Speaker 1: It's eighteen eighty one. Captain J. Francis le Baron of
Speaker 1: the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is surveying Central Florida.
Speaker 1: As he travels up the Peace River in Polk County,
Speaker 1: he finds something fossils, tons of them along the sandy
Speaker 1: banks of the Peace River, giant shark, teethed whale skulls,
Speaker 1: and prehistoric mastadon bones. Captain le Baron collects nine barrels
Speaker 1: worth of fossils and has them shipped off to a
Speaker 1: professor at the Smithsonian Institution. A few years later, Captain
Speaker 1: le Baron returns to the region. As he's digging through
Speaker 1: the sandbars of the Peace River amongst the bones from
Speaker 1: millions of years ago, he makes another discovery. All the bones,
Speaker 1: all the decomposition had left Central Florida rich in phosphate,
Speaker 1: a mineral left over from the creatures that lived and
Speaker 1: died in an around the ancient sea that once covered Florida,
Speaker 1: and phosphate, it turns out, is a valuable ingredient for
Speaker 1: making fertilizer. They called it white gold. There's interest in
Speaker 1: the fossils, but palaeontologists don't get the chance to dig
Speaker 1: because the mining companies get there first. Soon, Polk County
Speaker 1: became the self proclaimed phosphate capital of the world, and
Speaker 1: the area was producing three quarters of the nation's supply.
Speaker 1: By the late nineteenth century. Railroad tracks had sprung out
Speaker 1: in every direction across the region, which helped move all
Speaker 1: that phosphate. There was a lot of work and not
Speaker 1: enough workers to get the job done, so phosphate companies
Speaker 1: paid a fee to the state of Florida in exchange
Speaker 1: for prisoners to fill the labor shortage. Black men arrested
Speaker 1: for petty crimes were forced to dig ditches and push wheelbacks.
Speaker 1: Was full of white rock while underguard. It had become
Speaker 1: a new form of slavery.
Speaker 2: This song that called Shove it Over, and it's a
Speaker 2: line in rhythm, pretty generally distributed all over Florida. It
Speaker 2: was sung to me by Charlie Jones on railroad construction
Speaker 2: camp near Lakeland, Florida.
Speaker 1: This is Zora Neil Hurston, the novelist who became a
Speaker 1: central figure in the African American cultural revival of the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties and thirties known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Speaker 2: When I get in a land noise, I'm going to
Speaker 2: spread the news about the Florida Boy.
Speaker 1: Hurston grew up in central Florida, and in nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven she moved to Polk County to collect and record
Speaker 1: stories and work songs from Black Southerners, songs that were
Speaker 1: down from generations. Some of the workers who taught Hurston
Speaker 1: these songs were setting down railroad tracks and working in
Speaker 1: the mines to move phosphate. Hurston described these men who
Speaker 1: worked long, hard hours in Polk County in her memoir
Speaker 1: dust tracks on a road they go down in the
Speaker 1: phosphate mines, Hurston wrote, and bring up the wet dust
Speaker 1: of the bones of prehistoric monsters to make rich land
Speaker 1: in far places so that people can eat. But all
Speaker 1: of it is not dust. Huge ribs twenty feet from
Speaker 1: belly to backbone, some old time sea monster caught in
Speaker 1: the shallows, shark teeth as wide as the hand of
Speaker 1: a working man. It was these fossils tossed to the
Speaker 1: side by mining operations that gave this region its new
Speaker 1: name Bone Valley. As the decades passed, phosphate mining evolved.
Speaker 1: Instead of convict with shovels, they started using dragline machines
Speaker 1: like the one operated by Michelle Schofield's father, David's Palm.
Speaker 1: These giant machines excavate the top soil and produce towering
Speaker 1: two hundred foot mountains of white sand called gypsum stacks
Speaker 1: that loom over the Polk County horizon. By the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: some of the mines in northern Polk County shut down
Speaker 1: after depleting the soil of its phosphate, and mining operations
Speaker 1: moved further south, but you can still see the scars
Speaker 1: the industry left behind. The mined out areas were left
Speaker 1: to be reclaimed by nature. Dense vegetation grew around these
Speaker 1: deep mining pits that filled with water, which is why
Speaker 1: you see these long, narrow bodies of water in the region,
Speaker 1: like the ones in North Lakeland where Leo, his dad
Speaker 1: and friends continue their search from Michelle Schofield.
Speaker 3: Do you my maness, I have to have my feet
Speaker 3: saw rule deps sarrangleists in this vallyity.
Speaker 4: I see relation about a breach das rash to the world.
Speaker 4: Who's holding the stars to the warm solding.
Speaker 1: Store Bone Valley Chapter two comby Critters. It's been almost
Speaker 1: forty eight hours since Michelle went missing. There was no
Speaker 1: sign of her until one of Leo's friends saw the
Speaker 1: orange Mazda just off the eastbound side of I four,
Speaker 1: a major highway that runs through Polk County and connects
Speaker 1: Tampa and Orlando.
Speaker 5: Now a new wave of panic washes.
Speaker 1: Over Leo as he and his father's speed to where
Speaker 1: the Mazda was seen. A few of Leo's friends and
Speaker 1: Michelle's dad followed them there.
Speaker 6: We get to the car, We find the car. Obviously
Speaker 6: we didn't touch the car. I didn't want anybody to
Speaker 6: touch the car. And we looked at it. We had flashlights,
Speaker 6: and you know, obviously it was mine.
Speaker 1: But there's no sign of Michelle. It's nearly midnight. Leo
Speaker 1: knows he needs to call the sheriff to get someone
Speaker 1: out here and quick. The car is right by the
Speaker 1: Polk City exit ramp on a rural stretch of the interstate.
Speaker 6: I didn't even know where I was at. I mean,
Speaker 6: I wasn't lost, but I've never been in this area.
Speaker 6: So I went up on the embankment. I climbed the embankment,
Speaker 6: got up on the road, and you couldn't see a
Speaker 6: store from the highway, but I went up anyway to
Speaker 6: look and when I get up to that overpass and
Speaker 6: walked just a few feet up behind a tree line.
Speaker 6: There was a store up there, and there was a
Speaker 6: pay phone, so I went over there and I made
Speaker 6: a call to the Sheriff's department, and I told them
Speaker 6: that I told him who I was, told him where
Speaker 6: I was, and that we had found the car on
Speaker 6: the side of the road. They asked me if I
Speaker 6: was going to take it home. I said, you're apparently
Speaker 6: not understanding who I am. My wife is still missing.
Speaker 6: I found her car, I did not find her. I
Speaker 6: need some help. I'm expecting we'll be right there, mister Scofield,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. And Batman shows up and
Speaker 6: everything gets fixed and stuff, and it didn't work that way.
Speaker 1: Finally deputies arrive and the crime scene unit is called in.
Speaker 1: They start inspecting the car. Some stereo equipment in the
Speaker 1: Mazda is missing. Leo doesn't want to waste any more time.
