Speaker 1: You're none class.
Speaker 2: Go next door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least that's safe.
Speaker 4: It's a private road. Keep out.
Speaker 2: Kelsey and I are in a rural area on the
Speaker 2: outskirts of Lakeland, Florida, looking for a woman named pam Reynolds.
Speaker 4: Right here, CEO, I get the ledger delivered back here.
Speaker 2: All we have is her address from nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 2: when she was the youngest juror on the Leo Schofield trial.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to open any gates though, Oh you know'
Speaker 3: hear any dogs there? Let's give it a try. I'm
Speaker 3: not hearing anything, Okay.
Speaker 4: Is this a kind of situation where we want to
Speaker 4: leave a note or let's just go.
Speaker 5: Oh hello, yeah, oh, hi sir. My name is Gilbert King,
Speaker 5: and I'm a writer and I'm looking to see a
Speaker 5: Pamela Reynolds. Does she live in this neighborhood or.
Speaker 6: Who are you now?
Speaker 5: My name is Gilbert King, and I'm a writer and
Speaker 5: I'm researching a case from the nineteen eighties and there's
Speaker 5: a woman named Pamela Reynolds who was who served on
Speaker 5: a trial. And I don't know where she lives, but
Speaker 5: we've tracked it down to back here. But we couldn't
Speaker 5: figure out where she might be.
Speaker 7: Oh, she's not here, right.
Speaker 2: She was involved in.
Speaker 5: A very big trial back in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 8: She was, Yeah, she sat on a jury.
Speaker 5: She was on the jury.
Speaker 2: By the end of Leo's trial, there were only ten
Speaker 2: jurors that deliberated and eventually convicted him. Many of these
Speaker 2: ten jurors were already retired or nearing retirement age during
Speaker 2: the trial in nineteen eighty nine, so when we tried
Speaker 2: to track them down thirty years later, we weren't surprised
Speaker 2: to find that many had passed away. But Pam Reynolds
Speaker 2: was just twenty two years old when she was called
Speaker 2: to serve on Leo's trial. We wanted to find her
Speaker 2: to ask her what went on in that jury room,
Speaker 2: what made those ten jurors vote to convict Leo?
Speaker 5: Yeah, very nice, Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: We find out that the man we are talking to
Speaker 2: is Pam's dad, Kelsey, and I leave a card with him,
Speaker 2: but we don't get a call. So we go back
Speaker 2: to Pam's house a few more times. One time her
Speaker 2: mom is there and she tells us Pam had a
Speaker 2: hard time with the trial, has nightmares about it. We
Speaker 2: aren't sure we'll hear from her. But then one day
Speaker 2: we get a call and Kelsey goes to meet.
Speaker 4: Pam Okay, testing, testing, testing.
Speaker 8: I just need it to the Lakeland Square mall here
Speaker 8: to meet Pamela Reynolds.
Speaker 4: She lives one of the jurors that leads trial. And
Speaker 4: I'm really hoping I can find the quiet space in
Speaker 4: the mall.
Speaker 8: Okay, Hi are you, Pamela?
Speaker 4: I'm good. How are you so cute? How young are you?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 4: Thank you? I'm twenty three?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 4: Yeah, well you know you were very young at the trial,
Speaker 4: oh child?
Speaker 9: Yeah, that was the way back when I'm the one
Speaker 9: that I didn't believe in the capital punishment part where
Speaker 9: you know, you send him up and let him burn
Speaker 9: and whatever. I just didn't believe in that. And if
Speaker 9: you think about it, I kind of saved the guy's
Speaker 9: life if he's going to get all is he getting
Speaker 9: out or what.
Speaker 3: Do you?
Speaker 6: My maness move to have my feels so rustps sorry
Speaker 6: lists In this valiity, I see relation.
Speaker 4: Who water.
Speaker 10: A bride?
Speaker 9: Dspage to the world, who's holding.
Speaker 4: The s.
Speaker 6: To the warm soldings?
Speaker 2: St Bone Valley Chapter four, Dog with a Bone. When
Speaker 2: pam is twenty two. She's by far the youngest juror
Speaker 2: on the case, and she takes her role seriously.
Speaker 9: Back then, I was more quiet and I took notes.
Speaker 9: I remember taking notes.
Speaker 2: She listened to all of the testimony. She watched John
Speaker 2: Aguero's aggressive theatrics, Jack Edmund's folksy style, She heard about
Speaker 2: Leo Senior's premonition, Alice Scott's eyewitness testimony, Leo's temper and
Speaker 2: volatile relationship with Michelle, And after two weeks of testimony,
Speaker 2: this is what she thought of Leo.
Speaker 11: I don't know.
Speaker 9: To me, he just didn't I didn't feel like he
Speaker 9: did it or whatever.
Speaker 2: When Kelsey sent me this interview to listen to, I
Speaker 2: was not expecting to hear that Pam didn't think Leo
Speaker 2: did it, but she still voted to convict him. I
Speaker 2: try to imagine Pam going back into the jury room
Speaker 2: after the trial to deliberate on Leo's case. I can
Speaker 2: see her sitting at a table surrounded by people she
Speaker 2: probably considered to be the adults.
Speaker 12: In the room.
Speaker 9: It was scary because I was the only young one
Speaker 9: on the jury too.
Speaker 2: Pam was told during the jury questioning process that a
Speaker 2: guilty verdict must be unanimous. She knew that even her
Speaker 2: single vote to acquit Leo would have been enough to
Speaker 2: deadlock the jury and trigger a mistrial. When the jury
Speaker 2: was deliberating, Pam went along with the majority to convict Leo. Then,
Speaker 2: since the judge Davis read their verdict in court and
Speaker 2: she watches Leo tell the jury that they've made a
Speaker 2: big mistake, that he's an innocent man, Pam and the
Speaker 2: other jurors go back to deliberate again, this time to
Speaker 2: recommend either life in prison for Leo Schofield or the
Speaker 2: death penalty. When forced to consider voting to put Leo
Speaker 2: to death, Pam finds herself outnumbered again, but this time
Speaker 2: she can't bring herself to go along with the majority.
Speaker 9: I remember one part where they wanted to send him
Speaker 9: up to be, you know, on that electric care, but
Speaker 9: I didn't want it to so they changed that for
Speaker 9: me because of me. I thought that was interesting.
Speaker 2: All that was needed to sentence a defendant to death
Speaker 2: in Florida at the time was a simple majority of jurors.
Speaker 1: Voting in favor.
Speaker 2: This is different from a conviction, which requires a unanimous vote.
Speaker 2: But instead of going along with the Pam speaks her
Speaker 2: mind and says she doesn't believe Leo should be executed.
Speaker 2: She thinks the other jurors felt a little sorry for her,
Speaker 2: or maybe they admire this twenty two year old for
Speaker 2: sticking to her beliefs. For whatever reason, Pam says, they
Speaker 2: switched their.
Speaker 9: Votes, but they changed it for me so that way,
Speaker 9: you know, it wouldn't bother me. I guess maybe I
Speaker 9: thought it was nice all those jurors that did that.
Speaker 2: Instead of voting to send Leo to the electric chair,
Speaker 2: they vote for life in prison. Pam may be the
Speaker 2: single most important reason why Leo didn't die in the
Speaker 2: electric chair.
