Bone Valley, page 16
The night before the funeral, the Gentry-Morrison Funeral Home held two separate wakes. One was a closed-casket service, honoring the wishes of Michelle’s father, David Saum. The other, a private open-casket viewing, was held at Leo’s request. “Her dad wanted it closed,” Leo remembered. “And I wanted to see her. I could not let her go. I wish I could have been more mature for her dad.”
In their discussion of the open casket, the funeral director told Leo they would do something to cover the wounds on Michelle’s neck. “What wounds?” Leo asked. This was the first time he’d heard anything about wounds to Michelle’s body.
“When Michelle was murdered,” Leo recalled, “I was originally under the impression, all the way up until the wake, that she was drowned. No one told me different.”
It was then that Leo’s father informed his son that Michelle had been stabbed to death. In that instant, the weight of her loss deepened—what Leo had always known was a murder suddenly became something far more brutal, and the grief he carried transformed into something sharper, more unbearable. “It was like she died all over again,” he recalled.
At his private viewing, Leo approached the open casket. “I had told myself that I wanted to see her because I wanted to kiss her one more time,” he recalled. “She was so cold that I couldn’t do it immediately. I felt her hand, and she was ice cold. And she didn’t even look like her. I mean, Michelle without life was not Michelle.”
Leo gave his wife a final kiss. But there was no sense of closure, no relief in the chance to say goodbye. Instead, Leo spiraled. “I think that’s when the drinking really started … I left out of there and started drinking Yukon Jack.”
On March 3, 1987, Leo attended Michelle’s funeral in a daze. He hardly remembers the service. The chapel was packed with young people who had known Michelle from school or who had met her at parties. The months that followed were a tailspin of drinking, couch surfing, and self-destruction. Leo finally hit rock bottom after a car crash, in which he was a passenger, left him with a broken neck, forcing him to wear a halo brace. That spring, facing an injury, dwindling support in Florida, and no stable housing, he decided to return to Massachusetts, where his family had relocated, to recover at his parents’ home.
* * *
The moment Assistant State Attorney John Aguero, newly appointed chief of the Homicide Division, assigned himself to Leo’s case, he struck a fatal blow before the trial even began. His boss, State Attorney Jerry Hill, had once called Aguero a “master at arguing cases based on circumstantial evidence.” Hill knew Aguero was the one prosecutor who could take a case like this all the way to the electric chair.
John Kah Aguero was born in 1952 and grew up in Key West, Florida. After finishing high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he served at the Pentagon for four years. He received his law degree from American University in Washington, DC, and then returned to Florida to work as a prosecutor in Santa Rosa County, in the Florida Panhandle. In 1985, Aguero transferred to the State Attorney’s Office in Polk County, and in 1988, just a few months before he secured the indictment of Leo Schofield, he was appointed director of the Special Prosecutions Division by State Attorney Jerry Hill.
By the time Aguero got the file it was clear the investigation into Michelle Schofield’s murder had already stalled.
In the days immediately following the discovery of Michelle’s body, the investigation was handled by Detectives Robert Weeks and Richard Putnel from the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Walking door-to-door, Weeks and Putnel sought any leads from Leo and Michelle’s neighbors, prompting the Island Oaks community with questions about the young couple and any unusual activity that could be related to the crime.
Two doors over, one neighbor told the detectives that she “was aware of domestic problems at the victim’s trailer but had no details.” She did, however, remember seeing an ambulance at their trailer one night.
Another neighbor also remembered the ambulance. He told the detectives that the victim and her husband were “always having problems.” He’d heard other neighbors say they had seen “the man hit the girl.”
And across the street, neighbors Robert and Linda Sells noted that “there was a lot of fighting going on over at the victim’s house and that deputies have been out there before.” Linda remembered one instance where she had seen “the man pull the girl up the front stairs by the hair of her head.” They recognized Leo by his long black hair and his motorcycle.
Finally, they spoke to Alice Scott, thirty-four, who lived across the street from Leo and Michelle and next door to Linda Sells, her husband’s sister. Alice liked to keep an eye on her neighbors and occasionally gossip. She had a reputation as a neighborhood busybody. Her account to the detectives of what she’d witnessed between Leo and Michelle was more detailed, and more violent, than anything they’d heard so far.
