Combee Critters

Summary

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Bone Valley, Season 1: "Combee Critters"

Host: Gilbert King
Date: September 21, 2022
Produced by: Lava for Good Podcasts

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Episode Overview

In this episode of Bone Valley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King dives deeper into the tragic murder of Michelle Schofield and the subsequent investigation that led to her husband, Leo Schofield, being accused of her death. The episode explores the discovery of Michelle’s body, the complexities of the investigation, perspectives from friends, family, and law enforcement, and the web of suspicion and heartbreak that enveloped the Schofields’ community in Polk County, Florida.

Note: The summary skips all promotional segments and focuses solely on the narrative content regarding Michelle Schofield’s murder, the investigation, and key figures involved.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The History and Setting of Bone Valley (01:59–08:20)

• Origins of the area: King recounts Polk County’s transformation due to phosphate mining, explaining how it became the "phosphate capital of the world." He draws connections between the region’s geology (remnants of prehistoric bones), industrial history, and its impact on local communities.
• Legacy of exploitation: The history of forced labor—Black men jailed for petty crimes and worked like slaves in the phosphate pits—sets a backdrop for systemic injustice.
• Zora Neale Hurston’s observations: The novelist documented songs and stories from Black phosphate workers, describing the bone-laden, sorrowful landscape that would become known as “Bone Valley.”
• Lasting scars: The environmental and social impacts of mining persist: “But you can still see the scars the industry left behind. The mined out areas were left to be reclaimed by nature…” (06:12)

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2. The Discovery: Michelle Goes Missing (08:20–14:32)

• Timeline: Nearly 48 hours after Michelle disappears, her car—a key clue— is found abandoned off I-4.
• Leo, his father, friends, and Michelle’s family search the area. “So when we get to the car, we find the car. Obviously we didn't touch the car. I didn't want anybody to touch the car. We looked in it, we had flashlights and, you know, obviously it was mine.” – Leo Schofield (08:59)
• The car’s stereo is missing, no sign of Michelle. Leo calls the sheriff, feeling panic and frustration.
• Crime scene search: Law enforcement begins searching with helicopters at sunrise. Friends and family form search parties along highways and local roads.

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3. The Body is Found (14:32–16:13)

• The search party, including Leo and Michelle’s best friend, Michelle McCluskey, converge as police activity intensifies. Leo realizes his worst fear as he sees his father distraught: “And I knew they had found her. And I didn't even stop the truck… everything was blending together and going super fast.” (13:22)
• Emotional devastation: Leo is restrained from seeing Michelle’s body: “And he kept saying, she's gone…It could not possibly end like this. I mean, it's just unreal. And it was like my whole world was just fragmenting.” – Leo Schofield (14:32)

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4. Crime Scene Details & Aftermath (16:13–19:00)

• Scene specifics: “Michelle's body is floating face down in a drainage canal off State Road 33 near an old phosphate mine. There's a large piece of plywood partially covering her body…” (16:13)
• Autopsy: “She’d been stabbed 26 times and scrapes on her back were consistent with her body being dragged after she was killed.” (16:13)
• Suspicious premonitions: Leo Sr. reports to police that he had a “premonition” from God about Michelle’s location. He later describes seeing her body as “smiling at him, as if saying thank you for finding me” – an odd detail given she was found face down with plywood atop her. (17:48)
• Officer Katchadourian, who took Leo’s report, finds Leo Sr.’s behaviors and claims about the discovery highly unsettling. “In hindsight, Gilbert, what I feel he was doing was confessing.” (18:10)

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5. Examining the Evidence (21:03–25:08)

• Accessing physical evidence: Gilbert and his team are shown evidence by Shane Kent, the courthouse evidence room manager. To protect the chain of custody, an armed officer supervises.
• They see the key items: plywood found atop Michelle, her blood-stained clothing, and photographs from the autopsy, which emphasize the brutality and personal nature of the crime.
• Personal impact: “We've been studying this case for months now…but in documents, the crime can feel abstract…Now she's no longer some stranger or the victim on an autopsy table. And your heart just breaks…” (24:00)

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6. The Schofields in Mourning (27:12–30:48)

• Leo’s grief: Overwhelmed by sorrow and stress, Leo's father handles funeral arrangements.
• Leo recounts seeing Michelle in the casket, devastated by how unnatural she seems in death: “Michelle without life was not Michelle…I kept thinking, I gotta just figure out a way…I’ve been chasing that going back ever since.” (29:16)
• Michelle’s childhood: Friends and family remember Michelle as athletic, musical, strong, but gentle. ("She seemed to be kind of good at almost everything…very sweet and feminine…") – Michelle McCluskey & family (31:22)

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7. Community Suspicion and Investigation (34:53–41:49)

• Ripple effects of loss: Friends speculate about the killer’s identity, reference other local murders, and the dangerous reputation of Cumby Road: “At the same time that this happened, just before, there was, like, five girls in the area that had been killed.” (35:28)
• Initial police work: Detectives Weeks (“Weeble”) and Putnall (“Dr. Death”), both seen as colorful, old-school cops, are assigned to investigate. Reporter Susie Shaddlecotti provides local color: “He has the personality of a dial tone…They called him Dr. Death because he was always at a crime scene.” (37:38)
• Sheriff Grady Judd: Known for his blunt, tough style and humor, Judd reflects on how overwhelmed and poorly resourced the department was in the 1980s, and on his meteoric rise from “Combee critter” to sheriff. (40:37)
  • “We didn’t have DNA, we didn’t have cell phone tracking. We didn’t have cameras.” – Sheriff Judd (42:03)

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8. Turning Suspicion on Leo (43:24–50:20)

• Neighborhood testimonies: Alice Scott, neighbor and self-proclaimed busybody, becomes a pivotal witness. She claims to see Leo return home the night of Michelle’s disappearance, hear a “scream,” and later see Leo put something “large and heavy” in the Mazda, shifting investigative focus onto Leo.
  • “With that single statement, Alice Scott puts the investigation focused squarely on Leo.” (44:00)
• Patterns of suspicion: Police learn from friends and roommates about Leo and Michelle’s volatile relationship, including disturbing allegations of fights and violence.
• Isolation: The mounting suspicion causes Michelle’s father to cut off contact with Leo after detectives warn him not to talk. “That really, really hurt, because you should know me better than that. But he needed something to hang that hat on…” – Leo (46:30–47:24)
• Friend’s doubts: Michelle’s best friend, Michelle McCluskey, admits to growing concern about Leo after Michelle went missing, but found no evidence of blood or violence in the home. (48:28–49:36)

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9. Tunnel Vision and Weak Evidence (53:00–58:42)

• Leo’s polygraph: Eager to prove his innocence, Leo volunteers for a lie detector test—but is told he "flunked.”
  • “He told me, ‘I think you killed your wife.’” – Leo (53:52)
• Lack of physical evidence: Clothes had no blood. No murder weapon. Two sets of fingerprints (neither Leo’s nor Michelle's) found in the car, but no follow-up from investigators.
• Crime scene doubts: The trailer showed no blood, and the carpet did not appear cleaned (contradicting neighbor Alice Scott’s claims). Most of Michelle’s blood was found at the dump site, not the home.
• Case stalls: There’s no hard evidence connecting Leo to the murder, and the state attorney hesitates to charge him.

