September 28, 2022 • 53 mins
Chapter 3 of 9
Facing the death penalty, Leo Schofield retains renowned Polk County defense attorney Jack Edmund, who must square off against an aggressive young prosecutor, John Aguero at trial. The prosecutor builds his case around testimony from numerous witnesses who describe a volatile relationship between Leo and Michelle, and a witness who claims to have observed something suspicious on the night Michelle disappeared.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
I was in a cell with two other guys that
were in for murder. One death from you got the
death penalty. I'm not sure what the other one got.
And they were they were so cavalier about it. One
of them made a joke, maybe we can get done
to give us an electric couch, and they made it.
They made that joke. That's the way it was in
(00:35):
the jail. Just having to be part of that, you know,
to like I'm one that would be sitting in the couch.
You know, that's beyond my comprehension. I don't even belong
in this story. It's June of nineteen eighty eight, sixteen
months after Michelle's Schofield was found stabbed to death in
(00:58):
a drainage canal in Polk County, Florida. Her husband of
just six months, Leo Schofield, is now sitting in the
Polk County jail facing first degree murder charges. The prosecutor,
John Aguero, is seeking the death penalty. Leo insists he's innocent.
(01:28):
Do you, my man? I have to my face steps
siss in this vase. See to the Bone Valley, Chapter three,
(02:45):
Trial by ambush. The very first thing that got me
hooked on Leo's case. Was the trial transcript that Judge
Scott Cup sent to me. The trial asked at about
two weeks in March of nineteen eighty nine, and unfortunately
there wasn't audio or video recording in the courtroom, but
(03:08):
the trial transcript documents every word of what was said.
There's a lot that happened over those two weeks, so
we're going to break it down. The first thing to
focus on is Leo's defense. At twenty two years old
and unable to make bail, Leo sits in the Polk
County Jail awaiting trial. Since he's unable to afford an attorney,
(03:32):
his case is assigned to the Office of the Public Defender.
My name is Tony Maloney and my job is mostly
related to homicide cases. Tony Maloney was an investigator with
the office, and she recalls that a young colleague, Holly Stutz,
was sent down to the jail to interview Leo, and
(03:56):
she took a lot of interest in Schofield's case. Starts
from the beginning and Holly takes detailed notes to Holly.
Leo is coming across like a young man who was
desperately searching for his wife, and the more she learns
about his timeline, the more she's convinced that Leo could
not have murdered Michelle. So Holly goes back to the
(04:19):
Public Defender's office and briefs Tony and the attorneys, and
she called him her little rock and roller, and she
just believed in him. I mean, she really wanted to
fight the fight. Anybody that I worked with closely on
that case, we all really wanted to believe Leo, and
(04:44):
he was so adam that he didn't do it. But
as the Public Defender's office is working on his case,
Leo is talking to his cellmates and they're giving him advice.
One of the cell mates that I had was this
guy name Squeegee, who apparently got his nickname from killing
(05:04):
a guy with a squeegee. Squeegee had said, you can't
go to trial and a mar charge with a public defender.
You cannot do that. Squeegee tells him that public defenders
are known in the system as public pretenders. Leo can't
trust his life to these attorneys. As an investigator for
the Public Defender's office. These are things Tony Maloney has
(05:27):
heard before. Oh, in the jail, they'd say no you've
got to have a real lawyer. That was how they
would say it to me, and then they got my speech.
Let me explain to you how we work cases, and
no leaf will be left unturned. You will have two
lawyers on your case and they have a lot of
(05:49):
education and experience. You will have at least one investigator,
more than likely you'll have two, and more. You will
have specialists to help us evaluate your case. And I said,
you know, you're not going to get any finer defense
than you're going to get right here. And Leo probably
(06:10):
got that speech for more than one of us. But
other inmates like Squeegee are getting into Leo's head. The
public Pretender's office will not save you. They tell him,
you need a superstar attorney. All I'm looking for. Somebody
needs to come and save me. I don't know how
(06:30):
you're going to do it, or what needs to be done.
I don't know anything about the system, how it works,
any of that stuff. I just know that I needs another.
One name that keeps coming up is Jack Edmond, the
most famous private defense attorney in Polk County. He's expensive,
but you gotta get Jack Edmond. They're telling Leo I
(06:51):
was star struck with Edmund. So Leo arranges a meeting
with Edmund, and one day he's brought to an attorney's room.
He assumes he'll be meeting Edmund, but instead the guy
sitting there introduces himself as Bob Nipper, Jack Edmond's investigator.
And he said, uh, he said, sign, my name is
(07:13):
Bob Nipper. I work for Jack Edmond. If you want
the best, you got to pay top dollar. My feast
ten thousand dollars often top Without proper representation, your life
will landon Rayford. Rayford is the Florida State Prison. It's
where Old Sparky, Florida's Electric Chair sits. By the late
nineteen eighties, Florida had not yet switched to lethal injection,
(07:36):
and Florida's electric Chair was the nation's so called busiest
instrument of death. Old Sparky claimed the lives of twenty
men that decade, including serial killer Ted Bundy, who was
executed only weeks before Leo's trial would begin. Leo tells
Bob Nipper about the car accident he was in. How
(07:57):
just a few months after Michelle's murder, he was a
passenger in a car that flipped over and he broke
his neck. He was getting fifty thousand dollars in an
insurance settlement. Nipper tells Jack Edmund, who agrees to represent Leo.
If Leo signs over the settlement and the case goes away,
(08:17):
Leo drops Tony Maloney and the Public Defender's Office to
go with the celebrated defense attorney Jack Edmund, with a
quote unquote real lawyer like Edmund. Looking into his case,
Leo's hoping this will all be cleared up quickly. Now
that's how I ended up dismissing the Public Defender's Office,
which was the biggest mistake that I made at that time.
(08:43):
Months pass and Leo doesn't hear anything from his private attorney,
Jack Edmund. He's learning that when you're charged with a
capital crime, nothing happens fast. Then one night, Leo says
that the guard rives at his cell to take him
down for an attorney visit. He's led into a little
(09:05):
room with a table and a few chairs. He assumes
he's there to finally meet his defense attorney, Jack Edmund,
But it's not Edmund. It's the prosecutor, John Aguero, who
walks into the room. So when he comes in, I
remember him from the plane. He wore a electric chair
(09:27):
tie tack and I'll never forget that because I commented
and when I saw it, I said, you don't think
that's kind of morbid And he said, no, I know,
just like playing his day. John Aguero sits down at
the table and Leo doesn't know what to expect. He said,
I want to talk to you about your father. I said, okay.
(09:49):
He said, um, I believe your father is guilty in
your covering for him. Leo has heard this line before.
He's already gone through the interrogation about his father with
the actives Weeks and Putnell, and he's under the impression
that Aguero or anyone who shows up in a suit
and tide has authority over him, so he's supposed to
(10:09):
answer their questions. I never hinted at I need a lawyer.
I mean, it never even crossed my mind to say
I need my lawyer here. So now Leo's alone in
a room with his prosecutor, the man trying to send
him to the electric chair. I was being polite. I
(10:31):
was being trusting, you know, I mean I trusted in
the process. You know, I knew this was going to
be made right. All I had to do was convinced
him that I was telling the truth. That was it.
That's what you're supposed to do. That's how I was raised.
Leo says that Aguero doesn't bring a tape recorder. He
doesn't have someone there to take notes or anyone to
(10:51):
witness the conversation. It's just Leo and Aguero. You would
never talk to a potential witness or a suspect without
recording it. You just don't do it unless you don't
want to be recorded. And that's exactly what happened. Aguero
looks Leo in the eye. Listen, He says, I know
(11:12):
you didn't kill Michelle. Your father did it, and if
you agree to testify against him, I'll draw up some
paperwork and you can walk out of here. You know,
I think he really thought that dad did it. I
think that a girl believed that dad did it. I
don't think he ever really believed that I did it.
Aguero doesn't have any physical evidence against Leo's father or
(11:36):
any eyewitness testimony that connects him to Michelle on the
night she disappeared. He just knows about this weird premonition
that Leo Senior told a police officer and others that
a vision from God had led him to Michelle's body.
To Aguero, this is beyond suspicious, but Leo refuses the deal.
(11:58):
He insists that he's telling Aguero the truth. He didn't
kill Michelle, and neither did his father. You want me
to testify to something that would be a lie. I
don't have that information. What happened is exactly what I've
been saying. What I've just told you again, and what
I told them multiple times over and over and over again,
(12:20):
that never will change. That's what happened. And he got
really frustrated with me telling him that, and he slammed
his hand on the table and he said, I'm going
to put you in the electric chair. And I said,
that's what you're gonna have to do, but I'm not
going to say something that's not true. When Leo first
(12:47):
told us about this meeting with Aguero, he was so
matter of fact about the visit. I didn't even question it.
But when I mentioned it to other attorneys, I got
the same reaction again and again. Eyebrows were raised. Twice
I was asked to turn off the tape recorder. These
attorneys were appalled. They told me that prosecutors are never
(13:07):
supposed to negotiate plea deals or offers of immunity without
defense counsel present. It could violate the sixth Amendment, which
guarantees the right to counsel in all criminal proceedings. That
man came and saw me, he offered me an immunity
deal will testify against my father. The attorneys I spoke
to told me that this was completely unethical and that
(13:28):
Aguero could have been subject to disciplinary action, but some
lawyers said they weren't surprised that state attorneys were getting
away with these kind of things in rural counties like Polk.
