. I had hired Kelsey as a researcher, basically for my book, but I had a couple of different projects going along, and we had a moment where we decided we're going to try to pursue Leo Schofield's case first because he was in prison. And we went down there with just a basic, like, handheld zoom recorder. We were not thinking podcast and sound. We were thinking story. And I think after we interviewed a few people, the power of their voices and the power of their storytelling made us pivot. And I think it was Kelsey's idea that said, this should be a podcast. I totally agreed that these stories that we're hearing in the voices, I don't think they would have been the same in print. I love the way their voices break and crackle and emote, and it's something that's just more powerful in the audio experience. And as an author, I acknowledge that in this particular story.
Kelsey Decker 00:10:52
I remember exactly where we were when we kind of mentally committed to this story being a podcast. And it was in the car leaving Hardy Correctional for the very first time after having spoken to Leo Schofield. We spent, I think, 3 hours with him that first time, and we left the prison and we're just like, this guy's amazing. He's an amazing storyteller, and we need people to hear his voice. We don't want people to read his words. We want them to hear the words from his mouth.
Gilbert King 00:11:25
None of us had done a podcast before.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:11:26
Which is amazing to be where you are, given that. And am I correct about this, Gilbert, that you guys did this on your own? First? You started out as an independent podcast with no other help and then eventually wound up hooking up with a production company.
Gilbert King 00:11:43
Yeah, I think as we started to investigate this and investigate the story, still thinking about it as a writing thing, I had to put together a proposal and start to pitch it to podcasts. I had no idea how to do that. I've done it for books, but it's through a literary agent. It's a lot smoother process for me. So we put together a package, but we said, we're down here in Florida. We just got to keep investigating and we're going to try and bring people to the story and see if they're interested in a way. It was great. It was a great learning experience. Kelsey had to learn all the sound equipment because we didn't know how to do that. So she's watching YouTube videos at night and talking to people and trying to get the right equipment. And so it wasn't an easy thing, but we were committed.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:12:22
What did those first episodes, what did they sound like compared to what the final product sounds like now with a team.
Gilbert King 00:12:28
Well, I can tell you we never actually got to the part of editing episodes. We just kept acquiring material. But I can tell you that we started to write scripts, and they're absolutely different from what we did because I had no experience how to write a script. And I was telling a story and it was just so heavily narrated, and the quotes were coming in as if I was writing a book. So once we got experienced producers, they're like, no, that's not quite how it's done. And everything just improved so much once we had experienced people helping us.
Kelsey Decker 00:12:59
Yeah, I mean, just kind of realizing the process of it. You have to start from the tape first, and you build it out from there. And that made such a difference approaching it in that way versus what's this opening scene going to be. And that made a huge difference.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:13:15
So let's get back to the tape, and I want to go back to that initial clip. The two of you have been nominated for Ambie Awards this year, as I've said, in three categories, and one is Best Hosts. In this clip, the two of you take turns narrating. But as we'll hear later, Gilbert, you carry the narration throughout episode five. Kelsey, you're really not on tape very much here, although you are much more so in many other episodes. So first take me back to that decision to co host.
Gilbert King 00:13:54
Kelsey started out as a researcher. She also knew the case better than I did throughout the whole story. We called her the keeper of the facts. And so Kelsey really kind of guided the story in the process more than I did. But we didn't go into this saying it's going to be two co hosts. It just sort of naturally emerged that way.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:14:14
I'm curious, though. Once you got into writing for the ear, tracking, you did have to make choices of where you were going to, say, take turns narrating where Kelsey your voice is going to show up in the car. On the way to go see somebody or whatever you are, there often as a sort of repertorial voice and also admitting to how nervous you are. A lot of times.
How did that come about? Like, okay, in this episode we're going to go back and forth. In that episode, we're not. How did that happen?
