EP. 183: OHIO - The 11-Year-Old Who Helped Solve His Mom's Murder
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The new year is supposed to represent a clean slate, new goals and resolutions, better habits, a fresh start.

Many people spend some time reflecting on the year behind them and make plans on how they're going to make the next year even better. That was definitely the case for a man named Jack Boyle Jr. in 1989. That had been a difficult year for Jack. For months, he had been looking at his life in 1989

and picturing how different things could be for him in 1990. But the only thing standing in the way of this new glamorous life was Noreen Boyle, Jack's wife. So this is the story of how Noreen Boyle suddenly vanished in the early morning hours of January 1st,

It's also a story about how their 11-year-old son Collier would help solve his mother's murder. I'm Courtney Browen. And I'm Colin Browen. And today we have the incredible privilege of interviewing Collier Landry. We are so happy to be back after our much-needed break. And we have some great episodes in store for you in 2025. So with that being said, you're listening to Murder in America.

Noreen Marie Schmidt was born on September 28, 1945, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her father, Norbert Schmidt, served in the Marine Corps, but after becoming disabled, he found work at a Philadelphia Naval shipyard as a night warehouseman. Noreen's mother, Marie, worked at a small-town loan and savings company. So, Noreen came from humble beginnings.

Her parents didn't have a lot, but they made it work. Noreen's sister Carol said in an interview with The Plain Dealer that their family would even take in boarders to make ends meet. "Noreen, or Nori as her friends called her, had a number of great qualities. She was kind, generous, smart, thoughtful. But before you even got to know any of these qualities, you would see that she was effortlessly beautiful.

She had this light blonde hair, piercing blue eyes, and a great style that drew people's attention. And on April 23rd, 1962, at just 17 years old, these very qualities would catch the eye of John F. Boyle Jr.,

otherwise known as Jack. Jack would later say that on that beautiful spring day, he and his friends had just arrived at a drive-in diner called The Hot Shop. And all of a sudden, he sees a car of girls pull up next to them. Jack and his friends were very interested in this group of pretty girls, and they all rolled their windows down and started introducing themselves. But Jack had his eyes set on the beautiful blonde sitting in the back seat.

He would later write a letter to his son Collier explaining this interaction. In it, Jack says, quote, "When everyone was exchanging names, all I saw was her. I said to her, 'Hey, you in the back seat,

"What's your name?" In true mommy fashion, she pulled the glasses down over the bridge of her nose, looked up over them at me and said, "Noreen, what's yours?" After that time, we were inseparable for the rest of our lives." And that was true. After meeting that day at the drive-in diner, Jack and Noreen were inseparable and they both came from similar backgrounds.

According to the Boyle family, Jack's father, John F. Boyle Sr., was a newspaper reporter. His mother, Christine Boyle, worked as a sales clerk at a local department store, so he too came from a working middle-class family. But Jack was ashamed of his upbringing.

He didn't like that he came from humble beginnings. So, throughout his life, he worked hard to really make something of himself. You see, the one thing about both Jack and Noreen was that they were both highly intelligent. After high school, they both attended the University of Pennsylvania, which is an Ivy League school. Noreen would end up graduating from UPenn, and from there, she became a successful dental hygienist.

On June 1st, 1968, at 23 years old, Noreen and Jack would get married in what Jack described as the downstairs, quote, poor person's church in Penwyn, Pennsylvania. And from the outside looking in, they had an incredible life ahead of them. Jack was attending medical school on his way to becoming a doctor. And while he worked on that, Noreen supported them by working as a dental hygienist.

Here is Jack and Noreen's son Collier talking about his parents' life during this time. Both of my parents were very intelligent people. They graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, you know, which is an Ivy League school. They're both from, you know, poor families in Philadelphia. And they, you know, but my, and my, you know, one of the things I found out when I was making the film is my mother supported my father financially.

while he was in med school because she graduated with a degree from Penn in dental hydronistry. So she went off and was working and was making like $25 an hour in the 60s and 70s in Philadelphia. And that's pretty good money.

Noreen was a hard worker with a good head on her shoulders. She was also very supportive of her husband's career. So she was more than willing to support them while he worked on becoming a doctor. But medical school is not easy. It's a long and tiring journey. In

In fact, for the first nearly 10 years of their marriage, Jack was in school. He ended up graduating from UP in 1973 with a bachelor's degree in biology. And four years after that, he finally graduated from the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine with his medical degree.

Now from there, Jack would actually serve as a doctor in the Navy Reserve for two years. And then the couple moved to Dahlgren, Virginia, where Jack worked at the Naval Surface Weapons Center. But this was also a very monumental time in their lives because in 1978, Jack and Noreen gave birth to their son, Collier Landry Boyle. And for Noreen, he was her entire world.

Jack would later say that he and Noreen had tried to conceive for many years with no luck.

So when Collier was born, they were over the moon. Noreen was a wonderful mother. She loved Collier with her whole being. And for the first five years of Collier's life, his memories are all with his mom growing up in Virginia. But soon enough, their family was given a great opportunity. Jack was offered a position at a hospital in Mansfield, Ohio. So from there, their family of three made the move.

However, the people of Mansfield had no idea that this picture-perfect family would one day change their town forever. - Jack Boyle was known to be a great doctor in Mansfield. He took great care of all of his patients. He was good at what he did.

but his coworkers had a different perception of him. According to Jack's son Collier, his dad had only worked at this hospital in Mansfield for about two years before he was kicked out. Now, some of the things his coworkers noticed about him was that he was a womanizer. Everyone knew that Jack was married, but that didn't stop him from pursuing other women. And the main reason Jack was fired from this hospital was because he had nearly 200 sexual harassment complaints against him.

So, from there, Jack just decided to open his own private practice, a place where he was the boss, and he didn't have to answer to anyone. And it's here where his career and success skyrocketed. In fact, at the time, 1 in 13 residents in Mansfield were reportedly patients of Dr. Boyle. People described him as empathetic, compassionate, and professional.

Now, with Jack working as a doctor, he was bringing in more money than they ever had. He and Noreen were able to purchase a beautiful home in town. They had a vacation condo on Lake Erie, two nice BMWs, and they could afford all of the luxury clothes and jewelry that money could buy. They were a very privileged family, which was a stark difference from Jack and Noreen's upbringings.

But even so, Collier said that his mother was one of the most generous people he had ever met. Doreen wanted Collier to know that even when you have money and you're able to afford all these things, you have to give to others. Here is a memory he has of his mom growing up. This is from my lens as an 11-year-old child, you know, up until age 11, is that my mother was a kind person.

generous, beautiful human being who did her best to make everyone feel welcome in her presence, had a smile that would light up a room, and was a genuinely kind and generous person with her time, with her knowledge, with any financial benefits she might have. She was just one of those people. I remember

you know, the holidays and you know, are coming up and I can remember every year for Christmas, you know, there's like Toys for Tots, right? And my mother would make me go downstairs to my toy box and I would have to get out half my toys to donate. And it wasn't just like the ones, because she knew which ones I played with too. I had to pick some of the ones that I played with that were really special to me because she wanted me to

give something up to feel that so I know what it's like to give something because other children were not as fortunate as I was and That was something she wanted me to learn and to really understand is realize how fortunate you are and the gift that you can give people and

Noreen was working hard to make sure her son grew up with the values that she had. But Collier's father, Jack, wasn't as virtuous. Not only was he a womanizer, but he was also a compulsive liar.

My father would just make up stories about everything I was telling on the podcast. Like I remember we went to this, we had, we had gone to this country club up on Lake Erie and on Catawba Island. And my father was telling this story with people that we were at dinner with of how he was shot down in Vietnam over the South China Sea. He was a naval fighter pilot flying an F-4 Phantom, shot down over the South China Sea.

His plane tails, it doesn't tailspin, but it like a turntables and crashes into the ocean. He couldn't open the ejection hatch. He cuts his way out of the aircraft with a knife, his trusty Bowie knife, government issued, you know, naval issued and swims two miles to shore, lives on slugs and bark for two days and, you know, the foliage there and then is rescued.

And he's a war hero. I mean, like some of these stories were so crazy. And I remember, you know, I remember hearing it as a kid, but

Jack told many lies to the people around them. He said his mother was a Vogue model and his father was an industrialist who had come from a long line of fortune. He

He lied about Noreen's upbringing too, telling people that she grew up in a mansion in Philadelphia. He made it seem like he and Noreen came from these wealthy families, when in reality, that just wasn't the case. "When we moved to Mansell, there were a lot of backstories that were created about their lives that didn't exist. I think they were maybe really almost embarrassed of their humble beginnings or their poor backgrounds, which they shouldn't have been at all. They should have worn it as a badge of honor, in my opinion. But it was a different time then."

But as a little boy, Collier would hear these stories of his dad being this war hero, a naval fighter pilot, and he believed him. After all, parents aren't supposed to lie. Collier also saw what a great doctor his father was and how much his patients loved him. But on the other hand, Collier also saw a very different side of his father, a side that no one else in Mansfield was able to see.

