Matthew Cox | Inside True Crime Podcast - Witnessing A Murder at 11 Years Old | Full Story Of Collier Landry

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

Witnessing A Murder at 11 Years Old | Full Story Of Collier Landry

She says, call your, I want you to know something. I would never leave you. And I was like, well, of course not, Mommy. I know that. And she goes, if I ever do, I want you to know that your father probably had me killed. Next thing I know, it's, I'm startled awake by hearing a scream. And I look at this clock, I have this Batman clock on the wall, and it's about 3.18 a.m. and then I hear two loud thuds about 60 seconds apart.

And between those thuds, I hear my father muttering. I recognize his voice. And then I count 12 footsteps as they walk down the hallway. And I always slept with my door open. And in the doorway, I can see out of my peripheral vision, the two feet stop in my doorway. Hey, it's Matt Cox, and I'm here with Collier Landry and Collier has an interesting story. In fact, I remember watching a documentary on the story, on this related subject. So as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, wow, I looked into it.

I was like, oh, wow, I need to talk to this guy. It's super interesting. And I watch some videos. And so anyway, check this out. I was watching one of your first, you know, we were contacted. Then I started watching one of your videos and I was kind of like, that sounds familiar. And then I went and as you were telling the story, I remember and I remember telling my

girlfriend as we were watching, I was like, oh my God, I remember watching this. Like 20, like before I even went to prison, I think I watched. Or maybe it was when I was in prison, I watched one of those, you know, one of the documentary type shows. I don't think I watched the whole, I don't think I had watched an individual. entire like a two hour documentary i want to say it was one of those one hour no you probably watched forensic files that yeah yeah okay like everybody else has yeah yeah um yeah so and then i got to the part i i watched one of the shows where you actually had confronted your father um and i never you know

i don't know what ended up happening with that we were we were like we were doing like four or five different things at the same time and i was like oh i'm going to interview this guy i've got to interview this guy so that's my documentary that's a murder of mansfield that i made What I can front him. Forensic Files is how a lot of people know me, mostly because I was this kid that was involved in this massive murder trial. And I was like the center of it, all of it, right? And that's how a lot of people know me.

And then I, in my process, which we're going to get into all this, but I had made a film called a murder in Mansfield because I did all of these things to try to find out why my father murdered my mother. Right. And it culminates in this, you know, sort of scene, which is like right over my shoulder. older here of me confronting my father in prison. So, okay, so let's, let's start at the beginning.

You were, you know, obviously, you were born. I was born. I was, I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in Brinmore Hospital, in, on February 28th, 1978. And I, uh, all my family was from, from, from, Philadelphia mainline area. And I grew up, I guess, like, you know, like every other kid, I guess I thought I had a really normal life. I think when we're young, we're, you know, we don't, we obviously don't realize what

adulting problems are or the situation that we're necessarily in. So my family, right when I was born, we moved from Philadelphia to Pensacola, Florida for about six months. my father was in the Navy. And then we moved to Dahlgren, Virginia when I was like one year old. And I lived on a naval base where I grew up for the next four years in Dahlgren, Virginia. And my father was a doctor. My father was a doctor on that naval base. You know, I grew up. I thought I just had like a normal life, normal kid. And it wasn't really until, you know, airplanes laying in the backyard.

going to the Chesapeake Bay and you know going to preschool and that was my sort of thing and i had like you know i was talking about this the other day with somebody i was just filming with vice and we were getting into like my backstory and i was like you know i i do remember like good times with my parents around that you know i remember really thinking that i was really in a happy family in my my dad and you know being home more and things like that and it wasn't really until we moved to Mansfield, Ohio, which is where I grew up, the rest of my life, that thing started to change. And when we moved to Mansfield, my father had taken a job as a president of a hospital there. And, or not a president, but like he was like, whatever, he was running the hospital.

Right. And he was a doctor who was an osteopath. He went to Penn. And as to my mother. and the thing is is that that was a place where we didn't know anyone right and like I said all my family is from you know Philadelphia so we were this sort of city folk if you will that is Mansfield is now it's it's grown but at that time it was a very small town and is in the Midwest and it's you know it's they're not used to having people like our like like we were right

city folk in the country So it was a lot for my mother to sort of relate to and my father. But one of the things that, and this is, I think that you, something you could really understand is, and this is unbeknownst to me at the time. But it was an opportunity for my parents in a place where no one knew who we were to create a life and to sort of have a little bit of a revisionist history in their lives. or, you know, just sort of create a new character, if you will. And so I think that the persona that both of my parents projected was they came from good, wealthy families in Philadelphia and, you know, obviously we're Ivy League educated, but they sort of created this facade.

And part of that facade was that we were a happy family. and I grew up spending 95% of the time with my mother. I was her constant companion. And I just kind of thought that was normal. And my father, who was a doctor, was always, quote, working. And so I started to realize as we moved to me as well, I was five years old, six years old, seven years old. I started to realize that, like, my father was around less and less. Like he wasn't home for family meals or he would just sort of disappear at night.