Kelsey Decker 00:14:48
Yeah, I think Gilbert kind of pokes fun at me for this now, but I'm always the person asking, how are you feeling? That kind of became my role a little bit. Maybe it's kind of a stand in for the listeners that I'm not a Pulitzer Prize winning author, I've never done an investigation like this before. So just I think being that person in the space, our team at Lava, was kind of like, that's an important perspective, and we want to make sure we capture that.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:15:18
I love hearing that because I always tell people that I consider the role of a host to be an informed guide for the listener. You're really the advocate for the listener. So what I want to do now is play a clip that follows directly on what I played before. So this is still the introduction to Jeremy's life.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:15:38
Kelsey Decker: Jeremy was born in Michigan on April 29th, 1969. According to family testimony, his mother Linda immediately rejected him. When she brought him home from the hospital, Linda didn't want anything to do with him. She was 15 at the time and using drugs, so she left him with her parents. So Jeremy's grandparents, Earline and Stacey Scott, they raise him. And Jeremy grows up calling them mom and dad. And they call him 'Bam-Bam' because he liked to hit stuff. But, Earline works and Stacey struggles with alcoholism, so Jeremy spends much of his early years in the care of his Aunt Debbie, who's just 14.
Gilbert King: Then one day, when Jeremy was two or three, he was left without supervision and was hit by a neighbor's car. His psych reports say that there was significant injury to the right frontal area of his skull. It seems this incident may have left Jeremy with lasting brain damage. And soon after, Jeremy's Uncle Tom moved in. Tom pretty severely abused Jeremy. He would beat him and call him names, according to his Aunt Debbie's testimony.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:16:54
Yeah, it's hard to hear and it goes on. One of the things, though, that I noticed about this clip and really all of the narration, the straight narration, is how neutrally it's written. This is written utterly without judgment. It's just fact, fact, fact. That is actually a really challenging thing to do, to not insert your own feelings even without knowing it. How hard was it to write that narration and get that balance right?
Gilbert King 00:17:36
In this particular case, I know exactly what you're talking about and I think that adds power to it where there's no judgment. We are just telling you this is who the child is. When you want to find out who those fingerprints are, and they belong to a 17 year old teenager at the time, this is who that child was at two years old. At three years old. We document him at ten, becoming homeless, living on the streets, in and out of foster care. I think his arrest record starts at ten. Heavy felonies at eleven, stealing cars, burglary, and would you just get that accumulation you're like, okay, now I have a better understanding because we're about to meet all the people he hung out with and associated with in those teenage years. And now you have a background of him. And I just think it's really important to not put your own opinions and judgments about the system and just say this is who he was and this is what happened to him. And I think that power is very understated, but it's very effective.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:18:29
It is very understated and your delivery is also, I think, spot on. So it's very neutral, but it's not robotic, and there's still feeling in it even while you're being neutral. I was curious. Jeremy's childhood trauma and possible brain injury come up again and again. Were you setting the groundwork for talking about that later, Kelsey?
Kelsey Decker 00:18:56
It was all very intentional, because I think it's all really important to understanding how this case played out. When we get to his confessions and all of these various statements he's made, because he has contradicted himself at times. And if you know who Jeremy is, if you know his background, you can get into his psychology a little bit and kind of understand where that stuff is coming from.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:19:21
Let's get a little deeper into the episode. In this clip, you've met a woman named Nancy who was 13 when she and her friends met Jeremy. Jeremy was 15. Storytellers keep in mind that Bone Valley is about a murder that happened in 1987. So this is more than 35 years ago.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:19:41
Nancy: We all went to the fair, and we'd go every single night.
Gilbert King: What kind of fair was it?
Nancy: It was just a carnival. You had the Sea Dragon. You had the Zipper... the one that spins around, Himalaya.
Gilbert King: What was Jeremy Scott doing there?
Nancy: He was actually running the Sea Dragon.
Gilbert King: And he— so he, when you were at the fair, like, he would, he would be the guy that would put you on the rides. That was his job?
Nancy: No, he actually was the one that turned it on. It was doing the mechanical part.
Gilbert King: So he was basically... a carny?
Nancy: A carny.
Gilbert King: Nancy and her friends would see him every night over the 10 days the festival was in town.
