Speaker 1: You've been around the system for a long time. Could
Speaker 1: you ever imagine the day where you'd sit at a
Speaker 1: table with a microphone and vouch for a man who.
Speaker 2: Says he's not guilty.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 4: In fact, I've stated many times I'm probably way over
Speaker 4: my skis right now. Technically I'm not supposed to be
Speaker 4: doing this, but it's like if I don't do it,
Speaker 4: who the fuck's gonna do it?
Speaker 5: This is Judge Scott cup. He isn't supposed to make
Speaker 5: any public comments on pending cases at all. Florida's Code
Speaker 5: of Judicial Conduct prohibits it. And yet that's exactly what
Speaker 5: he's doing to me, a writer. This could cost him
Speaker 5: not only a seat on the twentieth Circuit Court, he
Speaker 5: could even be disbarred.
Speaker 3: I can't. I just can't let it go.
Speaker 5: The first time I met Judge Scott Cupp was in
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen, invited to speak at a conference about my book,
Speaker 5: Devil in the Grove. It's a story of four young
Speaker 5: black men in central Florida who were wrongly accused of
Speaker 5: raping a white woman in nineteen forty nine. A young
Speaker 5: Thurgood Marshall represented them at trial. Decades before he became
Speaker 5: the first black justice on the US Supreme Court. I
Speaker 5: spent five years investigating this story, and when Devil in
Speaker 5: the Grove won the Pulitzer Prize in twenty thirteen, it
Speaker 5: brought renewed attention, outrage, and even political action to the case.
Speaker 5: In late twenty twenty one, I was in the courtroom
Speaker 5: when the State of Florida formally dismissed all charges against
Speaker 5: the young men known as the Groveland Four. Their families
Speaker 5: patiently waited for full exonerations, and after seventy two years,
Speaker 5: they finally had justice.
Speaker 6: If you know something that's right, stand up for it.
Speaker 2: The persistent.
Speaker 6: And stand back footed old God's promises. Let him work
Speaker 6: his plate. I don't care if it takes seventy two years,
Speaker 6: it might take eighties. He did it for me, then
Speaker 6: he'd do it for you.
Speaker 5: I talk about Florida's notorious legal history a lot in
Speaker 5: my book, presentations like the one I did for a
Speaker 5: group of judges in Naples, Florida, back in August of
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen. I didn't know him yet, but Judge Cupp
Speaker 5: was in the audience. He'd seen my name Gilbert King
Speaker 5: on the program.
Speaker 3: I actually thought you were a comic.
Speaker 5: He had me confused with the comedian Gilbert Gottfried.
Speaker 4: I glanced at the name and I was like, oh,
Speaker 4: this is But then, for whatever reason, I decided to stay,
Speaker 4: and all the seats in the back for people who
Speaker 4: want to like quietly duck out and not be seen,
Speaker 4: those were taken.
Speaker 3: I remember being.
Speaker 4: Off to the side up in the front, and then
Speaker 4: it quickly became apparent weren't a comic, and your presentation
Speaker 4: was obviously extremely powerful, And all I could think about.
Speaker 3: Was I got to get this guy on Leo.
Speaker 4: And I just pulled my card out and wrote whatever
Speaker 4: I wrote on the back.
Speaker 5: After my talk, I was signing books and the judge
Speaker 5: handed me his business card. On the back, he'd written
Speaker 5: the name Leo Schofield and his Florida Department of Corrections
Speaker 5: number one one five seven six zero. He also wrote
Speaker 5: quote not just wrongfully convicted, He's an innocent man. When
Speaker 5: I turned the card over, I saw the name Judge
Speaker 5: Scott Cupp. He nodded and told me to call him sometime.
Speaker 5: I held onto the card for a few days. I
Speaker 5: was unsure about whether or not to call. I hate
Speaker 5: disappointing people by telling them I can't pursue a story.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, I'd never got on a
Speaker 5: tip from a judge before. So sitting in my office
Speaker 5: in Brooklyn one afternoon, I pick up the phone. It's
Speaker 5: the end of the day, and I'm immediately put through
Speaker 5: to Judge Cup. When I tell him who I am,
Speaker 5: his voice takes on a sense of urgency. He brushes
Speaker 5: off my small talk and gets right into it. He
Speaker 5: starts telling me about Leo's story. How in February nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty seven, when Leo Schofield was twenty one years old,
Speaker 5: his eighteen year old wife, Michelle was killed. Two years later,
Speaker 5: Leo was convicted of her murder. That was over thirty
Speaker 5: years ago. Leo claimed he was innocent from day one,
Speaker 5: and he still maintains his innocence. And here's the other
Speaker 5: thing Judge Cup wanted me to know. Seventeen years after
Speaker 5: Michelle's murder, newly discovered forensic evidence from the crime scene
Speaker 5: pointed to a new suspect, but the State of Florida
Speaker 5: quickly shut down the investiga.
Speaker 4: You or somebody like you is Leo's last shot at
Speaker 4: having any semblance of a life. I not only want
Speaker 4: Leo free, I want the public to accept and believe
Speaker 4: in his innocence and that he was wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 5: I'm definitely intrigued, but I tell the judge I'm working
Speaker 5: on another book that I need to finish. I tell
Speaker 5: him it could be a while before I can start
Speaker 5: looking into the Schofield case. I can feel his disappointment
Speaker 5: through the phone before I hang up, though he has
Speaker 5: a favor. Just read the trial transcripts. Don't take my
Speaker 5: word for it. Read the transcripts.
Speaker 3: Because that's what hooked me and that's what should hook everyone.
Speaker 5: So that's what I do. I sit down in front
Speaker 5: of the computer and start reading trial transcripts that he
Speaker 5: sends me, typed up pages of everything that was said
Speaker 5: in the courtroom during Leo's trial. There are thousands of pages,
Speaker 5: and I can't stop reading. The state's theory of the
Speaker 5: crime makes no sense to me. There's nothing that resembles
Speaker 5: a real search for truth and justice. And even though
Speaker 5: I already know the jury's verdict, I'm still shocked that
Speaker 5: the trial ends with Leo's conviction. I'm also completely hooked.