What I saw as a child was, look, my father was abusive. He was apoplectic. He was a rageaholic. He abused, you know, physically, mentally, verbally, my mother and I for years and years and years and years. Now Collier would go on to create a documentary about his family's story called A Murder in Mansfield.

And it is truly one of the best true crime documentaries I have ever seen. So we will be tagging it below in the show notes. Everyone please go and watch it. I promise it is so, so good.

But in it, Collier really lays out just how horrible his father's abuse was. Jack was known to easily fly off the handle over minor inconveniences and would often bear the brunt of his wrath. At times, Jack would call his son a pussy, fat, stupid, a sissy, or even the F-slur. Collier has one memory of his dad throwing their family dog, Gowdy, across the room.

Bouts of violence were a common occurrence in their household. During another instance, Jack became enraged because their home computer speakers had stopped working and he took that anger out on Collier. Here is Collier at just 11 years old talking about this experience. - I was sitting in the computer and he was watching a movie.

And I didn't want his movie to be interrupted. The speaker plug was pulled out so it wouldn't be too loud. And he came in and he says, "Why aren't the speakers working?" And I said, "Well, I didn't even have any time to explain." He says, "Move out of the way." And he pushed me out of the computer chair and shoved me to the floor. And then he sat down in the chair and shoved the plug into my face and then shoved it in the back of the computer.

And then next he just started ripping off all the computer games and throwing them at my head and at my shoulders and at my back and everything. Throwing them at me and I dodged most of them and they hit the door and chipped off the paint. Then he started making me call myself a stupid little fat boy. Making me run around all over the house.

And here's Collier talking with us about his father's abuse. I had to deal with this rageaholic, this up and down, you know, rollercoaster of the temper, and then I'm sorry, and then him running around throwing things at me, calling me a stupid little fat boy because I was a chubby little kid because I had to take steroids all the time for my asthma.

all this stuff and just up and down, you know, and I was terrified of him. - Both Collier and Noreen suffered from this abuse for years, but when he was home, there was hardly ever peace. Because of this, Collier and his mother grew really close. They relied on each other and they did everything together

In an interview with the New York Post, Collier stated: "My mother always took me shopping. I think that was her hobby. She knew I was bored, so she'd make the day end up as a life lesson or an educational experience. She'd take me to an art museum or a science museum. We'd talk to each other through a giant echo tube at the Center of Science and Industry in Columbus.

Noreen was doing everything she could to give her son a good life with the circumstances they were given. His mom was his safe space, the one person who loved him unconditionally. But at the end of the day, she was suffering too. Carol Finley, Noreen's sister, told The Plain Dealer, quote, "'My sister had built up such a facade.'"

She didn't like to admit that life wasn't perfect for her. But I always sensed this underlying sadness. Even with her material wealth, she wasn't happy." And how could she be? Not only was Jack abusing her and Collier, but he was incredibly unfaithful to her throughout their entire marriage. Some could even call him a chronic cheater.

One of Noreen's closest friends, a woman named Shelly Bowen, would later say that when Collier was younger, Noreen and Jack went to one of his school plays that he was performing in. And during the performance, Jack stood up and left to go take a phone call. After he disappeared, Noreen rolled her eyes and told Shelly nonchalantly, quote, that's his girlfriend, end quote.

Jack reportedly had dozens of girlfriends over his 20-year marriage to Noreen, and she was very aware of them. According to her friends, she had tried to leave Jack over his infidelity, but in response, he threatened to stop supporting her in Collier, which is a scary position to be in.

Even further, Jack had a lot of excuses for his affairs. He even told Noreen that he couldn't help sleeping around and that it was an addiction. So, over time, Noreen had grown numb to her husband's infidelity. But she did have one rule. She knew that Jack was going to cheat on her whether she liked it or not. So the one thing she asked of him was to leave Collier out of it. She didn't want their son subjected to Jack's infidelity. But soon enough, Jack would even break that promise.

At this point in Noreen's life, things were really hard. On the outside looking in, they were the perfect family. They had status, money, a nice home, luxury cars, a beautiful family, everything she had ever dreamed of. But she was also very unhappy. Noreen knew that leaving Jack meant that her entire life would have to change. And Jack made it very clear that if she ever left him,

he would take everything from her. So Noreen made the difficult decision to stay in her marriage for the sake of her family and to distract herself from her husband's abuse. Noreen spent as much time with her son as she could. She also got involved in her community. She was a member of the Mansfield Garden Club. She helped others with knitting and arts and crafts. And she was very involved with Collier's school activities. But something was still missing from her life.

Noreen wanted another child, specifically a daughter. But by 1989, she was in her mid 40s. She and Jack had already had trouble conceiving in the past, so she knew having a child of her own wouldn't be likely. So that's when she decided to start the adoption process.

I don't really know exactly the whole story, but my mother wanted another child. She wasn't, you know, at that time probably able to conceive. She was in her early 40s. My mother wanted to be able to have a little girl, I think probably because she was like, well, I'm not having a kid with this man again. And that's what she wanted as part of her, you know, part of like her needs that needed to be met. So they adopted her and then all this just started unfolding.

In February of 1989, Noreen packed up her things and left for Taiwan to adopt a little girl named Elizabeth. And two weeks later, she brought her home to Mansfield, Ohio. Now, I believe at the time of her adoption, Elizabeth was just two years old. And perhaps Noreen thought that bringing another child into the picture would help their family come together. It surely would help heal Noreen's heart. After all, her children were her whole world.

But during this time, Jack's attention was on someone else. A new woman had entered his life. It was 28-year-old Sherry Campbell, and her entrance into Jack's life would change everything for the Boyle family.

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It was Memorial Day weekend of 1989. Collier was 11 years old and his father decided to take him out that weekend for a party. Now, Jack hardly ever spent time with his son, so this was a rare occasion. However, he didn't go to this party so that Collier could have a good time. He went there because that's where his girlfriend was spending Memorial Day weekend.

and Jack wanted to see her. Jack Boyle was about to break the one rule that his wife, Noreen, had given him, and that rule was don't involve the kids in your affairs. I met his girlfriend in Memorial Day weekend of 1989. I was 11 years old.

He took me to this party and it was like around people I had never been around. They were kind of like, you know, lived out in the sticks. There was like racing quads, playing volleyball, having a pig roast. And these are not the typical people my parents associated with. I was riding around the quad and it was fun and all that. And my father, I see he introduced me to this woman named Sherry Campbell.

And she had children and I was playing with their kids. I see my father walking around and he puts his arm around her. And I was like, oh, we're walking around this lake. I'm skipping stones with the kids. And I was like, oh, that's kind of weird. And I asked him later, you know, we were driving home. I said, you know, what, what's, who was that? What he goes, oh, that's a patient of daddy's and she's terminally ill. So daddy was comforting her. And I was like, oh, okay.

And again, being 11 years old, Collier believed him. But a few weeks later, when Father's Day rolled around, Collier would see Sherry Campbell again. And this time, he knew deep down that something wasn't right. Father's Day, you know, a few weeks later, my father asked me to come to his office with him. And then we go and we stop by the suntan parlor and Sherry comes out with two remote control cars.

And she gives me the remote and I'm like, oh, I remember this woman and poor thing, but oh, she gave me a radio control car. I'm like 11. I'm like stoked, right? I got a radio control car. It's Father's Day, right? And I'm playing with a radio control car, but I look at her and I see on her ring finger, she has a ring.

And it was a very unique ring. I'd never seen it before, only on my mother's finger. And I looked at her and I said, that's interesting ring. My mommy has a ring like that. And she's kind of giggled and looked at my father and it was just like sliding. It was like a diamond that slid back and forth in a shaft. It was a diamond slide ring. And, you know, I played with the radio control car and then I packed it up and my father and I were leaving and I get in his truck and I look through the windshield and he's making out with her. And I'd never seen that before.

And I'm like, oh man. And so my father gets in the car and we're driving home and he goes, okay, bumper, which is my nickname as a kid. He says, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to tell mommy that I took you to my office and I gave you the radio control cars as a present for getting good grades this year. Don't tell her about Sherry. Don't tell her. And I was just like, okay. And of course I'm terrified of my father. So I'm not going to say anything, you know, but I'm also feeling like, okay,

Because I grew up and I always, I think everyone who grows up with their childhood, like this is a normal childhood, right? Like this is a normal childhood. And so I just think, okay, this is what it is. And then to see that my father kissing another woman, I'm thinking back to myself, like I had friends whose fathers cheated on their mothers. And so I started thinking, okay, this is...

This is, okay, hold on. Like I'm now experiencing what my friends have told me about when their parents got a divorce. - 11 year old Collier had just witnessed something that he knew was very wrong, but his father, the man that terrified him, told him not to say anything about it. So Collier was torn. Later that night, he and his parents would go out to a Father's Day dinner as if nothing happened.