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10. Renewed Pressure – The Indictment (58:42–64:35)

• Prosecutorial focus: Assistant State Attorney John Aguero becomes convinced Leo’s father is suspicious due to his “vision from God.” Aguero personally re-interviews witnesses. Alice Scott and the Laffoons (local couple) adjust their stories to implicate Leo and his father—over a year after the murder.
• Leo indicted: In June 1988, 15 months after Michelle’s death, Leo is indicted for first-degree murder. He’s arrested in Massachusetts after considering suicide out of desperation. Leo’s father’s reaction: “If you did it, jump.” (61:15)
• Extradition: Leo waives his right to fight extradition, is brought to Florida, and confronts the prosecutor, who casually displays a tie clasp depicting “Old Sparky,” Florida’s electric chair.
  • “How do you like the car? …I said, I like it. It’s nice. I’m gonna make you drive me back in it.” – Leo to Aguero, referencing he’ll beat the charges. (63:30)
  • “...if I believe that [you’re innocent], you wouldn’t be here.” – Detective Weeks (64:09)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• "It had become a new form of slavery." – Gilbert King, on phosphate mining and convict labor (03:49)
• "I just want her out. I ended up just falling down and sitting against the front tire of the car. I came in the glute." – Leo Schofield, describing his mental collapse at the scene of Michelle’s body (15:50)
• "Michelle without life was not Michelle…my life has been chasing that going back ever since." – Leo Schofield, after the wake (29:16)
• "They called him Dr. Death because he was always at a crime scene." – Susie Shaddlecotti, on Detective Putnall (37:45)
• "We didn’t have DNA, we didn’t have cell phone tracking… It was tumultuous in those days." – Sheriff Grady Judd (42:03)
• "With that single statement, Alice Scott puts the investigation focused squarely on Leo." – Gilbert King (44:00)
• "It’s beyond trying to prove your innocence…There’s a sludge that covers you when you’re being questioned for such a thing…my wife, whom I love, and now I’m forced to prove that to someone I’ve never met before." – Leo Schofield (53:00)
• "If you did it, jump." – Leo’s father, urging Leo to end his life if guilty (61:15)
• "Leo catches a glimpse of something shiny on Aguero’s tie. It’s old Sparky, Florida's electric chair." – Gilbert King (64:35)

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Episode Structure & Tone

• Tone: A blend of investigative journalism, true-crime storytelling, and intimate, emotional recollections. Careful attention is paid to both procedural details and the inner lives of those affected.
• Pacing: The episode moves chronologically but frequently weaves present-day interviews and personal reflections into the narrative, augmenting the facts of the case with emotional resonance.

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Major Segments & Timestamps

• Historical Context / Bone Valley & Mining: 01:59–08:20
• Michelle’s Disappearance & Search: 08:20–14:32
• Discovery of the Body: 14:32–16:13
• Crime Scene & Aftermath: 16:13–21:03
• Physical Evidence Review: 21:03–25:08
• Funeral & Family Reflections: 27:12–30:48
• Community Suspicion & Police Practices: 34:53–41:49
• Shift in Focus to Leo: 43:24–50:20
• Case Weaknesses & Arrest: 53:00–61:56
• Final Arrest & Extradition: 61:56–64:35

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Final Reflection

“Combee Critters” lays bare not only the pain of loss but the inertia and flaws of an overwhelmed justice system in 1980s Florida. From the bone-laden landscapes to fractured family bonds and questionable eyewitness statements, the episode paints a vivid portrait of a tragedy with no easy answers—and introduces the audience to a case haunted by uncertainties, suspicions, and heartbreak.

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Next episode will further explore the evidence, trial, and continued efforts to re-examine Michelle Schofield’s murder.

Transcript

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, it's Karen and Georgia, and we just celebrated our 500th episode of My Favorite Murder. That's 500 podcasts filled with true crime comedy and some light girl math. We're about to podcast for you. Watch this. We have to think of something to say after welcome every week. And we're doing it every week for 10 years.

[Gilbert King]

Almost 10 years.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

10 years.

[Gilbert King]

10.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to my favorite murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gilbert King]

Goodbye.

[Sheryl McCollum]

On this podcast, Incels, we unpack an emerging mindset.

[Gilbert King]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Against women at a deadly tipping point.

[Gilbert King]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on.

[Sheryl McCollum]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

You get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gilbert King]

It's 1881. Captain J. Francis LeBaron of the U.S. army Corps of Engineers is surveying central Florida. As he travels up the Peace river in Polk County. He finds something. Fossils. Tons of them. Along the sandy banks of the Peace River. Giant shark teeth, whale skulls, and prehistoric Mastodon bones. Captain LeBaron collects nine barrels worth of fossils and has them shipped off to a professor at the Smithsonian Institution. A few years later, Captain LeBaron returns to the region. As he's digging through the sandbars of the Peace river amongst the bones from millions of years ago, he makes another discovery. All the bones, all the decomposition had left central Florida rich in phosphate, a mineral left over from the creatures that lived and died in and around the ancient sea that once Covered Florida. And phosphate, it turns out, is a valuable ingredient for making fertilizer. They called it white gold. There's interest in the fossils, but paleontologists don't get the chance to dig because the mining companies get there first. Soon, Polk county became the self proclaimed phosphate capital of the world, and the area was producing 3/4 of the nation's supply. By the late 19th century, railroad tracks had sprung out in every direction across the region, which helped move all that phosphate. There was a lot of work and not enough workers to get the job done, so phosphate companies paid a fee to the state of Florida in exchange for prisoners to fill the labor shortage. Black men arrested for petty crimes were forced to dig ditches and push wheelbarrows full of white rock while under guard. It had become a new form of slavery.

[Leo Schofield]

This song is called Shove it Over.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

And it's a line and rhythm pretty generally distributed all over Florida. It was sung to me by Charlie Jones on a railroad construction camp near Lakeland, Florida.

[Gilbert King]

This is Zora Neale Hurston, the novelist who became a central figure in the African American cultural revival of the 1920s and 30s known as the Harlem Renaissance.

[Sheryl McCollum]

When I get in a hill and.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Noise, I'm going to spread the news about the Florida boys.