Speaker 5: I get back to Judge Cup with a ton of questions,
Speaker 5: and his answers only confirm what a shit show this
Speaker 5: case is. I start thinking that maybe I can take
Speaker 5: a short break from writing my book spend some time
Speaker 5: down in Florida doing research for a feature story on
Speaker 5: this case. But the more I looked into it, the
Speaker 5: more obsessed I became. There seemed to be so much
Speaker 5: more to this story, and that short break from my
Speaker 5: book it wasn't so short. I would end up spending
Speaker 5: the next three and a half years of my life
Speaker 5: doing what Judge Cupp was hoping. I'd do a thorough
Speaker 5: investigation into the Leo Schofield case, something that the state
Speaker 5: of Florida never did. So I packed my files, my computer,
Speaker 5: and even my dog Maizy into the car and made
Speaker 5: the long drive south from Brooklyn. I needed to go
Speaker 5: back to central Florida, a place I can never seem
Speaker 5: to get away from. And the whole drive down I
Speaker 5: can't shake what Judge Cup keeps telling me about Leo Schofield.
Speaker 3: This guy is innocent.
Speaker 7: God help us if we can't get this right, do you.
Speaker 2: My man? I have to have my feet.
Speaker 1: Suti sorm in this vast.
Speaker 2: Lamboo rich.
Speaker 6: Desish to the word solding Sun.
Speaker 2: To the word soldings stud the Warm Souling.
Speaker 5: Sun Bone Valley, Chapter one. God help us. There are
Speaker 5: so many stories of wrongful convictions from around the country,
Speaker 5: where innocent people spend decades in prison for crimes they
Speaker 5: are later exonerated for. And there's no other state like
Speaker 5: Florida when it comes to getting it wrong. Since the
Speaker 5: US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 5: Florida has executed ninety nine people, but the state also
Speaker 5: has the highest rate of error in capital cases. Over
Speaker 5: that same period, thirty defendants sentenced to death were found
Speaker 5: to be wrongfully convicted. That means that for every three
Speaker 5: people executed in Florida, one person has been found innocent
Speaker 5: and released from death row. Usually I write stories about
Speaker 5: Florida's brutal history of wrongful convictions from the pre civil
Speaker 5: rights era, so most of the people involved have died
Speaker 5: a long time ago. There's no one to interview, just
Speaker 5: documents and case files to pour over. But this time
Speaker 5: it's different. The people at the heart of this case
Speaker 5: are still alive, and as I was about to find out,
Speaker 5: they were willing to talk. The transcripts and documents could
Speaker 5: show that Leo was wrongfully convicted, but they couldn't reveal
Speaker 5: what truly happened to Michelle Schofield back in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 5: or why the State of Florida would shut down the investigation.
Speaker 5: So I want to talk to Leo. I've interviewed men
Speaker 5: who were in the Klan back in the day, and
Speaker 5: I've spoken to convicted murderers as well as men who
Speaker 5: were exonerated after serving time. But I'd never been to
Speaker 5: a prison before, and I was bringing along a research assistant.
Speaker 5: This was new to her too.
Speaker 8: I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know, like,
Speaker 8: where would we be sitting to talk to this guy?
Speaker 8: Are there going to be guards around? Is he going
Speaker 8: to be handcuffed? Am I going to feel safe? I
Speaker 8: wasn't sure.
Speaker 5: This is Kelsey Decker. I had just hired her to
Speaker 5: help me research my new book before I decided to
Speaker 5: pivot to Leo's case. So Kelsey scanned and read all
Speaker 5: of Leo's legal files, and then she was hooked too.
Speaker 5: Before long, she knew Leo's case even better.
Speaker 9: Than I did.
Speaker 5: But Kelsey was also fresh out of college. She'd never
Speaker 5: done any investigative work before, let alone gone inside of prison.
Speaker 5: To interview a man convicted of murdering his young wife.
Speaker 5: Neither of us knew quite what she was signing up
Speaker 5: for or how long we'd end up working on this
Speaker 5: story together. But in March of twenty nineteen, I asked
Speaker 5: her to fly down to Florida and we made the
Speaker 5: drive to Herty Correctional to meet Leo Schofield.
Speaker 10: Good morning, good morning, How are you good?
Speaker 2: How about yourself?
Speaker 11: Sure? Good?
Speaker 8: We got there. You know, we had to leave phones
Speaker 8: in the car. I think the only thing we brought
Speaker 8: in was the recorder, and we had to bring our
Speaker 8: driver's license like photo IDs.
Speaker 12: In under persis any contrabands such as cellphones, firearms, ammunitions devices.
Speaker 8: Nice Star comic went in there, take off shoes, belts,
Speaker 8: empty pockets, put everything through the scanner, have to walk
Speaker 8: through the body metal detector, get the pat down. I'm
Speaker 8: still not entirely sure why they do this, but they
Speaker 8: have to inspect like the bottom of your feet. So
Speaker 8: we give them our IDs, and they give us these
Speaker 8: little like body alarms and you have to put the
Speaker 8: little loop on that through your belt and have it,
Speaker 8: you know, at your waist, and there's just one button
Speaker 8: on it and it basically, you know, if you are
Speaker 8: in trouble, it sends an alert to the correction officers,
Speaker 8: like what what situation am I gonna find myself in
Speaker 8: where I might need to press this button? I mean,
Speaker 8: I was at absolutely nervous.
Speaker 5: A corrections officer leads us through a series of heavy
Speaker 5: doors until we make it to a little room with
Speaker 5: a round table and a couple of chairs. The officer
Speaker 5: who guides us here leaves the room, and then we
Speaker 5: just sit and wait until they bring Leo in. We're
Speaker 5: in an administrative building and there are officers and staff
Speaker 5: chatting outside in the hallways. You might be able to
Speaker 5: hear them throughout our interviews with Leo.
Speaker 2: Let me thank both of you. If you're dying, you
Speaker 2: don't have that right.
Speaker 8: And you know, close the door and we're in there
Speaker 8: alone with him, and he sat down and thanked us and.
Speaker 9: Gurteous.
Speaker 8: You know, we just got into it.
Speaker 2: Listen, this is the story.
Speaker 9: It is what it is.
Speaker 2: You believe it, don't believe it. It's up to you.
Speaker 12: It will not change the fact that I'm an innocent man,
Speaker 12: and that truth transcends people's disbelief.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't need you to believe me to
Speaker 2: make it true.
Speaker 5: So here's what we learn about Leo. He's a teenager
Speaker 5: in the early nineteen eighties when his family moves from
Speaker 5: Fall River, Massachusetts to Lakeland, a city in Polk County, Florida.
Speaker 3: I know what that's like.
