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Crime Story: Episode 1- Gilbert King

Host: Kathleen Goldhar

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I'm Kathleen Goldhar. This is a Crime Story. Every week, a new crime with the storyteller who knows it best.

GILBERT KING: There was a moment, I don't distinctly remember it, but there was a chill that kind of ran down my body when he said, That's my punishment. This girl was nice to me and I killed her.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: If you love true crime, there's a good chance you know the podcast Bone Valley.

SOUNDCLIP

SINGER: Do you hear my-

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: To make the series, host Gilbert King and his producer Kelsey Dekker, spent more than five years investigating a murder. The result is the kind of story that reporters dream about where dogged investigative work actually makes a difference, where lives are changed and truths are told. This story begins in 1985, when Leo Schofield and Michelle Sam first met. They were just kids, a couple of high school dropouts who fell in love in Lakeland, Florida. Michelle was a local to Bone Valley, and Leo was a transplant from Massachusetts who didn't really fit in. But Leo was charming. Not long after meeting Michelle, Leo proposed. And like many young romances, things were a little rocky. And at times, Michelle felt that Leo was a little bit possessive. But Bone Valley is not a podcast about a troubled marriage. It's about a murder. On a rainy, humid night in February 1987, Michelle clocked out of her waitressing job and never came home. She was discovered three days later, stabbed to death. There was no physical evidence linking Leo to the crime. In fact, there were fingerprints at the scene that matched someone else. And yet Leo was convicted of Michelle's murder. He was just 22, and he's been in prison ever since. Gilbert King learned of Leo's story, when a Florida judge named Scott Cupp handed him a business card on the back, the judge had written Leo Schofield not just wrongly convicted, but he's an innocent man.

GILBERT KING: I think he was just trying to really, you know, hit me in the heart a little bit to see how I would respond to that, because I remember I went out to dinner with some public defenders that night and we're having a conversation. I said, oh, I need to show you something. I was doing this talk earlier today at this judge's convention, and I said, one of the judges handed me this card. What do you make of it? And we passed it around the room to the public defenders. And I know all of them were like, wait, a judge wrote this? He's a sitting judge. And I said, Yeah. And then the last guy that touched it was from Polk County. And he said, I know this case, you should call him. And that sort of tipped me off that he was aware that there was something wrong with this conviction. And so when I got back to New York, I think a day or two later I finally picked up the phone and reached out to Judge Cupp.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what did Judge Cupp tell you?

GILBERT KING: So in 1987, Leo Schofield's 18 year old wife disappeared a frantic search for days. And finally on the third day, they found her body in a phosphate canal. And she's been stabbed 26 times. And there wasn't really much evidence pointing to Leo. Leo was out there searching he had a pretty strong alibi, he was with people all night. But it took months and months and months and well over a year where they couldn't solve this case. And then a new prosecutor comes in and decides that there may be enough evidence to build a case that Leo could have been responsible for this. And so Leo, unfortunately, gets a very ineffective defense attorney who really blows the case, doesn't do any preparation, can't get the names right. He's just not prepared for this. And so Leo's convicted. And the way the judicial system works is that's not an uncommon thing. We see a lot of wrongful convictions out there. And we know about this because, you know, DNA comes into play later on and they go, oh, we got the wrong guy. So it wasn't really that difficult a case at that point. It's just another conviction of somebody who's claiming they were innocent. Where the case really gets interesting is 17 years into Leo's sentence, they find these fingerprints that were in the car that were never identified. And now because they have better technology and a APHIS system that can run the prints through, they run it through and it matches this known killer who lives on the same street where Michelle was last seen. And this was a man who's killed multiple people and he's currently in prison himself. And so that's when the case to me became something really interesting. It stood out to me than a normal and I hate to even say a normal wrongful conviction. This had some other element to it that was unsolved. And I remember thinking to myself, Wait a minute, why is Leo Schofield still in prison? And that's basically what the story is about. Try to answer that question. Why is Leo Schofield still in prison?

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: You eventually move to Florida to be closer to the story, which is an incredible commitment. But from your past work, I mean, we know that you throw yourself into stories like this before, but can we talk a little bit about the way you do take on a story?