Kelsey and I file record request to try to corroborate
Leo's claim that Aguero visited him in the jail, but
we were told those records no longer exist, so we
(13:52):
only have Leo's word that this meeting with Aguero took place.
But we would soon learn that this wasn't the only
time Aguero was accused of doing something like this. Ideally,
we would have asked Aguero about this directly, but he
died in twenty seventeen. We reached out to the state
(14:12):
Attorney's office to see if others who worked with John
Aguero would talk to us, but they declined our requests
for interviews. Leo has been in the Polk County jail
for nine months now. Jack Edmond has been his lawyer
(14:33):
for nearly six months, but Leo still hasn't met him
until finally, the night before his trial, Leo is taken
down to an attorney's room and he lays eyes on
his defense lawyer for the very first time. He had
cowboy hat ripped jeans, but I'm sure Packrick Cameron filters
(14:56):
and a yellow legal pad. Pad was empty. He didn't
have a note. Edmund shakes Leo's hand. He's sixty three
years old, and he's the first to admit his own
legal shortcomings. He once told a local reporter, when I
(15:17):
need research, I call someone who's gifted and bright, and
I'm neither. Edmund's style was to conduct what he called
trial by ambush, reacting to the States case and exposing
its weaknesses in cross examination. He was the one you
wanted if you were guilty, guilty, guilty, and somebody had
(15:39):
to mesmerize jury. This is Gradie Juddin, the current sheriff
of Polk County. He was good friends with Jack Edmund.
If you were guilty and had to win on the
emotion of the jury, you always wanted Jack Edmond because
I have seen him walk so many guilt people out
(16:01):
of the courtroom. Because of his charisma, his personality, his intellect,
and his absolute mastery of the courtroom. There's none better.
But if you needed to win a case on the law,
the fine print of the law, you didn't want Jack Edmond.
Edmond didn't do any pre trial interviews with witnesses or
(16:24):
hire any experts to analyze the evidence, and during his
meeting with Leo, they didn't go over the state's evidence either.
To Leo, Edmond didn't seem very familiar with his case.
But Edmond says that Assistant state Attorney John Aguero has
offered Leo a deal. This one has nothing to do
(16:46):
with his father. Aguero will reduce the first degree murder
charge to second degree murder if Leo agrees to plead guilty.
That comes with a twelve year sentence, But given that
Leo has no criminal record and with credit for time served,
Leo could actually be out of prison in just a
few years. To Edmund, this plea deal is a sign
(17:09):
that the state isn't confident in the strength of its
case against Leo. But before Leo can even think it over,
Edmund tells him he already took the liberty of turning
down a Guero's deal. Leo didn't know it at the time,
but this isn't supposed to happen either. Leo says he
(17:29):
would never plead guilty to anything anyway, but even so,
he did think it was strange that his lawyer didn't
consult with him first. It would be the first in
a string of very strange decisions by Jack Edmund. Hi,
(17:53):
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(18:37):
biggest problems, including the failed war on drugs that has
criminalized addiction, fueled over incarceration, and shattered communities. By thirty five,
Kelly Lingard was an executive with a fortune twenty it company.
If you had asked her thoughts on addiction, she would
have said that addiction was about making bad choices and irresponsibility.
(19:00):
But after hearing the story of a woman in recovery,
Kelly's perspective shifted. She began to understand that addiction was
a problem of pain, not irresponsibility, as she discovered how
difficult it is for people to maintain their sobriety in
the long run. After watching too many women get sober
only to relapse and die within days or weeks of
(19:22):
completing a recovery program, Kelly knew she could use her
business skills to make a difference. She left her career
and started Unshattered with the mission of ending the addiction
relapse cycle. Unshattered employees women in recovery, training them to
make premium handbags from upcycled materials and providing them with
(19:42):
a compassionate community that helps them continue their journey beyond
sobriety to move toward healing and growth. It demonstrates a
smarter way of treating addiction that moves away from criminalization
and keeps people out of the system. Kelly lingar Art
is one of the many entrepreneurs partnering would stand together
(20:03):
to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice.
To learn more about addiction and the War on Drugs,
listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. The trial begins on
(20:27):
March eighth, nineteen eighty nine. It's the morning after Leo
met Jack Edmond for the first time, and he walks
into court with his defense attorney at his side. He
was a known quantity. Everybody in the courthouns newing. This
is Judge Charles Davis, the trial judge in Leo's case.
I mean he questioned ahead at least twenty nine inch waste.
(20:49):
I mean real small pens pencil like fellow a Jack
Edmund Quirk. Every morning, every morning that you're in trial.
He walks into the courtroom and he comes up to
the bench and on the bench he places two rolls
of life Savers. He walks over to the clerk stand
and he places two rolls of life Savers. He walks
(21:12):
over to the stenographer stand and he places two roles
of life Sabers. Then he goes to the the state attorney's
table and he places one role of But my kids
loved it when I tried cases of Jack Edman, because
I came home with pockets full of Lifesavers. I mean,
he was that was that was his amo. Jack was
very flamboyant and he had a delightful Southern accent, just
(21:37):
a drawl. This is Susie Shattlecotty. She's been reporting on
the Polk County courts for the Lakeland Legers since nineteen
eighty four. The Leo Schofield case was one of the
first trials she covered, gavel to gavel, as she says,
Jack actually took acting lessons to perform for a jury,
(22:00):
and he looked like Colonel Sanders. He always wore boots,
and he always wore a western suit. You know, it
was a suit, but it had the western cut in
the back. That's for Leo. He was looking a little
rough around the edges when he entered the courtroom. I
was into rock and roll. I was a musician. I
was in a band. I was pretty successful with doing that.
(22:21):
If I could do this again so that the jury
knows who I am, I go in there just like
I was every day. I never wore a suit in
my life. I hadn't cut my hair, and I don't
remember the last time I cut my hair before I
went to jail. But it wasn't like I looked like
(22:42):
I crawled out of the dumpster, you know. It was
who I was now. They cut my hair off and
it was cut off into jail, which you can imagine.
It's not like super cuts or anything. And then I
had two suits. One of them was my father's and
the other one was I believe it was David Collins,
who was still a friend of mine. And one was
(23:03):
a dark blue and one was a light blue. Neither
one of them fit. I'd wear one one day, one
the next, and then I wore the light blue jacket
with the duck blue pants and light blue pants of
the duck blue jacket. Just kept switching it but the
entire trial. As Leo takes his seat at the defendant's table,
(23:24):
he catches a glimpse of the prosecutor, John Aguero on
the other side of the courtroom. Since Leo turned down
both of Aguero's offers, the young prosecutor is laser focused
on sending the heavy metal kid from Massachusetts to the
electric chair. At the time of Leo's trial, Aguero was
thirty six years old. He's recently been promoted the chief
(23:46):
homicide prosecutor, and he's already put one man on death row.
So Aguero is supremely confident and he commands everyone's attention
in the courtroom. Now, jury selection begins, but there's already
a problem. Another high profile death penalty case is happening
at the same time in the same courthouse. Both cases
(24:09):
are pulling potential jurors from the same pool of people
that showed up for jury duty, But one by one,
potential jurors are being excused because they can't afford to
take weeks out of their lives to sit on a
long trial, so the pool of available jurors is dwindling.
Twelve jurors are eventually selected for the Leo Scofield trial,
(24:30):
but no alternates. That means that if anyone on the
jury gets sick or has a family emergency, there won't
be anyone to replace them. Leo's lawyer, Jack Edmond, could
have stopped the trial right there until they could see
alternate jurors, but Aguero, the prosecutor, wants to proceed. Edmund
(24:51):
also agrees to proceed with no alternate jurors, which is
odd because this is a death penalty case. It only
takes one vote of not guilty to cause a mistrial,
so you want as many jurors as possible. But Leo
trusts his famous lawyer. You know, I don't have any
(25:14):
idea what that means for me. I'm wanting to help
a guirl. I'm wanting to show him what a nice
guy I am. You know what I mean, Because I'm thinking,
somewhere along the line in this nightmare of a dream
i'm having, that we're all going to wake up and
see that this isn't right, and even a Guerrol will
see that it isn't right because justice plays out always.
(25:42):
John Aguero walks toward the jury to deliver the state's
opening argument. What kind of person is Leo Schofield? He asks?
Is he a docile, mild mannered young man? As he
sits there looking at you today, you're going to find
out that's the farthest thing from the truth. Leo Schofield
is a very violent young man. Oh John was thunderous
(26:12):
and he was very demonstrative. He would use his arms.
He would be we are here because and then he's
spin on his heel and point to the defendant to say,
because that man decided that DA didn't deserve to live
any longer. And he would just be off to the races.
He would get up there with nothing and he would
(26:33):
just tell a story. But when Leo's defense attorney Jack
Edmond rises for his opening, it's clear he hasn't done
his homework. Right off the bat, he gets the name
of Leo's landlord wrong. Then Edmond mixes up the days
of the week from when Michelle disappears until she's found.
