Leo Schofield – Part 1: Murder in Bone Valley | #449

Summary

---

RedHanded #449: Leo Schofield – Part 1: Murder in Bone Valley

Podcast Date: May 7, 2026
Hosts: Hannah and Alexa Chynes
Episode Theme: A deep-dive into the 1987 murder of Michelle Schofield in Polk County, Florida, and the controversial conviction of her husband, Leo Schofield. This is part one of a two-part series exploring the case, its investigation, and the prosecution's reliance on problematic evidence.

---

Overview

This episode re-examines the case of Leo Schofield, who was convicted in the late 1980s for the murder of his wife, Michelle, amid dubious evidence, dubious witnesses, and a zealous prosecutor. The hosts explore the couple’s tumultuous relationship, the flaws in the police investigation, the trial’s procedural missteps, and the critical role of the "Bone Valley" podcast in uncovering new evidence and drawing attention to the case in recent years. The tone is conversational, skeptical, and occasionally irreverent, with the hosts blending dark humor with detailed investigative logic.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Love Story – and Tragedy – of Michelle and Leo Schofield

• Marriage in Lakeland, Florida (01:09 – 02:06): Michelle and Leo married young and poor, with dreams and challenges typical of teenagers in love.
• Their Circumstances: Lived in a cramped single-wide trailer with friends, fought often, struggled financially, and shared a car.
• Personalities: Leo, a wannabe 80s rock star with a temper, was enamored with Michelle, who came from a fragmented background and faced multiple hardships growing up.
  “Michelle had had a tough life. She had come from a happy family, but it was a fragmented one.” (08:45 – Hannah)

2. Timeline of Michelle’s Disappearance

• February 24, 1987: Michelle is last seen leaving work at Tom’s Restaurant at 8pm, runs errands, and makes a late call to Leo from a petrol station (Sparky’s) at 9:45pm (15:02–21:43).
  • The sparse communication era— no mobile phones, people reliant on public phones and home lines.
  • “Basically just driving to people’s houses to be like, can I borrow your phone to phone somebody else’s house and hope that they’re there? Might as well just have a fucking tin can with a piece of string on it.” (14:24 – Hannah)
• After the Call: Leo waits for Michelle at a friend’s house—she never arrives. Late-night searches begin, involving Leo, his parents, and Michelle’s family (22:29–32:40).
• Missing Persons Report: Leo contacts law enforcement 3 times within the first 14 hours, but is initially brushed off by police who believe Michelle would simply “turn up.”

3. The Investigation

• Discovery of Michelle’s Car (41:07): Found two days later abandoned in the wrong direction from the route Michelle should have taken. Bloodstained fabric softener bottle discovered inside, but no fingerprints of Leo or Michelle found—only two unmatched sets.
  • “That’s, like, impossible.” (43:33 – Alexa Chynes)
• Discovery of Michelle’s Body (44:43): Found in a drainage ditch, fully clothed, stabbed 26 times, no signs of sexual assault or robbery except missing shoes, purse, and handbag.
  • “She had been stabbed to death in what looked like a frenzied attack...Her wedding band was still on her finger. Only her shoes, her purse and handbag were missing.” (44:48 – Alexa Chynes)

4. Suspicions and Eyewitness Testimony

• Leo’s Immediate Reaction and Police Doubts:
  • Police suspicious of Leo due to his “confused” demeanor and inability to recall basic facts like Michelle’s birthday and eye color during the stress of reporting her missing (34:00–36:34).
  • “I just think he was a mess. But I understand why that looks suspicious to the officer. But I’m also like, why would he come and report it to you then? ...so early?” (34:20–34:40 – Hannah)
• Alice Scott’s Testimony:
  • The “nosy neighbor” whose timeline is riddled with contradictions and later changes. Her account forms the backbone of the prosecution, but is highly implausible and contradicted by multiple independent witnesses and physical evidence (49:43–61:40).
  • The hosts conclude that for Alice’s story to work, Leo’s entire family and several friends would have had to be in “very specific cahoots.”

5. Problems with the Prosecution’s Theory

• Absence of Physical Evidence:
  • No blood in the trailer despite the theory that Michelle was killed there, no evidence of cleaning with detergent, and blood on the scene matched only to the canal/crime scene.
  • “The medical examiner said that Michelle would have lost around five pints of blood when she was killed. And Alice Scott’s account makes it seem like Leo killed Michelle in their trailer. So where is all that five pints gone? It’s all on the dirt path by the canal where Michelle’s body was found.” (63:56–64:19 – Alexa Chynes/Hannah)
• Prosecution’s Reliance on Alice Scott and Implausible Cleaning Theory:
  • Alice claimed Leo cleaned the carpet with the door wide open—yet there’s no trace of cleaning product or evidence the carpet was cleaned at all.
  • “You’re going to clean blood out of a carpet with just water and no detergent?...Come on. You need like heavy duty fucking bleach.” (67:43 – Hannah)
• Timeline and Alibi Issues:
  • Multiple independent witnesses contradict Alice Scott’s story. The only unaccounted-for hour in Leo’s night is from 3:30 to 4:40am—barely enough for the alleged acts, and conflict with physical evidence of when and where the crime occurred.

6. Legal Proceedings and Defense Failures

• Aggressive Prosecutor, John Aguero:
  • Under pressure to clear cases, Aguero pursued Leo with intensity, reopened the case after Leo moved away, and sought the death penalty (71:14–72:59).
  • Offers made to Leo to implicate his father or take a plea deal—both refused by Leo, who instead insisted on his innocence (77:51–79:02).
• Leo’s Poor Legal Representation:
  • Leo, convinced he needed a famed attorney, hired Jack Edmond—described as “the KFC colonel” (74:29–75:07)—who failed to investigate or defend vigorously, ultimately not even meeting Leo until just before the trial began.
  • Jury problems: No alternates, only 12 jurors, two of whom dropped out, making conviction for the death penalty easier (81:01–82:40).
  • “Jack Edmund, for whatever reason, does an absolutely piss poor job of this. It’s actually quite staggering, especially because he has got a 20 year old man in front of him who is facing death. It blows the mind.” (76:32 – Hannah)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Bone Valley Podcast:

  • "It's just like a really really good example - good is putting it mildly - a phenomenal example of relentless journalism and absolutely what freed an innocent man who otherwise was completely out of options." (03:20 – Hannah)

• Skepticism on Eyewitness Testimony:

  • "Eyewitnesses in general are notoriously bad. And Alice Scott was definitely a busybody..." (60:11 – Hannah)
  • "You just have to do quite a lot of mental gymnastics and question a lot of people’s stories in order to trust Nosy Parker, Alice Scott." (57:32 – Alexa Chynes)

• On the Prosecution’s Cleaning Theory:

  • "He’s a criminal genius if he has, because he’s like, well, I don’t want it to look too clean because then people are going to be suspicious because we’re quite messy people. So let me pick up all this stuff, clean the carpet, maybe I’ll make it messy again because…I don’t want people to wonder why the carpet’s so clean." (68:37 – Hannah, mocking prosecution logic)

---

Important Timestamps

• The Wedding and Background: 01:09–08:45
• Timeline of Disappearance: 12:38–22:29
• Discovery of the Car & Body: 41:07–44:43
• Investigation Flaws and Eyewitness Issues: 49:43–63:27
• Legal Proceedings and Defense Issues: 71:14–82:40

---

Tone & Language

The hosts maintain RedHanded’s signature irreverent, conversational, and skeptical tone throughout, balancing respectful discourse with occasional dark humor and analogies (e.g., fashion industry metaphors, “criminal genius” sarcasm regarding cleaning). Their ordinary language keeps the story accessible and emphasizes the flaws and absurdities in the case.

---

Conclusion & What’s Next

The episode ends by setting up the trial (to be covered in Part 2), focusing on the courtroom drama, the fallout, and the evidence that came to change the narrative—including the shocking discovery of whose fingerprints were actually found in Michelle’s car.

“Join us next week to hear all about that, including whose fingerprints they were that they found in Michelle’s car. Because it is wild and entirely the reason we have two episodes in this case.” (83:13 – Alexa Chynes)

---

This episode is essential listening for true crime fans interested in wrongful convictions, problematic prosecutions, and the role of investigative journalism in justice.

Transcript

[Alexa Chynes]

Neighbor game. Oo.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty, Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Grainger Announcer]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H Vac and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.

[Hannah]

On 29 August 1986, in a small church in the city of Lakeland, Florida, Leo Schofield and Michelle Somme tied the knot. 19 year old Leo looked every inch the wannabe 80s rock star kitted out in his borrowed white tux and black mullet while 18 year old Michelle beamed in her high neck ivory gown complete with puff sleeves and coiffed perm.

[Alexa Chynes]

The pair were young, they hadn't been together that long. They certainly didn't have much money, but it's the 80s, those things don't matter. And also, they were the very much in love. And with the help and support of their friends and family, they pulled off this small yet perfect wedding. But just six months later, Michelle would be dead. Fingers quickly began pointing at her husband Leo.