GILBERT KING: I have a lot of connections in Florida that I've built up over the years from my books and a lot of goodwill. I think I do a lot of public speaking at, you know, judicial conferences, public defender conferences. And I'm very much there's probably not a lawyer in Florida who hasn't seen me speak. To be honest with you. So I'm really rooted in there. And it's been a really valuable way to work because there are other times that, like, I'll be reading and one specific case, an opinion from the Florida Supreme Court that I don't quite understand. And I look at who wrote it. They said, Oh, I got that guy on speed dial. I know him. You know, I've had drinks with him after a conference. I'll just call him up and ask him what he was thinking and get him on the phone and work through it. And that seems to happen to me all the time. So I just knew that if it's in Florida, I can find things out, I can get records, I know how to do this. And it's just a very comfortable, like a battleground, I guess so to say. And I love to just sort of dive into these projects. My books take about five years to do. I didn't think a podcast was going to take me that long. I was completely wrong because it's coming up on five years on that as well. But I just think the level of investigation that I want to do and to bring to this is just so important. And I feel like the readers have always responded to the level of detail and the thoroughness in the books that I've written. And I wanted to do that kind of narrative for a podcast.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And along with you is Kelsey. And can you tell me who was she? How did you guys connect?

GILBERT KING: Kelsey, interestingly enough, was attending Barnard College here in New York, and she worked at the Columbia University's Butler Library, which has a lot of oral history there. She was working as an archivist in there, sort of part time in college. And so I would go to that library all the time to do research on my book. And, you know, once I met her, I was like, Boy, you did you ever want to do any freelance work? Like, what do you what are you doing? Because I need research done. And she was open to that and she started helping me with my book. And then we got this lead on this Leo Scofield case. And I remember said, to her like, you know, this case seems really interesting, but I have this book that I'm working on, and I remember she was the one that said, Well, if there's an innocent man in prison, that that should be the priority. And so she was the one that sort of persuaded me to look into this a little more. And so finally it came time to let go down and start researching and meet Leo Scofield. And I said, do you want to do this? Do you want to be in on this? And she said, Yeah, I do. And that was it. And so we ended up working on this for the next four plus years of our lives.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And one of the things that I loved, you know, so much of this podcast always to me felt like just these enduring friendships and these relationships that you develop. And one of them really is with Kelsey. And so there's you older, more experienced journalist, her young. But I felt like she took on a real leadership. I don't know if that's the right word, but you guys became very equal partners and she brought in a strength and a humanity. That was a lovely counter to you and your factual journalistic. Put one foot in front of the other, keep asking the questions. And I saw that develop over the podcast. And I was just so taken. And I think the moment that Kelsey arrived in my ears as that very important storyteller was after you guys see Michelle's autopsy pictures, you get back in the car and this happens.

SOUNDCLIP

KELSEY DECKER: I mean, I was thinking about her and like. The pain she must have felt and how scared she must have been in those last moments. You know, there is also the proximity and age I was thinking about, you know, also like myself and and all of my friends who were young women and. Could potentially be in a situation like that.

GILBERT KING: Take your time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Can you tell me what Kelsey means to you and what she brought to the story?

GILBERT KING: Yeah, I mean, I've often said this. I believe that she's the conscience of the story. And that particular scene, I was not in favor of that scene. My first instincts were like, this is too manipulative. It's not something I'm journalistically that I would really approve of. I don't I wasn't comfortable with it at all. But we played it a couple of times with the producers, and they thought it was really effective in a way that I couldn't really see because I didn't have a lot of audio experience. And I remember just pulling Kelsey aside and I said, Look, how do you feel about this? And she goes, It's real. And that's what happened. And we kept the mic running all the time because we didn't know what we're doing. So we just said, record everything. And so we had all these moments like that that were just a little bit more emotional than what I was used to doing. And I was worried that I was going to feel like we were manipulating the listener. And but they kind of convinced me that instead of just writing about what we just saw, these horrific autopsy pictures that kind of spoke to it all right there and the fact that she was closer in age to Michelle, the victim really resonated to me. And I just felt like everything she says and does in the story is always honest and real. And so she she was really the conscience of the story. And I really there's a lot of times where I just followed her lead and followed her instincts. I try to give her as much credit as possible, but I don't think anybody will ever really know the true impact she had, not just on the reporting. She was equal to me every single step of the way.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah. I'm so glad you kept that in. As a listener, it was insanely impactful and it just brought Michelle back to us as opposed to it being about Leo and the injustice of Leo, which was equally as important, obviously. But it just reminded us that this somebody died, somebody was violently killed. And Kelsey does that. She represented us, I think, in a way.

