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 I'm not supposed to be doing this, but it's like if I don't do it, who the fuck's gonna do it?
This is Judge Scott cup. 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 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 Cupp was in twenty eighteen, invited to speak at a conference about my book, Devil in the Grove. It's a story of four young black men in central Florida who were wrongly accused of raping a white woman in nineteen forty nine. A young Thurgood Marshall represented them at trial. Decades before he became
the first black justice on the US Supreme Court. I spent five years investigating this story, and when Devil in the Grove won the Pulitzer Prize in twenty thirteen, it brought renewed attention, outrage, 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 Groveland 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 for it.
The persistent.
And stand beck footed old God's promises. Let him work his plate. I don't care if it takes seventy two years, it might take eighties. He did it for me, then he'd do it for you.
I 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 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 seen, those were taken.
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 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 and his Florida Department of Corrections number one one five seven 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 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 got on 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 Cup. When I tell him 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, 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 Cup wanted me to know. Seventeen years after Michelle's murder, newly discovered forensic evidence from the crime scene pointed to a new suspect, but the State of Florida quickly shut down the investiga.
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 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 he has 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 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 get back to Judge Cup with a ton of questions, and his answers only confirm what a shit show this case is. I start thinking that 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 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'd do a thorough investigation into the Leo Schofield case, something that the state of Florida never did. So I packed my files, my computer, and even my dog Maizy 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 Cup keeps telling me about Leo Schofield.
This guy is innocent.
God help us if we can't get this right, do you.
My man? I have to have my feet.
Suti sorm in this vast.
Lamboo rich.
Desish to the word solding Sun.
To the word soldings stud the Warm Souling.
Sun Bone Valley, Chapter one. 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 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 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. 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 Schofield 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 Klan 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 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 to help me research my 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 of prison. To interview 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 Herty Correctional to meet Leo Schofield.
Good morning, good morning, How are you good?
How about yourself?
Sure? Good?
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 persis any contrabands such as cellphones, firearms, ammunitions devices.
Nice Star comic went 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 IDs, 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, like what what situation am I gonna find myself in where I might need to press this button? I mean, I was at absolutely nervous.
A corrections officer leads us through 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 in an administrative building and there are officers and staff chatting outside in the hallways. You might be able to hear them throughout our interviews with Leo.
Let me thank both of you. If you're dying, you don't have that right.
And you know, close the door and we're in there alone with him, and he sat down and thanked us and.
Gurteous.
You know, we just got into it.
Listen, this is the story.
It is what it is.
You believe it, 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 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. 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 stepchild that sat between Tampa and Orlando. While I was driving I for I'd hear radio ads 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 it immediately sets him apart. This isn't the Florida you see on postcards with art deco hotels, pink flamingos, 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 and the jeane vest. Well these oomie pins on it.
They don't get any of that. I mean, I don't get any of the cowboy hat stuff.
He never feels 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 Salm who lives nearby in Lakeland. He's nineteen and she's sixteen.
Tell me about the first time that he saw Michelle.
The very first time caught her glass. I'll never forget that. She was my best friend's girlfriend.
My best friend at the time was a kid named Manny Tricola, 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 time I met her. I'll never ever forget that.
But Michelle was with Manny, 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 roll thing all my life. It's the only thing I ever knew. I mean, I've been playing guitar since I was seven years old.
When Leo first meets Michelle, he's in a heavy metal band called Rhino.
Rhino was an acronym and spelled all wayano. It's almost an embarrassment, but it stood for rocky nuts off and I actually did not care for that as a band name, but I didn't have a lot of decision making over that, and we were 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. 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 strung at times. You know, there's a thing about guitarists and bands, most of them, most of them are kind of hard to get along with.
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 went and grabbed that guitar out of the fire before it got too bad to 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 young and.
He did have a temper.
But you know, there were certain people that didn't like him. But I think it's mainly because the girls liked him, most.
Of them, 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 South Florida.
Not long after Manny had went to prison.
I was at home in my parent's house and I got a call him says 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 till I can figure it out, and you know, and when she mentioned Manny, I finally figured out, well, this is Michelle.
Unbelievable.
Michelle found Leo's number in Manny's address book. They talked 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, and I don't think we spent minutes a part.
After that, Michelle breaks it off with Manny, 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 has a pretty traditional childhood in Lakeland. She and her brothers would play in their 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 suffers 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, David sam 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 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. When 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 were older, we were of age.