Speaker 9: I just hope he gets out if he's you know,
Speaker 9: I mean for sure, if he's not guilty, I mean
Speaker 9: they need to get him out of there.
Speaker 2: I mean thirty years.
Speaker 11: That's awful for a guy.
Speaker 12: Shoot.
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Speaker 2: Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
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Speaker 8: Hitting Record, Testing Testing. All right, ready, Okay, I'm ready.
Speaker 2: After Kelsey and I read through Leo's transcript, we still
Speaker 2: don't have a clear picture of the state's theory. There
Speaker 2: seem to be so many gaps in their timeline from
Speaker 2: the night Michelle disappeared, So let's break it down.
Speaker 8: We'll start with the times both the state and the
Speaker 8: defense agree on. At nine five pm, Leo's at Buddy
Speaker 8: Anderson's house when he gets the call from Michelle. She
Speaker 8: says she's clocked off work and is about to drive
Speaker 8: over in the Mazda and pick him up. Leo tells
Speaker 8: her to meet him at Vince Rayner's house, should take
Speaker 8: her about fifteen minutes to get there from Sparky's gas station,
Speaker 8: where she's calling from.
Speaker 2: But about three hours later, Michelle still hasn't shown up Vince's,
Speaker 2: so Leo calls the Sheriff's department. The call went through
Speaker 2: at twelve forty three am. It's recorded and documented, and
Speaker 2: Leo can be heard talking with Vince while he's on hold.
Speaker 10: You're checking the fifty's in jail and not they're going
Speaker 10: to transform me back to the chefs upon the file
Speaker 10: and missing chest.
Speaker 2: Assistant State Attorney John Aguero uses this twelve forty three
Speaker 2: am call to establish Leo's state of mind that night.
Speaker 2: He suggests that you can hear the anger in Leo's
Speaker 2: voice that Leo was so furious at his wife he'd
Speaker 2: end up stabbing her twenty six times within the hour.
Speaker 2: Listen closely.
Speaker 10: I doubt whether says they should be just fucking arm
Speaker 10: and means he is. God help her, because I can't
Speaker 10: afford to fucking worry about this kind of little shit.
Speaker 10: You know, the rightest little problem is fucking cut me out.
Speaker 10: I don't know why, but they just thing I hate
Speaker 10: this failing, fucking hate it. She was on her way here.
Speaker 10: Why I'm tripping outlands? How I could have knew it.
Speaker 8: I've listened to this call so many times, and I've
Speaker 8: tried to hear it the way Aguero wanted the jury
Speaker 8: to hear it. But Leo's furious, but I just can't.
Speaker 8: To me, he just sounds scared or worried.
Speaker 2: After this call to the Sheriff's office, Aguero says that
Speaker 2: Leo leaves Vince's house and then somehow someway, he locates
Speaker 2: Michelle and the Mazda.
Speaker 8: Aguero doesn't offer any theory about how or where this
Speaker 8: reunion between Leo and Michelle occurred because he has no witnesses.
Speaker 8: But according to Aguero's timeline, this reunion had to have
Speaker 8: happened between about one am and one thirty because at
Speaker 8: around one thirty am, Leo's neighbor, Alice Scott, enters the picture.
Speaker 2: Since Alice is the only witness who claims to have
Speaker 2: seen anything related to the murder itself, Aguero's case hinges
Speaker 2: on her testimony of where and when Michelle was killed,
Speaker 2: So sometime around one thirty Am, Alice Scott is supposedly
Speaker 2: sitting at her bathroom window when she sees Leo and
Speaker 2: Michelle drive up in the orange Mazda and walk inside
Speaker 2: their trailer.
Speaker 8: Alice Scott's statements are not consistent. Her story about what
Speaker 8: she saw that night changes each time she tells it,
Speaker 8: but in the version she gives at trial, she says,
Speaker 8: when Leo and Michelle get home, they start fighting, and
Speaker 8: this apparently goes on for about twenty minutes, then all
Speaker 8: goes quiet. Alice says she sees Leo walk out of
Speaker 8: the trailer, get in the Mazda, and drive off. She
Speaker 8: says he's gone for another twenty minutes.
Speaker 2: After he returns, Alice says Leo spent five or ten
Speaker 2: minutes in the trailer before bringing out the heavy object.
Speaker 2: He puts the heavy object, what's assumed to be Michelle's body,
Speaker 2: in the back of the Mazda and drives off. It's
Speaker 2: around two twenty am when Alice says she sees Leo
Speaker 2: carrying the object out, but.
Speaker 8: Two twenty is another important time. That's when David saw
Speaker 8: Michelle's dad told police that Leo showed up at his house,
Speaker 8: woke him up and told him his daughter was missing.
Speaker 2: So the Times don't line up. The statements of Alice
Speaker 2: Scott and David Salm put Leo in two places at
Speaker 2: once at two twenty.
Speaker 8: Am, and then Leo's mom testifies she had driven Leo
Speaker 8: to David's house. So Aguero basically says that Leo gets
Speaker 8: in touch with his parents and they immediately agreed to
Speaker 8: become accessories to a murder, and then right away they
Speaker 8: come up with this master plan. They're going to get
Speaker 8: rid of Michelle's body and craft a false.
Speaker 2: Alibi, so to recap. According to Aguero, Leo and Michelle
Speaker 2: start fighting at one point thirty and it goes on
Speaker 2: for about twenty minutes. He says, Leo kills his wife
Speaker 2: in a fit of raid and drives away to call
Speaker 2: his parents for help. Then Leo goes back to the trailer,
Speaker 2: puts the body in the Mazda, and drives off. He
Speaker 2: meets up with his parents, switches vehicles, and shows up
Speaker 2: at Michelle's dad's house with his.
Speaker 8: Mom, and Aguero said, this all happened within one hour.
Speaker 8: That just doesn't make sense to me.
Speaker 2: Then around three am, Leo and his mom drive up
Speaker 2: to two patrol cars parked at a gas station on
Speaker 2: Comby road. Both Leo and the state agree on this.
Speaker 2: It's documented in the police reports, but according to Aguero,
Speaker 2: they're not actually out looking for Michelle. He says the
Speaker 2: Schofields are just driving around in the middle of the
Speaker 2: night to fake an alibi. When Leo and his mom
Speaker 2: saw the police officers, Aguero says they were really on
Speaker 2: their way to meet up with Leo Senior at the
Speaker 2: Canal to help get rid of Michelle's body.
Speaker 8: Aguero brings the Laffoons to the stand to support this
Speaker 8: version of events. Remember, Randy and Mary Laffoon are the
Speaker 8: couple that live down the street from Leo and Michelle.
Speaker 8: At first, they say they didn't see or hear anything
Speaker 8: on the night Michelle was murdered. But then fifteen months later,
Speaker 8: Aguero talks to them at the suggestion of Alice Scott,
Speaker 8: and suddenly they say they remember seeing the Mazda or
Speaker 8: Leo Senior's pickup truck near where Michelle's body was found.
Speaker 2: How is it that, fifteen months after the murder, they
Speaker 2: now remember all these details that they didn't remember until
Speaker 2: Laguero spoke to them. The Laffoons also changed their story
Speaker 2: depending on who they're talking to, and they can't remember
Speaker 2: specific details or dates.