(26:54):
He stands before a map of Lakeland and starts describing
roads and distances and times without any context or story.
Maybe the jury is able to follow along, but Edmund
is not. He points to Cumbry Road and seems confused.
Let's see, he says, staring at the map. Now I'm lost.
(27:16):
I've done goofed up? Hadn't I more silence? Nope, I'm wrong,
ladies and gentlemen. I think he thought that this case
was really a weak case. It was a weak, circumstantial case,
and there's no way you're going to hang for us
to be murder on this kid. And so he didn't
put much in it, and unfortunately he underestimated the power
(27:37):
of John and whirl. Still, Leo remains optimistic Edmond had
told him that he had a ninety percent chance of
walking out of the court acquitted. After both sides make
opening statements, Aguero starts calling witnesses to answer his opening question,
what kind of person is Leo Schofield? The state's case
(28:04):
against Leo Schofield is a circumstantial case, which means John
Aguero has no physical evidence linking Leo to Michell's murder
and no witness who claimed to have seen the actual crime.
So instead Aguero brings in a steady stream of bad
character witnesses. It's an onslaught. There's twenty one of them
(28:25):
all together. One witness after another describes incidents where Leo
punches holes in the wall, turns over furniture, and smashes guitars.
That he dragged Michelle up a flight of stairs by
her hair. But that's not all. Witnesses testify that Leo
didn't help with his wife's funeral arrangements, that he wasn't
(28:47):
able to tell the officer his wife's year of birth,
and that he was going out to bars with friends
not long after Michell was killed. Aguero wants the jury
wondering what kind of guy does that? And every trial
has what they call it's a black day. This is
what I learned in the jail. Everybody knows, you go
a trial, there's a black day where something doesn't go right.
(29:10):
But for me, every one of those days was a
black day. One of the witnesses that Guero calls to
the stand is Michelle McClusky. She spots Leo as soon
as she enters the courtroom. I walked in and he
(29:30):
was turned around in his chair and watched me, you know,
walk up, and he stared at me. But instead of
being afraid or trying not to walk eyes with him,
I just wanted to stare him down. I wanted to
burn all in him with my eyes. You know. This
is Michelle Scofield's best friend who helped Leo look for
his wife when she went missing. Michelle McClusky had her
(29:53):
suspicions about Leo after Michelle disappeared, but now two years later,
he's convinced that Leo killed Michelle. They asked me, what
was my relationship to Michelle and how long did I
know her? And what was my relationship to Leo? And
I just looked at him and I had to think
(30:15):
about it for a minute, and I said he was
my friend. Yeah, he was. Michelle McClusky describes a very
unstable relationship between Leo and Michelle and tells Aguero that
she saw the couple fight a lot. One time she
heard Leo yell from another room, shut up, I hate you.
I'll kill you, you bitch. She says she thought she
(30:38):
heard Leo slapper, but Michelle swore to her that Leo didn't.
As I read the trial transcript, there's no doubt Leo
comes off terribly. So many people are testifying about Leo's temper.
He smashes things, screams at Michelle, gets violent with her.
I have to think that after listening to this part
(30:59):
of the state's case, the jury has already decided that
Leo is a bad husband and maybe even a bad person.
But Leo isn't on trial for that. John Aguero is
going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
Leo killed Michelle, and with his next witness, Aguero introduces
the one piece of evidence he has that could potentially
(31:20):
link Leo to the crime. Alice Scott, who Aguero calls
the busybody of the neighborhood, takes the stand. She's a neighbor.
I thought she was a pretty nice lady and she
would have no reason to try to hurt me. Annie.
She must have seen something. Alice Scott tells the jury
(31:42):
that in the early morning hours of February twenty fifth,
she looked out her bathroom window and she did see something.
She says she saw Leo carry out something heavy from
his trailer and put it in the back of the Masta.
(32:04):
Alice is careful to say that she doesn't know what
Leo was carrying, but Aguero ties it together with a question,
you didn't know that he might be carrying a body out?
No Alice answers, but she takes Aguero's cue and Alice
starts calling the heavy object the body. Alice also claims
(32:24):
that she saw Leo return to the trailer the next morning,
with a carpet cleaner. He took it in the house,
Alice says, and he had the door open and he
was cleaning the carpet. What would her motive have been
other than just to report what she saw? Susie SHOTTLECOTTI,
(32:45):
the local reporter, watched Alice Scott's testimony intently in the courtroom. Yeah,
she didn't have a dog in this hut. She didn't
really know those people that well, and there was no
reason for her to try to fabricate something that didn't
happen or that she didn't actually see. So, you know,
I think that made her testimony pretty powerful. When it's
(33:12):
the defense's turn to question Alice Scott, Jack Edmond asked
her if she can remember the exact night this happened.
She tells Edmund that she can't remember dates. But Alice
says her sister in law, Linda Sells, who lives next door,
also saw Leo emerge with the heavy object. They'd even
chatted about it right there across the fence that divided
(33:35):
their yards, Alice says. So Alice's sister in law, Linda Sells,
is called to the stand. She says she and Alice
did see Leo carrying something heavy to the Mazda, but
Linda says this happened a week or two before the
night Michelle disappeared. She says she knows this because she
(33:56):
did not talk with Alice on the night Michelle went missing.
When I came to this part of the trial transcript,
I had to stop to make sure I just read
that correctly. The state's whole case hinges on the testimony
of its star witness, Alice Scott. Aguero must have hoped
his next witness would get on the stand and corroborate
(34:18):
Alice's testimony. Instead, Linda Cells has directly contradicted her. As
Leo watches Linda Cells on the stand, something clicks in
his memory. I remember then carrying an amplifier out of
my house and place it in the back of my car.
And you might not have known what I was carrying,
(34:39):
because you know, I did carry it out, and it
was a bigger amp and I carried out and I
put it in the back in my car, but you
knew what it was not. You knew it wasn't a body.
There's no way you could have mistaken an AMP for body.
And the night that Michelle was missing, I definitely didn't
carry anything out of the house, so you're telling a lie.
If Aguero was phased by seeing Linda Cells contradict the
(35:02):
testimony of a star witness, he didn't show it. Besides,
he was more focused on another witness, Leo Schofield Senior.
His premonition, the one he claimed led him to Michelle's body,
has become a major part of Aguero's case, the thought
that he woke up in the night and had this image.
(35:25):
And first of all, that ditch is like every other
ditch in Polk County, So what took you there that
as opposed to anywhere else? It just seems so totally incredulous.
Reporter Susie Shattlecotty was eager to hear how Leo Senior
would do on the stand. She'd already heard his story
(35:47):
about a vision leading him to Michelle's body in a
drainage canal off State Road thirty three. When I first
heard that, it's like, oh, con, I think everybody had
that feeling, because if you've been out on thirty three
thirty five years ago, then a pipe in sunlight out there,
it was out in the middle of nowhere. Leo Senior
(36:12):
takes the stand and John Aguero begins his questioning, Oh,
John had a heyday with that? I mean, how can
you not just you know this vision? Leo's father knew
that his story of a premonition sounded weird and could
hurt his son's case, so he attempts to walk back
(36:34):
his comments, saying that he didn't recall mentioning a vision
from God to anyone. He says he may have, but
he just couldn't remember his exact words. But the thing is,
his comments were well documented. Multiple witnesses testified to it,
and his story about the vision had been recorded in
(36:55):
an official police report. From just reading the words on
the pages, Leo Senior doesn't come across as very credible,
and Aguero keeps hammering him. Isn't it true that you
went to State Road thirty three that day because you
knew you were going there to find the body? No, sir,
(37:15):
Leo Senior replies. Seeing his dad with her under Aguero's
aggressive questioning is painful for Leo, and he can't understand
why his father would say that God had led him
to Michelle's body. I was like, what the hell is that?
We were looking for three days? You know, who's going
to believe that. Why would you even say something like that.
(37:39):
He wanted to believe God was helping him, and you know,
he knew something was wrong. We all knew something was wrong.
We're looking for my wife in ditches. What you're not
looking at a ditch thinking everything's okay. I don't even
remember what his actual testimony was on the stand. He
tried to clean it up. And that was the worst
thing you could do, you know, because now you've got Aguero,
who's a master at, you know, twisting your head off,
(38:00):
and he did exactly that. One of the reasons Aguero
was so aggressive with Leo Senior is because he's an
alibi witness for his son's whereabouts on a night Michelle disappeared.
There were times when Leo claimed to be alone with
his father looking for Michelle. So if Aguero could show
the jury that there's something suspicious about Leo Senior, he's
(38:22):
hoping the jury will also reject Leo's alibi. That probably
hurt his case more than anything. This was definitely one
of the blacker days for Leo. Seven days after opening arguments,
Jack Edmond begins his defense. He calls Leo Scofield junior
(38:47):
to the stand. My initial reaction was no good thing
comes when he put to the NY Standard Judge Charles Davis.
No matter how sincere and convincing he is, it makes
one innocent slip up. It's magnified right off the bat.
