Chapter 3 | Trial by Ambush

I was in a cell with two other guys that were in for murder. One death from the got the death penalty. I'm not sure what the other one got. And they were so.

Cavalier about it.

One of them made a joke, maybe we can get them to give us an electric couch, and they made that joke.

That's the way it was in 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 Schofield was found stabbed to death in 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.

Do you my mans left to have my field? Soru sorremists in this vastity see Rage to the.

Bone Valley, Chapter three. Trial by Ambush. The very first thing that got me hooked on Leo's case was the trial transcript that Judge Scott Kupp sent to me. The trial lasted about two weeks in March of nineteen eighty nine, and unfortunately there was an audio or video recording in the courtroom, but 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

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 she took a lot of interest in Schofield's case.

Leo 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 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 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 those cellmates that I had was this guy named Squeegee.

Who apparently got his nickname from killing a guy with a squeegee.

Squeeze had said, you can't go to trial and I'm out of 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 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. No leaf will be left unturned. You will have two lawyers on your case and they have a lot of education and experience. You will have at least one investigator, more than likely you'll have two, and more. You will have specialists to

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. You know, I don't know how you're going to do it or what needs to be done. I don't know anything about the system, how it works, on any of that stuff. I just know that I need some out.

One name that keeps coming up is Jack Edmund, the most famous private defense attorney in Polk County. He's expensive, but you gotta get Jack Edmund. They're telling Leo.

I was starstruck 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 Knipper, Jack Edmund's investigator.

And he said, uh, he said, sign, my name is Bob Knipper. I work for Jack Edmund. If you want the best, you gotta pay top dollar. My fee is ten thousand dollars off the top. Without proper representation, your life will land in 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, 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

Settlement and the case goes away, 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 Defense Office, which was the biggest mistake that I made at that time.

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 the guards at his cell to take him down for an attorney visit. He's led into a little room with a table in 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 an Alexic chair tie tack and I'll never forget that because I commented when I saw it, I said, you don't think that's kind of morbid And he said, no, no, just like that, playing his day.

John Aguero sits down at the table and Leo doesn't know what to expect.

He said, I want to I want to talk to you about your father.

I said, okay.

He said, I believe your father is guilty in your cover and form.

Leo has heard this line before. He's already gone through the interrogation about his father with the detective's Weeks and Putnam, and he's under the impression that Aguero or anyone who shows up in a suit and tie has authority over him, so he's supposed to 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 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 was convince 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 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 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 guirro 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 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. 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, 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,

When Leo first 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 supposed to negotiate plea deals or

That man came and saw me, he offered me an immunity, and they'll testify against my father.

The attorneys I spoke to told me that this was completely unethical and that 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 requests 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 only have Leo's word that

He had cowboy hat, ripped jeans, button up short, Patrick Cameron hanfilters, and a yellow lego 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 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 to mesmerize jury.

This is Grady Juddon, the current Sheriff of Paul 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 Edmund because I have seen him walk so many guilt people out 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.

Edmund didn't do any pre trial interviews with witnesses or 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, Edmund didn't seem very familiar with his case. But Edmund says that Assistant state Attorney John Aguero has offered Leo a deal. This one has nothing to do with his father. Aguero will reduce the first degree murder charge to second degree murder if Leo agrees to plead guilty.

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The trial begins on March eighth, nineteen eighty nine. It's the morning after Leo met Jack Edmund for the first time, and he walks into court with his defense attorney at his side.

He was a known quantity. Everybody in the court house is newing.

This is Judge Charles Davis, the trial judge in Leo's case.

I mean he mussed I had at least a twenty nine inch waist, I mean real small pencil like fellow Jack Edmund Quirk. Every morning, every morning that you're in traw 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 over to the stenographer's stan and he places two

Jack was very flamboyant and he had a delightful Southern accent, just a drawl.

This is Susie Shottlecatti. She's been reporting on the Polk County courts for the Lakeland Ledgers 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, 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. If I could do this again so that the jury knows who I am, I'd 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 I crawled out of a 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 is 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 a DOC 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 DOC blue pants, and like blue pants of the DC blue jacket, just kept switching it for the entire trial.

As Leo takes his seat at the defendant's table, 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 is thirty six years old, he's recently been promoted the chief homicide prosecutor,

You know, I don't have any 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 Aguerol will see that it isn't right.

Because justice plays out always.