Speaker 8: And then there's the issue of the crime scene or
Speaker 8: the supposed crime scene Leo and Michelle's trailer, the place
Speaker 8: where Leo supposedly stabbed Michelle twenty six times, or the
Speaker 8: medical examiner says she would have lost five pints of blood.
Speaker 2: Alice Scott, Leo's neighbor, says she sees Leo bring a
Speaker 2: carpet cleaner inside his trailer the next morning, and she
Speaker 2: sees him cleaning the carpet through his open front door.
Speaker 2: If this is true, Leo must have done a remarkable
Speaker 2: job scrubbing the scene because not a single trace of
Speaker 2: Michelle's blood is found in the trailer. No blood on
Speaker 2: the walls or ceiling, no blood on the carpet or
Speaker 2: seeped into the floorboards. Not one speck of blood was
Speaker 2: found in the kitchen or the bathroom either. One of
Speaker 2: the crime scene technicians testified that the carpet did not
Speaker 2: look clean, and that he found no evidence that it
Speaker 2: was recently cleaned. If it had been, there should have
Speaker 2: been some kind of detergent on the carpet, but there wasn't.
Speaker 8: To address this, Aguero pivots, he suggests that Leo could
Speaker 8: have steamed all the blood out of the carpet using
Speaker 8: water alone. I'm pretty sure this is impossible. Plus, wouldn't
Speaker 8: there be blood in the carpet cleaner. The state never
Speaker 8: mentions any effort to locate the cleaner and test for blood.
Speaker 8: And I find it hard to believe that any crime
Speaker 8: scene technician walked into that trailer and concluded that a
Speaker 8: brutal stabbing took place there. Nine or ten investigators went
Speaker 8: in to search the trailer, but the only thing they
Speaker 8: took out was a three by four inch piece of carpet.
Speaker 8: It had a small stain on it. They tested it
Speaker 8: and said that they couldn't even determine what kind of
Speaker 8: stain it was. Could have been blood, or it could
Speaker 8: have been vodka or rust. They were in there for
Speaker 8: four or five hours and that's all they found.
Speaker 2: And when asked why they didn't remove more of the
Speaker 2: carpeting in the trailer to see if any blood had
Speaker 2: soaked into the padding beneath it, the crime scene technician
Speaker 2: testified they didn't do that because it would have ruined
Speaker 2: the flow. Think about that. The state claims that Michelle
Speaker 2: was stabbed twenty six times in there. They can't find
Speaker 2: any blood, and they're worried about damaging the floor in
Speaker 2: a single wide trailer. When I look at the reports
Speaker 2: and the photos, I'm convinced that detectives and crime scene
Speaker 2: technicians knew what their own eyes were telling them. The
Speaker 2: trailer was not the crime scene.
Speaker 8: And then there's the Mazda. It's found broken down on
Speaker 8: I four, more than six miles away from where Michelle's
Speaker 8: body is discovered.
Speaker 2: Aguero offers no explanation for that. Who was driving and
Speaker 2: where were they going?
Speaker 8: Aguero never presents a theory to answer any of those questions.
Speaker 8: Maybe he could have crafted a more coherent story if
Speaker 8: he wasn't tied to the testimony of Alice Scott, Aguero's
Speaker 8: star witness, the neighborhood busybody. And let's be straight, Alice
Speaker 8: Scott is not a credible witness. Her story changed multiple
Speaker 8: times throughout the investigation and even during the trial.
Speaker 2: And I've always wondered about this. If Alice was the
Speaker 2: type of neighbor to call the cops on kids riding
Speaker 2: bikes on her lawn, why wouldn't she call the police
Speaker 2: the night she heard her neighbor screaming bloody murder? At
Speaker 2: two am, And how is it that none of Leo's
Speaker 2: other neighbors reported hearing anything like that when they were
Speaker 2: questioned by police.
Speaker 8: And then Alice's husband, Ricky Scott, would tell a newspaper
Speaker 8: reporter twenty years after Michelle's death that even he didn't
Speaker 8: believe Alice's story, he says he knew how she twisted
Speaker 8: the truth. Ricky said, quote, she took a little something
Speaker 8: and exaggerated like she always did. And Alice's sister in law,
Speaker 8: Linda Sells, would tell the same reporter that Alice will
Speaker 8: say anything to be the center of attention.
Speaker 2: On top of that, when Alice herself was confronted by
Speaker 2: the reporter on the inconsistencies in her story, like that
Speaker 2: she couldn't see what she said she saw from her
Speaker 2: bathroom window, she changed her story yet again. Twenty years
Speaker 2: after Michelle's death, Alice said that her vantage point from
Speaker 2: the bathroom window wasn't good enough, so she'd walked onto
Speaker 2: her porch to observe the commotion. This is not what
Speaker 2: she said a trial.
Speaker 8: She also told the reporter quote, if Aguero had done
Speaker 8: what he was supposed to and executed Leo Schofield, we
Speaker 8: wouldn't have to be dealing with this mess now.
Speaker 2: For prosecutor John Aguero, defending the state's timeline wasn't going
Speaker 2: to be easy, and he knew it, but destroying Leo's
Speaker 2: alibi defense by challenging Leo's Senior's credibility would be much easier.
Speaker 2: Leo's father and the alleged vision from God that led
Speaker 2: him to Michelle's body three days after she was killed,
Speaker 2: had become the elephant in the courtroom. Aguero argued that
Speaker 2: Leo Senior knew exactly where the body was, and since
Speaker 2: he couldn't call God as a witness, he just let
Speaker 2: Leo Senior's premonition hang in the courthouse air for the
Speaker 2: jury to ponder. John Aguero was stuck on Leo Senior's premonition.
Speaker 14: John was very a very straightforward man.
Speaker 2: Officer Richard Kachadourian of the Lakeland Police Department was on
Speaker 2: duty when Leo and his father first went down to
Speaker 2: the station to report Michelle missing. He also heard first
Speaker 2: hand of Leo Senior's premonition when he called to offer
Speaker 2: his condolences to the family. Katchadorian remembers that even after
Speaker 2: the trial ended, John Aguero was still focused heavily on
Speaker 2: Leo Senior.
Speaker 14: Every time I went to State Attorney's office, would mee
Speaker 14: end of the hall a little bit, and John would
Speaker 14: be at the desk and his classes on, and I
Speaker 14: stick my head in and John, how you do anything new?
Speaker 14: And we chitchat for a minute, and he told me, said,
Speaker 14: mister Schofield, dodge the bullet on this one, because he
Speaker 14: felt mister Schofield was involved in this, at least in
Speaker 14: the disposal of the body. He told me a number
Speaker 14: of times, Richard, when I get the time, I'm going
Speaker 14: to go back into an historical case and put him
Speaker 14: in jail.
Speaker 2: The narrative about Leo Senior and his strange vision rippled
Speaker 2: through the press and the community. It's often the first
Speaker 2: thing people mention when we asked them about the Schofield case.
Speaker 15: The whole thing has struck me really about this case
Speaker 15: was the father.
Speaker 2: This is Joe Zarbo. He was working at the Polk
Speaker 2: County Sheriff's office in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 15: Obviously he's involved in it. Somehow.
