- 5 weeks ago
When a young woman turns up murdered, police desperately try to retrace her last known movements. However, what they discover reveals two shockingly different possibilities of how she was killed.
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00:00When was Michelle's car located?
00:09Michelle's car was found the following day.
00:13There were two pools of blood in the cargo area.
00:17And there was a series of unidentified prints.
00:21There had been a lot of serial killings in Florida.
00:25That left them worried.
00:30Michelle's body was in the water, covered with a board.
00:36If you were 10 feet away, you would not see that body.
00:39This area was out in the middle of nowhere.
00:43She had 26 stab wounds.
00:46Somebody was completely out of control during this murder.
00:52Neighbors noticed Michelle's car at the exact location the body was found.
00:58And in a blue pickup truck.
01:01In both arms, he is hearing what appeared to be a heavy object.
01:06All enforcement was incredulous.
01:10What struck you about this case?
01:12This is something personal.
01:14This killer stabbed her until this young woman bled out.
01:18This is an overkill.
01:22Hi, I'm Paula Zahn.
01:37And tonight, we're on the case in Lakeland, Florida, about 45 minutes east of Tampa.
01:42The rapidly growing city became the scene of a polarizing mystery when Michelle Schofield simply vanished.
01:50At first, her disappearance left residents questioning just how well they knew their neighbors.
01:57And over time, those divisions only deepened.
02:01Then, just when it seemed that law enforcement had a killer in custody,
02:06doubts about critical evidence forced many to re-examine the case's most controversial questions.
02:12February 25th, 1987.
02:19It was close to 1 a.m. on a brisk winter night in Lakeland
02:23when the sheriff's office received a call from a distraught husband.
02:2821-year-old Leo Schofield told the dispatcher he had been waiting for his 18-year-old wife Michelle
02:48since she called him from the payphone of a nearby convenience store.
02:54Did she indicate she would be right over?
02:57Yes.
02:58They both expected to catch up with each other in fairly short order.
03:03Leo had expected Michelle to pick him up at a friend's house around 10 p.m.
03:07This is not like my wife at all.
03:10My last conversation with her was she was on her way to pick me up.
03:14And from where she was picking me up was a 15-minute drive.
03:17That's why I'm flipping out, man.
03:19It's not like her to do it.
03:23Leo informed police she was driving the couple's only car,
03:28an orange station wagon.
03:29And he did his best to answer the dispatcher's questions.
03:32When was the last time Leo had seen her?
03:46He saw her that morning, Tuesday morning.
03:50According to Michelle's friends, her shift at Tom's Restaurant had been uneventful,
03:55and it ended around 8 p.m.
03:58How did her day go?
03:59We know from Michelle's co-workers, her boss, everything went fine.
04:07Leo told police that their initial plan was for Michelle to come get him around 8.30.
04:13But she was already behind schedule.
04:17Did she tell him why she was running late?
04:19She told him that after work, she'd gone home to put up laundry
04:23and to take care of a puppy that they had.
04:26And then had gone across to Sparky's, gotten a Coke, $3 worth of gasoline.
04:31That's where she had been.
04:36He called me at quarter to 10 to say that she was going to pick up something and bring a hand.
04:39I said, no, I'm just checking out.
04:41She said, okay.
04:42She said, I love you.
04:43And I said, I love you too.
04:44Bye.
04:47Leo informed police that by 11.30 p.m., he knew something was off.
04:52He called his father, Leo Schofield Sr., for help.
04:56As the night went on, he became concerned and he started calling his father,
05:01asking for a ride to go look for Michelle.
05:03His father picked him up about midnight and they went looking for her.
05:07Did he say where they looked for her?
05:10He did.
05:10They drove back to the home that they shared.
05:12They drove by her work.
05:13And then they took the opposite direction back and then ended back up where they started at that friend's house.
05:24During that time, Leo had also reached out to Michelle's family.
05:29Her older brother, Ricky, remembers the call.
05:33What do you remember about the night Michelle disappeared?
05:37I answered the phone and Leo said, do you know where your sister is?
