Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida

From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King comes a chilling exploration of one of America's most haunting wrongful conviction cases. Based on the hit podcast, Bone Valley dives into the dark heart of rural Florida, where a young man's life was upended by a tragic miscarriage of justice.
"Captivating, enraging, and all too true." ―Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road
"Bone Valley is a work of rare moral clarity and deep compassion." ―Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking
In 1987, 18-year-old Michelle Schofield was found stabbed to death in a drainage canal in Central Florida's Bone Valley. Her husband, Leo—a young guitarist with big dreams—was convicted of her murder and sentenced to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence.
More than thirty years later, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King was tipped off about the case by a Florida judge convinced Leo had been railroaded by a corrupt prosecutor. King's search for answers led him to Jeremy Scott, a violent neighbor forensically tied to the crime scene, now serving a life sentence for another murder. Drawn into the intertwined lives of both men, King uncovers a story that transcends guilt and innocence, exploring the human capacity for change.
Bone Valley tells the story of two men bound by one tragedy, and of a justice system unwilling to face its own mistakes—a powerful account of grace, redemption, and a truth that endures. Gilbert King has written a new classic of narrative nonfiction.

Gilbert King is the writer, producer, and host of Bone Valley, a narrative podcast about murder and injustice in 1980s central Florida, from Lava For Good podcasts. He is the author of three books, including Devil in the Grove, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. A New York Times bestseller, the book was also named runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. King has written about race, civil rights, and the death penalty for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic, and he was a 2019-2020 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars at the New York Public Library. He lives in Brooklyn.