Nancy: Yeah. So— so when me and the girls got on him, we got an extra ride. I'm like, hey, I got an extra ride... [laughs]
Gilbert King: And when the festival eventually packs up, Jeremy sticks around the area.
Nancy: I think he just came into town and decided to stay for a little bit. He was quiet. I mean, like shy. Very shy compared to, like, the average kids, and— I mean, until he got to know you, you know. I do know he was, like, maybe slow. I don't know how to better explain it. He just was different. You know, I don't know if it's a disability or what, because back then...
Gilbert King: Nancy grew up with the sense that she should protect kids like Jeremy. So she would make sure to include him when she and her friends would play sports and hang around the park.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:21:07
I love this scene, and I love all the scenes that are so specific. Gilbert, what made you say, well, what were the rides?
Gilbert King 00:21:18
I had done some research on this because I found out that Jeremy had been met at this carnival. They met him at this carnival. And so we looked into the carnival where it was. We wanted to find out the dates. We wanted to make sure everything really aligned. And she was right. Everything she said was the right year and the right month. It was like a citrus carnival. And I saw all the rides, but I didn't want to say them to her. She said them, she remembered them all, but we were aware of it. And I think it was really important because that scene is setting the stage. Jeremy Scott is connected to four murders. He's forensically connected to three of them, and this was the first one. An elderly woman, a neighbor of Nancy's, is murdered in 1985, right at the time that Jeremy comes into their lives. And so we really wanted to set the stage. Like, who is Jeremy Scott at this point? Who's he hanging out with? And how did he get involved in an arrest for a murder a couple of weeks later?
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:22:10
Sometimes when I listen to really richly textured shows, it's almost like listening to, I don't know, an orchestra or something. Like you're hearing ups and downs. You're hearing a huge range of emotions, and it's so relieving to hear somebody laugh and talk about something happy. And, of course, it goes to a very dark place as you guys were structuring the whole internally one episode, the arc throughout. Did you think about that, Kelsey? How about you?
Kelsey Decker 00:22:43
Yeah, I mean, all I can really say is we absolutely thought about it. We went through so many different drafts of every episode, and we're getting feedback from our producers, Kara Kornhaber and Britt Spangler, and we just had many, many, many conversations about the various emotional arcs of these episodes and landed on what felt right to our ears.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:23:08
Can you remember a particular time getting feedback and going, we thought we had it. Now we have to revise it again.
Gilbert King 00:23:17
There's a couple of times where we tried to set up with meetings with people, and one of the people we were really trying to get was Jeremy Scott's girlfriend, and she still lived in town. And you hear her voice later on in episode six when the lawyers start to interview her and the attorneys. And we had set up a couple of interviews with her, and she was very reluctant. And then we finally said, we're going to finally get to talk to Jamie, and she knows everything about Jeremy in those two years where he's free and out there committing these crimes. And we had plans to maybe take her to the locations, and she had some very frightening stories to tell about her relationship with Jeremy. And there was a moment where we arranged it. We set the time, and we were going to meet at a restaurant, and she just didn't show. And that was like, a real break for us because we had to rely then on the interviews with Leo's lawyers. And the sound is not quite what we wanted. We wanted more intimate sound from her because we knew some of the stories she would tell.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:24:17
How about you, Kelsey? A revision that involves working with one of your producers.
Kelsey Decker 00:24:25
Yeah. I mean, I know that this episode in particular, episode five, was pretty tricky because we've spent four episodes really focused on Leo and his story in his case. And then this episode is a little bit of a diversion where we're suddenly going in this different direction. And so I know we had a lot of conversations about, as we're going through Jeremy's story, do we remind listeners of, like, what's going on with Leo and Michelle in this moment? And so we were kind of looking for a place where that would make sense to call back to Leo and what's going on with him. And we had many conversations about looking for a place to kind of weave their narratives together.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:25:10
Let me play that for you.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:25:12
Gilbert King: Jeremy is convicted on the arson charge and shipped off to state prison. By the time he's released, it's December 1986. Leo and Michelle Schofield have been married for about four months. They're living in the little trailer near Combee Settlement. They're going to church. Leo's playing music. And, Michelle has yet to start her job at Tom's Restaurant. Jeremy Scott is back on the streets— and this time, he's in Lakeland.
