“Thank you to everyone who tuned in or followed along, and who continues to support Leo and his fight for Justice,” Lava For Good, the podcast’s manufacturing firm, mentioned in a tweet. “We are heartbroken at today’s decision, but we will continue to do everything we can until Leo is finally free, where he should be.”
In 1987, the physique of Ms. Schofield, who was 18, was found in a drainage canal in Lakeland, Fla., with 26 stab wounds. Suspicion shortly grew round Mr. Schofield, her husband of simply six months. At the trial, prosecutors referred to as 21 witnesses, who portrayed Mr. Schofield as hotheaded and abusive. A neighbor mentioned she had seen him on the evening of the homicide, shifting a big object from his house that would have been a physique. The state argued that Mr. Schofield had time to homicide his spouse and that he had arrange a false alibi about being along with his dad and mom that evening.
But there was by no means any bodily proof linking Mr. Schofield to the crime.
Investigators struggled to match a set of fingerprints discovered within the Schofields’ automotive to both Mr. Schofield or his spouse. Because fingerprints weren’t computerized in 1987, matching the 2 fingerprints that investigators lifted from the automotive required evaluating them facet by facet in opposition to identified prints.
The fingerprints went unidentified till 2004, when Mr. Schofield’s second spouse, a social employee whom he met in a life-skills class in jail, implored a pal in legislation enforcement to run them yet another time. There was a match: Jeremy Scott, who was already serving a life sentence for robbing and beating a person to dying.
Mr. Scott confessed to the homicide of Ms. Schofield a lot of occasions, together with in an in depth interview for “Bone Valley.” Speaking from jail, Mr. Scott detailed how he got here throughout Ms. Schofield at a pay cellphone. She supplied him a trip house, however as an alternative, Mr. Scott directed her to a secluded spot he frequented, close to the drainage canal. Mr. Scott mentioned he got here onto her. She rejected him, and he started to stab her repeatedly, he mentioned.
Source: www.nytimes.com