Leo admits that he had a temper. I had a
(39:07):
bad habit of hollering and screaming, and it wasn't beyond
me to throw a temper tantrum once in a while,
he tells Jack Edmond, and yes, he did knock over
a coffee table in his trailer. He also admits to
two instances in which he slapped Michelle. But he never
punched her, he says, and he never dragged her by
the hair up any flight of stairs. Edmund leads Leo
(39:29):
through his actions and movements on the night Michelle disappeared,
and Leo tells the same story he always tells to
police and defense attorneys. It never changes. When Prosecutor John
(39:57):
Aguero gets his chance to question Leo, It's Monday, March twentieth.
Aguero had the weekend of Saint Patrick's day to prepare
for his cross examination. He's feeling lucky he was going
to do cross right after lunch, and I remember seeing
him when we were getting ready to go in the
courtroom and I overheard somebody saying, John, you're ready. He said,
(40:21):
I've been ready for this for weeks. And it was
just the tone in his voice, you could tell it's like,
let me at him. Aguero approaches the young man he
arrested almost a year before. I don't have any training
how I speak to people. I've never been on trial before.
I've never had my life so exposed and so exaggerated
(40:43):
and manipulated and all that. So I'm sitting there and
I'm scared of death as it is. Leo focuses on
answering Aguero's questions accurately, but he feels that he isn't
connecting to the jury, and that is a problem of
this case. My shop spokenness for my inability to open up.
(41:06):
But how do you do that? How do you do
that when you know all this stuff is wrong? But
these people are not going to believe you anyway, and
he's the homeboy hero, it's almost impossible. Aguero begins his
questioning and Leo consents that this prosecutor is prepared. He's
(41:29):
challenging Leo on everything from the number of times he
slapped Michelle, to the phone calls he made when Michelle
went missing, and Leo can feel the eyes of the
jury on him. But Leo isn't tripped up by anything.
Aguero asks and his answers are consistent. Aguero keeps the
pressure on. My emotions were insecure, fear, and he played
(41:55):
on that. Aguero knew that he was masterful in that.
And it's a very unfortunate thing because I look back
at it kicking myself. Now, what do I have to
fear in this man? You know? Why? Why these people
are nothing to me? This is the story. Tell the story,
you know, telling the truth, and don't give him the
(42:18):
ability to keep breaking you, cutting you off and painting
this picture, you know, with his own strokes. Leo is
trying really hard to hold his composure, but it was tough.
John was making it really really tough because John was
just all over him. He was just calling him on
absolutely everything. And if memory serves me, toward the end,
(42:41):
Leo is starting to get pretty rattled, you know, because
John was just telling him we're not buying it, We're
not buying this. I remember sitting there and looking at
my mother and she was just crying. The sad reality
is I was waiting for someone to just rescue me.
(43:01):
Once John Aguero is done with Leo, Jack Edmond rests
his case for the defense. Aguero gives the first closing argument.
It's one I kind of coined myself, the twelve Days
of Christmas. Closing argument, he would be, if you want
to and I think he did it on this one,
if you want to believe that this man is innocent,
(43:22):
then you have to believe that this is a coincidence.
And then you bring up the next one and say,
if you want to believe that he didn't do it,
then you have to believe that this and this, that
both of these are coincidences, and then you go all
the way down the list. His closing might have been persuasive,
but it's also full of misstatements. At one point, Aguero
(43:44):
tells the jury to imagine Michelle's screaming, no, Leo, don't
stab me. Alice Scott said no such thing on the stand.
As for Alice's sister in law, Linda Sells, he simply
pretends that her testimony about which night they saw Leo
carrying something heavy didn't contradict Alice's statements. He approaches many
(44:07):
of the discrepancies and testimony this way and finds a
way to tie them up quickly and confidently. Aguero then
argues that it was no premonition or vision that led
Leo Senior to Michelle's body. He says Leo's father knew
exactly where to find her because he dumped her there,
and Leo and his parents were never out searching for Michelle.
(44:30):
They are liars. He says, they were making phone calls
and driving around town to craft a false alibi. There's
no question Aguero was in command of his case against
Leo Schofield. He's a tough act to follow, even for
someone as charismatic as the southern gentleman in the Western
cut suit with the roles of life savers. Jack Edmond
(44:54):
rises for his closing and drives home the point that
there is no physical evidence connecting Leo Schofield to the
murder of his wife. It's an entirely circumstantial case built
around bad character evidence and the testimony of Alice Scott,
which he argues cannot be trusted. In the state's rebuttal.
Aguero concludes with a dramatic statement he points at Leo
(45:18):
and tells the jury, you don't have to lock up
your eighteen year old daughters at night, because we have
the murderer sitting right over there. And the reason that
was so bothersome to me is that all the things
I had to answer for and try to swim through
and present myself in this ridiculous suit and this ridiculous
(45:38):
haircut to a jury who's going to ultimately decide my faith.
The one thing I'm not allowed by law to tell
them is that this same confident guy that's standing before you,
baking me and acting like he's so sure, is the
same one that offered me immunity to prosecute my father.
(46:00):
I'm thinking the same thing. If Aguero offered Leo immunity
because he's sure it was the father and not the
son who killed Michelle, why is he still trying to
put Leo in the electric chair. Now that it's time
for the jury to deliberate, two of the jurors are gone.
One was forced to drop off for health reasons and
(46:23):
the other had a family emergency with no alternates. The
jury is now down to ten, and now as only
ten jurors are sent into deliberations, I can't imagine what
Edmund was thinking. That's too fewer people on the jury
who could have been more sympathetic to Leo's version of events.
Of course, the man I wanted to talk to them
(46:44):
most about this was Jack Edmund himself, but by the
time I was reading the transcripts, he, like John Aguero,
had also passed away. The jury deliberates for just four hours,
then they turned with the verdict. When the bailiff came
in and said we have a verdict. I remember Jack
(47:05):
walking across the room and he was just looking down
and shaking his head and saying, that's too soon, that's
too soon. Michelle McClusky was sitting in the courtroom next
to Michelle Schofield's dad, David Psalm. She was holding David's hand, shaking,
physically shaking. Dave Hann was all sweaty. He definitely wanted
(47:31):
wanted to guilty. Verdict real did. By that time, there
was no question. I don't remember anybody not believing him
at that point, so you know, I was trying to
hold myself together. The verdict is read, Leo was found
guilty of first degree murder, and I remember when they
(47:53):
said he was guilty that we were just relieved and
happy and a few in it because it was a celebration. Afterwards,
there was some level of the really deep sadness to
know that, yeah, the course the jury found him guilty,
he really did this, you know what I mean, Like
(48:16):
there is no more questioning it at all. He did
this honestly. I think I was known, Yeah, I know,
I know, honestly, Gilbert. For life of me, I can't
(48:37):
remember what I was thinking when the jury was coming out.
After the verdict was read, they took me to a
holding cell because now I'm going in the penalty facing
I'm gonna have to face the death penalty. And in
a couple of minutes Edmund had come in through the
bars and they let him in the cell with me,
(48:59):
and I remember telling him I don't want to die,
and he gave me a hug and he said I'm
not going to let that happen, and I remember telling
him then I can't even cry. I was so numb
and beat down and disgusted that I don't think sadness
(49:19):
was the reaction for me. For me, it was I
was incredulous that this could even be taking place, you know,
I mean it was just so beyond my ability to
imagine I would personally be facing something like that. When
Leo is brought back into court the next morning for sentencing,
(49:42):
he addresses the jury in his cheap, mismatched suit and
his jail house haircut. This is what he says. It's
hard for me to sit up here and plead with
you for my life because you already found me guilty.
You've already taken it away. I'm telling you you're making
a mistake, a big mistake. I'm not guilty. I didn't
(50:05):
kill my wife. I'm asking please don't take it. I
can show you, I can prove it to you. I
don't even know what to say to you. I really don't.
I simply told a jury you made a mistake. You
know that's I'm not guilty. I did not do it.
And I think I was even trying to tell him
(50:26):
I can prove it to you. I was so desperate.
Something wasn't told right. We didn't get all the story out.
The jury deliberates, then hands their recommendation to the judge.
John Aguero, the prosecutor with the old sparky tie clasp,
has failed to send Leo Schofield to the electric chair.
(50:50):
Leo is sentenced to life in prison. The first time
Kelsey and I finished reading through the transcript, all we
can think about is this one moment in Jack Edmond's
(51:13):
closing argument when he reminds the jury that police never
found any fingerprints in the car that matched Leo or
Michelle's Scofield, And then Edmond asked the jury this question,
wouldn't you like to know if someone else's fingerprints were
in that Mazda? The painful truth is someone else's fingerprints
(51:35):
were found in the Mazda, and the fingerprint evidence was
right there for Jack Edmond to see. If Edmund had
just looked into these prints, he would have been able
to see that someone had been in the car, someone
who was yet to be identified, someone who might have
known something about Michelle's murder. So Leo's right. They didn't
(52:01):
get the whole story out, and that's what Kelsey and
I set out to do. Get the whole story. The
story of Michelle's murder doesn't end with Leo's conviction. In fact,
the story is just beginning. Bone Valley is a production
(52:25):
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one. 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 Kelsey Decker. Our
(52:49):
theme song, 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. To see photos and documents from our
(53:12):
investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgod
dot com slash
I was in a cell with two other guys that
were in for murder. One death from you got the
death penalty. I'm not sure what the other one got.
