Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 2: He sees his father coming out of the woods with
Speaker 2: his hands over his face, and he knows something happened.
Speaker 2: His father just grabs him and says, she's gone. She's gone.
Speaker 1: I'm Kate Winkler Dawson, a nonfiction author and journalism professor
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I'm also the co host of the
Speaker 1: podcast Buried Bones on Exactly Right, and throughout my career,
Speaker 1: research for my many audio and book projects has taken
Speaker 1: me around the world. On Wicked Words, I sit down
Speaker 1: with the people I've met along the way, amazing writers, journalists, filmmakers,
Speaker 1: and podcasters who have investigated and reported on notorious true
Speaker 1: crime cases. This is about the choices writers make, both
Speaker 1: good and bad, and it's a deep dive into the
Speaker 1: unpublished details behind their stories. We might have our first
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Prize winner on our show Today, author Gilbert King
Speaker 1: digs into cases of wrongful conviction, and today we're talking
Speaker 1: about his outstanding podcast, Bone Valley season two. Gilbert explores
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighty seven murder of Michelle Schofield in Florida.
Speaker 1: It's a story of justice forgiveness and the possibility of redemption.
Speaker 1: So this story is Lakeland, Florida, nineteen eighty seven. Can
Speaker 1: you tell me what nineteen eighty seven is like? I
Speaker 1: was thirteen, So what was it nineteen eighty seven like
Speaker 1: in Florida or in the nation.
Speaker 2: I was a little bit older than that, but I
Speaker 2: went to college down there. So I used to drive
Speaker 2: through Lakeland, and I remember Lakeland is just this kind
Speaker 2: of hard rock capital of Florida. They used to have
Speaker 2: Lakely Civic Center had this heavy metal fetish. I guess
Speaker 2: you'd say they had. Everybody would show up, you know,
Speaker 2: my crew, you name it. They were there and it
Speaker 2: was like the place. And so you know, just driving
Speaker 2: past your radio ads, you know, these are the days
Speaker 2: before cell phones and concerts were really huge. A lot
Speaker 2: of metal bands were big, and they were all playing
Speaker 2: in Lakeland. Lakeland is kind of like the poor stepchild
Speaker 2: between Tampa and Orlando. It's a smaller little town and
Speaker 2: it's right off eye for the car door between Orlando
Speaker 2: and Tampa, and so it's a little bit more rural too.
Speaker 2: I mean, back then, a lot of orange growths, a
Speaker 2: lot of phosphate business, agriculture, whereas you know, Tampa and
Speaker 2: Orlando were a little more thriving in terms of urban centers,
Speaker 2: so that was pretty much it. Lakeland was just I've
Speaker 2: got every part of America really, you know, it was
Speaker 2: just had everything you could imagine, but it was more
Speaker 2: of a rural community and you know, the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: there's no cell phones. It's just a little bit of
Speaker 2: a different vibe. And I really love the heavy metal
Speaker 2: aspect because Leo Schofield, who's at the center of it,
Speaker 2: is this Boston kid who moves down to Florida with
Speaker 2: the parents, doesn't really want to leave New England, but
Speaker 2: there he is. He's got the thick Boston accent and
Speaker 2: he's a heavy metal dude, long hair. He's aspiring musician.
Speaker 2: He plays lead guitar. He's in a band.
Speaker 1: Called Rhino Okay, so, and he is not an outcast
Speaker 1: in this town which we hear from sometimes it sounds
Speaker 1: like he fits right into this place.
Speaker 2: Well in some ways he does, because he's got this
Speaker 2: music connection and he's a very good guitarist, so bands
Speaker 2: wanted him and he plays the part really well. You know,
Speaker 2: he's thin guy, long black hair, twenty years old. He's
Speaker 2: just good at what he does. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: he comes down here from Boston and he's like, I
Speaker 2: don't get the cowboy hats. I don't get these gator shirts,
Speaker 2: you know, like I don't have a pickup truck. I'm
Speaker 2: not that kind of guy. Like I'm a motorcycle riding
Speaker 2: you know. Jean's vest heavy metal dude. So he really
Speaker 2: had to look for his tribe, so to speak. And
Speaker 2: he does find it in these bandmates. That becomes his thing.
Speaker 2: But you know, he doesn't feel comfortable there. He drops
Speaker 2: out of high school, starts doing odd jobs. He's all
Speaker 2: about doing the music. He sees that as his.
Speaker 1: Career, okay, and he ends up meeting a young woman
Speaker 1: is Michelle from Lakeland, Florida.
Speaker 2: Also yes, she got born and raised in Lakeland. She
Speaker 2: grew up there, you know. And Leo first meets her.
Speaker 2: I think she's sixteen years old. He's going there to
Speaker 2: give this friend to his Manny guitar lessons. And Mannie
Speaker 2: is kind of like Michelle's boyfriend, except Manny's got his
Speaker 2: eyes on a lot of other girls. He's not really
Speaker 2: paying attention. It was kind of like this good looking
Speaker 2: serfer dude, and you know, Michelle is just one of
Speaker 2: his many girls, I guess you would say. But Leo
Speaker 2: just is struck by her immediately when he meets her.
Speaker 2: But Manny gets himself into some trouble and goes off
Speaker 2: to a juvenile facility for some kind of I don't
Speaker 2: really know what it was. It involved a gun, nobody
Speaker 2: was killed or anything like that, but he's looking at
Speaker 2: a long, lengthy sentence. And when he finally goes away
Speaker 2: to this juvenile detention center in Florida, Michelle is kind
Speaker 2: of lonely and she meets Leo, and you know, they
Speaker 2: start hanging out as friends and coming to concerts and
Speaker 2: stuff like that. But as time goes by, see they're
Speaker 2: spending a lot of time together. They're clearly interested in
Speaker 2: each other. And so with Manny gone, Leo decides, Okay,
Speaker 2: I guess we can do this, and you know, right
Speaker 2: away they're practically living together.
Speaker 1: Wow, and so young too. What do we know about
Speaker 1: Michelle personality wise? What kind of family she came from,
Speaker 1: any of that stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she comes with a broke from a broken family.
Speaker 2: Her mom and dad divorced. Mom moves back to Texas,
Speaker 2: gets in a really bad car accident and has some
Speaker 2: kind of brain damage. So it's Michelle and her two
Speaker 2: older brother, a younger brother and an older brother, and
Speaker 2: they're living in Lakeland. But you know, the dad is
Speaker 2: works in the phosphate minds. He runs a dragline. He's
Speaker 2: got really long hours. So they're kind of got a
Speaker 2: lot of freedom, and Leo's not used to that kind
Speaker 2: of freedom. Leo's parents are very involved, but Michelle can
Speaker 2: pretty much come and go as she pleases. They looked
Speaker 2: at their father, David, as a sort of like a
Speaker 2: roommate rather than a father. You know, he was pretty
Speaker 2: lax about that. But the kids weren't in trouble or anything.
Speaker 2: They were, you know, good kids. But they're really on
Speaker 2: their own. Michelle was working in fast food or she
Speaker 2: was selling Amway products, you know, even at fifteen, sixteen
Speaker 2: years old, so she's off pretty much on her own.
Speaker 2: And when she meets Leo, they you know, they're they're
Speaker 2: dating right away, and they decide they just want to
Speaker 2: get their own place because they both have jobs. And
Speaker 2: so they get a trailer in a low income area
Speaker 2: of Lakeland and move in together and start living their
Speaker 2: life that way.
Speaker 1: And tell me again, as far as aspirations. Do either
Speaker 1: of these kids have aspirations? I know that it sounds
Speaker 1: Leo really wants to stay in music, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Leo's definitely like he's got heavy metal on his mind.
Speaker 2: He's in this band, right, I know they're practicing all
Speaker 2: the time. Michelle not so much. She's still trying to
Speaker 2: figure things out. You know, at this point, she just
Speaker 2: turned seventeen, and you know, she does like metal music
Speaker 2: and she does like to sing, but she's really figuring
Speaker 2: herself out. But you know, the relationship with Leo and
Speaker 2: she sort of falls into the homemaker role at early.
Speaker 2: It's at seventeen. I mean, she's just she's got that down,
Speaker 2: works a job. She gets this new job at Tom's restaurant.
Speaker 2: She's a waitress there, and and everything's going, you know,
Speaker 2: well with her, except you know Leo. And Leo's kind
Speaker 2: of a volatile guy, and that's sort of a key
Speaker 2: to the whole story. He's got a temper. You know,
Speaker 2: he talked to his bandmates and like at one point
Speaker 2: there was one girl that he was dating and in
Speaker 2: the middle of a concert he saw her flash another
Speaker 2: guy lift her top up and let that sets Leo off,
Speaker 2: you know, he runs off the stage, throws his guitar
Speaker 2: into a bonfire, storms into the woods. He's a very
Speaker 2: temperamental guy. And you know, they talk him back out,
Speaker 2: come back to the concert. Come on, Leo, it's okay.
Speaker 2: They pull the guitar out of the bonfires, still got
Speaker 2: burn marks on it. He still plays it, you know.
Speaker 2: And so that pretty much describes Leo, who's like I
Speaker 2: think he's like nineteen or twenty at the time when
Speaker 2: this happened.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, I was going to ask what the general
Speaker 1: impressions are a family and friends of their relationship. Is
Speaker 1: he volatile with her very much?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, they're They're known to fight, and Leo's got
Speaker 2: a temper. And you know, roommates who'd come into the
Speaker 2: trailer and all say the same thing, like they'd hear
Speaker 2: the door shut, they'd hear crashing, slamming, throwing things around,
Speaker 2: and you know they nobody ever saw That's the thing
Speaker 2: like that, nobody really ever saw Leo hit her or
Speaker 2: anything like that, but they assumed it was happening, something
Speaker 2: was going on, and like he had a really bad temper,
Speaker 2: and most of his temper was based around the fact
Speaker 2: that Michelle didn't have a driver's license. She had a
Speaker 2: learning permit, so she wasn't supposed to be driving the car,
Speaker 2: but Leo had to get a car, and so she
Speaker 2: would often take the car and go out and disappear,
Speaker 2: and Leo had no way of knowing where she was,
Speaker 2: and it would scare him because one time she got
Speaker 2: and pulled over by police and they kind of let
Speaker 2: her go with a warning. But you know, she would
Speaker 2: just take the car all the time and go off
Speaker 2: with friends, and Leo saw that as a problem because
Speaker 2: she didn't have insurance and she wasn't really licensed, and
Speaker 2: so Leo just said, just check in with me, let
Speaker 2: me know where you are, And that was one of
Speaker 2: the things that they thought about the most.