I would often find him sleeping on the couch later. night or if I was if I came up in the morning he was he was gone or he was watching up watching CNN Larry King in the middle of the night and I remember just sort of going I don't something something's all off here but maybe not maybe it's just me you didn't you didn't hear then they weren't arguing in front of you or anything well but no so my my parents did argue and and my father was a very violent person growing up so my father had a massive proclivity for violence. But it didn't really start until I was around seven where he was violent with me and my mother like overtly. I'm sure he was manipulative to her. I'm sure they got in arguments and all

these things. My father wasn't around a lot, you know, and he was quote, like I said, always working. And then I started noticing this change in the family dynamic. And I had kids I was going to school with that were children of doctors that were in single parent households. So their parents were divorced. I didn't really quite understand how that worked, but I knew that it wasn't great. And I saw the pain that they were going through with the sort of manipulation between both parents and whatnot, bouncing around on weekends. But I still was grateful for this family unit that I perceived that we had. And over the years, my father was around less and less.

But one of the things that we did do, we did two things together. We would go, I would go with him with his medical rounds to the hospitals, and he would see his patients, and I would like tap dance and sing and perform for the people to entertain them, right?

Because I was one of those artsy-fartsy people. So we would do that. And then we would go on ski trips, and mostly would be myself and my father. So I learned how to ski when I was like eight years old. we would go up and one of the things I remember if my mother didn't come with us which often she didn't she would stay in the lodge if she did she didn't personally ski she did a couple times it wasn't really her thing but I noticed that when I would go with my father it would be like just father and

son trip to go up there I noticed that oftentimes I wake up in the hotel room by myself or I would see my father talking to a woman and like I remember one time going to look for my father I woke up and I put my clothes on and was like walking around the hotel looking for him. I found him in a bar, like at the ski lounge lounge, the ski lodge lounge talking to this woman. And I was like, huh, this is weird. But I didn't really think anything of it. As I was getting older, so 9, 10 years old, I started to develop asthma. And it was pretty serious.

And I was not an asthma. athletic kid. I was on steroids because of asthma. I started, you know, having a lot of problems. I couldn't, like, playing in gym class. Like I could because it was exercise-induced asthma. It was just really bad, right? Especially during the winter. We're getting bronchitis a lot and things like that. But my father started getting really abusive towards me for not being athletic, calling me a stupid little fat boy. We would play catch in the yard and he'd try to, like, throw the baseball at my nuts and tell me I was a pussy, you know, things like that, abusive of things. And I noticed that things were getting more and more contentious between my parents.

And there were situations where, so my father was apoplectic, right? And he would literally at the drop of a snap of a finger could just, he was a rageaholic, just, you know, everything would just hit the fan. I remember we were making breakfast on a Saturday and I dropped an egg on the floor and he just lost it. And he threatened to kill me and then my mother begged for mercy and slammed the door and shattered all the windows um he he was just he was just that type of person so i i also grew up in this situation where besides the trauma that happens later i grew up in a very contentious household of like you know i had a tiptoe around didn't want to set my dad off right and i never really understood why that why he was that way and he was very

Jekyll and Hyde. So sometimes he'd be really, really nice. So, or he would have these rage fits and then he would apologize as most, you know, as most abusers, manipulators, narcissists do. I just kind of thought that was normal, right? Right. No, I know. I, I, look, I understand. I mean, one, being in a very similar household. And two, I was just thinking I was, I was, I was, uh, as you were saying it, I was thinking it's funny, like you don't notice that's, you don't know there's anything wrong. I, I'm actually working on a story with my my girlfriend and we're and as we're kind of going through it and like everybody involved in the stories on drugs well you know when you're surrounded by water you don't realize you're in water you know what I mean like a fish doesn't know it's in water so it's the

same thing when all you when your only reference is you know you've got a sweet mother and a father who's abusive you kind of assume well that's how it is with everybody right yeah absolutely Absolutely. So you don't realize how odd it is until you get into a normal situation, and you go, wow, my family's fucked off. You know, but, so I know exactly what you're saying. You just don't see it. No, you don't at all. And it's a, it is a situation where you just, yeah, you just, you can't see the forest for the trees, right? You don't know your water. When you're in water, you don't know your water. I love that.

I'm going to use that, by the way. So I am, I kind of but still thought that I was grateful for my life, right? And my mother was just the kindest, most gentle, a beautiful woman, by the way, and just a kind person to everyone and just really taught me the foundation of kindness. And also my parents didn't suffer fools. like I was the kid who education was a very high priority in my household and I was a kid who was who would school would end would get to play with his friends like get a week off from from school school and then go back to summer school and take summer classes and science art math whatever it was right right and I loved to learn so I was like into that right and that's how I grew up and and I think a lot of it was, I often wonder what I think back on things is maybe my mother was trying to put me in these things so I wouldn't see certain situations. So if I'm away with friends or at school and

doing activities, that I'm not seeing what lies beneath the surface of their relationship, which was my father was a manipulative, consistent womanizer and abuser. And I ended up finding out much later in life that my father was having affairs on my mother, even before they got married in 1968. And they had been together since they were in high school. He was like maybe 19. I think she was like 17 when they met. And they had had a relationship, like from the very early stages of their relationship, he was a womanizer. He built some of the nation's largest banks out of an estimated $55 million because $50 million wasn't enough. And 60 million, seemed excessive.