05:40I'm like, dude, why are you calling here asking me that?
05:44At the time, Ricky was annoyed by more than just being awakened in the middle of the night.
05:50He didn't like Leo nor the way he treated Michelle.
05:55I'm like, you're the guy that knows everything about my sister.
05:59You're married to her.
05:59Why would I know where my sister is?
06:01I was just very confrontational with him.
06:04I mean, I hung up.
06:07At first, investigators weren't sure how seriously to take Leo's call either.
06:13He and Michelle were a young couple, and it seemed possible that she had left on her own.
06:19But the sheriff's office did put out a bolo on the 5-foot-2-inch 18-year-old and her orange station wagon.
06:27The next day, there is still no sign of Michelle.
06:30But an important discovery was made that changed the course of the investigation.
06:38What was that?
06:39Her car was found just barely off Interstate 4.
06:42Who found the car?
06:47Someone who happened to know the Schofields.
06:50He worked in Orlando, and so on his way to work, he said he saw it.
06:54And on the way back, it was still in the same spot.
06:56So he contacted Leo and let him know that he saw his car out on I-4.
07:01Leo notified police, and deputies raced to the location with a sense of urgency.
07:09No one could think of a logical explanation for Michelle to have left the car in that area.
07:20Just to get to I-4, you were traveling away from Michelle's home, away from her workplace, the gas station we know she was at, and the friend's house that Leo was at.
07:35All of that would have been in opposite direction.
07:39And even the most cursory inspection of the station wagon added to those concerns.
07:47How would you describe the area where the car was found?
07:50The car was visible from the interstate, so it wasn't hidden.
07:55It was an open view.
07:56Was there any indication that the car had run out of gas?
08:00None.
08:03Did investigators view the discovery of the car as a bad sign?
08:08It certainly was not a positive sign.
08:14In fact, the discovery of Michelle's car was alarming enough for police to launch an official missing persons case.
08:24And once they processed the station wagon, they began to wonder if they might be investigating something even more sinister.
08:32Police investigating Michelle Schofield's disappearance began to take the case very seriously as they studied her station wagon found on the edge of the interstate.
08:58Describe the condition of her car.
09:02When it was found, it was unlocked.
09:05The car was abandoned.
09:08Did the car appear to have broken down?
09:11There's no evidence that the vehicle had been damaged.
09:15Was anything missing from the car?
09:17The vehicle had been burglarized.
09:19The stereo equipment was missing from the front dashboard.
09:22And in the rear of the vehicle, the speakers had been removed.
09:28Police believed all the evidence indicated that Michelle had not been the one who left the car there.
09:34And what they found next convinced them their theory was correct.
09:39Were there any signs of a struggle, either inside the car or outside?
09:44The front of the car contained no evidence of any kind of struggle.
09:48However, in the rear of the car, there were two pools of blood in the cargo area.
09:53Also a little bit of blood on a detergent bottle.
10:01An examination of the car's exterior added to investigators' concerns.
10:06On the outside of the car, there was some hair kind of tucked into the molding.
10:14That hair matched the color of Michelle's hair.
10:19Was that the point at which investigators believed that Michelle was the victim of foul play?
10:26The discovery signaled to everyone that something was amiss.
10:30Police meticulously processed the car for any physical evidence that might connect a stranger to the crime scene.
10:43Were there any fingerprints found in the car?
10:46There was a series of unidentified prints.
10:49Two on the driver's side window.
10:51And in the back near where the speakers were removed.
10:55Two on a piece of paper.
10:56What kind of information could they get from those prints?
11:01There was no database.
11:03They couldn't just plug them in a computer and compare them to hundreds of thousands of people all at once.
11:07They had to compare them to individuals.
11:10And they did.
11:11They determined that they were not Michelle's prints.
11:14They were not Leo's prints.
11:15They were none of their family members' prints.
11:16They ultimately just declared to be unknown fingerprints.
11:19Testing of the blood discovered inside the car confirmed that it was the same type as Michelle's.
