Where is Leo Schofield Now? Is He Still in Jail?

The murder of Michelle Saum Schofield in February 1987 is one of the most puzzling cases ever, and it has a lot to do with more than just the horrible crime itself.

After all, her husband Leo Schofield was found guilty, as reported on ABC’s “20/20: Last Seen in Lakeland,” but there is some evidence that someone else might have been involved. So, if you want to know more about the first one, including how he’s thought to be involved, what the legal consequences are, and where he stands now, we have the information you need.

What is his name?

In 1986, 20-year-old Leo and 17-year-old Michelle, who had both dropped out of high school, met for the first time. They hit it off right away and couldn’t stay apart. Soon after, they moved in together, and their Southside Assembly of God Church is said to have paid for their whole wedding to help them “stop living in sin.” Six months into their already troubled marriage, though, Michelle was killed in one of the worst ways possible: she was stabbed 26 times.

The truth is that Leo, who reported Michelle missing, was quickly suspected because their neighbors, friends, and family said their relationship was abusive and they fought all the time. Some witnesses said he yelled at his wife a lot, but others said he wasn’t just violent; at one point, he even threatened to kill his wife, they said. So, when a neighbor said she’d heard the couple arguing on that fateful night and then said she’d seen Leo leave while putting a big thing in his trunk, the doubts multiplied many times over.

Even though there was a lot of blood and evidence at the spot where Michelle was found, the Schofield trailer home was said to be the crime scene. This did not help Leo’s case. Even though the neighbor’s story had a lot of problems, the 20 other people who testified about his violent tendencies made it clear that the prosecutors were right. Leo was arrested and charged with murder in June 1988. After two hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty in 1989. He was only 21 years old at the time. It is very important to remember that there was no physical proof against him.

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Where is Leo Schofield at this time?

Leo was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison. He has spent the last 30+ years behind bars in a state facility and has never stopped saying he is innocent. This is clear from the many appeals he has filed over the years, especially after Jeremy Lynn Scott’s fingerprint was linked to the case and he was said to have confessed (he later denied it), but to no avail. Leo told ABC’s “20/20” in 2022, “Innocent has no part in it, no plan for it, didn’t know it was happening, didn’t know it was going to happen, and didn’t want it to happen.” “Yes, that’s me.”

Even though the former want tobe band member admitted to slapping his wife Michelle twice on the stands of the court, he said he was not violent during the incident. “Physical abuse is one kind of abuse, and I’ve been guilty of emotional abuse,” Leo said. “I yelled a lot, and I wasn’t above hitting a wall or being very dramatic.”

Leo Robert Schofield Jr., who is 57 years old, is being held at the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Florida, which is a mixed-security prison. He will be eligible for parole in 2023, but Leo, his second wife Crissie Carter, their daughter Ashley, and The Innocence Project of Florida are still working hard to prove his innocence. They want to clear his name and bring Michelle what they think is justice.

Even though there is no physical evidence linking him to the brutal stabbing, Leo, who was 21 at the time, was arrested and convicted mostly because one witness said she heard screaming coming from the couple’s trainer the night Michelle went missing.

The witness also said that she saw Leo put something big into a car’s truck. She was one of the witnesses at Leo’s trial who said that he was a bad husband.

Leo, on the other hand, has always said that he had nothing to do with the murder.

“Innocent had nothing to do with it, had no idea it was going to happen, didn’t know it was happening, and didn’t want it to happen.

ABC News said that Leo’s defense team and allies pointed to unidentified fingerprints that were found in Michelle’s car.

After his second wife, Crissie, got him a new lawyer, Leo’s fingerprints were matched to those of Jeremy Scott, who was already in prison for murder and serving a life sentence.

In 2016, Leo’s lawyer, Andrew Crawford, said that Jeremy had admitted to killing Michelle during a phone call that was not recorded.

But when asked by state investigators, Jeremy denied having anything to do with the murder. He did, however, say he would confess to any murder for $1,000, according to ABC News.

Recently, podcast producer and host Gilbert King said that in a two-hour interview and letters, Jeremy gave a detailed confession on the record.

He told the Tampa Bay Times, “He really felt bad about what he had done. He told me that this has been awful for him. We made him sit down and tell us about himself.”

Michelle hasn’t been seen since she left her job at a restaurant. Before her body was found seven miles away in a canal, her car was found at the side of the road.

During the talk, the prisoner talks to Amy about the day police found Michelle’s body: “At that time, I was so mad at God.

“I took off my shirt. I hit a tree, then I hit the ground, and then I pulled grass out of the ground.”