He is the most interesting man in the world. I don't typically commit crimes, but when I do, it's bank fraud. Stay greedy, my friends. Support the channel. Join Matthew Cox's Patreon. Things really started to change when my grandparents started dying. So my mother's mother passed away in November of 1987. Her father, who was my pop-op, who I was probably close.

two out of all my grandparents was he passed away January 1988 and he had come to stay with us at the end of his life and then my father's father passed away in May or June of 1988 and the other person left was my grandmother who was my father's mother now my father's mother had three children my father a middle child who was my aunt obviously and then uh younger son, who was my uncle, who was my godfather, who was very close to my mother. And my mother was extremely close with her mother-in-law, because she didn't really have a relationship, a very good relationship with her daughter, daughter was a little bit of a tomboy. My mother was a traditional, beautiful woman, into fashion, into art, into like the high society

type of things, you know, loved going to museums. And that was something she really shared in common with my, with my grandmother. Now, both of my family's backgrounds were poor working class people, you know, and but in this town of Manseel, they had sort of portrayed that they had different lives. You know, they came from wealthy families and relations to famous people and things like that, which a lot of them was not true. My father also portrayed this persona that he was a naval war hero. And my father would tell these stories to patients, to girlfriends, to people of, like things like going and i remember we were at this country club that we had joined in in katava island which is northern part of the state of ohio and i remember that we were at this dinner my father was telling this whole story about how he was in his fighter jet in the south china sea and he had to eject because he got shot down he ejected and the ejection latch wouldn't work so the plane went down in the south china sea and he had to take his trusty bowing knife

military issue and cut him his way out of the cockpit and then swim a couple miles to shore and get picked up by a search and rescue team days later it's great story it's not true but i grew up thinking that my dad because he was was in the navy and i used to watch airplanes laying in our backyard when we lived in Dahlgren and I thought that my father had flown airplanes and this is like around the time the top gun comes out so like 19 it was talking 87 86 something like that so my father's very into top gun and I thought oh and he would tell me these stories right because that was something my father was really proud of course when you're trying to relate to your father I was like oh okay and I bought it of course and I remember his call sign what he said was bumper which was my nickname growing up

because when we lived on the naval base I used to point to the nose cone of of the airplanes and call it a bumper. He used to say bumper. So he said his call sign was bumper. And I remember him telling me, he's like, oh, they found my helmet. I'm going to get my helmet. I remember asking my father for like years. Did you get your helmet?

You get your fighter helmet? Because I thought that would be cool to have, right? I go wear my dad's fighter helmet. It's obviously bullshit. My father even told people he flew for the blue angels, which is like the Navy's color guard. Right. Like the most elite, elite fighter pilots in the world.

And there are photographs of my father that he would even have in his office of him with probably more medals on his jacket, on his officer's jacket, than the joint chiefs of staff for the president. I mean, it was just absurd. But again, I didn't know any of these things. Now, I do remember going to the Army surplus store with my father where they sell those medals. And I do remember getting some for myself because I was a green beret one year. for Halloween. I think the last Halloween I was in there, you know, but it was, I grew up in this sort of facade. And, but I kind of didn't believe it. But really when things started to unravel was around my mother wanted to have, my mother wanted to adopt a baby from China, from Taiwan,

specifically, like a two-year-old girl. And I was supposed to go over, this is February of, 1989. I was supposed to go over with her to China and I got really, really sick the night, like a few days before, really bad asthma. And I didn't go because I probably would have died on the airplane. And my, I was left with my father. And I had never been alone with my father for more than a brief period of time, right? Or with other people around. That was two weeks that I was with him. And it was absolute hell. He was so

abusive to me. And I remember, so my father had a real proclivity for violence and he loved violent movies. And I remember he was watching Commando and I didn't really like watching those movies growing up. I didn't like to see people getting shot and murdered and things like that. So I would cover

my eyes and he would call me a pussy, smack me, you know, don't uncover your eyes. You need to see this. This is war. I was in the Vietnam War. like all this crazy shit. My father was, let me be very clear. My father was in the Navy in the ROTC program. He never was a fighter pilot. He never saw combat. He was, yes, he was in the Navy around when the Vietnam War occurred. He never was in, in Vietnam. He never did any of these things. And he never left the United States, apparently. So, but he would tell me these stories. I mean,

just, you know, as a war hero, decorated war hero. And I'm just, but I, but I, you know, I felt bad. I believe that I was doing something wrong, right? So this time, very specifically, he would say to me, he was watching these movies. I was in playing a computer game on the computer and I'd unplug the speakers to the computer. So I wouldn't disturb him. Literally was just like trying to be considerate my father. He comes into the office where I'm playing the video game. It was like Math Blaster or something, if you remember that. And, And he says, why is there no sound coming through a computer? And I told him, I told him why I unplug the speakers. And he just lost it. He grabs the speaker wire and he shoves it in my face.

He's like, I'm going to fucking stick this in you. He sticks to the back of computer and he starts screaming at me. He starts taking books and computer games and throwing them at me off the shelf and screaming at the top of the long sound. Also, my father is six foot four, a good 200 25 pounds. He's a big dude. And I'm a kid, an asthmatic little chubby kid. He starts chasing me around the house, making me stop and salute him every time he said, what are you? And I'd have to stop and salute him and say, a stupid little fat boy, sir, and run around and do all these choices. He's just screaming at me. He's throwing things at me. And he's whipping me with a belt. And he did that for a period of about two weeks. And

I remember he and then he would stop and then he would apologize and say it's okay daddy sorry and all this stuff like you know the master manipulator right is he drunk like is he no no so okay so everybody says that so I want to be very clear my father never drank my father was not an alcoholic and as far as I knew didn't abuse drugs like I you know I I only saw my parents drink on very limited occasions my mother. liked an amaretto sour. I think my father maybe drank scotch, but like they weren't drinkers. You know, alcohol wasn't something that I noticed in my house. He went, now his father was an alcoholic, but he wasn't.

