Even as he was serving 36 years of a life sentence for killing his wife, Leo Schofield put in the work to forgive the man who confessed to the crime.
He turned to his faith. He mentored younger inmates. He became someone who mattered to others on the inside. But it wasn’t until recently — nearly a year since he had been paroled after decades of maintaining his innocence — that Mr. Schofield was able to feel a “sense of completion,” after he and Jeremy Scott spoke on the phone for the first time.
“Forgiveness is not about the person who hurt us,” Mr. Schofield said in a recent interview. “It’s about us who are hurt and being freed from the effect of that.”
“Jeremy and I had a chance to close a chapter,” he added.
Their conversation is featured in the second season of “Bone Valley,” the podcast whose initial series of episodes in 2023 chronicled Mr. Schofield’s efforts to prove his innocence as producers described a case riddled with errors.
The second season, the first two episodes of which will be available starting Wednesday, explores Mr. Scott’s confession to killing Michelle Schofield in 1987 and his reconciliation with his son after years of estrangement. Mr. Scott also details another murder he says he committed but for which he was never charged.
If Mr. Scott hadn’t confessed, Mr. Schofield said, “I’d still be languishing right now.”
“Doing what Jeremy has done is monumental,” he said. “It took a lot of courage. It took a lot of personal integrity.”
Mr. Schofield served 36 years in the Florida prison system before he was released on parole on April 30, 2023 — eight years after Mr. Scott had first confessed to the crime that put Mr. Schofield away. The state has yet to move forward on additional murder charges against Mr. Scott.
On Feb. 27, 1987, the body of Michelle Schofield was found with 26 stab wounds in a drainage canal in Lakeland, Fla. She was 18. Mr. Schofield, her husband of six months, was charged with her murder soon after. But there was never any physical evidence linking him to the crime, not even the set of fingerprints that were found in Ms. Schofield’s car.
In 2004, the authorities said the prints belonged to Mr. Scott, who was already serving a life sentence for robbing a man and beating him to death.
Mr. Scott confessed to the murder of Ms. Schofield a number of times, in instances including detailed interviews with Gilbert King, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and the creator of “Bone Valley.”
It wasn’t out of the ordinary for Mr. Scott to call Mr. King from prison. But Mr. King wasn’t expecting Mr. Scott to call one day in February while he was visiting Mr. Schofield at his home near Tampa, where Mr. Schofield was recovering from a near-fatal motorcycle accident. Mr. King asked Mr. Scott and Mr. Schofield if they wanted to talk. Both agreed. It was the first time the two men had spoken.
“He’s trying to help this guy and comfort this guy who actually killed his wife and is the reason that he spent 36 years in prison,” Mr. King recalled. “It’s something I’ll never understand.”
Mr. Schofield was denied parole four times, even after Mr. Scott had confessed to the killing. Now he was on the phone with Mr. Scott, offering encouragement as he had as a mentor to younger inmates when he was still in prison — and as he continues to do on visits to this day.
“You have to go through some really dark places to get to that area of forgiveness,” Mr. King said. “You have to do these things that we cannot possibly imagine, and he clearly had been there.”
But getting to that point was far from easy. Just two years ago, Mr. Schofield said, he wouldn’t have been able to speak to Mr. Scott the same way. But as practicing forgiveness became more real to him, Mr. Schofield also learned more about Mr. Scott’s story from Mr. King.
“I developed a certain respect and somewhat of an affinity for the guy,” he said. “I wanted to tell him that I genuinely forgive him and, more important, I wanted him to know that there are people that care about him and want to see him do right. Because he’s never going to get out.”
Mr. Schofield emphasized that he was not apologizing on behalf of Michelle’s family, who had objected to his parole bid.
“I sometimes feel almost guilty” about forgiving Mr. Scott, he said. “But this is about me, not Jeremy. It is very freeing to your spirit. I don’t want to live with a bunch of anger. I had enough of that in prison.”
After Mr. Schofield was released last year, he spent the first night at a halfway house, on a lawn chair underneath the stars with his second wife, Crissie Schofield, a social worker whom he had met in prison. But he struggled without a routine and lost track of the days because his regular measure of time — prison guards conducting an inmate head count several times a day — was no longer a part of his routine.
He eventually found work at a mechanic shop. It was a steep learning curve for someone who thought he knew his way around cars: The last car he had worked on was a 1987 model.
Now he’s focused on recovering from his motorcycle accident and spending time in church to deepen his faith. Mr. Schofield earned a theology degree in prison and became a senior pastor in the Messianic Christian community at the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Fla., where he served most of his time, forming close bonds with inmates and correctional officers. He still misses his former congregants and the structure of prison life.
Mr. Schofield is working to overturn his conviction, and has the backing of State Senator Jonathan Martin, a Republican and the chairman of the Criminal Justice Committee. If his conviction is not overturned, Mr. Schofield expects to be on parole for another four to six years.
At Mr. Schofield’s parole hearing in April 2024, Jacob Orr, an assistant state attorney, criticized the media attention around the case and took issue with the storytelling in “Bone Valley,” accusing the podcast of omitting key facts.
While Mr. Schofield is grateful to be out of prison, the fact that he is on parole for a crime he says he did not commit is the “one bad apple in the whole thing,” he said.
“My whole pursuit from the beginning was justice for Michelle,” he said. “It breaks my heart that the state won’t do the right thing.”
Mr. Schofield plans to visit Michelle’s grave for the first time once he recovers, and will bring his guitar with him. He’ll sing her favorite songs and finally say goodbye.
“I’m going to lay my Michelle down,” he said, pausing to let tears pass. “I’ve come full circle, and I want her to rest in peace.”
Remy Tumin is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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