Michael I Schiller is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. His Emmy Award-winning work spans animation, radio and documentary film.
“The Dead Unknown,” a video series he directed about the crisis of America's unidentified dead, earned a national News and Documentary Emmy Award, national Edward R. Murrow Award and national Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award.
His 2015 animated documentary short film “The Box,” about youth solitary confinement, was honored with a video journalism award from the Society of Professional Journalists’ Northern California chapter, a San Francisco International Film Festival Golden Gate Award and a New Orleans Film Festival special jury prize, and it was nominated for a national News and Documentary Emmy for new approaches.
Schiller was one the producers of the pilot episode of the Peabody Award-winning Reveal radio show and podcast. He continues to regularly produce audio documentaries for the weekly public radio show, which airs on over 450 stations nationwide. Schiller is based in Reveal's Emeryville, California, office.
The final episode of Mississippi Goddam shares new revelations that cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson accidentally killed himself.
There have long been concerns about the quality of investigations into the suspicious deaths of young Black men in the state, especially when police are involved.
Billey Joe Johnson was a Black boy dating a White girl. That made the story behind his death even more complicated.
When a detective with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether the case should be reopened.
In December 2008, the autopsy of Billey Joe Johnson Jr. helped the grand jury conclude that his death was an accident. But an independent review of the autopsy came to a different conclusion.
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system buckles as authorities fail to follow up on inconsistencies in the official story.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
In 1969, an unknown young woman was found dead off a remote mountain trail. Mountain Jane Doe, as locals called her, is one of more than 13,000 people in a national database of unidentified dead.
Bernie Madoff masterminded one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in history, duping thousands of investors out of tens of billions of dollars. After his recent death, we dig into how he pulled it off.
Boxer Charles “Duke” Tanner, among the few to receive clemency from President Donald Trump, returns to his hometown after spending 16 years in prison.
