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Thursday, February 26th, 1987, a friend called the Schofields, saying that he had seen Michelle’s car at exit 44 on Interstate 4. At 11:30 that night, the Schofields and the sheriff’s deputies gathered at the vehicle. They found the back hatch unlocked, the rear speakers missing and bits of hair stuck in the rear panel. The Schofields and the authorities mounted a search in the area and on Friday at 1:30 PM, Leo’s father found her body. She had been stabbed 26 times and dumped in the canal.

On June 24th, 1988, Leo Schofield was arrested and charged with Michelle’s murder.

“I was incredulous. Nothing in my personal history prepared me for the stain on my personhood that was immediately felt when I was accused of killing the girl I loved.” - Leo Schofield

Despite the copious amounts of blood, the tire tracks, and footprints at the canal where Michelle’s body was found, Leo’s trailer was declared by investigators to be the scene of the crime. The prosecution maintained that Leo and Michelle had gone back to their home around 1:30 AM, at which point Leo stabbed Michelle 26 times, carried her body out to their shared vehicle and dumped her out in the canal.

In contrast to the canal crime scene, Leo’s trailer was blood-free, aside from a small stain the size of a half-dollar of an unidentified fluid. According to the medical examiner, Michelle bled five pints of blood. Leo’s clothes from that night were taken into evidence and, like the trailer were also found to be completely free of blood.

This discrepancy was just one of many in prosecutor John Aguero’s case:

Despite the many witnesses that Leo interacted with on the night of Michelle’s disappearance, the prosecution’s case focused on the testimony of Alice Scott, who stated that she saw Leo and Michelle enter the trailer around 1:30 AM the night Michelle disappeared. Alice said that she heard arguing and the sounds of a struggle coming from the trailer, followed by Leo leaving at 2:30 AM with something “the size of a child” wrapped up and thrown in the back of the couple’s Mazda.

In direct opposition to Alice Scott’s testimony, Michelle’s father, David Saum, testified that Leo was with him at 2:30 AM. At 2:45 AM, Leo was speaking to the sheriff’s deputies at the gas station.

Beyond the discrepancy in the timeline, Alice Scott had a history of mental issues and had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution by her family. She also blatantly lied about the distance between the bathroom window that she allegedly witnessed the night’s events from and the Schofields’ trailer.