Speaker 1: He wants to start searching the area for Michelle.
Speaker 6: I told the detective Russell, I'm going to be out
Speaker 6: here in the ditches and in the medium and of
Speaker 6: vye for looking for anything.
Speaker 1: But the deputy tells Leo to wait because they're going
Speaker 1: to fly a helicopter over the area at sunrise. So
Speaker 1: Leo and the rest of the search party a few
Speaker 1: hours sleep before.
Speaker 5: Meeting up again.
Speaker 6: I literally am there at daybreak, and so the plan
Speaker 6: was to search I four.
Speaker 1: They search both sides of the highway, including the Median. Leo,
Speaker 1: his dad, his friends, and Michelle's family cover the six
Speaker 1: plus miles of I four until they reached the exit
Speaker 1: for State Road thirty three. There's no sign of Michelle.
Speaker 7: Nobody that we knew from nobody.
Speaker 1: This is Michelle McCluskey. She's Michelle Schofield's best friend. It's
Speaker 1: mid morning now. When they come on to State Road
Speaker 1: thirty three, which connects I four, the highway where the
Speaker 1: car was found to Cumby Road, which was Michelle's last
Speaker 1: known location, they decide to split up. Leo's father will
Speaker 1: start searching one end of State Road thirty three. Leo
Speaker 1: and Michelle McCluskey will start at the other end of
Speaker 1: State Road thirty three, and they play to meet Leo
Speaker 1: Senior somewhere in the middle. So Leo and Michelle McCluskey
Speaker 1: jump into her boyfriend's pickup truck.
Speaker 7: I was just terrified and just really focused on really
Speaker 7: trying to find her.
Speaker 1: It's slow searching. They walk a stretch of the road,
Speaker 1: get back in the truck, pull up a bit, get
Speaker 1: out and search again.
Speaker 6: One Michelle McCluskey and I were looking in one particular area.
Speaker 6: There was a sheriff's car that went by real fast,
Speaker 6: headed down thirty three toward where my father was looking,
Speaker 6: and the second car went by. I said, I'm following this.
Speaker 6: Something's going on.
Speaker 1: Leo jumps in the pickup with Michelle McCluskey in the
Speaker 1: passenger seat and tries to catch the sheriff's car ahead.
Speaker 5: In the distance, he.
Speaker 1: Sees an eighteen wheeled truck jackknife in the middle of
Speaker 1: the road. Some cars are parked on the shoulder.
Speaker 6: I almost turned off because it was so congested. I
Speaker 6: thought it was a car accident. Yeah, I thought this
Speaker 6: was going to be one of things where it turns
Speaker 6: out to be nothing, and I wish that it would
Speaker 6: have been.
Speaker 1: Leo keeps driving toward the congestion. A helicopter's on the
Speaker 1: ground at the scene.
Speaker 7: Somebody's missing, and you come up on a scene like that,
Speaker 7: and the helicopters sat down and the ambulances there. You
Speaker 7: just know, all of a sudden, nobody has to tell
Speaker 7: you what it is, you know.
Speaker 6: I saw my father's truck down there on the side
Speaker 6: of the road and all these other vehicles, and then
Speaker 6: he was coming out of the woods and he had
Speaker 6: his hands in his cover and his face, and I
Speaker 6: knew they had found her. And I didn't even stop
Speaker 6: the truck. I mean I slowed down and up, and
Speaker 6: I jumped out and went running, and everything was blending
Speaker 6: together and going super fast.
Speaker 1: Leo jumps out of the pickup and runs along the
Speaker 1: side of the road. Yellow crime scene tape has already
Speaker 1: been tied between a pine tree and a sign that.
Speaker 5: Reads no dump of rubbish.
Speaker 1: The tape cordons off a short sandy road that cuts
Speaker 1: through the tree line. Beyond it, Leo sees men in
Speaker 1: suits standing in front of palmetto.
Speaker 5: Bushes, looking down into a drainage canal.
Speaker 1: Leo now knows Michelle is back there, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to push past the deputies to get to her. His
Speaker 1: dad grabs him and keeps him from reaching the canal,
Speaker 1: to keep him from seeing Michelle's body.
Speaker 6: And he kept saying she's gone, And I was trying
Speaker 6: to hold on to some kind of my mind was
Speaker 6: doing it, fabricating some kind of possibility that you're not right,
Speaker 6: She's not dead. It could not possibly end like this.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's just unreal. And it was like my
Speaker 6: whole world was just fragmenting, and I wanted so bad
Speaker 6: to just run back there and just grab her, and
Speaker 6: if I could just hold her, I'd hold her and
Speaker 6: she'd still be alive. And I, you just I can't.
Speaker 6: It can't end like this. It just it can't end.
Speaker 6: We look too hard, I've been up too long. I'm
Speaker 6: gonna save her. I mean, it just just I just
Speaker 6: lost it. I ended up punching the ground. I was
Speaker 6: pulling grass out. I hit the tree, and I kept saying,
Speaker 6: she's not dead, She's not dead. And then all these
Speaker 6: people are coming around, and because I'm flipping out, I
Speaker 6: end up in between these cars.
Speaker 1: The cops come around one side of the car towards Leo.
Speaker 1: His dad comes from the other side.
Speaker 6: And I'm telling him, don't touch me, don't come near me.
Speaker 6: I want her out now.
Speaker 3: I just want to.
Speaker 6: I ended up just falling down and sitting against the
Speaker 6: front tire of a car. I came in glue.
Speaker 1: Michelle's body is floating face down in a drainage canal
Speaker 1: off State Road thirty three near an.
Speaker 5: Old phosphate mine.
Speaker 1: There's a large piece of plywood partially covering her body,
Speaker 1: resting on her back and legs. She's still wearing the
Speaker 1: red pants she wore to work that day and a
Speaker 1: sleeveless white top. Her autopsy would later reveal that she'd
Speaker 1: been stabbed twenty six times, and scrapes on her back
Speaker 1: were consistent with her body being dragged after she was killed.
Speaker 1: Officer Richard Kachadorian, who talked to Leo and his father
Speaker 1: the morning after Michelle's disappeared, hears about it.
Speaker 5: On the news.
Speaker 8: I remember coming to work one night and there it
Speaker 8: was on television, and she was found not far from
Speaker 8: where I'm sitting right now.
Speaker 1: He feels bad for the Schofields and picks up the
Speaker 1: phone to offer his condolences. Leo Senior answers, and.
Speaker 8: It was definitely a very peculiar conversation. He talked about
Speaker 8: a premonition that he had.
Speaker 1: What Leo Senior told him was so odd. Katadorian decided
Speaker 1: to write an official report about the call. His report reads,
Speaker 1: mister Schofield advised writer that he received a premonition the
Speaker 1: night prior to the discovery of his daughter in law,
Speaker 1: possibly from the Lord, advising him where Michelle could be found.