Speaker 5: I moved from New York to central Florida around the
Speaker 5: same time to attend college in Tampa. I used to
Speaker 5: drive from Tampa to Orlando a lot, and I'd go
Speaker 5: through Polk County and it was just that a place
Speaker 5: to pass through real country with farmland, cattle, citrus groves,
Speaker 5: and its biggest city. Lakeland was sort of the poor
Speaker 5: stepchild that sat between Tampa and Orlando. While I was
Speaker 5: driving I for I'd hear radio ads for heavy metal
Speaker 5: concerts at the Lakeland Civic Center. Bands like ac DC,
Speaker 5: Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest played there a lot in
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties. When Leo moves to Polk County, Florida
Speaker 5: from Massachusetts, he has a thick New England accent that
Speaker 5: it immediately sets him apart. This isn't the Florida you
Speaker 5: see on postcards with art deco hotels, pink flamingos, and
Speaker 5: white sand beaches. This is central Florida, and Polk County
Speaker 5: is unmistakably the South.
Speaker 12: And you know, down here they're wearing alligator shirts and
Speaker 12: all the other stuff. And I'm wearing a rock and
Speaker 12: roll shirt, ripped up jeans and the jeane vest. Well
Speaker 12: these oomie pins on it.
Speaker 2: They don't get any of that. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: get any of the cowboy hat stuff.
Speaker 5: He never feels like he fits in, so he drops
Speaker 5: out of school and starts doing odd jobs with his father.
Speaker 5: In nineteen eighty five, he meets a girl named Michelle
Speaker 5: Salm who lives nearby in Lakeland. He's nineteen and she's sixteen.
Speaker 10: Tell me about the first time that he saw Michelle.
Speaker 2: The very first time caught her glass. I'll never forget that.
Speaker 2: She was my best friend's girlfriend.
Speaker 12: My best friend at the time was a kid named
Speaker 12: Manny Tricola, and I was giving him guitar lessons and
Speaker 12: I have him go over in his house and walked
Speaker 12: in his bedroom. The first time I ever saw Michelle,
Speaker 12: she was sitting on his bed and it was just
Speaker 12: instant lightning. That was the first time I met her.
Speaker 12: I'll never ever forget that.
Speaker 5: But Michelle was with Manny, so Leo was casually seeing
Speaker 5: other girls while he chased his true passion.
Speaker 12: My pursuit was music. I have been grooming myself for
Speaker 12: the rock and roll thing all my life. It's the
Speaker 12: only thing I ever knew. I mean, I've been playing
Speaker 12: guitar since I was seven years old.
Speaker 5: When Leo first meets Michelle, he's in a heavy metal
Speaker 5: band called Rhino.
Speaker 12: Rhino was an acronym and spelled all wayano. It's almost
Speaker 12: an embarrassment, but it stood for rocky nuts off and
Speaker 12: I actually did not care for that as a band name,
Speaker 12: but I didn't have a lot of decision making over that,
Speaker 12: and we were just a little club band, a little
Speaker 12: party band.
Speaker 5: Leo was Rhino's lead guitarist. And then there was Dave Collins.
Speaker 13: Girls like Leo a lot because he was he was
Speaker 13: looked like a rock star, you know, and he acted
Speaker 13: like that, yeah on the stage and.
Speaker 5: All Dave played bass. He was one of Leo's good friends,
Speaker 5: and Leo used to spend a lot of weekends.
Speaker 9: At his house.
Speaker 5: Kelsey and I sat down with him and his wife
Speaker 5: Liz in their home in Lakeland.
Speaker 13: He was a good guitarist and a little high strung
Speaker 13: at times. You know, there's a thing about guitarists and bands,
Speaker 13: most of them, most of them are kind of hard
Speaker 13: to get along with.
Speaker 5: Dave tells us about this one time when Rhino played
Speaker 5: a show on a flatbed trailer in the woods for
Speaker 5: free beer. Leo was seeing this other girl at the time,
Speaker 5: and she lifted her top, flashing another.
Speaker 13: Guy, and Leo got mad and took his guitar and
Speaker 13: threw it into bonfire, and then he ran off into
Speaker 13: the woods. We ran off and finally found him and
Speaker 13: brought him back. Somebody went and grabbed that guitar out
Speaker 13: of the fire before it got too bad to shape.
Speaker 13: I remember he played that for quite a while. It's
Speaker 13: like burnt in certain places and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But you know, he was young and.
Speaker 2: He did have a temper.
Speaker 13: But you know, there were certain people that didn't like him.
Speaker 13: But I think it's mainly because the girls liked him, most.
Speaker 3: Of them, to be honest.
Speaker 5: I've seen pictures of Leo at the time. His hair
Speaker 5: is jet black and long in a style that screamed
Speaker 5: nineteen eighties hard rock, and with his overbite, I think
Speaker 5: he looks like a young Freddie Mercury, the lead singer
Speaker 5: from Queen. While Leo's out there pursuing his rock star dreams,
Speaker 5: his best friend Manny, gets into some trouble and ends
Speaker 5: up in a juvenile detention facility in South Florida.
Speaker 2: Not long after Manny had went to prison.
Speaker 12: I was at home in my parent's house and I
Speaker 12: got a call him says for you, And I'm talking
Speaker 12: to her on the phone and she's just talking to
Speaker 12: me like, I know, I can't recognize her voice, but
Speaker 12: I'm not trying to give that up, you know, So
Speaker 12: I'm just listening till I can figure it out, and
Speaker 12: you know, and when she mentioned Manny, I finally figured out, well,
Speaker 12: this is Michelle.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Michelle found Leo's number in Manny's address book. They talked
Speaker 5: for a while, then Leo invites Michelle to come see
Speaker 5: his band.
Speaker 2: She was just feeling, you know, sad and only over
Speaker 2: Manny being gone.
Speaker 12: And I said, well, if you can make it over
Speaker 12: to where we're playing, I'll take you home afterwards. And
Speaker 12: I did, and I don't think we spent minutes a part.
Speaker 5: After that, Michelle breaks it off with Manny, and over
Speaker 5: the next few months Leo gets to know Michelle, and
Speaker 5: he gets to know her family too. Michelle was the
Speaker 5: middle child and only daughter. At first, she has a
Speaker 5: pretty traditional childhood in Lakeland. She and her brothers would
Speaker 5: play in their treehouse in the back yard, and on
Speaker 5: weekend she'd go to the roller rink with her friends.