[Gilbert King]

Hurston grew up in central Florida, and in 1927 she moved to Polk county to collect and record stories and work songs from black southerners, songs that were passed down from generations. Some of the workers who taught Hurston these songs were setting down railroad tracks and working in the mines to move phosphate. Hurston described these men who worked long hard hours in Polk county in her memoir, Dust Tracks on a Road. They go down in the phosphate mines, Hurston wrote, and bring up the wet dust of the bones of prehistoric monsters to make rich land in far places so that people can eat. But all of it is not dust. Huge ribs 20ft from belly to backbone. Some old time sea monster caught in the shallows. Shark teeth as wide as the hand of a working man. It was these fossils tossed to the side by mining operations that gave this region its new bone valley. As the decades passed, phosphate mining evolved. Instead of convicts with shovels, they started using dragline machines like the one operated by Michelle Schofield's father, David Somm. These giant machines excavate the topsoil and produce towering 200 foot mountains of white sand called gypsum stacks that loom over the Polk county Horizon. By the 1980s, the some of the mines in northern Polk county shut down after depleting the soil of Its phosphate and mining operations moved further south. But you can still see the scars the industry left behind. The mined out areas were left to be reclaimed by nature. Dense vegetation grew around these deep mining pits that filled with water, which is why you see these long, narrow bodies of water in the region, like the ones in North Lakeland, where Leo, his dad and friends continue their search for Michelle Schofield. Do you hear my madness? Laughter has my fears Sorrow's depths are endless in this valley of tears.

[Leo Schofield]

I.

[Gilbert King]

Wanna see a revelation I wanna know.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Who you are.

[Gilbert King]

I'm reaching out in desperation to the one who's holding the.

[Leo Schofield]

Star.

[Gilbert King]

To the one who's holding the.

[Leo Schofield]

Staring the star.

[Gilbert King]

Bone Valley Chapter 2 Comby critters it's been almost 48 hours since Michelle went missing. There was no sign of her until one of Leo's friends saw the orange Mazda just off the eastbound side of I4, a major highway that runs through Polk county and connects Tampa and Orlando. Now a new wave of panic washes over Leo as he and his father speed to where the Mazda was seen. A few of Leo's friends and Michelle's dad follow them there.

[Leo Schofield]

So when we get to the car, we find the car. Obviously we didn't touch the car. I didn't want anybody to touch the car. We looked in it, we had flashlights and, you know, obviously it was mine.

[Gilbert King]

But there's no sign of Michelle. It's nearly midnight. Leo knows he needs to call the sheriff to get someone out here and quick. The car's right by the Polk City exit ramp on a rural stretch of the interstate.

[Leo Schofield]

I didn't even know where I was at. I mean, I wasn't lost, but I've never been in this area. So I went up on the embankment, I climbed the embankment, got up on the road and you couldn't see a store from the highway. But I went up anyway to look. And when I got up to that overpass and walked just a few feet up behind a tree line, there was a store up there and there was a payphone. So I went over there and I made a. I made a call to the sheriff's department and I told them that. I told them who I was, told them where I was and that we had found the car on the side of the road. They asked me if I was going to take it home. I said, you're apparently not understanding who I am. My wife is still missing. I found her car. I did not find her. I need some help. I'm expecting. We'll be right there, Mr. Scofield, you know what I mean? And Batman shows up and everything gets fixed and stuff. It didn't work that way.

[Gilbert King]

Finally, deputies arrive and the crime scene unit is called in. They start inspecting the car. Some stereo equipment in the Mazda is missing. Leo doesn't want to waste any more time. He wants to start searching the area for Michelle.

[Leo Schofield]

I told Detective Russell I'm going to be out here in the ditches and in the median of I4 looking for anything.

[Gilbert King]

But the deputy tells Leo to wait because they're going to fly a helicopter over the area at sunrise. So Leo and the rest of the search party get a few hours sleep before meeting up again.

[Leo Schofield]

I literally am there at daybreak. And so the plan was to search i4.

[Gilbert King]

They search both sides of the highway including the median. Leo, his dad, his friends and Michelle's family cover the six plus miles of I4 until they reach the exit for State Road 33. There's no sign of Michelle.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Nobody that we knew had heard from her. Nobody.

[Gilbert King]

This is Michelle McCluskey. She's Michelle Schofield's best friend. It's mid morning now when they come onto State Road 33 which connects I4, the highway where the car was found, to Cumby Road where which was Michelle's last known location. They decide to split up. Leo's father will start searching one end of State Road 33. Leo and Michelle McCluskey will start at the other end of State Road 33 and they plan to meet Leo Senior somewhere in the middle. So Leo and Michelle McCluskey jump into her boyfriend's pickup truck.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I was just terrified and just really focused on really trying to find her.

[Gilbert King]

It's slow searching. They walk a stretch of the road, get back in the truck, pull up a bit, get out and search again.

[Leo Schofield]

When Michelle McCluskey and I were looking in one particular area, there was a sheriff's car that went by real fast heading down 33 toward where my father was looking. And the second car went by. I said I'm following this, something's going on.

[Gilbert King]

Leo jumps in the pickup with Michelle McCluskey in the Passenger seat and tries to catch the sheriff's car. Ahead in the distance he sees an 18 wheeled truck jackknifed in the middle of the road. Some cars are parked on the shoulder.

[Leo Schofield]

I almost turned off because it was so congested. I thought it was a car accident. I thought this was going to be one of them things where it turns out to be nothing and I wish that it would have been.

[Gilbert King]

Leo keeps Driving toward the congestion. A helicopter's on the ground at the scene.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Somebody's missing. And you come up on a scene like that and the helicopter shut down and the ambulance is there, you just know. All of a sudden. Nobody has to tell you what it is.

[Leo Schofield]

You know, I saw my father's truck down there on the side of the road and all these other vehicles. And then he was coming out of the woods and he had his hands in his, covering his face. And I knew they had found her. And I didn't even stop the truck. I mean, I slowed down enough and I jumped out and went running. And everything was blending together and going super fast.

[Gilbert King]

Leo jumps out of the pickup and runs along the side of the road. Yellow crime scene tape has already been tied between a pine tree and a sign that reads, no dumping of rubbish. The tape cordons off a short, sandy road that cuts through the tree line. Beyond it, Leo sees men in suits standing in front of palmetto bushes, looking down into a drainage canal. Leo now knows Michelle is back there, and he's trying to push past the deputies to get to her. His dad grabs him and keeps him from reaching the canal to keep him from seeing Michelle's body.

[Leo Schofield]

And he kept saying, she's gone. And I was trying to hold on to some kind of. My mind was doing it, fabricating some kind of possibility that you're not right, she's not dead. It could not possibly end like this. I mean, it's just unreal. And it was like my whole world was just fragmenting. And I wanted so bad to just run back there and just grab her. And I. If I could just hold her, I'd hold her and she'd still be alive. And I. You just. I can't. It can't end like this. It just. It can't end. We look too hard. I've been up too long. I'm gonna save her. I mean, it just. Just. I just lost it. I ended up punching the ground. I was pulling grass out. I hit the tree. And I kept saying, she's not dead. She's not dead. And then all these people are coming around me because I'm flipping out. I end up in between these cars.

[Gilbert King]

The cops come around one side of the car towards Leo. His dad comes from the other side.

[Leo Schofield]

And I'm telling him, don't touch me. Don't come near me. I want her out now. I just want her out. I ended up just falling down and sitting against the front tire of the car. I came in the glute.