Alice said that one time, she saw Leo run out of the trailer to grab Michelle when she got home from work. Alice watched him beat Michelle as he dragged her into the trailer by her hair, she said. Another time, she saw Michelle outside, her mouth bleeding. “Leo would beat Michelle day and night,” she told them. Just the week before last, she “would see Leo drop Michelle off at the trailer around midnight … leave, come back, and beat Michelle.”
On the night of Michelle’s disappearance, Alice happened to be up, unable to sleep, and on alert for any activity outside her window. Crouched on her bathroom counter, she peered out across the street. Weeks recorded what she claimed to observe:
Scott stated that on the morning of 25 Feb. 87, between 0130–0200 hours, she heard a noise, looked out her bathroom window and saw Leo letting Michelle out of their little orange station wagon. Scott said Michelle went inside the trailer and Leo drove off in their car. Scott said that approximately 20 to 30 minutes later Leo came back in the orange station wagon. Scott said Leo went inside the trailer then she heard Michelle screaming and knew Leo was beating her. Scott said at approximately 0230 to 0300 hours, she saw Leo come outside carrying a large object in both arms, place the object into the back of the station wagon then drive off in the station wagon. Scott said she never saw Michelle again …
Alice then listed several vehicles she’d seen at the residence and added that, before Weeks and Putnel showed up that day, “Leo drove up, ran in the house, and threw something in the garbage that looked like it was wrapped in newspaper.”
As he combed through the PCSO reports, Aguero’s focus landed squarely on Alice Scott. In spite of her initial statement to Detective Weeks, in which she described hearing the tortured screams of a woman being stabbed to death, no other neighbors reported hearing anything that night.
* * *
The investigation had hit a wall because there were no corroborating witnesses to support Alice Scott’s account. This was Aguero’s biggest hurdle. Alice initially told police she saw Leo carrying “something heavy” to the Mazda between 2:30 and 3:00 AM. But David Saum, Michelle’s father, reported that Leo arrived at his house across town between 2:20 and 2:30 AM, searching for his wife. Three PCSO deputies also documented in their reports that Leo approached them at a gas station near Saum’s house shortly before 3:00 AM, asking if they had any updates on the missing persons report he had filed. All these accounts—coming from the State’s own witnesses—directly supported Leo’s version of events.
Even if the witness statements didn’t line up, the lack of physical evidence was impossible to overlook. Crime scene technicians found no trace of blood inside the Schofield trailer—no smears, drops, or anything else to suggest that Michelle had been stabbed twenty-six times there.
Aguero had to realize that Leo’s alibi for that crucial time window was airtight. It flatly contradicted Alice Scott’s timeline—it was impossible for Leo to have carried Michelle’s body out of their trailer between 2:30 and 3:00 AM when, at that exact time, he was five miles away, first with Saum and then speaking to three deputies from the PCSO.
Worse still for Aguero was Alice Scott’s claim of hearing a struggle and screams from the trailer before seeing Leo carry the bundle. That account forced Aguero into accepting the trailer as the murder scene. Yet, without any blood evidence—no sign of a struggle, no forensic trace of the brutal stabbing—it was a theory built on sand. To move forward with the case, Aguero would need to explain both the airtight alibi and the glaring absence of physical evidence.
On May 18, 1988—fifteen months after the murder—Aguero brought Alice Scott into his office for another interview. This time, without detectives present or a tape recorder running, she suddenly remembered something new: seeing Leo bring a carpet cleaner into the trailer. None of her previous statements had mentioned a carpet cleaner, and there is no mention of one in any police reports, evidentiary logs, or search warrants.
Yet now, alone in Aguero’s office, Alice conveniently provided this detail, which offered a neat explanation for the missing blood evidence that had eluded investigators for over a year.
That wasn’t Aguero’s only break that day. Alice also pointed him toward two new witnesses: Mary and Randy Laffoon, a middle-aged couple who lived around the corner in the same mobile home park. Their place was about ten lots away from the Schofields’ trailer—far enough that they had no clear view of the home.
