September 21, 2022 • 52 mins
Chapter 1 of 9
Author Gilbert King receives a message from a Florida judge who claims that there is an innocent man in prison, wrongly convicted of murdering his wife back in 1987. King and researcher Kelsey Decker meet Leo Schofield in prison and learn about the disappearance of 18 year-old Michelle Schofield.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You've been around the system for a long time. Could
you ever imagine the day where you'd sit at a
table with a microphone and vouch for a man who
says he's not guilty. No. In fact, I've stated many
times I'm probably way over my skis right now. Technically
(00:23):
I'm not supposed to be doing this, but it's like
if I don't do it, who the fuck's going to
do it? This is Judge Scott Cupp. He isn't supposed
to make any public comments on pending cases at all.
Florida's Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits it. And yet that's
exactly what he's doing to me, a writer. This could
(00:45):
cost him not only a seat on the twentieth Circuit Court,
he could even be disbarred. I can't. I just can't
let it go. The first time I met Judge Scott
Cup was in twenty eighteen, when I was invited to
speak at a conference about my book, Devil in the Grove.
It's a story of four young black men in Central
(01:06):
Florida who were wrongly accused of raping a white woman
in nineteen forty nine. A young Thurgood Marshal represented them
at trial. Decades before he became the first black justice
on the US Supreme Court. I spent five years investigating
the story, and when Devil in the Grove won the
Pulitzer Prize in twenty thirteen, it brought renewed attention, outrage,
(01:28):
and even political action to the case. In late twenty
twenty one, I was in the courtroom when the State
of Florida formally dismissed all charges against the young men
known as the grovel In four. Their families patiently waited
for full exonerations, and after seventy two years, they finally
had justice. If you know something that's right, stand up
(01:52):
for it. The persistent and stand back footed old God's promises.
Let him work his play, and I don't care if
it takes seventy two years? Did I take eighties? He
did it for me, and he'd do it for I
(02:17):
talk about Florida's notorious legal history a lot in my book,
presentations like the one I did for a group of
judges in Naples, Florida, back in August of twenty eighteen.
I didn't know him yet, but Judge Cupp was in
the audience. He'd seen my name Gilbert King on the program.
I actually thought you were a comic. He had me
confused with the comedian Gilbert Gottfried. I glanced at the
(02:42):
name and I was like, oh, this is But then,
for whatever reason, I decided to stay, and all the
seats in the back for people who want to like
quietly duck out and not be seeing those were taken.
So I remember being off to the side up in
the front, and then it quickly became apparent weren't a comic,
and your presentation was obviously extremely powerful, And all I
(03:06):
could think about was I got to get this guy
on Leo and I just pulled my card out and
wrote whatever I wrote on the back. After my talk,
I was signing books and the judge handed me his
business card. On the back, he'd written the name Leo
Schofield in his Florida Department of Corrections number one seven
(03:31):
six zero. He also wrote quote not just wrongfully convicted,
He's an innocent man. When I turned the card over,
I saw the name Judge Scott Cupp. He nodded and
told me to call him sometime. I held onto the
card for a few days. I was unsure about whether
(03:52):
or not to call. I hate disappointing people by telling
them I can't pursue a story. But at the same time,
I'd never a tip from a judge before. So sitting
in my office in Brooklyn one afternoon, I pick up
the phone. It's the end of the day, and I'm
immediately put through to Judge Cupp. When I tell him
(04:12):
who I am, his voice takes on a sense of urgency.
He brushes off my small talk and gets right into it.
He starts telling me about Leo's story. How in February
nineteen eighty seven, when Leo Schofield was twenty one years old,
his eighteen year old wife, Michelle, was killed. Two years later,
(04:34):
Leo was convicted of her murder. That was over thirty
years ago. Leo claimed he was innocent from day one,
and he still maintains his innocence. And here's the other
thing Judge Cupp wanted me to know. Seventeen years after
Michelle's murder, newly discovered forensic evidence from the crime scene
(04:54):
pointed to a new suspect, but the State of Florida
quickly shut down the investig You or somebody like you
is Leo's last shot at having any semblance of a life.
I not only want Leo free. I want the public
(05:16):
to accept and believe in his innocence and that he
was wrongfully convicted. I'm definitely intrigued, but I tell the
judge I'm working on another book that I need to finish.
I tell him it could be a while before I
can start looking into the Schofield case. I can feel
his disappointment through the phone before I hang up, though
(05:37):
he asked a favor. Just read the trial transcripts. Don't
take my word for it. Read the transcripts because that's
what hooked me, and that's what should hook everyone. So
that's what I do. I sit down in front of
the computer and start reading trial transcripts that he sends me,
typed up pages of everything that was said in the
(05:57):
courtroom during Leo's trial. There are thousands of pages, and
I can't stop reading. The state's theory of the crime
makes no sense to me. There's nothing that resembles a
real search for truth and justice. And even though I
already know the jury's verdict, I'm still shocked that the
trial ends with Leo's conviction. I'm also completely hooked. I
(06:23):
get back to Judge Cupp with a ton of questions
and his answers only confirm what a shit show this
case is. I start thinking it maybe I can take
a short break from writing my book spend some time
down in Florida doing research for a feature story on
this case. But the more I looked into it, the
more obsessed I became. There seemed to be so much
(06:43):
more to this story, and that short break from my
book it wasn't so short. I would end up spending
the next three and a half years of my life
doing what Judge Cupp was hoping. I do a thorough
investigation into the Leo Schofield case, something that the state
of Florida never did. So I packed my files, my computer,
(07:03):
and even my dog Maizie into the car and made
the long drive south from Brooklyn. I needed to go
back to central Florida, a place I can never seem
to get away from. And the whole drive down I
can't shake what Judge Cupp keeps telling me about Leo Schofield.
This guy is innocent. God help us if we can't
(07:25):
get this right, do you my man to my fields
sorce steps sorry? In this vast relation, I reach desperation
(08:13):
to the wording star to star Bone Valley, chapter one.
(08:49):
God help us. There are so many stories of wrongful
convictions from around the country, where innocent people spend decades
in prison for crimes they are later exonerated for. And
there's no other state like Florida when it comes to
(09:11):
getting it wrong. Since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment in nineteen seventy six, Florida has executed ninety nine people,
but the state also has the highest rate of error
in capital cases. Over that same period, thirty defendants sentenced
to death were found to be wrongfully convicted. That means
(09:34):
that for every three people executed in Florida, one person
has been found innocent and released from death row. Usually
I write stories about Florida's brutal history of wrongful convictions
from the pre civil rights era, so most of the
people involved have died a long time ago. There's no
one to interview, just documents and case files to pour over.
(09:56):
But this time it's different. The people at the heart
of this case are still alive, and as I was
about to find out, they were willing to talk. The
transcripts and documents could show that Leo was wrongfully convicted,
but they couldn't reveal what truly happened to Michelle Scofield
(10:17):
back in nineteen eighty seven, or why the state of
Florida would shut down the investigation. So I want to
talk to Leo. I've interviewed men who were in the
clan back in the day, and I've spoken to convicted
murderers as well as men who were exonerated after serving time.
But I'd never been to a prison before, and I
was bringing along a research assistant. This was new to
(10:39):
her too. I had no idea what to expect. I
didn't know, like, where would we be sitting to talk
to this guy? Are there going to be guards around?
Is he going to be handcuffed? Am I going to
feel safe? I wasn't sure. This is Kelsey Decker. I
had just hired her her to help me research my
(11:01):
new book before I decided to pivot to Leo's case.
So Kelsey scanned and read all of Leo's legal files,
and then she was hooked too. Before long, she knew
Leo's case even better than I did. But Kelsey was
also fresh out of college. She'd never done any investigative
work before, let alone gone inside a prison to interview
(11:23):
a man convicted of murdering his young wife. Neither of
us knew quite what she was signing up for or
how long we'd end up working on this story together.
But in March of twenty nineteen, I asked her to
fly down to Florida and we made the drive to
Hearty Correctional to meet Leo's scofield. Good morning, good morning,
(11:44):
how are you good? How about yourself? We got there,
you know, we had to leave phones in the car.
I think the only thing we brought in was the recorder,
and we had to bring our driver's license like photo
IDs in under the sets any contrabands such as SOE
full firearms, i'm an issuance devices, nice start cootting. Went
(12:06):
in there, take off shoes, belts, empty pockets, put everything
through the scanner, have to walk through the body metal detector,
get the pat down. I'm still not entirely sure why
they do this, but they have to inspect like the
bottom of your feet. So we give them our ideas
(12:28):
and they give us these little like body alarms and
you have to put the little loop on that through
your belt and have it, you know, at your waist,
and there's just one button on it and it basically
you know, if you are in trouble, it sends an
alert to the correction officers. I'm like, what what situation
(12:54):
am I going to find myself in where I might
need to press this button? I mean, I was asolutely nervous.
A corrections officer leads us to a series of heavy
doors until we make it to a little room with
a round table and a couple of chairs. The officer
who guides us here leaves the room, and then we
just sit and wait until they bring Leo in. We're
(13:15):
in an administrative building and they're officers and staff chatting
outside in the hallways. You might be able to hear
them throughout our interviews with Leo. Both if you're dying,
and you know, close the door and we're in there
alone with him, and he sat down and thanked us,
(13:38):
and great. Just you know, we just got into it. Listen,
this is the story. It is what it is. You
believe or don't believe it. It's up to you. It
will not change the fact that I'm an innocent man,
and that truth transcends people's disbelief. You know, I don't
(13:59):
need you to believe me to make it true. So
here's what we learn about Leo. He's a teenager in
the early nineteen eighties when his family moves from Fall River,
Massachusetts to Lakeland, a city in Polk County, Florida. I
know what that's like. I moved from New York to
central Florida around the same time to attend college in Tampa.