Speaker 1: Has anybody interpreted that in intead of him being kind
Speaker 1: of just concerned about her getting picked up of the
Speaker 1: police or wrecking the car or doing any number of
Speaker 1: things that someone might has that been interpreted ever as
Speaker 1: him being increasingly controlling over a young woman that he married.
Speaker 2: Also, Yeah, and he admits it too. You know, he
Speaker 2: just said, I was immature, I didn't really know, I
Speaker 2: was not ready for a relationship. What ended up happening
Speaker 2: was because they were fighting they decided to go to
Speaker 2: a church. They had a fellow painter that Leo was
Speaker 2: doing odd jobs with, and he said, you ought to
Speaker 2: come and check out this Baptist church, and so Leo
Speaker 2: did and they went together and they liked it. But
Speaker 2: one of the things the church said is you're living
Speaker 2: together in sin, you got to get married. And they
Speaker 2: have really only known each other for a few months,
Speaker 2: and they kind of felt some pressure from the church
Speaker 2: to sort of, you know, solidify their relationship by marrying.
Speaker 2: And Leo was like, you know, I love her. I
Speaker 2: was nineteen twenty. Do I want to spend the rest
Speaker 2: of my life? Leo said, you know, frankly, I do.
Speaker 2: I really this is a good different girl from me.
Speaker 2: I really liked her because I wasn't sure a Shell
Speaker 2: was ready for marriage though, and we talked about it
Speaker 2: and she said she's ready. And so they decided to
Speaker 2: get married very quickly, put together within a matter of
Speaker 2: I think two weeks, borrowed some clothes from like other
Speaker 2: parishioners who had recently got married, and they put together
Speaker 2: this wedding really quick, and the next thing you know,
Speaker 2: they're newlyweds and living in this trailer together comeby section
Speaker 2: of Lakeland.
Speaker 1: So how long are they married before what happens happens?
Speaker 2: Right, So they get married in August of eighty six.
Speaker 2: They're living in this trailer. Six months later is when
Speaker 2: Leo goes into band practice. One night, he worked all
Speaker 2: day with the drummer's father. He did, like laid down
Speaker 2: lines for a cable company, and they had band practice
Speaker 2: this night, February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven. You know,
Speaker 2: they don't have a phone in the trailer, so all
Speaker 2: their calls are sort of calling at Vince's house, and
Speaker 2: whenever they call, they had to call from a payphone
Speaker 2: at a gas station. But on this particular night, Leo's
Speaker 2: waiting at band practice. Arrangements like, after you finish your
Speaker 2: shift to Tom's restaurant, come by the band practice, hang
Speaker 2: out with us, then we'll go out and grab something
Speaker 2: to eat. That was the plan. But Michelle's shift ended
Speaker 2: at eight pm and Leo doesn't hear, so he's kind
Speaker 2: of already getting worried. Look, she knows to call here,
Speaker 2: she knew the number. Where is she? Nobody really knew.
Speaker 2: But at nine forty five pm, finally Michelle calls, and
Speaker 2: she calls on the payphone. She says, look, I finished
Speaker 2: my shift at eight, I went home, I did the laundry,
Speaker 2: I fed the dogs, and now I'm ready to come over.
Speaker 2: And Leo's like, great, thank you for calling. This is
Speaker 2: like you know, He's saying to her, like, this is great.
Speaker 2: Now we don't have to have a fight because you
Speaker 2: called me and everything worked out. I know where you
Speaker 2: are and she should be there within about ten or
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, and she said she'd be right over. The
Speaker 2: phone call ends with both of them saying I love you.
Speaker 2: Ten fifteen minutes pass no sign of Michelle. An hour passes,
Speaker 2: no sign of Michelle, and now Leo is starting to
Speaker 2: panic because this is not like her usually when something
Speaker 2: like this happens. She said I'll be right over or
Speaker 2: she's calming, but she hasn't shown. And now it's like
Speaker 2: eleven PM, eleven thirty, and Leo's getting really worried. He
Speaker 2: calls his father and said, Dad, you got to come
Speaker 2: get me. I don't know where Michelle is. She said
Speaker 2: she'd be right over. I don't know if her car
Speaker 2: broke down, if she got an accident. He starts making
Speaker 2: some phone calls. There's three hours that pass, and Leo
Speaker 2: is just hanging out with his friends and there's no
Speaker 2: sign of Michelle.
Speaker 1: Tell me where she made that phone call from again,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: She made it from a gas station called Sparky's, which
Speaker 2: was right across the street from Tom's restaurant where she
Speaker 2: was working, and that was sort of the closest one
Speaker 2: to their house, so they used to use that one
Speaker 2: the most.
Speaker 1: So she never ended up going back to the trailer.
Speaker 1: She was supposed to go straight from the restaurant. Is
Speaker 1: that right?
Speaker 2: She was supposed to come straight from the restaurant. But
Speaker 2: she did say, like, I had to do someth like
Speaker 2: just some laundry at my dad's house earlier that day,
Speaker 2: and I went back and folded it. And then they
Speaker 2: had two little puppies, and so she went back and
Speaker 2: walked them and fed them and did some stuff. And
Speaker 2: she stayed till like nine forty five, that's when she
Speaker 2: got back to the gas station. It was a little
Speaker 2: late for Leo's taste, but he knew he was supposed
Speaker 2: to be. He knew he was going to be practicing
Speaker 2: to at least ten anyway.
Speaker 1: So just for a practical question for later on, are
Speaker 1: there people who see her making this phone call from
Speaker 1: Sparky's to him at whatever time that was.
Speaker 2: No because Sparky's is closed at this hour. She had
Speaker 2: gone in there earlier after a shift change. She got
Speaker 2: three dollars worth of gas and she bought a coke.
Speaker 2: And so she told Leo on the phone. She made
Speaker 2: thirteen dollars in tips because she called at the friend's house,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of witnesses there who like
Speaker 2: kind of heard the conversation. There was like no doubt
Speaker 2: that that had happened. Even the state later on said,
Speaker 2: you know, we agree that that happened, you know, and
Speaker 2: they could mark time at nine forty five, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: there was no real dispute about that call.
Speaker 1: Okay, So she vanishes, but she has the car, the
Speaker 1: family car, right.
Speaker 2: Right, And that's the thing. So Leo just like, I'm
Speaker 2: going to just trace the steps, and so they try.
Speaker 2: He tries with his father around eleven thirty. They drive
Speaker 2: out closer to midnight. Actually they're driving around trying to
Speaker 2: retrace the steps, driving by friend's house and seeing if
Speaker 2: they could see any sign of a car. They drive
Speaker 2: past Leo's trailer. They don't see it. There there's no
Speaker 2: sign of them. This is worrying. So they go back
Speaker 2: to Vince's thinking, all, right, now, the time before cellphone,
Speaker 2: she couldn't check in with Vince, right, So they go
Speaker 2: back to Vince's house and say, well, that's where she
Speaker 2: was likely headed. We should go back there. And they
Speaker 2: get there and there's still no sign of her, and
Speaker 2: Leo is getting really worried. At this point, his father
Speaker 2: waits out in the truck in the driveway. Leo goes
Speaker 2: inside and decides he's got to start making some calls.
Speaker 2: At twelve forty three am, he calls the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 2: Oh County Sheriff's office, and he reports her missing. And
Speaker 2: it's kind of frustrating because at this point she's eighteen
Speaker 2: years old now, so it's not like it's a child
Speaker 2: that's missing. They take the information, but there's not much
Speaker 2: they can do it. They check in the jail to
Speaker 2: see if maybe she got arrested for driving, you know,
Speaker 2: without a license. She wasn't there. There's no sign of
Speaker 2: any accidents are in the neighbors, so there's nothing going
Speaker 2: on like that. Leo made some phone calls to the
Speaker 2: hospitals just to see if there had been any kind
Speaker 2: of accident and no sign of her, and the sheriff's
Speaker 2: office just takes all the information but basically says, there's
Speaker 2: not much we can do. We'll put out a bolo,
Speaker 2: you know, be on the lookout for but you know,
Speaker 2: there's not much we can do. But if we do
Speaker 2: see her, the books we can do is really tell
Speaker 2: her we're looking for. So that's not enough for Leo.
Speaker 2: The Leo wants action. He's really worried. After he hangs
Speaker 2: up the phone, he goes out with his father and
Speaker 2: they start looking around again.
Speaker 1: How many people are in Lakeland? Tell me how big
Speaker 1: of a place this is? Again?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean the population today I think is over
Speaker 2: one hundred thousand. Yeah, but you know, a little bit
Speaker 2: smaller back then. There is a city of Lakeland, and
Speaker 2: that's sort of where they are. But Lakeland is a
Speaker 2: polk county is right in the middle of Florida, and
Speaker 2: it's huge. It's bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
Speaker 2: And most of it is just rural, you know, farmland
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. But they're in the city of Lakeland.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, will you tell me what is possible of
Speaker 1: these things in nineteen eighty seven, because I'm just not sure.
Speaker 1: That's way too modern of a time for me. Does
Speaker 1: Sparkys or anybody near Sparkys like Tom's, do they have
Speaker 1: any kind of exterior security cameras or anything.