“At first they say they didn’t see or hear anything on the night Michelle was murdered,” Kelsey said, flipping through the police reports. “And suddenly, they say they remember seeing the Mazda or Leo Sr.’s pickup truck near where Michelle’s body was found.”
According to Alice, the Laffoons had seen something suspicious—not near the Schofield trailer, but outside the neighborhood. She told Aguero the couple had spotted both the Mazda and Leo Sr.’s pickup truck “sitting alongside the road, possibly SR 559, during the early morning hours of February 25, 1987.” The sighting was vague, but for Aguero, it was another thread to pull—another chance to prop up a narrative that was starting to unravel.
This new lead came with its own issues. The Schofields’ Mazda had already been found on I-4, just off the exit for SR 559, nearly seven miles from where Michelle’s body was discovered. Its location had been well documented in newspaper reports, making the Laffoons’ supposed sighting near SR 559 neither helpful nor new. Still, Aguero subpoenaed the couple for questioning.
And that’s when Aguero got his second big break. On the same day he re-interviewed Alice Scott, the Laffoons’ memories suddenly shifted. Now, instead of seeing the vehicles near SR 559, they claimed to remember them parked at the exact spot where Michelle’s body was found—off SR 33.
“Fifteen months later, Aguero talks to them at the suggestion of Alice Scott,” Kelsey said. “And now they say they remember seeing the Mazda or Leo Sr.’s pickup truck near where Michelle’s body was found.”
“How is it that fifteen months after the murder, they now remember all these details that they didn’t remember until Aguero spoke to them?” I wondered.
Even more convenient, fifteen months after the murder, sitting in John Aguero’s office, the Laffoons were suddenly able to pinpoint the exact night of their sighting: February 25, 1987, the morning after Michelle disappeared.
Like Alice Scott, Randy Laffoon had spoken with detectives during the PCSO’s initial investigation. But apart from repeating neighborhood gossip about Leo, he told investigators he hadn’t seen anything unusual or memorable that night. Now, under Aguero’s guidance, his recollection suddenly aligned with a narrative that seemed to be falling neatly into place.
Armed with this damning new evidence—details that detectives had failed to uncover over the previous year and a half—Aguero, with the help of his star witness Alice Scott, believed he finally had a case. Within two weeks, Randy Laffoon, Mary Laffoon, and Alice Scott were testifying before a grand jury. Aguero secured an indictment, and a warrant was issued for Leo Schofield’s arrest. The nearly cold case of Michelle Schofield’s murder had been resurrected. All it took was a little patience, a few conveniently recovered memories, and John Aguero’s uncanny ability to connect dots that no one else could or had.
15
DIDN’T HAVE A NOTE ON IT
In late June 1988, Leo took a break from work. He and his dad were doing repairs at a building around the corner from where they lived in Fall River, Massachusetts. Around lunchtime, Leo walked to the store for cigarettes and a snack. When he returned, his father was standing in the street beside Leo’s younger brother, Jason, who sat on his bike looking concerned. Jason had just ridden over from their house to deliver the news: Officers were there with a warrant for Leo’s arrest. He had until 5 PM to turn himself in.
In a panic, Leo climbed to the top of the building where he and his father had been working. From the roof, he looked out over the neighborhood where he’d grown up, but the familiar view brought no comfort—only confusion and despair. After sixteen months, the detectives were no closer to uncovering the truth of what had happened to Michelle. He had cooperated, told them everything, been completely honest. And yet they still couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see his innocence.
Why couldn’t they believe him? How had it come to this?
He edged closer to the roof’s edge, staring down at the street several stories below. The familiar thoughts returned. “I honestly stood there thinking I should just drop off of it and be done,” Leo recalled. “I’m not gonna let these people take me through hell. You know, you’re not listening to the truth, don’t care about the truth.”
As Leo wrestled with his thoughts, his father appeared behind him. His words cut deeper than anything Leo had heard so far: “If you did it, jump.”