Speaker 2: Joe was at the crime scene that day Michelle's body
Speaker 2: was found. Not long after Michelle's murder, he left his
Speaker 2: job as a deputy and became a private investigator. In
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two, while Leo was trying to get his
Speaker 2: case looked at again, Joe's Arbo was brought in to
Speaker 2: re examine Leo's case, and one of his first steps
Speaker 2: was to interview Leo in prison.
Speaker 15: I know that one time during the interview, I believe
Speaker 15: he was he started to cry a little bit and
Speaker 15: he asked me, he said, do you believe me? And
Speaker 15: I told him, I said, it doesn't make any difference
Speaker 15: whether I believe or not. I don't know if he
Speaker 15: did it or not. Leo, I said, I can't prove it.
Speaker 15: I'm not here trying to get Leo off. I'm just
Speaker 15: looking at the whole thing all over again, you know,
Speaker 15: as a fresh set of eyes.
Speaker 2: But Joe's Arbo also couldn't shake Leo Senior's premonition from.
Speaker 15: What he said, God told me where she was. I mean,
Speaker 15: it was just weird.
Speaker 2: Especially weird was where he found the body.
Speaker 15: It was well off the road a little bit, you know,
Speaker 15: at that time. I can remember there was a lot
Speaker 15: of heavy brush, you know, between the roadway and where
Speaker 15: she was found. It's not something that you're to be
Speaker 15: walking down the street and look over and see a
Speaker 15: body laying there. Okay, have you gone out there crime
Speaker 15: scene or where it was?
Speaker 2: And these are definitely not the same fuck pos, But
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, we'd been there.
Speaker 5: If you were to count those poles off, just I counted.
Speaker 2: It was one of the first places Kelsey and I
Speaker 2: went to in Lakeland. We brought along the police reports
Speaker 2: with all the distances measured out. It was one of
Speaker 2: those sweltering afternoons in Polk County when you get out
Speaker 2: of the air conditioned car and you're blasted by the
Speaker 2: heat and humidity of the Florida summer. Kelsey and I
Speaker 2: are walking along State Road thirty three trying to locate
Speaker 2: the exact spot where Leo's senior found Michelle's body.
Speaker 4: Did you see any water?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 10: There it is.
Speaker 1: It isn't hard to find, Okay, so that's got to
Speaker 1: be that's got to be the body of water. I've
Speaker 1: heard it described as a fishing pit, spate mining pit,
Speaker 1: whatever it is.
Speaker 2: That's definitely the water. And it's exactly one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen feet from State.
Speaker 1: Road thirty three, So I guess in there is where
Speaker 1: Michelle's body would have been found back in nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible place to end up.
Speaker 2: We've talked to a lot of people about this place
Speaker 2: and it comes up constantly. In the trial testimony, the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: John Aguero goes to great lengths to paint a picture
Speaker 2: of how remote the location is. But if you look
Speaker 2: at the aerial photos taken on the day Michelle was found,
Speaker 2: it's not as off the beaten path as the state
Speaker 2: makes it seem. In the photos, you see a long,
Speaker 2: narrow body of water that runs parallel to State Road
Speaker 2: thirty three. It can't be seen from the road because
Speaker 2: of the tree line and the thick palmetto bush is
Speaker 2: guarding it. There's a dirt path as wide as a
Speaker 2: driveway that cuts from the road and leads right to
Speaker 2: the edge of the canal. The dirt road opens into
Speaker 2: a clearing behind the tree.
Speaker 8: Line, right by the place you pull off. There's a
Speaker 8: sign there that says no dumping of rubbish. You can
Speaker 8: see it in the photos. I mean they tied the
Speaker 8: crime scene tape to that sign.
Speaker 2: There's garbage everywhere, empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, old tires,
Speaker 2: plastic tarps, and in the photos shown at trial, there
Speaker 2: are tire tracks and footprints in the soil right next
Speaker 2: to Michelle's bloodstains. When Jack Edmund asked one of the
Speaker 2: crime scene technicians why no one bothered to analyze the
Speaker 2: tire tracks or footprints, he was told there were just
Speaker 2: too many. It would have taken too long. Even Aguero
Speaker 2: has to pivot in his closing argument from the description
Speaker 2: of this place as remote and hard to find. He
Speaker 2: admits that, yes, the location where Michelle's body was found
Speaker 2: is both a lover's lie for teenagers as well as
Speaker 2: a fishing spot.
Speaker 8: There's just multiple stories told about this one little location,
Speaker 8: and I think there's some validity on both sides. But
Speaker 8: it's definitely like a place that people would go, like,
Speaker 8: people would go back there and fish there was like, yeah,
Speaker 8: there was trash back there.
Speaker 2: If you believe the defense, it makes perfect sense that
Speaker 2: Leo Senior would look there. When Leo, his dad, and
Speaker 2: Michelle's friends and family went searching for her, they were methodical,
Speaker 2: working backwards from where the MASDA was found on I four,
Speaker 2: heading towards Sparky's gas station. They were all searching in
Speaker 2: ditches off the side of the road. It seems like
Speaker 2: any member of the search party could have found her,
Speaker 2: but all that was lost on the jury. The second
Speaker 2: Leo Senior told his own story about his vision from God.
Speaker 2: I looked into this phenomenon people saying that God led
Speaker 2: them to finding a dead body. It turns out this
Speaker 2: kind of thing isn't uncommon. There are plenty of reports
Speaker 2: from homicide cases where witnesses claim that a higher power
Speaker 2: led them to the discovery of important evidence or even
Speaker 2: a body. I think these visions are similar to the
Speaker 2: stories you hear from people who just miss a flight
Speaker 2: that crashes, killing everyone on board. How can you not
Speaker 2: attribute some kind of divine intervention to such a traumatic event. Still,
Speaker 2: telling people that God led him to that spot does
Speaker 2: sound weird. There's no denying that. And so the suspicion
Speaker 2: around Leo Senior's vision or premonition was its own gift
Speaker 2: from God to the prosecutor. It made up the bulk
Speaker 2: of Aguero's closing argument, and all the innuendo around Leo's
Speaker 2: father was a devastating blow to Leo's case. And there
Speaker 2: was one other thing Joe's Arbo was left wondering about.
Speaker 15: There was something that keeps popping into my head that
Speaker 15: Leo's father made a move on Michelle. Did you ever
Speaker 15: hear anything like that?
Speaker 2: No, we didn't, But there is something disturbing in Leo
Speaker 2: Senior's past. In April nineteen eighty seven, a couple months
Speaker 2: after Michelle was murdered, Leo Senior was arrested and charged
Speaker 2: with sexually abusing a minor in Rhode Island. And this
Speaker 2: behavior it wasn't a one time thing. This is a
Speaker 2: pattern with Leo's father. He's serving a prison sentence in
Speaker 2: Idaho for a similar charge. I think this is one
Speaker 2: of the reasons Aguero was so fixated on Leo Senior.
Speaker 2: John Aguero began his career prosecuting child abuse cases, and
Speaker 2: he'd seen a lot of them. He knew the type. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: in Aguero's mind, Leo Senior was such a bad guy,
Speaker 2: he just had to have been involved in Michelle's murder too.
