Criminal - Catastrophe

Episode Date: September 8, 2017

In 1993, more than 1,000 levees broke along the Mississippi River, flooding thousands of acres. Most of these cases were accidents due to the river rising well above its usual levels. But in West Quincy, Missouri, there was another culprit, James Scott. His crime? Knowingly causing a catastrophe by breaking the levee. But his motive was not what prosecutors expected.  Thanks to Noam Osmand for the story.   For more information, check out Adam Pitluk's book, Damned to Eternity. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums,

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. I would say overall, you know, my childhood was good. You know, except for, you know, the early run-ins with the police. I got to be well-known amongst junior officers and other police officers in Quincy. Jimmy Scott grew up in Quincy, Illinois, right on the Missouri-Illinois border. The two states are separated by the Mississippi River. Jimmy was close to his two brothers, Mike and Jeff. The three boys were just one year apart.

He would, I think, kind of mastermind something and then they just kind of, you know, he was, he was like a leader type. This is Jimmy's mother, Sharon Scott. She says that when her kids were little, they got in trouble all the time. Not anything too unusual, smoking cigarettes, ringing random doorbells in the middle of the night. Sometimes they built small fires in their yard. But Quincy is a small town, and so the Scott boys, and especially Jimmy, got reputations. And then, in 1982, when the brothers were 13, 12, and 11, they rode their bikes to their old school, Webster Elementary.

The school had shut down the year before. The doors were locked. 12, and 11. They rode their bikes to their old school, Webster Elementary. The school had shut down the year before. The doors were locked. And so the brothers climbed up a fire escape, kicked through a window on the second floor, and snuck in. You know, I know we kind of did some ramsacking through some of the classrooms. I got me a big red kickball.

Yeah, that was pretty neat. They wandered into the auditorium where they'd been in school plays. The two older brothers, Mike and Jimmy, were smoking. The youngest brother, Jeff, asked for a cigarette, but his brother said no, so he asked if he could hold the lighter. Jimmy dared Jeff to light one of the stage curtains on fire,

and Jeff, who was 11, held the lighter against the curtain. It caught on fire easily, and they couldn't make it stop. Mike tried to stomp it out, but it was spreading up the curtains. They ran back towards the window where they'd broken in, and then Jimmy remembered that Mike had taken a gradebook. Jimmy lit the gradebook on fire, too. He was worried about fingerprints, and threw it, along with the lighter,

into a classroom and closed the door. The brothers biked home and promised never to tell anyone. By 2 a.m., the entire town smelled like smoke. People, including Jimmy's parents, watched the school burn from their front porches. Eighty firefighters worked through the night to put it out, but it was still burning the next morning. Four other fire departments were called in to help. We had no idea that it was going to burn to the ground.

It was gutted. I think Mom knew because that's one of the things she did was she smelt her hands. And Mom knew that something was amiss, but she didn't know the extent of the scope. And I don't think we did either. It was probably, I would say, probably about three days later that the police came to the house. Arson investigators worked with local teachers to identify any kids behaving strangely, which the Scott boys were.

And Jimmy had even done some cryptic bragging. The police interviewed the brothers one at a time, Mike first, then Jeff, Jimmy last. They all confessed. They were tried before a juvenile judge with a court-appointed defense attorney. Mike, the oldest, got probation till he was 18, but he would go home with his parents that day. Jeff, the youngest, was sent to live with a foster family. Jimmy, who the judge determined was the instigator, was moved to a youth home to finish out the school year. Then, if I recall, I was sent to have an evaluation, a mental evaluation.

After that, I think I returned home. They diagnosed him with mild depression and ADD. By August of 1982, the whole family was back under the same roof. But things felt different. People criticized Sharon's parenting to her face. Other kids weren't allowed to play with the Scott brothers, especially Jimmy. People knew who I was. I think that there was a fear probably amongst teachers and others that what's

he going to do? You know, what's going to happen? Is he going to do something that's going to hurt, you know, me or anybody else? After he graduated from high school, Jimmy spent a lot of time hanging out and drinking with his older half-brother, Dan. One night, Jimmy had a lot of beers and then lit some wood on fire in an old carport, destroying an antique tractor. And he kept going from there. Small arsons here and there, I think dumpster fires, maybe a car fire, you know, petty theft, just petty. You know, if something happened in my neighborhood, the cops were the first one to call to our house. You know, they were the first one to show up.