This is Liz Collins and she's still married to Dave, Rhino'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 bed house. Michelle, does your mom and dad know you're here? Oh, they don't care where I go, And so I never couldn't understand that, you know why they gave her so much freedom by 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 bounce 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 North Lakeland. You're a part of town called Comby 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 from what I gathered from interviews. I've done it seems like Comby was a mostly white, low income, high crime area. Michelle, like Leo, also dropped out of high school, and she gets a job on Comby 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, but painting houses to pay the bills. Living with another 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, so I couldn't have her ownlinsurance, and she'd already been stopped.
Once by a cop. Thankfully, they let her go and she was close to home.
Leo and 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 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 what, why don't you get it? You know, like we go through these stupid, ridiculous arguments. She'd come in and she's giddy and smiling, She's had a great day, she's driving, she loved driving the car, and me like, I'm moron, I'm furious 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 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 possessive, way too insecure, but I was young and didn't have a lot to think with.
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, 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 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 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 there digging post holes or something, and
I can't imagine what he was thinking of. 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, can I marry your daughter? You know, can I have your daughter's hand in marriage? And for the life of me, I don't know why he said yes, but he did. And so when he said yes, I almost didn't know what to say to that. I'm like, okay, well bye, you know good, well, you know how it goes.
Michelle says yes and they start thinking about a wedding. Money 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 the day.
It was a very traditional wedding ceremony, you know, love, honor, and obey sickness and 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 to welcome Leo and Michelle into the church.
I remember, 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. I was just amazed that this girl's coming down the aisle and she's going to marry me.
Leo and Michelle Schofield are pronounced husband and wife.
They don't tell you how to kiss the bride. So when that time came, brother Walden saying, okay, that's enough. What 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 standing next to a multi layered wedding cake. They borrowed their outfits from another recently married couple at the church. 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 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.
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Bone Valley is sponsored by Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community that partners with America's boldest change makers to tackle the root causes of our country's biggest problems, including the broken criminal justice system. Weldon Angelos is one of those change makers. 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 Dogg, Pink, and Gnas. 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.
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Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the evening of 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 Mods to the Tom's Restaurant for her waitressing shift. She clocks off around eight pm, 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, rode 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 was Buddy that I talked to as overcall, and I said, what's going on.
Buddy tells Dave that Michelle hasn't shown up yet, And for.
Me, it was like, it just irritating because stuff like that, you know, they'd had fives before and she ran off of their girlfriends and stuff like ed and I'm thinking it's just the same thing, you know. So I 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 nine forty five pm, the phone rings at Buddy's house. It's Michelle.
So the one time, the one time she calls, the only time she had 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 gas station across the street from Tom's restaurant to call Leo from the payphone 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 I was that so hard?
Right?
So now we don't have to have 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 to pick 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.
Fifteen minutes pass thein 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 thirty, now I'm starting to get worried.
First thoughts from maybe she got stopped by a cop.
Again or whatever.
Minutes turn into hours. Still no Michelle.
I think it's like eleven thirty. I call my father. He's in bed. I talked to my mom, and my mom.
Gets my dad up out of bed. He says, she's probably just out doing whatever. Wait a little while. She's not back in a little bit, call me back. So at midnight, and this is one of them times I'm just not gonna forget because these.
Big grandfather clock and it's bonging midnight, and I call and 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 point forty five at 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, I'm not thinking anything good.
They figure 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, lights were off. The car's not there.
I don't stop because obviously he's not there. I had my dad drive by one of her best friend's house. Maybe the car's there. It's not there, lights 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 there's nothing. Then Leo makes one more call.
Hope here the sheriff opproperator, Tippy herey, can I help you?
At the time that I'm calling. It's twelve forty three.
In the morning.
I need to talk to tell me about buying my wife on a four and a half hours great coming home from work and can really trying that away from my job and I are going in if.
Maybe you can got picked up. And now I'm really worried about it.
Right here find out coming.
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, and 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 going song.
Is not right.
Leo's being recorded by the Sheriff's office and you can hear him talking Evince while he waits on hold.
I doubt very says they should be just fucking around, and man, she is, God help.
Her, because I can't afford to fucking.
Worry about this kind of little shit, you know, the slightest little problem fucking cut me out.
I don't know why, but they just do. Man, I hate this feeling fucking hate it. She was on her way here. That's why I'm cooking.
Out, man, That's how I could to do it.
Hell, okay, yeah, I'm sure we don't have her.