[Gilbert King]

Michelle's body is floating face down in a drainage canal off State Road 33 near an old phosphate mine. There's a large piece of plywood partially covering her body, resting on her back and legs. She's still wearing the red pants she wore to work that day and a sleeveless white top. Her autopsy would later reveal that she'd been stabbed 26 times and scrapes on her back were consistent with her body being dragged after she was killed. Officer Richard Katchadourian, who talked to Leo and his father the morning after Michelle disappeared. Here's about it on the news.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I remember coming to work one night and there, there it was on television and she was found not far from where I'm sitting right now.

[Gilbert King]

He feels bad for the Scofields and picks up the phone to offer his condolences. Leo Senior answers, and it was definitely.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

A very peculiar conversation. He talked about a premonition that he had.

[Gilbert King]

What Leo Sr. Told him was so odd, Katchadourian decided to write an official report about the call. His report reads, Mr. Schofield advised Ryder that he received a premonition the night prior to the discovery of his daughter in law, possibly from the Lord, advising him where Michelle could be found.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

He told me on the phone that night that he discovered the body and the body was in the water and that she was looking at him and then she was smiling at him.

[Gilbert King]

Michelle was smiling, Leo Senior said, as if saying, thank you for finding me. This is especially odd because Michelle was floating face down and had plywood on top of her.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

It was strange and that's how I thought of it. It became extremely strange and I got, I mean, it frightened me to a certain degree. And if you know that landscape, you just don't happen upon. You just don't drive down that road and happen upon anything that's really dense vegetation, snake infested water. I mean, you either have to know something's there or somebody directed you there or you knew something was in that area. You know, in hindsight, Gilbert, what I feel he was doing was confessing. That was definitely one of the oddest phone calls in my life.

[Gilbert King]

Hi, I'm Jason Flom, CEO and founder of Lava for Good Podcasts, Home to Bone Valley, Wrongful Conviction, the War on Drugs and many other great podcasts. Today we're asking you, our listeners, to take part in a survey. Your feedback is going to help inform how we make podcasts in the future. Your complete and candid answers will help us continue to bring you more insightful and inspiring stories about Important topics that impact us all. So please go to lavaforgood.com survey and participate today. Thank you for your support. 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. Christina Dent is one of many entrepreneurs partnering with Stand Together to end the War on Drugs, the underlying cause of many problems such as over incarceration and the criminalization of addiction in communities across the country. As a foster mom, Christina came into contact with the War on Drugs when she saw how it was ripping apart the family she worked with. She witnessed how kids were affected and how mothers wanted something better for their families, but didn't have the tools to get there themselves. Christina Dent started a non profit called End It For Good because she knew there was a better solution to help these families. She's working to end the War on Drugs in Mississippi and build consensus around the state to help families struggling with substance abuse problems find a different path forward than the one they've been given. Stand Together has many more stories like this one as it partners with thousands of change makers who are driving solutions in education, health care, poverty, and the criminal justice system. To learn more about the War on Drugs, listen to the War on Drugs podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Leo Schofield]

There is a piece of wood board.

[Gilbert King]

Oh, the plywood. Right.

[Leo Schofield]

That was covering the body.

[Gilbert King]

Right.

[Leo Schofield]

I do have that, so I'll bring that out.

[Gilbert King]

Just a minute. We've been reading about it for months. It's just so funny that it's here. Actually, Kelsey and I are talking to Shane Kent, who runs the evidence room in the basement of the Polk county courthouse. Shane's in his early 40s with tattoos and gauged piercings. He's going to show us all the physical evidence from Michelle Schofield's murder.

[Leo Schofield]

How it's gonna go down is I'm gonna try to keep control of all the evidence.

[Gilbert King]

Sure.

[Leo Schofield]

I'm gonna be the only one handling it. I drop off a piece, let you look at it, examine it, if you.

[Gilbert King]

Want to take pictures of it.

[Leo Schofield]

The only thing that I do not recommend any pictures being taken is of the victim is any kind of nude because some of the wounds are in her chest and her bare chest is exposed. So.

[Gilbert King]

Okay. Understand.

[Leo Schofield]

Okay. All right. If you want to, guys, have a seat. I'll start bringing stuff up.

[Gilbert King]

Okay. Thanks. You. Every time someone asks to see the evidence from a homicide, the state attorney's office is notified and they can send someone down to observe. So we have an armed officer with us, and she's going to be watching as we look through all the evidence.

[Leo Schofield]

All right. Got a nice little table out here for you guys.

[Gilbert King]

Oh. Kelsey and I sit side by side at the table. And Shane starts bringing out the evidence. The plywood that was covering Michelle's body in the canal where she was found on top of the body in that little swamp. Maps of lakeland mounted on foam boards. Michelle's time card from Tom's restaurant. See, there's the downy bottle that they found the typo on. The blood smeared downy fabric softener bottle that was found in the back of the Mazda.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

The downy bottle very much looked like a downy bottle from the 80s. You know, it wasn't like the one you'd be able to buy at the store today. You know, for me, this all happened before I was born. So seeing some of that stuff, I was able to like, better place and time. Like, oh, my gosh. Okay, this happened. And it was 1987.

[Gilbert King]

Then Shane brings out Michelle's clothes. Each piece is contained in a clear plastic bag.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Her jacket, her top, her bra and underwear. And the red pants that she wore to work. That was all there as well.

[Leo Schofield]

No.

[Gilbert King]

And this is the gray jacket, the jacket and the top, they'd been slashed. And there was a lot of dried.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Blood on those items.

[Gilbert King]

I look at Kelsey, we both know what's next. Shane starts with photos of Michelle as she was found floating face down in the canal under the plywood. A few more like that, without the plywood. Then he brings out the photographs from the autopsy. There are pictures of her face, her head tilted to one side. She looks like she could be sleeping. Except she isn't. And the wounds are horrific. We've been studying this case for months now, but. But in documents, the crime can feel abstract, with Michelle described only as the victim. By this time, we'd met Leo, some of Michelle's friends and family. And now she's no longer some stranger or the victim on an autopsy table. And your heart just breaks trying to imagine the pain and devastation they felt when Michelle was killed. That's all I can think about. Seeing these photos.

[Leo Schofield]

That's everything.

[Gilbert King]

Yeah. That was not so pleasant. Not a lot of cases are. No, I know, but.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Right. I'm gonna need to decompress.

[Leo Schofield]

Yeah, sure. Gosh.

[Gilbert King]

Is this us?

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Yeah.

[Gilbert King]

Kelsey and I aren't saying much. On the way back to the parking garage, the summer heat is stifling and it's the end of the workday, so there are people all around us. We get to our car where we debrief.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I mean, I was thinking about her and like the pain she must have felt and how scared she must have.

[Gilbert King]

Been in those last moments.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I think, you know, there was also the proximity and age I was thinking about, you know, also like myself and all of my friends who are young women and could potentially be in a situation like that.

[Leo Schofield]

For a minute.

[Gilbert King]

Grief and heartbreak overwhelm everyone close to Michelle in the days and nights after her body is discovered. When it comes time to arrange her funeral, Leo is in no shape to help.

