John Aguero of Florida: Schofield Case, Misconduct, and Death

John Aguero was a Florida prosecutor who spent 28 years with the Polk County State Attorney’s Office in the 10th Judicial Circuit, where he ran the homicide division and tried 64 first-degree murder cases, winning 60 convictions. He handled some of the region’s most prominent killings, from the thallium poisoning of Peggy Carr to a quadruple execution-style murder at a Bartow manufacturing plant. His most contested case, the 1989 conviction of Leo Schofield, continues to draw scrutiny years after Aguero’s death in 2017.¹

Background and Career

Raised in the Florida Keys, Aguero was hired by the Polk County State Attorney’s Office on August 14, 1985. He rose to direct the homicide division. Colleagues described him as a “gifted trial lawyer,” an “incredible strategist,” and a “tenacious fighter” known for thorough preparation and attention to victims’ families.¹

He retired in October 2014 and returned about a year later on a part-time basis to mentor younger prosecutors in trial work.¹

The Leo Schofield Case

Aguero prosecuted Leo Schofield in 1989 for the murder of Schofield’s wife, Michelle, who was killed on February 24, 1987. Schofield was 21 at the time and has always maintained his innocence.

A Circumstantial Trial

Aguero initially sought the death penalty. The state’s case had no physical evidence and no eyewitnesses tying Schofield to the killing. Aguero built the prosecution around 21 witnesses portraying Schofield as a violent husband in a volatile marriage.² A neighbor, Alice Scott, said she saw Schofield carrying a heavy object to his car trunk, and two fishermen reported seeing vehicles near the drainage canal where Michelle’s body was found that matched vehicles owned by Schofield and his father.³ After a two-week trial in March 1989, a jury convicted Schofield of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life.

Allegations Against Aguero

Schofield later alleged that before trial, Aguero visited him in the Polk County Jail without his defense attorney present, suggested Schofield’s father was the real killer, and offered to drop the charges if Schofield testified against him. Schofield said that when he refused, Aguero slammed his hand on the table and told him, “I’m going to put you in the electric chair.” Legal experts who reviewed the account for the Bone Valley podcast called the alleged contact a potential Sixth Amendment violation and “completely unethical.”⁴ Records of the visit no longer exist. Aguero also offered a plea to second-degree murder with a 12-year sentence, which Schofield’s attorney rejected without consulting him.

Jeremy Scott and the Push for Exoneration

In 2004, advances in fingerprint technology identified prints belonging to Jeremy Scott in Michelle Schofield’s abandoned car, near blood evidence. Scott was serving a life sentence for the 1988 murder of Donald Moorehead, had a criminal history dating to age 11, and lived less than two miles from where Michelle’s body was found.⁵² In 2005, Aguero offered Scott immunity if he confessed to Michelle’s murder, but Scott refused.³

In 2016, Scott told Schofield’s attorney that he had killed Michelle. At a 2017 evidentiary hearing, Scott testified under oath that he committed the murder, then reversed himself under cross-examination and said, “I didn’t do that.” The presiding judge found his testimony not credible, and courts denied requests for a new trial in both 2017 and 2019.⁶

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King brought the case to a national audience through the podcast Bone Valley. After being denied parole in 2023, Schofield was granted parole and released on April 30, 2024, having spent more than 36 years in prison. He remains legally guilty, and his legal team, which includes the Florida Innocence Project, continues to pursue exoneration.⁶² Jeremy Scott died in prison in September 2025 at age 56, never charged in Michelle Schofield’s death.⁷

George Trepal and the Thallium Poisoning

In 1991, Aguero secured the capital conviction of George Trepal, a chemist and Mensa member, for the murder of neighbor Peggy Carr. Carr died in 1988, five months after drinking Coca-Cola laced with thallium. Prosecutors alleged Trepal took soft drinks from Carr’s carport, added the poison, and returned them.⁸ Trepal never confessed. The investigation depended heavily on Polk County Sheriff’s Office investigator Susan Goreck, who worked undercover, befriended Trepal, and gained access to his home, where thallium was found. A jury convicted Trepal of first-degree murder, six counts of attempted first-degree murder, seven counts of poisoning food or water, and one count of tampering with a consumer product, and he was sentenced to death.⁹

The case later drew appellate scrutiny over the testimony of FBI chemist Roger Martz. A lower court found Martz had “misled” the jury by testifying that known Coca-Cola contained no nitrate, when his own undisclosed testing had revealed it was present, and concluded “the data available at the time of trial did not support the opinion Martz offered and that he knew it.”¹⁰ Aguero acknowledged at an evidentiary hearing that in any new trial, Martz would not testify the same way about the nitrate test. The Eleventh Circuit denied Trepal’s habeas petition in 2012.⁹