[Hannah]

And then when accusations of violence in their relationship surfaced, along with the neighbour's account of his odd behavior in the days after she vanished, suspicions rose yet further. Then when Leo's own father discovered Michelle's savaged body following what he claimed was a message from God, it looked like a horrific family affair that had ended in the brutal murder of a young newlywed.

[Alexa Chynes]

But.

[Hannah]

But years later, the plot thickened when new evidence took things in an unbelievable direction. This is a case that has rolled on for four decades until 2024 when we finally got what is probably the closest we're ever going to get to justice in this case.

[Alexa Chynes]

And for that we have to thank the fantastic podcast series Bone Valley and their hosts, Gilbert King and Kelsey Decker.

[Hannah]

It's so Good.

[Alexa Chynes]

Is it?

[Hannah]

It's very, very, very good.

[Alexa Chynes]

Okay.

[Hannah]

If you guys, if anybody hasn't listened to Bone Valley, it's got, like, three seasons, four seasons now.

[Alexa Chynes]

I believe I'm aware of it.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Yeah. The first two seasons are about this case. And it's just. It's fantastic. It's just like, a really, really good example. Good is putting it mildly. A phenomenal example of relentless journalism and absolutely what freed an innocent man who otherwise was completely out of options. We see a lot of these cases.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, you love to see it.

[Hannah]

You love to see it.

[Alexa Chynes]

And when they actually are innocent.

[Hannah]

Exactly. I was going to say we see a lot of podcasts that are like, you know, is this person innocent? And I'm like, no, no. And in this case, it is like, you go through the story and they have just so much information. And the outcome that we have now, the outcome that Leo has now, would just not be a reality without that podcast series. I also love the name Bone Valley.

[Alexa Chynes]

So good.

[Hannah]

And I went into it thinking, like, why is it called Bone Valley? Is it like her body is found in a pit of bone? No, it's called Bone Valley because the area in central Florida, like the counties, Polk county being one of them, where Michelle's remains are found, they used to do a lot of phosphate mining there in the 1800s. And when they were, like, digging for phosphate, I assume that's how you find it.

[Alexa Chynes]

I didn't know you dug for phosphate. It sounds like it's just around this

[Hannah]

is what I thought. But, like, phosphate mining, they discovered loads and loads of fossils in that area. So kind of like we've got our Jurassic Coast Bone Valley in Central Florida. There you go. Go listen to it. It's fantastic.

[Alexa Chynes]

We are not investigative journalists. We're going to spend the next two weeks on this case, and we're going to pack a lot in, but we obviously are not even going to be able to come close to two seasons worth of information that is dedicated to this story over on Bone Valley. So if you do do want to make it your job to know about this case, go and check it out, because Bone Valley has hours of firsthand interviews with all of the key figures in this case, and it is absolutely worth your time. And you're not going to get that here.

[Hannah]

No, I'd say we're not. Like, if we're going to compare it to fashion, we're not like fast fashion, because we are doing volume but also quality. But we're not like haute couture, which is what I'D say Bone Valley is.

[Alexa Chynes]

We really need to write that into our pitch deck.

[Hannah]

We are. What are we? We're like an elevated premium brand. Affordable but sustainable.

[Alexa Chynes]

What? Like when Alexa Chung had that fashion brand, everyone's like, it's really expensive. She's like, yeah, because I don't use children in factories. That's why they cost £300.

[Hannah]

Exactly. But she's Alexa Chung. Not a fancy brand name. Anyway, whatever, fuck it. I was trying. I was trying a thing. Anyway, with that. I'm Saruti.

[Alexa Chynes]

And I'm Alexa Chynes.

[Hannah]

She's Hannah. She's Hannah. And this is red handed. And this is part one of our look at the case of Leah Schofield.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, and I haven't shagged Ian Watkins

[Hannah]

yet. No, he's dead. Never mind. And this is why we'll never be overjaw.

[Alexa Chynes]

So brand safe over here. Anyway, Leah Schofield wasn't Alexa Chung either. He was born in Fall River, Massachusetts.

[Hannah]

It always comes up.

[Alexa Chynes]

It does always come back. Always comes back to Fall River. And Katie Price swear, if you don't know Fall river is where the Lizzie Borden house is absolutely worth your time 100%. Just drive to Lizzie Borden's house in Fall river while listening to Bone Valley. And then you've done everything. You've done your homework.

[Hannah]

You can also go see the courthouse where Aaron Hernandez was tried.

[Alexa Chynes]

Very true. Anyway, Leo didn't last long in Fall River. He moved to Lakeland, Florida with his parents when he was a teen. And with his thick Bostonian accent, Leo stood out in the South. Not that he minded too much, because after graduating high school, Leo may have worked in a factory by day, but by night he was the lead guitarist for a rock and roll band called Rhino, Spelled R Y N O, which stood for tell them, rock your nuts off. So far, obviously, I've got no idea what happens.

[Hannah]

Big fan of Leo. Leah's a complicated character, but he's definitely fun.

[Alexa Chynes]

Great.

[Hannah]

I think that's probably. He's got a temper, but, you know, he can play a guitar and everyone likes him and all the ladies fancy him.

[Alexa Chynes]

Well, no one's perfect, eh? Leo and his friends played gigs all over the local area and had big ambitions for their group. And it was at one of these gigs that Leo and Michelle first hit it off. They actually already knew each other because Michelle had gone out with one of Leo's best friends. He's called Manny Manfred, one would assume. But when Manny got himself a four year sentence at a youth development centre for Handling a stolen gun, Michelle turned to Leo for comfort. What followed was a friendship. The pair hung out almost every day, listening to music, talking, and going for long drives in Leo's car.

[Hannah]

Michelle had had a tough life. She had come from a happy family, but it was a fragmented one. When Michelle was still young, her mother had become very ill and had to move back to Texas to be nearer her family. Michelle and her siblings stayed with their dad in Florida, but when their house burned down, they ended up in foster care while her dad basically tried to do everything he could to rebuild their lives. So then after all that, when she lost her boyfriend Manny for four years, which, come on, they are so young. She's 18 when she marries IO. She's even younger when Manny gets sentenced to this youth development center that would have felt like forever as a teenager. So naturally, Michelle turned to Leo. And Leo, well, he was absolutely besotted. He said he'd never met a girl like Michelle before.

[Alexa Chynes]

Which is why when their pastor suggested they get married, the pair agreed and got hitched just six months after they first got together. It wasn't smooth sailing, though. Leo and Michelle had no money, they lived in a trailer, a single wide one, not a double wide, with another couple, Michelle's best friend and her partner.

[Hannah]

A trailer? A single trailer with four people living in it. Like, yeah, it's a lot.

[Alexa Chynes]

Four whole people crammed into one singular trailer. Naturally, there was quite a lot of tension, especially because Michelle and Leo fought a lot. I've lived on my own for years now. I genuinely don't know if I can go back. Like, if I ever find someone to consistently shag me, this is going to be quite a large problem.

[Hannah]

It's just a lot of fights because

[Alexa Chynes]

I do what I want all the time.

[Hannah]

Yeah, that's gone.

[Alexa Chynes]

And I have done for years. And, like, Mabel sleeps with me, and if someone else comes into that equation, I'm gonna be like, she was here first.

[Hannah]

Especially if he fucking snores. There's a whole nother world of pain, my friend.

[Alexa Chynes]

Friends of mine. The bloke goes to the dentist and comes home and he's like, apparently I grind my teeth. Like, I had no idea.

[Hannah]

Just opens his mouth. He's got stumps for teeth.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, right. He's just like, do you understand that 85% of my life is listening to you grind your teeth and you don't even. It's not selling the dream, to be honest.

[Hannah]

I believe it.

[Alexa Chynes]

Well, if you do decide to get in ear monitors, we'll talk about it. When they take imprints of your ears, they just keep that imprint forever. So you can get earplugs that are designed for your ear.

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah, I need some of those. Mm.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Hannah]

When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Alexa Chynes]

Anyway, Michelle and Leo, teeth grinding, unconfirmed, but one of the most common fights they had was about the car that they shared and how Michelle was always late when it was her turn to pick Leo up from somewhere.

[Hannah]

And on Tuesday 24th February, 1987, this is exactly the situation that seemed to be playing out again. Leo was at his friend Buddy Anderson's house for band practice. Michelle had their car and was supposed to pick Leo up at 8.30pm, but she was late and Leo was starting to get pissed. She was supposed to come to Buddy's straight after work and she clocked off at 8pm so where the hell was she? And just to remind everybody, this story takes place in the 80s and there will be no mobile phones whatsoever in this case at all. So when we're like, he's just sat around being like, where the fuck is she? It's because he literally doesn't know where she is. And it's so alien. Like we're, you know, we're like not geriatric millennials, but we're certainly like mid level millennials. And even for me, even for me, someone who didn't get a mobile phone until, you know, like late high school, it is bizarre how different their situation and their lives are. They basically just sat around being like, where is she? I don't know.