Kelsey Decker 00:25:55
Amazing that you had that queued up right for us.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:25:58
It was an important moment. In public radio, we call it a signpost. I don't know if anybody used that term with you guys. Probably did. Kelsey I see you shaking your head Yes. And Gilbert saying no.
Gilbert King 00:26:11
No. I don't know any of this stuff. I really don't.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:26:14
Well, as a writer, I think you would simply say foreshadowing, probably. But you're orienting the listener to time and place because there are a raft of characters. Like I said, you're sort of all over the place in time sometimes. And it's easy as a listener, especially with the series as long and full as this one to get lost. So it did that for me. Even just listening to it all the way through the first time as a listener, not knowing I was going to be able to speak with you, I was like, oh, that's where I am. But it is also a cliffhanger. It's very ominous. I wanted to ask you about two things. One was the delivery, because I've done voicing of things like that, both as a director and as the voice. And it's not that easy to get it spot on. Sometimes it takes five or ten takes. Did that come naturally or did you have to do it a few times?
Gilbert King 00:27:14
Yeah, there was a lot of work involved in this part. When I started this project, I was going to be saying, I'll be the investigator, I'll figure this out. Kelsey and I said, and we'll turn it over to someone, maybe a host. I don't have any idea about this. And they're like, no, you have to do it. You're the investigator. And I'm like, I don't know if I have a voice for that my voice sounds terrible. I don't know how my voice sounds. I just don't have the confidence in it. And I try to do the readings. And it was great having Kelsey and Kara and Britt and Rux, our real editor, just sitting there saying, try it like this, or maybe that's, too many words, and just restructuring the writing. So I had to learn as I went along. I think one of the benefits to doing this is that I didn't really have a lot of familiarity with radio and podcasting in that world. I had a really strong sense of the story that we wanted to do on this. And so I don't think we followed a lot of the rules. We have some episodes where Kelsey is narrating some. It moves around, and I think it's totally fine to break all those rules. It gets people out of the cadence of a normal story, and they have to sort of pay attention a little more because you don't know what's coming next.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:28:17
Yeah, absolutely. You're really talking about the reality of it, what it's like in the studio, and you've got a director saying, no, try it like this, or maybe you've got your colleague Kelsey saying, I hear it differently. It needs to sound different. And so that was the reality, and it's just spot on. And one of the things that's also I thought really spot on was the sound design in that little tiny clip of narration is amazing. You've got the acoustic music underneath all the way through. And then when you say that last sentence and he's in Lakeland, there's nothing, and then you get a beat of music, you're laughing like, you guys have talked about this. Tell me.
Kelsey Decker 00:28:58
Well, I don't know that we've talked about it, but our sound designer, Britt, is just incredible. And we heard she would kind of go into these meditative states with this stuff, and she just knew exactly what the story needed.
Gilbert King 00:29:15
Yeah, I was really nervous about the sound design because I've never worked with this team before, and I was afraid that there'd be like kind of like Halloween horror music at crimey moments. And I was like, all right, if that happens, I'm going to have to step in. And I don't like that. I just want this to be really subtly designed, but powerful. And I remember when we get our sound designs back and we just had no notes, but we were just so impressed by listening to the first cuts on these and just recognizing these crescendos of music and silence and building, and it's just a matter of taste. And we were just so lucky to be in good hands with that.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:29:50
So, Britt Spangler was your sound designer. Did she collaborate with you at the writing stage?