GILBERT KING: That's a really beautiful way of putting it. I can tell you, like just, you know, Michele's brother was very moved by how we were treating everything and we were, you know, and then same with Leo. Leo was really, really moved by Kelsey's reactions to these things. It's also really hurtful to him because it brought back a lot of pain about loss and the tragedy of it. And hearing Kelsey's reaction, I can't imagine what it's like for Leo to hear some of this stuff because it's so intensely personal. You know, we were asking a lot of him. We'd go into the prison and interview him for 3 hours and we'd leave and he'd tell us he's a wreck for days, like just revisiting all this stuff. And it just really brought home the poignancy and the and the importance of treating this and in a way that is respectful to everybody.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I think journalists like I mean, I can feel the same. You do it for enough years and it starts to just become your job as a story, like you're just looking for the next thing to defend your thesis as opposed to, you know, sometimes more than sometimes you need the people like Kelsey to bring you back to a being about real people, you know?

GILBERT KING: Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I'm so glad that I didn't, like, just put my foot down and say, no, this isn't traditional journalism or whatever. And I just trusted and, you know, it's like you're all working. It was like these young women who just had such much better instincts than I did for this stuff.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I think that happens in life all the time, doesn't it?

GILBERT KING: Yeah, it does.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the other moments in the podcast that is just so powerful is when you finally meet Jeremy Scott, the man whose fingerprints were found in Michelle's car, who you believe is the real murderer. I've done jailhouse interviews, and no matter how many times you go into a prison, they're always just a little bit nerve wracking. So can you talk to me a little bit about that visit with Jeremy?

GILBERT KING: Yeah, I think one of the things that's really important as we prepared for this interview for a long time. We went through every single possible situation. You know, if he's combative, if he starts to deny things, we had a strategy. We were just as I was writing to him, he said, I want to tell my story, but I don't know how. I just want to tell my version of it. And so we use that to sort of say, All right, we're here for you. We want to listen to you. We want to hear your story. And we're not going to interrogate you. We're not going to try and trick you. We want this to be about how you feel about this. And so we went to all these scenarios and things we knew we had to cover, knowing that we might only get, like less than an hour in there with him. But, you know, once we got inside there, something really interesting happened. I would start Jeremy talking and sort of make him feel comfortable. And I think that was really working. You could tell he just felt really relaxed. And then Kelsey would just ask him a lot of questions. That sounds like what a therapist might ask. How did that make you feel? Jeremy? And he was really responding to her. You know, he didn't always make eye contact with her, but sometimes he did and he would get emotional. But, you know, we were obviously leading to Michelle. And I think there was a moment where I was expecting him to sort of take accountability for it, but I never expected him to get so emotional about it. That really blew me away. Just listening to him talk about this remorse that he felt. And there was a moment I don't distinctly remember it, but I think I there was a chill that kind of ran down my body when he said,

SOUNDCLIP

JEREMY: That shit gets me so scared, I sleep with it every night

GILBERT KING: He was acknowledging that I'm tortured by this. This girl was nice to me, and I killed her. That's my punishment. I have to see her face every night when I go to sleep. That part just got me, and I just figured we may not connect on anything else, but that moment is going to really connect because I could feel it just listening to it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I mean, he confessed to you.

SOUNDCLIP

JEREMY: I happened so fast. As far as Michelle. She was just at the wrong time, wrong place. Everything happens when you're young and not thinking.