You know, where was you at and what was you doing? Right around this time, a man named Neil Baker was promoted to detective with the Quincy Police Department. And one of his first cases as a detective was a series of arsons, an apartment, an old carport, and a car wash. He says there wasn't much crime in Quincy. Detectives normally spent their time on misdemeanor marijuana cases. He was trying to find a pattern to the fires, and he was able to connect each fire to Jimmy Scott. One was a car wash on Broadway here in Quincy. He was mad at the owner because something the owner did, I believe, to his brother.

One was an old guy's garage here in town, a shed. He had a bunch of wood in it. He was showing off for some friends. He was in his late teens. And one was a young lady that had rebuffed his advances, and he set fire to her apartment house. When he went to arrest Jimmy, Detective Baker brought along his younger brother Bruce,

also a detective. They arrested Jimmy on six counts of arson and one count of disorderly conduct. Jimmy was 18 years old when he began his seven-year prison sentence. He'd only end up serving three of those seven years. When he got out of prison, he got a job at Burger King. He dated a woman named Susie.

They got married. And he went back to hanging out at Dan's house every night. You know, I was a drinker, partier. Loved to have fun. Loved my friends, my family. And then, all hell broke loose in Quincy, and Jimmy Scott was right in the middle of the worst of it. For today's story, we worked with contributor Noam Osband, who learned that in a small town, people have a very hard time forgetting who they think

you are. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The summer of 1993 was a memorable one for people living on the Mississippi River in Illinois and Missouri. The winter before, they'd seen particularly heavy snowfall. And then that spring and into the summer, it just rained and rained and rained, two to three times the normal amount of rain. The soil was saturated, so the rainwater just ran into the river. We just kept having rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, and everything just kept going up.

The rivers kept going up, and they was trying to keep the levees from breaking. And they was breaking up and down, all the way up and down the Mississippi. Weather storms are likely tonight. And the National Weather Service is still saying locally heavy rain. They're patrolling. They are sandbagging. They are cutting brush so they can get to even more levees,

so they can maybe get some bulldozers in. This morning, I have declared a state of disaster for the city of Kent. Can you tell me what the river stage is at Quincy, please? Where is it all going to go? More than a thousand levees failed that summer along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Twenty million acres were destroyed. More than 500 counties flooded, doing almost 15 billion dollars in damage. But the town of Quincy was safe. It sits up high on limestone bluffs,

protected from the river. However, its sister city, just across the Bayview Bridge, West Quincy, Missouri, was not safe. Not at all. Their levee simply wasn't tall enough, so they tried to bulldoze the dirt from the base of the levee up toward the top, and then started lining it with plastic sheets and put sandbags on top of that. 3.5 million sandbags in all. Well, everybody was working very hard to keep, you know, the levees from breaking. And it was a hot summer, and everybody was just doing their part, you know, filling sandbags and that. One of those volunteers was Jimmy Scott.

I started working on the West Quincy levee, you know, helping patrol, walk, pile sandbags. I think I did that for, like, four or five days. Jimmy says he took the work seriously and felt useful. When he finished working at the levees, he often went to Dan's house for beers. There were always a lot of other people hanging out there, watching baseball and drinking, and Jimmy told them stories about what he'd seen happening at the river. One evening, Jimmy played basketball with some teenagers in Dan's driveway.

One of the boys asked Jimmy if he was scared the levee would break, to which Jimmy replied, if the levee breaks, then we'll have good catfishing in West Quincy. On July 13th, engineers said the levee could hold 32 feet of water. The water level was at 31.9. Hundreds of communities and thousands of people are bracing for the highest water in 20 years. I told my husband I'll stay till I see the first snake and then I'm gone. They think they've got the levee high enough. They're worried now about what's seeping through the bottom. Well, meanwhile, the levees at West Quincy and Hull, Illinois are holding as tensions rise. Flood Watch 93 is next.

On the night of July 14th, Jimmy was back at Dan's, and his wife Susie was there too. Jimmy chatted with a 16-year-old named Joe Flax. Jimmy talked about wishing his wife wasn't always around. She worked across the river in Taylor, Missouri. And Joe Flax remembered Jimmy saying, If that levee breaks, I hope it strands Susie over in Taylor so I can party here without her. On July 16th, the water was cresting. And even though the Army Corps of Engineers and National Guard had been able to make the levee taller by bulldozing sand upward, that process also thinned the levee walls pretty dramatically. Jimmy went down to the Bayview Bridge to help

and told a National Guardsman that he'd already been taught how to spot trouble areas. Jimmy joined another volunteer and they got to work inspecting a one-mile stretch. There was a larger amount of water or seepage in one section of this levee. And I was like, well, we need to find someone in charge and go tell him. According to Jimmy, they set out in opposite directions to try to find someone in charge. Jimmy walked south. And when he got to the Bayview Bridge, he found Sergeant Duke Kelly. This was just before 2 p.m.