(14:21):
I used to drive from Tampa to Orlando a lot,
and I'd go through Polk County and it was just
that a place to pass through real country with farmland, cattle,
citrus groves, and its biggest city. Lakeland was sort of
the poor step child that sat between Tampa and Orlando.
While I was driving I four, I hear radio ads
(14:43):
for heavy metal concerts at the Lakeland Civic Center. Bands
like ac DC, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest played there
a lot in the nineteen eighties. When Leo moves to
Polk County, Florida from Massachusetts, he has a thick New
England accent that immediately sets him apart. This isn't the
Florida you see on postcards with art deco hotels, pink flamingos,
(15:07):
and white sand beaches. This is central Florida, and Polk
County is unmistakably the South. And you know, down here
they're wearing alligator shirts and all the other stuff, and
I'm wearing a rock and roll shirt, ripped up jeans
in the jean vest. Well these armie pins on it.
They don't get any of that. I mean, I don't
get any of the cowboy hats stuff. He never feels
(15:30):
like he fits in, so he drops out of school
and starts doing odd jobs with his father. In nineteen
eighty five, he meets a girl named Michelle's Psalm who
lives nearby in Lakeland. He's nineteen and she's sixteen. Tell
me about the first time that you saw Michelle the
very first time, Carter Glans never forget that. She was
(15:53):
my best friend's girlfriend. My best friend at the time
was a kid named Manna Ricola, and I was giving
him guitar lessons and I have him go over in
his house and walked in his bedroom. The first time
I ever saw Michelle. She was sitting on his bed
and it was just instant lightning. That was the first
(16:13):
time I met her. I'll never ever forget that. But
Michelle was with Mannie, so Leo was casually seeing other
girls while he chased his true passion. My pursuit was music.
I have been grooming myself for the rock and rule
thing all my life. It's the only thing I ever knew.
I mean, I've been playing guitar since I was seven
(16:35):
years old. When Leo first meets Michelle, he's in a
heavy metal band called Rhino. Rhino was an acronym and
spelled all hiano. It's almost an embarrassment, but it stood
for rocky knots off And I actually did not care
if that as a band name. But I didn't have
a lot of decision making over that, and we were
(16:57):
just a little club band, a little party band. Leo
was Rhino's lead guitarist, and then there was Dave Collins.
Girls like Leo a lot because he was he was
looked like a rock star, you know, and he acted
like that, yeah, on the stage, and all Dave played bass.
(17:18):
He was one of Leo's good friends, and Leo used
to spend a lot of weekends at his house. Kelsey
and I sat down with him and his wife Liz
in their home in Lakeland. He was a good guitarist
and a little high strong at times. You know, there's
a thing about guitarists in bands, most of them. Most
of them are kind of hard to get along with.
(17:44):
Dave tells us about this one time when Rhino played
a show on a flatbed trailer in the woods for
free beer. Leo was seeing this other girl at the time,
and she lifted her top flashing another guy, and Leo
got mad and took his guitar and threw it into bonfire,
and then he ran off into the woods. We ran
off and finally found him and brought him back. Somebody
(18:06):
went and grabbed that guitar out of the fire before
he got too bad of shape. I remember he played
that for quite a while. It's like burnt in certain
places and stuff like that. But you know, he was
he was young, and he did have a temper. But
you know, there were certain people who didn't like him.
But I think it's mainly because the girls liked him most,
(18:28):
to be honest, I've seen pictures of Leo at the time.
His hair is jet black and long in a style
that screamed nineteen eighties hard rock, and with his overbite,
I think he looks like a young Freddie Mercury, the
lead singer from Queen. While Leo's out there pursuing his
rock star dreams. His best friend, Manny, gets into some
trouble and ends up in a juvenile detention facility in
(18:51):
South Florida. Not long after mann He had went to prison.
I was at home in my prime's house and I
got a call sends for you, and I'm talking to
her on the phone, and she's just talking to me, like,
I know, I can't recognize her voice, but I'm not
trying to give that up, you know, so I'm just
listening until I can figure it out. And you know,
(19:13):
and when she mentioned Manny, I buy figured out, Well,
this is Michelle. Unbelievable. Michelle found Leo's number in Manny's
address book. They talk for a while, then Leo invites
Michelle to come see his band. She was just feeling,
you know, sad and only over Manny being gone. And
I said, well, if you can make it over to
where we're playing, I'll take you home afterwards. And I did,
(19:37):
and I don't think we've spent minutes apart. After that,
Michelle breaks it off with Mannie, and over the next
few months, Leo gets to know Michelle and he gets
to know her family too. Michelle was the middle child
and only daughter. At first, she's a pretty traditional childhood
in Lakeland. She and her brothers would play in their
(19:59):
treehouse in the back yard, and on weekend she'd go
to the roller rink with her friends. But then came
the difficult years. Her parents divorce, and shortly after her
mother's in a car crash. She suffered significant brain damage
and returns to Texas to be cared for by her family.
Michelle and her two brothers stay in Florida with their father,
(20:20):
David's psalm, but a house fire leaves them homeless for
a period of time. From there, Michelle and her brothers
move into a children's home in Lakeland. They lived there
for a few years until their dad finishes rebuilding the
family home. By the time Michelle starts dating Leo, she's
seventeen years old and her single dad is putting in
(20:41):
long hours at a local phosphate mine. Michelle comes from
a broken home and a good family, but still a
broken family with a lot of challenges. Even at that
age when we met and she was young, she had
a lot of free reign. She would come up to
our house and of course we were partying, but we
(21:02):
were older. We were of age. This is Liz Collins
and she's still married to Dave Ryno's bass player and
Leo's good friend. At the time. She didn't drink over there,
but she would spend the night over there with Leo
at our house before we would go to bedhouse of Michelle,
does your mom and dad know you're here? Oh? They
don't care where I go, and so I never couldn't
(21:24):
understand that, you know, why they gave her so much
freedom like that. By this time, Leo moved out of
his parents' house and was living on his own, and
soon after Michelle meets Leo, she moves in with him.
They bounced between a few different apartments with a variety
of roommates until another couple offers up a second bedroom
in their single wide trailer. The mobile home is in
(21:46):
North Lakeland. You're a part of town called Cumby Settlement.
The neighborhood is mostly quiet with old growth live oak
trees draped in Spanish moss. Their trailer is about a
mile off Cumby Road, which is a little less He's full.
From what I gathered from interviews I've done, it seems
like Cumby was a mostly white, low income, high crime area. Michelle,
(22:09):
like Leo, also dropped out of high school, and she
gets a job on coumby Road, working as a waitress
at Tom's Restaurant, a drive in diner serving burgers and
Southern comfort food. Leo trades in his motorcycle and gets
an orange Mazda station Wagon. He's focused on his music
the painting houses to pay the bills. Living with another
(22:31):
couple in a small trailer was difficult for everyone, and
at times things became tense. One fight in particular keeps
coming up over and over. In the past, our arguments
were usually about the car. Leo and Michelle shared, the Mazda.
Sometimes Michelle would use it to go visit friends, and
Leo would never hear from her. She didn't have a license,
(22:53):
so I couldn't have her online schance, and she'd already
been stopped once by a cop thankfully made let her go.
She was close to home. Leo. Michelle didn't have a
phone at their trailer, but Leo begged her to stop
somewhere and get a message to him if she was
going to be out with the car. I would always
tell her, you're not my daughter, so you want to
(23:14):
go pick up your friends and do this and do that.
I don't have any issues with that. My issue is
is that if I'm expecting you here and you're not
gonna be here for two more hours, you need to
call and tell me, you know, so I'm not worried.
So we always had these fights about the car because
she wouldn't do it, and she'd show up late, and
I'd be furious, you know, like why don't you get it?
(23:37):
You know, like, and we go through these stupid, ridiculous arguments.
She'd come in and she's giddy and smiles, She's had
a great day. She's driving, she loved driving the car,
and me, like a moron, I'm curious because she's late.
Leo was worried about her safety, but he also admits
he was possessive. He was a great catch for me,
even the rock star want to be you know, I
(24:00):
just never had a girlfriend like Michelle, and she was
absolutely everything, and so I didn't want to lose Michelle,
and I felt like I had to control everything. But
that is my greatest regret with Michelle. I was way
too controlling, way too possess a way too insecure. But
I was young and didn't have a lot to think with.
(24:22):
The arguments continue, but Leo wants things to get better,
so when Leo starts doing some work painting houses for
a man named Bob Good, he turns to him for
relationship advice. Bob introduces him to the South Side Assembly
of God, a church not far from where Leo and
Michelle were living. The young couple meets with the pastor there,
(24:43):
who finds out that Leo and Michelle are not just
boyfriend and girlfriend, they are living together. He tells Leo
and Michelle that they are living in sin they need
to get married. That wasn't really on my radar immediately,
but it wasn't not on my radar either. There was
no doubt in my mind that I could spend the
(25:04):
rest of my life with Michelle. The question I had
was could she spend the rest of her life with me?
You know, I didn't. I didn't know if that was
going to be something that she'd want to do. But
I know that I wanted to be with her forever.
And I went out to a field that her dad
was working in that he owned, and he was out
(25:25):
there and digging post holes or something. I can't imagine
what he was thinking. I mean, I was literally sweating
when I went out there, and quite the old fashioned way.
I just came out and I asked him, I said, um,
can I marry your daughter? You know? Can I have
your daughter's hand in marriage? And for the life of me,
(25:46):
I don't know why he said yes, but he did.