[Alexa Chynes]

I remember asking my mum this Once. I don't know what she is.

[Hannah]

A boomer.

[Alexa Chynes]

I don't know. Is she that old? Anyway, shut up, Hannah. Nobody cares. I asked her what you did in this situation. She was like, well, Hannah, back then there was this novel concept of just being where you said you were gonna be when you said you were gonna be there.

[Hannah]

Yeah. And if you weren't, then people would just be like, well, I better drive to somebody's house who has a phone, because there's a lot of that as well. Basically just driving to people's houses to be like, can I borrow your phone to phone somebody else's house and hope that they're there? Might as well just have a fucking tin can with a piece of string on it. Like, it is. It's a lot. And in this episode in particular, we're gonna go through a lot of time lining because it's obviously very, very important to the story. It's just like. It's infuriating, like, how. How hard it is for anybody to, like, just get basic information.

[Alexa Chynes]

So Leo, no phone. Leo, stuck in the 80s, had to just sit around her buddies and wait. And finally, at 9:45pm, more than an hour after she was supposed to be there, Leo got a call at Buddy's house. And it was Michelle. She was calling from the payphone at the local petrol station, which was called Sparky's. Very good. Which was opposite the restaurant where she worked. What we know about this call comes from Leo and people who were at Buddy Anderson's house that night who overheard it. Michelle was excited, seemingly oblivious to Leo's frustrations, and she gushed that she'd made $13 in tips that night, so she'd put $3 worth of petrol in the car and she'd bought a Coke. Michelle explained that then she'd gone home to feed their new puppy and fold some laundry, which was why she was late. To be fair, if someone was late to pick me up because they had put some washing away,

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

I would be furious.

[Hannah]

I think that this happens so much in Leo and Michelle's life that he's just like, at least you called me. At least I know where you are.

[Alexa Chynes]

Anyway. At this information, Leo softened and he thanked Michelle for calling him and telling her. And he said, look how easy things are when you call me and you tell me what is going on.

[Hannah]

Yeah. And we can only be as specific as we are being about what was said and Michelle's tone and demeanour. Obviously, like we said, Leo is on the phone to us, so he's telling us. But also the people at Buddy Anderson's house can hear Leo say these things. So we don't have phone records, we don't have loads and loads of information. We have to take the word of the people who were there.

[Alexa Chynes]

Michelle said she wanted to go to McDonald's and then she would come and get him. Oh my God. I would be.

[Hannah]

I knew this was gonna really upset you.

[Alexa Chynes]

Pulling my eyelashes out.

[Hannah]

Yeah. I think the thing I want to say is because it is really easy to feel frustrated, especially because you do hear that this happened all the time with Leo Michele and this is why he gets annoyed. And the people at Buddy Anderson's like, oh, he was getting so annoyed. But he was always annoyed because this was always happening.

[Alexa Chynes]

Uh huh.

[Hannah]

But I also want to say that Michelle is 18.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So like it's like if I'm 36, I could feasibly have an 18 year old child. Right. I could. It's horrific. But I could, I could. And I think my mum basically had a 17 year old at my age.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Which is bonkers. But I could. And I would justice for Super. And I'm like, I would just assume that if I had a 17 or 18 year old, I was like, can you please do this thing? That they would just probably not do it. And I just think she is so young. She's so young. Yeah.

[Alexa Chynes]

To be fair, getting my brother to do anything. Yeah.

[Hannah]

So anyway, I'm sure lots of teenagers do exactly as they're supposed to. But she's 18. Yeah. Like of course it's annoying. But I just want to. I just want to recalibrate everybody to how young they are.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah. And Leo said, no, no, no, come and get me, you. And then we go to McDonald's together, which is what I would do. And he asked Michelle to pick him up from another friend's house. And that friend is called Vince Rayner. And he said to Michelle, I'm going to walk to Vince Rayner's house right now. And Michelle said, okay.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Now we know again that there's no cctv, there's very few phone records. A lot of this is just based on eyewitness testimony. So that's the way we have to timeline this case. So we know that Michelle's boss at Tom's restaurant where she worked as a waitress saw her leave after her shift finished at about 8pm he also saw Michelle walk across the road to Sparky's. And there we know that she did fill up her tank and buy a Coke just like she told Leo. Interestingly, Michelle also asked the attendant who was working at the petrol station if there was a phone she could use. Now, she didn't actually use the phone there and then, however, because as she told Leo, Michelle went home to deal with the dog and fold some laundry. It seems that Michelle then came back from the trailer to Sparky's at 9:45pm to phone Leo at Buddy's place. And this is confusing, it's confusing as to why Michelle didn't just call Leo when she was at the petrol station at 8pm because remember, she's meant to pick him up at 8:30. If you're there, you're asking about the phone. Why not just phone him there and then to be like, hey, I know, I meant to pick you up in half an hour, I'm going to go sort the dog out. Maybe she thinks she can do it in half an hour and get to Buddy's house. Like, maybe that's some sort of teenage, like time paralysis way of thinking about it. Maybe that's why she doesn't phone. But then why does she ask about the phone? Other people I've seen online I like, why does she ask about the phone at all? She works every day at Tom's restaurant across the road from Sparky's. She would have known there was a phone there. I don't know, I don't have an answer to that. But the attendant says she spoke to me and she asked about the phone. I don't know. So anyway, by 9:45, by the time she comes back to Sparky's to phone Leo at Buddy's house, she already was super late and she already knew where he was because that's how she phones Buddies to speak to him. So my question is, why does she stop at Sparky's at all again to phone Buddy's house? Why not just go to Buddy's to get Leo? I guess it's because she wanted to go to McDonald's and she knew she was going to be even more late and she wanted to tell Leo. It's hard to know for sure. And the only reason I bring it up is because by Leo's own admission and by pretty much everybody else's version of events, Michelle never called him. When she was late, she never called him. So the one time she calls him right, is the night that she spoilers ends up vanishing. I am not saying this is. I'm suspicious about the court. I have to admit that we don't have records of this call, like a petrol station from the 80s. There's no record of her making this call even if there was, like, I don't have it. And also I have to say that by 9pm because Michelle's making this call at 9:45 Tom's restaurant is closed, so there's no witnesses across the road who could have seen Michelle and there's nobody at Sparky's either who sees her make this call. So some people question whether it even happened.

[Alexa Chynes]

I think it did because Buddy Anderson, his parents and the rest of the band were in the room when Leo spoke to Michelle. And it's unlikely that Leo answered the phone in someone else's house. So one of Buddy's family must also have briefly spoken to Michelle when she called asking for her husband. So it's safe to say that this call was real and it was Michelle on the other end and it did come in at 9:45.

[Hannah]

And I think we have to all like agree that this call happened, otherwise the timeline is just like whatever. I'm happy to take the word of the people who were at Buddy Anderson's house because as we will see, they all turn on Leo so they have no reason to lie for him.

[Alexa Chynes]

And it's a lot of people to lie. But this is where after we have all mutually agreed this phone call happened when it happened, things start to go off the rails. After the call, Leo walked to Vince's house with Buddy and Vince confirmed that they Both arrived at 10pm it should have been about a 10 or a 15 minute drive for Michelle. So they're just standing around expecting her to show up any minute. But that never happens. Michelle is nowhere to be seen.

[Hannah]

An hour and a half passes and at 11:30pm a worried Leo phones his parents from Vinces. And this is what I mean. You expect her to literally be there at the same time you get to Vince's an hour and a half patience. People must have had to be like, well there's nothing I can do.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So yeah. He phones his mum and dad's house and Leo's stepmom answers the call and passes the phone to Leo's dad, Leo Sr. Which is just so infuriating. I wish we could just change his name and call him something else because it makes it so confusing. But that is his name. And Leo Sr. Tells his son Leo not to stress. Michelle was easily waylaid. She probably just bumped into a friend and got distracted. Leo Sr. Assured his son that Michelle would turn up eventually. And he also reminded him this whole thing happens all the time and like we said Michelle's just 18, and it's not just that she's forgetful or, like, unreliable. She also likes hanging out with her friends because she's 18. She likes staying out late, she likes going out, she likes partying. And Leo's not really into that in the same way. And he finds it quite annoying with Michelle, but again, like, what do you expect?

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So after speaking to his dad, Leo tried to calm down and wait it out. But just 15 minutes later, at 11:45, Leo called his dad again, and this time, Leo Senior agreed to come pick his son up. He arrived at midnight in his blue and white camper van, and the pair of them then spent the next 40 minutes driving around the area of Cumby in Lakeland, between Tom's Restaurant and Sparky's Buddy's, Vince's, and the trailer where Leo and Michelle lived, but there was no sign of Michelle. And also, she's driving a very baked car. She's driving an orange Mazda. They also don't see this car anywhere.

