Prelude to a Murder: When Misfits Falls in Love in Deepest Florida

At sixteen years old, Leo Schofield felt like an outcast. He’d grown up in the housing projects of Fall River, Massachusetts, and he had the working-class New England accent to prove it. But as he reached his formative teenage years, his parents made the move south to Lakeland, Florida, dragging Leo down there with them.

Leo’s father had been searching for a better life. He wanted to get his family out of the projects, and after a couple of failed business ventures, the promises of the Sunshine State called. Leo had an aunt and a cousin who had already relocated to Florida, paving the way for the Schofields to join them there. The family settled into their new Lakeland home, in the Lazy Dazy Retreat Mobile Home Park off Highway 98, a rural twolane highway with stretches of commercial and residential development. Reluctantly, Leo enrolled at Lake Gibson Senior High School. Back in Massachusetts, he’d been just two years away from graduating with the friends and classmates he’d known his whole life. But now, in a new school and a new state, he felt like he was starting over.

Walking down the hallways of his new school wearing ripped-up jeans and a faded denim vest embellished with army pins, Leo found his rebellious personal aesthetic sneered at by the other students, in their cowboy boots and Florida Gators T-shirts. When his new classmates mockingly bellowed “Damn Yankee” in his direction, he wished his father had left him up north.

In Massachusetts, Leo had been an honor student. But the academics in Florida seemed to lag behind those in his home state, and he was left to sit through classes and lessons he’d already mastered the previous year. Bored and feeling like a social outsider, he chose to drop out of school a mere three months before graduation. The thought of donning a cap and gown to be lost in a sea of matching strangers hundreds of miles away from the classmates he’d spent his adolescence with held no appeal.

Instead, Leo turned his attention to music. He’d been playing guitar since the age of seven, and his early love for the instrument had grown into an all-consuming ambition to become a rock star performing to sold-out arenas like his idols in the bands Mötley Crüe and Judas Priest. Leo’s cousin started introducing him to other kids around town, and before long, Leo found a group that shared his taste in music. Soon after, he auditioned to join a local band.

Leo continued to take the stage with the rescued guitar, now charred by flames and smoky with soot—a lasting testament to his fiery, impulsive nature.

RYNO performed mostly at local house parties and small clubs and occasionally set up for shows in storage units or out in the woods. True to their name—an acronym for Rock Your Nuts Off—the band sometimes attracted the attention of police. The lineup included Dale Toy, the leader and front man; Danny Carter on drums; and David Collins on bass. Leo, hired as their lead guitarist, had the right look—rough around the edges, with long dark hair and tanned skin. In time, his bandmates would see that the angsty teenager from Massachusetts had the attitude to match.

“The girls liked Leo a lot,” bass player Dave Collins remembered. “Because he looked like a rock star, and he acted like that onstage and all….But there’s a thing about guitarists in bands,” he observed. “Most of them are kind of hard to get along with.”

Dave was a little older, with a wife and two young kids. He had a laidback sense of humor and a deep commitment to his family. Unlike Leo, he had no desire to make it big; he wasn’t interested in touring or playing outside Lakeland. For him, the band was a hobby, and his family came first. Of all the guys, Leo gravitated toward Dave, and while Dave admired the ambitious young guitarist, he couldn’t help but chuckle as he watched Leo transform into his rock star alter ego onstage.

Leo’s fiery reputation was cemented during one unforgettable performance. During band practice, a group of guys approached RYNO looking for a band to play at their party. They’d pulled a flatbed trailer into the woods to serve as a stage and promised the band payment in beer. The bandmates huddled together, quickly reaching a consensus: They were in.

Leo invited a girl he’d been casually seeing to watch the performance, but as he rocked out onstage, he glanced over the crowd to see her lifting her shirt, bare chest exposed. Furious that everyone else had seen this, Leo jumped down from the flatbed trailer, tossed his guitar into the bonfire, and stormed off into the woods. One of his bandmates quickly pulled the guitar from the flames while it was still salvageable, and Dave ran through the brush to find Leo and calm him down.

After that night, Leo continued to take the stage with the rescued guitar, now charred by flames and smoky with soot—a lasting testament to his fiery, impulsive nature.

*

“Instant lightning.”

That’s how Leo would later describe the moment his eyes locked with Michelle Saum’s. She was sitting on his friend’s bed gazing up at Leo with soft brown eyes framed by feathered hair and lit by a smile that radiated warmth. Leo had come to give his friend Manny Troccola a guitar lesson. Manny, another transplant from up north, had become one of Leo’s closest friends. Introducing Michelle as his girlfriend, Manny looked on as Leo was clearly captivated by her effortless beauty and charming smile—but Leo would never make a move on his best friend’s girl. His and Michelle’s conversation was brief, and soon Leo was pulled away to start the lesson.