[Leo Schofield]

My dad took over everything. I could not make a solid decision for me, for anything. I couldn't decide, decide what clothes for her to wear. I couldn't decide what color the casket should be, what kind of casket should be on. Those things were so foreign to me. How do you decide what kind of casket you put your dead wife in?

[Gilbert King]

But there's one detail Leo does care about. Michelle's dad wants a closed casket wake.

[Leo Schofield]

And I just could not leave her without seeing her again. I just could not do it.

[Gilbert King]

So Leo makes an arrangement with the funeral home. They'll hold the wake with a closed casket. But an hour or so before they'll let Leo see Michelle one last time. The funeral director tells him that to view Michelle, they'll need a high neck shirt to cover her wounds.

[Leo Schofield]

And I was flabbergasted. Like what wounds? When Michelle was murdered, I was originally under the impression all the way up until the wake that she was drowned. And that's when my father said they were stab wounds.

[Gilbert King]

With Leo in his debilitated state, no one had wanted to tell him exactly what happened to Michelle.

[Leo Schofield]

Obviously I knew somebody had killed her. Why or how was beyond my ability to think. Stabbing her is beyond that. You know, it's just. It's just beyond that. And for me, that was the whole thing cast again, reliving it all over again. A different scenario somehow worse than the drowning.

[Gilbert King]

At the wake, Leo is given the private moment. He wanted to see Michelle one last.

[Leo Schofield]

Time and walked into the viewing area. I have never seen a dead body. I've never been to a wake. I've never had any experience like that. So I really wasn't prepared for any of that. And she was laying in the casket and I told myself that I wanted to see it because I wanted to kiss her with one more time. She was so cold. I couldn't do it immediately. I felt her Hand. She was ice cold and she didn't even look like her. I mean, Michelle without life was not Michelle. I did manage to. It took a while. I managed to kiss her. It didn't help. I kept thinking, I gotta just figure out a way. I gotta go back. All I gotta do is get back to this minute, what I was looking for. Instead of going this way, if I just go that way, I could have ran into the car, you know, but just any. Just that minute, if I could just get back to there, I could make it all go away. And you can't go back. There's no way to go back. My life has been chasing that going back ever since.

[Gilbert King]

After the wake, there's Michelle's funeral. The church is filled with young people and they've come to remember Michelle.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

We met in fourth grade and I don't know, we just. We hit it off, like, right away, you know, as little kids.

[Gilbert King]

This is Michelle McCluskey. She was Michelle Schofield's best friend. As kids, they did gymnastics in the front yard, listened to music, and then as they grew into teenagers, they would go the roller skating rink almost every night. They also played a lot of sports with boys in the neighborhood.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

She seemed to be kind of good at almost everything. I remember always thinking how strong she was. She could do things physically that a lot of girls our age couldn't do. She was kind of rough and tumble, you know. She had an older brother and a younger brother. She wrestled with them and stuff like that. But she was, you know, she wasn't like a tough girl or anything like that. She was very, very sweet and feminine and like, always like to do her nails and have her hair done, that kind of stuff too. When we were younger, they lived in a small mobile home. It was a single wide mobile home and it was so small, but Ricky had a full drum set in the living room.

[Gilbert King]

Ricky is Michelle's older brother. The whole family loved music. Playing, singing, you name it. Ricky and his father, David, both learned the drums. Michelle's grandfather played the banjo, of course.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Then we started listening to rock and roll. And if you met her, you would never guess that she liked heavy metal rock, you know what I mean?

[Gilbert King]

Kelsey and I reached out to Jesse Saum, Michelle's younger brother. Today. He's an artist, and we met him at his studio in Port Canaveral. It has big garage doors that open onto the marina. Dozens of his metal sculptures hang from the walls and ceiling. He keeps a picture of Michelle at one of his workstations.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

She was. She was trying to do more musical stuff too. You know, she was really good at singing and stuff like that. And I think she was just trying to find her voice, you know, and was kind of suppressing it because everybody has to work and pay their bills, you know what I mean? But I think that that was really her kind of creative thing, that she.

[Sheryl McCollum]

How she could express herself.

[Gilbert King]

Jesse and Michelle went to a lot of heavy metal shows together when they were growing up. He's only 16. When Michelle moves in with Leo, he comes home one afternoon when he hears that Michelle's body has been found.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I think I had come home and.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I think my grandmother actually told me.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Because I don't think my dad was there. I was hoping not to witness his state of being at that moment. Cause, you know, he just, you know, crumpled.

[Gilbert King]

We asked Jesse if he thinks his dad, David Sahm, would talk to us. But Jesse tells us that his dad doesn't even like to talk to him about Michelle. It's still too painful. As a matter of courtesy, I mail David a letter telling him what I'm doing and offering him the opportunity to speak with me or to ask any questions. But I don't hear back from him. In the days following Michelle's funeral, Leo is having a hard time processing these new details of his wife's death. Now he's forced to think about the violence Michelle experienced in her last moments.

[Leo Schofield]

I know Michelle, and there's no way that anybody who knew her was capable.

[Gilbert King]

Of doing this to her.

[Leo Schofield]

It's not possible. And so I'm looking for some monstrous thing that you can't describe in a human form. You know, it's just a monster.

[Gilbert King]

Leo and Michelle's friends are also trying to make sense of Michelle's murder, and they're trying to figure out who might be responsible. It's a time, you know, we were.

[Leo Schofield]

Suspect of a lot of different people. You know, you sit around in your mind, you. You try to. Who could have done something, you know.

[Gilbert King]

As terrible as that. This is Dave again, the bass player in Leo's band, and his wife Liz.

[Leo Schofield]

There was a couple of people that we wondered about.

[Sheryl McCollum]

My first reaction when we got the.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Phone call that night, at the same time that this happened just before, there.

[Gilbert King]

Was, like, five girls in the area.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

That had been killed. One of them was even right down.

[Gilbert King]

Here off Cumby Road, dumped on the railroad track. Cumby Road is the street where a lot of teenagers hang out in Lakeland. A lot of crime happens here. A lot of theft, fights, sometimes murders. It also happens to be where Tom's restaurant is, where Michelle was working the night she went missing.

[Sheryl McCollum]

So my first reaction was, oh, my God, it's gotta be that same guy.

[Gilbert King]

He's come over here.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

So I just. That was my first reaction. It was that serial killer that had.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Been running around I4 corridor.

[Gilbert King]

But their minds always returned to those closest to Michelle. And word was getting around about how Leo's dad claimed a premonition had led him to Michelle's body. The sheriff's department was looking at that.

[Leo Schofield]

And thinking, yeah, that don't sound right. You know, and to be honest with you, there were times when we kind of suspected he may have cause the.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

There again.

[Leo Schofield]

At a time like that, it's such a terrible thing.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

You know, you.

[Leo Schofield]

You try to figure out who. Who in the world would have done.

[Gilbert King]

Something like that, you know, that's what the Polk county sheriff's office would have to figure out. Two experienced detectives were assigned to the Michelle Schofield case. Detective Weeks and Detective Putnall. I could try to describe them, but it might be better coming from the longtime reporter for the Lakeland Ledger, Susie Shaddlecotti.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I was covering cops then, so I do remember having a lot of murders going on at that point and a.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Lot of things that went unsolved.