GILBERT KING: I read a lot of these kind of interviews. Interrogations, however you want to phrase it, and you can see what's common when you're talking to somebody who's done something really horrific is they kind of lead you up there with all these details. They can describe the details, but the actual act itself sometimes becomes a blur and they don't really love to dive into that. And they'll often cut the story short. And so Jeremy, his way of doing it was like, well, and then I lost it. It would have been very easy if he was lying to just say. And I started a bunch of times. I can't remember how many times I just kept plunging and, you know, he could have done that and just paid lip service to it, but he don't want to talk about it. And that was telling in itself. Like, I'll tell you all this, I'm not proud of this. It's one of the worst moments of my life. But I'm not going to I'm not going to do that because that's really getting into his psyche and that's a lot of damage. I can tell you afterwards, he wrote me and he asked me to see some transcripts from that interview, and I sent him some transcripts and he said, I don't ever want to read that again. It's awful. It could just sort of tell how he felt about it.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: One of the remarkable things about the work that you did in this podcast was you sort of are open to everybody's story and humanity. So there's this man who's in front of you telling you that he did this terrible thing to this woman has done a bunch of other terrible things, But I still felt like you decided that his history of trauma, his background, his hard upbringing was worthy of explaining. One, it better helps us understand who he became, but it also sort of forces you to get out of this punishment and tough on crime mentality to understand that most people get to a place like that because of their background. Is that part of what you go in there looking to do? Like, how much of that is important to you as a storyteller that you give everybody that kind of fair shake, that sense that we have to understand everybody's story?

GILBERT KING: Yeah, I think it's I think it is important. I would say we didn't really go in there planning on this because to be honest with you, Jeremy Scott and his actions, they're pretty horrific and there's a long pattern of violence. You can hear it throughout the show from his girlfriends, from the people he was around, from people he interacted with who had extraordinarily violent interactions with him. I knew that was going to be something that I didn't think we could try and persuade audiences to feel empathy about this. We couldn't do that. We weren't even going to try that. I think the reason it works really well in this case is, is that we really followed Leo's lead on this, and Leo at one point realizes that he was always looking for this monster. The person who must have done this to his wife had to be some monster. And then he learns who Jeremy Scott is and he's like, This is no monster. This is kind of a damaged individual that he just can't feel this hatred that he was feeling all those years when he didn't know who did it. And I think, you know, with Leo, he really respected the fact that Jeremy confessed because he didn't have to do that. And for Leo, it felt like this was Jeremy's redemption, trying to come clean. He didn't know Leo. He wasn't really invested in this. Jeremy was doing a lot of this for himself in his own psyche. And Leo couldn't survive in prison for all these years unless he took on that bitterness and that anger. And it's really important for him religiously to find forgiveness in his heart. For Jeremy, that's the only way he said. And he was very clear about it, which I thought was fascinating. He said, I'm in no position to forgive Jeremy Scott. That's I would never be so presumptive to do that because Michelle's own family, they have a right to to have feelings about this. I'm not doing it for any other reason than to save myself and to save myself from being destroyed in this prison. I need help with this. And the way I get there is by forgiving Jeremy and moving on from that and not having hatred in my heart, not only for Jeremy, but for the state that put him in prison. And so we really follow Leo's lead. And the way Leo talked about Jeremy was really important to us. And, and that's, I think why it really works so well is it's not coming from us, you know, the reporters. It's coming from Leo, the man who has every right to hate Jeremy Scott. But he he won't do it. And that's that's really who Leo is.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I mean, Leo is remarkable. This is a man who was undereducated, who had poverty in his background, has been in prison since 22 years old. Where does that come from? He is an astounding human.

GILBERT KING: Yeah. You know, it also made us think like when he described his story a lot of this, we didn't really put it in the podcast, but he had mentors at prison and they were older men who just said, You have to make the better of yourself at every opportunity. You have to go back and get your GED, you got to get your high school degree, then you got to go to college. And you know, he did all that. He got multiple degrees from college and then he becomes a leader in the church behind bars. And to just tell you how remarkable it is, because I just talked to him and he's at this reentry program and it's you would think like everything is great. There's no violence in this prison. His life is really pretty relaxed compared to where he used to be. But he's extraordinarily lonely because he was removed from a prison where all his friends were for the last 20 years, and he's prohibited from contacting them. He can't even write to them. So they're just all of a sudden he's plucked out of their lives. And a lot of those men were counting on him to get through prison. And he's always been that that leader in the prison who's able to mentor young kids coming in, but also his friends and his bandmates. And it was really painful for Leo. And I remember there was a moment where he was getting ready for transferred to be transferred, which was all about his growth and his next stage in life. And he was like seriously contemplating not leaving because he felt like he couldn't leave these guys behind. And it took a little more effort than I could have possibly imagined to say, Leo, you have to do this. But he was like, I can't leave these guys now. I don't know what's going to happen if I'm out of their lives. And that's the way he was thinking. So he's really an extraordinary person. I think it's like when you meet some people who are wrongfully convicted and it becomes obvious and you look at them and you talk to them and you go, I don't know if I could do that. I would be so angry and so bitter at losing so many years of my life. And we just cannot put ourselves in that headspace because it's so foreign to us and so traumatic. And I don't even know how to describe it. But when you meet people that come out of that who have been wrongfully convicted and they're still around and they're still a positive force, you're dealing with somebody special. And he really is.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: How did you handle it? Like, one of the things that I remember is I, I had listened to it. My husband listens to fewer podcasts than I do. I probably listen to more podcast than most people. But I said, you have to listen to this. So he finally listened, and I think he was on episode five, he called me and said, You have to tell me that this ends up getting his conviction has to be changed because I cannot handle listening to the rest of this ends up badly. And I was like, Sorry, I can't. You were in this for five years. Were there times when you wanted to throw something at a wall or?