Not long after, an incident involving a stolen pistol earned Manny a four-year sentence at the Okeechobee’s Eckerd Youth Development Center. At his age, four years felt like an eternity

Leo, grieving his friend’s absence, was at home with his parents when the phone rang. His mom picked up, then turned to Leo, holding out the receiver. “It’s for you.”

Leo put the phone to his ear and heard a girl’s voice on the other end. He couldn’t immediately place it, but he didn’t want to give that away. He listened, searching for clues until she mentioned Manny. It must be Michelle, he realized. Unbelievable.

Leo had always assumed Michelle didn’t care for him—he was constantly stealing her boyfriend away to play guitar or ride motorcycles. Manny had even confirmed it. “Michelle said she doesn’t like you,” he had told Leo, “because I spend too much time with you.”

But now, here she was, on the other end of the phone. Michelle explained to Leo that she’d found his number scribbled in a book on Manny’s dresser. She was feeling sad and missed Manny, and she thought that Leo, as his closest friend, might understand and commiserate.

That night, RYNO was playing a show, and hoping to lift her spirits, Leo told Michelle that if she made it out to the venue, he’d give her a ride home afterward. She agreed.

As he performed, Leo spotted Michelle in the crowd—and then noticed another familiar face. And then another. Shit, he thought. Two girls he’d been casually dating had shown up to see him play. He hadn’t expected them both to accept his invitation, and now with Michelle there as well, he found himself in a predicament.

After the show, Leo approached Michelle. “You see those two girls?” he asked, gesturing in their direction.

Michelle followed his gaze and nodded.

“They’re both here to see me,” he explained. “And when they figure that out, they’re probably going to be really mad.”

Michelle giggled as Leo assured her everything would be fine.

“Just chill out,” he said, indicating that he needed a moment to sort things out. Predictably, both girls were furious and didn’t hang around, leaving Leo free to focus on Michelle.

From that night on, Leo and Michelle spent every spare moment together. In those early weeks, neither knew where things would lead, but they were careful to keep things from crossing the line between friendship and romance. What started as a distraction from Manny’s absence soon blossomed into a deep bond as Michelle and Leo spent hours talking, listening to music, and getting to know each other.

Leo opened up to her about his childhood and the friends he’d left behind in Massachusetts. He told her about his birth mother, Sandra, who’d given up custody of him while he was just a toddler; and about Cheryl, his father’s second wife, who had stepped in during his adolescence and raised him as her own. He spoke of his three younger half siblings—Tammy, Kristen, and Jason—who shared Cheryl’s blond hair and fair features, while he stood apart with black hair and a darker complexion, likely inherited from his birth mother. And, of course, he told her about his love for the guitar and the life he had envisioned for himself.

In return, Michelle shared her own story.

*

Michelle’s father, David Saum, worked as a dragline operator at a local phosphate mining operation, steering a massive metal bucket to scrape “white gold” from the earth. Phosphate was big business in Central Florida. Ancient geological processes had left the region’s soil rich in this valuable mineral for modern agriculture, and David had worked in the industry for as long as Michelle could remember. Each year, the mining site crept farther south as deposits dwindled, lengthening her father’s commute. When Michelle was younger, his work was close enough to home that he’d bring her and her siblings to the restricted mining site on his days off, to search for fossils. Woolly mammoth tusks, saber-toothed tiger skulls, and shark teeth the size of their heads were strewn about, cast aside by the mining operation. Once, he came home with stories about unearthing an entire petrified tree.

That was back before Michelle’s family fell apart, when her parents were still together. Her memories of that time were filled with road trips, often to Mexico to visit her maternal grandparents and great-grandparents. Because her father was afraid of flying, the family of five would pack themselves into the car instead. When they were at home, Michelle and her brother Jessie could often be found in the backyard, where their father had built a tree house nestled among a grove of old oaks. With enough practice, the siblings learned to cross the entire yard without touching the ground by climbing trunks and swinging between branches.

But within a few years, that house—and that life—would be gone. Things began to unravel when Michelle was around seven or eight, in the mid-1970s. Her parents were active participants in the party culture of the era, drinking and falling into increasingly frequent intense fights. They eventually decided to separate.

Not long after, Michelle’s mother was involved in a serious car accident that left her with brain damage and the need for long-term care. She was moved back to Texas to be cared for by family. When Michelle’s father’s house burned down, and an extended stay with her grandmother became untenable, the family collectively decided that the best option was to place her, Jessie, and their older brother Rickey in a Florida Baptist Children’s Home.

Originally established as an orphanage in Arcadia around the turn of the century, the children’s home had been relocated to a fifty-acre tract near Lakeland’s Lake Hunter that had been donated to support its expansion. By the mid-1970s, the Lakeland campus had been in operation for over two decades, serving hundreds of children between the ages of five and eighteen. It provided a stable environment, access to counseling, and temporary housing for children awaiting adoption, foster care placement, or respite from homes affected by alcoholism, divorce, or abuse.