Speaker 2: No, there's no cameras back then at all. There's just
Speaker 2: really nothing back then. No cell phones, no mounted cameras,
Speaker 2: you know, on the street lights or outside stores, so
Speaker 2: there's nothing to check on that. I think it's a
Speaker 2: lot of why a lot of my friends who are
Speaker 2: mystery writers set their stuff in the eighties, because you
Speaker 2: don't have the chips that tell you where you were doing.
Speaker 2: It was an easier time to have a crime because
Speaker 2: they're just tougher to document. And so you know, I
Speaker 2: ended up talking to the sheriff of Paulk County, Grady Judd,
Speaker 2: who you'd probably seen. He goes viral a lot. He's
Speaker 2: like a tough talk in Lauren Ordered, Florida sheriff, and
Speaker 2: we interviewed him and I said, look, I need you
Speaker 2: to put your historians hat on, because you were in
Speaker 2: the sheriff department in the eighties yourself as a young deputy.
Speaker 2: And he said, you know, it was just impossible to
Speaker 2: solve crimes unless somebody spoke up. Back then, you just
Speaker 2: didn't have cameras, you didn't have cell phone data, you
Speaker 2: didn't have any of that stuff. Unless somebody saw something,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of cases would go unsolved. And
Speaker 2: at this particular time in Lakeland, they had a white
Speaker 2: supremacist sheriff who was forced out of office by the governor,
Speaker 2: and a lot of detectives and deputies kind of quit.
Speaker 2: This was right at the time of you know, Michelle disappearing,
Speaker 2: right and so it was they were in a lot
Speaker 2: of turmoil there.
Speaker 1: They did.
Speaker 2: They didn't have a lot of manpower, and so they're
Speaker 2: kind of short shifted, and so that was played into
Speaker 2: it too. They just they were getting a lot of
Speaker 2: unsolved murders right around the time because they just couldn't
Speaker 2: keep up with them.
Speaker 1: I had just talked to a detective in a different city.
Speaker 1: I'm in Texas, and he said, you know, when somebody
Speaker 1: goes missing, you really should tell the police immediately. Everyone
Speaker 1: thinks you have to wait twenty four hours or forty
Speaker 1: eight hours, but especially if it's somebody at risk and
Speaker 1: outside the norm, you really should talk to them sooner.
Speaker 1: What about Michelle when do they start thinking this is
Speaker 1: this is more than just a wife who wandered off somewhere.
Speaker 2: I would say immediately. I mean when she doesn't show up,
Speaker 2: Leo has like a couple of calls to the sheriff's office.
Speaker 2: He's checking in and they're like, mister Schofield, we told
Speaker 2: you there's nothing we can do unless we run into her,
Speaker 2: you know. But he's really frustrated. He wants a search,
Speaker 2: and they're saying, we don't do searches, like we're not
Speaker 2: there yet, and so it's basically putting together friends and
Speaker 2: family retracing the roads like the you know, Leo's out
Speaker 2: all night that night with his father and his mother,
Speaker 2: driving around. They show up at like Michelle's father's house
Speaker 2: at two twenty in the morning, knocking on the door.
Speaker 2: You know, we can't find Michelle. We can't find Michelle.
Speaker 2: Mielle's father comes out to the search. He's driving around town.
Speaker 2: He sees two deputies cars parked at a gas station.
Speaker 2: He runs over there and says, I'm looking for my wife.
Speaker 2: You know, did you see have you heard anything? And
Speaker 2: they're like, we don't have any report of any missing person.
Speaker 2: He's getting really frustrated, like called this in a couple
Speaker 2: of times. Nobody's doing anything, and you know, they're basically saying,
Speaker 2: there's nothing we can do, and so it's really frustrating.
Speaker 2: It's a search by friends and family. So the next
Speaker 2: morning they kind of put together search to they're all
Speaker 2: out looking. They put together flyers, they're distributing them all
Speaker 2: over town. They're doing like everything you could imagine that
Speaker 2: can be done. And Leo's like not sleeping. He's frantic,
Speaker 2: you know, he's looking everywhere, calling friends, trying to see
Speaker 2: where Michelle could be.
Speaker 1: What do the people at Tom's, at that restaurant she
Speaker 1: worked out? What did they say her night was like?
Speaker 1: They said it was basically like any other night. She
Speaker 1: was originally going to work till five. They extended her
Speaker 1: shift to eight because it was kind of busy. You know,
Speaker 1: they all saw her leave, They.
Speaker 2: Saw her go across the street to Sparky's, and even
Speaker 2: the clerk at Sparkys was in her. She remembered that
Speaker 2: she remembered Michelle coming in after work and buying the
Speaker 2: coke and the gas when they asked her later, So
Speaker 2: there's no doubt about that. And then she she only
Speaker 2: lived a couple miles away, so she went back to
Speaker 2: the house, fed the dogs and all that. So the
Speaker 2: people at Tom's didn't really have anything to add, nothing suspicious.
Speaker 1: Did anybody look at Leo sooner rather than later? Maybe
Speaker 1: her family, even though I know they were not as
Speaker 1: involved as Leo's family.
Speaker 2: Is, surprisingly not right away, because Leo was the one
Speaker 2: who was like sort of the impetus behind the searching.
Speaker 2: He was the one pushing everybody and so, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was constantly calling the police, like constantly checking in
Speaker 2: with them. His behavior didn't really rattle anyone. In fact,
Speaker 2: they kind of said to him HERU like, calm down,
Speaker 2: She's gonna be all right. She runs off sometimes she's
Speaker 2: done this before, you know that. But Leo was really
Speaker 2: particularly worried about this time for some reason, because she
Speaker 2: called and said she'd be right over. This didn't seem
Speaker 2: like one of those things where she was off with friends.
Speaker 2: And to be frank, they could not find any reports
Speaker 2: or any evidence that she was out of friend nobody.
Speaker 2: None of her friends had seen her, and that's what
Speaker 2: they thought was really strange, Like she disappeared, but there
Speaker 2: was no accounts of like, yeah, I'm having a fight
Speaker 2: with Leo. I just had to get away, like she's
Speaker 2: nowhere to be seen, like no one could find her,
Speaker 2: and that all her friends are now searching.
Speaker 1: How many days does this go on before something changes?
Speaker 2: It extends into a second day, So she goes missing,
Speaker 2: twenty four hours goes by, nothing goes into the second day.
Speaker 2: One of Leo's former bandmates, it was a guy named
Speaker 2: Chris Peck and he worked in Orlando and he was
Speaker 2: driving home from work and he saw what he thought
Speaker 2: was Michelle's Mazda station Wagon broken down on the side
Speaker 2: of the road, or at least park there, and he
Speaker 2: was tempted to stop and write a haha note because
Speaker 2: Leo's car would constantly break down and he wanted to
Speaker 2: just leave a note on the lunshield like ha ha,
Speaker 2: you broke down again, something like that, And so he
Speaker 2: was thinking about that, but it was on the other
Speaker 2: side of the highway and he was trying to get home.
Speaker 2: But he gets down to Lakeland and coincidentally pulls into
Speaker 2: that same Sparky's and sees a flyer with Michelle's picture
Speaker 2: on it saying missing, Help find me. And at that
Speaker 2: point he's like, oh no, and so His first thought
Speaker 2: is he sees the detective's number for the Polk County
Speaker 2: Sheriff's office, and he calls there and tells them that
Speaker 2: he just saw the car that Michelle was driving. But
Speaker 2: they're like, not really searching. It doesn't really register, and
Speaker 2: so the next thing he does is called Leo and
Speaker 2: tries to get a message to him, you know, like
Speaker 2: I just saw your car on the side of I four,
Speaker 2: And he gets it over to Leo's parents and finally
Speaker 2: they get back to him later that night and he
Speaker 2: tells him I saw the Masta on the side of
Speaker 2: I four at this exit. And so Leo, his father,
Speaker 2: a couple of friends they rush out to the scene
Speaker 2: and there's the Mazda. It's broken down about seven miles
Speaker 2: outside of Lakeland on the way towards Orlando, and it's
Speaker 2: just sitting there and they look at it. They already
Speaker 2: know like, don't touch it. They're smart enough about that.
Speaker 2: So there's a gas station up on a hill right
Speaker 2: near the exit. Leo walks up the hill and calls
Speaker 2: the Polk County Sheriff's office and says, you know, I
Speaker 2: found the car. My wife is not here. She's nowhere
Speaker 2: to be found. You've got to send somebody out here.
Speaker 2: And you know, the cops are like, well, are you
Speaker 2: going to drive the car home then? And he's like,
Speaker 2: you don't understand she's missing. We just found her car.
Speaker 2: It takes a while for it to sink in and finally,
Speaker 2: you know, detectives finally show up and they think what
Speaker 2: they see what might be blood in the back seat,
Speaker 2: like in the back hatchback, and so they're still careful
Speaker 2: not to touch anything, but they point that out, you know,
Speaker 2: to the detectives. At this point, now it's going to
Speaker 2: be a full blown search. The police are going to
Speaker 2: get involved, but they sort of say, you know, wait
Speaker 2: till morning. Okay, it's past midnight. Now we're going to
Speaker 2: do a helicopter search of the area in the morning.
Speaker 2: Go home and rest and come back at the break
Speaker 2: of dawn and then start searching. And so that's exactly
Speaker 2: what happens. The helicopter goes out in the morning, starts
Speaker 2: searching the area. Leo, his father, the friends, they all
Speaker 2: kind of split up. But now because they know where
Speaker 2: the car was, it's very easy to trace that back.