GILBERT KING: Yeah. Right up until the very end. I mean, honestly, and I remember thinking like, look, we're not going to have the kind of feel good ending at the end of this story. We really are not. So where do we go with this ending? And I remember thinking to myself, I think the ending has to be we have to really just be truthful and it's going to infuriate people. And I said, that's okay. To infuriating people about something sometimes brings change and it brings people to the cause. And I think that's really by just saying, we're going to tell this story as honestly as we know it. But, you know, we can't control people's reaction to this. I knew people were going to be really upset hearing this. And, you know, your husband gets to five. It just starts getting worse from there. You just start seeing all the setbacks and they're just absolutely devastating. And we actually got to sit through a couple of them, too, you know, his his parole hearing and also one of his appeals that just got shot down. And it was like, how is it that everybody I show this to I'm talking about lawyers around the country, every side of the political spectrum, judges, prosecutors, when they look at this, they go, oh, come on, this guy needs a new trial. But there's a little group in Polk County where they're like, No, no, no, we got this right. We got no need to look at this any further.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: That was going to be my question. I mean, what the hell? What what? Why are they so immovable? I mean, what is that about?

GILBERT KING: I talked to a lot of people about it, and there's a couple of things at play. I think the finality that the courts like to have, like you have to respect a jury's verdict. And the courts have spoken and it's gone through the appellate system. And I get that that's true, but it's not always correct. You know, and we know this for a fact, we see exonerations all the time. Florida has a particularly notorious history of getting these cases wrong. And I'm talking about death penalty cases where the appellate process is much more comprehensive. But when you talk about a regular first degree murder trial that doesn't have a capital sentence on it, you know, they don't get the same kind of scrutiny. And so you can only imagine how many really, truly innocent people are out there. Now, I want to say that with this caveat. I got the state usually gets these convictions right. For the most part, a high percentage of crimes are, you know, people taking pleas. These are still fairly rare, but they're not that rare in Florida. I just think the whole process we really set out to look at the appellate process in this because, you know, we do cover the trial, the original trial. But that to me doesn't even seem like the worst injustice. The worst injustice happens afterwards when we start to know who this person is, who's connected to the crime scene and what he's saying and what he's trying to say. And nobody will listen to him from prosecutors to judges to, you know, appellate judges. It just became so frustrating to see why is this not breaking through.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And they keep bringing up evidence that is false. How can judges the higher up, keep letting this bullshit evidence be brought forward? It was just astounding to me as like, is there nobody saying that's false? We know it's false. It's been proven to be false.

GILBERT KING: There. There should be. And that was something like we felt like we had to really lay into a lot of these points. And, you know, I never saw, like, the defense when I look at the defense documents, I never saw Leo's defense lying or misrepresenting evidence. Everything I saw about the lies and the misrepresentation was coming from the state. And also a lot of times they would just take these innocuous statements like, you know, Leo asked to see a lawyer early on in the in the like. Yeah. So what? Everyone asked us at one point he didn't even ask for a lawyer. He asked a friend, Do you think I need a lawyer? They're questioning me every day. They use that against him. They said, well, Leo couldn't know. Like he'd never helped with his wife's funeral. Like to hold that against him. And, like, this is a 22 year old basket case. And as he says in the podcast, like I was in no position to pick out the kind of wood for the coffin. I just couldn't handle that. This kid just like to put that responsibility on him and then to use it against him. I just felt it was really disingenuous and just there was a lot of that happening. It was always on behalf of the state. And so that that part of it really told me that they I believe that they were trying to win this case. They were trying to seek justice.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And what I also loved about the podcast is that, of course, your many of your episodes were done ahead of time and in the can and but you were eventually going live and people were getting on board and you talked about that. People were getting angry. I mean, we weren't the only ones we saw it. There was articles being written. It became a very big thing. How much did the podcast popularity play into the fact that Leo finally got a break this year? I mean, you mentioned that he was transferred to a lower security prison with the expectation that maybe and quite likely he'll actually get paroled next year.