[Alexa Chynes]

At 12.43pm, Leo's dad drove him back to Vince's house. Leo told his friend that he was now really worried and he needed to use his phone. Leo called the sheriff's department. He wanted to check if Michelle had been picked up by the cops because she didn't actually have a driver's license. Yeah. And she had already been stopped a couple of months before, but that officer had let her go with a warning.

[Hannah]

And I think that is a. It's clear that that's where his mind goes. He's like, the only thing that makes sense is that she's been picked up by the cops.

[Alexa Chynes]

Mm.

[Hannah]

And, yeah, good point of call. And again, very important because he's phoning the police. He's phoning the police at this point,

[Alexa Chynes]

not being like, Michelle's been murdered, you know, like, it seems very.

[Hannah]

He's like, there's a valid reason for why he's calling.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah. But unfortunately, the police hadn't seen Michelle either. So Leo tried to file a missing persons report, but the officer he spoke to brushed him off, telling Leo that she'd been missing, like, three hours. Go home. She'll turn up. This happens all the time. Which is exactly what the police said to my friends when I went missing in Massachusetts and I did turn up.

[Hannah]

You did turn up. You did. And that's why they say it. They're like, most people just turn up, go home.

[Alexa Chynes]

Most people are asleep in the lobby of an airport Hilton.

[Hannah]

You should check there first. So what's Important about this call, other than the fact that it is the first point of contact that Leo has with the police, is that this call was recorded because it's obviously going through to the sheriff's department. And it gives us a bit more of an insight into his mind. This particular recording. Now, I'm not going to play it. It is played in Bone Valley, so if people want to listen to it, they can go listen to it there. But basically, the bit that they play isn't actually Leo speaking to the officer or that's not the bit that's particularly interesting. The bit that's interesting is when he's on hold and he's speaking to his friend Vince, who's standing next to him, and Leo says something along the lines of, I doubt she's screwing around, but if she is, God help her. The slightest thing sets me off. I don't know why she's always doing stuff like this, but it's not like her to be this late. And if you ask me, because a lot of people at the prosecution and the police especially be like, look how angry he sounds. Look how angry he sounds. That's not really the feeling I got when I listened to this call. To me, it sounds more like Leo is confused. He's confused about whether to be angry or scared. I think that's it. He's like, I'm angry because she's not here and I'm suspicious about what she's doing. But I'm also like, it's not like her to be this late. So, yeah, I also think it's worth pointing out that, remember when this is all happening, Leo is 19 years old, so a lot of people are like, well, he knows he's being recorded and that's why he's saying this, that and the other. Okay, I don't even know if he's be. If he knows he's being recorded. I don't know. I think in this day and age, people would assume that. I don't know if Leo knows that. And I'm also like, if he had done something to his wife, firstly, big firstly, when did he do it? At this point, it would have had to have happened in the 40 minutes that he and his dad were alone driving around after they left Vince's house. And this would be a later accusation that would be made and like, okay, maybe. So if that is what happened, why come back to Vince's house and call the police so early on and alert them to your missing wife? The theory some people have is that basically his dad Comes and picks him up from Vince's house, they drive off together, Leo finds Michelle, he kills her and then Leo's dad is like, fuck, we better cover this up. Let's drive back to Vince's and call the police. Why don't you call the fucking police? You just go home and be like, Michelle's always doing this. I'll deal with her in the morning when she gets back. Oh, she's not turned up. Like why would you. Somebody must have done something to her. Like it doesn't make any sense. And also why on earth if you knew you were being recorded, why would you say things like God help her, everything sets me off. It doesn't make sense. Why wouldn't you just play the I'm so worried about my wife card? Which he doesn't do, which to me makes it seem more plausible.

[Alexa Chynes]

Anyway, after this call to the police, Leo Sr. Said that he needed to go home. He had the flu and just wanted to go to sleep. So at 1:15am Leo and his dad drove to Leo's parents house. Leo's dad went to bed and now his stepmom joined Leo to help keep looking for Michelle. Kristen, Leo's little sister, had been woken up by Leo's initial call to their dad at 11:30. And now she had once again woken up when Leo and their dad came home. And Leo and her mum left at 1:30 in the morning. The family had a grandfather clock that chimed every half hour. My grandparents used to have one of those. It's so annoying. Both Leo's mum and sister say that they heard this gong as they headed back out. So that's the reason we are sure of the exact time. Like all of the watches that froze on the Titanic.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So now Leo and his stepmom get back in the white and blue campervan and drive around but there's still no sign of Michelle. And at 2:45am they actually went to Michelle's dad's house. David's son Leo woke his father in law up asking if he knew where Michelle was. He didn't. And this is important. Leo even used the home phone at the Somme house to call Michelle's aunt to see if she had heard from her. Michelle's dad and Michelle's little brother Jessie both confirmed that Leo did indeed come to their house that morning. Because Jesse remembers being annoyed thinking that Leo was a bit too controlling of his sister, always wanting to know where she was and disturbing other people at all hours with his nonsense.

[Alexa Chynes]

Leo and his mum left the Somme house at 3:15am and headed back out there. Before long they spotted two police officers out by Sparky's and they think that those cops are there looking for Michelle, so they go and speak to them. But the men say they don't know what Leo's talking about. The BOLO announcement about Michelle had only just gone out. Those officers didn't even know about it yet.

[Hannah]

The next point in Our timeline is 3:30am When Leo and his mum returned to the Schofield house. Leo's dad was asleep but his sister Kristen saw them come back. Now, after he took his mum home at 3:30, Leo borrowed their camper van and went back out on his own to look for Michelle again. And this is important because this point at 3:30 when he leaves his parents house with their car, the next bit of time is the only bit of time that entire night that Leo is unaccounted for by another witness. But it's only for about an hour because at 4:40am Leo went back to his friend Buddy Anderson's house. And Buddy says that Leo turned up crying and saying that he was worried because he thought someone has Michelle. And that is a weird thing to say. Sure. Like that is a weird thing to say. He doesn't even know where Michelle is. And it wasn't like we've said, totally out of character for Michelle to do this, like stay out all night. So why does Leo think that someone has her? I don't know, maybe it's just like he's exhausted, it's 4:40 in the morning, he's been looking all night. Like maybe your mind jumps to the worst possible place. I don't know.

[Alexa Chynes]

At 6:30 that morning, David some Michelle's dad also went out looking for her and the first stop he made was to the couple's trailer. David went in and noticed that the place was a total mess. But it was always a mess. I'm not surprised. There's four people and a puppy in there. So he didn't think too much of it. So by now Leo, Michelle's dad and their friends were all out searching for Michelle. But the police were still not that concerned. So shortly after noon on 25th February, Leo and his dad went to the police station. Michelle had now been missing for about 14 hours.

[Hannah]

And just to be clear, this is therefore his third attempt to speak to the police because he calls the sheriff's department, he speaks to those officers outside Sparky's and now he's going to the police station.

[Alexa Chynes]

The officer that Leo and Leo Sr Spoke to at first, just told Leo that most people who are reported missing aren't actually missing. But as he started to ask more questions, he became suspicious. The officer didn't like that. Whenever he asked Leo a question, his dad responded. At one point, Leo seemed to not know Michelle's birthday. And the officer pushes him on. What sort of husband doesn't know that?

[Hannah]

And look, I heard that. And I was like, wow, look, he's in a state of shock. He's been up all night and all these things. And then I heard that his birthday and Michelle's birthday are a day apart. I don't think. How would you forget that? If somebody's birthday was the day before mine, I wouldn't forget it. I don't think he forgot it. I think he literally is just, like. His head is just, like, a mess.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

And even if he had forgotten, that doesn't mean he killed her. But I don't know, a big deal is made of the fact that he apparently doesn't know what color her eyes are. He apparently doesn't know her birthday. I just think he was a mess. But I understand why that looks suspicious to the officer. But I'm also like, why would he come and report it to you then?

[Alexa Chynes]

Yes.

[Hannah]

So early? I don't know.

[Alexa Chynes]

I also personally know people who, you know, when you get married and you have to go and do that interview to prove that you actually like them, and people who sat there were like, what is her job? It just falls out of your head?

[Hannah]

Absolutely.

[Alexa Chynes]

I also recently learned that. So I've never really known what color my eyes are. Some people say blue, some people say green. I don't know. My passport says blue. That's why I go. It's because having blue eyes similarly to how very few people are actually blonde. Being blonde just means you have the gene mutation, which means your hair bleaches in the sun. Having blue eyes is just an absence of melanin, which is why, depending on the light, they can look different, because it's not a thing, it's an absence.