And so when he said yes, um, I almost didn't
know what to say to that. I'm like, okay, well bye,
you know good, but you know how it goes. Michelle
says yes and they start thinking about a wedding. Money
(26:06):
was tight, but the churchgoers were determined to see the
marriage happen, and sooner rather than later. So another couple
and Dale and I put together a wedding and a
reception for them. On one of our trips to Polk County,
Kelsey went to a Sunday service at the church and
met the Grinsteads who knew Leo and Michelle back in
(26:26):
the day. It was a very traditional wedding ceremony, you know, love, honor,
and obey sickness and in health, just very traditional honey.
Leo's parents attend the ceremony along with Michelle's dad and
her mom even makes the trip from Texas. Dave and
Liz Collins are there along with other congregants who want
(26:49):
to welcome Leo and Michelle into the church. I remember
it like it happened yesterday. I remember seeing my bride
coming in the church. You know. That was just amazing
to me. And I had the thought when I was
standing there waiting for her that I'm actually marrying this girl.
(27:09):
I was just amazed that this girl's coming down the Aisland.
She's going to marry me. Leo and Michelle Scofield are
pronounced husband and wife. They don't tell you how to
kiss the bride, so so when that time came, her
(27:30):
brother Walden saying Okay, that's enough. This is how I
normally kiss her, you know, and even she kind of
giggled at that. There's a photo from the reception. Leo
and Michelle's standing next to a multilayered wedding cake. They
borrowed their outfits from another recently married couple at the church.
(27:51):
Michelle's in a lacy white dress with flowers in her hair.
Leo's wearing a white tuxedo with a black bow tie.
They look so happy, holding hands, laughing and smiling at people.
Off camera. A young couple whose lives are just beginning together.
On August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty six, Pastor Tom Waldron
had accomplished what he'd set out to do, preside over
(28:14):
the wedding of Leo and Michelle so that they would
no longer be living in sin It was one of
the best days of my entire life. Just six months later,
Pastor Waldron would preside over Michelle's funeral service. Hi. I'm
(28:42):
Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs,
and many other great podcasts. Today we're asking you, our listeners,
to take part in a survey. Your feedback is going
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(29:05):
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for your support. Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together.
Stand Together is a philanthropic community that partners with America's
boldest changemakers to tackle the root causes of our country's
(29:28):
biggest problems, including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos
is one of those changemakers. At the age of twenty three,
Weldon was arrested for a first time offense of selling
weed to a confidential informant. At the time, he was
a budding musician spending time with artists like Tupac, Snoop
(29:48):
Dog Pink, and Nas. His entire life was ahead of
him when he was sentenced to a mandatory fifty five
years in federal prison without the possibility of early release.
After serving thirteen years, a bipartisan effort led to him
getting officially pardoned. Upon his release, he founded The Weldon Project,
(30:09):
a nonprofit working to create better outcomes for those still
in prison that funds social change and provides financial aid
for all those who are still serving time for cannabis
related offenses. Weldon Angelos is one of the many entrepreneurs
partnering with Stand Together to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty,
(30:31):
and criminal justice. To learn more about the War on Drugs,
listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the evening of
(30:53):
February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven. Leo and Michelle have
been married for about half a year. After work, Leo
was hanging out at his friend Buddy Anderson's house, waiting
for band practice to start. Leo's also waiting for Michelle
to call. She took the moths to the Tom's Restaurant
for her waitressing shift. She clocks off around eight pm,
(31:15):
and Leo told her he'd be at Buddy's. But it's
after eight and she still hasn't called. I went over
there for practice, wrote over there on my motorcycle. This
is Dave, the bass player. We're getting ready to practice.
And all of a sudden, Leo seemed to be very distraught,
and I don't think he said anything to me. It
(31:36):
was Buddy that I talked to as over acall, and
I said, what's going on? Buddy tells Dave that Michelle
hasn't shown up yet, And for me, it was like,
it's just irritating because stuff like that, you know, they'd
had fives before and she ran off of their girl
(31:57):
friends and stuff like ed and I'm thinking it's just
the same thing, you know. So I've took time out
of my schedule to come all the way over here
and now we're not going to practice because of this foolishness. Finally,
at ninety five pm, the phone rings at Buddy's house.
It's Michelle. So the one time, the one time she calls,
(32:19):
the only time she got a call, and she was
going to be late. She was already late, but she
called to tell me. She tells Leo that after work,
she went back to their trailer to do housework. She
fed their dogs and folded the laundry that she did
earlier in the day at her father's place. There's no
phone in their trailer, so she drove back to the
(32:39):
gas station across the street from Tom's restaurant to call
Leo from the pay phone there. She tells him she
made thirteen dollars in tips and was excited about that.
She says, she put three dollars of gas in the
Mazda and bought a coke And it was a good conversation.
I even asked her, I said, and all, was that
so hard? Right? So now we don't have to have
(32:59):
a bit. Oh, everything's good, I know you're okay. Leo's
about to head over to his other friend, Vince's house,
which is basically just down the street from buddies. So
I tell us picked me up at Vince's house. We
have that agreement. The last thing we say is I
love you. There's no way Michelle's not on her way.
(33:20):
Fifteen minutes pass than a half hour. It's only about
eight miles away. But Michelle has yet to show up
at Vince's house. And so when she's not there at
ten o'clock, ten to thirty, now I'm stopping to get worried.
First thoughts from maybe she got stopped by a cop
again or whatever. Minutes turn into hours. Still no Michelle.
(33:44):
I think it's like eleven thirty. I called my father.
He's in bed. I talked to my mom, and my
mom gets my dad up out of bed, and he
says she's probably just out doing whatever. Wait a little while.
She's not back in a little bit, called me back.
So at midnight, and this is one of the times
I'm just not going to forget because these big grandfather
clawk and it's bonging midnight, and I call him and
(34:06):
tell my dad and she's not here. You need to
come get me. Something's wrong. Michelle was less than fifteen
minutes away from where she was supposed to come and
pick me up. She made a phone call to us,
to me at nine forty five and Anderson's house, and
no later than ten o'clock she should be there. So
by midnight when my father comes and finally gets me,
(34:30):
I'm not thinking anything good. They figured there's only two
ways Michelle could have driven from the gas station where
she called Leo to Vince's house, so Leo and his
dad drive both roots. No sign of Michelle or the
Mazda anywhere. They go back to Leo's trailer to see
if she's there. I went to the house. The lights
were off the cause and not there. I don't stop
(34:51):
because obviously she's not there. I had my dad drive
by one of her best friend's house. Maybe the cars there,
it's not their lights or off. She's not there. They
go back to Vince's. She's not there, so Leo's dad
waits in the driveway while Leo goes inside to make
some phone calls. He's calling hospitals in the area to
see if there have been any serious car accidents, but
(35:12):
there's nothing. Then Leo makes one more call, Hope cany
Sheriff's property. Harry, can I help you at the time
that I'm calling. It's twelve forty three in the morning.
I need to talk to the company about buying my wife.
He's four and a half hours later, coming home from
mark and finding minutes away from my job, and I
(35:36):
was going in if maybe he got picked up or not.
I'm really worried about it. I'll right to find out. Phone.
The Sheriff's department connects Leo to the jail so he
can ask them if Michelle is being held there. And
one I'm on the phone was the Sheriff's department. Vince
is sitting on the couch and he's looking at me,
and I can see the look in his face. He's
not feeling good about it either. By then, we're all
(35:59):
going songs. Not all right. Leo is being recorded by
the Sheriff's office, and you can hear him talking to
Vince while he waits on hold and doubtful. It says,
they shou me just sucking arm man. He is, God
help her. So I can't afford the fucking worry about
this kind of a little shit, you know, the slightest
little problem fucking put me out. I don't know why,
(36:20):
but they just do. I hate the feeling, fucking hate it.
She was on her way here. That's why I'm cooking out. Man, Now,
I couldn't need it. Hello fair, Yeah, I'm sorry we
don't have her. Oh man, uh could you put me
back to Chess Pollock, Parliament and person? Okay? Going on? Hey,
(36:43):
what's last name? My show? Go field? Okay? Helpful? Okay? Uh?
I put six great hundred pomb panta right, Bob. Well,
(37:05):
she was coming home from one, so more likely she
had red pants with a red and white stripe. Should
mar the DC color with black stripe. After the call,
Leo goes back outside, gets in his dad's pickup, and
they drive to his parents trailer. It's about one thirty am.
(37:29):
His dad says he's not feeling well and goes to bed.
Leo tries reaching anyone you can think of that might
know where Michelle is. He even calls her grandmother, Agnes,
who lives nearby. No sign of Michelle. He calls the
sheriff again and says he gets the same dispatcher. The
woman told me, I don't know. I forget this, he said,
(37:51):
mister Scofield, Michelle is eighteen years old. If we find her,
the only thing we can do is suggest that she
get in touch with you, and I'm like, you don't understand.
We didn't have an argument. Something's wrong. She's by herself,
something's wrong with his dad in bed, Leo convinces his mother, Cheryl,
(38:11):
to go back out with him to look for Michelle.
They drive by another friend's house looking for the Mazda.
At around two thirty am. They pull into David Psalm's
house that's Michelle's father, and Leo wakes him up. Michelle's
younger brother Jesse. Here's the conversation and also gets out
of bed. I just heard a bunch of commotion and
(38:32):
stuff and I was just startled and I got up
and I'm like, you know what's going on? Jesse says,
his dad picked up the shotgun he kept by his bed.
Can't crab the shotgun? Well, you know, he's he don't
know what's going on. Somebody banging on the front door, dude,
that's what he does, right, I mean, he's old school.