11:31In the years before modern DNA technology, that was the best they could do.
11:37The case was now being treated as a possible homicide investigation.
11:42Police knew they had to start the investigation with Michelle's inner circle.
11:54They talked with those closest to the fun-loving 18-year-old.
11:59What kind of lives did Leo and Michelle lead?
12:02They were young.
12:04They had only been married about six months when this happened.
12:08Michelle was a young, outgoing, well-liked individual, madly in love with her husband.
12:17Was there anyone who would have had a vendetta against her that investigators found?
12:22We have no reason to believe she had any enemies.
12:30But as police dug deeper, they discovered there had been tension in Michelle's marriage.
12:36In fact, it was Leo's own statements that raised the most serious red flags.
12:45Comments that he may not have realized had been recorded during his initial call to report his wife missing.
12:52He thought he had been placed on hold.
12:56What did he say?
12:57He spoke to some other people in the room and let know his true feelings about that situation.
13:02Although Leo, at first, had told the dispatcher Michelle would never have been late,
13:08he told his friends a different story.
13:13I can't afford to f***ing worry about this kind of m***h.
13:16And I hate this feeling.
13:17F***ing hate it.
13:19You know, this has been all the time.
13:20I can't stand it.
13:23And Leo's anger continued to build as he waited for the dispatcher to return to the line.
13:28Police now wonder if those were the words of a panicked young man frightened about his wife's safety,
13:44or could they have been a threat of violence from a jealous husband?
13:48Police had launched an all-hands-on-deck search for 18-year-old Michelle Schofield.
14:06But the massive effort ended suddenly and in the worst way possible.
14:11Her lifeless body was found in a canal seven miles from her abandoned car.
14:21And everything about the way the discovery was made sent the investigation into a whole new direction.
14:29Who discovered Michelle's body?
14:32Her father-in-law, Leo Schofield Sr.
14:35Police were surprised that Leo Sr. had found the teenager's body.
14:41And they had a lot more questions when he told them how he had come to the location.
14:49He indicated that he heard the voice of God directing him to a particular site.
14:54He said he had been driven by an inner force, almost like a vision, that directed him to where her body was.
15:07What was the reaction to this idea that God led him to this place where Michelle's body was found?
15:14The reaction by law enforcement was incredulous.
15:18And as investigators studied the crime scene, Leo Sr.'s account only became harder to believe.
15:29How would you describe the area where Michelle's body was found?
15:32This area was out in the middle of nowhere, very desolate.
15:37Her body was tucked in under heavy brush.
15:40The body was in the water, face down, covered with a board.
15:48Investigators struggled to understand how Leo could even have seen her from where he claimed to have been standing when he spotted her.
15:57Some of the police officers testified, you had to be at least within three feet standing over the body to see the body.
16:04If you were ten feet away, you would not see that body.
16:06Still, officers were able to quickly confirm that the young woman in the canal was Michelle Schofield.
16:19Michelle was wearing her work uniform, red pants and a white shirt.
16:25There was also a jacket she was wearing that was found at the scene.
16:31Investigators noted that Michelle was barefoot.
16:34The shoes were not discovered.
16:40Police put their doubts about Leo Sr.'s story and their suspicions of his son on the back burner as they processed the crime scene.
16:50What did investigators see when they started to look more closely at the area near where Michelle's body was found?
16:57What the investigators did find was drag marks to the water's edge.
17:03Certainly to get a body back there, that would have been very challenging.
17:11Investigators believe the overgrown brush explained why Michelle's jacket had been discovered a few steps short of the water.
17:19They theorized it had come off while she was being dragged to the canal.
17:26And a closer examination of that windbreaker told more of the gruesome story.
17:34That jacket had stab wounds through it.
17:36Even after two days in the water, the medical examiner was able to tell that those stab wounds were the cause of Michelle's death.
17:51The body was very, very well preserved.
17:54Stab wounds were incredibly evident.
17:57There were 26 of them.
17:58What did that tell investigators about who might be responsible?
18:07That told investigators that this was a crime of passion.