[Hannah]

Oh, interesting. Interesting. And, yeah, speaking of, like, forgetting things or, like, getting things wrong in the heat of the moment. When I went to one of those interviews before I got married last year, I spelled my dad's name wrong. My dad's name is spelled wrong on my wedding certificate. Don't tell them. Don't tell them. Because at the. They, like, interview you before you, like, walk down the aisle. And she was speaking to me, and I was like, I've had a couple of glasses of Prosecco, which, like, also you're not meant to do, or, like, they're not meant to be able to tell that you've had a drink. And then she was like, reading the stuff off my wedding certificate because they're like, make double checking. All the information is correct. And she read out my dad's name, and I was like, that's not right. And then she saw the look on my face, and I was like, oh, that's fine. And she was like, are you sure? Because this is a legal document. And I was like, yeah, that's fine. Because I didn't want her to be like, well, we. We need to, like, change all this or, you know, it's gonna. It's gonna cause a big delay. I was like, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. So in official records, one day when, like, my great, great, great, great, great, great grandchild is, like, doing. Tracing their lineage back, they'll be like. They'll think that's how my dad's name was spelled, and it's wrong. Sad. Anyway, whatever.

[Alexa Chynes]

Maybe they'll find his passport as well and be like, wait, hang on a minute.

[Hannah]

There's fraud. Who am I.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug? There's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Grainger Announcer]

If you work in university maintenance, Grainger considers you an MVP because your playbook ensures your arena is always ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And, Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a Human him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, Get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Hannah]

The new Wegovy pill is now available through weight watchers. Powerful GLP1 results in a simple pill at the lowest price available. And with Weight Watchers, you can get doctor support and personalized nutrition programs. See if you [e-mail] ad not reviewed or approved by Novo Nordisk.

[Alexa Chynes]

People forget things is the point. However, this law enforcement officer was so suspicious that he noted down that he thought foul play was going on.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So he writes that down, but then doesn't do anything and then just sends Leo and his dad home. So it's all very confusing. It's all very confusing. I think he's just like, in case anything happens later down the line, I'm gonna write this down. But he is ultimately like, she's been missing 14 hours.

[Alexa Chynes]

Go home.

[Hannah]

So, yes, I just think, you know, it's interesting that his mind jumps to that. He doesn't really have much evidence for the fact that there's foul play. All he really has is that Leo's the husband and he seems to not know when her birthday is. And they're also disregarding the fact that, like I said, Leo, by this point, 14 hours after he last spoke to Michelle, he has contacted the police three times. Perhaps, perhaps this was all just like a way to establish an alibi, as the prosecution would later claim. But again, if you just killed your wife, would you really be trying to involve law enforcement so early on? Especially when they themselves are telling you, fuck off for 24 hours? Like, why be so persistent? In my mind, you have, like, very little to gain by doing that.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, I think so.

[Hannah]

So some people also wonder why Leo's so worried about Michelle. It's been 14 hours. Why has he contacted the police three times? Seems a bit suspicious. And like we said, she. She has done this before where she stays out all night. The thing is, Comby was a pretty dangerous place. It was quite deprived and had quite high crime rates back in the 80s. And in the podcast Bone Valley, Leo explains that when he first moved to Florida, he was shocked by how many violent crimes there seemed to be constantly being reported compared to when he lived in Boston. Now, look, I think this has probably got something to do with Florida's sunshine laws, as we know usually does. Like, a lot more information gets reported in Florida, so it can feel a bit more, like, overwhelming, I guess. But I did also actually look at the crime stats. And I do have to say it's quite a stark difference, because if you compare Massachusetts with Florida, the murder rate at the time in Florida was three times higher and the prevalence of rape was about twice as high. So I guess that's why Leo is a little bit more concerned. But the police still didn't seem all that fussed about the fact that Michelle was missing.

[Alexa Chynes]

Until, that is, two days after Michelle vanished, when a friend of Leo's spotted the orange Mazda out on Interstate 4, he called Leo and he called the police. And immediately it was odd that the car would be there because it was in the wrong direction to go to Vince Rayner's house from Sparky's, which is the route that Michelle was meant to take the night she disappeared. Finally, it was now that the police started to take the situation a bit more seriously, because even if Michelle had just broken down and it was true that the car wouldn't start, Michelle was close enough to just walk back. So where did she go?

[Hannah]

Yeah, yeah, it would have been a long fucking walk. But, like, somebody would have seen her. She would have found a way to get home. She's not like, out in the middle of nowhere.

[Alexa Chynes]

No.

[Hannah]

So the car being broken down was also probably why it was still sat there two days later without having been stolen. But it seemed that someone had had a go because while the car doors were all locked, the boot wasn't. And inside the car, in a Super 80s kind of way, someone had nicked the car speakers and tried but failed to steal the radio.

[Alexa Chynes]

My mum used to have the radio that popped out. Do you remember those? You put it in the glove box.

[Hannah]

Yes, yes, my parents had that. So, yeah, that's not perhaps that shocking. What was more worrying is that in the back of the car, investigators found a bottle of fabric softener with a blood smear on it. They would actually be able to match the blood smear on the bottle of fabric softener with Michelle's blood type. Again, remember, this is the 80s and that's pretty much all they could do back then. And it also wasn't a lot of blood, it's just like a smear across it. But it wasn't looking good. And then it started to look very weird because the police dusted the car and only found in the entire car two sets of matching prints, one on the inside windscreen and one on the back of the car on the inside by the boot. These prints didn't belong to Leo or Michelle. In fact, no prints whatsoever belonging to either of them. Were found anywhere in or on the car. How exactly? It's very fucking weird. Because it's their car.

[Alexa Chynes]

That's, like, impossible.

[Hannah]

They find no prints. They find no prints. And look, I have to say, I'll keep saying, like, it's the 80s, it's the 80s, but they know how to dust for prints.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So very weird. Basically what it looked like was someone had wiped the entire vehicle down meticulously

[Alexa Chynes]

with a Q tip. Like, that is so hard.

[Hannah]

But then seemingly carelessly left two sets of prints, possibly their own, behind. And maybe they say when they find no other prints, maybe they mean they don't find, like, usable prints. I don't know. But they say the only two prints they find are these two.

[Alexa Chynes]

And so the search for Michelle ramped up and it took on a darker feeling, although nobody said felt inevitable, that now they were probably looking for a body. And sadly, on Friday 27th February, three days after she went missing, they found Michelle's remains. Her body had been dumped in a drainage ditch near State Road 23, off Interstate 4, six miles from where her car had been abandoned.

[Hannah]

And it was actually a drainage ditch that was connected to an old phosphate mine.

[Alexa Chynes]

Ah. Michelle was found lying face down in the water with a plywood board placed on her back. She had been stabbed to death in what looked like a frenzied attack. The autopsy would later show that she'd been stabbed at least 26 times in her back and chest and neck. There was no alcohol or drugs in her system, and unusually in a case like this, no sign of sexual assault either. Michelle's body was fully clothed, and she was still dressed in the white shirt and red trousers that she'd worn to work the day she vanished. Her wedding band was still on her finger. Only her shoes, her purse and handbag were missing.

[Hannah]

But the scene was a total mess. There was rubbish absolutely everywhere. People use this place as a sort of dumping ground as well as, unfortunately, a spot for hooking up and taking trucks. It's sort of, like, secluded enough that I think if you were there, you would feel like you were really out of the way. But it's also easy enough to get to for whatever no good one might be up to. So the prosecution always says. It's so remote. It's so remote. It's so remote. It's not really. It's like just off the interstate. But once you're there, you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere.

[Alexa Chynes]

Sure.

[Hannah]

So, yes, Aries a mess. I think that also plays a significant role in how poorly this scene is processed. Again, it's the 80s, I get it. It's a different set of forensic standards that were probably being met. But, like, it's crazy with our heads now to think about how much evidence they probably missed because they didn't know what was evidence on what was just rubbish. So, yeah, it's confusing. Anyway, despite all the rubbish that was strewn around, it was clear to see drag marks and large pools of blood in the dirt starting about roughly 20 yards from the edge of the canal. Drainage ditch, whatever we want to call it, in which Michelle is found.

[Alexa Chynes]

Man made waterway.

[Hannah]

Yeah. And one look at Michelle's back made it very obvious that she had been dragged across the ground, most likely after she was already dead and dumped in the water.

[Alexa Chynes]

According to witnesses, when he was told what the police had found, Leo fell apart on the side of the road. Was it guilt or was it heartbreak? To the police, it looked like the former. Especially when the officer who had taken Leo's original statement about Michelle being missing called the Scofield family to offer his condolences and learned from Leo senior that he had been the one to discover Michelle's remains. Thanks to a message from God. Leo Sr. Claimed that the night before he had had a dream in which Michelle appeared to him, smiling as if to thank him. He said that when he woke up, he knew exactly where to go. And there she was, just like in his dream.

