James Scott is one of the most popular and richest Worker who was born on November 20, 1969 in Quincy, Quincy, United States. During flooding on the Mississippi River in 1993, the Scotts, along with several other residents living in and around Quincy and Hannibal, spent much of mid-July reinforcing the West Quincy levee. By July 16, the river had stopped rising and had dropped 46 centimetres (1.51 ft) below the levee. That night, however, the levee unexpectedly failed when the river burst through its main stem. The resulting flood inundated 14,000 acres (57 km) on the Missouri side of the river. In one incident, a barge was sucked into the levee and slammed into a gas station, causing a fire.
Meanwhile, authorities on both sides of the river joined federal authorities to investigate the case. Their investigation eventually led to Joe Flachs, an old friend of Scott’s. Flachs told authorities that Scott had told him he had broken the levee so he could strand his wife, Suzie, on the Missouri side of the river. Suzie worked as a waitress at a truck stop in Taylor, Missouri. As the story went, Scott wanted to be free to party, fish, and have an affair. Investigators subsequently found other witnesses who said Scott boasted about breaking the levee at a party after the flood. Based on this evidence, Scott was taken to Missouri for trial in November 1994.
Scott appealed, and on February 25, 1997, the Missouri Court of Appeals threw out the conviction due to prosecutorial misconduct. Prosecutors hadn’t told the defense about two witnesses who reportedly heard Scott say he’d deliberately broken the levee. He was retried in 1998, and convicted a second time after three hours of deliberation on April 30. The original sentence was reinstated on July 6.
Scott grew up in Quincy, Illinois. By his twenties, he had a criminal record and had served time in six prisons. While most of these arrests were for petty burglary, they also included two for arson. In 1982, he burned down his elementary school, Webster Elementary School in Quincy. In 1988, he burned down a garage and set several other fires, netting him a sentence of seven years in prison.
Scott’s account of the flood sounded suspicious to Neal Baker, a sergeant with the Quincy Police Department. Baker was familiar with Scott; he had arrested Scott for the 1982 and 1988 arsons while he was a patrolman. For one thing, Baker noticed that Scott looked too clean to have been working on a levee all day. He also had trouble recalling simple details about working on the levee. Baker also noticed that Scott wasn’t wearing a life jacket.
By 1993, Scott was out of prison on parole for the 1988 fire. He worked at a Burger King in Quincy and spent most of his nights drinking heavily. He lived in the nearby town of Fowler with his wife Suzie.