Oh man, Uh could you put me back to the trust, follow the parliament and persons?
Okay, it on? Okay, what's your last name? Michelle Gofield? Okay, I help you out.
I can think uh if I've put sick.
Great under the palm, pam.
All right, bomb, Well, she's coming home from mark from More unlikely. She had red pants with a red and white stripe shirt AMA the DLC eighty one, the color on with black strite.
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. His dad says he's not feeling well and goes to bed. Leo tries reaching anyone he 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'll never forget this, he said, mister Schofield 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, 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 Salm'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.
Just heard a bunch of commotion and 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.
He grabbed the shotgun.
Well, you know, he's you 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 to my dad, and then he's you know, he's out of brath and he's panicked, and he's like, you know, we don't know where mischee, you know, like you know, I've called everywhere.
I'm done it now.
And I was like, man, 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?
Right?
And just the people that she hung out with and stuff like that, they'd you know, they wouldn't be partying 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 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 go out on his own to look for his daughter. Leo and his mom leave the psalm's 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 stop and talk to three deputy shriffs that were in two cars, two separate cars, and they didn't even have anything on her 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. 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. 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 grab my dad's jacket, I go off, 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, 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 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 was.
A good little walk. I mean, they all lived within the same marble, and 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 in, 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. I'll just wait. And I did not want to wait, but I had nothing else that I could do.
But I was.
Beyond worried.
I was miserable.
I didn't even think of sleep, and I didn't think of beating. I didn't think of changing my clothes. I didn't think of taking a shower. My next thought, 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. 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 Katchadorian.
Hang on a second, yes, hey, give me a favorite, just to intercept him a minute, letting him on the phone with that gentleman from New York of all night s.
Gilbert Kelsey and I were able to track him down by phone in Lakeland, where 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, we could call you back.
It's not a problem now. I don't worry about it. I'm in all right.
We'd 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 back on February twenty fifth with Leo Schofield and his father came to the Lakeland Police Department back.
In nineteen eighty seven. I can ensition it right now.
I was working the station duty office desk. I stepped out of the booth the little office there, and went law and engaged him in conversation. And at first it seemed like a just and I hate using a word typical, but it just seemed like just an missing person's 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 person's they're not really missing, you know, they're just unaccounted for for for whatever reason. And I was taking the information, asking what I considered standardized questioning about where you last saw you know, what does she do for a living?
You know, a blah blah blah, and mister Schofield, the father, was doing all the talking.
The way I remember almost all of it. I'd asked the question and the father would answer. And when I got down to the date of birth, mister Schofield gave me her date 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 date of birth.
Leo had the same issue the 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 too, but on the call he just had trouble remembering the year Michelle was born.
Okay, help, I'm thinking twelve eight. I don't remember the year eighteen sixteen sixty eight eight. Okay.
He's stumbling on the birthday again with Katchadorian, and the rookie officer finds this suspicious.
He was distant. I tried to engage him. I think I said something to him, back, can you look at me? I mean, look at me. You know what's your wife's state 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 question, did you are you have any marital discourse? Are there any issues?
Did you hit her that you know there have been domestic violence of any kind? And it was all knows 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 there in the lobby.
Not angry, but annoyed, thought I was being rude.
After asking some more questions, Officer Katchadorian 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.
And I remember going back in and letting them know that I needed to handle his fat and I need to get a deputy right.
Away out to their house. I suspected some form about play.
It's now late in the afternoon on February twenty fifth, about eighteen hours since 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 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 in 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 with 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 ditch, and it just dawned on me, what do we look for?
We expected to be playing cards in the ditch somewhere, to sit in 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 murder in Florida that had horrified the nation in the early nineteen eighties.
They were just doing the Adam Walsh thing, 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 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 Yehaw 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 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. 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 occur and somebody's getting butchered and it's horrifying. You 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 were looking in these drainage ditches and all this other stuff, that what do we expect to find?
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 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 Cumby 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 car is found, but Michelle is not. The Orange Mazda would be towed to a crime lab in Orlando and processed 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 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 identified for seventeen years. Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive producers are Jason Flahm and Kevin Wordis. Kara
Krnhaber is our senior producer. Britz Spangler is our sound designer. Ruxandra Guidy is our editor. Fact checking by Maximo Anderson. Our producer and researcher is Keller. Our theme song, The One Who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Lee Bob 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 investigation and exclusive behind the scenes content, visit Lava Forgood dot com slash