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He says this about Jeremy Scott’s confession and the court’s decision to throw out the case and start over: “I feel very angry about it. My wife was killed by him. It’s hard to forget about.”

Advocates in Florida keep fighting for a man who is still in jail for the 1987 murder of his wife, even though a convicted killer has admitted to the crime more than once.

Prosecutors say that 21-year-old Leo Schofield Jr. killed his 18-year-old wife, Michelle Saum Schofield, in a fit of anger. But, as shown in an exclusive interview he gave to “20/20” recently, many people, including the Innocence Project of Florida, say Leo didn’t stab Michelle 26 times.

“‘Innocent’ means I had nothing to do with it, didn’t plan it, and didn’t know it was happening,” said the now-56-year-old prisoner from Bowling Green, Florida’s Hardee Correctional Institute.

The case started on February 24, 1987, when Michelle left her job at Tom’s Drive-In restaurant at 8:15 p.m. but never went home to Lakeland, Florida, which is about 30 miles west of Tampa, according to an application for clemency from the Innocence Project of Florida. Leo and his father, Leo Schofield Sr., started asking people around town if they had seen Michelle while she was gone.

Some people said that she bought $3 worth of gas across the street from where she worked.

Three days later, Michelle’s body was found face down under a piece of plywood in a canal in Bone Valley, a part of Central Florida known for its fossil beds and prehistoric history. Michelle had lost a lot of blood and was stabbed many times in the neck and back.

“At that moment, I was so mad at God,” Schofield said on “20/20.” “I took off my shirt. I punched a tree, punched the ground, and pulled grass out of the ground.”

In June 1988, after an investigation that took more than a year, the police arrested Leo. However, the Innocence Project says that the evidence they used against him was “entirely circumstantial.” ABC News says that witnesses talked a lot about how angry Leo could get, which he admitted in court when he said he hit Michelle twice.

“Physical abuse is one kind of abuse, but I’ve also hurt people emotionally,” Leo told 20/20. “I yelled a lot, and I wasn’t afraid to punch a wall or act very dramatic.”

Alice Scott’s testimony was also a big part of the case. She said she heard the couple fighting the night Michelle went missing, but the court didn’t believe her because the time line didn’t make sense.

Former State’s Attorney Jerry Hill, who oversaw the original case, told “20/20” that “you’re going to find some discrepancies with witness testimony” no matter who it is.

A body of a teacher who had won awards was found in her Texas home by her 5-year-old daughter.

Even though there was no physical proof that Leo killed his wife, he was found guilty and given a life sentence in 1989.

But two years later, he met Crissie Carter, a former probation officer who was now a therapist. She believed Leo when he said he was innocent. Carter, who later married Leo and became the mother of their adopted child, looked into the case again and quickly found unidentified fingerprints in Michelle’s car.

In 2004, the prints were put into a database and linked to a man named Jeremy Scott, who was serving a life sentence for a murder that happened in 1988. Jeremy Scott had nothing to do with the Schofields’ neighbor who testified against him. In the clemency application, the canal where Michelle’s body was found was called Scott’s “lair” and said to be a place where he “had sexual trysts” with his ex-girlfriend.

After Michelle was killed, Jeremy Scott was found guilty of killing 37-year-old Donald Morehead by hitting him in the head with a bottle and suffocating him with a phone cord. He then stole $20 and a car.

The Innocence Project says that Scott was also accused of another murder, but he was never found guilty in that case. Oxygen.com looked at his prison records and found that he has been convicted of a number of other crimes, such as arson in 1986 and several burglaries in the late 1980s.

Leo wasn’t given a new trial, even though there was new fingerprint evidence that supporters say could show he didn’t kill Michelle.

In 2016, one of Leo’s new lawyers said he talked to Scott on the phone, who allegedly admitted to killing Michelle. Scott also talked to a private investigator who was hired to look into the case.

In that conversation, Scott supposedly said that Michelle had offered to drive him somewhere before the two of them started to fight.

The Innocence Project says, “Scott didn’t have a car, so he often hitched rides or begged for rides.”

Scott is said to have said that he was “heavily high” on pills at the time of the murder, and his girlfriend said that he was “extremely violent.”

But there were also problems with Scott’s story. He said he killed Michelle by stabbing her in her car, but the clemency report said there was no blood in the car.

ABC News says that Scott also told state investigators that he would confess to any murder if they gave him $1,000.

During a later hearing, Scott admitted to killing Michelle, but then said, “I didn’t do that” when he saw photos of Michelle’s body after she had died.

“20/20” says that Scott said again in a prison interview with the “Bone Valley” true crime podcast, which came out earlier this month, that he had killed Michelle.

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