What a high quality interview with an impressive guest. You can tell when a creator is just looking for a promo spot vs when they are a genuine competent, engaged journalist. Well done, all involved, and thanks for this!
Thanks for the podcast. I've been tired and in pain, and I didn't even realize that today was Monday. That made the podcast a pleasant surprise. I've had a rough weekend physically, so I listed to something that might have been Bone Valley. I think it was on a channel with "Lava" in the name. The whole thing was Mr. King and his assistant. I think that there were eight or nine episodes plus an interview with some woman. I've also listened to some of your episodes again. I remember hearing the interviews with Jeremy Scott. At times, he sounded believable. At other times, he sounded as if he might just be an old con playing old con games. If his fingerprints hadn't been in the car, I wouldn't put much weight on his confession. Once the fingerprints put him in the car, then all the rest of his testimony works. I believe that he is guilty. The strongest evidence against Leo Sr. is that Alice Scott saw a blue truck at the trailer between nine and ten in the evening. I don't really believe anything she says. Maybe she wasn't lying because she just hates Leo Jr. in general, but as her story has changed, everything she says is thrown into doubt. That she lies once doesn't mean that she's always lying, but I just can't assign her statements any data quality. If she was telling the truth and Leo Sr. came to the trailer at that time for some reason, maybe he decided to make a pass at her. Maybe she rejected him in a way that upset him. In that case, maybe he followed her to the gas station and confronted her immediately after her phone call. He's still in the position of being one guy trying to manage two vehicles. The timeline doesn't seem to work, but that narrative is more believable to me than any narrative involving Leo Jr.. I'd like to believe that I would have noticed that the prosecutor couldn't tie Linda Sells to saying what night she saw Leo Jr. moving something out of the trailer. If I had noticed that bit of testimony and the prosecutor then said in his argument that the exact night didn't matter, my mind would have been screaming, "The Hell it doesn't!" At that point, the prosecutor would have lost all credibility with me. Maybe that wouldn't have been enough for me to vote "not guilty," but I'd like to think it would have pushed me a long way on that path. I'm aware that I can be drawn along with a crowd as anyone can. At the same time, I've always been a bit of contrarian. As I've become older, I've become more and more afraid of being drawn along with a crowd because I believe that can lead to tragedies. That's probably why I feel more and more social anxiety about doing things as simple as going to the grocery store. I'll also admit that I hear Leo Jr.'s accent and immediately think of him as a jerk. A part of me wonders whether he would have been charged, much less convicted, if his accent had been a typical middle-Florida accent. While I've spent most of my life in the South, most southerners say that I don't have a southern accent. There are many southern accents that I also associate with jerks. Even with these prejudices, I'd like to think that my contrarian nature would cause me to dig my heels when the prosecution put forward so many witnesses to establish that Leo Jr. was a jerk who abused his wife. I'd like to think that I would say to myself, "This prosecutor is throwing out all of these witnesses to domestic abuse because he doesn't have any good witnesses to establish evidence directly related to the murder. There must be something wrong with his actual evidence of the actual murder." Plenty of people in my life have disliked me very intensely. Others appreciate my honesty. I suspect many people who read my comments dislike me. I left the Gallery because I was tired of conflict with certain people. I'm sure that I would be the least popular member of a jury. I'm still amazed that the jury was so easily manipulated by the prosecution. One of the goals of our education system should be to build citizens who are not manipulated by marketing. That includes the marketing of lawyers on either side of any case. If lawyers couldn't win just by putting on "the best show," our justice system would be better. I understand that many killers end up leading police to the victims even before those killers become suspects. I guess that there is some part of the human mind that causes people to want to reveal things even when revealing those things goes against the killer's best interests. I still don't see why Leo Sr. would want to lead the police to Michelle's body if he or his son were involved in any way. If Leo Sr. committed the murder alone, I could possibly see him wanting to reveal the body so that Leo Jr. would no longer face the stress of not knowing what had happened. If Leo Sr. helped his son hide her body after Leo Jr. committed the murder, I see no reason to lead police to the body. With every day that she stays in the water, there will be less evidence on her body. If she is never found, prosecution will be even more difficult. I understand the guilty conscience argument, but revealing her location is counterproductive. Making a big deal of Leo Sr. ascribing his finding of her body to God also seems to be stupid. People are going to say odd things under that kind of stress. If the prosecutor fixated on that statement in the way that this prosecutor seems to have done, his credibility would be another step lower with me. In this video, I think you said that the prosecutor talks about Leo Jr. slitting his wife's throat from "ear to ear." If I were on the jury, saw the autopsy report which doesn't indicate that kind of cutting, and then heard the prosecutor saying that, his credibility would take another hit. The other podcast talks about law enforcement or prosecutors threatening to take the unborn children of pregnant women if they refused to testify against certain suspects. Any official in law enforcement or the court system who makes that threat should be sent to jail. I realize that these people can sometimes feel desperate to see justice served. I realize that the nature of the work that they do requires that they have tremendous self-confidence. That self-confidence can cause them to be blind to the possibility that they are wrong. That law enforcement must draw these kinds of people who are prone to those kinds of mistakes means that they must be trained even more never to cross that kind of line. At one level, I understand people getting drawn into the narrative and believing the Leo Schofield Jr. is guilty. At another level, I'm still amazed by how this case has gone. I really, really, really liked your series on Jonbenet Ramsey. You've done some other series that were excellent. This one might be your best series yet. (Someday, I will have to listen to the series on Dylatov Pass. From what you've said, Brett seems to insist on a nuclear-powered Yeti as the culprit, but maybe I'm guessing wrongly.)