And the first thing I hear is like Leo talking
(38:53):
to my dad, and and then he's you know, he's
out of breath and he's panicked, and he's like, you know,
we don't know where michells you know, like like, well,
you know, I've called everywhere. I'm dead now, And I
was like, man, well, why would you be so overly
concerned about her being out at two am? Like, you know,
she's eighteen years old? Man, Like that's kind of the norm,
you know what I mean. Like, and just the people
(39:14):
that she hung out with and stuff like that, they'd hat,
you know, they wouldn't be parting or anything all night,
but they would just stay up late, you know. I mean,
that's kind of what you do when you're eighteen years old.
So I couldn't understand why the urgency of it and
why he would physically show up at that hour, and
how is how is your dad reacting to what he
was saying? He was just trying to absorb the information
that he was being told. David starts getting dressed to
(39:36):
go out on his own to look for his daughter.
Leo and his mom leave the Psalms house around two
forty five am, and while driving around Cumby Road, they
spot two patrol cars parked at a gas station. Leo
approaches them. That night, I literally stopped and talked to
three deputy shoves that were in two cars and two
(39:57):
separate cars, and they didn't even have anything on report
that I already made. I mean, that was really frustrating.
I mean, how many reports do I need to make
before you people do something. Leo and his mom returned
to Leo's parents trailer. She's tired and goes to bed.
It got to be after four. I was at my parents' house.
(40:17):
It started the rain. He looks outside the window of
his parents trailer. They live off a big highway ninety
eight north, and he's looking across the street to a
parking lot, and it was a flashing light, like a
beacon light, and Gilbert, I'm holding on to anything. Well,
I'm doing a chicken bone wish thing at this point. Anything.
(40:39):
I'm looking for anything, and anything's a possibility. He thinks
for a moment, doesn't really make any sense. But maybe
this flashing light is a tow truck. Maybe they have
the Mazda. So I grabbed my dad's jacket. I go
up and I walk across the street in ninety eight
and I get over to the store and it's a
light drizzle. He makes it over to the parking lot,
(41:01):
but it's not a tow truck. It's just a street
sweeper driving around the lot, and in that moment, right
at that moment, right there, I started to cry in
the rain because I didn't know what to do. I
(41:23):
didn't know where to go, and I knew then my
wife's in trouble and I don't have any way to
help her, not a damn thing. And it was so frustrating.
So I walked up to Buddy's house, which is a
(41:46):
good little walk. I mean, they all lived within the
same level. When you're walking, you know, in the rain.
That was like a frigging eternity to get there, and
I banged on his window when I finally got there,
and he came and he let me in and I begged,
please take me out. Something's wrong. He said, just wait
till the morning, just wait. We can't do nothing now,
(42:07):
I'll just wait. And I did not want to wait,
but I had nothing else that I could do. But
I was. I was beyond worried. I was miserable. I
didn't even think of sleeping. I didn't think of beating,
(42:28):
I didn't think of changing my clothes, and didn't think
taking a shower. My next thought and my next objective
was getting somebody. Get in a car and let's go
find Michelle. At daybreak, Leo walks back to his parents trailer.
(42:49):
There's still no word from Michelle, so he and his
dad go down to the Lakeland Police Department, where they
meet a rookie officer, Richard Catchadorian. Hang on a second, yes, hey,
give me a favorite, just to intercept him a minute.
Let him him on the phone with that gentleman from
New York of all night. Gilbert Kelsey and I were
able to track him down by phone in Lakeland, where
(43:11):
he does private security at a local university. We talked
to him while he was on duty in his patrol car.
If you need to go, we could call you back.
It's not a problem now. I don't worry about it.
I'm all right. We've gotten a copy of Katchadurian's police
report from that morning and emailed it to him to
refresh his memory, but he said he didn't need it.
Can you tell us where you were what you remember
(43:33):
back on February twenty fifth, when Leo Schofield and his
father came to the Lakeland Police Department back in nineteen
eighty seven, I can envision it right now. I was
working the station duty office desk. I stepped out of
the boot the little office there, and went law and
engaged him in conversation. And at first it seemed like
(43:54):
a just and I hate using more typical, but it
just seemed like just another missing persons information. And I
was trying to take it apart as I was listening
to because a lot of times, you know, when you
get a missing persons, they're not really missing, you know,
they're just unaccounted for for whatever reasons. And I was
(44:17):
taking the information, asking what I considered standardized questioning about
where you last saw her, you know, what does she
do for a living? You know, say blah blah blah.
And mister Scofield, the father, was doing all the talking
the way I remember it, almost all of it. I'd
asked the question and the father would answer. And when
(44:40):
I got down to the date of birth, mister Scofield
gave me her day of birth. And I said, why
can't your son answer those questions? How do you know this?
And he doesn't for whatever reason. That just that question,
it was like a cold knife blade in me. I
just couldn't understand why the boy couldn't provide me his
wife's day of birth. Leo had the same issue. The
(45:02):
night before. On his twelve forty three am call to
the sheriff's dispatcher, he knew his wife's birthday. It's December eighth,
the day before his own birthday. He knew her age two,
but on the call he just had trouble remembering the
year Michelle was born. Okay, I'm thinking, um twelve eight.
(45:32):
I don't remember the year eighteen. He's stumbling on the
birthday again with Katchadurian, and the rookie officer finds this suspicious.
(45:53):
He was distant. I tried to engage him. I think
I said something to back. Can you look at me?
I mean, look at me. You know what's your wife's
day of birth? Why is your father answering that question?
Why aren't you? How come you don't know your own
wife's date of birth? And he was distant. One of
the things I did ask quest you have any marital discourse?
(46:13):
Is there any issues? Did you hit her? You know
there have been domestic violence of any kind And it
was all nose And that's mister Schofield did all the
answering on that too. I asked the boy if he
had anything to do with the disappearance of his wife
and the father got a little annoyed with me. They're
(46:33):
in the lobby, not angry, but annoyed, thought I was
being rude. After asking some more questions, Officer Katchadurian determines
that the place where Michelle was last seen does not
fall within the Lakeland Police Department's jurisdiction, so he'd need
to pass the information over to the Polk County Sheriff's office.
(46:53):
And I remember going back in and letting him know
that I needed to handle his spat and I need
to get a deputy right away out to their hands.
I suspected some form about play. It's now late in
the afternoon on February twenty fifth, about eighteen hours since
(47:14):
Michelle went missing. Something is definitely very wrong. If Michelle
is off having a good time somewhere, who is she with?
A search party starts to take shape, parents, both families, friends.
They drive the streets around Cumby and expand into other
parts of Lakeland. They make missing person flyers with details
(47:35):
about the Mazda and photos of Michelle that they post
around town. And then, as the search party develops over
the next three days, we're all looking around and the
ditches and all that stuff, her father's with me and
all that, and I had this distinct thought. I was
standing in the back of a pickup truck and we've
got this sunbeam light in the middle of the night
on power Plant Road, and we're looking in the dish,
(47:57):
and it just dawned on me, what are we for?
We expected to be playing cards in the ditch somewhere,
just sitting here waiting to be found, And it just
struck me that something is drastically wrong. While shining lights
into ditches on the side of the road, Leo's mind
went to a very dark place, to a particularly gruesome
(48:19):
murder in Florida that had horrified the nation in the
early nineteen eighties. They were just doing the Adam walsting right,
None of that, I remembered. I was attending the University
of South Florida in Tampa at the time, about a
half hour west of Lakeland. Adam Walsh was a six
year old boy who'd been abducted in nineteen eighty one
(48:40):
from a department store in South Florida. After a couple
weeks of searching, the boy's severed head was found in
a drainage canal near Yeehaw junction, about twenty miles east
of Polk County. Everyone in Florida knew about Adam Walsh.
The brutal nature of the crime made international headlines, and
Adam's father, John Walsh, became a public figure advocating for
(49:02):
victims of violent crimes. He later launched the long running
television show America's Most Wanted. That was big news in Florida.
And I'm from Massachusetts and I grew up in a project.
I don't know if we were isolated or not, but
I don't remember stories like that when I was a kid.
You come down here to Florida and it's like an
every day occurrence. Somebody's getting butchered and it's harfying, and
(49:23):
hear that stuff on the news. And I did say,
I hope we don't find her in water like Adam
Walsh was. And I said that only because it dawned
on me when we're looking in these drainage ditches and
all this other stuff, that what do we expect to find?
(49:53):
Another day goes by constant searching around Lakeland, looking in
ditches and woods. Michelle has been missing for forty eight hours.
Finally there's a break one of Leo's friends is on
his way home from work when he spots what he
thinks is Leo and Michelle's Mazda. It's parked on the
(50:16):
shoulder of I four, just a few miles east of Lakeland.
He doesn't think much of it, but then he stops
at Sparky's gas station on Cumbey Road. He sees a
flyer with Michelle's picture and he realizes something is wrong.
He calls Leo's parents and says he thinks he saw
the Mazda abandoned on the side of the highway. The
(50:37):
car is found, but Michelle is not. The Orange Mazda
would be towed to a crime lab in Orlando and
process for evidence by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
A mechanic who analyzed the car would note that something
called the flywheel had come apart, causing the Mazda to
break down. It also appeared that the stair had been
(51:00):
tampered with. A lab tech would find a bottle of
downy fabric softener in the back smeared with blood, and
most crucially, two sets of fingerprints were lifted from inside
the vehicle. The owner of those prints would not be
(51:21):
identified for seventeen years. Bone Valley is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
(51:42):
Our executive producers are Jason Flaum and Kevin Wurdis. Karak
Kornhaber is our senior producer. Brit Spangler is our sound designer.
Roxandra Guidi is our editor, fact checking by Maximo Anderson.
Our producer and researcher is Kelly see Decker. Our theme song,
(52:02):
The One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Leebob
and the Truth. It was written by Leo Schofield and
Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hearty Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is
written and produced by me Gilbert King. You can follow
the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Lava for Good.