So he was just a rage-filled human. And I, I, um, so this was a time I was without my mother, you know, and then it's this apologizing back and forth, right? So finally my mother comes back. And I'm now aware of like why she's never like let me be with my father for longer than certain periods of time.

And I thought, you know, okay, there's like some real issues here. So she comes back from China. And then flash forward a few months later, it's Memorial Day weekend, 1989. And I go with my father to this barbecue party. And we go like out the outskirts of Mansfield into the country country. and go to these people's house and they're like racing quads and they're barbecuing

and people are drinking beer and playing volleyball and stuff and I had never seen anything like this as a kid because my mother was very preppy, very properly, as was my father. We didn't really like, no offense, but like we didn't associate with people like that. Like, you know, they're,

and not that there's anything wrong with it. I had a blast, by the way, like riding a quad. But I'd never seen anything like that. Dirt bikes, all this. I wasn't aware that those things like this. I, you know, I raced bikes when I was a kid. It was like BMX kid and all that stuff. But like I never, I never saw that, right?

And there was a woman there, a young woman. And I met her. Her name was Sherry Campbell. And I, towards the end of the evening, I'm walking with her daughter, who's a couple years younger than me, and we're walking around the lake and we're like skipping stones and all this. And I look back and my father has his arm around this woman. I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting.

And we're getting ready to leave and he gives her a kiss on the cheek, which wasn't like necessarily totally out of character because my parents kind of did the, you know, thing that you do with, you know, friends and whatever. But I took note of it. And I asked my father on the ride back home, I said, who was that woman? And he explained to me that she was a patient and that she was terminally ill and that he was there to comfort her. in her health problems. And that's why he had his arm around her because he was consoling her. I was like, oh, that's, you know, horrible, you know.

I didn't really think anything of it. That was satisfactory enough answer for me. On school ends, and in June of 1989, it was Father's Day. And my father goes, takes me to his office and he says, go to his office, we pick up some stuff and he stops to go get a suntan. This is like the late 80s, so the sun tanning is in.

And this woman, again, Sherry Campbell, is at the suntan place, just happens to run into us. And she has two radio control cars. And she, you know, says, hey, happy Father's Day. I got these for you guys. And all this, it's like, oh, yay. And I'm like, of course, you get a kid radio control car. You're his best friend. But I noticed something that's kind of odd.

I see a ring on her finger. that I recognized my mother was wearing at one point and it was a diamond slide ring it was very unique like it wasn't a standard ring and I said oh my mommy has a ring like that

and she just kind of giggles and she looks at my father I don't pay it any mind and as we're getting ready to leave I get in the car and I look up and my father is full on making out with this woman and I had never seen that

other than movies right I thought, oh, okay, something's up. And my father gets in the car. And so I ask him, and he goes, I need you to tell your mother that I took you to the office and I gave you the radio control cars and not tell her about meeting Sherry or anything like that. I need you to do me that favor. And, of course, I'm afraid of my father. So I don't want to say anything to him.

But I know that something is seriously wrong with this. And I lied to my mother out of fear from my father. Right. So we go to dinner that night. and then in the middle of the night I get very sick and obviously racked with guilt as a kid because I never lied to my mother and the next day I'm playing with the radio control car

my father is not there and I come in the porch I'm just so overwhelmed with guilt and I say mommy I need you to sit down and I tell her I said I think daddy's having an affair and she was 11 years old okay and I say to her this is yeah 1989 and I say to her

I said, I think daddy's having an affair. And I tell her the whole story of meeting Sherry, meeting Sherry back in Memorial Day. You know, she got the cars and how she had the ring and how they were making out and all this stuff. My mother said, thank you for telling me. She was upset that I had lied to her, but she was thankful and she understood why my father put me in that position

and it wasn't fair to me. And she's grateful that I told her the truth. She goes in, she makes a phone call and there's a lot of screaming. And that was when I realized that like, oh, my God, like some of these other kids, I'm going to be a child of divorce. I don't have this particular, I don't have this perfect family that I thought I had. Despite my father's behavior and despite my father not being around all the time, I still thought I had a family unit intact. And I realized that that's not the case. So this is, like I said, end of June 1989, and this is when things really started to unravel.

So my parents start to engage my mother files for divorce because unbeknownst to me at that time, my mother and father had a, had an understanding, which was my mother had said, you know, my father's name was John, but he went by Jack. She's like, Jack can do her the fuck you want. Don't involve our kid. The moment you involve our kid, that's the line in the sand. And he did. He involved me by introducing me to one of his.

his girlfriend and that was it for my mother and she'd filed for divorce and for the next several months it was getting really ugly and my father would like leave little notes in my bed saying I love you buddy and everything will be okay and daddy like basically the victim like mommy's doing this but mommy'll come to her senses type stuff that he was saying this and I'm thinking myself like I don't know what's going on but like it seems like you're at fall here buddy because my mother was my most important person to me. I spent, like I said, the majority of my time with her. But it kept getting uglier and uglier.

And my father, I would, if any time, I would spend time with my father at this point, this is towards the end of 1989, we would randomly run into Sherry Campbell. And he'd be like, look who's here. It's Sherry. You're at a Kmart. And she just conveniently, we would just come. Sherry was sick. Yeah, exactly.

I thought Sherry was going to die. I thought Sherry was She's definitely not terminally ill. No. Okay. And because she's still around. So that was a lie. And what happened is, is that, yeah, we randomly run into her and he had was like moved in with her staying there.