Gilbert King 00:29:56
Well, Britt is a big fan of these kind of true crime podcasts, and she knows the genre and she knows storytelling. So we would bring her into the story conferences because we thought she was very valuable. And she added some things like, I think we can layer this with a little bit of music and Gilbert talking, and she had all these ideas and let's cut the narration down. We can do this with just sound, we can do it with one of the interviews. And so she just brought a lot of ideas to the writing that we were able to sort of adjust based on her expertise and understanding of how it should sound.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:30:28
So the next time you do a podcast, and I assume this is not the last show that you'll work on, you'll know ahead of time, like, let's bring in a good sound designer in the story conferences.
Kelsey Decker 00:30:40
Yeah. And we'll request Britt Spangler and Kara Kornhaber because we want to keep working with them. They're amazing.
Gilbert King 00:30:47
Yeah. I mean, the collaboration with this team, it was so enjoyable and it made me feel like I was a better writer just being around everyone on this team. And it was so inspiring to me that I will do another podcast if I can work with that same team. That's how much I really treasured the experience.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:31:05
So we're going to move along in this story a little bit more. A considerable amount of time in this episode is devoted to Jeremy's violent teenage history, as you had said, and he raped at least two girls. Frankly, I kind of lost count, which is terrible. Those two girls were friends. He'd been staying with a family named the Ziemann family. The parents took in a lot of troubled teens and of course, unbeknownst to them, he raped their 14 year old daughter, Wendy. And here is a clip about that rape.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:31:47
Gilbert King: They're devastated about what Jeremy did to Wendy. But the Ziemanns, as a family, basically decide that they were not going to report Jeremy's sexual assault. They just didn't want to expose their 14 year old daughter to an investigation and a trial. And Wendi Ziemann wouldn't seem to recover from the trauma that happened so early in her life. What did she do afterwards?
Heidi Ziemann: She never did anything after that. She never went back to school. She was never able to hold a job. She got to the point where she didn't want to leave the house. I mean, she was just so paranoid about everything and everybody. And, um, and it just got worse through the years.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:32:32
It seems to me that you made extremely deliberate choices throughout, not just the episode, but the whole series to really help listeners feel the aftermath of all of these things.
Kelsey Decker 00:32:49
Yeah, I think, as Gilbert would refer to it, it's Jeremy Scott's wake of violence. He moved through these various communities and families and groups of people and he just left this trail of violence in his wake. We couldn't not mention these sexual assaults. It's more than just these murders he's linked to. It's these women whose lives he damaged at such a young age, and it was tough. It was very intentional, all of these things, because we're trying to straddle this line of we want people to empathize with Jeremy and where he came from to some degree, but we also need to make sure people understand that he caused some real harm and just trying to find the line and the balance there. We had many, many conversations about that.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:33:45
Do you recall a conversation where you decided on a different tactic or changed a tone or decided, we really need to know what happened to this victim later?
Gilbert King 00:34:03
Yeah, I think that was really important, because you're going out and seeking out people. And honestly, we didn't know these stories. We knew that one particular woman, Tracy, we knew that she was associated with some of the people who were staying in the same house that Jeremy was staying. So when we initially reached out to her, we were thinking she was just a friend and she was in Jeremy's circle. But then we found out she has this story where she was sexually assaulted, and so we kind of stopped this. Is this something you're comfortable talking about? Because we didn't know where it was going. Are you comfortable? And she was comfortable. She didn't really want to get into the details, and we didn't want that anyway. It's more of just capturing the emotion and her anger. And the Ziemanns had their hearts in the right places. They were trying to help these homeless children and giving them places to stay, but it really cost them because one of those kids assaulted their daughter. And you can just see the spiral of violence and the people who are left to deal with this. And it was really important for us, as Kelsey just mentioned, to not only show Jeremy's background and show how damaged he was as a child, but really, when Jeremy enters this world, you see all of this violence, and people's lives are affected forever.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:35:19
I was struck by some messages that I certainly pulled out from that. Whether they were intentional or not, I don't know. So one of them is that you're kind of saying things might have turned out differently if the Ziemanns had reported that that had happened. If people had made different decisions along the way about Jeremy, for instance, that maybe Michelle Schofield might not have been killed or Leo Schofield might not be in prison. Am I extrapolating too much here, or was that intentional?