But the thought of his dad kissing another woman continued to haunt him. And eventually, Collier knew he had to tell his mother the truth. One day, while he was playing with his remote control car in the driveway, he said he was overcome with guilt. So he went inside and called his mom over to finally tell her what he saw.

I come in and I ask my mother to sit down. I said, "Mommy, I have to tell you something." And I start telling her about Sherry and how I saw him kiss her and about the ring and how I met Sherry a couple months earlier at Memorial Day and this whole thing. And I said, "I think he's having an affair. I don't know."

I saw him kiss her and she, you know, said, well, you know, thank you for being honest with me. I'm not happy you lied to me, but I know why you did because your father told you to and he shouldn't have done that, etc. And then she goes in and she starts screaming on the phone, assuming she's yelling at my father. But that was it. Like they had a deal and the deal was don't involve our kid. Think about the betrayal Noreen felt.

For years, she had put up with her husband's abuse and infidelity, but she always had one rule. Don't involve Collier, something she had specifically told him not to do under any circumstances. She could handle the heartbreak of infidelity, but there was absolutely no reason her son had to be exposed to it.

This time, it didn't matter about the money. Noreen wanted out of her marriage for good. Now, she wouldn't officially file for divorce until November of 1989. And by that time, Noreen was making plans for her new life without her husband. But Collier said that the energy inside of their home around this time was unsettling. There was clear tension between Jack and Noreen. So anytime his father came home from work, they tried to avoid him as much as they could.

My father wasn't around a lot. As I said, he was always like quote on call or he was working or whatever, or he would be sleeping on the couch and watching CNN or whatever, like three in the morning.

That was my perspective on how my father was interacting with my mother. I don't think they slept in the same bedroom for many years. He was at the house less and less, but every time he would come in, there would be an engagement or we would go upstairs so we could avoid him. He was coming in to get his stuff and we would try to have as little interaction with him as possible. Occasionally, Jack would have to take Collier to run some errands, but every time he did, it was a nightmare.

As they would drive in the car together, Jack would tell his son that once the divorce was finalized, Collier and his mother would have nothing. He started telling me, you know, around this time, like he's going to have a, you know, my mother's divorcing him. He's going to make sure that I have the worst life possible, that my mother and I are going to be broke. I'm not going to go to college. I'm going to go to public school because I went to private school at that time.

He's gonna turn the whole world upside down. She's gonna be working at McDonald's by the time he's done with her. We're gonna be on the street, you know, all this stuff. He's not gonna support my college education. And what a wonderful life he's gonna create for Sherry and her kids. And if Jack was making these threats to his 11-year-old son, I can only imagine the things he was saying to Noreen. One thing we know for sure is that she feared for her life. In fact, Noreen started telling friends that if something ever happened to her,

that Jack was responsible. Sadly, she even told this to her 11-year-old son. I remember my mother was really downtrodden. This is right around Thanksgiving of 1989, and she said to me, she picked me up from school, and we were going to go eat at this place called Bob Evans. For those of you who don't know, it's like a Midwestern staple. And she said to me in the car, she goes, Collier, I want you to know something. Your father has mafia connections, and I would never leave you.

And if something happens to me, your father had me killed.

Soon enough, Christmas of 1989 had arrived, and Noreen tried her best to make it special for Collier and Elizabeth. One thing that stuck out to Collier that Christmas is that his mother had given him a Nintendo Entertainment System, which is what all the kids wanted at that age. But as happy as Christmas should be as a child, this holiday was anything but joyful. This impending divorce was about to change their family for good, and Noreen knew that. In addition, Jack had been very angry at the time. Even

Even more so than usual. In his podcast, The Collier Landry Show, Collier recalled playing Double Dragon 2 on his new Nintendo in front of his father. It's a classic game where players defeat enemy after enemy to proceed to the next level. But after watching Collier play that game, Jack snapped at him. I had this fighting game that he had gotten me and he saw it and he goes, this is a violent game. I would never have got this for you if this was violent. And I'm thinking to myself, you...

would call me a little bitch and a little pussy for covering my eyes when there's a violent scene in a movie or a sex scene. You would pull my eyes down and make me watch it, and now you're upset because I'm playing a video game? Ironically, Jack had been planning something far more violent, and that plan would come to fruition in just a few short days.

On New Year's Eve of 1989, people all around America looked at their clocks and began the countdown into the new year. Usually, when the clock strikes midnight, everyone cheers. They sip their champagne, kiss their loved ones, and they celebrate.

But that wasn't the case in the Boyle household. That night, Collier kissed his mom goodnight and went to bed. But he had no idea that that would be the very last time he would ever see his mom alive. A few hours later, Collier suddenly woke up at around 3 a.m. to the sound of two loud thuds.

Next, he heard his little sister scream. Collier didn't know what to think of the sounds, but they frightened him. And for just a moment, think about what it was like when you were nine, 10, 11 years old, waking up in the dead of night. The shadows made by trees on your window pane are a monster reaching out for you. The click and grind of a radiator was a creature rising from the depths to swallow you whole.

In those moments, most kids only want one thing, the only thing that can soothe their fears, their parents. But for Collier, one of his parents was the monster lurking in the darkness, and he knew it almost as soon as he opened his eyes. After hearing those thuds, followed by a scream, Collier's first fear was that something had happened to his mother.

But then he started hearing footsteps walking towards his bedroom. And in that moment, his second fear was that something was about to happen to him. I'm counting his footsteps that are going down the hallway.

And I'm sleeping and I'm looking at my Batman clock that's on the wall. That's how I know what time it is. And I can see out of my peripheral vision because I always slept with my door open and the feet stop in the doorway. And I recognize my father's shoes. And I'm just, and all I'm saying to myself is like, there's this voice from the universe screaming, don't look up. And I firmly believe that if I had looked up, I wouldn't be sitting here.

As he laid in bed that night, Collier kept his eyes closed. His heart was thudding and his mind was racing, but he didn't dare move. And after what surely felt like an eternity, he finally heard the sounds of his dad walking away. But Collier believes that his father went to his room that night to see if he had heard anything. And if he had, if Collier would have been awake when his dad walked by his bedroom, he believes with his whole heart

that his father would have killed him. The fear that ran through Collier that night was unfathomable, but eventually he fell into an uneasy sleep. The next morning was the very first day of 1990, the day that Collier's life was forever changed. But in the light of day, he made a horrible discovery.

So the morning I rushed to her bedroom, I'm scrummaging through, because the bed was in a state of disarray. My mother always made her bed in the morning and I always made my bed. That's the first thing I do when I get up still. And I'm rummaging through the sheets and I'm looking for blood. And I come downstairs and my father is seated on the couch and he had a towel wrapped around his waist because he had just taken a shower. And I said, where is my mother? And he doesn't look at me, he's watching television. I said, where is my mother? And he looks up to me very coldly and calmly and

He goes, "Well, mommy took a little vacation, Collier, and right then I knew." And then he starts to go into this whole diatribe about how, you know, I started asking him what happened and he said, "Oh, well, you, you, your mother came down. I was sleeping on the couch. We got into an argument. She's hollering at me, Jack this, Jack that about Sherry, about money, about this, about the divorce, about me, all this stuff, right?"

But Collier didn't believe a word of what his father was saying. After all, he never heard his mother screaming that night. He only heard his sister scream and then two loud thuds. So he asked his dad about those thuds. "What was that?" he asked. Jack claimed that Noreen got mad and threw her purse at him and the purse hit the wall. Then from there, he said that Noreen left the house.

But as Jack is explaining this to him, Collier knows that that isn't true. And what his dad does next confirms this even further. It starts into this whole, well, you know, we're not going to call the police. We're not going to call the FBI. And when I said the FBI, I remember thinking like, what is this like escalating? Like, this is weird. And by that time, my grandmother is there and he's telling the whole story to her.

And he goes and gets dressed, and he's then like, no, we're not going to call the police. And I'm thinking to myself, as soon as you leave, I'm calling someone. Now, Collier was a very smart kid. Back around Thanksgiving, when his mom told him that if anything happened to her, it was his father, Collier went home and wrote down the phone numbers of Noreen's friends, just in case he would ever need it.

After that, he even hid the phone numbers in one of his stuffed animals so his dad wouldn't find it. And after hearing this story that his mom randomly left for a vacation in the middle of the night, Collier knew it was time to get help. So when his dad and grandma weren't looking, he grabbed their cordless phone and snuck over to the bathroom. Painstakingly and trying not to get caught, he told each friend that answered that he didn't know where his mom was or what had happened to her. From there, one of his mother's friends called the police.

Soon after, two uniformed officers arrive at their home. After getting the phone call from one of Noreen's friends, they came to the house to check things out. But sure enough, when they questioned Jack about his wife's whereabouts, he remained calm and collected. He told the officers that he had fallen asleep on the couch downstairs the night before, and he woke up to his wife yelling at him. He said that Noreen was throwing things at him, completely irate.