He wasn't at our house hardly at all. He would come back and get things and things. Things were just really, really ugly between my parents. And my father gets. nastier and nastier. This is like around Thanksgiving of 1989. My father is telling me things like he's going to make sure, because I believe my mother finally filed for divorce in November of that year, November 1989, officially. And my father started telling me how he's going to make sure that I get yanked out of the school that I'm at and go to public school, like all the

other, quote, poor kids. And I'm going to, he's going to make sure that my mother and I don't have a house to live in, that, um, that, uh, he, that, uh, he's going to make sure that my mom is working at McDonald's and that I don't have enough clothes and that, and that we are so, we suffer. And that's how I'm going to grow up. And he's going to create a beautiful, wonderful life with Sherry and her children and give them everything. This is what he's telling me as an 11 year old child. And I started noticing my mother's demeanor was really beaten down Because unbeknownst to me also was the fact that my father is a doctor, but the whole reason that my father is a doctor is my mother who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry and got her dental hygienist degree was working in Philadelphia in the 60s and 70s, earning $25 an hour to put my father through medical school. And my mother ran all of his books and took care of all the accounting for my father's practice because my father went into private.

practice after he left the hospital because he was asked to leave because it was womanizing and because he had so many complaints against it, which, of course, I didn't know any of this as a child. So my father starts telling me all these horrific things. So my mother is driving me after picking me up to school. We're going from school. We're going to a restaurant called Bob Evans to eat. And she says to me, as we're driving down the road, she says, call your, I want you to know something, I would never leave you. And I was like, well, of course not, mommy. I know that. And she goes, if I ever do, I want you to know that your father probably had me killed. And I was like, well, how is that mommy? And she said, she starts going into this fact that, you know, so my father's

Italian. And she said, you know, your father has mafia connections and, you know, your, your father just has ways to dispose of me. Who knows if that's even true. Yeah. Based on all the other, like, you know, who knows what he's telling her. Exactly. And, you know, my mother did know, my mother did, I ended up finding out eventually, like, my mother did know her family and there wasn't these connections, like, at least not that

way. But there was, she was just in fear of her life. And I had kind of seen that at that moment, like, okay, something's up. so the holidays are here and it's just not a great holiday you know christmas my father isn't around like he's with his new family buying them all kinds of presents and stuff like that and it's just a whole thing right and my grandmother who's my again my father's mother was supposed to come stay with us for christmas and have a wonderful holiday she doesn't come for christmas she instead comes for new year's and she arrives on new year's eve or uh December 30th

1989 and what's interesting is my mother when they were arriving she saw my father drive down the driveway we could see my grandmother was in the car and she said to her best friend who she's on the phone with well jack's here with his mother so he get i guess he can't kill me tonight and the irony of all this is that my mother used to say things like famous last words my mother had a very sardonic sense of humor right so you know she used to say like famous last words but famous last words so i my grandmother arrives and we have dinner whatever my father leaves and my grandmother and my mom are sitting in the living room and i you know i give everybody a kiss good night i give her a hug night mommy next thing I know it's I'm startled awake by hearing a scream and I look at this clock I have this Batman clock on the wall and it's about 3.18 a.m. And then I hear two loud thuds about 60 seconds apart. And between those thuds, I hear my father muttering. I recognize his voice. And then I count 12 footsteps as they walk down the hallway. And I always always,

always slept with my door open. And in the doorway, I can see out of my peripheral vision, the two feet stop in my doorway. And something's telling me, don't look up. Because I firmly believe that if I had, at that point in time, there's no, it's nothing to make the whole little bigger and say she left with the kid. Yeah. Because that's actually probably more plausible. A hundred percent. a hundred percent and the footsteps go away i somehow go back to sleep i wake up a few hours later i jump out of bed i run straight to my mother's room and there's a bunch of sheets that are off the bed it's in disarray and i'm looking for blood stains i'm looking for anything i can find i come downstairs and my father is sitting on the couch watching CNN with a towel wrapped

around his waist i said to him where is my mother and he doesn't respond right away I said to him again, I said, where is my mother? And he looks at me and he goes, well, call your mommy took a little vacation. And I knew at that moment, it was game one, motherfucker. Like, you fucking killed her. But I don't really want to believe it, but I'm like, this is what's happened. So my grandmother comes in and my father says to me, my father says, okay, so we're not.

going to contact the police. We're not going to contact the FBI. And I thought that was really bizarre when he said the FBI. I'm like, we're in Ohio, like at the FBI. And he goes into this whole story of explaining that the thuds that I heard was my mother throwing her purse at him and that she had come downstairs and attacked him and started screaming at him over the divorce, over money, and threw her purse at him, threw all her credit cards at him, left the house, walked down the driveway in the dead of winter with no coat and got into a car that was waiting for her at the end of the driveway and left. Uber?

Yeah, 1989. She pulled up her iPhone and got the Uber. That whole story doesn't make it in a town where I don't know very many people in the middle of the night without my credit cards, without anything, without a, yeah. Without a coat. Yeah, and left her personal vehicle there. left her personal vehicle there left her just left her children

there didn't grab the kids just left and so that's already very fishy right and I know my father's lying right because I because once he involved me with the sherry with the with the mistress I started realizing

that all the shit that my father told me my entire life was all bullshit like my father was a liar and I was like okay so this is the type of person I'm dealing with So I was, I became even closer to my mother during this time between when I discovered that he's a womanizer and has this relationship to when she goes missing. So our bond only gets stronger because now I believe my mother. I believe and I see the pain that my mother's going through in this whole divorce and

separation and divorce. And I'm just like this guy's a horrible fucking human being. My father's a real. I've already didn't really care for my father to begin with. And now I'm like, you're a fucking asshole. And now my mother's gone. and now you're feeding me this bullshit. So my father leaves and my grandmother who's there and she's bought the whole story.