Gilbert King 00:36:02
I would say that was absolutely intentional, because one of the things that we were trying to also show is that here is Jeremy Scott, his fingerprints are found on the eyeglasses of a murder victim he spotted around town with all these coins in his pockets, and that was what was taken from the house. It looks like an airtight case against him, but for some reason, the public defenders did a really magnificent job and Jeremy was acquitted. If the state had really done their job and convicted Jeremy right there, that's where a lot of the violence would have ended. He would have been sentenced to life in prison. After that, you had several sexual assaults. You had another man who was wrongfully accused of another murder that Jeremy confessed to. It was really an indictment of the system and the criminal justice system and the family courts and the foster kids, all of that. This is what happens if you don't do it right, if you don't hold people accountable. And people like Jeremy are free to just go out and create more violence and look at all the victims he left behind. That was a really important part of the story for us.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:37:02
And yet it's very subtle. You never come out and say, we are accusing the state prosecutor's office of corruption, of negligence, of whatever it was. You never actually state that. And that's throughout, right?
Gilbert King 00:37:21
I think so. It's an effort to just lay bare the facts. Sometimes you can say, the state did this, and this is really awful, what they did. I'd rather hear the state attorney's words and hear what they're saying in court and the way they're arguing this case. I'd rather hear the investigators who are totally uncurious about what Jeremy had done because they're trying to sort of protect the conviction and cover the state's ass a little bit. Jeremy mentions a cab driver that he earlier confessed to killing, and he kind of floats it out there and they're like, we don't want to hear about the cab driver. Don't mention that. And they just shut it down. They kind of laugh it off. And then you just see, like, one failure after another. They can't convict him. They can't properly investigate them. When they get them on the stand, they just ask them simple questions and get them right off. They're not searching for the truth. And that was the point of we're going to go in and try and find the real truth behind the story.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:38:10
And we are going to wrap up shortly. But first, I want to ask a question. I feel like I have to ask this question. There are issues with the whole genre of true crime. What was the biggest ethical question to do with true crime that you guys wrestled with?
Gilbert King 00:38:29
When I was younger, I used to listen to true crime for the drama, but as I got older, I became more interested in using true crime as sort of a Trojan horse to move the narrative through. But this story is about a wrongful conviction, and it's about prosecutorial misconduct and what they've done to put an innocent man in prison. Our entire thing is we didn't want to make this look like Jeremy Scott is a serial killer, and let's do two episodes of what it must have been like for Michelle to die, and we didn't want to do that kind of thing. Those are not our tastes. We were really more focused on the wrongful conviction area in the space, and I think maybe we didn't listen to a lot of true crime podcasts, so we were kind of out there on our own. But we knew how we wanted this story to feel and that's how we set it out.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:39:15
Kelsey, can you recall any particular decision points along the way where you had to think about how to shape the story, whether it was in the writing, in the sound? Can you think of one point where you went, oh, if we do that, it's going to stray into that cliche?
Kelsey Decker 00:39:37
I think Gilbert is making a face because he probably already knows what I'm going to say. We had to make a decision early on, basically, about the language we were going to use and how we referred to Jeremy. And I was very adamant that I did not want to refer to Jeremy as a serial killer. I was worried that that would cheapen our story and take it in that direction. And I think using language like that would create this black and white kind of good versus evil type of story. And I think what we have is more complex and it's more human. And I wanted to make sure that we were acknowledging Jeremy as somebody who caused harm and also had harm done to him and kind of look at the full picture of that.
Gilbert King 00:40:25
Yeah. And I'll just add, I mean, I know this sounds strange because I'm the one with all the experience and I've done this many, many times, but I'm totally comfortable saying this. Kelsey was the conscience of this story. I followed her lead through a lot of these decisions and a lot of the feelings. So I learned so much just working with this team of young people who really cared about these issues and also following Leo's lead. Leo's looking at Jeremy as a human being, and we followed his lead to get to where we were. And I think Kelsey was always on top of the feeling and she was just so persuasive when she made these arguments that we all said, yes, Kelsey's right. Let's do it that way.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:41:04
I've got one more clip to play for you. And what's happened is that they finally find out that there is a match between the fingerprints found in Michelle Schofield's car and Jeremy. And it's cause for celebration for Chrissy, Leo's wife, and Scott Cup, who ultimately becomes Leo's attorney. But Leo does not react the same way. I think they were actually surprised by that. Let's listen to this clip.