From there, she stormed out of the house and got into a car that he didn't recognize. And to Collier's shock, the police believed Jack's story. Given the rocky relationship that Jack disclosed to them, it wasn't unusual for one spouse to storm off and then return after they cooled off. In addition, it certainly helped that Jack was a doctor and that he maintained a relaxed, calm composure. He certainly didn't scream, nervous, guilty husband.

After the police left, Collier didn't know how his dad was going to react. Was he going to be mad at him for telling people that his mom was missing? Was he going to hurt him? But surprisingly, Collier said that his dad was acting pretty passive. He even started saying things like,

I wonder where mommy is. Where do you think she went? Jack was hypothesizing on where Noreen could have traveled to, but Collier knew that his mom was not on vacation. And strangely enough,

The day after his mom disappeared, his dad's mistress came over. Now, Sherry Campbell had never been by their house before, but on this day, she came over with a pot roast and ate dinner as if she was a part of the family now. Call your new deep down that something wasn't right here. If his mom was actually on vacation and would be coming home soon like his father claimed,

Why would he be inviting Sherry over? So from here, Collier called his mother's friends yet again. This time, they informed him that they had filed a missing persons report, but Collier was adamant that his mother did not run off. "My dad did something to her," he said. So the following day, another police officer came by their house. - A police detective shows up at our door. His name is Lieutenant Detective David Messmore.

And he charms his way in with my grandmother and I, and I'm like, yeah, come on in, come on in. And my grandmother is livid. And she's like, I'm going to call my son. He's a doctor. You need to stop harassing us. So she goes for the phone. I grab him. I say, look, I can't talk here. It's not safe, but I go back to school tomorrow. Give me your card. I'm going to call you from school. And he's like, okay. I was like, you know, my mother would never leave me. My father's done something to her, but I can't talk here.

So at just 11 years old, Collier comes up with a plan to call David Messmore while he's at school. However, school doesn't start for a couple more days, so he'd have to wait.

In the meantime, David Messmore kept showing up to the Boyle household to get answers. He knew that there was definitely more to this story, but every time he came by, Jack's lawyer was there and they would always shoo him away saying that Jack was not speaking to law enforcement. But luckily for Collier, winter break came to an end.

And as soon as he arrived at school that week, he marched right over to the principal's office and placed the call to David Messmore. Upon getting the call, Messmore immediately made his way over to Collier School. And once there, Collier told him everything. So the next day, I go back to school. I call Dave. I say, come down here. We meet. I lay out for him everything. Everything. Everything.

having to do with my parents' history, my father's proclivity for violence, everything about Sherry, like everything I can remember about my parents, everything that happened that night, my father, all this stuff, right? And I said, look, when I go home, while my grandfather's downstairs dealing with my sister or making dinner, I'm going to go upstairs and pull

the crawl space, pull the bookshelves out of the wall where the crawl space is and start looking for my mother's body. And I'm going to look for her purse that I know she would never leave the house without. See if I can find that. And I start laying out this plan on how I'm going to investigate.

Collier was putting his life at risk. Every moment he could, he was searching his home for evidence. He didn't know exactly what he was looking for. At first, he looked for his mother's body, but then he started looking for any other evidence he could find. He went through Noreen's clothes looking for blood,

he pulled out furniture and he searched every inch of their house collier was doing everything in his power to help with the investigation but noreen wasn't there she had been missing for days now and hadn't returned home like jack said she would and with every passing day the likelihood of her coming home alive was growing thin but no one else in mansfield seemed to believe this

only Collier and Dave Messmore. And sadly, Messmore's department wasn't very interested in looking into the case. In fact, the captain at the time allegedly wanted to close the case as quickly as they opened it, stating that there was no evidence of foul play. But Messmore remained steadfast, fighting to keep the case open.

And together, he and Collier worked to get as much information as possible. So every day I'm going to school, talking to Dave Massimore, and my father is coming home, and again, every night is this weird, like, you know, I wonder where mommy is. I wonder what mommy's having for dinner tonight and where she's staying. And I'm just like, this is delusional.

My father's behavior starts going, he's this very, my father was, as I said, a very violent man, a very abusive man. He starts going from being, you know, this machismo like asshole, like violent guy to

Being very sort of passive and it's very weird, but he would come home and sometimes I noticed like strange bruises on his arm So I'd be like remembering okay gonna tell Dave about that tomorrow He had these cuts all over his hands. My father always had these really well manicured hands He had cuts all over his hands the next time I saw he he asked me to rub Bengay on his shoulders because he was sorry said he was moving boxes and

So every single day, 11-year-old Collier is going home and making mental notes of everything his dad is doing and saying. Then the next day at school, he's calling David Messmore to report it. But it wouldn't be until several weeks into his mother's disappearance when he found a piece of evidence that would change everything. Around the middle of January, you know, so I'm doing this like amateur salute thing in my house.

At 11 years old, around the middle of January, my dad says, you know, I'm going to go pick up paperwork in my office. Do you want to come with me? I was like, absolutely, because I want to keep my eyes on him all the time. We stop at this gas station on the way back home, and he goes into the gas station. I'm like, okay. I'm looking through the windshield watching him, and I just start rummaging through his truck, and I open up the center console. I find two photographs. One is of a house that I've never seen before.

And the second one is of Sherry and her two kids sitting in front of fireplaces covered in plastic. And I'm like, okay, this is a new house, clearly. I've never seen this before. It's a brand new house. - After finding these photographs, Collier goes to school and calls Dave Messmore to tell him about his discovery. From there, David Messmore would do some digging and what he would find would blow the case wide open.

As it turns out, Jack Boyle's mistress, Sherry Campbell, wasn't just his girlfriend. Sherry and Jack had a baby together. In fact, Sherry had just given birth to their full-term daughter less than two weeks after Noreen went missing. And that photograph that Collier found,

of Sherry and her kids sitting in a brand new house? Well, Jack had recently bought them that house. Soon enough, everything was starting to make sense. Jack Boyle had fallen in love with someone else. He started a family with someone else and he had clearly been planning to start a whole new life with her. But now the question was, did Noreen find out about this and run away or did Jack kill her to start this new life?

As Dave Messmore is looking at all of this, he can't help but wonder if that new house holds the answers to Noreen Boyle's disappearance. So after a little digging, they find the house. It was three hours away from Mansfield, Ohio in the town of Erie, Pennsylvania. Slowly but surely, investigators are uncovering more about Jack Boyle's double life. And based on what happens next,

It's clear that Jack was becoming more and more paranoid. He knew that the walls were closing in. What happened was, I was noticing over the weeks that my father was getting under more and more duress. And every single night,

Every single night, Dave Messmore is coming to our house to try to talk to my dad. And his lawyer is there shutting him down. So this was like around the 20th or 21st of January, 1990. My father comes to me and again, he seems like he's under duress because he's probably like, why do they keep coming at me? And like, why are they finding out information? And then to me, he goes, you know, Collier, I know that it's been really hard on you

Losing mommy and mommy leaving us. It was always mommy's left us in such a state mommy left us here mommy left us That's all he always saying he goes I know mommy has left us all in such a state and it's really affected you but I have a medical conference trip coming up in a couple of days I have to go to Florida now every year we would go to Clearwater Beach, Florida for these medical Conventions, but they're usually in the spring when kids are on spring break not two three weeks after Christmas, right and

And when Dave hears this information, he's terrified as well. He knew that Jack Boyle was capable of horrific things, and he wanted to make sure that no one else would be hurt as his hands.

So over the course of the next few days, Dave Messmore worked hard to get Collier out of that home. On January 24th, 1990, Collier woke up at around 6am to strangers standing over his bed. They told him that they were with Child Protective Services and that he had to quickly grab his things and come with them. Collier and his sister Elizabeth were being saved just in the nick of time thanks to his own advocacy for himself and Messmore's belief in him, but that doesn't make this removal from his home any less tragic.

Collier stood in his bedroom, with no guidance whatsoever, looking over his precious collection of toys and every prized possession in his life. What would he need where he was going? His Nintendo? His favorite stuffed animal? His schoolbooks and bags?

over the next few minutes collier gathered up all the relics of his life and bid the home he had grown up in farewell he hugged his beloved dog and asked when he would see him again cps promised that he would be reunited with gaudy but that never happened that was the very last time he ever saw his childhood dog after packing up his things collier goes downstairs where chaos is quickly unfolding

I'm forced to leave my dog. I'm forced to leave my house. And as I'm coming down the stairs, it's like a slow motion movie. There's Dave Messmore and my grandmother's screaming at him. He has a search warrant. There are cops all in my house, men and women in white lab coats. They've got all these, they've got this, like all these detect, like equipment. They're looking for stuff. They're looking for my mom. Like they're serving a search warrant.