(52:23):
To see photos and documents from our investigation and exclusive
behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgod dot com slap
You've been around the system for a long time. Could
you ever imagine the day where you'd sit at a
table with a microphone and vouch for a man who
says he's not guilty. No. In fact, I've stated many
times I'm probably way over my skis right now. Technically
(00:23):
I'm not supposed to be doing this, but it's like
if I don't do it, who the fuck's going to
do it? This is Judge Scott Cupp. He isn't supposed
to make any public comments on pending cases at all.
Florida's Code of Judicial Conduct prohibits it. And yet that's
exactly what he's doing to me, a writer. This could
(00:45):
cost him not only a seat on the twentieth Circuit Court,
he could even be disbarred. I can't. I just can't
let it go. The first time I met Judge Scott
Cup was in twenty eighteen, when I was invited to
speak at a conference about my book, Devil in the Grove.
It's a story of four young black men in Central
(01:06):
Florida who were wrongly accused of raping a white woman
in nineteen forty nine. A young Thurgood Marshal represented them
at trial. Decades before he became the first black justice
on the US Supreme Court. I spent five years investigating
the story, and when Devil in the Grove won the
Pulitzer Prize in twenty thirteen, it brought renewed attention, outrage,
(01:28):
and even political action to the case. In late twenty
twenty one, I was in the courtroom when the State
of Florida formally dismissed all charges against the young men
known as the grovel In four. Their families patiently waited
for full exonerations, and after seventy two years, they finally
had justice. If you know something that's right, stand up
(01:52):
for it. The persistent and stand back footed old God's promises.
Let him work his play, and I don't care if
it takes seventy two years? Did I take eighties? He
did it for me, and he'd do it for I
(02:17):
talk about Florida's notorious legal history a lot in my book,
presentations like the one I did for a group of
judges in Naples, Florida, back in August of twenty eighteen.
I didn't know him yet, but Judge Cupp was in
the audience. He'd seen my name Gilbert King on the program.
I actually thought you were a comic. He had me
confused with the comedian Gilbert Gottfried. I glanced at the
(02:42):
name and I was like, oh, this is But then,
for whatever reason, I decided to stay, and all the
seats in the back for people who want to like
quietly duck out and not be seeing those were taken.
So I remember being off to the side up in
the front, and then it quickly became apparent weren't a comic,
and your presentation was obviously extremely powerful, And all I
(03:06):
could think about was I got to get this guy
on Leo and I just pulled my card out and
wrote whatever I wrote on the back. After my talk,
I was signing books and the judge handed me his
business card. On the back, he'd written the name Leo
Schofield in his Florida Department of Corrections number one seven
(03:31):
six zero. He also wrote quote not just wrongfully convicted,
He's an innocent man. When I turned the card over,
I saw the name Judge Scott Cupp. He nodded and
told me to call him sometime. I held onto the
card for a few days. I was unsure about whether
(03:52):
or not to call. I hate disappointing people by telling
them I can't pursue a story. But at the same time,
I'd never a tip from a judge before. So sitting
in my office in Brooklyn one afternoon, I pick up
the phone. It's the end of the day, and I'm
immediately put through to Judge Cupp. When I tell him
(04:12):
who I am, his voice takes on a sense of urgency.
He brushes off my small talk and gets right into it.
He starts telling me about Leo's story. How in February
nineteen eighty seven, when Leo Schofield was twenty one years old,
his eighteen year old wife, Michelle, was killed. Two years later,
(04:34):
Leo was convicted of her murder. That was over thirty
years ago. Leo claimed he was innocent from day one,
and he still maintains his innocence. And here's the other
thing Judge Cupp wanted me to know. Seventeen years after
Michelle's murder, newly discovered forensic evidence from the crime scene
(04:54):
pointed to a new suspect, but the State of Florida
quickly shut down the investig You or somebody like you
is Leo's last shot at having any semblance of a life.
I not only want Leo free. I want the public
(05:16):
to accept and believe in his innocence and that he
was wrongfully convicted. I'm definitely intrigued, but I tell the
judge I'm working on another book that I need to finish.
I tell him it could be a while before I
can start looking into the Schofield case. I can feel
his disappointment through the phone before I hang up, though
(05:37):
he asked a favor. Just read the trial transcripts. Don't
take my word for it. Read the transcripts because that's
what hooked me, and that's what should hook everyone. So
that's what I do. I sit down in front of
the computer and start reading trial transcripts that he sends me,
typed up pages of everything that was said in the
(05:57):
courtroom during Leo's trial. There are thousands of pages, and
I can't stop reading. The state's theory of the crime
makes no sense to me. There's nothing that resembles a
real search for truth and justice. And even though I
already know the jury's verdict, I'm still shocked that the
trial ends with Leo's conviction. I'm also completely hooked. I
(06:23):
get back to Judge Cupp with a ton of questions
and his answers only confirm what a shit show this
case is. I start thinking it maybe I can take
a short break from writing my book spend some time
down in Florida doing research for a feature story on
this case. But the more I looked into it, the
more obsessed I became. There seemed to be so much
(06:43):
more to this story, and that short break from my
book it wasn't so short. I would end up spending
the next three and a half years of my life
doing what Judge Cupp was hoping. I do a thorough
investigation into the Leo Schofield case, something that the state
of Florida never did. So I packed my files, my computer,
(07:03):
and even my dog Maizie into the car and made
the long drive south from Brooklyn. I needed to go
back to central Florida, a place I can never seem
to get away from. And the whole drive down I
can't shake what Judge Cupp keeps telling me about Leo Schofield.
This guy is innocent. God help us if we can't
(07:25):
get this right, do you my man to my fields
sorce steps sorry? In this vast relation, I reach desperation
(08:13):
to the wording star to star Bone Valley, chapter one.
(08:49):
God help us. There are so many stories of wrongful
convictions from around the country, where innocent people spend decades
in prison for crimes they are later exonerated for. And
there's no other state like Florida when it comes to
(09:11):
getting it wrong. Since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital
punishment in nineteen seventy six, Florida has executed ninety nine people,
but the state also has the highest rate of error
in capital cases. Over that same period, thirty defendants sentenced
to death were found to be wrongfully convicted. That means
(09:34):
that for every three people executed in Florida, one person
has been found innocent and released from death row. Usually
I write stories about Florida's brutal history of wrongful convictions
from the pre civil rights era, so most of the
people involved have died a long time ago. There's no
one to interview, just documents and case files to pour over.
(09:56):
But this time it's different. The people at the heart
of this case are still alive, and as I was
about to find out, they were willing to talk. The
transcripts and documents could show that Leo was wrongfully convicted,
but they couldn't reveal what truly happened to Michelle Scofield
(10:17):
back in nineteen eighty seven, or why the state of
Florida would shut down the investigation. So I want to
talk to Leo. I've interviewed men who were in the
clan back in the day, and I've spoken to convicted
murderers as well as men who were exonerated after serving time.
But I'd never been to a prison before, and I
was bringing along a research assistant. This was new to
(10:39):
her too. I had no idea what to expect. I
didn't know, like, where would we be sitting to talk
to this guy? Are there going to be guards around?
Is he going to be handcuffed? Am I going to
feel safe? I wasn't sure. This is Kelsey Decker. I
had just hired her her to help me research my
(11:01):
new book before I decided to pivot to Leo's case.
So Kelsey scanned and read all of Leo's legal files,
and then she was hooked too. Before long, she knew
Leo's case even better than I did. But Kelsey was
also fresh out of college. She'd never done any investigative
work before, let alone gone inside a prison to interview
(11:23):
a man convicted of murdering his young wife. Neither of
us knew quite what she was signing up for or
how long we'd end up working on this story together.
But in March of twenty nineteen, I asked her to
fly down to Florida and we made the drive to
Hearty Correctional to meet Leo's scofield. Good morning, good morning,
(11:44):
how are you good? How about yourself? We got there,
you know, we had to leave phones in the car.
I think the only thing we brought in was the recorder,
and we had to bring our driver's license like photo
IDs in under the sets any contrabands such as SOE
full firearms, i'm an issuance devices, nice start cootting. Went
(12:06):
in there, take off shoes, belts, empty pockets, put everything
through the scanner, have to walk through the body metal detector,
get the pat down. I'm still not entirely sure why
they do this, but they have to inspect like the
bottom of your feet. So we give them our ideas
(12:28):
and they give us these little like body alarms and
you have to put the little loop on that through
your belt and have it, you know, at your waist,
and there's just one button on it and it basically
you know, if you are in trouble, it sends an
alert to the correction officers. I'm like, what what situation
(12:54):
am I going to find myself in where I might
need to press this button? I mean, I was asolutely nervous.
A corrections officer leads us to a series of heavy
doors until we make it to a little room with
a round table and a couple of chairs. The officer
who guides us here leaves the room, and then we
just sit and wait until they bring Leo in. We're
(13:15):
in an administrative building and they're officers and staff chatting
outside in the hallways. You might be able to hear
them throughout our interviews with Leo. Both if you're dying,
and you know, close the door and we're in there
alone with him, and he sat down and thanked us,
(13:38):
and great. Just you know, we just got into it. Listen,
this is the story. It is what it is. You
believe or don't believe it. It's up to you. It
will not change the fact that I'm an innocent man,
and that truth transcends people's disbelief. You know, I don't
(13:59):
need you to believe me to make it true. So
here's what we learn about Leo. He's a teenager in
the early nineteen eighties when his family moves from Fall River,
Massachusetts to Lakeland, a city in Polk County, Florida. I
know what that's like. I moved from New York to
central Florida around the same time to attend college in Tampa.