Speaker 8: He told me on the phone at night that he
Speaker 8: discovered the body, and the body was in the water,
Speaker 8: and that she was looking at him, and that she
Speaker 8: was smiling at him.
Speaker 1: Michelle was smiling, Leo Senior said, as of saying thank
Speaker 1: you for finding me. This is especially odd because Michelle
Speaker 1: was floating face down and had plywood on top of her.
Speaker 8: It was strange, and that's how I thought of it.
Speaker 8: It became extremely strange, and I got I mean, it
Speaker 8: frightened me to a certain degree. And if you know
Speaker 8: that landscape, you just don't happen upon. You just don't
Speaker 8: drive down that road and happen upon anything that's really
Speaker 8: dense vegetation, snake infested water. I mean, do you either
Speaker 8: have to know something's there, or somebody directed you there,
Speaker 8: or you knew something was in that area. You know,
Speaker 8: in hindsight, Gilbert, what I feel he was doing was
Speaker 8: confessing that was definitely one of the oddest phone calls
Speaker 8: in my life.
Speaker 9: Him Flohm, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
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Speaker 1: Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is
Speaker 1: a philanthropic community that partners with America's boldest change makers
Speaker 1: to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems, including.
Speaker 5: The broken criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: Christina Dent is one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand
Speaker 1: Together to end the War on Drugs, the underlying cause
Speaker 1: of many problems such as overincarceration and the criminalization of
Speaker 1: addiction communities across the country. As a foster mom, Christina
Speaker 1: came into contact with the War on drugs when she
Speaker 1: saw how it was ripping apart the family she worked with.
Speaker 1: She witnessed how kids were affected and how mothers wanted
Speaker 1: something better for their families, but didn't have the tools
Speaker 1: to get there themselves. Christina Dent started a nonprofit called
Speaker 1: End It for Good because she knew there was a
Speaker 1: better solution to help these families. She's working to end
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs in Mississippi and build consensus around
Speaker 1: the state to help families struggling with substance abuse problems
Speaker 1: find a different path forward than the one they've been given.
Speaker 1: Stand Together has many more stories like this one, as
Speaker 1: it partners with thousands of change makers who were driving
Speaker 1: solutions in education, health care, poverty, and the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: To learn more about the War on drugs, listen to
Speaker 1: the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcast.
Speaker 10: There is a piece of wood board that was covering
Speaker 10: the body.
Speaker 6: I do have that, so I bring that out. Just
Speaker 6: been reading about it for months.
Speaker 5: It's just so funny that it's here.
Speaker 1: Kelsey and I are talking to Shane Kent, who runs
Speaker 1: the evidence room in the basement of the Polk County Courthouse.
Speaker 1: Shane's in his early forties with tattoos, engaged piercings. He's
Speaker 1: gonna show us all the physical evidence from Michelle Schofield's murder.
Speaker 10: How's gonna go down is I'm gonna try to keep
Speaker 10: control out of all the evidence. Sure, I'm gonna be
Speaker 10: the only one handling it. If I'll drop off piece,
Speaker 10: let you look at it, examine it, if you want
Speaker 10: to take pictures of it. The only thing that I
Speaker 10: do not recommend any pictures being taken is of the
Speaker 10: victim is any kind of nude, because some of the
Speaker 10: wounds are in her chest and her bare chest is exposed.
Speaker 6: So okay, understand, okay, all right, if you want to, guys,
Speaker 6: have a seat, I'll start bringing Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1: Every time someone asked to see the evidence from a homicide,
Speaker 1: the state Attorney's office is notified and they can send
Speaker 1: someone down to observe. So we have an armed officer
Speaker 1: with us, and she's going to be watching as we
Speaker 1: look through all the evidence. Alright, Kelsey and I sit
Speaker 1: side by side at the table and Shane starts bringing
Speaker 1: out the evidence. The plywood that was covering Michelle's body
Speaker 1: in the canal where she was found was found on
Speaker 1: top of the body. In that little maps of lakeland
Speaker 1: mounted on foam boards, Michelle's time card from Tom's restaurant.
Speaker 5: See there's a downy bottle that they found.
Speaker 1: The blood smeared downy fabric soft in her bottle that
Speaker 1: was found in the back of the Mazda.
Speaker 11: The downy bottle very much looked like a downy bottle
Speaker 11: from the eighties. You know, it wasn't like the one
Speaker 11: you'd be able to buy at the store today. You know,
Speaker 11: for me, this all happened before I was born, So
Speaker 11: seeing some of that stuff, I was able to like
Speaker 11: better place in time, like, oh my gosh, okay, this
Speaker 11: happened and it was nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: Then Shane brings out Michelle's clothes. Each piece is contained
Speaker 1: in a clear plastic bag.
Speaker 11: Her jacket, her top, her bra and underwear, and the
Speaker 11: red pants that she and more to work. That was
Speaker 11: all there as well, no sense And this is the
Speaker 11: gray jacket, the jacket and the top. They'd been slashed
Speaker 11: and there was a lot of dried blood on those items.
Speaker 5: I look at Kelsey. We both know what's next.
Speaker 1: Shane starts with photos of Michelle as she was found
Speaker 1: floating faced down in the canal under the plywood. A
Speaker 1: few more like that without the plywood. Then he brings
Speaker 1: out the photographs from the autopsy. There are pictures of
Speaker 1: her face, her head tilted to one side. She looks
Speaker 1: like she could be sleeping, except she isn't, and the
Speaker 1: wounds are horrific. We've been studying this case for months now,
Speaker 1: but in documents the crime can feel abstract, with Michelle
Speaker 1: described only as the victim. By this time, we'd met Leo,
Speaker 1: some of Michelle's friends and family, and now she's no
Speaker 1: longer some stranger or the victim on an autopsy table,
Speaker 1: and your heart just breaks trying to imagine the pain
Speaker 1: and devastation they felt when Michelle was killed. That's all
Speaker 1: I can think about seeing these photos.
Speaker 6: That's everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a pleasant.
Speaker 12: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Not a lot of cases are, no, I know. But
Speaker 6: I'm gonna need to decompress her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, yeah, Kelsey and I aren't saying much. On
Speaker 1: the way back to the parking garage, the summer heat
Speaker 1: is stifling, and it's the end of the work day,
Speaker 1: so there are people all around us.
Speaker 5: We get to our car where we debrief.
Speaker 11: I mean, I was thinking about her and like the
Speaker 11: pain she must have felt, and how scared she must
Speaker 11: have been in those last moments. I think, you know,
Speaker 11: there's also the proximity and age I was thinking about,
Speaker 11: you know, also like myself and and all of my
Speaker 11: friends who are young women and could potentially be in
Speaker 11: a situation like that.
Speaker 5: Certa, I can take your time.
Speaker 1: Grief and heartbreak overwhelm everyone close to Michelle in the
Speaker 1: days and nights after her body is discovered. When it
Speaker 1: comes time to arrange her funeral, Leo is in no
Speaker 1: shape to help.