Speaker 5: But then came the difficult years. Her parents divorce, and
Speaker 5: shortly after her mother's in a car crash. She suffers
Speaker 5: significant brain damage and returns to Texas to be cared
Speaker 5: for by her family. Michelle and her two brothers stay
Speaker 5: in Florida with their father, David sam but a house
Speaker 5: fire leaves them homeless for a period of time. From there,
Speaker 5: Michelle and her brothers move into a children's home in Lakeland.
Speaker 5: They lived there for a few years until their dad
Speaker 5: finishes rebuilding the family home. By the time Michelle starts
Speaker 5: dating Leo, she's seventeen years old and her single dad
Speaker 5: is putting in long hours at a local phosphate mine.
Speaker 12: Michelle comes from a broken home and a good family,
Speaker 12: but still a broken family with a lot of challenges
Speaker 12: even at that age when we met. When she was young,
Speaker 12: she had a lot of free reign.
Speaker 14: She would come up to our house, and of course
Speaker 14: we were partying, but we were older, we were of age.
Speaker 5: This is Liz Collins and she's still married to Dave,
Speaker 5: Rhino's bass player and Leo's good friend.
Speaker 3: At the time.
Speaker 14: She didn't drink over there, but she would spend the
Speaker 14: night over there with Leo at our house before we
Speaker 14: would go to bed house. Michelle, does your mom and
Speaker 14: dad know you're here? Oh, they don't care where I go,
Speaker 14: And so I never couldn't understand that, you know why
Speaker 14: they gave her so much freedom by that.
Speaker 5: By this time, Leo moved out of his parents' house
Speaker 5: and was living on his own, and soon after Michelle
Speaker 5: meets Leo, she moves in with him. They bounce between
Speaker 5: a few different apartments with a variety of roommates until
Speaker 5: another couple offers up a second bedroom in their single
Speaker 5: wide trailer. The mobile home is in North Lakeland. You're
Speaker 5: a part of town called Comby Settlement. The neighborhood is
Speaker 5: mostly quiet with old growth live oak trees draped in
Speaker 5: Spanish moss. Their trailer is about a mile off Cumby Road,
Speaker 5: which is a little less from what I gathered from interviews.
Speaker 5: I've done it seems like Comby was a mostly white,
Speaker 5: low income, high crime area. Michelle, like Leo, also dropped
Speaker 5: out of high school, and she gets a job on
Speaker 5: Comby Road, working as a waitress at Tom's Restaurant, a
Speaker 5: drive in diner serving burgers and Southern comfort food. Leo
Speaker 5: trades in his motorcycle and gets an orange Mazda station wagon.
Speaker 5: He's focused on his music, but painting houses to pay
Speaker 5: the bills. Living with another couple in a small trailer
Speaker 5: was difficult for everyone, and at times things became tense.
Speaker 5: One fight in particular keeps coming up over and over.
Speaker 2: In the past, our arguments were usually about the car.
Speaker 5: Leo and Michelle shared, the Mazda. Sometimes Michelle would use
Speaker 5: it to go visit friends, and Leo would never hear
Speaker 5: from her.
Speaker 12: She didn't have a license, so I couldn't have her ownlinsurance,
Speaker 12: and she'd already been stopped.
Speaker 2: Once by a cop. Thankfully, they let her go and
Speaker 2: she was close to home.
Speaker 5: Leo and Michelle didn't have a phone at their trailer,
Speaker 5: but Leo begged her to stop somewhere and get a
Speaker 5: message to him. If she was going to be out
Speaker 5: with the car.
Speaker 12: I would always tell her You're not my daughter, so
Speaker 12: you want to go pick up your friends and do
Speaker 12: this and do that.
Speaker 2: I don't have any issues with that.
Speaker 12: My issue is is that if I'm expecting you here
Speaker 12: and you're not gonna be here for two more hours,
Speaker 12: you need to call and tell me, you know.
Speaker 2: So I'm not worried.
Speaker 12: So we always had these fights about the car because
Speaker 12: she wouldn't do it, and she'd show up late, and
Speaker 12: I'd be furious, you know, like what, why don't you
Speaker 12: get it? You know, like we go through these stupid,
Speaker 12: ridiculous arguments. She'd come in and she's giddy and smiling,
Speaker 12: She's had a great day, she's driving, she loved driving
Speaker 12: the car, and me like, I'm moron, I'm furious because
Speaker 12: she's late.
Speaker 5: Leo was worried about her safety, but he also admits
Speaker 5: he was possessive.
Speaker 12: He was a great catch for me, even the rock
Speaker 12: star want to be you know, I just never had
Speaker 12: a girlfriend like Michelle, and she was absolutely everything, and
Speaker 12: so I didn't want to lose Michelle, and I felt
Speaker 12: like I had to control everything.
Speaker 2: But that is my greatest regret with Michelle. I was
Speaker 2: way too controlling, way too possessive, way too insecure, but
Speaker 2: I was young and didn't have a lot to think with.
Speaker 5: The arguments continue, but Leo wants things to get better,
Speaker 5: so when Leo starts doing some work painting houses for
Speaker 5: a man named Bob Good, he turns to him for
Speaker 5: relationship advice. Bob introduces him to the South Side Assembly
Speaker 5: of God, a church not far from where Leo and
Speaker 5: Michelle were living. The young couple meets with the pastor there,
Speaker 5: who finds out that Leo and Michelle are not just
Speaker 5: boyfriend and girlfriend, they are living together. He tells Leo
Speaker 5: and Michelle that they are living in sin they need
Speaker 5: to get married.
Speaker 2: That wasn't really on my radar immediately. But it wasn't
Speaker 2: not on my radar either. There was no doubt in
Speaker 2: my mind that.
Speaker 12: I could spend the rest of my life with Michelle.
Speaker 12: The question I had was could she spend the rest
Speaker 12: of her life with me? You know, I didn't know
Speaker 12: if that was going to be something that she'd want
Speaker 12: to do, but I know that I wanted to be
Speaker 12: with her forever. And I went out to a field
Speaker 12: that her dad was working in that he owned, and
Speaker 12: he was out there digging post holes or something, and
Speaker 12: I can't imagine what he was thinking of. I mean,
Speaker 12: I was literally sweating when I went out there, and
Speaker 12: quite the old fashioned way, I just came out and
Speaker 12: I asked him, I said, can I marry your daughter?
Speaker 12: You know, can I have your daughter's hand in marriage?
Speaker 12: And for the life of me, I don't know why
Speaker 12: he said yes, but he did. And so when he
Speaker 12: said yes, I almost didn't know what to say to that.