And I'm just like, what is like, and I knew at that point, I was like, okay. I mean, I had already known we have crossed the Rubicon. My mother is missing and most likely dead. My father's done something with her. And we, you know, they take me out of the house and I'm just like, okay, my life will never be the same. And Collier was right. His life would never be the same. Because of the emergency situation at hand,

Collier was first placed in the home of his high school principal while CPS figured out his long-term placement. But his first night there was difficult. Collier said he laid in bed and just stared at the ceiling, wondering how his life had come to this. Like we mentioned earlier, Collier also struggled with asthma. And that night, in a strange place, in a strange bed...

In a horrific time of his life, he had the worst asthma attack ever. It was so bad, he had to be rushed to the ER for treatment. And I remember going into this hospital, this was Mansfield General Hospital, and there was an honor box, which is like where they keep newspapers in, and it's called an honor box because you put money in it, you pull the paper, and you only take one that you pay for and whatever.

The whole lobby is filled with people. And I remember we're walking towards the honor box and my principal in my school, then ring about grabs me and sort of shifts me over this other direction. And they take me into this like little private consultation room. And one of our family friends who's a cardiologist, his name is Dr. Bay. He he's, he is there. He's got some shots and he gives me a breathing treatment and go through the whole thing. And I can really breathe my lungs open up and thank God. Right. So then they say to me, they say, um, call your Lieutenant Messmore found your mother.

And it seems like this eternal pause and she was dead. Now, it's really, really difficult to articulate the cognitive dissonance that occurs when someone says this to you because on one hand, you are relieved in a way because what you knew in your heart and what you were experiencing, like you weren't gaslighting yourself, you knew was true.

Unbeknownst to Collier at the time, as investigators were searching his home in Mansfield, another set of investigators were executing a search warrant at Jack's new house in Erie, Pennsylvania, the home he shared with Sherry Campbell. And there, under the basement floor, investigators found the body of Noreen Marie Schmidt Boyle. She was dead at just 44 years old.

An autopsy would reveal that she had blunt force trauma to her head, but her ultimate cause of death was asphyxiation. When investigators told Collier the horrific news, the first thing that came out of his mouth was the last thing you'd expect to hear from an 11 year old. With tears in his eyes, he said, "That bastard."

There was absolutely no doubt in his mind that his father had murdered his mother. It was something he knew from the very beginning. And soon after the discovery of Noreen's body, Jack Boyle Jr. was arrested for her murder.

If you love Murder in America, you love mysteries, you love true crime, you love murder stories and the unknown, then I have a new show for you. It's called The Conspiracy Files and it's hosted by me, Colin Brown, from Murder in America and The Paranormal Files.

On The Conspiracy Files, we explore everything from bizarre deaths to freak paranormal events, pedophile rings, government corruption, ritual sacrifice. No topic is untouched on this show. Everything that we talk about on The Conspiracy Files is backed up with fact. I

I release reference sheets with every single episode that we do so you guys know everything we're talking about is confirmed to have happened and be real. It's a completely different type of show than anything else you've ever seen about conspiracy theories. Instead of a bunch of conjecture and theories, we're presenting you people with facts, telling you the story, walking you through the story just as detailed as we do with Murder in America, and then letting the listener decide what they think.

Anyways, you should definitely give it a listen. It's called The Conspiracy Files. The links are in the description of this show and you can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now let's get back to our story.

Despite his life being completely turned upside down, Collier continued going to school that week. A normal routine was good for him in such an uncertain time. But he said that he'll never forget walking through the doors right after his mom's body had been discovered and his father had been arrested. At the time, his school was celebrating the Chinese New Year, something his mother had helped organize. But as he walked through the doors that day, every single person turned to look at him.

After all, the story of his parents was all anyone in town had been talking about for the last few weeks. And it had finally all come to a head. Everybody's like I walk in and everybody's just tears just streaming down their faces because everybody loved my mother. And all I can remember is my mom when my grandmother, her mother died and she was very close to her father. And she said, you've got to be strong for pop up. And I just remember walking in there as I was 11 years old.

And I was like, you gotta be strong for everybody. You gotta be strong for all these people, Collier, because you're in the middle of like, this is, this is like, this is it. And it's, you know, it's like, you know, your whole world is just never going to be the same. You just lost the most important person in your life, which you kind of knew was already the case. You now have no father. He's been arrested, you know, and, and all this stuff is happening. I'm like, what's going to happen? Like,

and this is like when the real starts to hit the fan it's like you know i um you know i i go back that night to the principals of my school's house and dave messmore comes and visits me and he just explains to me like what happened and how they found her and he said remember the house and i said yeah and he goes that's where we found her

They found her buried underneath the basement floor underneath. You know, and he asked me, he goes, have you ever seen any indoor outdoor carpeting on your house? And I said, yeah, we had it sitting on our back porch for like three months. And he goes, yeah. And he said, have you ever seen a blue tarp? And I said, yeah, I was with my father when I bought it at Kmart. He goes, yeah, that's what my father wrapped her body in.

Now, despite finding his wife's body buried under the basement floor of his house, Jack Boyle surprisingly maintained his innocence. His defense attorneys would later say he was one of the most difficult clients they ever had. They tried to urge him to take a plea deal, but he refused. He wanted a trial. So over the course of the next few months, the prosecution worked hard to gather as much evidence as they could for the biggest trial their town had ever seen. And they uncovered a lot.

In June of 1990, the trial of Jack Boyle Jr. commenced, and everyone in Mansfield, Ohio was tuning in to hear the details of how their town's beloved doctor had murdered his wife. The courtroom was packed. Soon enough, Jack and his defense team walked in and took their seats, and over the course of the next few days, the prosecution helped paint a picture of how this seemingly perfect family began to unravel. So, let's go over what they found.

To everyone's surprise, Jack Boyle's crimes began long before the murder of his wife, Noreen. In fact, years earlier, another police department in Baltimore had been investigating him.

As it turns out, on January 13th, 1987, three years before Noreen was murdered, Jack's niece filed a complaint stating that he had sexually molested her and her younger sister. The abuse spanned over a period of two years in the late 1970s, beginning when one of the girls was 11 and the other was just nine years old.

During that time, Jack would get the girls alone and pretend he was giving them physicals as doctors do. But in reality, he was using this opportunity to inappropriately touch them. Now it would take about 10 years for the girls to come forward.

The allegations didn't come to light until 1986 when one of Jack's nieces attempted suicide. Afterwards, she would go through intensive therapy and it was there where she felt comfortable enough to tell her therapist about the sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her uncle. Now from there, detectives in Baltimore investigated the claims for seven whole months.

But sadly, in the end, the girls didn't want to testify against him. It was too traumatic for them, having to stand up against their uncle, the man who stole their innocence. So nothing ever came from this. Now Collier would later tell us that he had no idea any of this had happened, but he did notice a strange disconnect within his family at the time. After all, these were his cousins on his mom's side.

And randomly, they just stopped coming around. Now, when these investigators in Baltimore heard that Jack Boyle had been arrested for murdering his wife, they actually called Dave Messmore and told him about the sexual assault allegations. They even said, quote, you get him for us. We have no doubt in our minds that he'd be capable of murdering his wife. We couldn't get him, so get him for us, end quote.

Sadly, Jack Boyle was never held accountable for molesting his two nieces, and afterward, he continued working as a respected family doctor in Mansfield, which is a scary thought. And strangely enough, soon after that, he was also investigated for another crime that happened in Florida. This incident occurred on December 31, 1988, two years to the day before Noreen was murdered.

This time, however, it didn't involve molestation. It involved allegedly breaking into a home, vandalizing it, and threatening a former girlfriend of his. A woman living in Florida claimed that for five whole years, from 1983 to 1988, she had been romantically and sexually involved with Jack. During that time, she had been working as a nurse at a hospital in Mansfield. But in the fall of 1988, she moved to Florida and ended her relationship with him. And he wasn't happy about it.

This woman would later tell a police officer that after she moved, Jack had relentlessly harassed her through phone calls and letters. Then on New Year's, she returned to her home to find it completely ransacked. Her clothes had been pulled out of drawers, her home had been ruthlessly vandalized, and stuck to the door was a note she had written to her current boyfriend, and the letter was pinned to her bedroom door with a sharp dagger.

Now, this woman had always known that Jack was the one who did this, but there wasn't enough evidence to actually file any charges against him. So, once again, Jack Boyle was allowed to act however he wanted to, and still never faced any consequences. So as you can see, Jack Boyle clearly lived a double life.

In Mansfield, Ohio, he was this respected doctor with wealth and a beautiful family. But behind closed doors, he was a womanizer, a violent man who terrorized people, and he was allegedly molesting little girls.