Speaker 2: They're going to trace it back to Tom's restaurant. The
Speaker 2: last place she was seeing seven miles away, so that's
Speaker 2: what they do. They sort of split up along I
Speaker 2: four early in the morning, and they're working both sides,
Speaker 2: looking in ditches, looking in the meat, in no sign
Speaker 2: of anything. They finally get back to the road where
Speaker 2: Tom's is and they're there and they split up again,
Speaker 2: and this is the point where Leo is searching with
Speaker 2: his Michelle's best friend. Her name is Michelle McCluskey, and
Speaker 2: they see a cop car speedby with the lights on,
Speaker 2: siren blaring, so Leo thinks, okay, that's it, and then
Speaker 2: they see a second one and then Leo's like, all right,
Speaker 2: we got to go follow that car, and so they
Speaker 2: jump in the car Leo's with Michelle's best friend, and
Speaker 2: they're speeding toward it, and they see a truck kind
Speaker 2: of jackknifed on the road and Leo's like, oh, they're
Speaker 2: speeding to an accident. They get a little bit closer
Speaker 2: and he sees his father's car on the side of
Speaker 2: the road in the same spot. Leo jumps out of
Speaker 2: the truck, still moving, and he sees his father coming
Speaker 2: out of the woods with his hands over his face,
Speaker 2: and he knows at this point something happened and he
Speaker 2: rushes over to his father. His father just grabs him
Speaker 2: and says she's gone, she's gone, and Leo's kind of
Speaker 2: freaks out. He's like, they tell her she's a water
Speaker 2: and Leo's like, get her out, get her out? How
Speaker 2: do you know she? Like, he's just freaking out. The detectives,
Speaker 2: the police kind of hold him back. They won't let
Speaker 2: him go over there, and so he's kind of freaking out.
Speaker 2: There's a very famous picture of Leo, like he tears
Speaker 2: his shirt off and he's just pacing up and down
Speaker 2: the street, and that's kind of like the image we
Speaker 2: use on the Bone Valley themes. Like Leo is just
Speaker 2: totally distraught. He knows his wife is back there, they
Speaker 2: won't let him go see, and he's just unprepared for this.
Speaker 1: How did his father find her? How did that even happen?
Speaker 1: If they're kind of in a wooded area, that becomes
Speaker 1: a big part of the case.
Speaker 2: You know, they find Michelle, and then after Michelle has found,
Speaker 2: Leo's father found her, and so what does he start saying?
Speaker 2: He said, God let me to the body. It was God,
Speaker 2: help me find her. They kind of spun it into
Speaker 2: like Leo's father woke up in the middle of the night,
Speaker 2: had a premonition at the body, and went right to
Speaker 2: the site, and that's how it got spun locally. But
Speaker 2: you know what happened was it was a logical, methodical
Speaker 2: search backwards from the car towards Sparky gas station. And
Speaker 2: this was on the way. And if you look at
Speaker 2: the aerial shots that the helicopter did, like, if you're
Speaker 2: going that way, that's a place you're going to go into.
Speaker 2: It has a driveway into it, there's lots of beer
Speaker 2: bottles and garbage. It's a place where kids hung out.
Speaker 2: And so Leo's father is working backwards from ifour This
Speaker 2: is the first cut that leads back to this dark area,
Speaker 2: and he starts looking around back there and he sees
Speaker 2: a jacket right near the water, there's an old phosphate pit.
Speaker 2: He sees a jacket laying there kind of looks like
Speaker 2: could be Michelle's jacket, and so he walks to the
Speaker 2: jacket and that's when he sees Michelle floating face down
Speaker 2: in the water, and she's got like a piece of
Speaker 2: plywood over most of her body and she's just laying there,
Speaker 2: and that's when he freaks out. He runs out into
Speaker 2: the truck he fled, you know, waves down a truck
Speaker 2: and says, y's your radio. Call the police, and he says,
Speaker 2: my daughter in law is back there.
Speaker 1: So was the theory until we see this plywood and
Speaker 1: find out a little bit more about this. Was the
Speaker 1: theory that she wrecked her car, then went back to
Speaker 1: Sparkeys to get help, and then something happened to her
Speaker 1: in between the car, the seven miles of the car,
Speaker 1: and then Sparky's is that what it would be?
Speaker 2: You know, they never really get to that theory because
Speaker 2: they can't explain why the car is like seven miles away.
Speaker 2: They don't have any explanation for that broken down on
Speaker 2: the side of the road. They really start looking about
Speaker 2: canvassing the neighborhood. And as they start canvassing the neighborhood
Speaker 2: of the trailer where Leo and Michelle lived, some of
Speaker 2: the neighbors are saying that, oh, they used to fight
Speaker 2: over there all the time, and so now they're like,
Speaker 2: h well, it's the husband. And then there's a witness
Speaker 2: across the street from the Schofields trailer. Her name is
Speaker 2: Alice Scott. And Alice Scott is kind of the busybody neighbor.
Speaker 2: In fact, the prosecution calls her that, and she basically
Speaker 2: says that she saw Leo carrying something out heavy into
Speaker 2: the back of the Mazda the night she disappeared, and
Speaker 2: so this becomes the biggest break for the police. They're thinking,
Speaker 2: if that's true, the trailer must be the crime scene.
Speaker 2: So because Alice says she saw Leo come out of
Speaker 2: there after a fight, carrying something heavy and putting in
Speaker 2: the back of the car and driving away, they start
Speaker 2: using that as the theory of how the crime took place.
Speaker 2: All based on Alice Scott's testimony and statements.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about what investigators see
Speaker 1: when they go back there and they see her floating
Speaker 1: with you said a piece of plywood above her, and
Speaker 1: you said, is this a pond or what kind of
Speaker 1: body of water is this?
Speaker 2: It's an abandoned phosphate pit. So there used to be
Speaker 2: a phosphate mine that was there, and they filled it
Speaker 2: with water and it just left it. It's basically reclaimed
Speaker 2: land at this point, but it's filled with water. It
Speaker 2: more or less looks like a lake. But it runs
Speaker 2: parallel to this road, so it seems more like a canal,
Speaker 2: but the way they call it back then was called
Speaker 2: a drainage pit. And so they find Michelle fully clothed
Speaker 2: everything but her shoes, and she's laying in this water.
Speaker 2: And when they pull the ply would offer and bring
Speaker 2: her out of the water, they quickly find out that
Speaker 2: she's been stabbed numerous times. Later on the corner would
Speaker 2: say twenty six times. She'd been stabbed in the front
Speaker 2: and back and parts of her neck. So it was
Speaker 2: a brutal, brutal killing. And so they examined the crime
Speaker 2: scene basically that area, and they find like a large
Speaker 2: clump of blood and it matches Michelle's blood. So it's
Speaker 2: right in the sand, in the dirt, right in that
Speaker 2: area of cut right back in that woods back there
Speaker 2: near the near the water, and so you know, they
Speaker 2: find that there, and they find the body, but they
Speaker 2: don't really put it together, like they look at it
Speaker 2: sort of, well, if Leo was seen carrying something heavy,
Speaker 2: she must have been killed back there, and this was
Speaker 2: probably the dumping site, and that's kind of what they
Speaker 2: settled on. They settle on the trailer as being the
Speaker 2: crime scene. The big problem with this is they cannot
Speaker 2: find one drop or speck of blood in the trailer
Speaker 2: for someone who have stabbed someone twenty six times inside
Speaker 2: that trailer then carry her out. Is pretty clear that
Speaker 2: there's going to be some form of blood, like it's
Speaker 2: just impossible to clean up that kind of mess. But
Speaker 2: they don't find any blood, and so that's kind of
Speaker 2: a problem for the state. And the other problem is
Speaker 2: that Alice Scott is kind of a suspect witness's you know,
Speaker 2: she's been institutionalized in mental institutes for delusions. Her husband
Speaker 2: is saying begging the police not to talk to her
Speaker 2: because she tends to get overly involved in these kind
Speaker 2: of things and they doesn't want her to do it.
Speaker 2: He doesn't want her doing this, but she doesn't. She
Speaker 2: starts talking to police and her descriptions become more clear
Speaker 2: and more violent, and she's the only witness who had
Speaker 2: heard anything that night. It takes about sixteen months for
Speaker 2: the state to arrest Leo Schofield because they're just they're
Speaker 2: not really confident they have a strong case here. There's
Speaker 2: no physical evidence connecting Leo. There's a lot of alibi
Speaker 2: witness because he's with friends most of the time, so
Speaker 2: they're trying to narrow down that period from when it
Speaker 2: would have happened, and Alice Scott says, I looked at
Speaker 2: a clock. I saw this. It was between two thirty
Speaker 2: and three am. Well, Leo's accounted for, he's with police
Speaker 2: and he's with Michelle's father at that hour, So like
Speaker 2: kind of worried about this. But they have a really
Speaker 2: good prosecutor named John Aguero, who's an expert at putting
Speaker 2: together circumstantial cases, and when he starts to talk to
Speaker 2: Alice Scott himself, he finds that the timeline is starting
Speaker 2: to come together under his questioning.
Speaker 1: In my other show Buried Bones with Paul Paul Hols,
Speaker 1: I learned something this was several years ago. When they
Speaker 1: find a victim and it's a woman and she is
Speaker 1: fully clothed, I assume, as I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people do, that there was no sexual assault, until Paul says,
Speaker 1: sometimes the offender redresses them. So did they find any
Speaker 1: signs of sexual assault or anything like that on Michelle.
Speaker 2: No, they said that she was not sexually assaulted. There
Speaker 2: was no evidence of that. That's really interesting. I'd never
Speaker 2: heard that before.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hadn't either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, particular case, there was nothing like that, which led
Speaker 2: them more towards Leo, because like, why would Leo have
Speaker 2: sexually assault you know, it's not that kind of This
Speaker 2: was a rage crime. That's what they're arguing. Shoot, Leo
Speaker 2: was so mad that Michelle was late that for some
Speaker 2: reason he decided to stab her twenty six times. That's
Speaker 2: that's pretty much how the case came together. Miraculously, Alice
Speaker 2: Scott led them to two more neighbors who after a
Speaker 2: year and a half, suddenly remembered that they saw Leo's
Speaker 2: father's car or the Mazda at that pit area that night,
Speaker 2: even though they talked to police twice and that never
Speaker 2: came up. There was a lot of things that never
Speaker 2: came up in the initial statements that fifteen months later,
Speaker 2: they came up in John Aguero's office when he was
Speaker 2: questioning him. That was a key to the case.