(14:21):
I used to drive from Tampa to Orlando a lot,
and I'd go through Polk County and it was just
that a place to pass through real country with farmland, cattle,
citrus groves, and its biggest city. Lakeland was sort of
the poor step child that sat between Tampa and Orlando.
While I was driving I four, I hear radio ads
(14:43):
for heavy metal concerts at the Lakeland Civic Center. Bands
like ac DC, Black Sabbath, and Judas Priest played there
a lot in the nineteen eighties. When Leo moves to
Polk County, Florida from Massachusetts, he has a thick New
England accent that immediately sets him apart. This isn't the
Florida you see on postcards with art deco hotels, pink flamingos,
(15:07):
and white sand beaches. This is central Florida, and Polk
County is unmistakably the South. And you know, down here
they're wearing alligator shirts and all the other stuff, and
I'm wearing a rock and roll shirt, ripped up jeans
in the jean vest. Well these armie pins on it.
They don't get any of that. I mean, I don't
get any of the cowboy hats stuff. He never feels
(15:30):
like he fits in, so he drops out of school
and starts doing odd jobs with his father. In nineteen
eighty five, he meets a girl named Michelle's Psalm who
lives nearby in Lakeland. He's nineteen and she's sixteen. Tell
me about the first time that you saw Michelle the
very first time, Carter Glans never forget that. She was
(15:53):
my best friend's girlfriend. My best friend at the time
was a kid named Manna Ricola, and I was giving
him guitar lessons and I have him go over in
his house and walked in his bedroom. The first time
I ever saw Michelle. She was sitting on his bed
and it was just instant lightning. That was the first
(16:13):
time I met her. I'll never ever forget that. But
Michelle was with Mannie, so Leo was casually seeing other
girls while he chased his true passion. My pursuit was music.
I have been grooming myself for the rock and rule
thing all my life. It's the only thing I ever knew.
I mean, I've been playing guitar since I was seven
(16:35):
years old. When Leo first meets Michelle, he's in a
heavy metal band called Rhino. Rhino was an acronym and
spelled all hiano. It's almost an embarrassment, but it stood
for rocky knots off And I actually did not care
if that as a band name. But I didn't have
a lot of decision making over that, and we were
(16:57):
just a little club band, a little party band. Leo
was Rhino's lead guitarist, and then there was Dave Collins.
Girls like Leo a lot because he was he was
looked like a rock star, you know, and he acted
like that, yeah, on the stage, and all Dave played bass.
(17:18):
He was one of Leo's good friends, and Leo used
to spend a lot of weekends at his house. Kelsey
and I sat down with him and his wife Liz
in their home in Lakeland. He was a good guitarist
and a little high strong at times. You know, there's
a thing about guitarists in bands, most of them. Most
of them are kind of hard to get along with.
(17:44):
Dave tells us about this one time when Rhino played
a show on a flatbed trailer in the woods for
free beer. Leo was seeing this other girl at the time,
and she lifted her top flashing another guy, and Leo
got mad and took his guitar and threw it into bonfire,
and then he ran off into the woods. We ran
off and finally found him and brought him back. Somebody
(18:06):
went and grabbed that guitar out of the fire before
he got too bad of shape. I remember he played
that for quite a while. It's like burnt in certain
places and stuff like that. But you know, he was
he was young, and he did have a temper. But
you know, there were certain people who didn't like him.
But I think it's mainly because the girls liked him most,
(18:28):
to be honest, I've seen pictures of Leo at the time.
His hair is jet black and long in a style
that screamed nineteen eighties hard rock, and with his overbite,
I think he looks like a young Freddie Mercury, the
lead singer from Queen. While Leo's out there pursuing his
rock star dreams. His best friend, Manny, gets into some
trouble and ends up in a juvenile detention facility in
(18:51):
South Florida. Not long after mann He had went to prison.
I was at home in my prime's house and I
got a call sends for you, and I'm talking to
her on the phone, and she's just talking to me, like,
I know, I can't recognize her voice, but I'm not
trying to give that up, you know, so I'm just
listening until I can figure it out. And you know,
(19:13):
and when she mentioned Manny, I buy figured out, Well,
this is Michelle. Unbelievable. Michelle found Leo's number in Manny's
address book. They talk for a while, then Leo invites
Michelle to come see his band. She was just feeling,
you know, sad and only over Manny being gone. And
I said, well, if you can make it over to
where we're playing, I'll take you home afterwards. And I did,
(19:37):
and I don't think we've spent minutes apart. After that,
Michelle breaks it off with Mannie, and over the next
few months, Leo gets to know Michelle and he gets
to know her family too. Michelle was the middle child
and only daughter. At first, she's a pretty traditional childhood
in Lakeland. She and her brothers would play in their
(19:59):
treehouse in the back yard, and on weekend she'd go
to the roller rink with her friends. But then came
the difficult years. Her parents divorce, and shortly after her
mother's in a car crash. She suffered significant brain damage
and returns to Texas to be cared for by her family.
Michelle and her two brothers stay in Florida with their father,
(20:20):
David's psalm, but a house fire leaves them homeless for
a period of time. From there, Michelle and her brothers
move into a children's home in Lakeland. They lived there
for a few years until their dad finishes rebuilding the
family home. By the time Michelle starts dating Leo, she's
seventeen years old and her single dad is putting in
(20:41):
long hours at a local phosphate mine. Michelle comes from
a broken home and a good family, but still a
broken family with a lot of challenges. Even at that
age when we met and she was young, she had
a lot of free reign. She would come up to
our house and of course we were partying, but we
(21:02):
were older. We were of age. This is Liz Collins
and she's still married to Dave Ryno's bass player and
Leo's good friend. At the time. She didn't drink over there,
but she would spend the night over there with Leo
at our house before we would go to bedhouse of Michelle,
does your mom and dad know you're here? Oh? They
don't care where I go, and so I never couldn't
(21:24):
understand that, you know, why they gave her so much
freedom like that. By this time, Leo moved out of
his parents' house and was living on his own, and
soon after Michelle meets Leo, she moves in with him.
They bounced between a few different apartments with a variety
of roommates until another couple offers up a second bedroom
in their single wide trailer. The mobile home is in
(21:46):
North Lakeland. You're a part of town called Cumby Settlement.
The neighborhood is mostly quiet with old growth live oak
trees draped in Spanish moss. Their trailer is about a
mile off Cumby Road, which is a little less He's full.
From what I gathered from interviews I've done, it seems
like Cumby was a mostly white, low income, high crime area. Michelle,
(22:09):
like Leo, also dropped out of high school, and she
gets a job on coumby Road, working as a waitress
at Tom's Restaurant, a drive in diner serving burgers and
Southern comfort food. Leo trades in his motorcycle and gets
an orange Mazda station Wagon. He's focused on his music
the painting houses to pay the bills. Living with another
(22:31):
couple in a small trailer was difficult for everyone, and
at times things became tense. One fight in particular keeps
coming up over and over. In the past, our arguments
were usually about the car. Leo and Michelle shared, the Mazda.
Sometimes Michelle would use it to go visit friends, and
Leo would never hear from her. She didn't have a license,
(22:53):
so I couldn't have her online schance, and she'd already
been stopped once by a cop thankfully made let her go.
She was close to home. Leo. Michelle didn't have a
phone at their trailer, but Leo begged her to stop
somewhere and get a message to him if she was
going to be out with the car. I would always
tell her, you're not my daughter, so you want to
(23:14):
go pick up your friends and do this and do that.
I don't have any issues with that. My issue is
is that if I'm expecting you here and you're not
gonna be here for two more hours, you need to
call and tell me, you know, so I'm not worried.
So we always had these fights about the car because
she wouldn't do it, and she'd show up late, and
I'd be furious, you know, like why don't you get it?
(23:37):
You know, like, and we go through these stupid, ridiculous arguments.
She'd come in and she's giddy and smiles, She's had
a great day. She's driving, she loved driving the car,
and me, like a moron, I'm curious because she's late.
Leo was worried about her safety, but he also admits
he was possessive. He was a great catch for me,
even the rock star want to be you know, I
(24:00):
just never had a girlfriend like Michelle, and she was
absolutely everything, and so I didn't want to lose Michelle,
and I felt like I had to control everything. But
that is my greatest regret with Michelle. I was way
too controlling, way too possess a way too insecure. But
I was young and didn't have a lot to think with.
(24:22):
The arguments continue, but Leo wants things to get better,
so when Leo starts doing some work painting houses for
a man named Bob Good, he turns to him for
relationship advice. Bob introduces him to the South Side Assembly
of God, a church not far from where Leo and
Michelle were living. The young couple meets with the pastor there,
(24:43):
who finds out that Leo and Michelle are not just
boyfriend and girlfriend, they are living together. He tells Leo
and Michelle that they are living in sin they need
to get married. That wasn't really on my radar immediately,
but it wasn't not on my radar either. There was
no doubt in my mind that I could spend the
(25:04):
rest of my life with Michelle. The question I had
was could she spend the rest of her life with me?
You know, I didn't. I didn't know if that was
going to be something that she'd want to do. But
I know that I wanted to be with her forever.
And I went out to a field that her dad
was working in that he owned, and he was out
(25:25):
there and digging post holes or something. I can't imagine
what he was thinking. I mean, I was literally sweating
when I went out there, and quite the old fashioned way.
I just came out and I asked him, I said, um,
can I marry your daughter? You know? Can I have
your daughter's hand in marriage? And for the life of me,
(25:46):
I don't know why he said yes, but he did.