Speaker 12: I'm like, okay, well bye, you know good, well, you
Speaker 12: know how it goes.
Speaker 5: Michelle says yes and they start thinking about a wedding.
Speaker 5: Money was tight, but the churchgoers were determined to see
Speaker 5: the marriage happen, and sooner rather than later.
Speaker 15: So another couple and Dale and I put together a
Speaker 15: wedding and a reception for them.
Speaker 5: On one of our trips to Polk County, Kelsey went
Speaker 5: to a Sunday service at the church and met the
Speaker 5: Grinsteads who knew Leo and Michelle back in the day.
Speaker 15: It was a very traditional wedding ceremony, you know, love, honor,
Speaker 15: and obey sickness and health, just very traditional honey.
Speaker 5: Leo's parents attend the ceremony, along with Michelle's dad, and
Speaker 5: her mom even makes the trip from Texas. Dave and
Speaker 5: Liz Collins are there along with other congregants who want
Speaker 5: to welcome Leo and Michelle into the church.
Speaker 12: I remember, like it happened yesterday. I remember seeing my
Speaker 12: bride coming in the church.
Speaker 16: You know.
Speaker 2: That was just amazing to me.
Speaker 12: And I had the thought when I was standing there
Speaker 12: waiting for her that I'm actually marrying this girl. I
Speaker 12: was just amazed that this girl's coming down the aisle
Speaker 12: and she's going to marry me.
Speaker 5: Leo and Michelle Schofield are pronounced husband and wife.
Speaker 12: They don't tell you how to kiss the bride. So
Speaker 12: when that time came, brother Walden saying, okay, that's enough.
Speaker 12: What this is how I normally kiss her, you know,
Speaker 12: and even she kind of giggled at that.
Speaker 5: There's a photo from the reception Leo and Michelle standing
Speaker 5: next to a multi layered wedding cake. They borrowed their
Speaker 5: outfits from another recently married couple at the church. Michelle's
Speaker 5: in a lacy white dress with flowers in her hair.
Speaker 5: Leo's wearing a white tuxedo with a black bow tie.
Speaker 5: They look so happy, holding hands, laughing and smiling at
Speaker 5: people off camera, a young couple whose lives are just
Speaker 5: beginning together. On August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty six, Pastor
Speaker 5: Tom Waldron had accomplished what he'd set out to do,
Speaker 5: preside over the wedding of Leo and Michelle so that
Speaker 5: they would no longer.
Speaker 2: Be living in sin It was one of the best
Speaker 2: days of my entire life.
Speaker 5: Just six months later, Pastor Waldron would preside over Michelle's
Speaker 5: funeral service.
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Speaker 10: Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
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Speaker 10: to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems,
Speaker 10: including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos is one
Speaker 10: of those change makers. At the age of twenty three,
Speaker 10: Weldon was arrested for a first time offense of selling
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Speaker 10: thirteen years, a bipartisan effort led to him getting officially pardoned.
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Speaker 10: working to create better outcomes for those still in prison
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Speaker 5: Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 5: It's the evening of February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 5: Leo and Michelle have been married for about half a year.
Speaker 5: After work, Leo was hanging out at his friend Buddy
Speaker 5: Anderson's house, waiting for band practice to start. Leo's also
Speaker 5: waiting for Michelle to call. She took the Mods to
Speaker 5: the Tom's Restaurant for her waitressing shift. She clocks off
Speaker 5: around eight pm, and Leo told her he'd be at Buddy's.
Speaker 5: But it's after eight and she still hasn't called.
Speaker 13: I went over there for practice, rode over there on
Speaker 13: my motorcycle.
Speaker 5: This is Dave, the bass player.
Speaker 13: We're getting ready to practice, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 13: Leo seemed to be very distraught, and I don't think
Speaker 13: he said anything to me. It was Buddy that I
Speaker 13: talked to as overcall, and I said, what's going on.
Speaker 5: Buddy tells Dave that Michelle hasn't shown up yet, And for.
Speaker 13: Me, it was like, it just irritating because stuff like that,
Speaker 13: you know, they'd had fives before and she ran off
Speaker 13: of their girlfriends and stuff like ed and I'm thinking
Speaker 13: it's just the same thing, you know. So I took
Speaker 13: time out of my schedule to come all the way
Speaker 13: over here and now we're not going to practice because
Speaker 13: of this foolishness.
Speaker 5: Finally, at nine forty five pm, the phone rings at
Speaker 5: Buddy's house. It's Michelle.
Speaker 12: So the one time, the one time she calls, the
Speaker 12: only time she had a call, and she was going
Speaker 12: to be late.
Speaker 2: She was already late, but she called to tell me.
Speaker 5: She tells Leo that after work, she went back to
Speaker 5: their trailer to do housework. She fed their dogs and
Speaker 5: folded the laundry that she did earlier in the day
Speaker 5: at her father's place. There's no phone in their trailer,
Speaker 5: so she drove back to the gas station across the
Speaker 5: street from Tom's restaurant to call Leo from the payphone there.
Speaker 5: She tells him she made thirteen dollars in tips and
Speaker 5: was excited about that. She says, she put three dollars
Speaker 5: of gas in the Mazda and bought a coke.
Speaker 2: And it was a good conversation. I even asked her,
Speaker 2: I said, and I was that so hard?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: So now we don't have to have Oh everything's good,
Speaker 2: I know you're okay.
Speaker 5: Leo's about to head over to his other friend, Vince's house,
Speaker 5: which is basically just down the street from buddies.
Speaker 2: So I tell us to pick me up at Vince's house.
Speaker 2: We have that agreement. The last thing we say is
Speaker 2: I love you. There's no way Michelle's not on her way.
Speaker 5: Fifteen minutes pass thein a half hour. It's only about
Speaker 5: eight miles away. But Michelle has yet to show up
Speaker 5: at Vince's house.
Speaker 12: And so when she's not there at ten o'clock ten thirty,
Speaker 12: now I'm starting to get worried.
Speaker 2: First thoughts from maybe she got stopped by a cop.
Speaker 9: Again or whatever.
Speaker 5: Minutes turn into hours. Still no Michelle.
Speaker 2: I think it's like eleven thirty. I call my father.
Speaker 2: He's in bed. I talked to my mom, and my mom.
Speaker 17: Gets my dad up out of bed. He says, she's
Speaker 17: probably just out doing whatever. Wait a little while. She's
Speaker 17: not back in a little bit, call me back. So
Speaker 17: at midnight, and this is one of them times I'm
Speaker 17: just not gonna forget because these.