Speaker 2: It even came up a trial during a bench conference
Speaker 2: because of Leo Senior's arrest in nineteen eighty seven. Aguero
Speaker 2: was aware of the charges, but he was reminded by
Speaker 2: the judge that he was prohibited from bringing it up
Speaker 2: before the jury. Leo Senior's history of sexual abuse while
Speaker 2: devastating is not evidence that he committed murder or helped
Speaker 2: dispose of the body, and it certainly is an evidence
Speaker 2: that Leo had anything to do with Michelle's death. It's
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three. Leo's now been in prison for four years.
Speaker 2: He's trying to make the most of his time there,
Speaker 2: so he gets his ged and he's thinking about enrolling
Speaker 2: in paralegal courses through the University of Florida. He's also
Speaker 2: started working as a teaching aid for a life skills
Speaker 2: class where inmates learn communication skills, resume writing, and how
Speaker 2: to balance a checkbook. Really, Leo is running the class
Speaker 2: while the teacher supervises. One day, Leo learns that his
Speaker 2: supervising teacher has moved on and the prison is bringing
Speaker 2: in someone new to run the program. Leo shows up
Speaker 2: to work. He has a little office in the prison
Speaker 2: and he gets a call from the guy who runs
Speaker 2: the education program.
Speaker 16: He called on the intercoms in my computer. He says, Schofield,
Speaker 16: please start at my office.
Speaker 2: He's about to be introduced to the new life skills teacher.
Speaker 2: Leo says that most of the teachers hired by the
Speaker 2: prison system are retirees, so he was expecting a seventy
Speaker 2: five year old lady. When he makes it to the
Speaker 2: education program office, the guy who runs the program points
Speaker 2: Leo to the new teacher, so.
Speaker 11: The head of education assigned him to be my aide.
Speaker 2: This is Chrissy Carter. She's a social worker and the
Speaker 2: new life Skills teacher.
Speaker 16: And I saw Chrissy for the first time, and because
Speaker 16: she was thirty one years old, and she was absolutely stunning.
Speaker 2: She's tall, blonde, and she's no old lady.
Speaker 11: The next time I saw him actually came into a class.
Speaker 11: There was another teacher there giving a test. Leo was
Speaker 11: there helping that teacher organize the test. So he and
Speaker 11: I sat at the front and started talking, and I
Speaker 11: liked him, and we had stuff to talk about that
Speaker 11: was interesting, and the two hours just kind of flew by.
Speaker 11: He's pretty funny, very sincere. He seemed different, you know,
Speaker 11: And one of the things I'd never do is ask
Speaker 11: at eBay why they're in or what's going on with that.
Speaker 11: But somehow the topic of his case came up.
Speaker 2: Leo tells her he's been convicted of killing his wife, Michelle,
Speaker 2: but that he's an innocent man.
Speaker 16: In the chain gang inmates will play games with girls
Speaker 16: and they'll say they're getting out in such and such
Speaker 16: a time, and then in that time comes up, they're.
Speaker 11: Not getting out.
Speaker 16: They'll make up some story. And I was not going
Speaker 16: to do that with her. I'd already lost my life
Speaker 16: and wasn't in a mood for a game, and I
Speaker 16: was very broken, and so I just laid it all
Speaker 16: on the line for you know, everything that was happening,
Speaker 16: and I told her this is the hill that I
Speaker 16: have to climb.
Speaker 11: I was like, Okay, what is this all about.
Speaker 2: Chrissy wants to believe him, and she likes him. She
Speaker 2: watches him teach the class, and they continue to get
Speaker 2: to know each other. At the same time, Leo was
Speaker 2: also getting ready to go back to court. Those first
Speaker 2: few years in prison, he'd had plenty of time to
Speaker 2: think about his case and what went wrong. He began
Speaker 2: spending time in the prison library learning about possible next
Speaker 2: steps in the legal system for someone who claims to
Speaker 2: be wrongfully convicted. He started researching the appeals process, and
Speaker 2: he came to the realization that his defense attorney, Jack Edmund,
Speaker 2: made a number of crucial mistakes at trial. So Leo
Speaker 2: starts to write up his own legal brief. It claims
Speaker 2: that Jack Edmund had provided ineffective assistance of counsel during
Speaker 2: the trial. Basically, he didn't do his job properly and
Speaker 2: as a result, Leo's conviction should be thrown out. The
Speaker 2: court grants Leo adhering to argue his case. He tells
Speaker 2: Chrissy and she decides to attend. Leo is given a
Speaker 2: court appointed lawyer to help prepare the argument. Together, they
Speaker 2: point to twelve mistakes that Jack Edmund made in Leo's defense.
Speaker 2: Here are the three most crucial mistakes. First, Edmund didn't
Speaker 2: meet with Leo until the night before his trial began,
Speaker 2: know the witnesses the evidence Leo's timeline, and Leo didn't
Speaker 2: learn about the evidence the state had against him until
Speaker 2: the trial began. He had no idea what was coming. Second,
Speaker 2: Edmond failed to object to the twenty one witnesses the
Speaker 2: prosecution called to testify about Leo's character. These witnesses, again
Speaker 2: twenty one in total, gave testimony that had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with evidence that could prove whether or not Leo
Speaker 2: committed the murder. Instead, they testified that Leo was someone
Speaker 2: who had a temper it should never have been allowed
Speaker 2: to open the state's case. Courts have decided this kind
Speaker 2: of testimony is deeply prejudicial to juries. There is one
Speaker 2: exception to this rule. Judges may allow testimony of prior
Speaker 2: bad acts when they occur between a defendant and the victim.
Speaker 2: So testimony about Leo hitting Michelle or dragging her by
Speaker 2: the hair that could have been admissible, But the prosecutor,
Speaker 2: John Aguero, was supposed to file something called a notice
Speaker 2: of intent so the judge could review the testimony and
Speaker 2: decide whether or not it should be allowed. In Leo's case,
Speaker 2: John Aguero never did that. He introduced the testimony anyway,
Speaker 2: and Jack Edmond failed to object, and finally Edmond failed
Speaker 2: by not calling Michelle's aunt Kathy to the stand. There
Speaker 2: were a number of important witnesses Edmund should have called
Speaker 2: but didn't, Leo and Michelle's landlord, who could have refuted
Speaker 2: the carpet cleaner testimony, and hospital and sheriff dispatchers who
Speaker 2: could have corroborated Leo's efforts to find his wife. But
Speaker 2: none of these witnesses were as important to Leo's case
Speaker 2: as Michelle's aunt Cathy. She'd been on the receiving end
Speaker 2: of a call Leo made to Michelle's grandmother. This call
Speaker 2: was crucial, not because of what was said, but because
Speaker 2: of when it took place too. That's the time Leo
Speaker 2: told Detective Weeks he made the call, and that's the
Speaker 2: time Aunt Cathy said she spoke to Leo. Detective Weeks
Speaker 2: confirmed this and it's documented in his report. This is
Speaker 2: critical because two am is also the time Alice Scott
Speaker 2: told police she heard screaming from Leo and Michelle's trailer,
Speaker 2: but Leo did not have a telephone in his trailer,
Speaker 2: so he couldn't have made the call from there. Leo
Speaker 2: claims he was at his parents' house all the way
Speaker 2: across town when he made that call. This phone call
Speaker 2: could have been a major piece of evidence corroborating Leo's alibi.