And so when he said yes, um, I almost didn't
know what to say to that. I'm like, okay, well bye,
you know good, but you know how it goes. Michelle
says yes and they start thinking about a wedding. Money
(26:06):
was tight, but the churchgoers were determined to see the
marriage happen, and sooner rather than later. So another couple
and Dale and I put together a wedding and a
reception for them. On one of our trips to Polk County,
Kelsey went to a Sunday service at the church and
met the Grinsteads who knew Leo and Michelle back in
(26:26):
the day. It was a very traditional wedding ceremony, you know, love, honor,
and obey sickness and in health, just very traditional honey.
Leo's parents attend the ceremony along with Michelle's dad and
her mom even makes the trip from Texas. Dave and
Liz Collins are there along with other congregants who want
(26:49):
to welcome Leo and Michelle into the church. I remember
it like it happened yesterday. I remember seeing my bride
coming in the church. You know. That was just amazing
to me. And I had the thought when I was
standing there waiting for her that I'm actually marrying this girl.
(27:09):
I was just amazed that this girl's coming down the Aisland.
She's going to marry me. Leo and Michelle Scofield are
pronounced husband and wife. They don't tell you how to
kiss the bride, so so when that time came, her
(27:30):
brother Walden saying Okay, that's enough. This is how I
normally kiss her, you know, and even she kind of
giggled at that. There's a photo from the reception. Leo
and Michelle's standing next to a multilayered wedding cake. They
borrowed their outfits from another recently married couple at the church.
(27:51):
Michelle's in a lacy white dress with flowers in her hair.
Leo's wearing a white tuxedo with a black bow tie.
They look so happy, holding hands, laughing and smiling at people.
Off camera. A young couple whose lives are just beginning together.
On August twenty ninth, nineteen eighty six, Pastor Tom Waldron
had accomplished what he'd set out to do, preside over
(28:14):
the wedding of Leo and Michelle so that they would
no longer be living in sin It was one of
the best days of my entire life. Just six months later,
Pastor Waldron would preside over Michelle's funeral service. Hi. I'm
(28:42):
Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drugs,
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(29:05):
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Stand Together is a philanthropic community that partners with America's
boldest changemakers to tackle the root causes of our country's
(29:28):
biggest problems, including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos
is one of those changemakers. At the age of twenty three,
Weldon was arrested for a first time offense of selling
weed to a confidential informant. At the time, he was
a budding musician spending time with artists like Tupac, Snoop
(29:48):
Dog Pink, and Nas. His entire life was ahead of
him when he was sentenced to a mandatory fifty five
years in federal prison without the possibility of early release.
After serving thirteen years, a bipartisan effort led to him
getting officially pardoned. Upon his release, he founded The Weldon Project,
(30:09):
a nonprofit working to create better outcomes for those still
in prison that funds social change and provides financial aid
for all those who are still serving time for cannabis
related offenses. Weldon Angelos is one of the many entrepreneurs
partnering with Stand Together to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty,
(30:31):
and criminal justice. To learn more about the War on Drugs,
listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the evening of
(30:53):
February twenty fourth, nineteen eighty seven. Leo and Michelle have
been married for about half a year. After work, Leo
was hanging out at his friend Buddy Anderson's house, waiting
for band practice to start. Leo's also waiting for Michelle
to call. She took the moths to the Tom's Restaurant
for her waitressing shift. She clocks off around eight pm,
(31:15):
and Leo told her he'd be at Buddy's. But it's
after eight and she still hasn't called. I went over
there for practice, wrote over there on my motorcycle. This
is Dave, the bass player. We're getting ready to practice.
And all of a sudden, Leo seemed to be very distraught,
and I don't think he said anything to me. It
(31:36):
was Buddy that I talked to as over acall, and
I said, what's going on? Buddy tells Dave that Michelle
hasn't shown up yet, And for me, it was like,
it's just irritating because stuff like that, you know, they'd
had fives before and she ran off of their girl
(31:57):
friends and stuff like ed and I'm thinking it's just
the same thing, you know. So I've took time out
of my schedule to come all the way over here
and now we're not going to practice because of this foolishness. Finally,
at ninety five pm, the phone rings at Buddy's house.
It's Michelle. So the one time, the one time she calls,
(32:19):
the only time she got a call, and she was
going to be late. She was already late, but she
called to tell me. She tells Leo that after work,
she went back to their trailer to do housework. She
fed their dogs and folded the laundry that she did
earlier in the day at her father's place. There's no
phone in their trailer, so she drove back to the
(32:39):
gas station across the street from Tom's restaurant to call
Leo from the pay phone there. She tells him she
made thirteen dollars in tips and was excited about that.
She says, she put three dollars of gas in the
Mazda and bought a coke And it was a good conversation.
I even asked her, I said, and all, was that
so hard? Right? So now we don't have to have
(32:59):
a bit. Oh, everything's good, I know you're okay. Leo's
about to head over to his other friend, Vince's house,
which is basically just down the street from buddies. So
I tell us picked me up at Vince's house. We
have that agreement. The last thing we say is I
love you. There's no way Michelle's not on her way.
(33:20):
Fifteen minutes pass than a half hour. It's only about
eight miles away. But Michelle has yet to show up
at Vince's house. And so when she's not there at
ten o'clock, ten to thirty, now I'm stopping to get worried.
First thoughts from maybe she got stopped by a cop
again or whatever. Minutes turn into hours. Still no Michelle.
(33:44):
I think it's like eleven thirty. I called my father.
He's in bed. I talked to my mom, and my
mom gets my dad up out of bed, and he
says she's probably just out doing whatever. Wait a little while.
She's not back in a little bit, called me back.
So at midnight, and this is one of the times
I'm just not going to forget because these big grandfather
clawk and it's bonging midnight, and I call him and
(34:06):
tell my dad and she's not here. You need to
come get me. Something's wrong. Michelle was less than fifteen
minutes away from where she was supposed to come and
pick me up. She made a phone call to us,
to me at nine forty five and Anderson's house, and
no later than ten o'clock she should be there. So
by midnight when my father comes and finally gets me,
(34:30):
I'm not thinking anything good. They figured there's only two
ways Michelle could have driven from the gas station where
she called Leo to Vince's house, so Leo and his
dad drive both roots. No sign of Michelle or the
Mazda anywhere. They go back to Leo's trailer to see
if she's there. I went to the house. The lights
were off the cause and not there. I don't stop
(34:51):
because obviously she's not there. I had my dad drive
by one of her best friend's house. Maybe the cars there,
it's not their lights or off. She's not there. They
go back to Vince's. She's not there, so Leo's dad
waits in the driveway while Leo goes inside to make
some phone calls. He's calling hospitals in the area to
see if there have been any serious car accidents, but
(35:12):
there's nothing. Then Leo makes one more call, Hope cany
Sheriff's property. Harry, can I help you at the time
that I'm calling. It's twelve forty three in the morning.
I need to talk to the company about buying my wife.
He's four and a half hours later, coming home from
mark and finding minutes away from my job, and I
(35:36):
was going in if maybe he got picked up or not.
I'm really worried about it. I'll right to find out. Phone.
The Sheriff's department connects Leo to the jail so he
can ask them if Michelle is being held there. And
one I'm on the phone was the Sheriff's department. Vince
is sitting on the couch and he's looking at me,
and I can see the look in his face. He's
not feeling good about it either. By then, we're all
(35:59):
going songs. Not all right. Leo is being recorded by
the Sheriff's office, and you can hear him talking to
Vince while he waits on hold and doubtful. It says,
they shou me just sucking arm man. He is, God
help her. So I can't afford the fucking worry about
this kind of a little shit, you know, the slightest
little problem fucking put me out. I don't know why,
(36:20):
but they just do. I hate the feeling, fucking hate it.
She was on her way here. That's why I'm cooking out. Man, Now,
I couldn't need it. Hello fair, Yeah, I'm sorry we
don't have her. Oh man, uh could you put me
back to Chess Pollock, Parliament and person? Okay? Going on? Hey,
(36:43):
what's last name? My show? Go field? Okay? Helpful? Okay? Uh?
I put six great hundred pomb panta right, Bob. Well,
(37:05):
she was coming home from one, so more likely she
had red pants with a red and white stripe. Should
mar the DC color with black stripe. After the call,
Leo goes back outside, gets in his dad's pickup, and
they drive to his parents trailer. It's about one thirty am.
(37:29):
His dad says he's not feeling well and goes to bed.
Leo tries reaching anyone you can think of that might
know where Michelle is. He even calls her grandmother, Agnes,
who lives nearby. No sign of Michelle. He calls the
sheriff again and says he gets the same dispatcher. The
woman told me, I don't know. I forget this, he said,
(37:51):
mister Scofield, Michelle is eighteen years old. If we find her,
the only thing we can do is suggest that she
get in touch with you, and I'm like, you don't understand.
We didn't have an argument. Something's wrong. She's by herself,
something's wrong with his dad in bed, Leo convinces his mother, Cheryl,
(38:11):
to go back out with him to look for Michelle.
They drive by another friend's house looking for the Mazda.
At around two thirty am. They pull into David Psalm's
house that's Michelle's father, and Leo wakes him up. Michelle's
younger brother Jesse. Here's the conversation and also gets out
of bed. I just heard a bunch of commotion and
(38:32):
stuff and I was just startled and I got up
and I'm like, you know what's going on? Jesse says,
his dad picked up the shotgun he kept by his bed.
Can't crab the shotgun? Well, you know, he's he don't
know what's going on. Somebody banging on the front door, dude,
that's what he does, right, I mean, he's old school.
And the first thing I hear is like Leo talking
(38:53):
to my dad, and and then he's you know, he's
out of breath and he's panicked, and he's like, you know,
we don't know where michells you know, like like, well,
you know, I've called everywhere. I'm dead now, And I
was like, man, well, why would you be so overly
concerned about her being out at two am? Like, you know,
she's eighteen years old? Man, Like that's kind of the norm,
you know what I mean. Like, and just the people
(39:14):
that she hung out with and stuff like that, they'd hat,
you know, they wouldn't be parting or anything all night,
but they would just stay up late, you know. I mean,
that's kind of what you do when you're eighteen years old.