Speaker 12: Big grandfather clock and it's bonging midnight, and I call
Speaker 12: and tell my dad and she's not here.
Speaker 2: You need to come get me.
Speaker 3: Something's wrong.
Speaker 12: Michelle was less than fifteen minutes away from where she
Speaker 12: was supposed to come and pick me up. She made
Speaker 12: a phone call to us, to me at nine point
Speaker 12: forty five at Anderson's house, and no later than ten
Speaker 12: o'clock she should be there. So by midnight when my
Speaker 12: father comes and finally gets me, I'm not thinking anything good.
Speaker 5: They figure there's only two ways Michelle could have driven
Speaker 5: from the gas station where she called Leo to Vince's house.
Speaker 5: So Leo and his dad drive both roots. No sign
Speaker 5: of Michelle or the Mazda anywhere. They go back to
Speaker 5: Leo's trailer to see if she's there.
Speaker 2: I went to the house, lights were off. The car's
Speaker 2: not there.
Speaker 12: I don't stop because obviously he's not there. I had
Speaker 12: my dad drive by one of her best friend's house.
Speaker 12: Maybe the car's there. It's not there, lights off, she's
Speaker 12: not there.
Speaker 5: They go back to Vince's. She's not there, so Leo's
Speaker 5: dad waits in the driveway while Leo goes inside to
Speaker 5: make some phone calls. He's calling hospitals in the area
Speaker 5: to see if there have been any serious car accidents,
Speaker 5: but there's nothing. Then Leo makes one more call.
Speaker 9: Hope here the sheriff opproperator, Tippy herey, can I help you?
Speaker 2: At the time that I'm calling. It's twelve forty three.
Speaker 9: In the morning.
Speaker 18: I need to talk to tell me about buying my
Speaker 18: wife on a four and a half hours great coming
Speaker 18: home from work and can really trying that away from
Speaker 18: my job and I are going in if.
Speaker 9: Maybe you can got picked up. And now I'm really
Speaker 9: worried about it.
Speaker 18: Right here find out coming.
Speaker 5: The Sheriff's department connects Leo to the jail so he
Speaker 5: can ask them if Michelle is being held there.
Speaker 12: And one I'm on the phone was the Sheriff's department,
Speaker 12: and Vince is sitting on the couch and he's looking
Speaker 12: at me, and I can see the look in his face.
Speaker 12: He's not feeling good about it either. By then we're
Speaker 12: all going song.
Speaker 9: Is not right.
Speaker 5: Leo's being recorded by the Sheriff's office and you can
Speaker 5: hear him talking Evince while he waits on hold.
Speaker 18: I doubt very says they should be just fucking around,
Speaker 18: and man, she is, God help.
Speaker 9: Her, because I can't afford to fucking.
Speaker 18: Worry about this kind of little shit, you know, the
Speaker 18: slightest little problem fucking cut me out.
Speaker 9: I don't know why, but they just do. Man, I
Speaker 9: hate this feeling fucking hate it. She was on her
Speaker 9: way here. That's why I'm cooking.
Speaker 18: Out, man, That's how I could to do it.
Speaker 9: Hell, okay, yeah, I'm sure we don't have her.
Speaker 18: Oh man, Uh could you put me back to the trust,
Speaker 18: follow the parliament and persons?
Speaker 9: Okay, it on? Okay, what's your last name? Michelle Gofield? Okay,
Speaker 9: I help you out.
Speaker 18: I can think uh if I've put sick.
Speaker 9: Great under the palm, pam.
Speaker 18: All right, bomb, Well, she's coming home from mark from
Speaker 18: More unlikely. She had red pants with a red and
Speaker 18: white stripe shirt AMA the DLC eighty one, the color
Speaker 18: on with black strite.
Speaker 5: After the call, Leo goes back outside, gets in his
Speaker 5: dad's pickup, and they drive to his parents' trailer. It's
Speaker 5: about one thirty am. His dad says he's not feeling
Speaker 5: well and goes to bed. Leo tries reaching anyone he
Speaker 5: can think of that might know where Michelle is. He
Speaker 5: even calls her grandmother, Agnes, who lives nearby. No sign
Speaker 5: of Michelle. He calls the sheriff again and says he
Speaker 5: gets the same dispatcher.
Speaker 12: The woman told me I'll never forget this, he said,
Speaker 12: mister Schofield Michelle is eighteen years old. If we find her,
Speaker 12: the only thing we can do is suggest that she
Speaker 12: get in touch with you. And I'm like, you don't understand.
Speaker 12: We didn't have an argument. Something's wrong, she's by herself,
Speaker 12: something's wrong.
Speaker 5: With his dad In bed, Leo convinces his mother, Cheryl,
Speaker 5: to go back out with him to look for Michelle.
Speaker 5: They drive by another friend's house looking for the Mazda.
Speaker 5: At around two thirty am. They pull into David Salm's
Speaker 5: house that's Michelle's father, and Leo wakes him up. Michelle's
Speaker 5: younger brother, Jesse, here's the conversation and also gets out
Speaker 5: of bed.
Speaker 19: Just heard a bunch of commotion and stuff and I
Speaker 19: was just startled and I got up and I'm like,
Speaker 19: you know what's going on?
Speaker 5: Jesse says, his dad picked up the shotgun he kept
Speaker 5: by his bed.
Speaker 8: He grabbed the shotgun.
Speaker 19: Well, you know, he's you don't know what's going on?
Speaker 19: Somebody banging on the front door, dude, that's what he does, right,
Speaker 19: I mean, he's old school. And the first thing I
Speaker 19: hear is like Leo talking to my dad, and then
Speaker 19: he's you know, he's out of brath and he's panicked,
Speaker 19: and he's like, you know, we don't know where mischee,
Speaker 19: you know, like you know, I've called everywhere.
Speaker 3: I'm done it now.
Speaker 19: And I was like, man, why would you be so
Speaker 19: overly concerned about her being out at two am? Like,
Speaker 19: you know, she's eighteen years old? Man, Like, that's kind
Speaker 19: of the norm, you know what I mean?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 19: And just the people that she hung out with and
Speaker 19: stuff like that, they'd you know, they wouldn't be partying
Speaker 19: or anything all night, but they would just stay up late,
Speaker 19: you know. I mean, that's kind of what you do
Speaker 19: when you're eighteen years old. So I couldn't understand why
Speaker 19: the urgency of it and why he would physically show up.