Speaker 2: All these points against Edmund are presented at the hearing.
Speaker 2: Jack Edmund even testifies and he admits that he didn't
Speaker 2: understand all the rules of evidence, so he falls on
Speaker 2: his sword and admits to the court that he failed
Speaker 2: to effectively represent Leo Schofield at trial.
Speaker 12: But none of it matters.
Speaker 2: Leo's motion is denied, and I believe.
Speaker 16: Awe that I'm convicted because they didn't like who I was.
Speaker 16: I don't believe anybody on that jury really believes I'm
Speaker 16: the harder. He didn't show any evidence of that. They
Speaker 16: believe that I was such a bad guy it didn't matter.
Speaker 2: After the hearing, Leo is handcuffed and transported back to prison,
Speaker 2: and Chrissy approaches Leo's attorney, Bob Doyle. She asks if
Speaker 2: she can speak to him privately.
Speaker 11: So we went to a little coffee shop and I
Speaker 11: was telling him, you know, here for Leo and interested
Speaker 11: in his case and looking at it, and you know,
Speaker 11: I told him that I was, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Like this guy.
Speaker 2: Chrissy tells this to Leo's lawyer, Bob Doyle because she's
Speaker 2: hoping he'll lead her in the right direction, even if
Speaker 2: that means she should run away from Leo as fast
Speaker 2: as she can. But instead, Doyle tells her.
Speaker 11: This, don't believe them, because you want to look at
Speaker 11: the case.
Speaker 2: Chrissy leaves the coffee shop, goes back to the Polk
Speaker 2: County Courthouse and walks into the clerk's office. She asks
Speaker 2: to see the files on Leo's case.
Speaker 11: I just started looking and asking and looking and asking
Speaker 11: some more.
Speaker 2: As Chrissy starts digging and asking questions, she starts seeing
Speaker 2: all the discrepancies. She was especially hung up on the
Speaker 2: state's timeline. How is it possible for Leo to be
Speaker 2: accounted for by friends, family, and deputies on the night
Speaker 2: Michelle had gone missing and still slip away to murder
Speaker 2: his wife, dispose of the body, and clean up a
Speaker 2: crime scene.
Speaker 11: Well, when you start looking at the case and you
Speaker 11: start putting the pieces together, nothing is adding up.
Speaker 2: She reads the trial transcripts, then she begins digging into
Speaker 2: the sheriff's reports and the files from the state attorney's office. Obviously,
Speaker 2: she has questions about Leo and Michelle's relationship, so she'd
Speaker 2: visit the prison to ask Leo about the case and
Speaker 2: about Michelle.
Speaker 11: No question was off limits, nothing was too difficult for
Speaker 11: him to share. Well, it might have been difficult, but
Speaker 11: he was willing.
Speaker 2: After talking to Leo, she'd go back to the clerk's
Speaker 2: office to do more research. Then back she'd go to
Speaker 2: run more questions by Leo.
Speaker 11: And his answer would always confirm that that was impossible
Speaker 11: for those things that have happened, or clarify that maybe
Speaker 11: I didn't understand right.
Speaker 2: She kept doing this for months, going back and forth
Speaker 2: between the court files and visiting Leo at the prison.
Speaker 2: After a while, Chrissy became certain that Leo couldn't have
Speaker 2: done this. But not only that, she realizes she's developing
Speaker 2: feelings for Leo.
Speaker 11: We got along really well, you know, it seemed like
Speaker 11: we were kind of liking each other a little bit.
Speaker 11: But he's in prison, you know, so the relationship ship,
Speaker 11: the dating thing was like a little awkward. In addition
Speaker 11: to the obvious, you know, physical restrictions and living your
Speaker 11: life in a fish pool. Every kiss, every hug, everything
Speaker 11: we say, everything has been under someone's watch. There's no
Speaker 11: hiding when you're in a relationship with someone in prison.
Speaker 11: We decided about four years into the relationship that we
Speaker 11: were going to do this forever, prison or no prison.
Speaker 11: We were doing it. So we had to do an
Speaker 11: application to get married in prison. I had to write
Speaker 11: a letter about why I wanted to marry him, you know,
Speaker 11: dear sir, I want to marr him because I love him,
Speaker 11: you know, sincerely. So we picked a date and my
Speaker 11: friend and I went shopping and I picked out a
Speaker 11: dress and went to the prison chaplain and walked in
Speaker 11: my dress that we'd picked out and we got married.
Speaker 7: There you go.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Chrissy did not choose a simple life. She's struggling
Speaker 2: to explain this choice. But at the same time, she
Speaker 2: didn't want to hide who she was, and so she
Speaker 2: called her friends to tell them about this man that
Speaker 2: she had married. One of them was her work friend,
Speaker 2: Cinda Williams.
Speaker 7: Actually, I handled all of the crimes against children cases
Speaker 7: that came to our Sheriff's office, and that's how I
Speaker 7: met Chrissy.
Speaker 2: Cinda was an investigator in Henry County when she first
Speaker 2: met Chrissy. Chrissy was the social worker Cinda worked with
Speaker 2: on child abuse cases. Then their career paths diverged. Sinda
Speaker 2: went to work for the State Attorney's office in Palm
Speaker 2: Beach County, almost two hours east of Henry, but they
Speaker 2: kept in touch and then one day Cinda gets this
Speaker 2: call from Chrissy.
Speaker 7: And she said, listen, I need to talk to you.
Speaker 7: And I'm like, sure, what, And I figured it was
Speaker 7: about a case and she said I've met somebody and
Speaker 7: I'm like, well, that's great, Chrissy, who is it? And
Speaker 7: she goes, well, his name is Leo, and I said okay,
Speaker 7: and she said, and he's incarcerated at the Henry County
Speaker 7: Correctional Facility.
Speaker 2: And I'm like.
Speaker 15: What.
Speaker 7: And then I said, well, why is he you know,
Speaker 7: why is he in prison? And she said, well, he's
Speaker 7: accused of murdering his wife. And I was like stunned,
Speaker 7: and I said, you know, what are you doing? That's
Speaker 7: you know, kind of nuts. I said, you know, you
Speaker 7: have so much going for you. You're smart, you're you're
Speaker 7: you know, going forward in your career. Why would you
Speaker 7: do something like that? And she said, well, because I
Speaker 7: believe he's innocent. And I thought to myself, a lot
Speaker 7: of people say these things all the time, and so
Speaker 7: I was just kind of thrown by it. Because she
Speaker 7: believed so strongly that he was innocent. I think that
Speaker 7: she wanted me, as her friend, to validate.
Speaker 2: That, but Cinda wasn't going to be able to do that.
Speaker 7: I told her, point blank, Chrissy, I cannot help you
Speaker 7: with this. It puts me in a terrible position.
Speaker 2: Remember, Senda's a cop. She has to think about her career.
Speaker 2: She can't be helping out a friend whose partner is
Speaker 2: in prison.
Speaker 7: Quite frankly didn't know what to say, and there wasn't
Speaker 7: anything that I could do because Leo had been he
Speaker 7: had had a trial, and he had been convicted, and
Speaker 7: he had been sentenced to prison, and there was no
Speaker 7: way that I could have gotten involved in that.