[Gilbert King]

Susie has been reporting on the courts in Polk county for over 35 years, and she's married to a retired detective with the sheriff's office. She knows just about everyone in Polk county. First, I asked her about Detective Robert Weeks.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Oh, yeah, Weeble.

[Gilbert King]

Did you call him Weeble? Yes.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

This little short guy. He's kind of built like a Weeble, you know, Weeble's wobble.

[Gilbert King]

Then I asked Susie about Weeks's partner, Detective Putnall.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, God.

[Gilbert King]

Richard Putnall. Dr. Death.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Oh, God, he has the personality of a dial tone.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I mean, they called him Dr. Death because he.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

He was always at a crime scene.

[Gilbert King]

But he was. He was the typical chain smoking, rumpled.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Suit, tall, lanky detective. I mean, he was just what you would imagine, an old crusty, smelled like.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Smoke all the time.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Detective.

[Gilbert King]

You know, Kelsey and I tried reaching out to these detectives without luck. We sent email, left phone messages, and knocked on doors. It was almost like word had gotten out about what we were doing. Very few people from the sheriff's office, active or retired, wanted to talk to us. But there was one guy. His name is Grady Judd. He's the actual sheriff now. And it's fair to say that he's the face and the voice of Polk County.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

This is a wonderful Safe community. I love the people here. And in turn, the community here overwhelmingly cares for each other and looks out for each other. It's a good place.

[Gilbert King]

Sheriff Grady Judd is a white man in his mid-60s. He wears glasses and a green uniform with his sheriff star pinned to his chest. He's known for his campy, tough on crime press conferences, which often involve props and pictures and often go viral on social media. In 2006, his deputies chased someone suspected of killing a police officer into the woods and shot him dead. After the autopsy, Judd was asked why deputies fired 68 bullets into the suspect. That's all the bullets we had, or we would have shot him more.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

He said, we don't choose to shoot people. They choose for us to shoot them. And if you choose for us to shoot at you, we're gonna shoot at you a lot. That's a guarantee.

[Gilbert King]

When we met him, some Lakeland rappers had just released a new song, ducking Grady Judd, and they made a music video that pokes fun at evading cops in Polk County. The sheriff loved it.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

And by the way, we're going to do an encore together. It's already scheduled. I told them, I said. They said, can we do an encore?

[Gilbert King]

And I said, yes, I love it.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

Because the first one I didn't have anything to do with it. They pulled my clips off the YouTube, and this one, I'm going to have a cameo appearance. And they said, can we. Can we shoot part of it with. With your SWAT vehicle? And I said, well, sure you can.

[Gilbert King]

Judd is so popular in Polk county, he recently won his fifth consecutive term as sheriff, running unopposed. He tells us he grew up in the Comby area, that same part of Lakeland where Michelle worked and where bodies were turning up.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

They used to call me a comby critter when I was a kid. I'd run around talking about being the sheriff, and they'd say, you're not gonna elect some kid from Comby Road to be the sheriff. I said, yeah, they are. They're gonna elect me. No, they ain't gonna elect a cumby critter. Well, they did. Here I am.

[Gilbert King]

Grady Judd was just 18 when he joined the sheriff's office. But since he was too young to legally purchase ammunition for his service weapon, his father had to buy it for him. Judd quickly rose up the ranks, and just a few years before Michelle Schofield's murder, he was supervising 44 employees, all older than him. And Judd is the first to admit that it's a pretty bad sign when a kid in his 20s, is running the criminal investigations unit.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

You know, I like to think that I'm sharper than the average bear, but that's just a personal opinion of me. But the reality is we should have had people with institutional wisdom running a criminal investigations division back in the day, and we didn't. So we had a young upstart college kid who read a lot and was intuitive when the real mature leaders weren't there.

[Gilbert King]

In Polk county in the 1980s, violent crime was rising dramatically, and Grady Judd was alarmed and frustrated by the growing number of unsolved homicides. Back then, they didn't really have the resources to keep up.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

We didn't have DNA, we didn't have cell phone tracking. We didn't have stores and intersections with cameras.

[Gilbert King]

On top of that, Grady Judd says they didn't have many experienced homicide detectives back then, and there were too many murders for them to handle. They'd start working one murder, but then another murder would come along and they'd have to stop what they were doing to move on to the next one. The year Michelle was killed, the Sheriff's office handled 27 homicides, its second worst year for murders in a decade. There were nine recent murder cases that had gone cold. And now detectives from the Polk County Sheriff's office had another killing on their hands with very little evidence to go on. Making matters worse, a month before Michelle's murder, Polk county sheriff Dan Daniels, a self avowed white supremacist, was forced out of office by the governor on the same day Michelle's body was found. There was an overhaul of the department and massive reorganization underway. Many officers in the Polk County Sheriff's office resigned.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

I didn't because my goal was to make this organization better, not run from a challenge. But it was tumultuous during those days.

[Gilbert King]

With the sheriff's department in turmoil, Detectives Weeks and Putnam do what they can with the resources available to them. The first thing they do is canvas Leo and Michelle's neighborhood, knocking on doors. And they begin to hear stories from neighbors of arguments and loud noises coming from the young couple's trailer. But nobody had seen or heard anything unusual on the night Michelle disappeared until Detective Weeks shows up at the trailer of Ricky and Alice Scott, who live across the street from Leo and Michelle. Ricky didn't see anything, but he says he's concerned about his wife getting involved in the investigation. Alice, who's in her mid-30s, stays up late, and she's the neighborhood busybody. She's been known to call the cops on kids for riding bikes on her lawn. And she tells Detective Weeks that, yes, she did see something suspicious on the night Michelle disappeared. She says she heard a noise and looked out her bathroom window. The Schofields pulled up to their trailer in the Mazda. She watched as Leo and Michelle went inside. Then Alice says she hears a scream. She says she stays at the window waiting until Leo emerges from the trailer. He's carrying something large and heavy that he places in the back of the Mazda. He closes the hatch, starts the car, and drives away. With that single statement, Alice Scott puts the investigations focused squarely on Leo.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

Eyewitness testimony is not your best evidence. Because people in a traumatic event, perception can be skewed. They mean well. Some don't mean well. Some there's an ulterior motive. But for the most part, your eyewitnesses mean well. But they're scared to death. And their perceptions may not be exactly as it occurred. But if somebody didn't talk, it was hard to solve a murder back then.

[Gilbert King]

As Detectives Weeks and Putnam interview Leo and Michelle's friends and former roommates, they learned that the young couple had a volatile relationship. There were stories about loud arguments in the trailer, Leo screaming at Michelle, Some noises that sounded like slaps, red marks on Michelle's face. Stories of Leo dragging Michelle by the hair. As the days turn to weeks after Michelle's murder, Leo can feel people looking at him differently. Word is getting out now that there's a witness pointing to Leo as the main suspect. At one point, Leo calls Michelle's dad, David Somm.

