Where Is Leo Schofield’s Dad? Is He Still Alive?

Schofield was born in the New South Wales town of Brewarrina, the son of a football-obsessed publican. (The football code is unknown, although based on the area and date, it is likely to have been rugby league.) He attended Christian Brothers’ High School in Lewisham and began his first employment as a 14-year-old in the haberdashery section of Grace Brothers, an Australian retail brand, in 1949.

He began his career in journalism in the 1970s with the Sunday Australian, which later merged with the Sunday Telegraph. Over the course of two decades, he also contributed to various other publications, including The Australian, Vogue, The Bulletin, and The Sydney Morning Herald. Schofield founded The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide in 1984, along with co-editors David Dale and Jenna Price, and served as editor until the ninth edition was published in 1993.

Between 1993 and 1996, he was the creative director of the Melbourne International Arts Festival. He took over as artistic director of the Sydney Festival in 1997 (between 1998 and 2001), and he was also the creative director of the 2000 Summer Olympics and the 2000 Summer Paralympics arts festivals.

Schofield appeared as a judge on the Australian version of the cooking show Iron Chef in 2010.

He has served on the boards of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (inaugural Chairman from 1996 to 2000), the Centennial Park Trust, the National Trust of Australia (NSW), and the Powerhouse Museum, the Dame Joan Hammond Foundation, Melbourne’s Old Treasury Building, and the Sydney Opera House Trust, among others.

Schofield and John Fairfax and Sons Limited were named as defendants in the Blue Angel slander action in 1989. Schofield described a lobster dish as “…near to culinary crime” in a review of the lunch published in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1984. He said that it had been “…roasted until every drop of juice and joy in the animal had been successfully eradicated… leaving a charred husk of a shell with meat that may have been albino walrus.” When it was discovered that Schofield and Fairfax had defamed the Blue Angel restaurant, a damages award of A$100,000 plus interest was made against them.

Schofield criticized Tasmania in the Sydney press in 2015 after failing to get extra funding for the Hobart Baroque Festival, labeling the island state’s officials and inhabitants who had previously financed his music festival “dregs, bogans, and third-generation morons.” Leading Tasmanian and Australian artistic icons, as well as political leaders, slammed Schofield’s remarks. Schofield’s opinions were slammed as “churlish, gauche, and unforgivably little” by noted Tasmanian author Bradley Trevor Greive, with several arts observers condemning Schofield’s words as very insulting, petulant, unseemly, and divisive. Tasmanian Premier Will Hodgman issued an official statement touting Tasmania’s dedication to the arts and his government’s “support [of] spectacular events and festivals.” Hodgman also remarked that “Leo Schofield’s views were insulting, uninformed, and completely out of sync with what the vast majority of people are saying about Tasmania.”

Schofield later claimed to be on antidepressants and drinking excessively. Schofield apologized unequivocally in an article published on the Tasmanian Times website for his “ill-considered, intemperate, and inelegant statements.” Schofield later relocated the Baroque Festival to Brisbane, where, according to Luke Martin of the Tourism Industry Council of Tasmania, who accused Schofield of “blatant mistruths,” the Queensland-based festival program received exactly the same amount of funding that prompted Schofield’s embarrassing public outburst against Tasmania. The opening night of the 2016 Brisbane Baroque Festival was picketed by an informal Tasmanian pro-arts performance group known as “Leo’s Bogan Brigade,” who exploited the media attention focused on Schofield’s critical statements as a positive opportunity to promote young and upcoming Tasmanian artists.

The abduction and death of 18-year-old Michelle Saum Schofield in 1987 has truly perplexed the entire nation for decades due to the numerous twists and turns. After all, as documented in ’20/20: Last Seen In Lakeland,’ while her husband Leo Schofield has since been convicted of her murder, there is still a chance that someone else is to blame. But, for the time being, if you’d want to learn more about the man who eventually discovered her remains — the newlywed’s father-in-law, Leo Schofield Sr. — we’ve got the information for you.

Who exactly is Leo Schofield Sr.?

While the specifics of Leo’s personal and professional experiences before to the incident are unknown, we do know that the Schofields moved to Florida from Massachusetts in the early 1980s. They appeared to be an almost perfect big, happy family, but things changed when his namesake’s wife of just over six months mysteriously vanished on the evening of February 24, 1987. That’s because, despite the fact that his son was the one who contacted him and the police just after midnight to request an immediate search for her, he was also the one who was soon convicted.

In terms of Leo Srrole, .’s he’d abandoned everything to drive around town with his son, looking for Michelle no matter the time, before assisting him in making a few calls to neighboring hospitals and her parents. His wife took over a couple of hours later, only for him to rejoin the search the next morning and purportedly continue helping out, resulting in the retrieval of her bloodied remains on the 27th. During his son’s 1989 trial, he claimed that a “inner power” or God had sent him to the canal along State Road 33, where he discovered his daughter-in-law beneath a piece of plywood.

While the specifics of Leo’s personal and professional experiences before to the incident are unknown, we do know that the Schofields moved to Florida from Massachusetts in the early 1980s. They appeared to be an almost perfect big, happy family, but things changed when his namesake’s wife of just over six months mysteriously vanished on the evening of February 24, 1987. That’s because, despite the fact that his son was the one who contacted him and the police just after midnight to request an immediate search for her, he was also the one who was soon convicted.

In terms of Leo Srrole, .’s he’d abandoned everything to drive around town with his son, looking for Michelle no matter the time, before assisting him in making a few calls to neighboring hospitals and her parents. His wife took over a couple of hours later, only for him to rejoin the search the next morning and purportedly continue helping out, resulting in the retrieval of her bloodied remains on the 27th. During his son’s 1989 trial, he claimed that a “inner power” or God had sent him to the canal along State Road 33, where he discovered his daughter-in-law beneath a piece of plywood.