GILBERT KING: Yeah, I think there was a lot of things happening which I thought were really interesting. You saw a lot of the public stuff, the social media response and that kind of stuff, and the articles that were being written. The New York Times wrote a couple of pieces about the case. It was covered by The Guardian. You know, it was all out there, but a lot of things were happening behind the scenes that were really interesting. People were contacting me. Prosecutors in the state of Florida were basically saying, What can I do to help? I looked into this case. They wanted to get involved. Ultimately, you had a state senator from Florida, very conservative state senator. He's newly elected. He gets put in charge of the Criminal Justice Committee, which oversees the parole board and the prisons. And he looked at it and he was like, this guy does need to be paroled, he needs to be exonerated. And he was furious about it. And I was getting a lot of those kind of letters and emails from law enforcement in the state, What can I do? And people were starting to write to the governor's office, and there was just this sort of movement that was happening outside of what we saw on social media. And I'm sure that had an impact on it. I think powerful people were reaching out not only to state representatives and the governor's office, but also to the 10th Circuit where Leo's case originated. I'm positive that people are reaching out there and they were feeling some pressure because if you listen to the last episode, the state's position completely changed. They didn't they didn't really throw the autopsy pictures in front and they didn't do what they usually do. He showed no remorse. He refuses to say he did it. How can you let him out? They didn't go that route. So I have the feeling that they were getting a little bit of pushback from other places. I know some people who had written to them, but I don't know the details of that. But I, I suspected that locally people were saying things to them.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Interesting. As you mentioned, this was your first audio project, your first podcast. How do you feel about telling stories through audio now?

GILBERT KING: You know, honestly, I love it. I, there was, I was trying to think about specifically our interview with Jeremy Scott and what I want to look like at the end of a book. Had I written a book and how those quotes would have played out and I think the power that you get. In audio was that we could hear Jeremy's voice cracking. You could feel his remorse. You know, he has this line where Kelsey asked him, like, do you think about Michelle really quietly.

SOUNDCLIP

KELSEY DECKER: Do you ever think about Michelle?

GILBERT KING: And his voice cracks.

SOUNDCLIP

JEREMY: I do all the time. I pray for her every night. When I lay down, I sleep with her. I can get out, can't get away. That's a nightmare.

GILBERT KING: And you can feel it was real. And, you know, we talk to Jeremy's brother, and Jeremy's brother sort of said that about Jeremy. Like if he's saying that he's not lying, he's feeling this. And his own brother had spent time in prison. And he said, when you're in there by yourself in a cell, the weight of what you've done really begins to hit you. And he suspected that was really happening to Jeremy. And and so I don't think I could have ever captured that the same way on the page, just hearing that the voice and the intimacy and like in a microphone or putting on headphones, it's really powerful. Even when I listen to it now, I think, Wow, that's really amazing.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, I mean, truly. How did Bone Valley change your life?