Audio Clip from Bone Valley Ep 5 00:41:37
Crissie Schofield: So I sit down and I say, "We have a match on the fingerprints...", and give him a name. And, at the time, I didn't realize how difficult that was going to be for him. It was very painful. His first reaction was to put his head down and cry.
Leo Schofield: I've had this mantle of a murderer on my shoulders for all these years. You know, to come out and say—we got the guy... he's—we got him. He's forensically linked. We know who it is. He's a murderer and all this other stuff. And I'm saying, "That's the guy who murdered my wife.". You know what I mean, so there was so much. It just, it was an explosion of stuff. And I got— I was, I was mad... you know, I was really mad. And it took me some days to, uh, to get control of that.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:42:33
Watching your faces and I'm seeing a lot of emotion on your faces. How does it feel to listen to that clip again?
Gilbert King 00:42:43
Actually, I was thinking of the same thing when I was just listening, I had just this frustration. And I talked to Leo today, and this is years after we did that interview, and he's still in prison and his story is out there. The narrative. I think we've changed the narrative of his case and yet he's still stuck in prison. That's how difficult it is. And I think that's why you see this emotion. I feel so bad that he's had these ups and downs. You think, this is it. Now they've got the guy, the fingerprints there, and then years later there's a confession and that's still not enough. And it makes me think of this poor guy just sitting in prison, always claimed his innocence, and all of this proof is out there and he still can't get out.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:43:23
How about you, Kelsey? Just talk to me about the taping and the writing and the editing of that particular scene.
Kelsey Decker 00:43:31
Yeah, I guess the emotions and listening to that. I think as an outsider, somebody who hasn't lived what Leo has been through, I think I would have assumed, like, you know, he would get this news and that would be cause for celebration. Right, like, that makes sense. But it's so much more complex for him. There's so many things to unpack there. And I don't know, I guess listening to it, it's just a moment where the weight of everything he's been through and is still having to endure feels really real because he has this lived experience that even knowing everything I do about this case, I didn't fully understand what that would feel like. And hearing it from him and hearing the weight of that emotion, it's always really powerful to me.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:44:21
Well, thank you both. This has really been a remarkable conversation. Normally I end with a lightning round of questions, but I'm not going to do that. I'm going to ask you one question, both of you. Kelsey, how has hosting this podcast changed you in ways that you didn't foresee?
Kelsey Decker 00:44:47
I would say kind of hosting. And this entire experience of working on this story and reporting on it and all of that stuff, I mean, it's been life changing. It's been experience that I never would have necessarily expected I would have in my twenties right out of college. And I think I'm really excited about what I'll be able to do with this now and the kind of things I'll be able to work on moving forward. And, you know, I'm also excited seeing the response to this show and hoping that that's going to lead to some good outcomes for Leo as well. So a lot of emotions there.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:45:33
How about you, Gilbert? As we have said, you've written several books. You are experienced and seasoned, but you had not done a podcast before, and this is your voice out there and a different relationship with the audience. How has hosting Bone Valley changed you in ways you didn't expect?