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 true truth. Leo Schofield is a very violent young man.

Oh John was thunderous, 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 no no, no 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 just tell a story.

But when Leo's defense attorney, Jack Edmund 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 Edmund mixes up the days of the week from when Michelle disappears until she's found. He stands before a map of Lakeland and starts describing roads and distances and times out any context or story. Maybe the jury is able to follow along, but Edmund does not. He points to Cumby

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 of Johnny Wirl.

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 against Leo Schofield is a circumstantial case, which means John Aguero has no physical evidence linking Leo to Michelle's murder and no witness

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 is a black day where something doesn't go right.

But for me, every one of those days was a black day.

One of the witnesses Aguero calls to the stand is Michelle McCluskey. She spots Leo as soon as she enters the courtroom.

I walked in and he 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 Schofield's best friend who helped Leo look for his wife when she went missing. Michelle McCluskey had her suspicions about Leo after Michelle disappeared, but now two years later she 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 about it for a minute, and I said he was my friend, Yeah, he was.

Michelle McCluskey 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 you 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,

She's a neighbor.

I thought she was a pretty nice lady and she would have no reason to try to hurt me and he she must have seen something.

Alice Scott tells the jury 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 Mazda. 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

What would her motive have been other than just to report what she saw?

Susie Shattlecatty, the local reporter, watched Alice Scott's testimony intently in the courtroom.

Yeah, she didn't have a dog in this house. 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 she didn't actually see. So, you know, I think that made her testimony pretty powerful.

When it's 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 their yards, Alice says. So Alice's sister in law,

I remember then carrying an amplifier out of my house and placing it in the back of my car. And you might not have known what I was carrying, because I did carry it out, and it was a bigger amp and I carried it out and I put it in the back of 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 Sells contradict the testimony of his 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. 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 seemed so totally incredulous.

Reporter Susie Shattlecotty was eager to hear how Leo Senior would do on the stand. She'd already heard his story 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, come on, I think everybody had that feeling, because if you've been out on thirty three thirty five years ago, they had to pipe in sunlight out there.

It was out in the middle of nowhere.

Leo Senior 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 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

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. 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 whatever. You're not looking at a ditch thinking everything's okay. I don't even

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 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 Schofield Junior to the stand.

My initial reaction was no good thing comes when you put to the.

Feral stand, 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 bad habit of hollering and screaming, and it wasn't beyond me to throw a temper tantrum once in a while, he tells Jack Edmund, 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

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, 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 in how to speak to people. I've never been on trial before.

I've never had my life so exposed and so exaggerated 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 short spoken, my inability to open up.

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 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 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 these people are nothing to me? This is the story.

Tell the story, you know, Tell him the truth and don't give him the 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, 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.

Once John Aguero is done with Leo, Jack Edmond rests his case for the defense, Aguero gives the first closing argument.

It's when 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, 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 tells the jury to imagine Michelle 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 they saw Leo carrying something heavy didn't contradict Alice's statements. He approaches many of the discrepancies and testimony this way and finds a way to tie them

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, this ridiculous haircut to a jury who's

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 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

When the bailiff came in and said we have a verdict.

I remember Jack 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 McCluskey was sitting in the courtroom next to Michelle Schofield's dad, David's Sam. She was holding David's.

Hand, shaking, physically shaking. Dave Jeanne was all sweaty. He definitely wanted a guilty verdict. We all did. By that time. There was no question. I don't remember anybody not believing it at that point, so you know, I was trying to hold myself together.

The verdict is read, Leo is found guilty of first degree.

Murder, and I remember when they said he was guilty. That we were just relieved and happy and a few it because it was a celebration. Afterwards, there was some level of the really deep sadness to know that, Yeah, of course the jury found him guilty. He really did this, you know what I mean, Like there is no more questioning it at all. He did this.

Honestly.

I think I was numb, Yeah, I know, I honestly, Gilbert, for life of me, I can't 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 phase and 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, and I remember telling him I don't want to die, and.

He gave me a hug and he said I'm not gonna 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 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 was brought back into court the next morning for sentencing, he addresses the jury in his cheap, mismatched suit and his jailhouse 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 kill my wife. I'm asking please don't take it. I can show you. I can prove it to you. I

I simply told the jury you made a mistake. You know I'm not guilty. I did not do it. And I think I was even trying to tell him I can prove it to you. I was so desperate to 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.