Speaker 6: My dad took over everything. I could not make a
Speaker 6: solid decision for me for anything. I couldn't decide what
Speaker 6: close further where. I couldn't decide what color of the
Speaker 6: casket should be, what kind of casket should be on
Speaker 6: those things were so fond to me. How do you
Speaker 6: decide what kind of casket you put your dead wife in?
Speaker 1: But there's one detail Leo does care about. Michelle's dad
Speaker 1: wants a closed casket.
Speaker 6: Wake, and I just could not leave her without seeing
Speaker 6: her again. I just could not do it.
Speaker 1: So Leo makes an arrangement with the funeral home. They'll
Speaker 1: hold the wake with a closed casket, But an hour
Speaker 1: or so before they'll let Leo c Michelle one last time,
Speaker 1: the funeral director tells him that to view Michelle, they'll
Speaker 1: need a high necked shirt to cover her wounds.
Speaker 6: And I was flabbergasted, was like, what wounds? When Michelle
Speaker 6: was murdered? I was originally on the impression all the
Speaker 6: way up until the wake that she was drown and
Speaker 6: that's when my father said they were stab wounds.
Speaker 1: With Leo in his debilitated state, no one had wanted
Speaker 1: to tell him exactly what happened to Michelle.
Speaker 6: Obviously I knew somebody had killed her. Why or how
Speaker 6: was beyond my ability to think. Stabbing her is beyond that,
Speaker 6: you know, it's just beyond that. And for me, that
Speaker 6: was the whole thing. Cast again, relive in it all
Speaker 6: over again, a different scenario, somehow worse than the drowning.
Speaker 1: At the wake, Leo was given the private moment he
Speaker 1: wanted to see Michelle one last time.
Speaker 6: And walked into the viewing area. I have never seen
Speaker 6: a dead body. I've never been to a wake, I've
Speaker 6: never had any experience like that, so I really wasn't
Speaker 6: prepared for any of that. And she was laying in
Speaker 6: the gasket, and I told myself that I wanted to
Speaker 6: see it because I wanted to kiss her one more time.
Speaker 6: She was so cold. I couldn't do it. Immediately. I
Speaker 6: felt her hand. She was ice cold, and she didn't
Speaker 6: even look like her. I mean, Michelle without life was
Speaker 6: not Michelle. I did manage to him. It took a while.
Speaker 6: I managed to kiss her. It didn't help me. I
Speaker 6: kept thinking, I gotta just figure out a way. I
Speaker 6: gotta go back. All I gotta do is get back
Speaker 6: to this minute, the one I was looking for, instead
Speaker 6: of going this way. If I just go that way,
Speaker 6: I could have ran into the car, you know, but
Speaker 6: just any just that minute, if I could just get
Speaker 6: back to there, I could I could make it all
Speaker 6: go away. And you can't go back. There's no way
Speaker 6: to go back. My life has been chasing that going
Speaker 6: back ever since.
Speaker 1: After the wake, there's Michelle's funeral. The church is filled
Speaker 1: with young people and they've come to remember Michelle.
Speaker 7: We met in fourth grade, and I don't know, we
Speaker 7: just we hit it off like right away, you know,
Speaker 7: as little kids.
Speaker 1: This is Michelle McCluskey. She was Michelle Schofield's best friend.
Speaker 1: As kids, they did gymnastics in the front yard, listen
Speaker 1: to music, and then as they grew into teenagers, they
Speaker 1: would go the roller skating rink almost every night. They
Speaker 1: also played a lot of sports with boys in the neighborhood.
Speaker 7: She seemed to be kind of good at almost everything.
Speaker 7: I remember always thinking how strong she was. She could
Speaker 7: do things physically that a lot of girls our age
Speaker 7: couldn't do. She was kind of rough and tumble, you know.
Speaker 7: She had an older brother and a younger brother. She
Speaker 7: wrestled with them and stuff like that. But she was,
Speaker 7: you know, she wasn't like a tough girl or anything
Speaker 7: like that. She was very sweet and feminine and like
Speaker 7: always liked to do her nails and have her hair
Speaker 7: done and that kind of stuff too. When we were younger,
Speaker 7: they lived in a small mobile home. It was a
Speaker 7: single wide mobile home and it was so small, but
Speaker 7: Ricky had a full drum set in a living room.
Speaker 1: Ricky is Michelle's older brother. The whole family loved music, playing, singing,
Speaker 1: you name it. Ricky and his father, David, both learned
Speaker 1: the drums. Michelle's grandfather played the banjo.
Speaker 7: Of course. Then we started listening to rock and roll,
Speaker 7: and if you met her, you would never guess that
Speaker 7: she liked heavy metal locks, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Kelsey and I reached out to Jesse Saum, Michelle's younger brother.
Speaker 5: Today.
Speaker 1: He's an artist and we met him at his studio
Speaker 1: in Port Canaveral. It has big garage doors that open
Speaker 1: onto the marina. Dozens of his metal sculptures hang from
Speaker 1: the walls and ceiling. He keeps a picture of Michelle
Speaker 1: at one of his workstations.
Speaker 12: She was she was trying to do more musical stuff too.
Speaker 12: You know, she was really good at singing and stuff
Speaker 12: like that, and I think she was just trying to
Speaker 12: find her voice, you know, and was kind of surprising
Speaker 12: it because everybody has to work and hear the bill,
Speaker 12: you know what I mean. But I think that that
Speaker 12: was really her kind of creative the thing that she
Speaker 12: how she could express herself.
Speaker 1: Jesse and Michelle went to a lot of heavy metal
Speaker 1: shows together when they were growing up. He's only sixteen
Speaker 1: when Michelle moves in with Leo. He comes home one
Speaker 1: afternoon when he hears that Michelle's body has been found.
Speaker 12: I think I had come home, uh, And I think
Speaker 12: my grandmother actually told me because I don't think my
Speaker 12: dad was there. I was hoping not to witness his
Speaker 12: state of being at that moment, because you know, he just,
Speaker 12: you know, crumpled.
Speaker 1: We asked Jesse if he thinks his dad, David Soalm,
Speaker 1: would talk to us, but Jesse tells us that his
Speaker 1: dad doesn't even like to talk to him about Michelle.
Speaker 1: It's still too painful. As a matter of courtesy, I
Speaker 1: mailed David a letter telling him what I'm doing and
Speaker 1: offering him the opportunity to speak with me or to
Speaker 1: ask any questions.
Speaker 5: But I don't hear back from him.
Speaker 1: In the days following Michelle's funeral, Leo is having a
Speaker 1: hard time processing these new details of his wife's death.
Speaker 1: Now he's forced to think about the violence Michelle experienced
Speaker 1: in her last moments.
Speaker 6: I know Michelle, and there's no way that anybody who
Speaker 6: knew her was capable of doing this to her. It's
Speaker 6: not possible. And so I'm looking for some monstrous thing
Speaker 6: that you can't describe in a human form, you know,
Speaker 6: it's just a monster.