Nelson Serrano and the Erie Manufacturing Murders

Aguero prosecuted Nelson Serrano for the 1997 execution-style killings of four people at Erie Manufacturing in Bartow: George Gonsalves, Frank Dosso, Diane Dosso Patisso, and George Patisso Jr. Prosecutors argued Serrano traveled from Atlanta using aliases to carry out the murders. He fled to Ecuador, was deported in 2002, and after an eight-week trial was convicted in 2006. The jury recommended death 9 to 3, and the judge imposed four death sentences.¹¹

The Florida Supreme Court affirmed the convictions in 2011 but vacated the death sentences in 2017 and ordered a new penalty phase, in part because of evolving standards on jury unanimity in capital sentencing.¹² The resentencing never happened. Serrano died on August 8, 2024, at 85, while hospitalized with a terminal condition.¹³

Mark Poole and a Reversed Death Sentence

Aguero prosecuted Mark Anthony Poole for a 2001 home invasion in Polk County in which Noah Scott was beaten to death with a tire iron and Scott’s fiancée was sexually assaulted and left for dead. Poole was convicted of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, sexual battery, armed burglary, and armed robbery, and in 2005 a jury unanimously recommended death.¹⁴

The Florida Supreme Court overturned Poole’s death sentence in 2008 because of Aguero’s conduct during the penalty phase. Despite having agreed not to raise Poole’s prior criminal history, Aguero asked a defense witness whether he knew about Poole’s prior arrests in South Carolina, Texas, and Georgia. The court found that “by this point, the damage had been done and the jury knew that Poole had a criminal history.”¹⁴ The convictions stood, and the case went back for a new sentencing.

At the 2011 resentencing, again handled by Aguero, a jury recommended death 11 to 1. The defense raised further concerns, including allegations that his peremptory strikes of African-American jurors were pretextual, that he made improper remarks about sentencing authority requiring judicial correction, and that he introduced the victim’s severed fingertip over objections that it was inflammatory.¹⁵ The Florida Supreme Court upheld the resentencing in 2014. A trial court briefly vacated the sentence again in 2016 under evolving jury-unanimity standards, and the Florida Supreme Court reinstated it in January 2020.¹⁶

Leon Davis Jr.

Aguero convicted Leon Davis Jr. in May 2011 for the 2007 robbery and murder of two insurance office clerks in Lake Wales, and Davis was sentenced to death. Colleagues cited the Davis prosecution as one of his most significant career achievements.¹⁷¹

2011 Domestic Battery Arrest

Days after the Davis sentencing, Aguero was arrested on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge. According to the arrest report, he grabbed his estranged wife, Kimberly Aguero, by the left arm and pushed her out of their Auburndale home. The couple was going through a divorce, and the report noted both had been drinking. A responding deputy observed no visible injuries.¹⁷

Aguero was held without bond until his first appearance, where Polk County Judge Susan Barber Flood released him without bail under a no-contact order. Sam Cardinale, executive director of the State Attorney’s Office, said Aguero had not been suspended and that it was “too early” to determine any administrative action. He kept working and was scheduled to begin prosecuting another murder within weeks.¹⁸

Death

Aguero fell ill in late June 2017 while visiting his daughter Denise in Morocco. He was hospitalized, spent three days in intensive care, and died on July 7, 2017, at 64. He was survived by three daughters and a granddaughter.¹ Within the Polk County legal community he was remembered as a relentless and effective trial lawyer. The Schofield case, still unresolved, keeps open the question of whether his reliance on character evidence over forensic proof contributed to a wrongful conviction.⁶

1
The Ledger. Longtime Polk Prosecutor John Aguero Dies Abroad
2
ABC News. Man Convicted of Wife’s 1987 Murder Shares Days With Family
3
The Ledger. Convicted Murderer Contradicts Himself on Stand
4
iHeartRadio. Bone Valley – Chapter 3: Trial by Ambush
5
Tampa Bay Times. Who Is Jeremy Scott? How Many Murders Did He Commit?
6
Florida Innocence Project. Leo Schofield
7
WUSF. Author Gilbert King: Jeremy Scott Died in Prison
8
The Ledger. Program Will Recall Murder Trial of George Trepal After 21 Years on Death Row
9
FindLaw. Trepal v. Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections
10
FSU Law Library. Trepal v. State, Florida Supreme Court Docket 89710
11
The Ledger. Nelson Serrano Convicted, Execution-Style
12
FindLaw. Serrano v. State, No. SC15-258
13
Yahoo News. Nelson Serrano, Death Row, 1997
14
The Ledger. Murderer’s Death Penalty Overturned
15
FSU Law Library. Poole v. State, Initial Brief of Appellant
16
FindLaw. State v. Poole
17
The Ledger. Local Prosecutor Arrested on Domestic Battery Charge
18
The Ledger. Prosecutor Faces Battery Charge