And they were they were so cavalier about it. One
of them made a joke, maybe we can get done
to give us an electric couch, and they made it.
They made that joke. That's the way it was in
(00:35):
the jail. Just having to be part of that, you know,
to like I'm one that would be sitting in the couch.
You know, that's beyond my comprehension. I don't even belong
in this story. It's June of nineteen eighty eight, sixteen
months after Michelle's Schofield was found stabbed to death in
(00:58):
a drainage canal in Polk County, Florida. Her husband of
just six months, Leo Schofield, is now sitting in the
Polk County jail facing first degree murder charges. The prosecutor,
John Aguero, is seeking the death penalty. Leo insists he's innocent.
(01:28):
Do you, my man? I have to my face steps
siss in this vase. See to the Bone Valley, Chapter three,
(02:45):
Trial by ambush. The very first thing that got me
hooked on Leo's case. Was the trial transcript that Judge
Scott Cup sent to me. The trial asked at about
two weeks in March of nineteen eighty nine, and unfortunately
there wasn't audio or video recording in the courtroom, but
(03:08):
the trial transcript documents every word of what was said.
There's a lot that happened over those two weeks, so
we're going to break it down. The first thing to
focus on is Leo's defense. At twenty two years old
and unable to make bail, Leo sits in the Polk
County Jail awaiting trial. Since he's unable to afford an attorney,
(03:32):
his case is assigned to the Office of the Public Defender.
My name is Tony Maloney and my job is mostly
related to homicide cases. Tony Maloney was an investigator with
the office, and she recalls that a young colleague, Holly Stutz,
was sent down to the jail to interview Leo, and
(03:56):
she took a lot of interest in Schofield's case. Starts
from the beginning and Holly takes detailed notes to Holly.
Leo is coming across like a young man who was
desperately searching for his wife, and the more she learns
about his timeline, the more she's convinced that Leo could
not have murdered Michelle. So Holly goes back to the
(04:19):
Public Defender's office and briefs Tony and the attorneys, and
she called him her little rock and roller, and she
just believed in him. I mean, she really wanted to
fight the fight. Anybody that I worked with closely on
that case, we all really wanted to believe Leo, and
(04:44):
he was so adam that he didn't do it. But
as the Public Defender's office is working on his case,
Leo is talking to his cellmates and they're giving him advice.
One of the cell mates that I had was this
guy name Squeegee, who apparently got his nickname from killing
(05:04):
a guy with a squeegee. Squeegee had said, you can't
go to trial and a mar charge with a public defender.
You cannot do that. Squeegee tells him that public defenders
are known in the system as public pretenders. Leo can't
trust his life to these attorneys. As an investigator for
the Public Defender's office. These are things Tony Maloney has
(05:27):
heard before. Oh, in the jail, they'd say no you've
got to have a real lawyer. That was how they
would say it to me, and then they got my speech.
Let me explain to you how we work cases, and
no leaf will be left unturned. You will have two
lawyers on your case and they have a lot of
(05:49):
education and experience. You will have at least one investigator,
more than likely you'll have two, and more. You will
have specialists to help us evaluate your case. And I said,
you know, you're not going to get any finer defense
than you're going to get right here. And Leo probably
(06:10):
got that speech for more than one of us. But
other inmates like Squeegee are getting into Leo's head. The
public Pretender's office will not save you. They tell him,
you need a superstar attorney. All I'm looking for. Somebody
needs to come and save me. I don't know how
(06:30):
you're going to do it, or what needs to be done.
I don't know anything about the system, how it works,
any of that stuff. I just know that I needs another.
One name that keeps coming up is Jack Edmond, the
most famous private defense attorney in Polk County. He's expensive,
but you gotta get Jack Edmond. They're telling Leo I
(06:51):
was star struck with Edmund. So Leo arranges a meeting
with Edmund, and one day he's brought to an attorney's room.
He assumes he'll be meeting Edmund, but instead the guy
sitting there introduces himself as Bob Nipper, Jack Edmond's investigator.
And he said, uh, he said, sign, my name is
(07:13):
Bob Nipper. I work for Jack Edmond. If you want
the best, you got to pay top dollar. My feast
ten thousand dollars often top Without proper representation, your life
will landon Rayford. Rayford is the Florida State Prison. It's
where Old Sparky, Florida's Electric Chair sits. By the late
nineteen eighties, Florida had not yet switched to lethal injection,
(07:36):
and Florida's electric Chair was the nation's so called busiest
instrument of death. Old Sparky claimed the lives of twenty
men that decade, including serial killer Ted Bundy, who was
executed only weeks before Leo's trial would begin. Leo tells
Bob Nipper about the car accident he was in. How
(07:57):
just a few months after Michelle's murder, he was a
passenger in a car that flipped over and he broke
his neck. He was getting fifty thousand dollars in an
insurance settlement. Nipper tells Jack Edmund, who agrees to represent Leo.
If Leo signs over the settlement and the case goes away,
(08:17):
Leo drops Tony Maloney and the Public Defender's Office to
go with the celebrated defense attorney Jack Edmund, with a
quote unquote real lawyer like Edmund. Looking into his case,
Leo's hoping this will all be cleared up quickly. Now
that's how I ended up dismissing the Public Defender's Office,
which was the biggest mistake that I made at that time.
(08:43):
Months pass and Leo doesn't hear anything from his private attorney,
Jack Edmund. He's learning that when you're charged with a
capital crime, nothing happens fast. Then one night, Leo says
that the guard rives at his cell to take him
down for an attorney visit. He's led into a little
(09:05):
room with a table and a few chairs. He assumes
he's there to finally meet his defense attorney, Jack Edmund,
But it's not Edmund. It's the prosecutor, John Aguero, who
walks into the room. So when he comes in, I
remember him from the plane. He wore a electric chair
(09:27):
tie tack and I'll never forget that because I commented
and when I saw it, I said, you don't think
that's kind of morbid And he said, no, I know,
just like playing his day. John Aguero sits down at
the table and Leo doesn't know what to expect. He said,
I want to talk to you about your father. I said, okay.
(09:49):
He said, um, I believe your father is guilty in
your covering for him. Leo has heard this line before.
He's already gone through the interrogation about his father with
the actives Weeks and Putnell, and he's under the impression
that Aguero or anyone who shows up in a suit
and tide has authority over him, so he's supposed to
(10:09):
answer their questions. I never hinted at I need a lawyer.
I mean, it never even crossed my mind to say
I need my lawyer here. So now Leo's alone in
a room with his prosecutor, the man trying to send
him to the electric chair. I was being polite. I
(10:31):
was being trusting, you know, I mean I trusted in
the process. You know, I knew this was going to
be made right. All I had to do was convinced
him that I was telling the truth. That was it.
That's what you're supposed to do. That's how I was raised.
Leo says that Aguero doesn't bring a tape recorder. He
doesn't have someone there to take notes or anyone to
(10:51):
witness the conversation. It's just Leo and Aguero. You would
never talk to a potential witness or a suspect without
recording it. You just don't do it unless you don't
want to be recorded. And that's exactly what happened. Aguero
looks Leo in the eye. Listen, He says, I know
(11:12):
you didn't kill Michelle. Your father did it, and if
you agree to testify against him, I'll draw up some
paperwork and you can walk out of here. You know,
I think he really thought that dad did it. I
think that a girl believed that dad did it. I
don't think he ever really believed that I did it.
Aguero doesn't have any physical evidence against Leo's father or
(11:36):
any eyewitness testimony that connects him to Michelle on the
night she disappeared. He just knows about this weird premonition
that Leo Senior told a police officer and others that
a vision from God had led him to Michelle's body.
To Aguero, this is beyond suspicious, but Leo refuses the deal.
(11:58):
He insists that he's telling Aguero the truth. He didn't
kill Michelle, and neither did his father. You want me
to testify to something that would be a lie. I
don't have that information. What happened is exactly what I've
been saying. What I've just told you again, and what
I told them multiple times over and over and over again,
(12:20):
that never will change. That's what happened. And he got
really frustrated with me telling him that, and he slammed
his hand on the table and he said, I'm going
to put you in the electric chair. And I said,
that's what you're gonna have to do, but I'm not
going to say something that's not true. When Leo first
(12:47):
told us about this meeting with Aguero, he was so
matter of fact about the visit. I didn't even question it.
But when I mentioned it to other attorneys, I got
the same reaction again and again. Eyebrows were raised. Twice
I was asked to turn off the tape recorder. These
attorneys were appalled. They told me that prosecutors are never
(13:07):
supposed to negotiate plea deals or offers of immunity without
defense counsel present. It could violate the sixth Amendment, which
guarantees the right to counsel in all criminal proceedings. That
man came and saw me, he offered me an immunity
deal will testify against my father. The attorneys I spoke
to told me that this was completely unethical and that
(13:28):
Aguero could have been subject to disciplinary action, but some
lawyers said they weren't surprised that state attorneys were getting
away with these kind of things in rural counties like Polk.