Speaker 1: Leo and Michelle's friends are also trying to make sense
Speaker 1: of Michelle's murder, and they're trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: might be responsible.
Speaker 13: It's a time, you know, we were the suspect of
Speaker 13: a lot of different people. You know, you sit around
Speaker 13: in your mind, you try to who could have done
Speaker 13: something you know as terrible as that.
Speaker 1: This is Dave again, the bass player in Leo's band,
Speaker 1: and his wife Liz.
Speaker 6: There was a couple of people that.
Speaker 13: We wondered about.
Speaker 14: My first reaction when we got the phone call that
Speaker 14: night at the same time that this happened, and just
Speaker 14: before there was like five girls in the area that
Speaker 14: had been killed. One of them was even right down
Speaker 14: here off Comby Road, dumped on the railroad track.
Speaker 1: Comby Road is the street where a lot of teenagers
Speaker 1: hang out in Lakeland. A lot of crime happens here,
Speaker 1: a lot of theft fights, sometimes murders. It also happens
Speaker 1: to be where Tom's Restaurant is, where Michelle was working
Speaker 1: the night she went missing.
Speaker 15: So my first reaction was, oh, my god, it's got
Speaker 15: to be that same guy. He's come over here. So
Speaker 15: I just that was my first reaction. It was that
Speaker 15: serial killer that had been running around I four corridor.
Speaker 1: But their minds always returned to those closest to Michelle,
Speaker 1: and word was getting around about how Leo's dad claimed
Speaker 1: a premonition had led him to Michelle's body.
Speaker 13: The Sheriff's department was looking at that and thinking, yeah,
Speaker 13: that don't sound right, you know, And to be honest
Speaker 13: with you, there were times when we kind of suspected
Speaker 13: he may have because there again, at a time like that,
Speaker 13: it's such a terrible thing, you know, you try to
Speaker 13: figure out who in the world would have done something
Speaker 13: like that, you know, That's what.
Speaker 1: The Polk County Sheriff's Office would have to figure out.
Speaker 1: Two experienced detectives were assigned to the Michelle Schofield case,
Speaker 1: Detective Weeks and Detective Putnam. I could try to describe them,
Speaker 1: but it might be better coming from the longtime reporter
Speaker 1: for the Lakeland Ledger, Susie SHOTTLECOTTI.
Speaker 16: I was covering cops then, so I do remember having
Speaker 16: a lot of murders going on at that point and
Speaker 16: a lot of things that went unsolved.
Speaker 1: Susie has been reporting on the courts in Polk County
Speaker 1: for over thirty five years, and she's married to a
Speaker 1: retired detective with the Sheriff's office. She knows just about
Speaker 1: everyone in Polk County. First I asked her about Detective
Speaker 1: Robert Weeks.
Speaker 16: Oh yeah, Weebel webel. Yes, it's little short guy. He's
Speaker 16: kind of built like a wee boy, you know, Weebel's wobble.
Speaker 1: Then I asked Susie about Weeks's partner, Detective Putnall.
Speaker 16: Of God, Richard Putnall doctor deaf. Oh god, he has
Speaker 16: the personality of a dial tone. I mean they called
Speaker 16: him doctor Deaf because he was always at a crime scene.
Speaker 2: But he was.
Speaker 16: He was the typical chain smoking, rumpled suit, tall, lanky detective.
Speaker 16: I mean, he was just what you would imagine an
Speaker 16: old krusty. He smelled like smoke all the time.
Speaker 6: Detective.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: Kelsey and I tried reaching out to these detectives without luck.
Speaker 1: We sent email, left phone messages, and knocked on doors.
Speaker 1: It was almost like word had gotten out about what
Speaker 1: we were doing. Very few people from the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: active or retired, wanted to talk to us. But there
Speaker 1: was one guy. His name is Grady Judd. He's the
Speaker 1: actual sheriff now, and it's fair to say that he's
Speaker 1: the face and the voice of Polk County.
Speaker 17: This is a wonderful safe community. I love the people here,
Speaker 17: and in turn, the community here overwhelmingly cares for each
Speaker 17: other and looks out for each other. It's a good place.
Speaker 1: Sheriff Grady Judd is a white man in his mid sixties.
Speaker 1: He wears glasses and a green uniform with his sheriff
Speaker 1: star pinned to his chest. He's known for his campy,
Speaker 1: tough on crime press conferences, which often involved props and
Speaker 1: pictures and often go viral on social media. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and six, his deputies chased someone suspected of killing
Speaker 1: a police officer into the woods and shot him dead.
Speaker 1: After the autopsy, Judd was asked why deputies fired sixty
Speaker 1: eight bullets into the suspect. That's all the bullets we had,
Speaker 1: and we would have shot him more.
Speaker 17: He said, we don't choose to shoot people. They choose
Speaker 17: for us to shoot them. And if you choose for
Speaker 17: us to shoot at you, we're gonna shoot at you
Speaker 17: a lot. That's a guarantee.
Speaker 1: When we met him, some Lakeland rappers had just released
Speaker 1: a new song, duck in Grady Judd, and they made
Speaker 1: a music video that pokes fun at evading cops in
Speaker 1: Polk County.
Speaker 5: The sheriff loved it.
Speaker 17: Really we got a boom. And by the way, we're
Speaker 17: going to do an encore together. It's already schedule. I
Speaker 17: told him. I said, they said, can we do an encore?
Speaker 17: And I said yes, I love it because the first
Speaker 17: one I didn't have anything to do with it. They
Speaker 17: pulled my clips off the YouTube and this one I'm
Speaker 17: going to have a cameo appearance and they said, can
Speaker 17: we can we shoot part of it with your swat
Speaker 17: vehicle and I said, well, sure you can.
Speaker 1: Jud is so popular in Polk County. He recently won
Speaker 1: his fifth consecutive term as sheriff, running unopposed. He tells
Speaker 1: us he grew up in the Cumby area, that same
Speaker 1: part of Lakeland where Michelle worked and where bodies were
Speaker 1: turning up.
Speaker 17: They used to call me a Comby critter. When I
Speaker 17: was a kid. I'd run around talking about being the sheriff,
Speaker 17: and they'd say, they're not going to elect some kid
Speaker 17: from Comby Road to be the sheriff. I said, yeah,
Speaker 17: they are. They're going to let me. They ain't going
Speaker 17: to elect the Comby critter. Well they did here I
Speaker 17: am Grady.
Speaker 1: Judd was just eighteen when he joined the Sheriff's office,
Speaker 1: but since he was too young to legally purchase ammunition
Speaker 1: for his service weapon, his father had to buy it
Speaker 1: for him. Jud quickly rose up the ranks, and just
Speaker 1: a few years before Michelle Schofield's murder, he was supervising
Speaker 1: forty four employees, all older than him. And jud is
Speaker 1: the first to admit that it's a pretty bad sign
Speaker 1: when a kid in his twenties is running the criminal
Speaker 1: investigations unit.
