When I retired from KWBU in January, friends and coworkers showered me with all sorts of gifts – carefully chosen, showing how well they have come to know me through the years. I love them all. I want to talk about one of them today – a book that Molly Jo Tilton gave me – Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida, by Gilbert King. You might have heard of it – before it was a book, it was a popular podcast.
King tells the story of Leo Schofield, who was charged with the murder of his wife Michelle in 1988. They weren’t a perfect couple. They had their share of disagreements, and on numerous occasions neighbors overheard them fighting with one another. They were young and poor, behind on their rent, living on odd jobs and food stamps. But they loved each other, and one night when Michelle didn’t come after work to pick him up – after she had called to say she was on her way – Leo became frantic and went out looking for her. He woke neighbors, called his Dad to help search, and after more than two hours with no luck, he called the Sheriff’s department.
Eventually they found her body at a secluded spot known locally as Bone Valley because of local phosphate mining.
Leo quickly became the prime suspect. He was arrested and tried and found guilty and sent to prison. But of course, there’s much more to the story.
In 2018, author Gilbert King was at a book signing in Florida when, as he writes, “[A] gray-haired man in a suit approached and handed me a business card. I could see there was something written on the back in blue ink, and I quickly read it:
LEO SCHOFIELD #115760 HARDEE C.I.NOT JUST ‘WRONGFULLY CONVICTED,’HE’S AN INNOCENT MAN.“
The card belonged to Scott Cupp, a sitting judge in Florida’s Twentieth Circuit. King writes, “It was almost as if he had approached me as a whistleblower, willing to risk his career to talk to someone in the media about a wrongdoing he had observed.”
King took on the project, spending much of the next six years researching the full story of what really happened that night more than thirty years before – identifying corruption in the judicial system and finding the real killer.
I think it’s safe to say without King’s tireless efforts, Leo Schofield never would have been exonerated. The details of that work – how King did his job, the huge expense of time and money required for good journalism – was a big part of this book, and left me wondering how many innocent people will never be set free because their stories won’t be told.
The story of redemption at the end of this book provides a plot twist I didn’t see coming. You’ll want to read the book for yourself to find out.
Gilbert King is a Pulitzer Prize- winning author who has written about race, civil rights, and the death penalty for The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic. Bone Valley is his third book.
Likely Stories - Bone Valley by Gilbert King