The children were housed in co-ed cottages designed to mimic “home-style living,” each accommodating five girls, five boys, and their “cottage parents.” Michelle, Jessie, and Rickey were placed in cottage number nine.

Looking back, Jessie remembered his time at the children’s home fondly, describing it as akin to an extended stay at summer camp. The siblings were able to stay together, and when they weren’t at school, there were plenty of organized activities. Because the other kids at the home came from similarly troubled backgrounds, Jessie never felt the need to explain his situation—they could all just be kids together. The only downside, he recalled, was having to attend services at the Baptist church three times a week.

Michelle was still living at cottage number nine when she began fourth grade and met her classmate Michell McCluskey. The two girls giggled over their shared name, and a friendship quickly blossomed. Soon, with her daughter begging for sleepovers, Michell McCluskey’s mother made arrangements with the children’s home and coordinated with Michelle Saum’s father to become an approved guardian. Once the paperwork was complete, Michelle spent nearly every weekend with her new friend.

The girls filled their afternoons practicing somersaults and cartwheels, roller-skating, or swimming at the local pool. They’d play volleyball and basketball, and they occasionally joined the boys for a game of football. At sleepovers, they’d dress up and watch Grease, singing along and reenacting their favorite scenes. Michelle always chose to be Rizzo, the sharp-tongued, impulsive, rebellious leader of the Pink Ladies.

Michelle and her brothers lived at the children’s home for nearly four years, until, one day, their father, David Saum, arrived to take them home. Despite living just a few miles away, David had not visited his children a single time during their stay. But now he was there, newly sober and ready to reunite the family.

They settled into a mobile home where Rickey’s drum set took up half the living room and where a shortage of beds meant someone always slept on the couch. The trailer was only temporary, a place to stay while their father worked on rebuilding the house they’d lost to the fire.

Michelle transferred to a new school district and started sixth grade without her best friend, Michell McCluskey. Now at different schools, the two kept their friendship alive with weekly sleepovers and Friday and Saturday night meetups at the roller rink. As they grew older, their hangouts shifted to scoping out cute boys, talking about crushes, and listening to hard rock. Occasionally, they’d score tickets to see a favorite band perform in town.

In November 1974, the Lakeland Civic Center had opened, promising to “put Lakeland on the map.” The eight-thousand-seat arena did just that, drawing crowds from across the state with shows from every big name in music. Located between Tampa and Orlando near downtown Lakeland, within its first year the Civic Center was hosting acts like Earth, Wind and Fire; Johnny Cash; the Beach Boys; Black Sabbath; and Elvis Presley. By the mid-1980s, it had brought AC/DC, Kiss, the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Prince to Polk County.

When Michelle and her friends couldn’t get tickets, they’d hang out in the arena parking lot, sitting on tailgates and swaying to the muffled tunes coming from inside. For Lakeland teenagers, concert T-shirts were social currency. Jessie recalled that Michelle proudly wore a Def Leppard shirt and one from Quiet Riot, both of which he eyed with envy.

Back home with their dad, the Saum kids found that his long work hours gave them plenty of freedom. If they wanted to go out at night, there was no need to sneak—they could simply walk out the front door at any hour. Jessie recalled that during those years, his dad felt more like a roommate; sometimes, the only sign that he’d been home would be the food missing from the fridge. Jessie embraced his freedom, tagging graffiti, racing motocross bikes with friends, and eventually building a massive half-pipe ramp in the front yard to host skate competitions for kids from all over Lakeland.

With her newfound freedom, Michelle embraced parties and boys and ultimately rejected formal education. She dropped out of high school, first taking a job at Burger King before trying her hand at selling Fuller Brush products door-to-door. With her mom in Texas and her father at the phosphate mine, much of the housework fell to her. Michelle cleaned, did the laundry, and often cooked for her brothers, singing along to her favorite Pat Benatar tape as she worked.

After Michelle’s boyfriend, Manny, was sent to Okeechobee, Leo became a regular visitor at the Saum house. He’d ride over on his red-and-white Yamaha FJ1100 motorcycle, showing it off to Jessie before taking Michelle for a ride. Rickey wasn’t around much, and if Leo arrived to find David working on the house, he would pitch in, putting his construction skills to use. Once the foundation and exterior walls were up, he would sometimes stay the night, sleeping in the shell of the future home. Michelle would wander out in the dark to lie beside him, the two of them talking late into the night.

Manny, a good-looking, blond surfer type, got plenty of attention from girls, and Leo suspected he saw Michelle as just another girl in his lineup.

One night, as they lay on the concrete foundation, Michelle heard an unfamiliar noise. “It almost sounds like footsteps,” she told Leo.

He got up to investigate and returned a few moments later.

“What was it?” Michelle asked.