And she's like, okay, you're not going to call anybody. You're not going to tell anybody because he doesn't want us to tell anybody. Like, yeah, that's fucking ridiculous. So my mother had just bought a, huh? It doesn't make sense. Like you're going to try and track her down at the very least. Of course. And what I, what I do is I grab, my mother just bought a cordless phone.

I grab this cordless phone. I go upstairs. And I had saved all my mother's friend's phone numbers and I had hidden them in a garfield that I had in my room. I grabbed that list. I go into the bathroom. I lock the door. I start calling everyone.

I tell them what happened. I tell them I can't call the police. I told my father I wouldn't call the police. Call the police. Right. So a black and white shows up at the house a few hours later. And two, you know, uniform officers come in and my grandmother is just livid with me, saying, screaming at me saying, your father does that not to call the police?

why did you call the police? I was like, I didn't call the police because I didn't call the police. And they're coming around, but my grandmother is literally helicoptering. She is hovering over everything. She's telling them to get out, get out of the house.

You don't have a right to talk to this kid, blah, blah, blah. And I'm trying to like explain to them. Like my mother would never leave me. Like something has happened to her. This is the bedroom. They're just kind of looking around or whatever. Turns into a missing person's report.

So I follow up the next day with my mother's friends. And they say, this is a missing person's case. you know, we filed a report. I'm like, well, like she is missing, yes, but something has happened to her. She's dead or she's,

you know, locked in a room somewhere. And, you know, and they all knew that my mother would never leave me because my mother did have friends in town, you know, other doctors, wives and stuff. I had friends growing up,

but she didn't have a family here, you know, and the family was all back east. And they were also very estranged, especially after my grandparents passed away, which I'll come to find out later. Why? but my um so the next day so we have this like it's new year's day by this time and my father's

girlfriend shows up and we have this whole like you know pot road or pork roast dinner it was just terrible but earlier in the day what happened is the detective showed up and his name was dave messmore knocks on the door my grandmother again is like you can't come in you can't do this and he's like well i just want to you know have a word is the doctor here no he's not here He'll come back later. He's like, if I just have a look around, he charms his way in. And I'm like, come on in, come on him. It's my grandmother, again, loses it.

And she goes to call my father on the phone. I grab him, I pull him aside and I say, give me your card. Like my mother would never leave me. Something's happened to her. Give me your card. I'll contact you. I'm going back to school. It gives me his business card.

The next day I go to school, the first thing I do is I walk into the principal's office. I give her the card. I say you need to call the Mansfield Police Department. you call this guy, you need to get him here. Dave Massmore comes down to my school, and over a period of like two or three hours, I lay out the entire history of my mother and father and everything that happened from our whole,

the whole situation and the girlfriend and all the details, meeting her, my father's abuse towards me, my mother, what really happened on New Year's Day, on New Year's Eve, and what I heard and everything. tell him, I said, I'm going to go home because my father won't be home. My grandmother will be dealing with my sister, if he was adopted from Taiwan. I said, I'm going to go upstairs and pull the bookshelves out of the wall and look into our crawl space to see if I can find my mother's body. Or I'm going to start, I'm going to start looking for clues. I'm going to see if I can

find her one purse that she would never leave the house with. I'm going to see if I can find this, and I just started laying out what I sort of plan was. I think he was looking at me like I was fucking crazy. Like this is, at the time, I'm almost 12 years old, but I'm still 11. He's like this kid, but I was a very articulate child and growing up with parents that really valued education. Like I wasn't watching television and stupid shit. I was reading books and I read my father's medical books for fun. And, you know, our idea of going on a family vacation was to go see all these museums and everything. So education is a really high priority in my household. So I was a well-spoken little kid, and I began to gather evidence against my father.

And over the course of the next 25 days, and today is a very, very key anniversary date, January 25th for me. But over the next 25 days, I start gathering evidence, and myself and Dave Messmore begin to put together. and ultimately it leads to my father's arrest, which is on January 25th, 1990. But I start gathering evidence, and some of the things that are happening is my father's coming home and he has all these marks and cuts on his hand.

So I report that. He is really sore, and he has me rubbed Ben Gay on his shoulders because he was so sore, and he said, from moving boxes in his new practice in Erie, Pennsylvania. And I'm just telling the detective, of everything, as all this is transpiring over the next several weeks.

But it wasn't until mid-January, 1990. My father takes me to his office to go pick up some paperwork. And I'm watching my father like a hawk, you know, so I don't let him out of my sight, right? And every night, like, during this time, his divorce attorney is over at the house. Dave Messmore keeps coming to the house with other, and other officers do, to want to talk to my father. He wants to question my father, but he refuses to talk to him. And I see Dave at the doorway, and mind you, I'm talking to Dave behind my father's back at school, reporting on everything that's going on inside the house.

And it's like we have this like thing and he's pretending not to know me and I'm pretending not to know it. It was really weird. It was crazy. But what happens is I go with my father to get these, this paperwork in his office. And on the drive back, we stop at a gas station. He walks in the gas station to purchase some stuff and pay for gas. And I'm watching him through the windshield. I start rummaging through his car.