Kelsey and I file record request to try to corroborate
Leo's claim that Aguero visited him in the jail, but
we were told those records no longer exist, so we
(13:52):
only have Leo's word that this meeting with Aguero took place.
But we would soon learn that this wasn't the only
time Aguero was accused of doing something like this. Ideally,
we would have asked Aguero about this directly, but he
died in twenty seventeen. We reached out to the state
(14:12):
Attorney's office to see if others who worked with John
Aguero would talk to us, but they declined our requests
for interviews. Leo has been in the Polk County jail
for nine months now. Jack Edmond has been his lawyer
(14:33):
for nearly six months, but Leo still hasn't met him
until finally, the night before his trial, Leo is taken
down to an attorney's room and he lays eyes on
his defense lawyer for the very first time. He had
cowboy hat ripped jeans, but I'm sure Packrick Cameron filters
(14:56):
and a yellow legal pad. Pad was empty. He didn't
have a note. Edmund shakes Leo's hand. He's sixty three
years old, and he's the first to admit his own
legal shortcomings. He once told a local reporter, when I
(15:17):
need research, I call someone who's gifted and bright, and
I'm neither. Edmund's style was to conduct what he called
trial by ambush, reacting to the States case and exposing
its weaknesses in cross examination. He was the one you
wanted if you were guilty, guilty, guilty, and somebody had
(15:39):
to mesmerize jury. This is Gradie Juddin, the current sheriff
of Polk County. He was good friends with Jack Edmund.
If you were guilty and had to win on the
emotion of the jury, you always wanted Jack Edmond because
I have seen him walk so many guilt people out
(16:01):
of the courtroom. Because of his charisma, his personality, his intellect,
and his absolute mastery of the courtroom. There's none better.
But if you needed to win a case on the law,
the fine print of the law, you didn't want Jack Edmond.
Edmond didn't do any pre trial interviews with witnesses or
(16:24):
hire any experts to analyze the evidence, and during his
meeting with Leo, they didn't go over the state's evidence either.
To Leo, Edmond didn't seem very familiar with his case.
But Edmond says that Assistant state Attorney John Aguero has
offered Leo a deal. This one has nothing to do
(16:46):
with his father. Aguero will reduce the first degree murder
charge to second degree murder if Leo agrees to plead guilty.
That comes with a twelve year sentence, But given that
Leo has no criminal record and with credit for time served,
Leo could actually be out of prison in just a
few years. To Edmund, this plea deal is a sign
(17:09):
that the state isn't confident in the strength of its
case against Leo. But before Leo can even think it over,
Edmund tells him he already took the liberty of turning
down a Guero's deal. Leo didn't know it at the time,
but this isn't supposed to happen either. Leo says he
(17:29):
would never plead guilty to anything anyway, but even so,
he did think it was strange that his lawyer didn't
consult with him first. It would be the first in
a string of very strange decisions by Jack Edmund. Hi,
(17:53):
I'm Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good podcasts,
Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, The War on Drug
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(18:16):
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(18:37):
biggest problems, including the failed war on drugs that has
criminalized addiction, fueled over incarceration, and shattered communities. By thirty five,
Kelly Lingard was an executive with a fortune twenty it company.
If you had asked her thoughts on addiction, she would
have said that addiction was about making bad choices and irresponsibility.
(19:00):
But after hearing the story of a woman in recovery,
Kelly's perspective shifted. She began to understand that addiction was
a problem of pain, not irresponsibility, as she discovered how
difficult it is for people to maintain their sobriety in
the long run. After watching too many women get sober
only to relapse and die within days or weeks of
(19:22):
completing a recovery program, Kelly knew she could use her
business skills to make a difference. She left her career
and started Unshattered with the mission of ending the addiction
relapse cycle. Unshattered employees women in recovery, training them to
make premium handbags from upcycled materials and providing them with
(19:42):
a compassionate community that helps them continue their journey beyond
sobriety to move toward healing and growth. It demonstrates a
smarter way of treating addiction that moves away from criminalization
and keeps people out of the system. Kelly lingar Art
is one of the many entrepreneurs partnering would stand together
(20:03):
to drive solutions in education, healthcare, poverty, and criminal justice.
To learn more about addiction and the War on Drugs,
listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts
or wherever you get your podcasts. The trial begins on
(20:27):
March eighth, nineteen eighty nine. It's the morning after Leo
met Jack Edmond for the first time, and he walks
into court with his defense attorney at his side. He
was a known quantity. Everybody in the courthouns newing. This
is Judge Charles Davis, the trial judge in Leo's case.
I mean he questioned ahead at least twenty nine inch waste.
(20:49):
I mean real small pens pencil like fellow a Jack
Edmund Quirk. Every morning, every morning that you're in trial.
He walks into the courtroom and he comes up to
the bench and on the bench he places two rolls
of life Savers. He walks over to the clerk stand
and he places two rolls of life Savers. He walks
(21:12):
over to the stenographer stand and he places two roles
of life Sabers. Then he goes to the the state attorney's
table and he places one role of But my kids
loved it when I tried cases of Jack Edman, because
I came home with pockets full of Lifesavers. I mean,
he was that was that was his amo. Jack was
very flamboyant and he had a delightful Southern accent, just
(21:37):
a drawl. This is Susie Shattlecotty. She's been reporting on
the Polk County courts for the Lakeland Legers since nineteen
eighty four. The Leo Schofield case was one of the
first trials she covered, gavel to gavel, as she says,
Jack actually took acting lessons to perform for a jury,
(22:00):
and he looked like Colonel Sanders. He always wore boots,
and he always wore a western suit. You know, it
was a suit, but it had the western cut in
the back. That's for Leo. He was looking a little
rough around the edges when he entered the courtroom. I
was into rock and roll. I was a musician. I
was in a band. I was pretty successful with doing that.
(22:21):
If I could do this again so that the jury
knows who I am, I go in there just like
I was every day. I never wore a suit in
my life. I hadn't cut my hair, and I don't
remember the last time I cut my hair before I
went to jail. But it wasn't like I looked like
(22:42):
I crawled out of the dumpster, you know. It was
who I was now. They cut my hair off and
it was cut off into jail, which you can imagine.
It's not like super cuts or anything. And then I
had two suits. One of them was my father's and
the other one was I believe it was David Collins,
who was still a friend of mine. And one was
(23:03):
a dark blue and one was a light blue. Neither
one of them fit. I'd wear one one day, one
the next, and then I wore the light blue jacket
with the duck blue pants and light blue pants of
the duck blue jacket. Just kept switching it but the
entire trial. As Leo takes his seat at the defendant's table,
(23:24):
he catches a glimpse of the prosecutor, John Aguero on
the other side of the courtroom. Since Leo turned down
both of Aguero's offers, the young prosecutor is laser focused
on sending the heavy metal kid from Massachusetts to the
electric chair. At the time of Leo's trial, Aguero was
thirty six years old. He's recently been promoted the chief
(23:46):
homicide prosecutor, and he's already put one man on death row.
So Aguero is supremely confident and he commands everyone's attention
in the courtroom. Now, jury selection begins, but there's already
a problem. Another high profile death penalty case is happening
at the same time in the same courthouse. Both cases
(24:09):
are pulling potential jurors from the same pool of people
that showed up for jury duty, But one by one,
potential jurors are being excused because they can't afford to
take weeks out of their lives to sit on a
long trial, so the pool of available jurors is dwindling.
Twelve jurors are eventually selected for the Leo Scofield trial,
(24:30):
but no alternates. That means that if anyone on the
jury gets sick or has a family emergency, there won't
be anyone to replace them. Leo's lawyer, Jack Edmond, could
have stopped the trial right there until they could see
alternate jurors, but Aguero, the prosecutor, wants to proceed. Edmund
(24:51):
also agrees to proceed with no alternate jurors, which is
odd because this is a death penalty case. It only
takes one vote of not guilty to cause a mistrial,
so you want as many jurors as possible. But Leo
trusts his famous lawyer. You know, I don't have any
(25:14):
idea what that means for me. I'm wanting to help
a guirl. I'm wanting to show him what a nice
guy I am. You know what I mean, Because I'm thinking,
somewhere along the line in this nightmare of a dream
i'm having, that we're all going to wake up and
see that this isn't right, and even a Guerrol will
see that it isn't right because justice plays out always.
(25:42):
John Aguero walks toward the jury to deliver the state's
opening argument. What kind of person is Leo Schofield? He asks?
Is he a docile, mild mannered young man? As he
sits there looking at you today, you're going to find
out that's the farthest thing from the truth. Leo Schofield
is a very violent young man. Oh John was thunderous
(26:12):
and he was very demonstrative. He would use his arms.
He would be we are here because and then he's
spin on his heel and point to the defendant to say,
because that man decided that DA didn't deserve to live
any longer. And he would just be off to the races.
He would get up there with nothing and he would
(26:33):
just tell a story. But when Leo's defense attorney Jack
Edmond rises for his opening, it's clear he hasn't done
his homework. Right off the bat, he gets the name
of Leo's landlord wrong. Then Edmond mixes up the days
of the week from when Michelle disappears until she's found.