[Hannah]

It's extremely weird. It's extremely weird. And when I first heard that, when I first heard about this case, I was like, fucking hell.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

Like, that is wild. And we'll come onto it. We'll come onto it. But what we need to know for now is that just like us, just like you listening. It felt like way too much of a coincidence for investigators. They immediately suspected Leo and thought that perhaps his dad, Leo Sr. Had helped him dump the body or that Leo had told his dad what he had done and where he had left Michelle. And Leo Sr. Had cracked under the guilt and gone to look for himself, found the body and then reported it. So the police take Leo in and have him do a polygraph, which they claimed he failed. But we also know they can lie about this. We know that the police in the US Especially at the time, could make you do. Yeah, could do a polygraph and then tell you you failed that polygraph just to see what your reaction is. And look, even if Leo did fail that polygraph, all it means is that he was stressed. All it could mean is that he was stressed, which Feels like a normal response given the situation that he's currently in. And Even in the 80s in Florida, polygraphs were not admissible in court. So the police needed more. And by this point they had already gathered accounts from friends of the couple that Leo had a temper and would often shout at Michelle and even hit her. But nobody believed that Leo would have killed Michelle until the police spoke to Alice Scott.

[Alexa Chynes]

Alice Scott was Leo and Michelle's neighbour and she would go on to become a very important character in this story. Alice says that she often struggled to sleep, so she regularly sat around watching her neighbours. Do you remember when we were shooting in Clop Hill and we were doing, like, a thing in front of the sign on the, like, Village Green? And that lady, right? If you are filming in public, it's very embarrassing, right? Like, nobody wants to be doing it. Like, you just need to get it over as quickly as possible. But you can't let that show that you're like, I'm having a terrible.

[Hannah]

I hate it, I hate it. It's awful. It's the worst thing.

[Alexa Chynes]

And it was so, like, hot fuzz. Like, Village Green Preservation Society. Like, it was so. Everyone was just like, they're here.

[Hannah]

Yeah. And this one lady, it was so

[Alexa Chynes]

funny, was watching us from her window and she came out to her front garden, brought a chair and a book. And a book and just sat with

[Hannah]

holes in it, high holes in it.

[Alexa Chynes]

I was like, is this the Wombles? Like, what? Awful.

[Hannah]

It was so funny. And then when it was obvious that we were done and we packed up, she was gone.

[Alexa Chynes]

She's trying to get signed.

[Hannah]

It was so funny. But that's Alice Scott. That is Alice Scott.

[Alexa Chynes]

When you are in Cape Town, you will see so many influences. Just, like, getting the shot. Like, people stop their cars and to take pictures of their girlfriend. It's so funny. That's hilarious. Unless you need to be somewhere, then it's very annoying. But I watch them and I'm like, I think I need like, 40% of the brass balls. You have to be able to do that. Just so brazen. Anyway, Alice is a nosy parker, is what we've established. And we believe that she just sits around knocking on people, but that's about it.

[Hannah]

Alice Scott, she is just a character. She's a card.

[Alexa Chynes]

A card we will go on to see. Alice Scott changed her story lot, a lot of times, and she also influenced other witnesses while she was at it. But the police were all ears. And what Alice Scott had to say made Leo look really, really guilty.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So Alice first spoke to the police when they were initially canvassing the area after Michelle vanished, and she told them that she had seen a blue and white camper van parked by Leo and Michelle's trailer at about 9pm or 10pm on the night in question. The issue with this sighting, because if you remember, the blue and white camper van is Leo Senior's car, Leo Senior's vehicle.

[Alexa Chynes]

I didn't remember that, but thank you. Yeah.

[Hannah]

Just to clarify, orange Mazda, Leo, Michelle's car, blue and white camper van, belongs to Leo's dad. Now, the issue with this sighting that Alice Scott gives is that it doesn't really fit anything. It doesn't fit with anything because, as we know, Michelle called Leo, who was at Buddy's house, from Sparky's at 9:45pm so basically, if we say Alice got 9:00pm, 10:00pm, somewhere in the midpoint of that, Michelle is still alive. She's at Sparky's, she's calling Leo. Now, Leo didn't phone his dad until 11.30pm, so his dad has no idea that Michelle is missing or anything is going on until 11.30pm and while the pair of them did go to Leo and Michelle's trailer in the blue and white camper van, it wasn't until much later that evening. Now, look, I know some people will be like, well, suspicious. Why was Leo's dad, maybe he was parked up at their trailer before and, like, he did something to Michelle. Maybe, but, like, there's no evidence of that other than what Alice Scott says. And we know at this point Michelle is still alive, so it's not like she's dead and he's there doing something to her. She's still alive and at Sparky's. And so, yeah, unsurprisingly, this sighting that Alice gives actually vanishes altogether from her later subsequent accounts, probably because she realised that it didn't fit with a very different timeline that had been corroborated by many other people.

[Alexa Chynes]

So Alice Scott then said that she saw Leo and Michelle come home in their orange Mazda at 1 or 1:30 in the morning. She watched them go inside and then she heard them fighting. She heard Michelle screaming, no, Leo, don't. Then Alice claimed that she saw Leo leave again at 1:50am for this Alice Scott timeline to work. Leo and his mum, who were driving around together from 1:30 to 3:30 in the morning, must have actually found Michelle pretty much straight away. And Leo would have then had to join Michelle in their orange car and drive home.

[Hannah]

What doesn't make Sense is that we know that Leo and his mum went to Michelle's Dad's house at 2:45am and we know that happened because her dad is like, yeah, they came here and Jesse, her brother, was like, yeah, he was fucking here, being annoying. So are we then to believe that Leo came back to the trailer with Michelle, as per Alice Scott's eyewitness testimony, kill her during a fight in the trailer and then immediately head back out at 1:50, presumably to then go back to his parents place and ask his mum to get out of bed, come back out with him? So we could go to Michelle's dad's place to establish an alibi. Why would that happen? Because surely his mum would be like, well, why do you need to go to Michelle's dad's place? We found Michelle. Or even if you do need to go there, you've come here in your orange Mazda. Why do you need me to come with you? Why do we need to go in the blue and white camper to Michelle's dad's place to believe any of this, you have to believe that Leo kills Michelle in the trailer during the fight that Alice Scott says she hears, then drive to his parents house, tell them everything. Fuck Mum and dad. Mum, dad and stepmom. I killed Michelle. Now, we need to immediately implement some sort of alibi for me and I need you to be in on it and then no questions asked immediately are just on board.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Hannah]

That's what you have to believe for this particular timeline to make sense.

[Alexa Chynes]

Right? It's like the Warren Commission.

[Hannah]

So, yes, also the question becomes, let's say Leo did kill Michelle, as per Alice Scott's hearing of it, why the fuck would he go to Michelle's dad's place? Why would he do this? Even let's say his mum and his dad are on board, they go along with it. Why would he do this? Why would he go to Michelle's dad's place? Imagine he goes there and Michelle's dad is like, oh, my God, yes, where is my daughter? Let's go back to your trailer. What if he'd insisted on going back to the trailer with him where Michelle was presumably lying dead or at least severely injured at this point because Leo's apparently already attacked her. Why would you go to Michelle's dad's place? It doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't you be trying to cover up the murder you've just committed?

[Alexa Chynes]

A lot of people would have to be in very specific cahoots.

[Hannah]

Mm. Yes, yes. It just doesn't make loads of sense.

[Alexa Chynes]

And also remember Leo and his mum stopped and spoke to those officers at Sparky's at 3:15. Why would you do that if you've just murdered your wife? Why would you bring so much attention to a situation that you haven't cleaned up yet in front of your mum?

[Hannah]

Yeah, it's just like you've apparently just murdered her, left her in that trailer and then you're running around drawing loads of attention to the fact that she's missing. Why wouldn't you be dealing with the imminent problem of the fact that you've murdered your wife?

[Alexa Chynes]

And also Kristen, Leo's younger sister, saw him bring his mum home. Their mum at 3:30 in the morning. And Kristen saw her dad asleep in his room and said she would have heard if he left. The prosecution would later claim that all of the Scofields were in on it together and covering up for Leo. And yes, it is less than ideal that it's his family vouching for him during certain times that night. But we know that Leo went to Michelle's dad's place and he spoke to those officers and those people don't have any reason to lie for him. You just have to do quite a lot of mental gymnastics and question a lot of people's stories in order to trust Nosy Parker, Alice Scott.

[Hannah]

Yeah, and look, I am not saying at this juncture that I'm like, that's enough evidence that Leo didn't do it. Right. We're poking holes in Alice Scott's story because it doesn't make any sense. It doesn't mean that Leo didn't do it. It just means what she's saying is completely, like, lacking any sort of credibility. Yeah, but the prosecution love it, the police love it. So let's stick with her for now. So Alice Scott tells the police that after he left at 1:50am, she saw Leo come back to the trailer at 2:10am so he's been gone for about 20 minutes. And yes, Alice Scott is still up and still watching everything from. From her bathroom window, which is what she claims, according to Alice. He goes back into the trailer and 10 minutes later he comes back out and this time he's carrying something heavy that he places into his car, the Orange Master. Now, look, we only have Leo and his stepmom's word for it as to what they were doing at this point, because they were driving around at this point looking for Michelle. So of course they could be lying. Of course his stepmom could be lying for Him. But Alice later changes this timeline because this timeline that she's giving is the first version. She later changes this story and says that it was probably more like 2:33am when she saw Leo carrying that heavy object out of his trailer and putting it into his car. And this makes no sense because we know that was the time that Leo was at his father in law's house. Now, look, eyewitness testimony, eyewitnesses in general are notoriously bad. And Alice Scott was definitely a busybody who watched her neighbours all the time and called the police all the time.