Speaker 1: You said, twenty seven stab wounds. Were there signs of
Speaker 1: defensive wounds or were they located in one particular place.
Speaker 2: No, there was a couple of bruises on her, but
Speaker 2: they didn't really notice any signs of defensive wounds or
Speaker 2: anything like that. They did notice, and they preserved it
Speaker 2: for a while, some fingernail scrapings that they believe, but
Speaker 2: you know, they didn't just DNA backed. They preserved it,
Speaker 2: but later the prosecutor destroyed it back in the nineties,
Speaker 2: got rid of all of it. But so that's all
Speaker 2: they really have is they have an eyewitness and a
Speaker 2: very circumstantial case. There's nothing physical connecting Leo to the crime.
Speaker 2: The one thing that kind of jumps out of the
Speaker 2: state but doesn't seem to jump out to Leo's defense attorney,
Speaker 2: is that they find fingerprints in the car that have
Speaker 2: been unidentified. They don't belong to Leo, they don't belong
Speaker 2: to Michelle, they don't belong to Leo's father. They just
Speaker 2: become unidentified and they sit in the file for many,
Speaker 2: many years as unidentified fingerprints. But because Leo's defense attorney
Speaker 2: did no pre trial investigation and he did no depositions
Speaker 2: of witnesses, he was known as a trial by ambush attorney.
Speaker 2: Like he just didn't like to be prepared. He liked
Speaker 2: to be spontaneous and I'll just take care of those
Speaker 2: witnesses on the cross examination, and that's how I win
Speaker 2: my cases. And he was very charming, southern, kind of
Speaker 2: looked like Colonel Sanders, but he was really ill prepared
Speaker 2: for this kind of case when it gets a little
Speaker 2: more scientific.
Speaker 1: Hmm, Well, I'm going to channel poll Holes one more time.
Speaker 1: Because the fingerprints inside the car, he would say, if
Speaker 1: he were here, he would say, well, where are those fingerprints?
Speaker 1: You know, if it's a random like a gas station
Speaker 1: attendant who's doing something, and it makes sense maybe it's
Speaker 1: on the inside of a window or something like that,
Speaker 1: that's one thing. But if it's a place where a
Speaker 1: stranger really probably shouldn't be, like the trunk of the
Speaker 1: car or you know, some other area, that might make
Speaker 1: a difference. Do we have any idea where those random
Speaker 1: prints were?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely. And what's curious about it is that they
Speaker 2: don't find any of Michelle or Leo's prints in the
Speaker 2: car at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, so somebody wiped it down, right, Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's what they're thinking, right, somebody must have wiped it down.
Speaker 2: But they find two fingerprints, ones on the inside driver's
Speaker 2: door and inside the car, and the other one is
Speaker 2: in the back, the back of the hatchback, and there's
Speaker 2: a television rental receipt and the television rental receipt was
Speaker 2: touched and fingerprints, but they didn't match anyone Leo or anyone.
Speaker 2: So that's where they find these prints that are unidentified.
Speaker 2: But also the stereo was tampered with, so the speakers
Speaker 2: in the back were missing, as well as the equalizer
Speaker 2: underneath the car stereo. The equalizer was taken out for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, they tried getting the stereo up, couldn't get
Speaker 2: it out, so they took the equalizer and the speakers
Speaker 2: in the back. So that does kind of explain why
Speaker 2: there might be, you know, fingerprints in the back of
Speaker 2: the hatchback, unidentified fingerprints.
Speaker 1: So if we are not thinking Leo is a suspect
Speaker 1: and we're thinking something else, would this be She breaks down,
Speaker 1: someone comes up to her, wants to steal her stuff,
Speaker 1: she puts up a fight, he stabs her and tosses
Speaker 1: her in this phosphate pit. And that's kind of the
Speaker 1: way this goes because now you have I didn't realize
Speaker 1: there was stuff missing, So now there is a motive
Speaker 1: for a stranger right.
Speaker 2: Right, And you know, nobody can explain why the car
Speaker 2: is seven miles away like broken down, like it doesn't
Speaker 2: really fit any theories of anything.
Speaker 1: You know, is it in the right direction though, Gilbert, like,
Speaker 1: is it going where it's supposed to be going before
Speaker 1: it breaks down toward the friend's house.
Speaker 2: No, it's going to totally opposite direction, and it's far
Speaker 2: far away, like in an opposite direction, and like the
Speaker 2: state isn't going to end up saying that Leo and
Speaker 2: his father and his mother were in on this conspiracy.
Speaker 2: One of them killed Michelle and they decided to all
Speaker 2: act together and get rid of the body and get
Speaker 2: rid of the car. And you know, that was what
Speaker 2: the theory was, and so that really was about attacking
Speaker 2: the alibi.
Speaker 1: Do we have any information about the blood that what
Speaker 1: they thought was blood in the back seat? Did it
Speaker 1: turn out to be blood and Michelle's blood? There was
Speaker 1: Michelle's blood was found on the downy fabric soft in
Speaker 1: her bottle, a little smear of it. It's just a
Speaker 1: little bit, but enough to get a sample and to
Speaker 1: show that it was Michelle's blood. There was also a
Speaker 1: little bit of blood on the back rug in the hatchback,
Speaker 1: but only a little bit, but they couldn't identify.
Speaker 2: It as Michelle's There wasn't enough of it there. But
Speaker 2: they said it was definitely human blood and that's the
Speaker 2: only blood that was found in the car in eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Were they doing blood typing? Is that what it would
Speaker 2: have been? It was blood typing, aba oh and that
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and they could tell it wasn't Leo's.
Speaker 2: They knew that it wasn't Leo's. It was definitely Michelle's
Speaker 2: based on the blood typing.
Speaker 1: So Leo's suspicious. They look at the alibi and what
Speaker 1: are they saying about his alibi? And I think all
Speaker 1: these people are lying on his behalf or that he
Speaker 1: slipped out and slipped back in and it was no
Speaker 1: big deal.
Speaker 2: There's one period where Leo goes out with his father
Speaker 2: for about an hour and he's driving around town. It's
Speaker 2: like right after the right after the Leo calls the
Speaker 2: sheriff reporting Michelle missing. They go back out and do
Speaker 2: the same kind of thing, and then they go back
Speaker 2: to Leo's parents trailer because Leo's father is not feeling well.
Speaker 2: I mean, he's got a cast on his leg. He's
Speaker 2: just not really up for this, and so he goes
Speaker 2: to bed and the mom goes out with Leo, and
Speaker 2: that's when they go over to Michelle's father's house. They
Speaker 2: start tracing them as they're out to like three something
Speaker 2: in the morning doing this. Finally they go back home,
Speaker 2: drops off his mom, and Leo's like, I'm going to
Speaker 2: my friend Buddy's house. I got to get his car.
Speaker 2: We're going to go out searching him freaked out. So
Speaker 2: the state's theory is that somehow, and they can't and
Speaker 2: say how this happens, somehow Leo must have run into
Speaker 2: Michelle while they're out searching, and then he says goodbye
Speaker 2: to his father. He gets in the Mazda with Michelle
Speaker 2: and they go back to the trailer, getting a huge fight.
Speaker 2: Leo stabs are there, carries her out. That's the theory
Speaker 2: they go on. You know, the timeline doesn't really work
Speaker 2: because there's some other witnesses that show up in the
Speaker 2: police reports verifying that Leo was calling there and exactly
Speaker 2: the time he said he was, and he couldn't have
Speaker 2: been doing it from the trailer. So there's a two
Speaker 2: am call that Leo made to Michelle's grandmother that was
Speaker 2: confirmed by both you know, the state acknowledged it. It's
Speaker 2: in the police reports, but Leo's lawyer doesn't see it.
Speaker 2: And so the state doesn't bring it up.
Speaker 1: So now we I think understand the way this trial
Speaker 1: is going to go. He's getting real road in, right.
Speaker 1: It seems pretty clear there are all these witnesses that
Speaker 1: can give him an alibi. His dad luckily finds Michelle
Speaker 1: to be able to recover her body and everything. But
Speaker 1: now everything is turning on this guy's character. And he's
Speaker 1: a young husband who's been her fighting, and you know,
Speaker 1: all of this stuff. And of course, you know, you
Speaker 1: can't ignore that he's from a very lower income area.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're not talking about middle class, upper
Speaker 1: class citizens in this in Lakeland. We're talking about very
Speaker 1: low socioeconomic area where they're obviously not going to be
Speaker 1: a priority. And it seems very clear that this kid
Speaker 1: is violent and acts violence and he's the one who
Speaker 1: did it. Open and shut.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. Horror thing is when you look into
Speaker 2: this case, Lakeland, this area had an unbelievable public defender's office.
Speaker 2: They were really good, really great trial and they had
Speaker 2: extraordinary records of getting acquittals in death penalty cases like acquittals.
Speaker 2: I mean, they were really good. And Leo starts out
Speaker 2: with the public Defender's office but when they lock them
Speaker 2: up and throw them in jail, he's talking to these
Speaker 2: other inmates, and that's a public pretender. Your life's on
Speaker 2: the line. You can't do that, you know. You got
Speaker 2: to get somebody good, you know. And it's a death
Speaker 2: penalty case. And because Leo had gotten in an accident
Speaker 2: the summer before he broke his neck, he's a passenger
Speaker 2: in a car, he had a fifty dollar settlement coming
Speaker 2: his way. And so this hotshot lawyer named Jack Edmund said,
Speaker 2: that's exactly my fee, and sign this paper and you know,
Speaker 2: and that's what happens. So that's how Leo ends up,
Speaker 2: not with the Public Defender's Office, which he says was
Speaker 2: the biggest mistake of his life. He ended up with
Speaker 2: a lawyer who was completely unprepared and just got steamrolled
Speaker 2: by the prosecutor.