I open up the center console of his truck. And I find two photographs right next to each other. One is of a house that I've never seen before. And the other one is of his girlfriend, Sherry Campbell, with her two children sitting in front of a fireplace that's wrapped in plastic. So it looks like a new fireplace. And I just kind of put two and two together. like this is a new house

she's involved this is something significant next day I go to school and I tell Dave Messmore about this towards the end of January so around January 21st

1990 because I don't hear from Dave after telling him about this house for a couple of days I noticed my father's behavior is becoming he's becoming more and more stressed at home but we oddly my father is not angry. My father

has turned actually into this sort of very passive person in a lot of ways where I was watching. I was playing a video games. I got Nintendo for Christmas that year was a fighting game and he saw me playing and he goes, I didn't know this was a violent game. I wouldn't have bought it for you. And I'm thinking to myself, who is this guy? Like, you're Mr.

Violence. You're Mr. I cover my eyes when you're watching Commando and you're angry with me and I'm playing a beat him up double dragon game and this is what you're upset about. I was like, this is so bizarre. But my father, comes to me, it was around January 21st, 1990, and he says, you know, Collier, I know it's been really hard on you, you know, with your mother leaving us. It was always, it was always with him over the course of this sort of investigation. It was everything that he would tell me was, your mother left us, your mother left us. You know, hopefully she'll come back. We would pray at meals at night for her safety. I mean, it was wacky shit. And I said, I was like, okay. And he said, well, I have a, I want to take you on a, like, let's just do a father and son bonding

trip. And I have a medical conference in Florida and I'll take you and we'll have it just a father and son bonding trip and they'll be really great. And I'm thinking to myself, okay, man, every year we would go to Tampa, Clearwater Beach, and we would go for medical conferences. But they were always in the spring. They weren't in the middle of January. and they weren't right after Christmas

because obviously these things are structured to like families can go on spring break and the kids can go bush gardens and whatever and it's a fun trip right it's Clearwater and I knew something was up and I the next day I tell Dave Messmore I call him up and I said this is what's happening and he realizes like

because I tell him I was like I'm going to drown the Gulf Mexico I'm not coming back from Florida and he knew that and as potentially the only key witness in a murder case he was very concerned. So the morning of January 24th, I get yanked out of my house.

Can I wake up? What's that? Oh yeah, of course. Please interrupt me. Is this a year later? No, this is, no, this is a few weeks later. A few weeks later.

So it's, yeah. Okay. No, so this has been, so my mother goes missing on December 31st, 1989. This is now like January 24th, 1990. Okay.

I thought maybe because, you know, a lot of times of, sure, homicide detectives or cases, you know, they take forever. Of course. And which is very interesting because now that seems to be the process. But this was not the case with my father. So what had happened is, and like I was saying,

my father's behavior was becoming, he was more and more passive. He wasn't getting aggressive, but he was very nervous. So I began to think, okay. you know I tell Dave Messmore I've been telling Dave Messmore all this stuff and then so they yank me out of the house children services comes in I say we're from you know child services

you need you have 20 minutes to pack a bag and get your stuff and so I start packing my clothes and I say okay what about my dog and they said we'll come back for your dog I never saw my dog again I pack a bag for my sister as I coming down the stairs

is when I discover the entire house and my grandma's screaming at these people the entire house is filled they're coming in with men and women in white coats and they've got all kinds of contraptions with them like they're executing a search warrant

in my house for my mother's body. And it was complete mayhem. I get taken to a friend's house, a friend of the family's house, and I'm not going to school that day. I go and I'm approached by a social worker comes And I don't know what a social worker is, you know, a caseworker, but I know it's not a good thing. And she basically explains me, I'm going to be staying here for a while.

I won't be going back to my home for a while. And they're kind of looking for my father. And I'm like, okay. So that night, which is January 24th, 1990, I have what is literally the worst asthma attack in my life. And I, I'm pretty convinced that I'm going to. die. And I'm in a home. I don't have my medication. I don't have the stuff that I need to breathe, really. I don't know how I made it through the night, but I did. Next morning, they take me to the hospital because I somehow stabilize. They take me at the hospital

and I go to see a family friend who's a doctor. And as I'm walking into the hospital, they, the lobby is filled with people and there's an honor box. You know, honor box is where they have the newspapers. And I just, as we're walking towards it, I get kind of veered away from it. And go into the room and the doctor's there, it gives me an injection for steroids. I get a breathing treatment and I'm like, okay, I can finally breathe. And this

is January 25th, 1990. And this is when this is when they tell me, they say, call your Lieutenant Messmore found your mother. And then there's like this eternal pause. And she was dead.

And the first thing out of my mouth was that bastard. And then that's when the circus starts. So I have a question. I mean, did you, are you still, you're still, you're 11. I'm 11, almost 12. So did you think, were you still holding out hope that maybe she was alive? you just kind of knew. I knew.

But in that moment, man, like you, you have that, like, you have this little, like, glint of hope in you. That maybe what you really know

to be true is really not true. Like, they're going to say, Lieutenant Sper found your mom. She was, you know, she was vacationing in the Bahamas. Uh,

she was in Aruba. She was shopping in Toronto and she, this and that. She was, you know, you kind of hope, that it doesn't have the ending because nobody wants to think

that their mother has been murdered and their mother has been murdered by their father. Right. So my father, they leave me out of this room and of course I see the honor box which has Boyle arrested for wife's murder.

Wife found, you know, on the headlines. And this was January 25th, 1990, so 33 years ago. And I, uh, I'm just like, and I already knew that my life was altered. I was like, this is like I've officially crossed the Rubicon now.