Leo froze, stunned by the betrayal in his father’s voice. All the doubts, all the suspicion he had faced since Michelle’s death, but this? This hurt the most. “You, too?” Leo asked quietly.
Upon reflection, he realized it wasn’t a coherent thought that kept him from jumping; it was a feeling, deep and instinctive. In the years that followed, he would come to understand what that feeling meant. Someone had killed his wife. And Leo knew, with every fiber of his being, that it wasn’t him.
Now, as he faced charges for Michelle’s murder, it seemed as though he was the only one left who cared about what had really happened to her, the only one who still wanted justice for Michelle. Some quiet, unspoken part of him knew he couldn’t give up—not just for himself, but for her. If the roles had been reversed, if Leo had been the one murdered, and Michelle stood accused, he wouldn’t have wanted her to break under the pressure of false accusations. And he certainly wouldn’t have wanted her to end her own life because of him.
His mind turned to her final moments—the terror she must have felt, the violence she endured. “I realized that whatever it is I’m going to face … is far less than what my wife faced.” That thought became a vow. He would face the charges. He would stand up—for Michelle.
With his father, Leo drove to the office of Ed Boyer, his family’s attorney. Boyer ushered him into his office to discuss the charges and potential next steps. As they strategized, Leo’s eyes drifted toward the window—and his stomach dropped. A SWAT team had surrounded the building, rifles drawn.
“They’re outside your window,” Leo said quietly.
The words had barely left his mouth when the door burst inward. His arms were yanked behind his back; cold handcuffs bit into his wrists. As Leo looked up, his heart sank. Detective Weeks stood over him, flanked by another man Leo didn’t recognize at first—Assistant State Attorney John Aguero.
“You’re making a mistake,” Leo pleaded as they dragged him to his feet. “You are making a mistake!”
Waiving the formal extradition process, Leo was placed on a flight back to Florida, seated between Aguero and Weeks. He turned to the detective he’d known now for nearly a year and a half. “Please, do not stop looking,” Leo pleaded.
“Why would I do that?” Weeks said.
“Because I’m not guilty of killing Michelle.”
Weeks shrugged. “Well, if I believed that, you wouldn’t be here.”
Leo then turned toward the other man seated beside him, the less familiar one. He caught a glimpse of something reflective. Craning his neck for a better look, he saw the small icon emblazoned on the prosecutor’s tie clip—an old wooden chair with straps dangling at its sides. It was Old Sparky, Florida’s electric chair.
* * *
“I can’t imagine how terrified Leo must’ve been at that point,” Kelsey said, shaking her head. “He’d spent one night in jail for a bounced check, and that’s the extent of his criminal record. From that, to being tossed in jail on first-degree murder charges? I’m sure he had no idea what to expect, or how long he’d be there. His family is hundreds of miles away. No wonder he started relying on the older guys locked up with him for advice.”
“And he was facing the death penalty, too,” I pointed out. “His life was being threatened. I imagine you’d look for help anywhere in those circumstances.”
After a long night of travel on the evening of June 24, 1988, and with his hands still cuffed behind his back, Leo was taken into the newly built Polk County Jail in Bartow, where he was strip-searched, fingerprinted, and backed against a wall for a mug shot. He was sporting a thin goatee, and his thick black hair reached the top of his shoulders. His dark, brooding eyes stared straight into the camera’s lens, in an unsuccessful attempt to mask the fear and exhaustion he was feeling from being transported back to Florida, charged with the murder of his wife.
Some of the inmates he shared a cell with warned him not to trust an overworked “public pretender,” not when he was being charged with a capital crime—never mind that Leo’s family could not afford bail, much less a pricey defense lawyer. His cellmates insisted he get Jack Edmund, a legendary defense lawyer well known in Polk County. Fortunately, Leo had a fifty-thousand-dollar insurance settlement coming from the car accident of the previous summer that had left him with a broken neck. A meeting was set up with one of Edmund’s investigators. All Leo had to do was sign a letter of protection ensuring that Edmund would receive his legal fee from the settlement. With that signature, Leo had just retained Polk County’s most famous defense attorney.