Now it's around this time when his wife Noreen started to feel very unhappy in her marriage, which is why in early 1989, she decided to adopt Elizabeth from Taiwan. But unbeknownst to Noreen, at the time of Elizabeth's adoption, Jack was already in another relationship, this time with 28-year-old Sherry Campbell. And sadly, just a few months after they adopted Elizabeth,

Sherry was pregnant with Jack's baby. And it's here where the prosecution believes that Jack started planning Noreen's murder. But how would they prove this? Well, at this point in the trial, it was time to bring forward the prosecution's star witness. And that was none other than Collier Landry Boyle, Jack and Noreen's then 12-year-old son. On the day that Collier was brought forward as a witness, everyone watching couldn't believe it.

Up walks this cute little boy with braces on his teeth. He's wearing a navy shirt with a red collar, and he confidently takes a seat on the witness stand, just feet away from his father. Collier was more than ready to help get justice for his mom, and the prosecution starts by asking him about the relationship he had with his parents. Can you tell us what you did with your mom? Usually we like to go shopping together and just...

We go out, we watch a lot of movies, and we go to the grocery store together and rent movies and stuff like that. But we just have a lot of fun. We go all kinds of different places. Okay, now also drawing your attention here to your father, Dr. John Boyle, did he spend time with you? Not very much at all. But compared to the time you spent with your mom, would you say you spent maybe how much percent with your dad and how much percent with your mother? 99% with my mother and 1% with my father.

Now, in that clip, you can hear the crowd and jury laugh at Collier's statement. Granted, hearing something so unfiltered and clear coming out of a 12-year-old boy's mouth does have a shock factor. However, his reaction to this laughter is a sigh. He doesn't smile, he doesn't laugh along, he sighs. After all, he's telling a room full of adults the sad truth. His dad hardly spent any time with him.

As you'll hear from the clips, Collier was a very brave and articulate little boy. Throughout his testimony, he surprisingly made a lot of people laugh. Most of the funny moments that Collier had on the stand were humorous because he was saying things that you would never expect to hear from a 12-year-old little boy. But that in itself

is a tragedy. Nothing makes you grow up more quickly than trauma and call your experience trauma that no child should ever be exposed to. But in this next part, the prosecutors ask him about his experiences with Sherry Campbell. - Okay, now, did there come a time that you were with your father and he happened to see Sherry Campbell? - Yes. - Did you tell the jury when that happened?

it was a it was a father's day of last year and my father asked me if i wanted to go with him to take a suntan to the suntan factory or wherever it was and when we got there my dad got out he says well look who's here it's sherry and then i just was like disgusted then um i turned to sherry and i looked at her hand and she had a ring on and i turned to her and i said

Sherry, my mother has a ring like that. Did this affect you in any way? Yes, it did, very emotionally. Can you tell the jury how it affected you emotionally? Well, I was so close to my mother, I couldn't believe my father could do anything like that. I thought it was her ring, my mother's ring, because I knew that was a very special ring. I knew hardly anybody ever had a ring like that.

Now Collier had no idea when he met Sherry Campbell that she was pregnant with his father's child. And unbeknownst to everyone, Jack had been fully planning to start a new life with her. The prosecution discovered that on November 11th, 1989, both Jack and Sherry, who was almost seven months pregnant at the time, walked into a real estate office in Erie, Pennsylvania. Jack introduced himself to the realtor

and Sherry introduced herself as his wife. And on that day, the couple was looking to find a home in the area. The realtor said that they were all smiles, clearly excited about their new life together. That day, they drove around the wealthy neighborhoods looking to find the perfect home for their growing family. Then finally, after looking at eight different houses, they found it.

It was this huge house covered in snow. The front door was bright red and it had a lot of room and space for this new chapter of their lives. Now when negotiating on the house, Jack offered to pay full price, but he demanded that the home be ready for him to move into on January 1st, 1990. And he was adamant about that date.

likely because that was also the date he planned on murdering his wife and he would need a place to hide the body. So the following day, Jack and Sherry signed a contract for a $299,000 lakefront home in the affluent neighborhood in Mill Creek Township. Adjusted for inflation, that's about $750,000 today. But perhaps the most twisted part of this comes from how the two signed the contract.

Sherry actually signed the papers in Sherry Boyle. Now Sherry would end up testifying at Jack's trial. And of course she claimed that she had no idea Jack was married with a family until she was around six months pregnant. But that clearly wasn't true because Collier had met her earlier that summer and he told her that his mom had the same ring she was wearing.

So she had to have known that Jack had a family. Plus, the Boyles were well known in town. Everyone in town knew that Dr. Boyle was married with kids. But on the stand, when asked why she continued to be with Jack after learning about his marriage, Sherry stated to the jury, quote, one lie doesn't mean you can't trust a man, end quote.

Now, just five days after Jack and Sherry signed the paperwork to move into their new home, Noreen filed for divorce. After years of contemplating it, the time had finally come, and Noreen had no shame. Reportedly, when she told a neighbor about the divorce, she nonchalantly added, "It's fine. He's got more girlfriends than he has ties." It seemed as if Noreen had finally had enough.

But she truly had no idea what was to come. On November 27th, Jack sent a letter out to all of his patients telling them that he was closing his local office to relocate to Erie, Pennsylvania. Slowly but surely, everything was falling into place for him. He had his new home, a new office in Erie, a baby on the way, and a whole new family. All he needed to do now was get Noreen out of the picture.

Now, many have wondered over the years, why even kill Noreen? She was already divorcing him. So why not just let her leave? Well, one thing to know about Jack Boyle is that he is a man that needs control. Divorces can be long and treacherous. You have to split up your assets and sometimes the process can take years. So killing Noreen meant that he could eliminate all of that extra stress and from there,

he could move to a new city and start a whole new life without any baggage so that's what he decided to do and sadly noreen must have seen this coming because it's around this time when she started telling people that if anything ever happened to her jack was responsible at the trial collier testified about that conversation he had with his mom some of noreen's friends also testified

It was very clear that Noreen was scared for her life and she had every right to be because a few days after Christmas of 1989, Jack Boyle would drive to Home Depot and rent out a jackhammer.

Jack would later claim that he rented the jackhammer to "break up the ice on the brick" around his new home so that his wife and children wouldn't slip. But if you've ever lived in a cold climate, which I have, I'm from South Dakota originally, you know just how ridiculous that statement is, considering that a $5 bag of salt works much better. So what was Jack doing with that rented jackhammer?

Well, according to Michelle Barth, the realtor who sold Jack and Sherry their home, Jack called her that day to ask what kind of soil was in the basement of their house. Michelle told him what it was, but she wanted to know why. Jack stated that it was just in case he wanted to lower the floor someday. Now, Michelle was very thrown off by this.

The basement already had really high ceilings, and it was a fairly new construction, so it had proper flooring and plenty of usable space for a growing family. But in reality, Jack didn't want to lower the floors of his basement for more space. He lowered it because he was just days away from killing his wife, and he needed somewhere to store her body. Which brings us to New Year's Eve, 1989.

The details on what exactly happened that night are still a little unclear. But as we mentioned earlier, Jack and Noreen didn't sleep in the same bed together. But Collier said that his little sister Elizabeth always slept with his mom. At three years old, she would get scared at night and to find comfort, she would walk over to her mother's room and crawl into bed with her. It's believed that late that night, after everyone had gone to bed,

Jack Boyle crept over to his wife's bedroom holding a hammer. When he walked inside, both Noreen and Elizabeth were fast asleep. And it's here where he lifted up the hammer and slammed it down onto the back of Noreen's head two times. The thud of the hammer jolted Collier awake. It also woke up Elizabeth. And after seeing what she saw, she let out a scream, a scream that Collier heard from

from several rooms down. I heard a scream coming from my sister. I heard a thud. Okay, could you describe this sound for us? Okay, it was about this loud. Did you get up at that time to investigate what had happened? No, I did not. And could you tell the jury why you didn't?

Because I was extremely afraid of my father and I always have. Now, Elizabeth was far too young to testify at Jack's trial. But after Noreen went missing, three-year-old Elizabeth actually told investigators, quote, daddy came in and hit mommy on the head and then wrapped her up like a snowman, end quote. So horrifically,

it's believed that Elizabeth watched Noreen's murder. Autopsy results would prove that Noreen did have blunt force trauma to the back of her head, but horrifically, those blows didn't cause her death. After rendering her unconscious, Jack grabbed a plastic bag and wrapped it around Noreen's head until she passed away. From there, with the plastic bag still around her head, Jack wrapped Noreen's body in a tarp

But the details of what happened next are unclear. One thing we know for sure is that Jack knew he had to get the body out of the house, but his house in Erie wasn't ready yet. So what did he do with her? Well, Collier told us that his dad rented out a cold storage unit around this time. So it's believed that after killing her that night,

he took her body to that cold storage. He then returned back home and started coming up with his story about how Noreen got up and left in the middle of the night. - Yes, it was around 8:30 in the morning and I got up and I ran immediately to my mother's room and I noticed the covers were pulled back like a body had been taken out. It's not the normal way my mother would get out of bed. And so I went downstairs and I said, "Where's my mother?"

to my father and he said, "Well, mommy took a little vacation, Collier." And then I just, I didn't know what to say. I just panicked. - Over the next week or so, Jack went to work tearing out the floors of his basement in the new home that he shared with Sherry Campbell. And he went through a lot of work to conceal his crime. After tearing up the basement with a jackhammer, he retrieved Noreen's body

drove it over state lines into Erie, Pennsylvania, and then placed his wife within the basement floors. He covered her in carpet that he had just bought from the store. Then from there, he poured concrete over her. Once that dried, Jack laid down some green astroturf, and he even built shelves over top to try and conceal any signs of his new renovations. It's a horrifying thought,

the process he went through to start this new life with Sherry Campbell. But clearly, their relationship was doomed from the start. In fact,

Right around the time that Jack was pouring concrete over Noreen's body, Sherry was giving birth to their daughter. They now had a newborn baby. It was a new year and a new home. But the foundation of that home had cracks, both figuratively and literally. And it was only a matter of time until everything came crashing down.