[Alexa Chynes]

Oh, fucking hell. She would have loved Facebook. Yeah.

[Hannah]

Oh, yeah, fuck it all. She's. She's a nightmare in this sense. And look, maybe to give Alice Scott the, the biggest, like, benefit of the doubt, maybe because she does this all the time, she's getting her nights confused. Maybe she's thinking about another night in which these things did happen. And these were the times. Because Leo, when he's told about this, something heavy he was carrying out, was like, yeah, I used. I have a fucking amp that I take to band practice and it is heavy. But he's like, anybody looking at it would know goddamn well that it's an amp. So she's lying. And he's like, I didn't do it that night, but he could have done it another night. So maybe she's confused. And look, if we didn't have Leo confirmed to be with other people in other places at the same point that Leo says she saw him at the trailer doing all of these things, her confusion over the exact timings wouldn't bother me as much. Like, I wouldn't be sitting here being like, well, one minute you said it was 2, the next minute you say it's 3. The next minute you say it's 1:30. Like, which is it? I would be like, she's probably just confused, but maybe this did really happen. The fact that there is direct contradictory evidence that is backed up by other people as to where Leo is the same time she says he's at the trailer. That's what makes me not believe her. Right. It just doesn't match up with so many people's accounts of that night.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Oh, no, we help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.

[Alexa Chynes]

The only time that night, as we said earlier, that there were no eyewitnesses as to where Leo was, was between 3:30 and 4:40am that's from when he took his mum home and before he turned back up at Buddy's house. Could he have killed Michelle in this time? It's tight, but it is possible. And so the police were suspicious, but Alice Scott is still the only one linking Leo and Michelle. That night, forensics teams investigated the trailer. And just like David Somm, who's Michelle's dad, had said, they noted that it was a total mess, but there was no blood in there.

[Hannah]

This is an infuriating part of the story because in a lot of reporting at the time, and like pretty much before Bone Valley, everyone's just like, they found blood. They found blood in there. They don't find blood in there. They don't.

[Alexa Chynes]

Luminar did light up in a few places, but so they would in everybody's house.

[Hannah]

There's four people living in that house and a dog. Yeah. It's also. We'll talk about this later. Remarkable at the things that luminol will react to. It's not just blood.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Mm.

[Alexa Chynes]

But the medical examiner said that Michelle would have lost around five pints of blood when she was killed. And Alice Scott's account makes it seem like Leo killed Michelle in their trailer. So where is all that five pints gone? It's all on the dirt path by the canal where Michelle's body was found.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So it really looks like the murder site and the dump site are one in the same. Also, the medical examiner's report stated that Michelle had been placed in the water within minutes of her death. So are we really to believe, therefore, that Leo. Let's play it out with Alice Scott's theory and the physical evidence we have for that to work it would have to mean that Leo incapacitates Michelle at the house, even though she didn't have any other notable injuries other than the stab wounds. He somehow incapacitates her. Maybe he even thinks that she's dead. And then he runs around trying to establish an alibi for some reason. And then he comes back, shoves her in the car, drives her out to that canal still alive, where he drags her out, stabs her 26 times, and then dumps her in that ditch before leaving the car broken down six miles in the wrong direction from his house, but somehow still getting from the dumped car to Buddy Anderson's house on foot. It's not walkable in that time. Did somebody give him a lift? If so, why is that person never come forward? How did he do all that in an hour? In an hour. Oh, and also, this is very important. When Leo turned up at Buddy Anderson's house at 4:40am, Leo didn't have any blood or mud on him, despite the fact that he's attacked Michelle, stabbed her 26 times, dragged her across a dirt path and dumped her in a ditch. He's got no blood, no mud on him whatsoever. And Buddy Anderson, who, as I said, will turn against Leo later, always testifies that Leo was still wearing the same clothes he was wearing at band practice earlier that evening. How would that make any sense? But none of this mattered, according to the prosecution, who stuck with the theory that Leo had killed Michelle in the trailer. And look, the prosecution, they depend so heavily on Alice Scott because she's the only person linking Leo and Michelle that night. So they need her. They need her. And because they use her so heavily, the things she's saying don't make sense. They fly in the face of, like, other evidence we have. And it also creates this weird situation in which Leo has to attack and or kill Michelle in the trailer. But it doesn't make sense. But they have to go with it. So they kind of paint themselves into a corner and make their case even more complicated because they have to use Alice Scott. But we'll get onto that next week.

[Alexa Chynes]

For now, we're going to stick to the blood. How did the prosecution explain the lack of blood? Once again, Alice Scott here to help.

[Hannah]

This is amazing.

[Alexa Chynes]

Alice Scott said that she saw Leo with a carpet cleaning machine the very next day.

[Hannah]

Yeah,

[Alexa Chynes]

apparently the next afternoon, Alice Scott saw Leo cleaning his trailer with the door wide open, as you would if

[Hannah]

you were cleaning up a shit ton of blood after you'd murdered your wife.

[Alexa Chynes]

And that, let's Go with it for a second. Fine. But forensics found no detergent in the carpet to suggest that it had been recently cleaned and it didn't even look clean. Yeah.

[Hannah]

And again they're like, where is the logic? The prosecution is just like, he could have cleaned it with just water. You're going to clean blood out of a carpet with just water and no detergent? I know he's a 19 year old, but even that, like, come on, come on. You need like heavy duty fucking bleach. And even then you're not gonna get it all. No, they don't win anything. They're in there for hours and they find nothing.

[Alexa Chynes]

On top of that, there were clothes all over the floor. So what Alice Scott is asking us to believe is that Leo cleaned the carpet with the door wide open and then put everything back on the floor. Yeah. Just rearranged the mess to how it had been before.

[Hannah]

He's a criminal genius if he has, because he's like, well, well, I don't want it to look too clean because then people are going to be suspicious because we're quite messy people. So let me pick up all this stuff, clean the carpet, maybe I'll make it messy again because, you know, I don't want people to wonder why the carpet's so clean. But I'll clean it with the door open and then I'll put all the stuff back out on the floor so it looks a mess, like, come on. And I'll make sure I only use water so they don't find detergent. What?

[Alexa Chynes]

And Alice Scott says that the carpet cleaning wasn't till at least noon the day after Michelle vanished. But Michelle's dad went by the trailer at 6:30 that morning and didn't notice anything weird. So how did he not notice the five pints of blood?

[Hannah]

Mm.

[Alexa Chynes]

And this timeline also means that Leo went to report Michelle missing before he cleaned up.

[Hannah]

Yeah, because remember, at noon he went with his dad to the police that day. Don't come to my trailer, though. But very take very seriously the fact that my wife is missing. Yeah. Shut up. Come on.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, I don't believe anyone would do that. I don't believe a child would do that.

[Hannah]

It's so unserious. So, yeah, nothing was really matching up. And the forensics was pretty weak. Like we mentioned, they had found a few splashes of something that had triggered the luminol in the trailer's bathroom, kitchen and bedroom. But firstly, it was in nowhere near the kind of volume that you would expect to see. And also they Couldn't even identify it as Michelle's blood. They couldn't even identify most of it as blood. And like I said, luminol reacts to all sorts of things, including urine, alcohol and other bodily fluids. And like I said, it's a small trailer with four adults living in it. Those spots could have been anything. Shut up. So despite the fact that for the police, Leo was their prime suspect, they couldn't actually arrest him because they knew they had nothing. But they did keep questioning him and Leo, by all accounts, cooperated. He didn't even ask for a lawyer because there's a lot of people say, oh, and then he fled. He fled Florida and headed back to Massachusetts. He does leave. He does leave, but he leaves after he's in quite a bad car accident and he ends up moving back to Massachusetts with his family at that point. But, and this is important, he leaves all of his details, including his new address in Massachusetts, with the lead detective in Lakeland who was dealing with Michelle's case, and says, please keep me informed of anything that comes up.

[Alexa Chynes]

Around that time, Polk county got a new Assistant State Attorney, John aguero.

[Hannah]

Boo.

[Alexa Chynes]

With 10 unsolved homicides on the books, this young hire was under pressure to get some cases cleared. And after taking one look at the murder of Michelle Scholfield, Aguero couldn't believe that the police had let Leo and his dad run off up north. Especially when he found out that Leo Sr. Had actually been arrested for molesting a girl in Rhode island after they'd moved back. Oh, good. So Aguero opened the case back up and spoke once more to Alice Scott, who this time pointed him in the direction of another couple, the Laffoons.