Speaker 1: Is this a capital case in Florida? Must be in
Speaker 1: eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Yes, this county went for the death penalty as much
Speaker 2: as you could.
Speaker 1: So the trial goes on, it sounds like already you're
Speaker 1: teasing that that Jack Edmunds, his defense attorney, is dropping
Speaker 1: the ball, and ultimately I'm assuming we end up. Is
Speaker 1: this a bench trial or is this a jury.
Speaker 2: It's a jury.
Speaker 1: No one tell me about the verdict.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just tell you the biggest. Well, he made
Speaker 2: a lot of mistakes, but the first mistake he did
Speaker 2: was he allowed the state to open its case with
Speaker 2: twenty one bad character witnesses in a row. And most
Speaker 2: of them just got up there and said, he's volatile,
Speaker 2: he fights all the time, he does this, he punches walls,
Speaker 2: he's like screaming all the time. Just shit, that was
Speaker 2: really prejudicial. There were some witnesses that came in and
Speaker 2: talked about like his relationship with Michelle, that probably would
Speaker 2: have been, you know, admissible, But because Jack Edmond didn't
Speaker 2: object to anything, he didn't preserve the record so that
Speaker 2: stuff could no longer be challenged. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I've let some judges, some prosecutors read the trial transcript
Speaker 2: and they all said the same thing, like this trial
Speaker 2: was over before this defense even got their case off
Speaker 2: the webings. This was just the way you start, Like,
Speaker 2: you couldn't imagine that the judge didn't even step in
Speaker 2: and say this has got to stop. It's twenty one
Speaker 2: straight bad character witnesses, you know, and it's all this
Speaker 2: four or four evidence, this stuff that's like should not
Speaker 2: be admissible in this to this extent. But because he
Speaker 2: didn't know, and you know, he said, I'm not really
Speaker 2: much of an evidence guy. I just know how to
Speaker 2: win trials. It wasn't really the guy you want for
Speaker 2: the law, and so he let it all in without objection.
Speaker 2: So that kind of started off in a really bad
Speaker 2: way because the testimony made Leo look like, you know,
Speaker 2: a violent monster. The worst part of it, I think
Speaker 2: was that there was a next door neighbor to Alice
Speaker 2: Scott who happened to be her sister in law. She
Speaker 2: was much more credible. Her name was Linda Sells, and
Speaker 2: basically what she ended up saying was like, yes, we
Speaker 2: did see Leo carrying something heavy out and we joked
Speaker 2: around about it, me and Alice because you know, we said, oh,
Speaker 2: I wonder what's going on in there, and they made
Speaker 2: jokes about it. But she said that was a week
Speaker 2: or two before Michelle disappeared. That was not that same night,
Speaker 2: because I didn't work that night and I wasn't coming
Speaker 2: home from work as Alice described and having that conversation
Speaker 2: with her in the driveway, and you know, it was
Speaker 2: later shown that she did not work that night. She
Speaker 2: was inside. So whatever Alice claimed she saw, she probably
Speaker 2: did see. But it was like a week or two
Speaker 2: before Michelle went missing. And you know, I asked Leo
Speaker 2: about that. I said, you know, carrying something heavy? Was
Speaker 2: it was alluded to being a body. In fact, she
Speaker 2: does say at one point I saw him carrying the body,
Speaker 2: and Leo said, look, you know I did carry something out.
Speaker 2: I was not that night because Michelle had the car,
Speaker 2: but I did put an amplifier back there. And it's like,
Speaker 2: she goes, I had a blanket over it. He said,
Speaker 2: you know, you knew what it was not. It was
Speaker 2: not a body. It was a box, you know, like
Speaker 2: that was what it was. And so Leo's like, you're
Speaker 2: lying by saying it's a body. But prosecutor was able
Speaker 2: to get away with that, and frankly, like the defense
Speaker 2: really dropped the ball in this one, because if you
Speaker 2: look at Linda sells his testimony, it's very clear like
Speaker 2: Alice is saying, I'm not good with dates. She says
Speaker 2: that a bunch of times, and Linda is like, I
Speaker 2: am good with dates. We saw that a week or
Speaker 2: two before. That was not the same night and so
Speaker 2: that was like the state's whole case. That was their
Speaker 2: main witness against Leo. That made the crime scene the trailer,
Speaker 2: and it was a different night and there's no blood
Speaker 2: in the trailer. Still, Leo ended up getting convicted.
Speaker 1: To simplify what they think the motive was, It's that
Speaker 1: Leo is a young, angry, volatile, sometimes violent asshole who's
Speaker 1: mad that his wife is not driving fast enough to
Speaker 1: get to this party and maybe she's out doing something else.
Speaker 1: Is that pretty much it? And he snaps and tracks
Speaker 1: her down and does this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. I think I look back at it,
Speaker 2: like you look at his behavior and then you co
Speaker 2: parent to you know, we know of some of these
Speaker 2: cases that we see today where the spouse claims that
Speaker 2: wife went missing, we don't know where she is. Leo's
Speaker 2: behavior is consistent for the three days, like he's the
Speaker 2: one out there saying, we got to look, we gotta
Speaker 2: do this. He's calling the police, consert he's putting himself
Speaker 2: in front of police. Think about this. Within fifteen minutes,
Speaker 2: when the state says that Leo killed Michelle and carried
Speaker 2: her out to the car, he shows up at Michelle's
Speaker 2: father's house saying, I need your help to find Michelle,
Speaker 2: Like fifteen minutes after he just butchered the daughter. Twenty
Speaker 2: minutes after that, he's over in front of police, standing
Speaker 2: in front of this saying I need help finding my wife.
Speaker 2: You know, this is how much really cleaning could he
Speaker 2: have done in that time, you know, like the one witnesses,
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure he's wearing the same exact thing for
Speaker 2: those two days. He never changed, And so they took
Speaker 2: the clothes in and examined him and didn't find a
Speaker 2: speca blood there either. And this isn't someone who's got
Speaker 2: like ninety pairs of shoes and jeans and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So and so there's just nothing physically connecting to him
Speaker 2: to the case. But he gets convicted. Fortunately for Leo,
Speaker 2: he the jury spared his life. And you know, I
Speaker 2: ended up tracking down the juror because most of them
Speaker 2: are like, you know, elderly Florida retired people. They're all dead.
Speaker 2: But this this one woman was twenty two at the time,
Speaker 2: and we tracked her down and she says, yeah, I
Speaker 2: didn't I didn't think he was guilty, but I just
Speaker 2: went along with the others. Oh my gosh, I know,
Speaker 2: and then, like she said, the quiet part out loud, right,
Speaker 2: But then when it came time to the death sentence,
Speaker 2: she kind of held firm because they were ready to
Speaker 2: send him to his death. Yeah, and she said, you know,
Speaker 2: I think they just changed it because of me, because
Speaker 2: they didn't want to upset me anymore, and so they
Speaker 2: decided to give him life. So like that that juror
Speaker 2: might have saved Leo's life too. You know, it's just
Speaker 2: a strange thing that we were able to track her
Speaker 2: down and talk to her.
Speaker 1: So tell me when things start to change, when people
Speaker 1: other than you realize that this is not Leo, this
Speaker 1: is actually somebody else.
Speaker 2: Well, this is the crazy part of the story. So Leo,
Speaker 2: you know, settles off to prison. He's there a few years.
Speaker 2: Some some like older veterans tell him, you, look, you
Speaker 2: got to get your education. You got to be useful.
Speaker 2: You have to prove to the state that you are
Speaker 2: worthy to be released. That's what you need to be
Speaker 2: working on. They just pounded his head. Follow the rules,
Speaker 2: don't get involved with bad people, work on yourself, work
Speaker 2: on your education. And that's what Leo does. He gets
Speaker 2: his high school degree. Then he goes on gets college degrees,
Speaker 2: multiple college degrees. But in the early days, he gets
Speaker 2: assigned as a teacher's aid in the prison. And this
Speaker 2: is in the early nineties, so he's like twenty five
Speaker 2: years old, and this kind of six foot tall, blonde
Speaker 2: social worker is who he's assigned to help. He's the
Speaker 2: teacher's aid for her, and remarkably, they fall in love
Speaker 2: in the prison and they get married and they're still
Speaker 2: married today thirty years later. But Chrissy gets into conversations
Speaker 2: with Leo, and Leo's like, look, I just want to
Speaker 2: tell you I'm here. I was convicted of murdering my wife.
Speaker 2: I want you to know that that's the hill I'm
Speaker 2: going to die on it. I don't want to play
Speaker 2: games with you. I am wrongfully convicted. And he's like,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to try and talk you into anything.
Speaker 2: If you want, go to your own research look into
Speaker 2: my case. And she does. She's got a college degree,
Speaker 2: and she starts looking into the case over many, many months,
Speaker 2: and she becomes convinced that Leo's innocent. And the one
Speaker 2: thing she settles on which obsesses her for years, is
Speaker 2: that these unidentified fingerprints are in that car, and she
Speaker 2: just wants to figure out who these prints belong to,
Speaker 2: and so that becomes her mission. This goes on for
Speaker 2: years and she's trying to get a hold of the Prince.
Speaker 2: What can she do that Leo's no longer represented by
Speaker 2: a lawyer. What can she do? She doesn't know. Flash
Speaker 2: forward to two thousand and four. Michelle's been dead for
Speaker 2: seventeen years now, Leo's still in prison. Chrissy finds a
Speaker 2: friend who is a detective at a sheriff's department and
Speaker 2: she's just begging her friend, Cinda, please just run these prints.
Speaker 2: My husband is in prison. Chrissy is just relentless, like
Speaker 2: a bulldog, and Sinda, just to get her to shut up,
Speaker 2: basically says, fine, give me the Prince. So takes the
Speaker 2: fingerprint cards. By this point they have the APHIS system
Speaker 2: automatic fingerprint identification system. She runs the Prince through, thinking
Speaker 2: this will be it. It's a tow truck driver, and
Speaker 2: which the story is going to be over. Your husband's
Speaker 2: a murderer, That's what she's thinking. They run the Prince through.