(26:54):
He stands before a map of Lakeland and starts describing
roads and distances and times without any context or story.
Maybe the jury is able to follow along, but Edmund
is not. He points to Cumbry Road and seems confused.
Let's see, he says, staring at the map. Now I'm lost.
(27:16):
I've done goofed up? Hadn't I more silence? Nope, I'm wrong,
ladies and gentlemen. I think he thought that this case
was really a weak case. It was a weak, circumstantial case,
and there's no way you're going to hang for us
to be murder on this kid. And so he didn't
put much in it, and unfortunately he underestimated the power
(27:37):
of John and whirl. Still, Leo remains optimistic Edmond had
told him that he had a ninety percent chance of
walking out of the court acquitted. After both sides make
opening statements, Aguero starts calling witnesses to answer his opening question,
what kind of person is Leo Schofield? The state's case
(28:04):
against Leo Schofield is a circumstantial case, which means John
Aguero has no physical evidence linking Leo to Michell's murder
and no witness who claimed to have seen the actual crime.
So instead Aguero brings in a steady stream of bad
character witnesses. It's an onslaught. There's twenty one of them
(28:25):
all together. One witness after another describes incidents where Leo
punches holes in the wall, turns over furniture, and smashes guitars.
That he dragged Michelle up a flight of stairs by
her hair. But that's not all. Witnesses testify that Leo
didn't help with his wife's funeral arrangements, that he wasn't
(28:47):
able to tell the officer his wife's year of birth,
and that he was going out to bars with friends
not long after Michell was killed. Aguero wants the jury
wondering what kind of guy does that? And every trial
has what they call it's a black day. This is
what I learned in the jail. Everybody knows, you go
a trial, there's a black day where something doesn't go right.
(29:10):
But for me, every one of those days was a
black day. One of the witnesses that Guero calls to
the stand is Michelle McClusky. She spots Leo as soon
as she enters the courtroom. I walked in and he
(29:30):
was turned around in his chair and watched me, you know,
walk up, and he stared at me. But instead of
being afraid or trying not to walk eyes with him,
I just wanted to stare him down. I wanted to
burn all in him with my eyes. You know. This
is Michelle Scofield's best friend who helped Leo look for
his wife when she went missing. Michelle McClusky had her
(29:53):
suspicions about Leo after Michelle disappeared, but now two years later,
he's convinced that Leo killed Michelle. They asked me, what
was my relationship to Michelle and how long did I
know her? And what was my relationship to Leo? And
I just looked at him and I had to think
(30:15):
about it for a minute, and I said he was
my friend. Yeah, he was. Michelle McClusky describes a very
unstable relationship between Leo and Michelle and tells Aguero that
she saw the couple fight a lot. One time she
heard Leo yell from another room, shut up, I hate you.
I'll kill you, you bitch. She says she thought she
(30:38):
heard Leo slapper, but Michelle swore to her that Leo didn't.
As I read the trial transcript, there's no doubt Leo
comes off terribly. So many people are testifying about Leo's temper.
He smashes things, screams at Michelle, gets violent with her.
I have to think that after listening to this part
(30:59):
of the state's case, the jury has already decided that
Leo is a bad husband and maybe even a bad person.
But Leo isn't on trial for that. John Aguero is
going to have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that
Leo killed Michelle, and with his next witness, Aguero introduces
the one piece of evidence he has that could potentially
(31:20):
link Leo to the crime. Alice Scott, who Aguero calls
the busybody of the neighborhood, takes the stand. She's a neighbor.
I thought she was a pretty nice lady and she
would have no reason to try to hurt me. Annie.
She must have seen something. Alice Scott tells the jury
(31:42):
that in the early morning hours of February twenty fifth,
she looked out her bathroom window and she did see something.
She says she saw Leo carry out something heavy from
his trailer and put it in the back of the Masta.
(32:04):
Alice is careful to say that she doesn't know what
Leo was carrying, but Aguero ties it together with a question,
you didn't know that he might be carrying a body out?
No Alice answers, but she takes Aguero's cue and Alice
starts calling the heavy object the body. Alice also claims
(32:24):
that she saw Leo return to the trailer the next morning,
with a carpet cleaner. He took it in the house,
Alice says, and he had the door open and he
was cleaning the carpet. What would her motive have been
other than just to report what she saw? Susie SHOTTLECOTTI,
(32:45):
the local reporter, watched Alice Scott's testimony intently in the courtroom. Yeah,
she didn't have a dog in this hut. She didn't
really know those people that well, and there was no
reason for her to try to fabricate something that didn't
happen or that she didn't actually see. So, you know,
I think that made her testimony pretty powerful. When it's
(33:12):
the defense's turn to question Alice Scott, Jack Edmond asked
her if she can remember the exact night this happened.
She tells Edmund that she can't remember dates. But Alice
says her sister in law, Linda Sells, who lives next door,
also saw Leo emerge with the heavy object. They'd even
chatted about it right there across the fence that divided
(33:35):
their yards, Alice says. So Alice's sister in law, Linda Sells,
is called to the stand. She says she and Alice
did see Leo carrying something heavy to the Mazda, but
Linda says this happened a week or two before the
night Michelle disappeared. She says she knows this because she
(33:56):
did not talk with Alice on the night Michelle went missing.
When I came to this part of the trial transcript,
I had to stop to make sure I just read
that correctly. The state's whole case hinges on the testimony
of its star witness, Alice Scott. Aguero must have hoped
his next witness would get on the stand and corroborate
(34:18):
Alice's testimony. Instead, Linda Cells has directly contradicted her. As
Leo watches Linda Cells on the stand, something clicks in
his memory. I remember then carrying an amplifier out of
my house and place it in the back of my car.
And you might not have known what I was carrying,
(34:39):
because you know, I did carry it out, and it
was a bigger amp and I carried out and I
put it in the back in my car, but you
knew what it was not. You knew it wasn't a body.
There's no way you could have mistaken an AMP for body.
And the night that Michelle was missing, I definitely didn't
carry anything out of the house, so you're telling a lie.
If Aguero was phased by seeing Linda Cells contradict the
(35:02):
testimony of a star witness, he didn't show it. Besides,
he was more focused on another witness, Leo Schofield Senior.
His premonition, the one he claimed led him to Michelle's body,
has become a major part of Aguero's case, the thought
that he woke up in the night and had this image.
(35:25):
And first of all, that ditch is like every other
ditch in Polk County, So what took you there that
as opposed to anywhere else? It just seems so totally incredulous.
Reporter Susie Shattlecotty was eager to hear how Leo Senior
would do on the stand. She'd already heard his story
(35:47):
about a vision leading him to Michelle's body in a
drainage canal off State Road thirty three. When I first
heard that, it's like, oh, con, I think everybody had
that feeling, because if you've been out on thirty three
thirty five years ago, then a pipe in sunlight out there,
it was out in the middle of nowhere. Leo Senior
(36:12):
takes the stand and John Aguero begins his questioning, Oh,
John had a heyday with that? I mean, how can
you not just you know this vision? Leo's father knew
that his story of a premonition sounded weird and could
hurt his son's case, so he attempts to walk back
(36:34):
his comments, saying that he didn't recall mentioning a vision
from God to anyone. He says he may have, but
he just couldn't remember his exact words. But the thing is,
his comments were well documented. Multiple witnesses testified to it,
and his story about the vision had been recorded in
(36:55):
an official police report. From just reading the words on
the pages, Leo Senior doesn't come across as very credible,
and Aguero keeps hammering him. Isn't it true that you
went to State Road thirty three that day because you
knew you were going there to find the body? No, sir,
(37:15):
Leo Senior replies. Seeing his dad with her under Aguero's
aggressive questioning is painful for Leo, and he can't understand
why his father would say that God had led him
to Michelle's body. I was like, what the hell is that?
We were looking for three days? You know, who's going
to believe that. Why would you even say something like that.
(37:39):
He wanted to believe God was helping him, and you know,
he knew something was wrong. We all knew something was wrong.
We're looking for my wife in ditches. What you're not
looking at a ditch thinking everything's okay. I don't even
remember what his actual testimony was on the stand. He
tried to clean it up. And that was the worst
thing you could do, you know, because now you've got Aguero,
who's a master at, you know, twisting your head off,
(38:00):
and he did exactly that. One of the reasons Aguero
was so aggressive with Leo Senior is because he's an
alibi witness for his son's whereabouts on a night Michelle disappeared.
There were times when Leo claimed to be alone with
his father looking for Michelle. So if Aguero could show
the jury that there's something suspicious about Leo Senior, he's
(38:22):
hoping the jury will also reject Leo's alibi. That probably
hurt his case more than anything. This was definitely one
of the blacker days for Leo. Seven days after opening arguments,
Jack Edmond begins his defense. He calls Leo Scofield junior
(38:47):
to the stand. My initial reaction was no good thing
comes when he put to the NY Standard Judge Charles Davis.
No matter how sincere and convincing he is, it makes
one innocent slip up. It's magnified right off the bat.
