After Judge Scott Cupp handed me his business card, stating that Leo Schofield was an innocent man, I began talking to him more and more about the case, and he pointed me to the trial transcript. It was very clear to me that without the testimony of Alice Scott, the State had no case against Leo. And it was also clear to me that Alice Scott’s testimony was completely contradicted by her next door neighbor and sister-in-law, Linda Sells, the State’s own witness. Linda clearly recalled her and Alice having a conversation in the driveway and seeing Leo carrying something heavy out of his trailer. But it was a week or two before Michelle went missing. Alice admitted on the witness stand that she wasn’t good with dates. I spoke to Linda Sells. She didn’t want to be interviewed, but she said that she stands by her statements that Alice was wrong about what she witnessed.
Sadly, wrongful convictions based on faulty witness testimony are very common. What made this case so interesting to me was that nearly two decades later, Jeremy Scott’s fingerprints from inside the Mazda were finally identified. And unlike the State, we were very interested in doing a thorough investigation into Jeremy Scott, and ultimately interviewing him in prison.

-G.K.

In the writing and telling of this story, we held off on mentioning Jeremy Scott from the beginning. We wanted the story to unfold over time, in the way it has in the three decades since Leo’s conviction. But, when Gilbert and I started researching the case in 2018, Jeremy Scott’s role was already pretty clearly laid out – his fingerprints had been identified and he’d confessed. So we were aware of him from the start, and that’s a big reason the case was so intriguing. There was a man who’d claimed innocence for over three decades, and another who’d confessed in a Polk County courtroom the year prior. And yet, the State of Florida found ways to discredit them both. Really getting to the bottom of who these two men are, and their roles in this case was what really drew me in. And of course, once we met Leo, and I saw the depth of his frustration and desperation to have his story told and to have this narrative corrected – that was the moment I knew we were really on to something, and we needed to really dig in to figure out what went wrong in this case.

-K.D.