Rebecca Scofield
Before & After with Lester Holt
Rebecca Scofield, a University of Idaho history professor, was falsely accused on TikTok by influencer Ashley Gillard of orchestrating the November 2022 murders of four students. The
Key takeaways
- Rebecca Scofield, a University of Idaho history professor, was falsely accused by TikTok creator Ashley Gillard of masterminding the November 2022 murders of four students.
- Gillard, who presented herself as a psychic and tarot reader with ~100k followers, randomly selected Scofield after a reading allegedly pointed to 'history.'
Main topics
- Viral misinformation and online harassment
- Defamation law and social media accountability
Notable quotes
"It is humiliating beyond words."
Conclusion
The episode underscores the devastating real-world consequences of unchecked social
Transcript preview
Speaker 5 (0:00) Hi, I'm Kate Snow, NBC News anchor and host of the NBC News podcast, The Drink. This month, I'm sipping green tea with the incomparable Harry Connick Jr., musician, actor, composer, author. We talk about how he got started playing for audiences in New Orleans at just five years old, and how a call from Rob Reiner to write music for When Harry Met Sally changed the course of his life. He also opens up about family, reflecting on losing his mom when he was only 13. how that loss has shaped him and inspired an orchestral piece and a book in her honor. It's all in this month's episode of The Drink. I hope you'll listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:41) Stay informed with the NBC News app. Speaker 5 (0:44) Major developments out of the White House. Speaker 6 (0:46) Read, watch, and listen throughout your day. And now, unlock even more with an NBC News subscription. Get deeper reporting and exclusive articles. Plus, more insight, analysis, and content only for subscribers. When you really look inside these numbers. It's more context and clarity from the reporters you trust. Download the NBC News app now and subscribe for more. Speaker 6 (1:15) It is so hard to feel like you are being unmade in front of a public spotlight and to have something this salacious, this disgusting and horrific be what my parents and one day my kids will read about me. It is humiliating beyond words. Speaker 1 (1:41) There are moments that divide a life into before and after. For Rebecca Schofield, a history professor at the University of Idaho, that moment came on Thanksgiving Day 2022 when she watched a TikTok post. Speaker 4 (1:56) This is the teacher who potentially had the four Idaho students killed. Speaker 1 (2:01) Eleven days earlier, four students, Kaylee Gonsalves, Madison Mogan, Ethan Chapin, and Zanna Kernodle, had been savagely stabbed to death in a house off campus. It was a crime that horrified the nation. The TikTok post accused Rebecca of masterminding the murders. Then came another TikTok. Speaker 4 (2:23) She's going to realize that it's very hard to outrun consequences of her actions. Speaker 1 (2:28) And another. Speaker 4 (2:29) She makes this quick, impulsive decision to have them killed. Speaker 1 (2:33) A barrage of posts calling Rebecca a killer until she decided to fight back. But this isn't just a story about one woman's mission to clear her name. It's a story about all of us and how vulnerable we are on social media. Speaker 1 (2:52) Here's my conversation with Rebecca Schofield about her before and after. Speaker 3 (3:01) Well, Rebecca, welcome. Thank you for being here. Speaker 2 (3:04) Thank you so much for inviting me. Speaker 3 (3:06) You know, as we sit down and thinking, did Speaker 2 (3:08) you Speaker 3 (3:08) ever in a million years imagine you'd be sitting here with me talking about something like this? Speaker 2 (3:15) Absolutely not. Have Speaker 3 (3:17) you talked about this before? Speaker 2 (3:18) Not really, no. I just wanted to make sure that I had time to process everything before really starting to speak publicly about it. Speaker 3 (3:30) Are you processing? I Speaker 2 (3:31) think I will be for the rest of my life. Speaker 3 (3:34) Your life has changed that profoundly. Speaker 2 (3:37) I think my entire way that I think about the world, the way I parent, the decisions I make about pretty much everything has shifted radically since that day three and a half years ago. And Speaker 3 (3:52) you clearly didn't see any of this coming. Speaker 2 (3:54) Absolutely not. Speaker 8 (3:54) I think... The idea that you will be randomly accused of murder is not something people consider. There's no playbook for this. It Speaker 3 (4:07) sounds like life was going pretty well for you. You just became head of the history department. I think you're writing a book. I really see Speaker 8 (4:14) my life kind of before this point as this. you