Sergeant Kelly asked Jimmy to lead him back to the trouble spot. And, according to Jimmy, the two men walked about a half mile before Sergeant Kelly realized they were walking toward a low-priority area. He stopped and said, my main concern is with my guys south of the Bayview Bridge, but I'll make sure I inform somebody and let them know. Sergeant Kelly turned back, but told Jimmy to keep an eye on it, and that, if it got worse, to let someone know.

Every so often they had, you know, everybody thinks when they talk about a sandbag levy, that it's sandbags, a row of sandbags. That wasn't the case every every so often they had sandbags to where they used to use a shore up and depressed area and the levee was you know it was like up and down up and down it wasn't a solid you know height all the way down that the levee you know it was up and down up and down up and down i moved. I took sandbags from the brim and put them on a depressed area of the levee. You heard the levee break. I mean, being on the Bayview Bridge, I seen, you know, sort of trees cracking, and it was loud.

You know, we heard the rushing water from half a mile away, a quarter mile away. A hundred-foot gap opened in the levee. Over 14,000 acres of farmland were flooded. Barges were propelled from the river onto farmland, and one crashed into a gas station, which promptly exploded. The Bayview Bridge was shut down for two months, forcing drivers to go hours out of their way to cross the river. All traffic on Quincy's Bayview Bridge was forced to stop

when a levee just several hundred yards upstream of the bridge broke, and the fight to save all this land was over. Now this happened three minutes ago. This was three minutes ago, folks. Water is spilling out over into West Quincy, and people understandably are being asked to evacuate the premises because of a fire that has erupted at the Air Coast Storage Station. Gentlemen, back behind the squad car now. It's just, it's so difficult to describe, to see that quantity of water, and to know that the destruction is what is coming. It's, you know, it's just so difficult to describe, to see that quantity of water, and to know that the

destruction of what is coming, it's just moments away. Jimmy says he was walking back to his car when he was stopped by Michelle McCormack, a reporter for local TV station WGEM. He told her that he'd seen water coming in and moved sandbags on top of the puddle. After that, he stayed on the scene and helped the Coast Guard unload boats from a truck. And then he spoke with Michelle McCormack again for the 10 p.m. broadcast.

That night I'm watching TV, the news, because I watch the news, and I see James Robert Scott standing on the bridge talking to a reporter, and she was doing a fine job interviewing him. Detective Neil Baker was at home watching this and he just couldn't believe Jimmy Scott was actually there to help. He did not look like somebody had been working on a levee and the heat was incredible. It was very humid. It had been raining every friggin day for quite a while.

This guy was a little sweaty and stuff because it was so hot. He didn't have on a life vest. He couldn't answer this good reporter's, any of her softball questions. She wasn't interrogating him. Who were you working with? Where were you working? What did you have for supper? Where did you have supper?

He couldn't answer anything. And I'm looking at him. I knew him, and from previous encounters, and it looked to me like this is, you know, this is a guy that had something to hide, and he could barely contain himself. The news made it clear that Jimmy was one of very few eyewitnesses. Everyone else was working along parts of the levee that seemed weaker. Bob Nall, the sheriff of a neighboring Illinois county, also watched Jimmy live on TV and

wanted to ask him a few questions. The first time I got interrogated was on July 17th, the day after the levee failed. The evening of July 17th, it was late at night, and lo and behold, who pulls up almost as we're getting out of the car, Sheriff Nall, can we talk to you? I said, yeah, what's this about? You know what it's about. And I told Susie, I said, I'm gonna go, he wants me to go around

and go around to the Amstrad Sheriff's Department. I said, I'll be home. She said, no, I'm going with you. And she did. But you know, I remember we'd come out, and Susie asked me, said, what's going on? I was like, they think I broke the levy. And she said, did you? I said, no, I didn't.

Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention, and they call these series essentials. This month, they recommend Wondery's Ghost Story, a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. The prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulties swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition.