Speaker 17: You know, I like to think that I'm sharper than
Speaker 17: the average bear, but that's just a personal opinion of me.
Speaker 17: But the reality is, we should have had people with
Speaker 17: institutional wisdom running a criminal investigations division back in the day,
Speaker 17: and we didn't. So we had a young, upstart college
Speaker 17: kid who read a lot and was intuitive when the
Speaker 17: real mature leaders weren't there.
Speaker 1: In Polk County in the nineteen eighties, violent crime was
Speaker 1: rising dramatically, and Grady Judd was alarmed and frustrated by
Speaker 1: the growing number of unsolved homicides. Back then, they didn't
Speaker 1: really have the resources to keep up.
Speaker 17: We didn't have DNA, we didn't have cell phone tracking,
Speaker 17: we didn't have stores and intersections with cameras.
Speaker 1: On top of that, Grady Judd says they didn't have
Speaker 1: many experienced homicide detectives back then, and there were too
Speaker 1: many murders for them to handle. They'd start working one murder,
Speaker 1: but then another murder would come along and they'd have
Speaker 1: to stop what they were doing to move on to
Speaker 1: the next one. The year Michelle was killed, the Sheriff's
Speaker 1: office handled twenty seven homicides, its second worst year for
Speaker 1: murders in a decade. There were nine recent murder cases
Speaker 1: that had gone cold, and now detectives from the Polk
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Office had another killing on their hands with
Speaker 1: very little evidence to go on, making matters worse. A
Speaker 1: month before Michelle's murder, Polk County Sheriff Dan Daniels, a
Speaker 1: self avowed white supremacist, was forced out of office by
Speaker 1: the governor on the same day Michelle's body was found.
Speaker 1: There was an overhaul of the department and massive reorganization underway.
Speaker 1: Many officers in the Polk County Sheriff's Office resigned.
Speaker 17: I didn't because my goal was to make this organization better,
Speaker 17: not run from a challenge. But it was tumultuous during
Speaker 17: those days.
Speaker 1: With the Sheriff's department in turmoil, Detectives weeks and putnall
Speaker 1: do what they can with the resources available to them.
Speaker 1: The first thing they do is canvas Leo and Michelle's neighborhood,
Speaker 1: knocking on doors, and they begin to hear stories from
Speaker 1: neighbors of arguments and loud noises coming from the young
Speaker 1: couple's trailer, but nobody had seen or heard anything unusual
Speaker 1: on the night Michelle disappeared until Detective Weeks shows up
Speaker 1: at the trailer of Ricky and Alice Scott, who live
Speaker 1: across the street from Leo and Michelle. Ricky didn't see anything,
Speaker 1: but he says he's concerned about his wife getting involved
Speaker 1: in the investigation. Alice, who's in her mid thirties, stays
Speaker 1: up late and she's the neighborhood busybody. She's been known
Speaker 1: to call the cops on kids for riding bikes on
Speaker 1: her lawn, and she tells Detective Weeks that yes, she
Speaker 1: did see.
Speaker 5: Something suspicious on the night Michelle disappeared.
Speaker 1: She says she heard a noise and looked out her
Speaker 1: bathroom window. The Schofields pulled up to their trailer in
Speaker 1: the Mazda. She watched as Leo and Michelle went inside.
Speaker 1: Then Alice says she hears a scream. She says she
Speaker 1: stays at the window waiting until Leo emerges from the trailer.
Speaker 1: He's carrying something large and heavy that he places in
Speaker 1: the back of the Mazda. He closes the hatch, starts
Speaker 1: the car, and away With that single statement, Alice Scott
Speaker 1: puts the investigations focused squarely on Leo.
Speaker 17: Eyewitness testimony is not your best evidence because people in
Speaker 17: a traumatic event, perception can be skewed. They mean well,
Speaker 17: some don't mean well. Some there's an ulterior motive. But
Speaker 17: for the most part, your eyewitnesses mean well, but they're
Speaker 17: scared to death and their perceptions may not be exactly
Speaker 17: as it occurred. But if somebody didn't talk, it was
Speaker 17: hard to solve a murder.
Speaker 1: Back then, as detectives weeks in Putnall interview Leo and
Speaker 1: Michelle's friends and former roommates, they learned that the young
Speaker 1: couple had a volatile relationship. There were stories about loud
Speaker 1: arguments in the trailer, Leo screaming at Michelle, some noises
Speaker 1: that sounded like slaps, red marks on Michelle's face, stories
Speaker 1: of Leo dragging Michelle by the hair. As the days
Speaker 1: turned to weeks after Michelle's murder, Leo can feel people looking.
Speaker 5: At him differently.
Speaker 1: Word is getting out now that there's a witness pointing
Speaker 1: to Leo as the main suspect. At one point, Leo
Speaker 1: calls Michelle's dad, David Salm.
Speaker 6: He said that he was informed by doctor Weeks to
Speaker 6: not have any contact with me until this was over,
Speaker 6: that they believed that I did it. And I said
Speaker 6: to him, you don't believe that, David, And he said
Speaker 6: I don't know. And I was silent for a few seconds,
Speaker 6: and I said, okay, all right, and that it was
Speaker 6: the last time I suppo to him. I understand his pain,
Speaker 6: but when he said that, it really really hurt, because
Speaker 6: you should know me better than that. But he needed
Speaker 6: something to hang that had on, you know, something to
Speaker 6: makes sense, like we all did. But when he said that,
Speaker 6: I really really started feeling the way coming down.
Speaker 1: And it's not just Michelle's dad who turns his back
Speaker 1: on Leo. Michelle's friends are talking to detectives too.
Speaker 7: Michelle was a very very beautiful girl, and she always
Speaker 7: dated very nice looking boy And when I met him,
Speaker 7: he just didn't seem like the kind of person that
Speaker 7: I would think she would be interested in. He was
Speaker 7: kind of small bill, kind of grungy, and he just
Speaker 7: didn't seem that attractive to me. It just it just
Speaker 7: rubbed me weird. I just didn't understand what she was
Speaker 7: so interested about, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Michelle McCluskey was the maid of honor at Leo and
Speaker 1: Michelle's wedding, but she still had her doubts.
Speaker 7: I remember not not being sure that it was a
Speaker 7: good thing for her and being concerned, you know, but
Speaker 7: she just she always convinced me it was okay. If
Speaker 7: they were not getting along or she was unhappy or
Speaker 7: anything like that, she didn't tell me.
Speaker 1: But after Michelle went missing, Michelle McCluskey remembers one moment
Speaker 1: in particular, after her first night of searching for her
Speaker 1: best friend, when questions about Leo's started.
Speaker 5: To creep in.
Speaker 7: We spent that whole day looking for her and stuff.
Speaker 7: And it was sometime laid into the night, and we
Speaker 7: went back to their house and I fell asleep on
Speaker 7: the couch and then I heard a noise or something.