GILBERT KING: In a In a couple of ways, and I think almost all positive. The one I'll just talk about the one and it's not really a negative. I just it's a thing that you really have to be aware of. Like once you go down this path, you're in it and you're basically interviewing people constantly. You're asking for documents, asking for photos, and it takes an emotional toll on you because it just there's no way to. So I couldn't find a way to separate myself from the story. And a lot of it has to do with, you know, I guess the way I look at storytelling. I don't have a traditional journalistic background. I don't have that kind of training. I came up really through narrative nonfiction books. And so I think there's a different way of of telling those kind of stories. And in that long form, you know, several years spent investigating it, then, sometimes you think, well, is it is he being objective? You know, he's so involved. Is this advocacy journalism now? What are we doing here? And I honestly hadn't really experienced any other way of doing this in in the work that I've done in the past. But I equate it with like Ida Tarbell when she's at the turn of the century, one of the great muckraking journalists of all time, and she ends up exposing Standard Oil and John D. Rockefeller and all the business shenanigans basically, and pressure and corruption and all of that. And she really exposes that in a real concise and thorough and comprehensive way. And you look at like what got her in it. Well, shoddy Rockefeller and Standard Oil ruined her father's business, drove him out of business. So, of course, she's biased. She sees what happened and she's learned this. And that's sort of how the way I look at it. Ida Wells is another example. When she was investigating lynching, like there's no two sides to that story. You have to be against lynching. And that's how I feel about wrongful convictions. And I'm not going to compromise my career by, like advocating for someone and not believing it. You know, I, I put so much time into this. If there was, like one moment where I felt Leah was being dishonest with me or is trying to mislead me, I realized he would probably back away from it. Like, I don't think I could go forward with it. So I knew that that wasn't going to happen. And and after a while, we just there's so much that we learn and everything pointed towards Jeremy and not Leo. And it was just so obvious that this was wrong. And so I felt like I was much more heavily involved in this than I might be with a book because people were living and living this life.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: Yeah, and you really did become invested. It was just so clear to us. And there's this exchange in the final episode of the podcast where you and Kelsey and Leo, you're on the phone and you're talking about his parole hearing and that it's still, you know, the fight isn't over.

GILBERT KING: We're not going anywhere. And I just want I just wanted you to know that, and, you know, we think about you all the time.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And at the very end of the call, you tell Leo that you love him.

SOUNDCLIP

LEO: Eyes of the masters of love you, Gilbert.

GILBERT KING: Take care, buddy. Love you too. All right.

KELSEY DECKER: Bye.

GILBERT KING: Bye bye.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: I thought it was just such a striking moment, and I don't think I've ever heard anything like that before on a podcast. So have you ever told any of your subjects that you've loved them before?

GILBERT KING: No, I never have. I mean, this is all new to me. I'm used to writing in third person, but I'm not ashamed of that at all. I feel like it was just an organic part of the story. And at the very end, that clip you just played, it just felt like we didn't know where this thing was going to end. We didn't know. It just felt like this was sort of the end and it. There I was sitting there with Kelsey and just listening to Leo talk about what this whole experience has meant to him, and it was just really hard not to get emotional about it. And, you know, I'm not ashamed of it. It was real and it was, you know, I think I cried a few times in the podcast, actually.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: And I think listening to it now, you looked a little bit emotional. Does it still kind of hit you when you hear it?

GILBERT KING: It really does. You know, I think part of the thing that gets me emotional is just hearing Leo talk about Kelsey and Kelsey's arc throughout the story.

SOUNDCLIP

LEO: To Kelsey, somehow she has a connection in my heart and I can't.

GILBERT KING: As much as it was emotional hearing. Leo It was really emotional hearing. Kelsey talk about what this project has meant to her and the way she perceived these new students down at this reentry program and how they were going to interact with Leo and how grateful they would be to meet Leo.

SOUNDCLIP

KELSEY DECKER: I know it's a whole process and we're all going to have to process this and you especially. But I really, like, you know, woke up feeling really, really good about this today. And like, I really excited for you. Like, I feel like I mean, I'm excited.

GILBERT KING: And I also just felt like I really wanted to just give Kelsey the last word on this story. Let her talk to Leo. And I just felt there was something really beautiful and organic about it, and I was just happy to slip into the background.

SOUNDCLIP

KELSEY DECKER: I think like, nine months is, yeah, that time's going to go by fast and you're going to hopefully, you know, be able to connect with a bunch of new people. And then nine months from now, team Leo is going to be like even bigger and more robust. And, you know, we're all going to be there for you when you know, you get out for real.

KATHLEEN GOLDHAR: This is Crime Story from CBC Podcasts. I'm your host, Kathleen Goldhar. Crime Story is produced and written by me, Alexis Green and Sarah Claydon. Sound Design by Graham MacDonald. Our senior producer is Geoff Turner. Additional audio from Lava for good. Our executive producers are Cecil Fernandes and Chris Oke. Tanya Springer is the senior manager for CBC Podcasts and Arif Noorani is the executive director of CBC Podcasts.

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TRANSCRIPT: Crime Story, Episode 1

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