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See for yourself at BotoxCosmetic.com. Sheriff Nall's next move was to start questioning people who knew Jimmy. He talked with some of the teenagers who'd hung around Dan's house drinking. They told him what they knew and repeated things Jimmy said about how a levy break would mean good catfishing. On July 22nd, startling news as an investigation is announced into the West Quincy levy break. The Marion County, Missouri and Adams County, Illinois Sheriff's Departments along with the Quincy Police Department will be investigating the possible sabotage of the levy,

specifically the sighting of an unfamiliar man on the levy at the time of the break. Commissioners say they called the law in in order to quell rumors and let levy workers know their efforts were not in vain. If this levy gave way of its own effort, we would almost have to say it's the Lord's will and the Lord's will also, but if it has been caused by something other than natural occurrence, I believe that the whole community who has pitched in so valiantly to help in this lever fighting can feel that we were not defeated.

Now, obviously, because the tangible evidence has been washed away, investigators will have to gather all the circumstantial evidence that they can. The crime was in Missouri, not Quincy, Illinois, but it was a larger issue than that. Detective Neil Baker. And of course, the Missouri authorities were pretty constrained what they could do because it was all underwater. So I interviewed pertinent people. I did an investigation and as well as my brother Bruce. The Baker brothers helped form a task force with other county, state, and federal law enforcement agencies to investigate the levy break. Even the FBI got involved. This went on for months.

But Neil Baker felt Jimmy Scott had to be involved. Him and others said that, you know, I made statements that I wanted the levity to break so, you know, I can do some fishing and partying and have Susie on the other side so I can mess around with other women and this and that. I'm not going to say that I didn't make, you know, some of the statements that were supposed to be made. And I remember telling Neil Baker and his brother the same thing. You know, if I

said that, you know, I don't remember, but it was just in a joking manner regardless. On October 1st, the Baker brothers paid a visit to the Burger King where Jimmy worked. They waited in the parking lot for Jimmy to finish his shift. But as I'm getting ready to pull out,

Neil Baker and Bruce Baker pull up in front and pull in front of my car where I couldn't pull out. And they come in the car and say, James, can I see you? Step out the car. See you. They said, we got a warrant for your arrest for burglary. Okay, what'd I burglarize? You warrant for your arrest for burglary. Okay, what I burglarized.

You'll have plenty of time to talk about that. We'll have plenty of time to talk about that. And we get down to Quincy Police Department, and they put me in an interrogation room or a holding room. We had actually five crimes to interview him about. Numero uno would have been the levee break, but we thought he might have committed a armed robbery, a purse snatching, a burglary to a vehicle,

and bad checks. Jimmy admitted to writing bad checks and stealing a backpack from a truck. But his story about the levee never changed. He told them what he told everyone else all along, that he moved sandbags. He said on tape that he moved at least four to five sandbags and that he'd never intended to make the levee worse. There's no physical evidence which shows that he broke it.

It's mostly like the fact he was there and that there are people like witnesses about things he said. Is that, I have no sense of if that's common or uncommon for somebody to be convicted on that degree of evidence. Without any physical evidence? Well, physically he was there. Physically he was the first one that saw it break i know what you're getting at um physical evidence i think's oftentimes overrated it's not it's a lot more flimsy than people think it is and um so i'd say yeah i'd say that's not that uncommon you know i remember when my trial was going on, the O.J. trial was going on. And I remember on the news you'd see the O.J. trial, O.J. Simpson trial, in big, bold, gold letters. Well, here, when my trial was going on, they had the James Scott trial. Same way, big, bold, gold letters.

The main question of the trial was whether the levy would have failed regardless of Jimmy's presence. Jimmy didn't testify. His attorneys presented an expert named Charles Morris, a civil engineer from Missouri, who told the jury that the levy was absolutely in danger of failing on its own. Morris said that anyone sabotaging it would have died, swept away by the undercurrent.

For the prosecution, experts testified to the strength of the levy. Detective Baker testified, describing Jimmy as a career criminal. And 16-year-old Joe Flax, who by this time was incarcerated himself, recalled Jimmy saying that he wouldn't mind his wife getting stranded on the Missouri side of the river. And then Joe Flax added something he'd never said before, that Jimmy planned to break the levy in advance of July 16th. After a three-day trial and four hours of deliberation, the jury reached a verdict.

I'm the first and only person arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and sentenced of knowingly causing a catastrophe. Jimmy Scott was convicted under a Missouri law that makes it a felony to, quote, knowingly cause a catastrophe. According to the law, one can cause a catastrophe by explosion, fire, flood, collapse of a building, or the release of poison, radioactive material, bacteria, viruses, or other difficult-to-confine forces. Catastrophe is defined as death or serious physical injury to ten or more people, or substantial damage to five or more buildings. Did you know that law even existed, the law about intentionally causing a catastrophe? No, others didn't either. You know, I'm thinking it's property damage.