Speaker 7: I woke up and he was standing in the living
Speaker 7: room with the front door open, just kind of looking outside.
Speaker 7: And that was the first time that I thought what if,
Speaker 7: Like what if he did something to her, and it
Speaker 7: made me kind of scared that I was there along
Speaker 7: with him.
Speaker 1: Soon, Michelle McCluskey would learn that Leo's neighbor, Alice Scott,
Speaker 1: told detective she heard Michelle's scream then saw Leo carrying
Speaker 1: something heavy to the Mazda. If that was true, it
Speaker 1: would mean that Michelle McCluskey was sleeping at the crime
Speaker 1: scene where her best friend had been violently murdered the
Speaker 1: night before by the man she was now.
Speaker 7: Alone with being in the house the next day and
Speaker 7: there's no blood, nothing's broken, no holes in the wall, no,
Speaker 7: you know, there's no sign that anything like that happened
Speaker 7: in their house. So I just thought, well, that just
Speaker 7: doesn't make sense. I had decided there was no way
Speaker 7: he could have done it because blood would have been
Speaker 7: all over the house and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: But what Michelle McCluskey didn't know was that busybody. Neighbor
Speaker 1: Alice Scott told police that she saw something else. The
Speaker 1: day after Michelle Schofield went missing, Leo bringing a carpet
Speaker 1: cleaner into the trailer. Detectives Weeks and Putnall continue to
Speaker 1: question Leo, and he can feel the pressure mounting and
Speaker 1: because he feels that he has nothing to hide, he
Speaker 1: never even thinks to bring a lawyer along.
Speaker 6: The fact that you're questioning me about the murder of
Speaker 6: my own life was extremely uncomfortable. I've told this story
Speaker 6: of zillion times. It doesn't change. I don't have any
Speaker 6: answers to what actually took place because I wasn't there
Speaker 6: to be in that position. It's beyond trying to prove
Speaker 6: your innocence. It's beyond that there's a sludge that covers
Speaker 6: you when you're being questioned for such a thing. We're
Speaker 6: not talking about robin a store, or a cocaine charge
Speaker 6: or something, and we're not even talking about a murder,
Speaker 6: which is bad enough. This is the murder of my wife,
Speaker 6: whom I love, and now I'm forced to prove that
Speaker 6: to someone I've never met before and obviously doesn't have
Speaker 6: any idea who I am.
Speaker 1: Leo asked to take a lie detector test. He wants
Speaker 1: to prove his innocence, and Detective Weeks obliges. Weeks brings
Speaker 1: in a guy from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Speaker 1: The examiner focuses on three questions, did you stab Michelle
Speaker 1: Leo answers no, Oh, did you stab Michelle with a knife?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 1: Did your mother lie about your activities that night?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: The polygraph examiner tells Leo he flunked, tells him, I
Speaker 1: think you killed your wife. Armed with the lie detective results,
Speaker 1: Weeks and Putnall continue to interview people close to the couple.
Speaker 6: Weeks and his team are going around spreading all kinds
Speaker 6: of stuff. My friends are looking at me strange. I
Speaker 6: can feel it, you can feel the difference. And on
Speaker 6: top of everything, I lost Michelle.
Speaker 1: Months pass with Leo as the main suspect, yet no
Speaker 1: evidence is turning up that connects him to Michelle's murder.
Speaker 1: The clothes he was wearing that night had no blood
Speaker 1: on them. Detectives don't have a murder weapon. They have
Speaker 1: an alleged failed polygraph. But polygraph tests don't actually detect lies.
Speaker 1: They really only measure anxiety. The US Supreme Court ruled
Speaker 1: that polygraph tests are not reliable and their results are
Speaker 1: not admissible evidence.
Speaker 5: In Florida.
Speaker 1: The detectives have statements about Leo's temper and his relationship
Speaker 1: with Michelle, and a statement from Alice Scott, who claims
Speaker 1: to have seen something the night Michelle disappeared. Still, the
Speaker 1: State Attorney's office is looking over all the evidence and
Speaker 1: they don't think detectives have enough to arrest Leo. Yet
Speaker 1: there's other evidence, like the fingerprints found in Michelle's Mazda.
Speaker 1: There were just two sets of prints that were lifted
Speaker 1: from inside the car, and when they didn't match Leo
Speaker 1: or Michelle or Leo Senior, the Sheriff's office stops looking
Speaker 1: for possible matches. But what's strange is that Leo and
Speaker 1: Michelle's prints aren't even in the car, which they should
Speaker 1: have been because.
Speaker 5: It's their car.
Speaker 1: When I first saw that in the Florida Department of
Speaker 1: Law Enforcements report, I wondered if someone wiped down the fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Crime scene technicians also exact and Leo and Michelle's trailer.
Speaker 1: If Alice Scott's eyewitness statement is true that she heard
Speaker 1: Michelle's scream then saw Leo carrying something heavy like a
Speaker 1: body and place it in the Mazda, that makes the
Speaker 1: trailer the scene of the crime. The medical examiner concludes
Speaker 1: that Michelle lost approximately five pints of blood, but they
Speaker 1: don't find anything you'd expect to find in the trailer
Speaker 1: after someone has been stabbed twenty six times. Inside, there
Speaker 1: is no blood, just like Michelle McCluskey noticed, and no
Speaker 1: signs that the carpet had been cleaned, which there should
Speaker 1: have been if Leo used the carpet cleaner. Alice Scott
Speaker 1: claims she saw him bringing into the trailer the day
Speaker 1: after Michelle disappeared. Instead, most of Michelle Schofield's blood was
Speaker 1: found in the dirt near the canal where.
Speaker 5: Her body was discovered.
Speaker 1: Nearly half of female homicide victims are killed by their partners,
Speaker 1: and the majority of those homicides are carried out by
Speaker 1: a male partner, so it makes sense that detectives would
Speaker 1: be suspicious of Leo, but there's no physical evidence connecting
Speaker 1: Leo to the crime, so the case stalls for months
Speaker 1: with no arrest. By the end of nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: with no new developments, the murder of Michelle Scofield is
Speaker 1: going cold. The Polk County Sheriff's Office now has ten
Speaker 1: unsolved murders on the books, but there's a new homicide prosecutor,
Speaker 1: Assistant State Attorney John Aguero. His job is to get
Speaker 1: the evidence from the detectives and convict someone for the
Speaker 1: murder of Michelle Schofield. He's young, smart, and very aggressive.
Speaker 1: Aguero takes a look at the Michelle Scofield case file
Speaker 1: and he thinks he sees something. He reads Officer Kachadorian's
Speaker 1: report about his conversation with Leo Senior, and Aguero thinks
Speaker 1: there's something weird going on with the father. A vision
Speaker 1: from God led him to Michelle's body in a phosphate
Speaker 1: drainage canal that can't even be seen from the road.