18:11It was very personal.
18:14This was not someone trying to steal a pocketbook or commit a robbery.
18:20She still had her wedding ring on her finger.
18:23And robbery wasn't the only motive the medical examiner helped to rule out.
18:33Had she been sexually assaulted?
18:35There's no evidence that she was sexually assaulted.
18:38Based on everything police observed at the scene, it was determined that Michelle had been killed somewhere else.
18:48She was obviously brought there, probably unloaded there.
18:51And they were able to intuit that because there just simply wasn't enough blood there?
18:56Yes.
19:00Former FBI Special Agent Brianna Fox studied the medical examiner's report to help us understand how a criminologist would use the evidence to create a profile of the attacker.
19:14What did you make of the fact that she was stabbed more than 20 times?
19:19The fact that there was 26 stab wounds indicates this was somebody who was clearly completely out of control during this murder.
19:31A rage-fueled attack committed by someone much bigger and stronger than the 105-pound teenager.
19:39That crime was frenzied, brutal, sadistic, she had stab wounds on her backside, she did not see it coming, and I know she didn't have really any capability of fighting back.
19:53This was just a very, very, very angry individual that did this to her.
20:00It was a vicious murder.
20:07Police still couldn't rule out Michelle's husband, Leo, as a suspect.
20:11And his father, Leo Sr.'s story about how he found her body added doubts to both of their accounts.
20:19Certainly by this time, you've got to be looking at him as an accomplice, someone that may have played a role or helped in disposing of a body.
20:27The investigation's focus on the Schofields forced Michelle's family to mourn their loss alone.
20:40How did your sister's murder affect your family?
20:44It broke the family.
20:47My dad took it the worst.
20:49It really hurt him the most.
20:51As it turned out, that pain was only going to intensify, because the deeper police delved into Michelle's murder, the closer to home the investigation would come.
21:21Investigators trying to solve Michelle Schofields' murder were zeroed in on her husband, Leo, and his father.
21:30And an examination of the couple's relationship only narrowed their focus.
21:35How did her friends characterize her marriage?
21:37Very volatile.
21:39And those people were not just Michelle's friends.
21:41Leo's friends said there was violence in the marriage.
21:43While the couple's rocky past raised red flags, it wasn't evidence that Leo or his father were involved in Michelle's murder.
21:57Police carefully assembled a timeline of the night she was reported missing.
22:03What was Leo's alibi during those critical hours after she's last heard from?
22:08After calling the sheriff's department to report her missing, he then left saying his dad was outside in the truck.
22:16And he claims to have been in that truck the rest of the time.
22:23The two men claimed that Leo was out looking for Michelle from midnight until after four in the morning.
22:30And during that time, he never saw her or the orange station wagon she was driving.
22:35The first story he tells, he spent the whole night with his father, ran out of gas, and he's had to walk back to this house.
22:44He never tells that story again.
22:51Leo's story changed each time he told it.
22:54And those discrepancies led detective to ask him if they could search the couple's home.
23:00Was Leo cooperative with investigators?
23:03No, Leo was not.
23:05The police respond to Leo and Michelle's residence.
23:09They're denied entry by Leo and his father.
23:12They did get in enough to see that the waterbed that he shared with Michelle had no sheets on it, no blankets.
23:17It was completely bare.
23:19But they were told to leave.
23:21Police were frustrated and turned to the Schofield's neighbors in the trailer park.
23:31And a woman, who lived just steps from the couple, shared a shocking eyewitness account of what she had seen and heard through her bathroom window.
23:41And the details of her story contradicted everything Leo had told investigators.
23:48What did Leo's neighbor see that night?
23:51At about 1.30, Leo's neighbor saw the orange Mazda station wagon pull back up to the Schofield house.
24:03Detectives were stunned.
24:05According to Leo, he never saw the station wagon that night.
24:09But the eyewitness said she could clearly see he was in the car and that Michelle was with him.
24:17She saw the young couple get out in a loud argument.
24:24Then they went inside.
24:25The argument continued.
24:27She said she could hear what sounded like someone being thrown up against the wall.
24:35They'd go silent reasonably quickly.
24:39And Leo Jr. is seen leaving the house in the Mazda and driving away.
24:47The eyewitness added that before Leo left, he had loaded a large object into the station wagon.
24:55He is seen raising the hatchback, carrying what appeared to be a heavy object in both arms.
25:03Something that's wrapped up is placed in the back of the Mazda station wagon.
25:07The eyewitness said that object could have been five or six feet in length.
25:19And she explained why she had waited before coming forward with her story.
25:25Apparently it was so common.
25:27Hearing them fight, her husband said, quit being nosy, get in bed.
25:31But after the neighbor heard that Michelle had been murdered, she quickly realized just how critical her story might be.
25:45Still, investigators did not accept her account at face value.
25:50They carefully checked if it was possible to see and hear what she said.
25:54This aerial photograph shows that the neighbor's home was about 150 feet from the Schofield home and that she had a direct line of sight from her bathroom window to their front porch.
26:08Did the neighbor's eyewitness account of what she saw that night make Leo the prime suspect in his wife's murder?
26:16It pointed the finger at Leo quite clearly.
26:18Once police confirmed that the Schofield's neighbor's story was plausible, she gave them more critical information.
26:30She said later that morning, Leo did something else suspicious.
26:34The same neighbor says that just hours later on, roughly six o'clock, she saw Leo Jr. in his dad's truck unloading a carpet cleaner.
26:45Could Leo have been using the machine to clean up evidence that tied him to the murder?
26:56Police eventually got a warrant to search the Schofield's home two weeks after her body was found.
27:03But they only discovered a few small stains on the carpet.
27:08Testing of the small sample couldn't identify whose blood it was.
27:13Did it make sense to you that there wasn't more blood found in their home?
27:18Yes. I would think that he had time to make some effort to clean things up.
27:26But there were items found that further damaged Leo Jr.'s credibility.
27:31Police discovered Michelle's wallet and work shoes.
27:35Whenever the last time she left the house, she did not take those things with her.
27:39That evidence led police to speak with the gas station clerk, who had seen Michelle just before she had used the payphone to call Leo.
27:50When she paid, she had her wallet with her.
27:53That's where the money came from to pay for the gasoline and the Coca-Cola.
27:56The fact that she had her wallet at the time meant that Michelle had returned home after that purchase.
28:04Which corroborates the testimony from the neighbor that saw them arrive home.
28:12Still, police were concerned that so much of their case relied on one eyewitness account.
28:18Then, the publicity surrounding the investigation led to another critical break.
28:26Eventually, there was another eyewitness account that blew this case wide open.
28:32What was it?
28:33Leo had neighbors that delivered the newspaper locally.
28:37They were up early on their newspaper route, and they noticed the Schofield car on the side of the road.
28:43But it was when and where they saw the distinctive orange station wagon that made the sighting so important.
28:52It was around 4 a.m. at the exact location the body was found.
28:58And the station wagon was parked alongside a blue pickup that matched the description of Leo Sr.'s unusual light blue truck.
29:09They remembered seeing these two vehicles.
29:11Although both Leo and his father denied they had been in that area near the canal,
29:20the sighting was at a time in which family members were the only ones who could confirm that story.
29:28Was Leo Jr. ever given a lie detector test?
29:32Absolutely. He denied any involvement.
29:34It came back deceptive on all of the important questions.
29:38He flunked it.
29:41But without physical evidence connecting Leo Jr. to the crime, police couldn't make an arrest.
29:50Just months later, Leo and his parents moved out of the area.
29:54And even though police were losing access to their prime suspect, they saw the family's sudden departure as an opportunity.
30:03They asked the home's new owner if they could search the property.
30:07Did they find any evidence?
30:09Yes.
30:10They found a notebook.
30:11And in the notebook, there are detailed descriptions of what people were doing the night that Michelle went missing.
30:19And it's in two different handwritings.
30:21One was done by senior and one was done by junior.
30:24And they're incredibly detailed.
30:27Those notes were essentially an accounting of time.
30:31They were manufacturing their alibi.
30:34They were writing it out.
30:36The notes accounted for the two men's whereabouts from midnight until just after 4 a.m.
30:47Police believed they were another critical piece of circumstantial evidence.
30:52Circumstantial cases are like a chain.
30:57It's one link.
30:58It's another link.
30:59A fact here and a piece of evidence here.
31:02And you put it all together to reach an inescapable conclusion.
31:06But would investigators be able to fit all those pieces together to get justice for Michelle Scofield?
31:14In June 1988, Leo Scofield was arrested and charged with first-degree murder of his wife Michelle.
31:38But investigators still knew that getting a conviction wouldn't be easy.
31:46Was he ever offered a plea deal?
31:49Yes.
31:49He was offered to plead to second-degree murder for 15 years in prison.
31:53And did he reject that?
31:55He did.
31:58Investigators also knew that taking their case to trial meant that they couldn't charge his father, Leo Sr., as an accomplice.
32:06If he faced jail time, they wouldn't be able to get his testimony in front of the jury.
32:12You want to get the murderer.
32:14And by calling Sr. as a witness, the prosecution was able to get out his ridiculous story of finding the body.
32:25But even after raising doubts about Leo Sr.'s story, there were still many other hurdles in front of prosecutors.
32:34It's a completely circumstantial case.
32:36And we were going up against an incredibly good defense lawyer.
32:46How would you describe the atmosphere in the courtroom at trial?
32:50There were the families in the courtroom.
32:53That atmosphere was very tense.
32:55And that tension grew as the prosecution called a series of witnesses who testified about the volatile nature of the couple's marriage.
33:06The prosecution called 50 witnesses.
33:08At least 11 of those testified that there was domestic violence.
33:13They saw violence.
33:14The prosecution painted a picture of a young husband who could not control his rage.
33:25One of the triggers for this anger that existed was Michelle being late.
33:34When her husband doesn't know where she is, doesn't know who she's with, he had a tendency to lash out.
33:40And that's exactly what happened this night.
33:41He gets anger and anger.
33:43And it builds and builds until he calls the sheriff's department.
33:45And you can hear what he's saying to his friends on the other end of that call.
33:48Then the prosecution's eyewitnesses took the stand.
34:08One who saw Leo and Michelle come home in their car.
34:11And another who later saw that car at the location where the body was found.
34:16That is when all that evidence comes together in a way that the jury could understand.
34:26Leo's defense team put him on the stand to try to counter all the allegations.
34:32What claims did Leo's defense team make a trial?
34:35He didn't do it.
34:36He was innocent.
34:38Leo basically said they're all lying from the start to the finish.
34:41He stuck by the idea that he never saw Michelle that night.
34:46It was clear the jurors would have to choose, believe Leo's story and acquit, or accept the prosecution's account and find him guilty.
34:59They came back in the courtroom after four and a half hours.
35:03I'm surprised that they came back as fast as they did.
35:06And their verdict was unanimous, guilty of first-degree murder.
35:18Were you able to see Leo Jr.'s reaction to the guilty verdict?
35:24Yes, I did.
35:25He came apart.
35:27He turned around and looked at his parents and he just sobbed.
35:31Leo was sentenced to life in prison.
35:36But that occurred at a time when life doesn't really mean life in Florida.
35:40It meant life with an eligibility for parole after 25 years.
35:47Even after his conviction, Leo Schofield continued to insist he was not guilty.
35:53He has never wavered that he's innocent of this crime.
35:59And 17 years later, Leo's supporters found physical evidence they said backed up his claim.
36:07Shockingly, the unknown fingerprints found in the couple's car were identified
36:12and linked to a convicted killer named Jeremy Scott.
36:16Scott was 17 when Michelle was murdered and he lived less than two miles from where her body was found.
36:29Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators went to question him about the new evidence.
36:36Jeremy Scott was approached in 2005 and they showed him a photo of the orange Mazda.
36:41He was told, your fingerprints were in a car and he responded with,
36:47was the stereo missing?
36:49Because that's what I did before I was sent to prison.
36:52How did he say he stumbled upon her car?
36:54He says, almost with an element of pride,
36:58that he would look for abandoned cars along the interstate.
37:04Scott's story seemed to eliminate the possibility
37:06that his fingerprints were connected to Michelle Schofield's murder.
37:12That explained the prints on the driver's side window
37:15and the prints in the vehicle where he was removing speakers.
37:19And during his initial interview with investigators,
37:22he strongly proclaimed his innocence.
37:25He denied any knowledge of having anything to do with Michelle's homicide.
37:31But Jeremy Scott, who was serving life without parole,
37:37seemed to enjoy seeing his name in the headlines.
37:40And 12 years after his first interview with police,
37:44he completely changed his story.
37:46But Scott's new account didn't line up with the evidence.
38:05There was not enough blood found in Michelle's car to support his story.
38:12And none of that was in the front seat
38:14where he claimed the stabbing occurred.
38:17And there were other serious questions raised
38:20about Scott's motive for coming forward.
38:23He told his lawyers,
38:24I'll say anything you want me to say.
38:26If a dude right now offered me some money,
38:29I'll take his murk.
38:31If they were offered me $1,000,
38:32I would confess to anyone.
38:33It seemed that Scott might be more interested
38:39in buying a better life behind bars
38:41than he was in telling the truth.
38:44But despite the flaws in his story,
38:46his confession has created a wave of concerns
38:49about Leo Schofield's conviction.
38:52Leo's supporters have pointed to Jeremy Scott
38:56as the real killer.
38:58Why hasn't Leo Jr. ever been granted a new trial?
39:01The courts found Jeremy Scott to lack credibility.
39:06He confessed and reconfessed
39:08and then recanted and then changed it.
39:10We've had two separate circuit judges
39:13hold evidentiary hearings.
39:15We've had the 2nd District Court of Appeals
39:18review their case.
39:20All of those courts
39:21have ruled against Leo Schofield.
39:24I understand that Leo's supporters believe
39:27what Jeremy Scott is saying.
39:30The courts have it.
39:35Are you still confident
39:38Leo Schofield killed his wife?
39:41Let me tell you,
39:42this case has generated
39:44about as much ugly comments
39:46said against me
39:48as I've ever had
39:49in 36 years of elected office.
39:51Would I change one thing
39:53we've done in this case?
39:55Not one thing.
39:57Leo Schofield
39:58is an unrepentant,
40:01guilty,
40:02first-degree murderer.
40:03And frankly,
40:05he ought to serve
40:05his entire sentence.
40:16Michelle's brother Ricky
40:17agrees.
40:18There are a number
40:20of supporters of Leo
40:21who claim that
40:21the investigators
40:22got the wrong man,
40:24that he wasn't
40:26the real killer.
40:28What do you say to them?
40:30They're going to keep
40:30trying to change the narrative,
40:32but the facts
40:32are still the facts.
40:34He's in jail
40:34because of the facts.
40:38Her short life
40:39was taken too fast,
40:41and Leo,
40:42to this day,
40:43doesn't want to take
40:43responsibility
40:44for his actions.
40:46He should be in prison
40:46for the rest of his life.
40:53In 2023,
40:55Leo Schofield
40:56was transferred
40:57to a new facility
40:58awaiting a potential parole
41:00after serving his sentence.
41:02We'll keep you posted.
41:04I'm Paula Zahn.
41:06Please join us again
41:06next time
41:07when we're back
41:08On the Case.
41:11On the next
41:12On the Case.
41:13How shocking
41:14was it
41:15that Donna
41:16had been attacked
41:17while her family
41:18was sleeping?
41:19Shock is to put it mildly.
41:20We couldn't believe it.
41:22You think you're safe
41:23in your own home.
41:24It's heart-wrenching.
41:25It's sheer terror.
41:27We didn't know
41:28who to trust.
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