Speaker 11: At that point, when she knew I was involved with
Speaker 11: someone in prison, she cut ties with me. For her,
Speaker 11: that was a big no no. She wanted her reputation
Speaker 11: and her experience and to not have any cloud around her,
Speaker 11: and she told me at the time that's why she
Speaker 11: was doing It was very, very painful.
Speaker 7: I was worried about her across the board.
Speaker 6: Did it seem out of character for her?
Speaker 7: Yes, even though I think Christy is very caring and
Speaker 7: very accepting of things, I kind of thought that that
Speaker 7: she was being sucked in.
Speaker 11: That's how I felt.
Speaker 2: Sinda tries to keep her distance, but Chrissie keeps giving
Speaker 2: her updates a new thing that she's learning about Leo's case, And.
Speaker 7: Every time I spoke to her, I always thought she's
Speaker 7: gonna tell me, Okay, I can't do this anymore, and
Speaker 7: you know this is not working out, and I'm just gonna,
Speaker 7: you know, forget about it.
Speaker 15: But she never did.
Speaker 2: By this point, Chrissy is completely obsessed with Leo's case.
Speaker 2: She does everything she can to investigate it on her own,
Speaker 2: and then she reads something in the reports. She sees
Speaker 2: that there's evidence that can be analyzed for possible DNA.
Speaker 11: Trying to get the DNA tested took three years, hearings
Speaker 11: and hearings and hearings. I think three thousand dollars that
Speaker 11: I had to pay for by myself. I'm a social worker,
Speaker 11: you know. My salary was social work salary.
Speaker 2: She's finally able to get Michelle's fingernail scrapings tested, but
Speaker 2: it's been too long. The samples have degraded so they
Speaker 2: couldn't draw any conclusive information from them. But there are
Speaker 2: also hairs that were found at the crime scene. Maybe
Speaker 2: one of them belongs to the murderer. She tries to
Speaker 2: get those tested too, but the.
Speaker 11: State attorney, Johnny Guerrero, when we were in this process,
Speaker 11: he had the hair.
Speaker 15: Destroyed, so it was in the process.
Speaker 11: In the process, the hair of samples that we wanted
Speaker 11: to test were destroyed.
Speaker 2: This is heartbreaking and infuriating to Chrissy. Why would they
Speaker 2: destroy evidence? The state attorney says, it's just a routine disposal.
Speaker 2: But to Chrissy, it feels like the state is intentionally
Speaker 2: putting up roadblocks to stop Leo from getting a new trial.
Speaker 2: She doesn't give up. There's one more piece of physical
Speaker 2: evidence that she can't stop thinking about.
Speaker 11: Always always. The fingerprints was a big question in my mind,
Speaker 11: because there's fingerprints in the car.
Speaker 2: Those fingerprints were never identified. Investigators just knew they didn't
Speaker 2: belong to anyone whose prints should have been in the car.
Speaker 2: They didn't match Leo or Michelle. The Prince also didn't
Speaker 2: belong to Leo's father. In fact, no one else's fingerprints
Speaker 2: were found in the Mazda.
Speaker 11: This whose fingerprints are they?
Speaker 7: I don't know. Nobody know.
Speaker 11: Nobody can answer, Well, they have to be somebody's fingerprints.
Speaker 11: So is it the tow truck driver or is it
Speaker 11: a mechanic or is it a random person? Or It
Speaker 11: was always bothered me. Obviously somebody was in the car,
Speaker 11: somebody knew something.
Speaker 1: Who was it?
Speaker 4: What do they know?
Speaker 2: So Chrissy keeps working at it, intent on trying to
Speaker 2: figure out this piece of the mystery. At the same time, Cinda,
Speaker 2: Chrissy's cop friend, is working hard in her new job
Speaker 2: as an investigator for the State Attorney's office in Palm
Speaker 2: Beach County. Cinda had come from a small sheriff's office
Speaker 2: in a rural county to Palm Beach County, which is
Speaker 2: a larger, more metropolitan area, and there she meets a
Speaker 2: young prosecutor. His name is Scott Cup. You might recognize
Speaker 2: that name. He's now Judge Scott Cup, who first tipped
Speaker 2: me to Leo Schofield's case by handing me a business card.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about what Scott was like as a
Speaker 2: young prosecutor, you know, what kind of person he was
Speaker 2: at that time in his life.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well, let's see, he was aggressive.
Speaker 2: I think aggressive is a word that I don't really
Speaker 2: see him as that aggressive today, But back then he
Speaker 2: was a prosecutor.
Speaker 7: Yes, he was a prosecutor. And I, well, I can
Speaker 7: give you an example. I remember the first time that
Speaker 7: he came down to my office and they had these
Speaker 7: big glass windows that looked out over the courthouse, and
Speaker 7: he looked at me and he said, I want you
Speaker 7: to look outside. And I didn't know it, you know,
Speaker 7: was wrong with him, but I'm like, okay, So I
Speaker 7: looked outside and he says to me, do you see
Speaker 7: any orange Groves and I'm like no, and he's like, well,
Speaker 7: do you see any like horse and buggies out there?
Speaker 7: And I'm like no, and he goes, well, welcome to
Speaker 7: the big city. So I'm like thinking to myself, what
Speaker 7: a jerk that. Ultimately, you know, I worked with him
Speaker 7: on many many cases and we eventually started seeing each
Speaker 7: other and then eventually we married.
Speaker 2: Not too long after that, Cinda and Scott Cupp moved
Speaker 2: back to Hendry County. Sinda takes a job as captain
Speaker 2: with the Sheriff's office. Cup takes off his prosecutor's hat
Speaker 2: and sets up his defense practice in the tiny city
Speaker 2: of LaBelle, Florida. Chrissy is also still in Henry County
Speaker 2: doing social work. One day, she goes to visit one
Speaker 2: of her clients who's being held in the county jail.
Speaker 11: One day, I was going into the jail and there
Speaker 11: was an attorney next to me. We're both going through
Speaker 11: the door at the same time. They have to buzz
Speaker 11: you in, and when we got to the desk, we
Speaker 11: both said we were there for the same person. So
Speaker 11: we kind of looked at each other and he's like, oh,
Speaker 11: that's my client. He introduced himself. It was Scott Cup.
Speaker 12: We met, I, you know, seemed to me bright, pretty intelligent.
Speaker 12: I had no idea that Chrissy Carter was Chrissy Schofield
Speaker 12: at that time. She didn't she didn't lead with that.
Speaker 2: Cup was the defense attorney. Chrissy was the social worker
Speaker 2: working with the same client. They talk a bit about
Speaker 2: their client and then both of them leave the jail
Speaker 2: and go home for the day.
Speaker 11: Apparently he told his wife that he met the social
Speaker 11: worker for the same client and told her my name,
Speaker 11: and she, from what he told me, cried and he's like,
Speaker 11: what what just happened? He said, that's my friend Chrissy.
Speaker 11: So that's how we all reconnected.
Speaker 2: Become friendly, Chrissy, Cinda, and Sinda's husband, Scott Cup. And
Speaker 2: it's not long before Chrissy starts sharing again about Leo,
Speaker 2: and that's how Scott Cupp finds out that Chrissy is
Speaker 2: married to a man convicted of murdering his wife.
