What To Know
- Maury Povich discussed how a 1995 murder of a guest who appeared on The Jenny Jones Show marked a turning point for daytime television.
- The incident led to major changes in talk show production.
- Jonathan Schmitz was convicted of second-degree murder in Scott , and although a civil judgment was initially awarded against the show, it was later overturned on appeal.
Maury Povich recently opened up about the tragic incident involving The Jenny Jones Show that “changed everything” for daytime TV.
During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, published on August 16, the former Maury Povich Show host, 87, discussed the murder of Scott Amedure, a gay man, who was killed by his straight friend, Jonathan Schmitz, after the former confessed his crush during an episode of Jenny Jones in 1995.
“Things changed in the talk shows [with] the unfortunate killing of a guest on Jenny Jones,” Povich said. “That changed everything. Before that, no guest was ever approached about a subject they didn’t know they were going to be asked about.”
The episode titled “Revealing Same Sex Secret Crush” was filmed in March 1995 but never aired on its scheduled May date.
In footage shared online from the episode, host Jenny Jones asked Amedure, “You think about him? You have fantasies about him?” as the gay man detailed a couple of fantasies involving Schmitz. When Schmitz was brought out on the stage, he covered his face and told Amedure, “You lied to me.”
Schmitz laughed it off on the show — but three days later, he killed Amedure with a shotgun in Lake Orion, Michigan.
“Apparently, it was terribly embarrassing,” Povich speculated. “After the show, days after the show, one of the guys was killed. It changed the whole viewing of daytime TV.”
As a result of Amedure’s murder, the process of booking and production for Maury immediately changed, Povich recalled.
“We had 10, 12 pages of legal documents that each guest had to sign,” he explained. “We had to make sure that there were never questions that were going to be asked that they weren’t prepared for. And every single show, all of a sudden, had an attorney that was attached to the show.”
Ultimately, Schmitz was found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 to 50 years in prison; he was released on parole in 2017. Jones, meanwhile, testified in a civil lawsuit filed by Amedure’s family. Although she was ordered to pay $29.3 million to the plaintiffs, the judgment was later overturned in a court of appeals. It was ruled that The Jenny Jones Show and the producers “had no duty to anticipate and prevent the act of murder committed by Schmitz.”
Maury aired from 1991 to 2022; meanwhile, Jenny Jones aired from 1991 to 2003.