[Hannah]

Unfortunate surname, unfortunate involvement in this case because the Laffoons also lived near Leo and Michelle, and they had been spoken to again at the time of the initial investigation. But at that point they said, I don't know anything. Don't know anything about this. But now, a year and a half later, after having had, presumably some very deep chats with their neighbour, Alice Scott, they suddenly seemed to remember a lot more. Like how specifically, between 3am and 4am on the night that Michelle vanished, they had seen an orange car and a blue and white truck parked up near where Michelle's body would later be found. This sounds pretty bad for Leo and his dad, because now it looks like they're in on it together, dumping Michelle's body whilst also running around to various people's houses trying to establish an alibi.

[Alexa Chynes]

Aguero was certain that they had their man. So he actually went personally all the way to Massachusetts to arrest Leo. They charged him with first degree homicide and made it clear that they wanted the death penalty for it. Now Leo finally got a lawyer, and he's even told that he can fight extradition to Florida. But he doesn't, saying he's an innocent man. So he doesn't need to worry. He just wants to clear the whole thing up. Yeah, famous last words.

[Hannah]

Very much. Now, at first, Leo was appointed a public defender, but once he goes into jail, he gets talking to his fellow inmates who warn him, you don't want a public defender on a case like this. You need a hotshot lawyer. I disagree. The public defender in this case, and I think in a lot of cases, but definitely in this case, they interviewed in Bone Valley, they're like, we believed him. We knew he was innocent. The case didn't make any fucking sense. We were gonna go hard and they were like, we were gonna investigate. We were gonna do everything. We were gonna fight this. But Leo gets it in his head that he needs a hotshot attorney. And the man on everybody's lips was Jack Edmund. Jack Edmund was a quintessential Southern gent. He sounds like the cockerel attorney in Futurama. Do you remember?

[Alexa Chynes]

Of course I remember.

[Hannah]

He sounds like that. But he looks like the KFC colonel. Look, I'm not even exaggerating. That is what he looks like. I'm actually going to show you a picture because it is. It's just so striking.

[Alexa Chynes]

Oh, boy. Yeah, yeah.

[Hannah]

And literally sounds like the cockerel. So this is. This is the man, right? And Edmund, if you listen to him speak, like in court recordings and things like that, he has this like deep Southern drawl. He's flamboyant, he's bombastic. And he also does that kind of like, doddering act when needed.

[Alexa Chynes]

And when Leo reached out to him and Jack's team found out about the car accident Leo had been in, for which he was owed $50,000 compensation, they said that Jack would take his case if Leo signed that entire $50,000 over to the cockerel man.

[Hannah]

Yeah. And Leo agreed.

[Alexa Chynes]

After all, his life is on the line. Doesn't have any other money. But this would turn out to be a huge mistake on Leo's part because Jack, Edmund wouldn't even come to see Leo until the night before the start

[Hannah]

of his trial for a fucking death penalty case. It is diabolical. I have a lot of questions about how Jack Edmond handles this case. And I've seen a lot of people online talk about, and they talk about this in Bone Valley. And like other people you know, ponder about this, is that Jack Edmond is like, it's like a big deal. He's a big name in Florida at the time. Am I only thinking about why he does this? Is like people like, he's the guy you want if you're actually guilty. Ah. Because he's, you know, if you're actually guilty, he doesn't need to look into the fucking case. He's just going to come there and pew, pew, pew. Fire shots at the prosecution, poke a bunch of holes in it.

[Alexa Chynes]

Got it.

[Hannah]

But if you are actually innocent, you need a public defender who's going to look into every single fucking little bit of evidence against you, who's going to leave no stone unturned, who's going to do a proper investigation and is going to be like, this makes no sense. Don't get me wrong, Jack Edmond could still have done that. And I'm not letting Jack Edmund off the hook because he is a massive part of what happens that we're going to get into in episode two. But Jack Edmund, for whatever reason, does an absolutely piss poor job of this. It's actually quite staggering, especially because he has got a 20 year old man in front of him who is facing death. It blows the mind.

[Alexa Chynes]

And when he eventually bothered to go and see Leo, it was to tell him that Aguero had offered him a plea deal. If Leo pleaded guilty to second degree murder, he would get 12 to 17 years. And given his lack of priors, he would probably be out in a few years with good behaviour. If Leo went to trial, however, and if he was found guilty, he was facing death. But Leo refused the plea deal, saying that he couldn't and wouldn't say that he was guilty because he wasn't.

[Hannah]

Yeah. Leo would also claim that before this plea deal, Aguero had offered him something different. Leo said that one night out of the blue, he had been taken from his cell to Aguero's office where Aguero allegedly told him, I don't think it was you, I think it was your dad. Tell me he did it, testify to that and I'll let you walk. And Leo had previously said to the police, in the midst of all of this while he's, you know, going through all the turmoil of Michelle being missing and then turning up dead and especially after his own dad finds her body, he does actually say to the police, I'm worried about my dad.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah. And he's A child molester.

[Hannah]

But Leo refused this plea deal from Aguero as well, saying, I can't testify to something like that because I can only tell you what I know. And when Leo wouldn't go along with it, Aguero apparently told him in that meeting. Then I'll put you in the electric chair. Now, look, there is no record of this deal anywhere.

[Alexa Chynes]

I'm not surprised.

[Hannah]

So it is just Leo's word against Aguero's that this meeting even took place, that Aguero even said any of these things. But next week we will come on to more of Aguero's little deals. And why the idea that he said this, let alone that there is no official clearance or like paperwork or paper trail that this was ever true, might not be that unbelievable. What I will say for now is that if Aguero did this, if he did come to Leo Schofield and say, I think your dad really did this. I don't think you did this. Testify to that and I'll let you go. That is highly unethical because he does it without talking to Jack Edmund. You can't just be talking to a defendant and offering plea deals without their defense in on it. It's like staggering. And Aguero knows this. And that's probably why he doesn't keep a record of anything, obviously. And there's no other eyewitnesses to it. Everything he is doing is dodgy, dodgy, dodgy. And I believe that he did do this because Leo says he sat all the way through trial thinking, how can this man be coming so hard for me when he told me he doesn't even think I did it. He thinks my dad did it.

[Alexa Chynes]

And for whatever reason, perhaps because he thought the case the prosecution had was weak, Jack Edmund and his team didn't even carry out their own investigation.

[Hannah]

Jack Edmund does so little. It is staggering. I, like, literally do not understand it.

[Alexa Chynes]

He didn't even seem that familiar with Leo's case. Which, when you're taking on a capital murder case for $50,000 in the 80s, is criminal. I'm Phoebe Judge. I've done it so much better than that. Never mind. I'm Phoebe Judge.

[Hannah]

Excellent.

[Alexa Chynes]

And this is Criminal.

[Hannah]

Good.

[Alexa Chynes]

That's fine. She's retired now.

[Hannah]

Now say you're Alexa Chung.

[Alexa Chynes]

I'm Alexa Chung. And this is Ian Watkins. Anyway, Jack Edmund. Piss poor job from the very start. Firstly, there was another high profile case set to run at the same time. So there was a limited number of jurors to pull from. So Leo Schofield ended up with just 12 jurors and no alternates. So that meant if everyone pulled out during the trial, they would be short to the full 12.

[Hannah]

Yep. Literally one person could pull out. And then you haven't got 12 people. Just in case people don't know what an alternate is. But I'm sure you guys can guess. It's like extra jury members who are in the trial who were there the entire time, hear the whole trial. So if somebody has to pull out of the jury for whatever reason, they can step in because they've already heard all the evidence. And you can keep that number at 12. There are no alternates in a capital murder case. What the fuck is going on?

[Alexa Chynes]

And it's something that Jack Edmund should have railed against, and it could have very easily. People do that all the time.

[Hannah]

He didn't even need to rail. He could have been like, judge. No, that's it.

[Alexa Chynes]

That's it.

[Hannah]

No, he doesn't. He's like, yeah, sure, whatever.

[Alexa Chynes]

And by the end of the trial, two jurors did drop out. So therefore, the state only needed for the death penalty, a unanimous verdict from 10 people.

[Hannah]

Yeah. So just to be clear, every person they lose is one less person that the state has to convince. It's mind boggling.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah.

[Hannah]

So, yes. Look, that's it. We're gonna have to stop with that today. We're gonna have to pick this back up next week where we will get into the trial and, yeah, talk all about the, frankly, incredibly absurd things that went down in the courtroom and very importantly, all the madness that came afterwards. So join us next week to hear all about that, including whose fingerprints they were that they found in Michelle's car. Because it is wild and entirely the reason we have two episodes in this case.

[Alexa Chynes]

Okay. Wow.

[Hannah]

And why Bone Rally has two seasons. So join us then for the final part of our look at the case of Leah Schofield.

[Alexa Chynes]

Goodbye, March, let's roll.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

Oh, no.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.

[Liberty Mutual Male Voice]

We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Alexa Chynes]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.

[Liberty Mutual Partner Voice]

Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Liberty Mutual Female Voice]

Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.