So I couldn't understand why the urgency of it and
why he would physically show up at that hour, and
how is how is your dad reacting to what he
was saying? He was just trying to absorb the information
that he was being told. David starts getting dressed to
(39:36):
go out on his own to look for his daughter.
Leo and his mom leave the Psalms house around two
forty five am, and while driving around Cumby Road, they
spot two patrol cars parked at a gas station. Leo
approaches them. That night, I literally stopped and talked to
three deputy shoves that were in two cars and two
(39:57):
separate cars, and they didn't even have anything on report
that I already made. I mean, that was really frustrating.
I mean, how many reports do I need to make
before you people do something. Leo and his mom returned
to Leo's parents trailer. She's tired and goes to bed.
It got to be after four. I was at my parents' house.
(40:17):
It started the rain. He looks outside the window of
his parents trailer. They live off a big highway ninety
eight north, and he's looking across the street to a
parking lot, and it was a flashing light, like a
beacon light, and Gilbert, I'm holding on to anything. Well,
I'm doing a chicken bone wish thing at this point. Anything.
(40:39):
I'm looking for anything, and anything's a possibility. He thinks
for a moment, doesn't really make any sense. But maybe
this flashing light is a tow truck. Maybe they have
the Mazda. So I grabbed my dad's jacket. I go
up and I walk across the street in ninety eight
and I get over to the store and it's a
light drizzle. He makes it over to the parking lot,
(41:01):
but it's not a tow truck. It's just a street
sweeper driving around the lot, and in that moment, right
at that moment, right there, I started to cry in
the rain because I didn't know what to do. I
(41:23):
didn't know where to go, and I knew then my
wife's in trouble and I don't have any way to
help her, not a damn thing. And it was so frustrating.
So I walked up to Buddy's house, which is a
(41:46):
good little walk. I mean, they all lived within the
same level. When you're walking, you know, in the rain.
That was like a frigging eternity to get there, and
I banged on his window when I finally got there,
and he came and he let me in and I begged,
please take me out. Something's wrong. He said, just wait
till the morning, just wait. We can't do nothing now,
(42:07):
I'll just wait. And I did not want to wait,
but I had nothing else that I could do. But
I was. I was beyond worried. I was miserable. I
didn't even think of sleeping. I didn't think of beating,
(42:28):
I didn't think of changing my clothes, and didn't think
taking a shower. My next thought and my next objective
was getting somebody. Get in a car and let's go
find Michelle. At daybreak, Leo walks back to his parents trailer.
(42:49):
There's still no word from Michelle, so he and his
dad go down to the Lakeland Police Department, where they
meet a rookie officer, Richard Catchadorian. Hang on a second, yes, hey,
give me a favorite, just to intercept him a minute.
Let him him on the phone with that gentleman from
New York of all night. Gilbert Kelsey and I were
able to track him down by phone in Lakeland, where
(43:11):
he does private security at a local university. We talked
to him while he was on duty in his patrol car.
If you need to go, we could call you back.
It's not a problem now. I don't worry about it.
I'm all right. We've gotten a copy of Katchadurian's police
report from that morning and emailed it to him to
refresh his memory, but he said he didn't need it.
Can you tell us where you were what you remember
(43:33):
back on February twenty fifth, when Leo Schofield and his
father came to the Lakeland Police Department back in nineteen
eighty seven, I can envision it right now. I was
working the station duty office desk. I stepped out of
the boot the little office there, and went law and
engaged him in conversation. And at first it seemed like
(43:54):
a just and I hate using more typical, but it
just seemed like just another missing persons information. And I
was trying to take it apart as I was listening
to because a lot of times, you know, when you
get a missing persons, they're not really missing, you know,
they're just unaccounted for for whatever reasons. And I was
(44:17):
taking the information, asking what I considered standardized questioning about
where you last saw her, you know, what does she
do for a living? You know, say blah blah blah.
And mister Scofield, the father, was doing all the talking
the way I remember it, almost all of it. I'd
asked the question and the father would answer. And when
(44:40):
I got down to the date of birth, mister Scofield
gave me her day of birth. And I said, why
can't your son answer those questions? How do you know this?
And he doesn't for whatever reason. That just that question,
it was like a cold knife blade in me. I
just couldn't understand why the boy couldn't provide me his
wife's day of birth. Leo had the same issue. The
(45:02):
night before. On his twelve forty three am call to
the sheriff's dispatcher, he knew his wife's birthday. It's December eighth,
the day before his own birthday. He knew her age two,
but on the call he just had trouble remembering the
year Michelle was born. Okay, I'm thinking, um twelve eight.
(45:32):
I don't remember the year eighteen. He's stumbling on the
birthday again with Katchadurian, and the rookie officer finds this suspicious.
(45:53):
He was distant. I tried to engage him. I think
I said something to back. Can you look at me?
I mean, look at me. You know what's your wife's
day of birth? Why is your father answering that question?
Why aren't you? How come you don't know your own
wife's date of birth? And he was distant. One of
the things I did ask quest you have any marital discourse?
(46:13):
Is there any issues? Did you hit her? You know
there have been domestic violence of any kind And it
was all nose And that's mister Schofield did all the
answering on that too. I asked the boy if he
had anything to do with the disappearance of his wife
and the father got a little annoyed with me. They're
(46:33):
in the lobby, not angry, but annoyed, thought I was
being rude. After asking some more questions, Officer Katchadurian determines
that the place where Michelle was last seen does not
fall within the Lakeland Police Department's jurisdiction, so he'd need
to pass the information over to the Polk County Sheriff's office.
(46:53):
And I remember going back in and letting him know
that I needed to handle his spat and I need
to get a deputy right away out to their hands.
I suspected some form about play. It's now late in
the afternoon on February twenty fifth, about eighteen hours since
(47:14):
Michelle went missing. Something is definitely very wrong. If Michelle
is off having a good time somewhere, who is she with?
A search party starts to take shape, parents, both families, friends.
They drive the streets around Cumby and expand into other
parts of Lakeland. They make missing person flyers with details
(47:35):
about the Mazda and photos of Michelle that they post
around town. And then, as the search party develops over
the next three days, we're all looking around and the
ditches and all that stuff, her father's with me and
all that, and I had this distinct thought. I was
standing in the back of a pickup truck and we've
got this sunbeam light in the middle of the night
on power Plant Road, and we're looking in the dish,
(47:57):
and it just dawned on me, what are we for?
We expected to be playing cards in the ditch somewhere,
just sitting here waiting to be found, And it just
struck me that something is drastically wrong. While shining lights
into ditches on the side of the road, Leo's mind
went to a very dark place, to a particularly gruesome
(48:19):
murder in Florida that had horrified the nation in the
early nineteen eighties. They were just doing the Adam walsting right,
None of that, I remembered. I was attending the University
of South Florida in Tampa at the time, about a
half hour west of Lakeland. Adam Walsh was a six
year old boy who'd been abducted in nineteen eighty one
(48:40):
from a department store in South Florida. After a couple
weeks of searching, the boy's severed head was found in
a drainage canal near Yeehaw junction, about twenty miles east
of Polk County. Everyone in Florida knew about Adam Walsh.
The brutal nature of the crime made international headlines, and
Adam's father, John Walsh, became a public figure advocating for
(49:02):
victims of violent crimes. He later launched the long running
television show America's Most Wanted. That was big news in Florida.
And I'm from Massachusetts and I grew up in a project.
I don't know if we were isolated or not, but
I don't remember stories like that when I was a kid.
You come down here to Florida and it's like an
every day occurrence. Somebody's getting butchered and it's harfying, and
(49:23):
hear that stuff on the news. And I did say,
I hope we don't find her in water like Adam
Walsh was. And I said that only because it dawned
on me when we're looking in these drainage ditches and
all this other stuff, that what do we expect to find?
(49:53):
Another day goes by constant searching around Lakeland, looking in
ditches and woods. Michelle has been missing for forty eight hours.
Finally there's a break one of Leo's friends is on
his way home from work when he spots what he
thinks is Leo and Michelle's Mazda. It's parked on the
(50:16):
shoulder of I four, just a few miles east of Lakeland.
He doesn't think much of it, but then he stops
at Sparky's gas station on Cumbey Road. He sees a
flyer with Michelle's picture and he realizes something is wrong.
He calls Leo's parents and says he thinks he saw
the Mazda abandoned on the side of the highway. The
(50:37):
car is found, but Michelle is not. The Orange Mazda
would be towed to a crime lab in Orlando and
process for evidence by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
A mechanic who analyzed the car would note that something
called the flywheel had come apart, causing the Mazda to
break down. It also appeared that the stair had been
(51:00):
tampered with. A lab tech would find a bottle of
downy fabric softener in the back smeared with blood, and
most crucially, two sets of fingerprints were lifted from inside
the vehicle. The owner of those prints would not be
(51:21):
identified for seventeen years. Bone Valley is a production of
Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One.
(51:42):
Our executive producers are Jason Flaum and Kevin Wurdis. Karak
Kornhaber is our senior producer. Brit Spangler is our sound designer.
Roxandra Guidi is our editor, fact checking by Maximo Anderson.
Our producer and researcher is Kelly see Decker. Our theme song,
(52:02):
The One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Leebob
and the Truth. It was written by Leo Schofield and
Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hearty Correctional Institution. Bone Valley is
written and produced by me Gilbert King. You can follow
the show on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Lava for Good.
(52:23):
To see photos and documents from our investigation and exclusive
behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgod dot com slap
Host
Gilbert King
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