[Leo Schofield]

He said that he was informed by Detective Weeks to not have any contact with me until this was over, that they believed that I did it. And I said to him, you don't believe that, David. And he said, I don't know. And I was silent for a few seconds, and I said, okay, all right. That was the last time I spoke to him. I understand his pain, but when he said that, it really, really hurt, because you should know me better than. But he needed something to hang that hat on, you know, something to make sense of, like we all did. But when he said that, I really, really started feeling the weight coming down.

[Gilbert King]

And it's not just Michelle's dad who turns his back on Leo. Michelle's friends are talking to detectives, too.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Michelle was a very, very beautiful girl, and she always dated very nice looking boys. And when I met him, he just didn't seem like the kind of person that I would think she would be interested in. He was kind of small bill, kind of grungy, and he just didn't seem that attractive to me. It just. It just rubbed me weird. I just didn't understand what she was so interested about, you know? I don't. I don't know.

[Gilbert King]

Michelle McCluskey was the maid of honor at Leo and Michelle's wedding, but she still had her doubts.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I remember not. Not being sure that it was a good thing for her and being concerned, you know, but she just. She always convinced me it was okay if they were not getting along or she was unhappy or anything like that. She didn't tell me, but.

[Gilbert King]

After Michelle went missing, Michelle McCluskey remembers one moment in particular after her first night of searching for her best friend when questions about Leo started to creep in.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

We spent that whole day looking for her and stuff, and it was sometime late into the night, and we went back to their house, and I fell asleep on the couch. And then I heard a noise or something. I woke up, and he was standing in the living room with the front door open, just kind of looking outside. And that was the first time that I thought, what if? Like, what if he did something to her? And it made me kind of scared that I was there alone with him.

[Gilbert King]

Soon, Michelle McCluskey would learn that Leo's neighbor, Alice Scott, told detectives she heard Michelle scream, then saw Leo carrying something heavy to the Mazda. If that was true.

[Sheriff Grady Judd]

It was.

[Gilbert King]

It would mean that Michelle McClusky was sleeping at the crime scene where her best friend had been violently murdered the night before by the man she was.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Now alone with being in the house the next day. And there's no blood, nothing's broken, no holes in the wall. No. You know, there's no sign that anything like that happened in their house. So I just thought, well, that just doesn't make sense. I had decided there was no way he could have done it because blood would have been all over the house, and it wasn't.

[Gilbert King]

But what Michelle McCluskey didn't know was that busybody neighbor Alice Scott told police that she saw something else the day after Michelle Schofield went missing. Leo bringing a carpet cleaner into the trailer.

[Leo Schofield]

Foreign.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, it's Karen and Georgia, and we just celebrated our 500th episode of My Favorite Murder. That's 500 podcasts filled with true crime comedy and some light girl math. We're about to podcast for you. Watch this. We have to think of something to say after welcome every week. And we're doing it every week for.

[Gilbert King]

For 10 years. Almost 10 years.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

10 years.

[Gilbert King]

10.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New Episodes every Thursday. Listen to my favorite murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gilbert King]

Goodbye.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

[Gilbert King]

In 2020, a group of young women in a tidy suburb of New York City found themselves in an AI fueled nightmare.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Someone was posting photos.

[Sheryl McCollum]

It was just me naked.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Well, not me, but me with someone.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Else'S body parts on my body parts that looked exactly like my own.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream.

[Gilbert King]

It happened in Levittown, New York. But reporting the series took us through the darkest corners of the Internet and to the front lines of a global battle against deepfake pornography. This should be illegal, but what is this? This is a story about a technology that's moving faster than the law and about vigilantes trying to stem the tide. I'm Margie Murphy. And I'm Olivia Carville. This is Levittown, a new podcast from iHeart podcast podcasts Bloomberg and Kaleidoscope. Listen to Levittown on Bloomberg's Big Take podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gilbert King]

Detectives Weeks and Putnall continue to question Leo, and he can feel the pressure mounting. And because he feels that he has nothing to hide, he never even thinks to bring a lawyer along.

[Leo Schofield]

The fact that you're questioning me about the murder of my own wife was extremely uncomfortable. I've told this story a zillion times. It doesn't change. I don't have any answers to what actually took place because I wasn't there to be in that position. It's beyond trying to prove your innocence. It's beyond that. There's a sludge that covers you when you're being questioned for such a thing. We're not talking about robbing a store or cocaine charge or something. I'm not even talking about a murder, which is bad enough. This is the murder of my wife, whom I love, and now I'm forced to prove that to someone I've never met before and obviously doesn't have any idea who I am.

[Gilbert King]

Leo asked to take a lie detector test. He wants to prove his innocence, and Detective Weeks obliges. Weeks brings in a guy from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. The examiner focuses on three questions. Did you stab Michelle? Leo answers, no. Did you stab Michelle with a knife? No. Did your mother lie about your activities that night? No. The polygraph examiner tells Leo he flunked. Tells him, I think you killed your wife. Armed with the lie detector results, Weeks and Putnam continue to interview people close to the couple.

[Leo Schofield]

Weeks and his team are going around spreading all kinds of stuff. My friends are looking at me strange. I can feel it. You can feel the difference. And on top of everything, I lost Michelle.

[Gilbert King]

Months pass with Leo as the main suspect. Yet no evidence is turning up that connects him to Michelle's murder. The clothes he was wearing that night had no blood on them. Detectives don't have a murder weapon. They have an alleged failed polygraph. But polygraph tests don't. They don't actually detect lies. They really only measure anxiety. The U.S. supreme Court ruled that polygraph tests are not reliable and their results are not admissible evidence. In Florida, the detectives have statements about Leo's temper and his relationship with Michelle and a statement from Alice Scott, who claims to have seen something the night Michelle disappeared. Still, the state Attorney's office is looking over all the evidence, and they don't think detectives have enough to arrest Leo. Yet. There's other evidence, like the fingerprints found in Michelle's Mazda. There were just two sets of prints that were lifted from inside the car. And when they didn't match Leo or Michelle or Leo Senior, the sheriff's office stops looking for possible matches. But what's strange is that Leo and Michelle's prints aren't even in the car, which they should have been because it's their car. When I first saw that in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's report, I wondered if someone wiped down the fingerprints. Crime scene technicians also examine Leo and Michelle's trailer. If Alice Scott's eyewitness statement is true, that she heard Michelle's scream, then saw Leo carrying something heavy like a body and place it in the Mazda, that makes the trailer the scene of the crime. The medical examiner concludes that Michelle lost approximately five pints of blood. But they don't find anything you'd expect to find in the trailer after someone has been stabbed 26 times. Inside, there is no blood, just like Michelle McCluskey noticed, and no signs that the carpet had been cleaned, which there should have been. If Leo Used the carpet cleaner Alice Scott claim she saw him bringing into the trailer the day after Michelle disappeared. Instead, most of Michelle Schofield's blood was found in the dirt near the canal where her body was discovered. Nearly half of female homicide victims are killed by their partners. And the majority of those homicides are carried out by a male partner. So it makes sense that detectives would be suspicious of Leo. But there's no physical evidence connecting Leo to the crime. So the case stalls for months with no arrest. By the end of 1987, with no new developments, the murder of Michelle Schofield is going cold. The Polk County Sheriff's office now has 10 unsolved murders on the books. But there's a new homicide prosecutor, Assistant State Attorney John Aguero. His job is to get the evidence from the detectives and convict someone for the murder of Michelle Schofield. He's young, smart and very aggressive. Aguero takes a look at the Michelle Schofield case file and he thinks he sees something. He reads Officer Katchadorian's report about his conversation with Leo Sr. And Aguero thinks there's something weird going on with the father. A vision from God led him to Michelle's body in a phosphate drainage canal that can't even be seen from the road. Aguero is certain that Leo's father is somehow involved. His so called vision from God that called him to Michelle's body is just too suspicious to ignore. So Assistant State Attorney John Aguero sends detectives Weeks and Putnam back out for a few more rounds of questioning with Leo. And there's a new focus.