Speaker 12: And I just like kind of threw my hands up
Speaker 12: and got oh my god. I had no idea she was.
Speaker 2: A whack job, and so she was trying to involved
Speaker 2: in this case.
Speaker 12: Right, which I didn't. I several times said no, no, no, no,
Speaker 12: no no. I just thought this was the typical guy
Speaker 12: getting over on somebody who they met through the prison system,
Speaker 12: convincing them for whatever reason, to marry them so they
Speaker 12: can tool them, whether it's for money, or maybe get
Speaker 12: them some representation to see if they can file something
Speaker 12: on some quote unquote technicality.
Speaker 2: And I want to know part of that. But Chrissy
Speaker 2: is relentless. She's begging Sinda to tell Scott to just
Speaker 2: look at Leo's trial transcript.
Speaker 7: I didn't push it and say, oh, well, she's my friend.
Speaker 7: I said, you know, you talk to her, maybe you
Speaker 7: can give her some advice and steer her in a
Speaker 7: direction that you know she needs to go legally.
Speaker 12: And then, and I'm not proud of this, but uh,
Speaker 12: kind of coldly, I said, Okay, here's the deal. I'll
Speaker 12: do it, but she's going to pay me, and she's
Speaker 12: my client. I'm not representing her husband. Okay, I'm not
Speaker 12: going into the prison to talk to this guy. I
Speaker 12: don't know what the hell's going on, but just to
Speaker 12: make this go away, I will review the transcript and
Speaker 12: I'll explain to her why her quote unquote husband is
Speaker 12: in prison for murder. And I thought that would be
Speaker 12: the end of it. I just wanted this to stop
Speaker 12: and just leave me alone about this, And quite frankly,
Speaker 12: I may have said, and I don't want her coming
Speaker 12: over here anymore.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 2: So Chrissy shows up at Scott Cup's office in LaBelle
Speaker 2: one day with six binders and two thousand plus pages
Speaker 2: of trial transcripts. She leaves them on his desk, and
Speaker 2: later that afternoon he stays true to his word and
Speaker 2: starts reading and reading into the night. The former prosecutor
Speaker 2: is transfixed.
Speaker 12: And I got to the end of the States case
Speaker 12: and closed up binder and just sat there, and I
Speaker 12: think I maybe even outset. Holy shit, this guy didn't
Speaker 12: do it. He couldn't have done it.
Speaker 2: All the overwhelming evidence of Leo's guilt that he expected
Speaker 2: to find in the transcript, it just isn't there. And
Speaker 2: as an experienced prosecutor, he knows it when he sees it.
Speaker 2: Cupp hadn't even read as far as the defense's case,
Speaker 2: and it was already obvious to him that Leo Schofield
Speaker 2: was wrongly convicted. He finishes the transcript and he's even
Speaker 2: more convinced that Leo is an innocent man, and now
Speaker 2: the aggressive prosecutor turned defense attorney is invested. He starts
Speaker 2: poking around to see if there's any physical evidence recovered
Speaker 2: from the original investigation of Michelle's murder. He's not interested
Speaker 2: in any of that bad character evidence or premonition stuff.
Speaker 2: He wants actual forensic evidence, of course, with DNA evidence destroyed.
Speaker 2: He learns what Chrissy has been stuck on for the
Speaker 2: past decade.
Speaker 12: There was a few prints that were found inside the
Speaker 12: vehicle that went unidentified at the time.
Speaker 2: He doesn't understand why detectives didn't do more with the prince.
Speaker 12: Why not expand out? Let's brainstorm, who's got connects to
Speaker 12: that area?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 12: Who are our guys that we know could be, as
Speaker 12: they say on TV, good for this? Why didn't they
Speaker 12: do that? Why wasn't that done?
Speaker 2: Scott Cupp calls up to Tallahassee to the Florida Department
Speaker 2: of Law Enforcement to see if they still have a
Speaker 2: copy of the fingerprints on file. They do, and they
Speaker 2: send him a copy on an index card. Then Cup
Speaker 2: has to decide what to do next.
Speaker 12: At that point, I really didn't know. I like to
Speaker 12: ruminate on things and try to figure out what's the
Speaker 12: best way to go forward.
Speaker 2: Well, he doesn't really get the time to think about
Speaker 2: it because he gives Chrissy the card and Chrissy kind
Speaker 2: of goes behind Scott's back and meets up with Cinda,
Speaker 2: who's now a police captain in Henry County.
Speaker 7: I remember Chrissy wanting to talk to me and coming
Speaker 7: to me and telling me that she had a fingerprint
Speaker 7: and that nobody ran it, and I'm.
Speaker 11: Like, please, please, please figure out a way.
Speaker 7: Chrissy's pretty tenacious, you know. Chrissie's like a dog with
Speaker 7: a bone. She has a cause and she follows through.
Speaker 7: So she handed it to me and she goes here
Speaker 7: it is. And I kind of laughed at her and
Speaker 7: I said, what are you doing with this? And she said,
Speaker 7: could you just see if this print comes back to anybody?
Speaker 7: And I thought to myself, well, apparently it doesn't, because
Speaker 7: nobody's pursued this.
Speaker 11: I didn't know how she was going to do it.
Speaker 11: I was just begging her, begging her, begging her, and
Speaker 11: she said, I'll look into it.
Speaker 7: I said, oh, right, give it to me.
Speaker 13: I did that.
Speaker 7: Probably because at that point I thought, if Chrissy doesn't
Speaker 7: leave me, alone. This is gonna finally make her shut up.
Speaker 7: And so I took the fingerprint and I handed it
Speaker 7: to one of my crime scene detectives and I said
Speaker 7: to him, is there any way that you can find
Speaker 7: out by running this through the database if this comes
Speaker 7: back to anyone? And he said sure, And if you
Speaker 7: want me to be perfectly honest, I thought it was
Speaker 7: going to come back as nothing. Not that I wanted
Speaker 7: it to, but I thought that it would be something
Speaker 7: that was already done and this was just another dead
Speaker 7: end avenue. And again I thought that she was grasping
Speaker 7: at straws.
Speaker 13: But he.
Speaker 7: Came back to me three days later and he said,
Speaker 7: there's a hit. And I'm like, really, all right, who
Speaker 7: does it come back to? And he said, a guy
Speaker 7: named Jeremy Scott, Jerry Scott.
Speaker 2: Who the fucks Jeremy Scott?
Speaker 7: Holy shit.
Speaker 2: Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 2: in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive producers
Speaker 2: are Jason Flahm and Kevin Wordiskak. Kornhaber is our senior producer.
Speaker 2: Britz Spangler is our sound designer. Roxandra Guidy is our editor.
Speaker 2: Fact Checking by Maximo Anderson. Our producer and researcher is
Speaker 2: Kelsey Decker. Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars,
Speaker 2: is performed by Lee Bob and The Truth. It was
Speaker 2: written by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hardy
Speaker 2: Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is written and produced by me
Speaker 2: Gilbert King. You can follow the show on Instagram, Facebook,
Speaker 2: and Twitter at Lava for Good. To see photos and
Speaker 2: documents from our investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content,
Speaker 2: visit Lava for Good dot com slash Bone Valley