Matter of fact, when it comes to my sentencing, I think my attorneys looked, you know, tried to find other cases that were similar. There is none. There is none like this at all. I don't think they had enough evidence that, all right, I'll just say it like this. I think they was looking for a scapegoat. Jimmy's mom, Sharon Scott. And he was there and think, well, you know, Jimmy Scott was the one.

He was over there and he was the one that broke the levy. During sentencing, the judge cited Jimmy's previous convictions, going all the way back to the fire at Webster Elementary. And then he sentenced him to life in prison. We met with Jimmy at the Jefferson City Correctional Center, a maximum security prison. We met with Jimmy at the Jefferson City Correctional Center, a maximum security prison. You know, I have one of the highest profile cases in this camp. You know, the most unique in the state. You know, being that there's no other case like mine at all. And when guys hear about it, you know, are you kidding? You're here for murder. I said, no, this is what I'm here for.

Have you ever been convicted of any violent crime? No. But you liked fire. That's one of the things that the judge said in my sentencing. He said it's funny that it started out with fire and in it, water. Jimmy's lawyers appealed his conviction on the grounds of procedural misconduct, arguing that the prosecution had not revealed all their witnesses beforehand. The Missouri Supreme Court gave Jimmy a new trial in 1998. This time, the defense called a soil scientist named R. David Hammer, who testified that when the Army Corps of Engineers bulldozed sand from the bottom of the levee walls to the top, they made the walls way too thin.

He said it was, quote, absolutely insane. Adding that, it wasn't a matter of if that levee would fail, but when. Jimmy was found guilty a second time. He will be eligible for parole in 2023. You know, there are probably things that I've done in my life, you know, leading up to the flood that I never got caught for, that I should be in prison for. You know, my personal opinion, but as for the West Quincy levy, no. This is a guy that I don't think there's much beyond what he would do.

Detective Neil Baker. He broke that levy, in my opinion, because he's an arsonist at heart and was similar to setting a fire. It was a very simple thing to do. People think, how can one guy do all that damage? A child could have done that damage. There was not much to it. So he did $100 million worth of damage. There were people in both trials who were experts who had said

that the levee seemed like it might have broken anyways, and levees had broken in other places. And so has there ever been a time where you have doubted, I guess, since you first saw him on TV, whether or not he did it? No, not ever. And remember, I have a history with Jimmy Scott. I've talked with him before and referenced other crimes before, and I can kind of, I have a feeling for when he's telling me the truth and when he's lying to me. There's only two that knows what happened that night, and nobody's going to change my mind.

That is God Almighty and Jim. That's the only ones. I can't change what happened. Sometimes things are happened for, everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. But me and the river don't get along. I just, no that's not my, I'm far away from the river I can stay. I'm happy. Noah Maas Band. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohr, Nadia Wilson, and me.

Audio mix by Rob Byers and Johnny Vince Evans. Special thanks to Adam Pitluck, who wrote a book about Jimmy called Damned to Eternity. We'll have a link on our website. Our intern is Mathilde Erfolino. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts around. Shows like The West Wing Weekly, where hosts Rishikesh Hirway and Josh Molina,

who was in The West Wing, break down every episode of the show. But it's a lot more than that. They also delve into political issues and source material that inspired the show. In a recent episode, they interviewed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Hey, guys.

Hi. I was a little bit daunted when my Skype told me that Right Honourable Justin Trudeau was joining the conversation. Can we establish your fanhood bona fides? Did you watch The West Wing when it was originally on? When I watched this episode, that was the first time I'd ever watched an episode of West Wing

outside of the regular time slot, with the exception of the Ritchie debate one. I actually watched it a few years ago to try and bone up for my own debates. But I'd never actually seen West Wing other than when it was scheduled to appear. And I saw pretty much all episodes. Go listen. Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation. And special thanks to AdCirc for providing their ad-serving platform to Radiotopia.

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia. from PRX. Prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Don't receive Botox Cosmetic if you have a skin infection.

Side effects may include allergic reactions, injection site pain, headache, eyebrow and eyelid drooping, and eyelid swelling. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms,

and dizziness. Tell your doctor about medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including ALS or Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton syndrome and medications, including botulinum toxins,

as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. For full safety information, visit BotoxCosmetic.com. We're answering all your questions. What should you use it for? What tools are right for you? And what privacy issues should you ultimately watch out for? And to help us out, we are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts.