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Leo Schofield maintained he was innocent all along in his wife’s 1987 murder. For “Bone Valley,” a podcast about the case, he connected with the man who said he did it.
April 9, 2025Updated 3:41 p.m. ET
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 he was innocent — 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.
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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.