TY for your comment - and I’m sorry about your pain (I can relate, autoimmune issues here. 🙄). But I have to say - sounds like you’re THINKING for yourself. If being potentially voted “least liked jury member” was a thing, it’s a moniker I’d want for sure. I think about the one jury member on this trial from Bone Valley, who talked about being very young and therefore going along with the rest of the jury members, despite feeling Leo was innocent. Because the other members were older and she assumed they must know better. She only drew the line at voting for the death penalty. Very disturbing to think about because it means had she gone with her convictions, and not gone along with the crowd, he would’ve been voted, not guilty, or a mistrial would’ve been declared. So you bringing that up here is a very good, very important point.
There is a case out here in CA- out of SD - it's the disappearance of Maya Mieleti (spelling) disappeared one night out of San Diego. Her husband said that she had been in her room the whole time they were home behind a lock door. Haven't seen it since the husband was put on trial and he was prosecuted for murder I think because it was evidence that he basically emailed which doctors and spellcaster to intrude on his wife..... so I'm not sure what the verdict was on him. I'm sure he is guilty. However, Maya has never been found.
I do not believe in innocent men being in prison. But between these two podcasts, I believe Leo is innocent. And The Interview Room is the place to take this next. These ppl have connections.
Was Leo Sr a religious man? Was he an attention seeker? Or was he just a man who was hurting, for his son, just went there because he hd been searching for days and saw a sight he hadn’t seen before and feels God sent him?
What a high quality interview with an impressive guest. You can tell when a creator is just looking for a promo spot vs when they are a genuine competent, engaged journalist. Well done, all involved, and thanks for this!
Thanks for the podcast.
I've been tired and in pain, and I didn't even realize that today was Monday. That made the podcast a pleasant surprise. I've had a rough weekend physically, so I listed to something that might have been Bone Valley. I think it was on a channel with "Lava" in the name. The whole thing was Mr. King and his assistant. I think that there were eight or nine episodes plus an interview with some woman. I've also listened to some of your episodes again.
I remember hearing the interviews with Jeremy Scott. At times, he sounded believable. At other times, he sounded as if he might just be an old con playing old con games. If his fingerprints hadn't been in the car, I wouldn't put much weight on his confession. Once the fingerprints put him in the car, then all the rest of his testimony works. I believe that he is guilty.
The strongest evidence against Leo Sr. is that Alice Scott saw a blue truck at the trailer between nine and ten in the evening. I don't really believe anything she says. Maybe she wasn't lying because she just hates Leo Jr. in general, but as her story has changed, everything she says is thrown into doubt. That she lies once doesn't mean that she's always lying, but I just can't assign her statements any data quality. If she was telling the truth and Leo Sr. came to the trailer at that time for some reason, maybe he decided to make a pass at her. Maybe she rejected him in a way that upset him. In that case, maybe he followed her to the gas station and confronted her immediately after her phone call. He's still in the position of being one guy trying to manage two vehicles. The timeline doesn't seem to work, but that narrative is more believable to me than any narrative involving Leo Jr..
I'd like to believe that I would have noticed that the prosecutor couldn't tie Linda Sells to saying what night she saw Leo Jr. moving something out of the trailer. If I had noticed that bit of testimony and the prosecutor then said in his argument that the exact night didn't matter, my mind would have been screaming, "The Hell it doesn't!" At that point, the prosecutor would have lost all credibility with me. Maybe that wouldn't have been enough for me to vote "not guilty," but I'd like to think it would have pushed me a long way on that path.
