How Did Michelle Schofield Die?

18-year-old Michelle Schofield of Lakeland, Florida reportedly disappeared on her way home from work at a burger joint at 8:15 p.m. on February 24, 1987. Nearly 90 minutes later, she called her husband Leo, but the call was supposedly just catch-up. After that, he requested to be picked up from a friend’s house so that the two of them could go out to eat. But she didn’t arrive as planned, so he started looking for her shortly after midnight; he called both of their parents, retraced her path, and checked their trailer home, but to no avail.

In the following hours, Michelle’s family tried everything to find her, including calling the police and local hospitals and printing posters and fliers, but to no avail. However, a friend identified her orange Mazda hatchback at exit 44 of Interstate 4 on February 25, per court documents, narrowing the search area for law enforcement and her family. Not locking the trunk of her car, losing the rear speakers, and having hair stuck inside the back panel all add to the suspicion that foul play may have occurred.

Numerous people, including police and volunteers, searched the area extensively before Michelle’s father-in-law, Leo Sr., located her body in a shallow grave on February 27, 1987. She was found seven miles away from where her car was parked, submerged under a sheet of plywood in a canal near the junction of State Road 33 and Interstate 44. The autopsy revealed that the 18-year-old had been stabbed 26 times and had lost five pints of blood before she died; hers was not a quick, easy, or painless death.

Who is responsible for the death of Michelle Schofield?

The detectives interviewed Michelle’s family and friends right away to find out if she had any problems, and they learned that her marriage was far from ideal, which makes sense given the severity of the crime. Reports suggested the couple frequently argued, and some even described instances of physical abuse and threats from Leo Schofield, according to witnesses. Alice Scott, their next-door neighbor, later claimed that she had witnessed the infamous fight between the Schofields on that fateful evening, right before Leo left the house with a large object in the trunk of his car.

Another witness report seemed to implicate Leo by saying that his father’s truck was with her car near where her body was found the morning after she went missing. As a result, Leo was arrested and charged with the first-degree murder of his wife Michelle on June 24, 1988, based solely on circumstantial evidence.

About a year later, during Leo’s trial, her entire story was called into question because of her history of mental illness and the implausibility of her timeline of the offense. Since Leo was with his wife’s father (ostensibly searching for her) around the time she said the explosive, probably physical fight took place in their trailer home, this is likely to be the case.

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