[Leo Schofield]

No, it's not about me anymore. They're both good cops and we're going to talk about my dad.

[Gilbert King]

But the detectives don't get what they want. Leo says he doesn't know anything about Michelle's murder. And if Leo thought his dad had something to do with it, he'd give up any information he had. Not long after this, Leo is a passenger in a serious car crash where he breaks his neck. He's hospitalized the released but has to wear a metal neck brace for a while. He decides he's done with Florida. By this point, Leo's parents have moved back to Massachusetts. Leo tells Detective Weeks he's moving back up north, gives him contact information in Massachusetts and asks the detective to let him know if they learn anything new about Michelle's murder. It's now May of 1988. Michelle has been dead for more than 15 months. John Aguero, the prosecutor, is frustrated by the investigation's lack of progress. So he decides he wants to talk to the neighbor, Alice Scott himself. Alice points Aguero to Randy and Mary Laffoon, a neighborhood couple that delivers newspapers around Lakeland. Detective Weeks interviewed them both a year before, but they said they didn't notice anything unusual on the night Michelle disappeared. But now, under Aguero's questioning, the couple tells the prosecutor they remember seeing an orange Mazda and a pickup truck just like the one Leo Sr. Drives. They were parked right where Michelle's body was found. And now, 15 months later, they say they saw those vehicles in the early morning hours of February 25, 1987, the night Michelle disappeared. Aguero might not have the evidence to charge Leo Senior yet, but with the statements from Alice Scott and the Laffoons, he thinks he has enough to charge Leo. So In June of 1988, Leo is indicted for first degree murder, a charge punishable by death in Florida. Aguero notifies police in Massachusetts, and he gets on a plane with Detective Weeks to take Leo into custody. Leo knows they're coming. But before he surrenders, he goes up to the roof of an apartment building he and his dad are painting, and he takes what could be his last look over the neighborhood he grew up in. He's just a few stories up, and his father joins him.

[Leo Schofield]

And of course, I've never been arrested for anything, so I'm pretty scared. I'm in a panic and Dad's not saying anything. I actually went out on the roof and I went out and I stood on the edge of the thing. And I'm not gonna lie. I honestly stood there thinking I should just drop off of it and be done. You know, 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. And my dad said something really crazy. He said, if you did it, jump.

[Gilbert King]

Leo's wife has been murdered. His friends have mostly abandoned him, and now his own family is cracking under the pressure.

[Leo Schofield]

If all you can think is that I did it, then obviously you're not not caring who killed Michelle. I did not kill Michelle. And at some point I just decided I'm going to stand for my life.

[Gilbert King]

Leo goes to the office of a local lawyer who has arranged for the arrest. And they wait. Then Leo notices movement outside the window. He turns to the lawyer.

[Leo Schofield]

They're outside your window. And the SWAT team was outside the window with their rifles. So I know they had surrounded the building. And no sooner did I say that they came in the office. They kicked in the door and just came right off in there. And Weeks was there, Aguero was there, and they picked me up, handcuffed me. I told of Weeks, you're making a mistake. I kept saying that, you're making a mistake. He didn't respond to that at all.

[Gilbert King]

Leo is brought before a Massachusetts judge who tells him he can fight extradition to Florida if he wants. But Leo waives that right. He says he'll go willingly and gets in a car with the prosecutor, John Aguero.

[Leo Schofield]

I told Aguero when we were driving to Logan Airport in Massachusetts, he asked me, how you like the car? We were in a red Cadillac. And he said, how do you like the car? I said, I like it. It's nice. I'm gonna make you drive me back in it. You're driving me to Massachusetts in a red Cadillac.

[Gilbert King]

Leo is escorted onto the plane for the flight back to Florida by Detective Weeks and John Aguero. Leo is just 22 years old and tonight he's going to be sleeping in the Polk County Jail.

[Leo Schofield]

I remember asking Weeks because he sat by me on the plane and I asked him to not stop looking, to continue looking. And he said, why would I do that? And I said, because I'm not guilty of killing Michelle. And he said, well, if I believe that, you wouldn't be here.

[Gilbert King]

That's when Leo turns to the other man sitting by him, prosecutor John Aguero. Leo catches a glimpse of something shiny on Aguero's tie. It's a tie clasp with some kind of design. Leo leans in to get a closer look. It's old Sparky, Florida's electric chair. Bone Valley is a production of Lava for Good podcast in association with Signal Company Number One. Our executive executive producers are Jason Flom and Kevin Werdes. Kara Kornhaber is our senior producer. Britt Spangler is our sound designer. Roxandra Guidi is our editor. Fact checking by Maximo Anderson. Our producer and researcher is Kelsey Decker. Our theme song, the One who's Holding the Stars, is performed by Lebob and the Truth. It was written by Leo Scoffield and Kevin Herrick in Florida's Hardy 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 lavaforgood.com Bonevalley.

[Leo Schofield]

Foreign.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

Hey, it's Karen and Georgia. And we just celebrated our 500th episode of My Favorite Murder that's 500 podcasts filled with true crime comedy and some light girl math. We're about to podcast for you. Watch this. We have to think of something to say after welcome every week. And we're doing it every week for 10 years.

[Gilbert King]

Almost 10 years.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

10 years.

[Gilbert King]

10.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to my favorite murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Gilbert King]

Goodbye.

[Sheryl McCollum]

On this podcast, Incels, we unpack an emerging mindset.

[Gilbert King]

I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me other.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger.

[Sheryl McCollum]

Against women at a deadly tipping point.

[Gilbert King]

Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

This is Incels. Listen to season one of Incels on.

[Sheryl McCollum]

The iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Karen Kilgariff or Georgia Hardstark]

You get your podcasts.

[Sheryl McCollum]

I'm Sheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place. It's a way of life. Now, this ain't just any old podcast, honey. We're going to be talking to family members of victims, detectives, prosecutors, and some nationally recognized experts that I have called on over the years to help me work these difficult cases. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't. We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes. Come join us and learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims, family members. Come be a part of my Zone 7 while building yours. Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.