I'm aware that I can be drawn along with a crowd as anyone can. At the same time, I've always been a bit of contrarian. As I've become older, I've become more and more afraid of being drawn along with a crowd because I believe that can lead to tragedies. That's probably why I feel more and more social anxiety about doing things as simple as going to the grocery store. I'll also admit that I hear Leo Jr.'s accent and immediately think of him as a jerk. A part of me wonders whether he would have been charged, much less convicted, if his accent had been a typical middle-Florida accent. While I've spent most of my life in the South, most southerners say that I don't have a southern accent. There are many southern accents that I also associate with jerks. Even with these prejudices, I'd like to think that my contrarian nature would cause me to dig my heels when the prosecution put forward so many witnesses to establish that Leo Jr. was a jerk who abused his wife. I'd like to think that I would say to myself, "This prosecutor is throwing out all of these witnesses to domestic abuse because he doesn't have any good witnesses to establish evidence directly related to the murder. There must be something wrong with his actual evidence of the actual murder." Plenty of people in my life have disliked me very intensely. Others appreciate my honesty. I suspect many people who read my comments dislike me. I left the Gallery because I was tired of conflict with certain people. I'm sure that I would be the least popular member of a jury. I'm still amazed that the jury was so easily manipulated by the prosecution. One of the goals of our education system should be to build citizens who are not manipulated by marketing. That includes the marketing of lawyers on either side of any case. If lawyers couldn't win just by putting on "the best show," our justice system would be better.
I understand that many killers end up leading police to the victims even before those killers become suspects. I guess that there is some part of the human mind that causes people to want to reveal things even when revealing those things goes against the killer's best interests. I still don't see why Leo Sr. would want to lead the police to Michelle's body if he or his son were involved in any way. If Leo Sr. committed the murder alone, I could possibly see him wanting to reveal the body so that Leo Jr. would no longer face the stress of not knowing what had happened. If Leo Sr. helped his son hide her body after Leo Jr. committed the murder, I see no reason to lead police to the body. With every day that she stays in the water, there will be less evidence on her body. If she is never found, prosecution will be even more difficult. I understand the guilty conscience argument, but revealing her location is counterproductive.
Making a big deal of Leo Sr. ascribing his finding of her body to God also seems to be stupid. People are going to say odd things under that kind of stress. If the prosecutor fixated on that statement in the way that this prosecutor seems to have done, his credibility would be another step lower with me.
In this video, I think you said that the prosecutor talks about Leo Jr. slitting his wife's throat from "ear to ear." If I were on the jury, saw the autopsy report which doesn't indicate that kind of cutting, and then heard the prosecutor saying that, his credibility would take another hit.
The other podcast talks about law enforcement or prosecutors threatening to take the unborn children of pregnant women if they refused to testify against certain suspects. Any official in law enforcement or the court system who makes that threat should be sent to jail. I realize that these people can sometimes feel desperate to see justice served. I realize that the nature of the work that they do requires that they have tremendous self-confidence. That self-confidence can cause them to be blind to the possibility that they are wrong. That law enforcement must draw these kinds of people who are prone to those kinds of mistakes means that they must be trained even more never to cross that kind of line.
At one level, I understand people getting drawn into the narrative and believing the Leo Schofield Jr. is guilty. At another level, I'm still amazed by how this case has gone.
I really, really, really liked your series on Jonbenet Ramsey. You've done some other series that were excellent. This one might be your best series yet. (Someday, I will have to listen to the series on Dylatov Pass. From what you've said, Brett seems to insist on a nuclear-powered Yeti as the culprit, but maybe I'm guessing wrongly.)
TY for your comment - and I’m sorry about your pain (I can relate, autoimmune issues here. 🙄). But I have to say - sounds like you’re THINKING for yourself. If being potentially voted “least liked jury member” was a thing, it’s a moniker I’d want for sure.
I think about the one jury member on this trial from Bone Valley, who talked about being very young and therefore going along with the rest of the jury members, despite feeling Leo was innocent. Because the other members were older and she assumed they must know better. She only drew the line at voting for the death penalty. Very disturbing to think about because it means had she gone with her convictions, and not gone along with the crowd, he would’ve been voted, not guilty, or a mistrial would’ve been declared.
So you bringing that up here is a very good, very important point.
Thanks for putting me on to the Earth Breeze detergent, but that link doesn’t give 40% off.. it’s the same price as if you just use the reg site
Love your podcast!
Where can I find a transcript for Leo’s original trial?
You guys are the best ! Thanks for awesome content!
If you google “leo schofield trial transcript pdf” you can get the transcripts. (Not sure if this channel lets me post links).
There is a case out here in CA- out of SD - it's the disappearance of Maya Mieleti (spelling) disappeared one night out of San Diego. Her husband said that she had been in her room the whole time they were home behind a lock door. Haven't seen it since the husband was put on trial and he was prosecuted for murder I think because it was evidence that he basically emailed which doctors and spellcaster to intrude on his wife..... so I'm not sure what the verdict was on him. I'm sure he is guilty. However, Maya has never been found.
I would have thought Alice's would be Allosaurus.
I do not believe in innocent men being in prison. But between these two podcasts, I believe Leo is innocent. And The Interview Room is the place to take this next. These ppl have connections.
See you at CrimeCon!
this prosecutor was corrupt. I wish you’d do a deep dive on his cases
Was Leo Sr a religious man? Was he an attention seeker? Or was he just a man who was hurting, for his son, just went there because he hd been searching for days and saw a sight he hadn’t seen before and feels God sent him?
Yeah