Gilbert King 00:45:59
Yeah, it's such a great question. I think that the way I would answer it is when I normally work on books, I don't use first person. I'm doing it from the third person. I'm like this omnipotent narrator who's giving the facts and creating this world. In this case, it's much more personal. And so I think this journey, it makes me think about the role of journalists. And I look back to people like Ida Tarbell, who, you know, investigated the Rockefellers and Standard Oil and, you know, well, is she biased? Yes, she is. Rockefeller ruined her father's business and that was what inspired her to do this huge investigation. And no one questioned the ethics of her entire investigation. She put her heart and soul into this the same way that Ida B Wells did when she investigated lynching. Lynching was wrong to her. It was a racial terrorism, and that's how she reported it. And by the end of the story, there's a lot of reporting, but we see there's some advocacy at the end. I believe Leo Schofield is absolutely wrongfully imprisoned. And I don't have any problem, like, using my own voice in first person to express this, because I felt like we've proved that and now here we are at the end and it's very personal to me and it's emotional to me. And that was very different as an experience as an author and hosting this show and getting those final words and talking about what this story meant to me and what Leo's life meant to me. That changed me a lot. It sort of ingrained me more in to, I know I want to keep working in this space.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:47:27
I have to tell you, people should listen to this series all the way through and make some time for that last episode. When I got to the last ten or 15 minutes, I happened to be in my kitchen and I'm somebody who always is doing a second thing. I'm walking, I'm doing dishes, I’m whatever. I had to stop and just listen. I just stood in my kitchen and I listened to that last 10-15 minutes. It is beautifully done and something I've never heard an ending like that before. And it took a lot of guts because it is very personal and it is advocacy journalism. Absolutely. And that's a choice, and it's remarkable. So thank you for all your work.
Gilbert King 00:48:20
Thanks so much for saying that. Elaine, this is such a pleasure to be with you today.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:48:23
Thank you. And it was a great pleasure to be with the two of you. So thank you again.
Kelsey Decker 00:48:28
Yeah, thank you.
Elaine Appleton Grant 00:48:35
A few more things about Bone Valley. First, there are bonus episodes coming as Gilbert and Kelsey continue to follow Leo's story. Second, Leo should be getting another parole hearing sometime this spring.
At the end of every episode, I give you a few takeaways. You'll find more in the show notes at podcastallies.com.
1. As storytellers, we have many formats to choose from. So how do you know when your idea is well suited to audio versus a book, a film or a video? As an author, Gilbert's first instinct was to write about Leo Schofield's case. But as soon as they talked to him, they realized that the story begged for audio. The power of their voices made us pivot, Gilbert says. I don't think they would have been the same in print. I love the way their voices break and crackle and emote.
2. You may have noticed that Gilbert and Kelsey had a pretty clear sound vision for Bone Valley. I always remember producer John Barth saying in episode two, you have to have a distinctive sound vision. When he develops new shows, he imagines the kind of listener he wants to attract, and that determines what the show needs to sound like. Gilbert made sure to simply lay out fact after fact so that the listener couldn't escape the conclusion or the emotion. It was neutral. They used both sound design and language to create a work of narrative nonfiction. They made sure not to sensationalize or cheapen the story. Kelsey could hear how the narration should sound in her head. She and other producers directed Gilbert to voice the narration to match that sound. And sound designer Britt Spangler went to story conferences and helped shape the scripts from the get go.
3. As I've mentioned, Gilbert won a Pulitzer for his book Devil in the Grove, so you might imagine he had nothing else to learn as a writer. But he'd never done a podcast before. His early drafts, he said, were written for the page with too much narration and quotes, which don't work in audio. When he and Kelsey hooked up with a production company, Lava for Good, he learned from their producers how to write for the ear.
That's it for today. Want more of this kind of audio storytelling analysis? Sign up for our Sound Judgment newsletter and join subscribers from NPR, PRX, PRPD, Stanford, Spotify and more. Visit podcastallies.com to subscribe.
Thanks for being with me on Sound Judgment. Follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify or your favorite podcast app. And please take a minute to give us a review. It helps and it boosts our moral. Sound Judgment is a production of Podcast Allies. It's produced by me, Elaine Appleton Grant. Sound design and editing by production manager Andrew Parrella. Our cover art is by Sarah Edgell. Podcast management by Tina Bassir.
Coming up on the next episode, why do we trust one voice and not another? And how can you become that trusted voice? Join me for a collaborative conversation with Jody Krangle, host of the audio branding podcast.
See you soon.