Speaker 5: At that hour, And how is your dad reacting to
Speaker 5: what he was saying?
Speaker 19: He was just trying to absorb the information that he
Speaker 19: was being told.
Speaker 5: David starts getting dressed to go out on his own
Speaker 5: to look for his daughter. Leo and his mom leave
Speaker 5: the psalm's house around two forty five am, and while
Speaker 5: driving around Cumby Road, they spot two patrol cars parked
Speaker 5: at a gas station. Leo approaches them.
Speaker 12: That night, I literally stop and talk to three deputy
Speaker 12: shriffs that were in two cars, two separate cars, and
Speaker 12: they didn't even have anything on her report that I
Speaker 12: already made. I mean, that was really frustrating. I mean,
Speaker 12: how many reports do I need to make before you
Speaker 12: people do something.
Speaker 5: Leo and his mom returned to Leo's parents trailer. She's
Speaker 5: tired and goes to bed.
Speaker 2: It got to be after four. I was at my parents' house.
Speaker 2: It started the rain.
Speaker 5: He looks outside the window of his parents' trailer. They
Speaker 5: live off a big highway ninety eight north, and he's
Speaker 5: looking across the street to a parking lot, and it was.
Speaker 12: A flashing light, like a beacon light, and Gilbert, I'm
Speaker 12: holding on to anything. Well, I'm doing a chicken bone
Speaker 12: wish thing at this point. Anything. I'm looking for anything,
Speaker 12: and anything's a possibility.
Speaker 5: He thinks for a moment, doesn't really make any sense.
Speaker 5: But maybe this flashing light is a tow truck. Maybe
Speaker 5: they have the Mazda.
Speaker 12: So I grab my dad's jacket, I go off, and
Speaker 12: I walk across the street in ninety eight and I
Speaker 12: get over to the store and it's a light drizzle.
Speaker 5: He makes it over to the parking lot, but it's
Speaker 5: not a tow truck. It's just a street sweeper driving
Speaker 5: around the lot.
Speaker 2: And in that moment, right at that moment, right there,
Speaker 2: I started to cry.
Speaker 12: In the rain because I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 12: I didn't know where to go, and I knew then
Speaker 12: my wife's in trouble and I don't have any way
Speaker 12: to help her, not a damn thing. And it was
Speaker 12: so frustrating. So I walked up to Buddy's house, which was.
Speaker 2: A good little walk. I mean, they all lived within
Speaker 2: the same marble, and you're walking, you know, in the rain.
Speaker 2: That was like a frigging eternity to get there. And
Speaker 2: I banged on his window.
Speaker 12: When I finally got there and he came in, he
Speaker 12: let me in and I begged, please take me out.
Speaker 12: Something's wrong.
Speaker 2: He said, just wait till the morning, just wait. We
Speaker 2: can't do nothing. I'll just wait. And I did not
Speaker 2: want to wait, but I had nothing else that I
Speaker 2: could do.
Speaker 9: But I was.
Speaker 3: Beyond worried.
Speaker 2: I was miserable.
Speaker 12: I didn't even think of sleep, and I didn't think
Speaker 12: of beating. I didn't think of changing my clothes. I
Speaker 12: didn't think of taking a shower. My next thought, my
Speaker 12: next objective was getting somebody get in a car and
Speaker 12: let's go find Michelle.
Speaker 5: At daybreak, Leo walks back to his parents' trailer. There's
Speaker 5: still no word from Michelle, so he and his dad
Speaker 5: go down to the Lakeland Police Department, where they meet
Speaker 5: a rookie officer, Richard Katchadorian.
Speaker 20: Hang on a second, yes, hey, give me a favorite,
Speaker 20: just to intercept him a minute, letting him on the
Speaker 20: phone with that gentleman from New York of all night s.
Speaker 5: Gilbert Kelsey and I were able to track him down
Speaker 5: by phone in Lakeland, where he does private security at
Speaker 5: a local university. We talked to him while he was
Speaker 5: on duty in his patrol car.
Speaker 3: If you need to, we could call you back.
Speaker 20: It's not a problem now. I don't worry about it.
Speaker 20: I'm in all right.
Speaker 5: We'd gotten a copy of Katchadurian's police report from that
Speaker 5: morning and emailed it to him to refresh his memory,
Speaker 5: but he said he didn't need it. Can you tell
Speaker 5: us where you were what you remember back on February
Speaker 5: twenty fifth with Leo Schofield and his father came to
Speaker 5: the Lakeland Police Department back.
Speaker 20: In nineteen eighty seven. I can ensition it right now.
Speaker 11: I was working the station duty office desk. I stepped
Speaker 11: out of the booth the little office there, and went
Speaker 11: law and engaged him in conversation. And at first it
Speaker 11: seemed like a just and I hate using a word typical,
Speaker 11: but it just seemed like just an missing person's information.
Speaker 9: And I was.
Speaker 20: Trying to take it apart as I was listening to
Speaker 20: because a lot.
Speaker 11: Of times, you know, when you get a missing person's
Speaker 11: they're not really missing, you know, they're just unaccounted for
Speaker 11: for for whatever reason. And I was taking the information,
Speaker 11: asking what I considered standardized questioning about where you last
Speaker 11: saw you know, what does she do for a living?
Speaker 20: You know, a blah blah blah, and mister Schofield, the father,
Speaker 20: was doing all the talking.
Speaker 11: The way I remember almost all of it. I'd asked
Speaker 11: the question and the father would answer. And when I
Speaker 11: got down to the date of birth, mister Schofield gave
Speaker 11: me her date of birth, and I said, why can't
Speaker 11: your son answer those questions?
Speaker 8: How do you know this?
Speaker 11: And he doesn't for whatever reason? That just that question,
Speaker 11: it was like a cold knife blade in me. I
Speaker 11: just couldn't understand why the boy couldn't provide me his
Speaker 11: wife's date of birth.
Speaker 5: Leo had the same issue the night before. On his
Speaker 5: twelve forty three am call to the sheriff's dispatcher. He
Speaker 5: knew his wife's birthday. It's December eighth, the day before
Speaker 5: his own birthday. He knew her age too, but on
Speaker 5: the call he just had trouble remembering the year Michelle
Speaker 5: was born.
Speaker 9: Okay, help, I'm thinking twelve eight. I don't remember the
Speaker 9: year eighteen sixteen sixty eight eight. Okay.
Speaker 5: He's stumbling on the birthday again with Katchadorian, and the
Speaker 5: rookie officer finds this suspicious.