Leo admits that he had a temper. I had a
(39:07):
bad habit of hollering and screaming, and it wasn't beyond
me to throw a temper tantrum once in a while,
he tells Jack Edmond, and yes, he did knock over
a coffee table in his trailer. He also admits to
two instances in which he slapped Michelle. But he never
punched her, he says, and he never dragged her by
the hair up any flight of stairs. Edmund leads Leo
(39:29):
through his actions and movements on the night Michelle disappeared,
and Leo tells the same story he always tells to
police and defense attorneys. It never changes. When Prosecutor John
(39:57):
Aguero gets his chance to question Leo, It's Monday, March twentieth.
Aguero had the weekend of Saint Patrick's day to prepare
for his cross examination. He's feeling lucky he was going
to do cross right after lunch, and I remember seeing
him when we were getting ready to go in the
courtroom and I overheard somebody saying, John, you're ready. He said,
(40:21):
I've been ready for this for weeks. And it was
just the tone in his voice, you could tell it's like,
let me at him. Aguero approaches the young man he
arrested almost a year before. I don't have any training
how I speak to people. I've never been on trial before.
I've never had my life so exposed and so exaggerated
(40:43):
and manipulated and all that. So I'm sitting there and
I'm scared of death as it is. Leo focuses on
answering Aguero's questions accurately, but he feels that he isn't
connecting to the jury, and that is a problem of
this case. My shop spokenness for my inability to open up.
(41:06):
But how do you do that? How do you do
that when you know all this stuff is wrong? But
these people are not going to believe you anyway, and
he's the homeboy hero, it's almost impossible. Aguero begins his
questioning and Leo consents that this prosecutor is prepared. He's
(41:29):
challenging Leo on everything from the number of times he
slapped Michelle, to the phone calls he made when Michelle
went missing, and Leo can feel the eyes of the
jury on him. But Leo isn't tripped up by anything.
Aguero asks and his answers are consistent. Aguero keeps the
pressure on. My emotions were insecure, fear, and he played
(41:55):
on that. Aguero knew that he was masterful in that.
And it's a very unfortunate thing because I look back
at it kicking myself. Now, what do I have to
fear in this man? You know? Why? Why these people
are nothing to me? This is the story. Tell the story,
you know, telling the truth, and don't give him the
(42:18):
ability to keep breaking you, cutting you off and painting
this picture, you know, with his own strokes. Leo is
trying really hard to hold his composure, but it was tough.
John was making it really really tough because John was
just all over him. He was just calling him on
absolutely everything. And if memory serves me, toward the end,
(42:41):
Leo is starting to get pretty rattled, you know, because
John was just telling him we're not buying it, We're
not buying this. I remember sitting there and looking at
my mother and she was just crying. The sad reality
is I was waiting for someone to just rescue me.
(43:01):
Once John Aguero is done with Leo, Jack Edmond rests
his case for the defense. Aguero gives the first closing argument.
It's one I kind of coined myself, the twelve Days
of Christmas. Closing argument, he would be, if you want
to and I think he did it on this one,
if you want to believe that this man is innocent,
(43:22):
then you have to believe that this is a coincidence.
And then you bring up the next one and say,
if you want to believe that he didn't do it,
then you have to believe that this and this, that
both of these are coincidences, and then you go all
the way down the list. His closing might have been persuasive,
but it's also full of misstatements. At one point, Aguero
(43:44):
tells the jury to imagine Michelle's screaming, no, Leo, don't
stab me. Alice Scott said no such thing on the stand.
As for Alice's sister in law, Linda Sells, he simply
pretends that her testimony about which night they saw Leo
carrying something heavy didn't contradict Alice's statements. He approaches many
(44:07):
of the discrepancies and testimony this way and finds a
way to tie them up quickly and confidently. Aguero then
argues that it was no premonition or vision that led
Leo Senior to Michelle's body. He says Leo's father knew
exactly where to find her because he dumped her there,
and Leo and his parents were never out searching for Michelle.
(44:30):
They are liars. He says, they were making phone calls
and driving around town to craft a false alibi. There's
no question Aguero was in command of his case against
Leo Schofield. He's a tough act to follow, even for
someone as charismatic as the southern gentleman in the Western
cut suit with the roles of life savers. Jack Edmond
(44:54):
rises for his closing and drives home the point that
there is no physical evidence connecting Leo Schofield to the
murder of his wife. It's an entirely circumstantial case built
around bad character evidence and the testimony of Alice Scott,
which he argues cannot be trusted. In the state's rebuttal.
Aguero concludes with a dramatic statement he points at Leo
(45:18):
and tells the jury, you don't have to lock up
your eighteen year old daughters at night, because we have
the murderer sitting right over there. And the reason that
was so bothersome to me is that all the things
I had to answer for and try to swim through
and present myself in this ridiculous suit and this ridiculous
(45:38):
haircut to a jury who's going to ultimately decide my faith.
The one thing I'm not allowed by law to tell
them is that this same confident guy that's standing before you,
baking me and acting like he's so sure, is the
same one that offered me immunity to prosecute my father.
(46:00):
I'm thinking the same thing. If Aguero offered Leo immunity
because he's sure it was the father and not the
son who killed Michelle, why is he still trying to
put Leo in the electric chair. Now that it's time
for the jury to deliberate, two of the jurors are gone.
One was forced to drop off for health reasons and
(46:23):
the other had a family emergency with no alternates. The
jury is now down to ten, and now as only
ten jurors are sent into deliberations, I can't imagine what
Edmund was thinking. That's too fewer people on the jury
who could have been more sympathetic to Leo's version of events.
Of course, the man I wanted to talk to them
(46:44):
most about this was Jack Edmund himself, but by the
time I was reading the transcripts, he, like John Aguero,
had also passed away. The jury deliberates for just four hours,
then they turned with the verdict. When the bailiff came
in and said we have a verdict. I remember Jack
(47:05):
walking across the room and he was just looking down
and shaking his head and saying, that's too soon, that's
too soon. Michelle McClusky was sitting in the courtroom next
to Michelle Schofield's dad, David Psalm. She was holding David's hand, shaking,
physically shaking. Dave Hann was all sweaty. He definitely wanted
(47:31):
wanted to guilty. Verdict real did. By that time, there
was no question. I don't remember anybody not believing him
at that point, so you know, I was trying to
hold myself together. The verdict is read, Leo was found
guilty of first degree murder, and I remember when they
(47:53):
said he was guilty that we were just relieved and
happy and a few in it because it was a celebration. Afterwards,
there was some level of the really deep sadness to
know that, yeah, the course the jury found him guilty,
he really did this, you know what I mean, Like
(48:16):
there is no more questioning it at all. He did
this honestly. I think I was known, Yeah, I know,
I know, honestly, Gilbert. For life of me, I can't
(48:37):
remember what I was thinking when the jury was coming out.
After the verdict was read, they took me to a
holding cell because now I'm going in the penalty facing
I'm gonna have to face the death penalty. And in
a couple of minutes Edmund had come in through the
bars and they let him in the cell with me,
(48:59):
and I remember telling him I don't want to die,
and he gave me a hug and he said I'm
not going to let that happen, and I remember telling
him then I can't even cry. I was so numb
and beat down and disgusted that I don't think sadness
(49:19):
was the reaction for me. For me, it was I
was incredulous that this could even be taking place, you know,
I mean it was just so beyond my ability to
imagine I would personally be facing something like that. When
Leo is brought back into court the next morning for sentencing,
(49:42):
he addresses the jury in his cheap, mismatched suit and
his jail house haircut. This is what he says. It's
hard for me to sit up here and plead with
you for my life because you already found me guilty.
You've already taken it away. I'm telling you you're making
a mistake, a big mistake. I'm not guilty. I didn't
(50:05):
kill my wife. I'm asking please don't take it. I
can show you, I can prove it to you. I
don't even know what to say to you. I really don't.
I simply told a jury you made a mistake. You
know that's I'm not guilty. I did not do it.
And I think I was even trying to tell him
(50:26):
I can prove it to you. I was so desperate.
Something wasn't told right. We didn't get all the story out.
The jury deliberates, then hands their recommendation to the judge.
John Aguero, the prosecutor with the old sparky tie clasp,
has failed to send Leo Schofield to the electric chair.
(50:50):
Leo is sentenced to life in prison. The first time
Kelsey and I finished reading through the transcript, all we
can think about is this one moment in Jack Edmond's
(51:13):
closing argument when he reminds the jury that police never
found any fingerprints in the car that matched Leo or
Michelle's Scofield, And then Edmond asked the jury this question,
wouldn't you like to know if someone else's fingerprints were
in that Mazda? The painful truth is someone else's fingerprints
(51:35):
were found in the Mazda, and the fingerprint evidence was
right there for Jack Edmond to see. If Edmund had
just looked into these prints, he would have been able
to see that someone had been in the car, someone
who was yet to be identified, someone who might have
known something about Michelle's murder. So Leo's right. They didn't
(52:01):
get the whole story out, and that's what Kelsey and
I set out to do. Get the whole story. The
story of Michelle's murder doesn't end with Leo's conviction. In fact,
the story is just beginning. Bone Valley is a production
(52:25):
of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company
Number one. 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 Kelsey Decker. Our
(52:49):
theme song, 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. To see photos and documents from our
(53:12):
investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgod
dot com slash
Host
Gilbert King
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Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
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