Speaker 2: A couple of days later, they get a hit and
Speaker 2: it's a young man who lived in Lakeland, very close
Speaker 2: to where Leo and Michelle lived who's in prison for
Speaker 2: a murder right now in the same area. And when
Speaker 2: they look extensively into his criminal records, they find another
Speaker 2: murder that he probably committed but he got acquitted of
Speaker 2: the year before, and he's extraordinarily violent. He's in and
Speaker 2: out of juvenile detention facilities, has an arrest record from
Speaker 2: the age of ten up until he's finally incarcerated at
Speaker 2: the age of nineteen for another murder. So now they're
Speaker 2: looking at this guy's like, this isn't a tow truck driver,
Speaker 2: This isn't a detective, It isn't any of those things.
Speaker 2: It's not you know, some stereo fief for something that
Speaker 2: stumbles it. It's an actual murderer. Can we start an investigation?
Speaker 2: And that's where you see the state really double down,
Speaker 2: like you would think that new evidence of a known
Speaker 2: killer whose fingerprints are found in his car the last
Speaker 2: place Michelle's been. It takes six years to get Leo
Speaker 2: into a hearing to look at this new evidence. It's
Speaker 2: just like slow walking it. It just takes forever, and
Speaker 2: you start to recognize that's what finality looks like. They
Speaker 2: do not want to revisit this and possibly lose this conviction.
Speaker 2: That's where the case really turns. The young man's name
Speaker 2: is Jeremy Scott.
Speaker 1: Is he related to Alice Scott?
Speaker 2: No, And that's the first thing they look into and
Speaker 2: they find no relation there. But it's pretty troubling that
Speaker 2: they have this prince come back to him. So they
Speaker 2: send a cold case detective up to the jail to
Speaker 2: interview him, and basically he's in a defensive mode because
Speaker 2: his original crime sent him to death row and he
Speaker 2: got off because he was an abused child and had
Speaker 2: all these mitigating factors. So they gave him life and
Speaker 2: they tell him, your fingerprints were found in this murdered victim,
Speaker 2: and they show him pictures and he claims to not
Speaker 2: know anything about it, and he says, was the stereo
Speaker 2: take it? And they're like, yes it was, and he says, yeah,
Speaker 2: I used to steal stereos. And so when they finally
Speaker 2: get into the hearing in twenty ten, John Aguero, the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: is also the prosecutor who sent Jeremy Scott to death row.
Speaker 2: So this same prosecutor prosecuted Leo and Jeremy. So now
Speaker 2: you have these two guys that are both connected to
Speaker 2: the death or to Michelle Scofield, which one of them
Speaker 2: did this? Right, That's what this defense is trying to argue.
Speaker 2: It's the guy that's really violent that did this. But
Speaker 2: the state is saying, well, John Aguero talked to him
Speaker 2: in his office, no witnesses, no police, no tape recorder,
Speaker 2: and they come up with the story that he's a
Speaker 2: stereo thief.
Speaker 1: He just found this car on the side of the
Speaker 1: road and was like, I'm going to take this right now,
Speaker 1: where's that nobody's here. Yeah, that's what I would have
Speaker 1: said too, absolutely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just Jeremy's bad luck that he happened to break
Speaker 2: into a car of a girl who'd been murdered an
Speaker 2: hour earlier. Right, But that's what they're going with. And
Speaker 2: they go into this evidence you are hearing, and a
Speaker 2: Polk County judge rules that, yes, that makes more sense
Speaker 2: that he's a car stereo thief, forget his background. You know.
Speaker 2: One of the things that comes up in this is
Speaker 2: that they interview Jeremy's girlfriend, Jamie, and Jamie says, oh,
Speaker 2: that place the cut where Michelle's body was found, that's
Speaker 2: where he used to take me to have sex. That's
Speaker 2: where we used to hang out, So what are the
Speaker 2: odds that this guy's fingerprints is found in the same
Speaker 2: place that Jeremy used to hang out take his girlfriends to.
Speaker 2: There's this part of the story that just sort of
Speaker 2: gets ignored and they just say no. I think they
Speaker 2: called it extremely serendipitous that his fingerprints were found in
Speaker 2: the car of a murdered victim. But he was a
Speaker 2: stereo thief, so that's what they're going with.
Speaker 1: It sounds like they can't get over the fact that
Speaker 1: they don't think she's been sexually assaulted. We know that
Speaker 1: somebody can be sexually assaulted without seeing these outward damages
Speaker 1: or penetration or anything like that. But for what they're saying,
Speaker 1: it's well, I mean, what's his motive He got the stereo, right,
Speaker 1: what would be the motive of dabbing this woman twenty
Speaker 1: seven times? He didn't rape her? Is that the impression
Speaker 1: you get or is it something different? Yeah?
Speaker 2: In fact, they use it in a real strange way.
Speaker 2: They're like, you know, she's an attractive gal, like any
Speaker 2: stranger would have raped her, but like if that's a husband,
Speaker 2: he's not gonna you know, Like that's why it's just
Speaker 2: a stabbing, and that's the argument they put forward. You know,
Speaker 2: it doesn't really make a lot of sense, but that's
Speaker 2: what they're still trying so hard to say. This is
Speaker 2: not a stranger, this is not some psychotic this is
Speaker 2: a passion killing. That's when you see stabbings a bunch
Speaker 2: of times, like it's a husband and wife a fight.
Speaker 2: Like that's what they go with. And you know, the defense,
Speaker 2: to their credit, Jack Edmund blindly says, you know, like,
Speaker 2: I think what we have out there is a ravenous
Speaker 2: maniac who stabbed Michelle and enjoy a robbery. And but
Speaker 2: you know, he didn't even look to see the fingerprints.
Speaker 2: He could have argued that. Another strange thing is that
Speaker 2: one of the investigators in the Michelle Schofield murder was
Speaker 2: the lead investigator for the for the murder that Jeremy
Speaker 2: got acquitted of, and he was absolutely convinced that they
Speaker 2: had the right guy. But the Public Defender's office was
Speaker 2: so good they got Jeremy off because basically they found
Speaker 2: no fingerprints on the murder weapon, and the jury ended
Speaker 2: up saying that kid didn't seem smart enough to wipe
Speaker 2: fingerprints down, so I don't think he did it. And
Speaker 2: so they acquitted him. But this particular detective like, why
Speaker 2: didn't you look at those prints and say, who are
Speaker 2: some known violent felons in the area. They could have
Speaker 2: done a manual comparison, and that was never done, or
Speaker 2: I'm going to say it was never done. The worst
Speaker 2: side of it is that it was done and it
Speaker 2: didn't like what they found. I didn't find any evidence
Speaker 2: of that, but I'll tell you there was a pack
Speaker 2: of Marlboro Reds sitting very close to the bloodstains that
Speaker 2: was photographed by police but never processed, never fingerprinted. I
Speaker 2: always found that very strange. It's the only object that's
Speaker 2: photographed at the scene that was never tested. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you look back at Jeremy's other cases, he smoked
Speaker 2: Marlboro Reds and he left him at two other seats.
Speaker 2: To me, it's just like I want to believe the
Speaker 2: best that it was just incompetence, But sometimes I look
Speaker 2: at this stuff and go, come on.
Speaker 1: Well things, I mean with Jeremy for people to say,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe his book smarts are not as adept
Speaker 1: and you don't need that to get away with a crime,
Speaker 1: I mean, you don't. I think it's some of the
Speaker 1: most intelligent killers I have ever written about were some
Speaker 1: of the stupidest criminals, and then vice versa. So a
Speaker 1: stereo thief has to be at least street smart to
Speaker 1: be able to get away with that. You know, I
Speaker 1: know he was in jail, but still and then you
Speaker 1: know the other part. Paul and I talk about this
Speaker 1: on the other show, about the idea of overkill, which
Speaker 1: I think is way overblown. I think there is pure
Speaker 1: rage anger, and it can be at a total stranger.
Speaker 1: It does not have to be some intimate anything. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and Paul actually says it that I asked you about
Speaker 1: the defense wounds, because he said, sometimes people stab that much.
Speaker 1: You know, it doesn't matter if they're passionate or not.
Speaker 1: It's the person keeps moving and you don't have a choice.
Speaker 1: You're so scared that they're alive and they're gonna hurt you.
Speaker 1: That's why they keep stabbing. It's not anger at that
Speaker 1: specific woman. It can be anger at anybody, or it
Speaker 1: could just be like he's scared he hasn't done the
Speaker 1: job yet. So I think way too much. There's so
Speaker 1: much assumption going on in this case of yours.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I agree with you. Completely about that. Like,
Speaker 2: I just feel like to call this a passion killing,
Speaker 2: it has to be someone. Now you don't know that,
Speaker 2: Like there's no way to know that. There's plenty of
Speaker 2: stabbing victims that are total strangers, but in this particular case,
Speaker 2: you know, it's pretty shocking that it comes back to
Speaker 2: Jeremy Scott, who is in and out of prison, in
Speaker 2: jail all the time, but on this particular night where Michelle,
Speaker 2: we know he's in Lakeland, he's living in Lakeland, not
Speaker 2: too far. In fact, his trailer he's staying in, his
Speaker 2: grandmother's trailer is located almost exactly between Tom's restaurant where
Speaker 2: Michelle last worked and the place she was found. It's
Speaker 2: right in the middle of that. And we're only talking
Speaker 2: a few miles, so you know, there you have it,
Speaker 2: and this is a place he's known to hang out at.
Speaker 1: And no alibia I assume for Jeremy Scott that night.
Speaker 2: No, I've looked at the thing. Like, Jeremy's not a
Speaker 2: really good liar either, And so when he's trying to
Speaker 2: put a story in place about they ask him how
Speaker 2: to tell that's how you stole the stereo, and he
Speaker 2: describes it and you just like, if you do this enough,
Speaker 2: you start to see weird things. He says, something really curious.