know, fairly steady upward trajectory. I had studied very hard and left my, you know, rural Idaho town to go to college. I went from undergrad to an elite graduate school. I was married to a person I've been friends with since I was 14. We had beautiful children. Everything seemed really normal. Speaker 3 (4:43) How did you first... find out about the murders? So Speaker 8 (4:48) my spouse and I had spent that weekend in Oregon at the wedding of one of our friends, and I received what's called a Vandal Alert, which is the University of Idaho's mass messaging system saying there has been a crime, more information to come. They sent out another communication that evening. That provided a little bit more information, but still no sense of who the victims were or how the students had died. And then I found out details along with the rest of the public over the next couple days. Speaker 5 (5:29) Four University of Idaho students killed. Their bodies found by Moscow police Sunday. It's been called a homicide. The investigation ongoing. Crime scene tape still surrounding the quiet neighborhood. Speaker 2 (5:43) It was terrifying. At the time of the murders, there is just no crime like this in our town. It is a very small community in a sort of sea of wheat fields. So the shock waves that this sent out were incalculable. On campus, students were so afraid. I Speaker 4 (6:10) have an evening class that I go walk to in the dark, and I have my roommates take me to that now. Speaker 2 (6:16) They had no idea of why these students had been attacked and not them. I mean, the entire town felt this way. Speaker 3 (6:26) So tell me the first moment that you heard your name associated with these murders. Speaker 2 (6:32) Yeah, so it had been about... 10 days or so from the murders. It was November 24th, 2022, which was Thanksgiving Day. The kids were getting sort of stir crazy. So my husband, sister-in-law, and I decided to walk down to the park. It was a beautiful, very sunny day, crisp, cool air. And we're standing in the park and I decided to check my work email. And there was a message from someone I didn't recognize. I opened it. She identified herself as an alumna and simply said, I think you should watch this. And there was a link. My spouse, he's an IT guy, so I have been known to click on questionable links in the past. So I showed him the link and said, do you think this looks okay to click on? He clicked on it. His eyebrows went up. He looked just shocked. And he said, don't watch that. And then I watched it because, of course, I watched it. Tell Speaker 3 (7:33) me what it was. It Speaker 2 (7:35) was a link to a TikTok video in which a person I did not know at all said, Speaker 4 (7:40) This is the teacher who potentially had the four Idaho students killed. She's the one who ordered the execution. Speaker 2 (7:47) And it was a picture of me, my professional headshot, and my faculty biography on the screen. I was just... In utter disbelief, my sister-in-law asked me, do I know this person? I have no idea who this is. I was so confused as to why anyone would think I would have anything to do with it. Speaker 3 (8:12) To be clear, you had no association with the victims, the murder victims? No, Speaker 2 (8:16) none at all. Speaker 3 (8:17) The only connection was you taught at the same university? Speaker 2 (8:20) Correct, but they were never in any of my classes. I wasn't their advisor. I didn't know any of them. Speaker 3 (8:26) This made no sense. Speaker 2 (8:27) None whatsoever. Speaker 3 (8:28) Was your natural inclination to kind of, it's the internet and move on? Speaker 2 (8:33) Absolutely not. I think my first instinct was this could get bad very quickly. And maybe that's the historian in me. I know how quickly things can go from pure rumor to someone getting significantly harmed. The atmosphere in Moscow at the time was terrifying. Everybody was desperate for answers. Speaker 5 (8:57) There's still a person out there who committed four horrible, horrible crimes. I will tell you, we are looking at everyone. Every tip we get, every lead we get, there's no one that we're not going to look into. Speaker 2 (9:09) To all of a sudden have my name being shouted into a universe where somebody who committed these crimes is still walking around, where people are on edge and angry and upset. and terrified. What do I do? How do I even attempt to address this? Speaker 3 (9:30) What were your options? Speaker 2 (9:31) I called and left a message with the Moscow Police Department. An officer called me back, and I offered to be investigated. I said, whatever you need, just let me know. I also spoke with our campus security officers who advised me how to lock down my Facebook page. I didn't want to Speaker 8 (9:52) be telling