“You don’t have to worry about it. It’s just evil spirits,” Leo said. “If you don’t acknowledge them, they’ll leave you alone.”

The next day, Michelle called her friend Michell McCluskey to tell her about the incident.

“That’s a really weird thing for him to say,” McCluskey responded. “Do you think he was trying to scare you?”

“No,” Michelle replied. “He was dead serious.”

Michell McCluskey was unsettled by the comment. Her best friend had already told her about Leo, his band, and how much fun she’d had at his shows. “Well, he is in a rock band,” she pointed out. “You don’t think he’s into devil worship, do you? Or maybe he’s doing drugs?”

“No, there’s no drugs,” Michelle assured her.

The comment didn’t sit right with McCluskey, but she let it go. She knew that her friend had a crush, but when McCluskey finally met Leo, she couldn’t understand what Michelle saw in him. He wasn’t particularly tall, he had crooked teeth, and to her, his long hair looked more unkempt than glam rock. But his grungy appearance was almost always paired with a guitar or a motorcycle, and she knew Michelle was drawn to musicians and preferred boys who were a little older.

After three weeks of friendship, Leo and Michelle finally acknowledged their feelings for each other. Leo, however, wasn’t sure how to proceed. The weight of Manny’s four-year sentence hung over him. He knew that what he had with Michelle was special, and he felt that Manny hadn’t valued the relationship in the way he was prepared to. Manny, a good-looking, blond surfer type, got plenty of attention from girls, and Leo suspected he saw Michelle as just another girl in his lineup. But to Leo, Michelle was someone special, and he was willing to fight for her.

“I’d just never had a girlfriend like Michelle,” Leo recalled. “And she was absolutely everything.”

Yet what was expected to be a four-year sentence was reduced to only a few months, and when Manny returned home early, he found that his best friend and his girlfriend had grown close in his absence. He and Michelle briefly considered getting back together, but they quickly realized their relationship had fizzled and that she’d found something meaningful with Leo.

“He didn’t want to be back with her. She didn’t want to be back with him. And I didn’t want to be apart from her,” Leo remembered.

With Manny’s blessing, their friendship blossomed into a romance.

*

In the fall of 2018, Kelsey set up a desk in my small office and began covering the walls with sticky notes and index cards. It wasn’t like what you see on TV—a “murder board” in cork with maps and photographs of suspects and crime scene locations tacked up, with string connecting the elements. Kelsey’s notes and cards helped her keep track of the countless names she’d come across, and she was also building a master timeline of the case, documenting every moment mentioned in trial testimony and police reports. On occasion, I’d joke about true crime tropes and how we were the least likely pair to be trying to solve a murder. But Kelsey was acutely aware that we were investigating a heinous crime involving a young white girl and a possible serial killer—two of the most common tropes in true crime—and she often reminded me how important it was to treat the subject matter with care.

Day after day and side by side, we sifted through every legal document available through the Polk County Clerk’s online portal of the Leo Schofield case. As someone used to going it alone for the research and investigation necessary for my books, I found Kelsey’s curiosity infectious. Together, we were learning about the Florida Rules of Criminal Procedure, about 3.850 motions for post-conviction relief, and about presumptive tests for blood. Kelsey read every newspaper article and deposition on the case that she could find, and often I’d get a text from her about something she’d discovered.

“You won’t believe this,” she’d text, sending me a screenshot of something she’d just found. As the weeks passed, I noted Kelsey’s urgent investment in the case—not just in the legal complexities, but in the people caught in its web. Her curiosity, empathy, and commitment to seeking justice made it impossible not to be drawn in.

In February 2019, I traveled down to Clearwater, Florida, for another talk. Judge Cupp had been following me online and had seen an announcement of my appearance there. He texted me, saying he’d make the three-hour drive from his house in Hendry County if I had some time to meet with him. I agreed to have breakfast with him at my hotel.

As my eyes scanned the restaurant, I noticed a gray-haired man in a Muhammad Ali T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops. He was wearing a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap turned backward, and he walked straight toward me. It was Judge Cupp. I had barely recognized him from the last time we met. He sat down with me and ordered an orange juice and nothing else.

I informed Judge Cupp that my research assistant, Kelsey, and I had read pretty much everything we could find and that I was interested in learning more about Leo’s story. His expression suddenly changed, as if he’d been caught off guard and had been expecting to have to work hard to convince me to write about the case.

I told the judge I was thinking about writing a feature story on Leo’s case, maybe for The New York Times Magazine or a place like the Marshall Project. When I asked him where he thought I should go next, he gave me a broad smile.

“I think you should talk to Leo,” he said.

__________________________________

Excerpted from Bone Valley: A True Story of Injustice and Redemption in the Heart of Florida by Gilbert King. Copyright © 2025 by Gilbert King. Reprinted with Permission from Flatiron Books. All rights reserved.