Speaker 2: He says, well, I drove past the car, and then
Speaker 2: I went to this gas station and I saw this
Speaker 2: trash can there, and I stopped at the trash can,
Speaker 2: and then I met a U turn and I decided
Speaker 2: to go back and steal the stereo. Why would you
Speaker 2: mention that trash can Like this is just something that's really.
Speaker 1: Small, very detailed, So kind of give me the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of how this goes. I know you got heavily
Speaker 1: involved with this. You obviously feel like Leo is innocent
Speaker 1: in Jeremy at a minimum needs to be better investigated.
Speaker 1: But Leo's still in prison.
Speaker 2: Well several years after. Jeremy doesn't get any help with
Speaker 2: his parole. That's what he always said, Like they promised
Speaker 2: you're gonna help me with my parole, and nothing ever happened.
Speaker 2: And that prosecutor died. Jhona Guerro died. He said, now
Speaker 2: I'm telling the truth. He was mad, and he wrote
Speaker 2: a letter to Leo's lawyer and confessed to killing Michelle.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you everything, how I did it and everything.
Speaker 2: And he did that, and ultimately I interviewed him in prison,
Speaker 2: and he told I was walking down Comby Road. I
Speaker 2: saw a girl at a payphone at this gas station.
Speaker 2: She recognized me, he said. I didn't know who she was,
Speaker 2: but she must have seen me in town or something
Speaker 2: like that. And it was kind of raining. She said,
Speaker 2: why are you all wet? He says, I need a ride,
Speaker 2: and he said where he was going, and he led
Speaker 2: her to the cut and he led her back there
Speaker 2: and she says, there's no houses back here, and that's
Speaker 2: when a knife comes out of his jacket pocket and
Speaker 2: she starts panicking and screaming and fighting him, and he
Speaker 2: attacked her. And after he attacked her, he said, I
Speaker 2: smoked some cigarettes trying to figure out what to do.
Speaker 2: Then I just dragged her into the water, and I
Speaker 2: took the car and was going back to my mom's house,
Speaker 2: which is in that direction. Car broke down. Why did
Speaker 2: it break down? He said, Michelle got so scared that
Speaker 2: she drove the car out of trying to drive out
Speaker 2: of the cut, and he slammed it into park and
Speaker 2: something happened mechanically to the car that is consistent with
Speaker 2: somebody doing that slamming a moving car into park him
Speaker 2: for four years. Since then, he's never denied killing Michelle. Ever,
Speaker 2: he goes into extreme detail. He also confessed to killing
Speaker 2: somebody else that he'd gotten away with, and it absolutely matches.
Speaker 2: He drew me a map of all his movements and
Speaker 2: he just said, I want to help Leo. He doesn't
Speaker 2: belong in prison. I'm the one who killed his wife.
Speaker 1: So now what I mean, do we have a new problem.
Speaker 1: We must have a new prosecutor on Lakeland at this point.
Speaker 2: Nope, there is somebody new, but they've just doubled down.
Speaker 2: This case is so obvious at this point it feels
Speaker 2: even embarrassing talking about the trial because it has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with the facts. Jeremy Scott is clearly the
Speaker 2: killer in this case. In fact, Leo and Jeremy. Leo
Speaker 2: finally got out last year on parole. He's still convicted
Speaker 2: murder in the eyes of the state, but he's out
Speaker 2: on parole at least. And he believes that Jeremy coming
Speaker 2: clean is what did it. Because our podcast came out
Speaker 2: and it was just, you know, obvious to everyone who
Speaker 2: listened that Jeremy Scott is the real killer and it's
Speaker 2: not a case of like some guy saying I'll take
Speaker 2: the fall. He was there, he lived there, and he
Speaker 2: talked about details that you know, nobody should have known,
Speaker 2: and I looked into his case. I've been writing to him,
Speaker 2: talking to him even to this day, and he's admitted
Speaker 2: to all the murders he's committed, even though he only
Speaker 2: got caught on one of them.
Speaker 1: Can the Innocence Project in New York get involved with
Speaker 1: this or is there a project involved?
Speaker 2: The Innocence Project of Florida has had the case, but
Speaker 2: basically they've just doubled down and said, you know what
Speaker 2: a jury has spoken, the appellate courts has spoken. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the same thing that every wrongful conviction has. Yes,
Speaker 2: juries have ruled against you, and the pellate courts have
Speaker 2: ruled against you. There's powerful people, I can tell you
Speaker 2: in Leo's corner, including the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee,
Speaker 2: who actually testified at Leo's hearing saying this is an
Speaker 2: abomination and makes him sick to his stomach that this
Speaker 2: man is still in prison for this crime. He's got
Speaker 2: some very powerful people out there, but there's an island
Speaker 2: in this one circuit that just will not let go
Speaker 2: of this and they're just they will not let the
Speaker 2: conviction go.
Speaker 1: That's unbelievable because I mean that is you know, demanding
Speaker 1: relief because of new evidence, not I mean, I know
Speaker 1: it's things that Jack Edmund missed as his defense attorney.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, this is no this is
Speaker 1: somebody who's confessing that's unreal and there's no DNA right
Speaker 1: because everything got thrown.
Speaker 2: Out, everything was destroyed, and you know, it's just it's
Speaker 2: it's a really embarrassing I think to just look at
Speaker 2: this case and look at the facts of it and
Speaker 2: just see that the state is just still taking this position.
Speaker 2: You know that they ended up saying that Jeremy Scott
Speaker 2: because he once said that he didn't do it, and
Speaker 2: now he says he does he did do it, that
Speaker 2: you can't believe a word he says. So they have
Speaker 2: to throw it all out with the bathwater. It's like,
Speaker 2: how about doing an investigation?
Speaker 1: Yeah, did he talk to anybody else about this who's
Speaker 1: not currently in prison or when he I mean, is
Speaker 1: there anybody who corroborate what he's saying.
Speaker 2: There's one person that we believe, but you know, the
Speaker 2: state just attacked him. He was like the jailhouse lawyer,
Speaker 2: and after he found out that that his fingerprints were
Speaker 2: found there, he worried that he's going to get sent
Speaker 2: back to death row. He apparently confessed to this other
Speaker 2: jailhouse lawyer. But you know, they just destroyed that guy's
Speaker 2: credibility on the stand and made it seem like this
Speaker 2: is just a bunch of crazy people talking. And you know, granted, Jeremy,
Speaker 2: he's off his meds, he's upset in court, and you know,
Speaker 2: they make him look kind of crazy that he's sitting
Speaker 2: in a git in a psych cell, eating off his fingers,
Speaker 2: and so they made him just seem like a not
Speaker 2: credible witness, and so that's easy for them to dismiss him.
Speaker 2: But I think it's one of the laziest things you
Speaker 2: could do, because if you sit down with that guy,
Speaker 2: you know, he tells you the things he did, and
Speaker 2: he's you know, he's coming clean about his.
Speaker 1: Life, okay, And a couple of sentence says, what did
Speaker 1: you learn from all of this?
Speaker 2: You know, I guess I learned that you don't really
Speaker 2: guaranteed to get truth in a courtroom because how a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff is just inadmissible and a verdicts don't
Speaker 2: really have to do a truth. I find if you
Speaker 2: look at our second season, it really gets to the
Speaker 2: bottom of it. We you know, we go back into
Speaker 2: this case, but we do it from a different side.
Speaker 2: We do it from Jeremy's side, and it's all about
Speaker 2: my conversations and my relationship with Jeremy and all the
Speaker 2: remorse when Leo Schofield doesn't show remorse in a parole
Speaker 2: hearing because he says, I have a claim of innocence
Speaker 2: that I've never wavered from. I cannot apologize for killing
Speaker 2: someone I did not kill. All the remorse is Jeremy's remorse.
Speaker 2: He like cried in our interview. You know, He's like,
Speaker 2: I think about Michelle all the time. I'm torment. This
Speaker 2: is my punishment. I go to bed and see the
Speaker 2: faces of the people I killed at night. That's my punishment.
Speaker 2: I think anybody who listens to him will just side.
Speaker 2: The state has this completely backward.
Speaker 1: And I think our listeners know how rare it is
Speaker 1: to get some kind of a confession like that to
Speaker 1: be able to play on a podcast and really build
Speaker 1: the case that you've built. I know that Leo is out,
Speaker 1: but this is hanging over him and will until he
Speaker 1: dies unless you know, this gets expunged or somebody can
Speaker 1: help in some way. And so you know, I'm pulling
Speaker 1: for you because you did some hard work on this
Speaker 1: and I know how personal you're taking this, So I
Speaker 1: hope it works out for both of you really with this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I've been through this with my stories
Speaker 2: in the past, and eventually, like it's undeniable, it just
Speaker 2: needs to be handled by the right person to come along.
Speaker 2: And there are some really good people and Leo's corner
Speaker 2: that are not quitting on this, and Leo isn't either.
Speaker 2: He just says, this is about justice for my dead wife.
Speaker 2: I don't want her in all of eternity believing that
Speaker 2: something like I did this. It's not the truth, and
Speaker 2: he goes, I have to just get justice for my wife.
Speaker 1: If you love historical true crime stories, check out the
Speaker 1: audio versions of my books The Ghost Club, All That
Speaker 1: Is Wicked, and American Sherlock, and Don't Forget. There are
Speaker 1: twelve seasons of my historical true crime podcast, Tenfold More
Speaker 1: Wicked right here in this podcast feed, scroll back and
Speaker 1: give them a listen if you haven't already. This has
Speaker 1: been an exactly right production. Our senior producer is Alexis M. Morosi.
Speaker 1: Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain. This episode was mixed
Speaker 1: by John Bradley. Curtis heath is our composer. Artwork by
Speaker 1: Nick Toga. Executive produced by Georgia Hardstark, Karen Kilgarriff and
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