Now, of course, Sherry Campbell claimed that she had no idea Noreen Boyle was buried in the basement of their new home and she would never face any criminal charges in this case. But many people over the years have had their questions on what exactly Sherry knew.

The prosecution had proof that Jack had rented a jackhammer before the murder, and Sherry's brother was actually the one who returned it for him just two days after the killing. In Jack's mind, he was getting away with it. But soon enough, Collier would find that picture inside his dad's car, the one that showed Sherry Campbell and her children inside the new house. And from there, it was only a matter of time until investigators would execute a search warrant on the property in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Now, when that day finally came, a team of crime scene investigators began combing through the house with a fine-tooth comb. And downstairs in the basement, as they were looking at the newly built bookshelves, they noticed a small splatter of freshly dried concrete down in the basement, and that's what alerted them to search down below. Just two feet down, they discovered Noreen's body wrapped in a tarp that Collier identified at trial as belonging to his father.

Richland County Prosecutor James Mayer Jr. would later tell the news journal, Dr. Boyle was a control freak. He wanted the body right underneath his feet. That was the type of guy he was. He was diabolical. Along with Noreen's body, investigators also found a shovel covered in dirt and concrete remnants in the basement with Jack's fingerprints on it.

Now, one would think after finding his wife's body buried in the floor of his home that Jack would admit to murdering her, but clearly, since he had a trial, that just wasn't the case. So what was Jack's defense? Well, they claimed that the prosecution had no real proof that Jack killed Noreen. They even went as far as to say that the body buried in the floor wasn't even Noreen Boyle.

Now, keep in mind that this was before DNA testing, but during the initial autopsy, the body's weight was marked as being around 150 pounds, and the eyes were marked down as brown.

and jack's defense team clung to these two discrepancies noreen was known to weigh about 120 to 130 pounds in addition her eyes were blue so they argued that the body couldn't possibly have been noreen's however noreen's body was shoved beneath a basement floor taking on water it's highly likely that the increase in weight was water weight from being stored in a natural drainage area the

There's also a phenomenon called "tache noire" that occurs after death. This happens when an exposed part of the cornea in the eye dries out, leaving a brown, black or orange discoloration. This is widely known and could easily explain the change in eye color between Noreen and the corpse.

In addition, the first assistant prosecutor, Jerry Alt, stated at trial, quote, End quote.

Jack's defense was really grasping at straws. They even tried dragging Noreen's name through the mud, claiming that she had been having affairs with men in law enforcement and that they actually killed her and framed Jack Boyle. They also said that the steps Jack took before the murder, like buying that tarp and jackhammer,

were so stupid that he couldn't have done this. The defense argued, quote, we hear from the prosecution about the prior calculation and design, the cold calculated planning, the scheme to hide and cover up and kill and bury. John Boyle walks in the morning of January 4th, 11 o'clock, orders some carpet, puts it in his name,

pays for it with a check imprinted with his name and address on it, signs his name to the check, and then comes back to pick it up at 7 o'clock. Does that ring of a scheme? A cool and calculated plan? End quote.

Now to everyone's surprise, Jack Boyle actually took the stand at his trial where he continued to proclaim his innocence. But if you know anything about trials, you know that this usually doesn't work out in their favor. In the closing statements, prosecutor James Mayer summed up the situation perfectly saying, quote, "'So what I'm telling you, Dr. Boyle,

The evidence showed this, he was a healer by day and a killer by night. And luckily the jury seemed to agree because after five hours of deliberation,

they found Jack Boyle Jr. guilty of second degree murder. And from there, he was sentenced to life in prison. This trial was huge for a number of different reasons. It's not often that a doctor murders his wife to start a new life with his mistress. But another huge part of this trial that stuck out to America was the fact that Noreen and Jack's 12-year-old son testified against his father.

Collier's face was plastered all over America that year. He was known as the little boy who helped get justice for his mom. When we interviewed Collier, I asked him, what was it like testifying against your dad? Was it intimidating? I kept staring at him and he would not look at me the whole time. I kept looking at the prosecutor and I would look over at him and he wouldn't look back at me.

He's writing his notes down. He would look up, but he wouldn't look at me. And I can remember I had to leave when I got off the witness stand and walk right past him. And I'm just like looking at him and he wouldn't look up.

He also said that the prosecution told him he didn't have to testify if he didn't want to. But Collier was more than ready. I was very much ready. You know, again, they said, you don't have to testify. I said, that's over my dead body. Like, I was not... You know, this is the thing, and I always tell this, like, when I talk to young people, or, you know, you have these moments in life, right, where, you know, all the chips are down. Like, you just push all your chips into the middle of the table. You're like, I'm all in. You know, I knew that...

If I didn't testify and my father was acquitted, I would go back to living with him. My life would be a living hell. He would never be like, yeah, I remember when you tried to get me convicted for murdering your mom. Or I might end up in a ditch somewhere mysteriously or drowning mysteriously. You know, and...

And I also would know, like, I didn't give it everything I had, you know what I mean? Like, I was not going to let that happen. I had enough foresight, fortunately, at that age, that I knew that I would be sitting here talking to, you know, a stranger in Houston, Texas.

I'm telling the story because I knew that I would want to be able to say I did everything I could. You know what I mean? Even if he was acquitted, like everything I could to make sure that I got justice for my mother. I left it all on the table. And I mean, it's absolutely terrifying. This is the monster in my life who has taken the person who I love the most and he has turned my whole world upside down. But I was like, you're not going to get away with this. Over my dead body, you're going to get away with this.

And luckily, he didn't get away with it. After his trial, Jack Boyle was sent to prison to serve out his life sentence. But this story was far from over. After losing his mother and now his father, Collier had nowhere to go. He was hoping that his extended family would take him in. But sadly, they refused.

The thing that was probably the worst is that, you know, I thought, okay, my family would step up, right? And my father's side of the family didn't want anything to do with me because they wanted me to recant my testimony. They wanted me to say that I lied about that. I made everything up, that I didn't hear the noises in the middle of the night, that I didn't know any of this went on. And my mother's side of the family said to me,

My aunt Carol, my mother's sister said to me, "We will not take you in because you look like your father." They lived in Baltimore, Maryland. And I was like, "Wow, so I am really alone." So I went into the foster care system.

Both Collier and his three-year-old sister Elizabeth were put into the foster care system. Given her young age, Elizabeth was quickly adopted by another family, but they only wanted her, not Collier. And sadly, after she was adopted, she and Collier lost contact with each other. So Collier lost a lot that year. His mother, father, sister, childhood dog...

his home, his security, everything. Now Collier really wanted to be adopted by Dave Messmore and his wife, and they wanted to take him in. But since Dave Messmore was the lead investigator in Noreen's murder, it was a conflict of interest, so the judge wouldn't allow it. In Collier's documentary, A Murder in Mansfield, he read a journal entry from this time, and it had me in tears. It read, quote,

My counselor told me that she believes in happy endings. I don't. But Collier said that eventually things began to look up for him. Following his father's conviction, he stayed in Mansfield and he was adopted by the Ziegler family who gave him a great life.

Now, over the years, Collier kept in contact with his father by writing him letters. But sadly, even after his conviction, Jack continued to maintain his innocence. It was frustrating. In an ideal world, Collier wanted to hear his dad admit to what he did, so he could move on and get the closure he deserved. But Jack Boyle is a stubborn man. When asked why Collier continued that relationship with his dad, he told us that at the end of the day he loved his father.

despite everything he had put him through. There's part of me that didn't want to believe for a while that my father did it, even though I think I went through a period in my teenage years and, you know, like, could my father be innocent? Did I really hear what it was? Did I really do that? Okay, no, that really happened. Because you don't... Ultimately, you don't want to believe that. Like, that's the worst thing imaginable. Your father murders your mother. That's horrific. You know, these are your parents, and this is what you... Like, you don't want to believe that that's the case. So...

