James Scott

James Robert Scott (born November 20, 1969) is an American who was convicted of causing a massive flood of the Mississippi River at West Quincy, Missouri as part of the Great Flood of 1993.

Scott is currently serving a sentence of 20 years to life in a Missouri prison.

In 1982, he burned down his elementary school, Webster Elementary School in Quincy.

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 was not wearing a life jacket.

Missouri authorities were also suspicious.

The levee had failed at one of its strongest points, and that area had been inspected two hours earlier, although later, two independent soil-science experts testified there was strong evidence the levee failed due to natural causes.

They became even more suspicious when they found out about Scott's extensive criminal record, including the arsons.

Adams County, Illinois, sheriff's deputies questioned him a week after the flood, and he was unable to keep his story straight.

On October 1, Quincy police arrested Scott on an unrelated burglary charge.

During questioning, he admitted to pulling four sandbags from one portion of the levee and moving them to the trouble spot he had claimed to have seen.

He told police, "My town was in trouble. The folks in Quincy and in West Quincy were about to lose everything. That’s why I went down to that levee. I had no plans to hurt anything. They needed help, so I helped."

While he denied any intent to cause any harm, he said, "I didn't mean to cause a problem but I did... I'm up shit creek."

He was released after an hour and a half.

In 1988, he burned down a garage and set several other fires, netting him a sentence of seven years in prison.

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.

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 1.5 ft below the levee.

That night, however, the levee unexpectedly failed when the river burst through its main stem.

The resulting flood inundated 14000 acre 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.

The flood Washed Out all of the bridges in the area—the only links across the river for 200 mi. While no one was killed, many people on the Missouri side of the river had to drive 80 mi to either St. Louis or Burlington, Iowa, fly, or take a ferry to get across the river for several weeks after the waters receded.

One major bridge, the Bayview Bridge, was out of service for 71 days.

Several businesses in West Quincy were also destroyed, most of which have never returned.

Reporter Michele McCormack of WGEM-TV, the NBC affiliate in Quincy, was told by two Department of Transport workers at the edge of the bridge that a man standing close by was first on the scene.

She walked up to him and Scott volunteered to do a live interview with her and photographer Rick Junkerman.

Scott said that he had seen a weak spot on the levee and tried to put more sandbags along it.

He then said he went for a drink, only to come back and discover the levee had let go.

He then helped the Coast Guard load boats into the floodwaters.

In a second interview with McCormack at his home which aired after his arrest, he told a similar story.

Scott's account of the flood sounded suspicious to Neal Baker, a sergeant with the Quincy Police Department.

However, he was convicted of burglary in January 1994 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

The 2007 book Damned to Eternity and a 2022 Vice News documentary have been critical of Scott's conviction.

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 burglary, they also included two for arson.