Speaker 20: He was distant. I tried to engage him. I think
Speaker 20: I said something to him, back, can you look at me?
Speaker 20: I mean, look at me. You know what's your wife's
Speaker 20: state of birth? Why is your father answering that question?
Speaker 20: Why aren't you? How come you don't know your own
Speaker 20: wife's date of birth?
Speaker 11: And he was distant.
Speaker 20: One of the things I did ask question, did you
Speaker 20: are you have any marital discourse? Are there any issues?
Speaker 11: Did you hit her that you know there have been
Speaker 11: domestic violence of any kind? And it was all knows
Speaker 11: And that's mister Schofield did all the answering on that too.
Speaker 11: I asked the boy if he had anything to do
Speaker 11: with the disappearance of his wife, and the father got
Speaker 11: a little annoyed with me there in the lobby.
Speaker 20: Not angry, but annoyed, thought I was being rude.
Speaker 5: After asking some more questions, Officer Katchadorian determines that the
Speaker 5: place where Michelle was last seen does not fall within
Speaker 5: the Lakeland Police Department's jurisdiction, so he'd need to pass
Speaker 5: the information over to the Polk County Sheriff's office.
Speaker 11: And I remember going back in and letting them know
Speaker 11: that I needed to handle his fat and I need
Speaker 11: to get a deputy right.
Speaker 20: Away out to their house. I suspected some form about play.
Speaker 5: It's now late in the afternoon on February twenty fifth,
Speaker 5: about eighteen hours since Michelle went missing. Something is definitely
Speaker 5: very wrong. If Michelle is off having a good time somewhere,
Speaker 5: who is she with? A search party starts to take shape, parents,
Speaker 5: both families friends. They drive the streets around Cumby and
Speaker 5: expand into other parts of Lakeland. They make missing person
Speaker 5: flyers with details about the Mazda and photos of Michelle
Speaker 5: that they post around town, and.
Speaker 2: Then as the search party develops over the next three days,
Speaker 2: We're all looking around in the ditches and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: Her father's with me and all that. And I had
Speaker 2: this distinct thought.
Speaker 12: I was standing in the back with a pickup truck
Speaker 12: and we've got this sunbeam light in the middle of
Speaker 12: the night on power.
Speaker 2: Plant Road, and we're looking in the ditch, and it
Speaker 2: just dawned on me, what do we look for?
Speaker 12: We expected to be playing cards in the ditch somewhere,
Speaker 12: to sit in here waiting to be found.
Speaker 2: And it just struck me that something is drastically wrong.
Speaker 5: While shining lights into ditches on the side of the road,
Speaker 5: Leo's mind went to a very dark place, to a
Speaker 5: particularly gruesome murder in Florida that had horrified the nation
Speaker 5: in the early nineteen eighties.
Speaker 2: They were just doing the Adam Walsh thing, right, None
Speaker 2: of that.
Speaker 3: I remembered.
Speaker 5: I was attending the University of South Florida in Tampa
Speaker 5: at the time, about a half hour west of Lakeland.
Speaker 5: Adam Walsh was a six year old boy who'd been
Speaker 5: abducted in nineteen eighty one from a department store in
Speaker 5: South Florida. After a couple weeks of searching, the boy's
Speaker 5: severed head was found in a drainage canal near Yehaw Junction,
Speaker 5: about twenty miles east of Polk County. Everyone in Florida
Speaker 5: knew about Adam Walsh. The brutal nature of the crime
Speaker 5: made international headlines, and Adam's father, John Walsh, became a
Speaker 5: public figure advocating for victims of violent crimes. He later
Speaker 5: launched the long running television show America's Most Wanted.
Speaker 12: That was big news in Florida. And I'm from Massachusetts.
Speaker 12: I grew up in a project. I don't know if
Speaker 12: we were isolated or not, but I don't remember stories
Speaker 12: like that when I was a kid. You come down
Speaker 12: here to Florida and it's like an every day occur
Speaker 12: and somebody's getting butchered and it's horrifying. You hear that
Speaker 12: stuff on the news. And I did say, I hope
Speaker 12: we don't find her in water like Adam Walsh was.
Speaker 12: And I said that only because it dawned on me
Speaker 12: when we were looking in these drainage ditches and all
Speaker 12: this other stuff, that what do we expect to find?
Speaker 5: Another day goes by constant searching around Lakeland, looking in
Speaker 5: ditches and Woods. Michelle has been missing for forty eight hours.
Speaker 5: Finally there's a break. One of Leo's friends is on
Speaker 5: his way home from work when he spots what he
Speaker 5: thinks is Leo and Michelle's Mazda. It's parked on the
Speaker 5: shoulder of I four, just a few miles east of Lakeland.
Speaker 5: He doesn't think much of it, but then he stops
Speaker 5: at Sparky's gas station on Cumby Road. He sees a
Speaker 5: flyer with Michelle's picture and he realizes something is wrong.
Speaker 5: He calls Leo's parents and says he thinks he saw
Speaker 5: the Mazda abandoned on the side of the highway. The
Speaker 5: car is found, but Michelle is not. The Orange Mazda
Speaker 5: would be towed to a crime lab in Orlando and
Speaker 5: processed for evidence by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Speaker 5: A mechanic who analyzed the car would note that something
Speaker 5: called the flywheel had come apart, causing the Mazda to
Speaker 5: break down. It also appeared that the stair had been
Speaker 5: tampered with. A lab tech would find a bottle of
Speaker 5: downy fabric softener in the back, smeared with blood, and
Speaker 5: most crucially, two sets of fingerprints were lifted from inside
Speaker 5: the vehicle. The owner of those prints would not be
Speaker 5: identified for seventeen years. Bone Valley is a production of
Speaker 5: Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
Speaker 5: Our executive producers are Jason Flahm and Kevin Wordis. Kara
Speaker 5: Krnhaber is our senior producer. Britz Spangler is our sound designer.
Speaker 5: Ruxandra Guidy is our editor. Fact checking by Maximo Anderson.
Speaker 5: Our producer and researcher is Keller. Our theme song, The
Speaker 5: One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Lee Bob
Speaker 5: and The Truth. It was written by Leo Schofield and
Speaker 5: Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hearty Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is
Speaker 5: written and produced by me Gilbert King. You can follow
Speaker 5: the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Lava for Good.
Speaker 5: To see photos and documents from our investigation and exclusive
Speaker 5: behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgood dot com slash