Speaker 1: Aguero is certain that Leo's father is somehow involved. His
Speaker 1: so called vision from God that called him to Michelle's
Speaker 1: body is just too suspicious to ignore, so Assistant State
Speaker 1: Attorney John Aguero sends detectives weeks in putnall back out
Speaker 1: for a few more rounds of questioning with Leo, and
Speaker 1: there's a new focus.
Speaker 6: No, it's not about me anymore. They're both good cops,
Speaker 6: and we're going to talk about my dad.
Speaker 5: But the detectives don't get what they want.
Speaker 1: Leo says he doesn't know anything about Michelle's murder, and
Speaker 1: if Leo thought his dad had something to do with it,
Speaker 1: he'd give up any information he had. Not long after this,
Speaker 1: Leo is a passenger and a serious car crash where
Speaker 1: he breaks his neck. He's hospitalized then released, but has
Speaker 1: to wear a metal neck brace for a while. He
Speaker 1: decides he's done with Florida. By this point, Leo's parents
Speaker 1: have moved back to Massachusetts. Leo tell's detective Weeks he's
Speaker 1: moving back up north, gives him contact information in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: and asks the detective to let him know if they
Speaker 1: learn anything new about Michelle's murder. It's now May of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight. Michelle has been dead for more than
Speaker 1: fifteen months. John Aguero, the prosecutor, is frustrated by the
Speaker 1: investigation's lack of progress, so he decides he wants to
Speaker 1: talk to the neighbor Alice Scott himself. Alice points Aguero
Speaker 1: to Randy and Mary Laffoon, a neighborhood couple that delivers
Speaker 1: newspapers around Lakeland. Detective Weeks interviewed them both a year before,
Speaker 1: but they said they didn't notice anything unusual on the
Speaker 1: night Michelle disappeared. But now under Aguero's questioning, the couple
Speaker 1: tells the prosecutor they remember seeing an orange Mazda and
Speaker 1: a pickup truck just like the one Leo's senior drives
Speaker 1: they were parked right where Michelle's body was found, and now,
Speaker 1: fifteen months later, they say they saw those vehicles in
Speaker 1: the early morning hours of February twenty fifth, nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: the night Michelle disappeared. Aguero might not have the evidence
Speaker 1: to charge Leo's senior yet, but with the statements from
Speaker 1: Alice Scott and the Laffoons, he thinks he has enough
Speaker 1: to charge Leo. So in June of nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: Leo is indicted for first degree murder, a charge punishable
Speaker 1: by death in Florida. Aguero notifies police in Massachusetts and
Speaker 1: he gets on a plane with Detective Weeks to take
Speaker 1: Leo into custody. Leo knows they're coming, but before he surrenders,
Speaker 1: he goes up to the roof of an apartment building
Speaker 1: he and his dad are painting, and he takes what
Speaker 1: could be his last look over the neighborhood he grew
Speaker 1: up in. He's just a few stories up and his
Speaker 1: father joins him.
Speaker 6: And of course, I've never been arrested for anything, so
Speaker 6: I'm pretty scared. I'm in a panic, and Dad's not
Speaker 6: saying anything. I actually went out on the roof and
Speaker 6: I went out and I stood on the edge of
Speaker 6: the thing, and I'm not gonna lie. I honestly stood
Speaker 6: there thinking and I should just drop off of it
Speaker 6: and be done. You know, I'm not gonna let these
Speaker 6: people take.
Speaker 11: Me through hell.
Speaker 6: You know you're not listening to the truth, don't care
Speaker 6: about the truth. And my dad said something really crazy.
Speaker 6: He said, if you did it, jump.
Speaker 1: Leo's wife has been murdered, his friends have mostly abandoned him,
Speaker 1: and now his own family is cracking under the pressure.
Speaker 6: If all you can think is that I did it,
Speaker 6: then obviously you're not caring who killed Michelle. I did
Speaker 6: not kill Michelle, And at some point I just decided
Speaker 6: I'm going to stand for my wife.
Speaker 1: Leo goes to the office of a local lawyer who
Speaker 1: has arranged for the arrest and they wait. Then Leo
Speaker 1: notices movement outside the window. He turns to the lawyer.
Speaker 6: I said that they're outside your window. And the swat
Speaker 6: team was outside the window with their rifles, so I
Speaker 6: know they had surrounded the building. And no siner did
Speaker 6: I say that they came in the office. They kicked
Speaker 6: them the door, and this came right off in there.
Speaker 6: And weeks was there. Aguero was there, and they picked
Speaker 6: me up, handcuffed me. I told Weeks, you're making a mistake.
Speaker 6: I kept saying that you're making a mistake. He didn't
Speaker 6: respond to that at all.
Speaker 1: Leo has brought before a Massachusetts judge who tells him
Speaker 1: he can fight extradition to Florida if he wants, but
Speaker 1: Leo waves that right. He says he'll go willingly and
Speaker 1: gets in a car with the prosecutor.
Speaker 5: John Aguero now told of gar.
Speaker 6: When we were driving to Logan Airport in Massachusetts, he
Speaker 6: asked me, how do you like the car? We're in
Speaker 6: a red Cadillac, and he said, how do you like
Speaker 6: the car? I said, and I like it. It's nice.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna make you drive me back in it. You're
Speaker 6: driving me to Massachusetts in a red Cadillac.
Speaker 1: Leo is escorted onto the plane for the flight back
Speaker 1: to Florida by Detective Weeks and John Aguero. Leo is
Speaker 1: just twenty two years old, and tonight he's going to
Speaker 1: be sleeping in the Polk County jail.
Speaker 6: I remember asking we because he sat by me on
Speaker 6: the plane and I asked him to not stop looking,
Speaker 6: to continue looking, and he said why would I do that?
Speaker 6: And I said, because I'm not guilty of killing Michelle.
Speaker 6: And he said, well, if I believe that, you wouldn't
Speaker 6: be here.
Speaker 1: That's when Leo turns to the other man sitting by him,
Speaker 1: Prosecutor John Aguero. Leo catches a glimpse of something shiny
Speaker 1: on Aguero's tie. It's a tie clasp with some kind
Speaker 1: of design. Leo leans in to get a closer look.
Speaker 1: It's old, sparky Florida's Electric Chair. Bone Valley is a
Speaker 1: production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal
Speaker 1: Company Number One. Our executive ducers are Jason Flam and
Speaker 1: Kevin Wordiska Kornhaber is our senior producer. Brit Spangler is
Speaker 1: our sound designer. Roxandra Guidy is our editor. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Maximo Anderson. Our producer and researcher is Kelsey Decker.
Speaker 1: Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars, is
Speaker 1: performed by Lee Bob and the Truth. It was written
Speaker 1: by Leo Schofield and Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hearty Correctional Institution.
Speaker 1: Bone Valley is written and produced by me Gilbert King.
Speaker 1: You can follow the show on Instagram. Facebook, and Twitter
Speaker 1: at Lava for Good to see photos and documents from
Speaker 1: our investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content. Visit Lava
Speaker 1: Forgood dot com, slash Bone Valley