I really had to come to terms with that and reconcile with that. But I decided at a very young age, I was in college and I was like, I remember, not to sound hooey-dooey about it, my mom came to me in a dream and said, "You need to forgive your father." Maybe I was still in high school actually. "You need to forgive your father and move on because it's only going to affect you. It's not going to affect him."

And so I reached out to him when I, you know, you know, we would trade letters back and forth. But, you know, my adoptive parents would read the letters and they would explain to me like, this is manipulation. This is gaslighting. Like this is he's manipulating you to feel guilty for him to feel bad about testifying or whatever, you know, and he's going to fight this injustice. And it's all it's all bullshit, you know.

It's sad, too, because that's my father. Like, that's my father. Like, that's what he created. That's his legacy. At 14 years old, Collier even wrote his dad a letter that read, quote, I know you're never going to tell me why you killed mommy. I know you'll never tell me why you cheated on her so much. I don't think our friends and family will ever forgive you for killing my mommy.

molesting my two cousins, lying, and everything else I might've missed. But I want you to know that if you pass on soon, I forgive you. I still love you, dad. Never forget that. I really hope you face up to what you've done and realize that it is wrong. Much love, Collier." The maturity it takes to write something like that

is admirable. And sadly, even after this, Jack Boyle not only continued to maintain his innocence, but he also wrote some horrible letters back to his son, calling him evil and a brat for saying those things. Now, once again, I implore everyone to go watch the documentary, "A Murder in Mansfield."

because Collier reads some of the letters he and his dad wrote back and forth to each other, and you will be completely shocked at the things Jack Boyle would say to his son. But eventually, Collier knew that he had to move on. He didn't want to be defined by this crime that had already taken up so much of his life.

Things always work out the way they should anyways. And I stayed in the community where all of this happened and I became very determined to not let this define me, to not be that person, to not let... You know, it's hard because you live under a stigma. You live under, you know, people just like, you know, you walk places and...

It whispers stares everywhere. And that really affected me. That affected my adoptive parents. That affected the family, friends everywhere. Because everybody knows me. I was on television. You know, it became this whole, you know, thing. And it was just, but I was like, I'm going to, I want to get out of here. I want to move to a place where nobody knows who I am. I ended up moving to Los Angeles, you know, got into the entertainment industry, worked as a model. And then

Did music stuff and then moved to behind the camera because I was like I need to tell this story and that's where I ended up and I share my story on shows like this to hopefully give people hope who have experienced massive trauma or violent crime. You know to know that like you can make it like you can lead a good life. I mean look I'm far from perfect. I have many flaws. Yeah.

But, you know, I wake up every day with hope in my heart, with gratitude for where I'm at and just put one foot in front of the other and

and lead the best life that I can. And that's all a testament to my mother who really instilled all this into me at such a young age. Now, eventually, years into his sentence, Jack Boyle's parole would come up. And a huge part of getting parole is that the parole board wants to see that you've taken responsibility for your crimes. Now, Jack is a smart man, and he wants his freedom.

So, after decades of denying any responsibility in Noreen's murder, he finally admitted that he was the one who took Noreen's life that night back on New Year's of 1990.

But of course, Jack's new story is full of lies. This time he said that on the night in question, Noreen came downstairs screaming and throwing things at him. He even said that she came after him, so he pushed her. But when he did, she fell and hit her head on the coffee table. Jack said that from there he blacked out, and when he came back to focus, Noreen was dead with a bag over her head.

Now, clearly this story is very unbelievable and the parole board must have agreed because they immediately denied his parole. - Collier never once believed his dad's new story, but ever since 1990, people all over America remembered him as the boy who testified

at his father's murder trial. Over the years, many people also wondered whatever happened to him. With the cards that Collier had been dealt, it would have been expected that he went on to live a very difficult life. But luckily, that wasn't the case. After his mother's murder and father's incarceration, Collier really made something of himself. And a few years back, he decided that he wanted to share his story with the world.

So that's when he came up with the idea to create the documentary, "A Murder in Mansfield." And he knew that in it, he wanted to confront his father once and for all. But I wanted to really sit down with him and ask him, "Why did you do this? Why did you murder my mother?" Because there was no reason to, you know?

He had a mistress. He had a baby on the way. He had a new house. He had a career. He was starting to make lots of money as a physician. You know, there's no reason, no reason to do this. That was the thing that I was always that sort of drove me to make the film, to talk about these experiences, to share and to be vulnerable with what my story is so others can learn from it. Right. And heal from it.

Now, a big part of this documentary is Collier confronting his father, and we will leave the details of their interaction for you to watch for yourself. But as you can imagine, Jack Boyle didn't give Collier the answers he was looking for. In our interview we did with Collier, I told him that his documentary was truly one of the most vulnerable things I'd ever seen.

And something that stuck out to me was that despite everything his father had put him through, Collier still had this very human experience that we all have, where we want to be loved and accepted by our parents.

And at the end of the documentary, when Jack Boyle is still refusing to admit wrongdoing, Collier still shows his father love, which just shows the kind of person that Collier Landry truly is. I remember I was interviewing with the New York Times and the guy watched the film and he goes, you know, I don't know if it was New York Times, I can't remember where it was, but he goes, you know, he's like, there's three seconds in the film that tell me everything I need to know about who you are as a person and who Collier Landry is. And I was like, what?

Because you just sit down and you talk to your father for probably an hour and he just tells you all these lies and bullshit and he doesn't give you the answer that you want to hear or that you're expecting so you can just move on with your life. And you get up and you hug him and you tell him, I love you, Pop. And when you said, I love you, Pop,

that's all i need to know about you to this day collier landry has never got what people call closure he knows that his father will never fully admit what happened in the early morning hours of january 1st 1990 he's come to terms with that so now his focus is to turn his experience into good and he hopes that along the way he can help others who have gone through trauma

I think for me, and the biggest thing that I want people to take away from my story is that you can go through something like this, like unspeakable trauma and, and pain. And you, you know, you come out the other side and, you know,

You're going to come out the other side. You're going to have bumps and bruises and some broken bones maybe, but you're going to make it. And you can really, you don't have to let it destroy you. You can make something positive out of your life. You can do things and you can choose to look at the world in a way that the glass is always half full. Like I'm a perpetual optimist. Anyone that knows me will tell you that, you know?

There is a lot of really, there's a lot of darkness in humanity, but there's also a lot of light. There's a lot of beauty. Experience the beauty. Focus on it.

In honor of Noreen Boyle, we will be making a donation to the Ohio Domestic Violence Network or ODVN. Near the end of her life, Noreen's friends described her as trapped, isolated and terrified, and there are many people out there who are in similar situations. So if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, help and support is available.

we'll be posting the full interview we did with collier on our patreon so if you want to go watch that make sure you're a member but also we would love if everyone could please go support collier landry by following him on social media and by watching his documentary a murder in mansfield you can get that on my youtube channel you can get that on my store on my website um and you can also watch it on amazon prime or wherever but you can get it from me it always helps to support the show you can find me on youtube tick tock

Instagram, everything is at Collier Landry. I have a YouTube channel. I'm at 57,000 subs right now and climbing. I talk about things like true crime, mental health, society, and popular culture. I'm doing a lot more with mental health and trauma. My podcast was originally called, like I said, Moving Past Murder, Moving Past Trauma. Now it's just the Collier Landry show just for ease. I do lives on YouTube, but I also do

regular content as well. I have a show that came out probably by the time these guys hear it. It came out on Oxygen called A Plan to Kill. The episode was Noreen Boyle. It came out on December 15th. And I have a new podcast I'm working on with Sony and Apple, which will play out in March, which really does a deep dive into the entire story over six episodes. It's called Me and Dave Against the World, which is Dave Messmore, the investigator, and how we solved my mother's murder. And it's about that whole backstory. So

All right, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in to the first episode of Murder in America in 2025. Wow. What a weird thing to say out loud. 2025.

Last year was such an incredible year for the show. Courtney and I were on Times Square. The family online grew so much bigger. Our listener base increased so much. So we have so many amazing people out there that have joined the Murder in America family. And we just couldn't be more thankful. We all hope you had a blessed holiday season. Spent a lot of time with family. Ate some cookies. Gave and got some presents. Did whatever.

I also want to thank Collier for speaking with us this episode. Collier is an amazing guy and you definitely should go support him on social media because he's doing some great work on his own nowadays. If you like Murder in America and you want more Murder in America, please consider signing up to be a member on our Patreon.

On Patreon, you can get access to bonus episodes of the show that will never be posted on our main feed, early and ad-free access to all of our episodes, and so much more. Seriously, if you love the show and you want more episodes and you've never joined us on Patreon, if you subscribe to one of the tiers where you're getting these bonus episodes, you'll get access to a library of episodes. I think there's like 120 episodes, probably more than that on there, full-length episodes of the show that you guys will love.

Anyways, we have some incredible episodes coming up this year, some really big projects and so much in the works for 2025. Thank you all for joining us on this crazy ride we call life. I hope you all have a great weekend and I'll catch you on the next one.