Like my whole life is over as I know it, like completely over. And I just, it's really hard to explain or it's really hard to articulate the emotions that come through that. And I think, you know, and I think for you, maybe you can relate. on a totally different level, but I think, you know, you were convicted for, you went to prison for 12 years, right? Yeah, almost 13 years, yeah. Yeah, and you, obviously, you committed a crime. You knew you were guilty.

You talked, we talked about that. But, you know, there is a finality when somebody, like, when the judge, you know, hands, when the judge says your sentence, right? You're, you're sentenced to however many, you did 12, 13, but maybe it was like 20 years and you were out for good behavior or whatever it was, right? But when you hear those things, like, you officially know like okay it's no joke this is like reality is set in like there's no coming back right i mean i'm sure you have had that you had that experience right despite your guilt like

it still hits you like oh this is real like it puts a button on it right right so i feel like i mean i didn't know exactly what was going to unfold but it was a circus so i go into the the foster care system temporarily. I'm staying with friends, actually. I'm not even in the foster care system yet. I'm temporarily saying with friends. My mother's mother's mother's, I'm sorry, my mother's sister, my aunt Carol comes in town. They have a memorial service with my mother's friends. And I testify at the grand jury hearing to indict my father, tell them everything I know, and I help them secure his indictment for my mother's murder. Then, I'm sorry.

Did you know any of the details at that point? Like, did you? I just knew. Sue, I knew a few things because they started asking me questions about, have you ever seen a blue tarp? Right. Around and I said, yeah, it was on our porch. Anything else?

Well, there was, you know, there was this green indoor outdoor, like astroturf carpeting that my dad had rolled up on the porch for months in 1989. You know, they started to ask me, have you ever seen this? I was like, yeah, I saw this. Yeah, I saw indoor outdoor covering. Now, I didn't know the details of what they had found, you know. But what had happened was, is while I'm having the worst asthma attack my life the night before, on January 24th, they are excavating my mother's body from underneath the basement floor of this house that I had found the photographs of

that my father had purchased with his mistress, Sherry Campbell. and they dug up her body underneath the basement floor and it was covered with green astroturf. There was new bookshelves and they almost didn't discover it. They just happened to see a splatter of concrete on the wall that wasn't cleaned up

and then they knew that the floor had been excavated and they ripped everything up and then that's how they dug her body up. And it was wrapped in a blue tarp which I saw for months just sitting on our porch. So the charge was premeditated murder because my father had planned all of this for months. Right. He bought all this equipment, set it out.

So this wasn't like a tarp that you had for 10 years for painting one time. This was, he went out and started collecting, bought the house or. Yes. Had a whole. All of it. All of it. And so I testified at the grand jury and a couple of things happened. states like, okay, we're going to go with somebody, right?

My father's side of the family wants nothing to do with me because they feel very strongly and I'm the reason why my father's arrested and they're under this, you know, spell of my father who is a psychopath and a master manipulator and narcissist that he's innocent. And now I have somehow involved police and dishonored the family and I'm the bad guy at 11 years old. My mother's side of the family. even though the body ends up in his mistress's basement. No, no, it's not his mistress. It's his house that he bought with her.

And she forged. She wrote her name is, so her name is Sherry Campbell. She's not married to my father. My father's name is Dr. John Boyle. He's still married to my mother. She writes on the documents to purchase the house, Sherry Boyle. And then she puts an N period. My mother's name was Noreen Schmid Boyle.

So the initials line up N as B. Right? So if any of they ever checks, it looks like that, right? Because nobody knew what my mother's mill name was, really. So it's this whole thing. So everything was very calculated. And he even asked, and it comes out in trial later, he even asked the real estate agent about lowering the basement floor in this house,

which was brand new, by the way, about lowering the basement floor. But it was at the lake level. So you can't really get underneath the floor too much because of the water level. It'll fill with water, right? Right. So it ends up being this whole. whole, it's a fiasco. So my father's side of the family wants nothing to do with me because I feel that I'm the whole reason that this is all transpired and my father's innocent. My mother's side

of the family. My godmother says to me verbatim. This is my mother's sister. We cannot take you in because you look like your father. Okay. So I was. There's a whole bunch of really, really logical people involved in the family. Very, very logical and rational people involved in this entire situation. And it's very, it's, it's a very peculiar situation to be in when you are the youngest person in this scenario, yet you are the adult. Right. And I'm just dumbfounded. I'm completely devastated that my family has nothing to do with me. And I go into the foster care system, which I don't know if anyone understands the foster care system in the United States or how it works, but it's fucking horrible, despite the circumstances in there. It's just not

great. And I basically have to, while in foster care, come to terms with the fact that my father has murdered my mother. He's about to go to trial. I'm the key witness in this trial. And even though prosecutors said to me, well, you know, we don't need you to testify if you don't want to. You don't have to testify. I was like, over my dead body. Because, you know, when it goes to trial, I'm 12 years old. So I turned 12 a month after all this happens after they take the body up and I'm in foster care and all this stuff. Right. And I really, in the nader of my life, I have to somehow find the courage and the strength to go,

okay, I'm going to do what's right. I've been doing what's right for the last several months for my mother, for my family, and I'm going to tell the world what I know and face this monster in court. And a lot of people were under the impression that I was, it was like videotape testimony, money like you phone in. No, I was in the courtroom. And the videotape is because they were

filming me in court for the news because the trial was televised live throughout the courtroom and they actually had. It was such a circus that the courtrooms filled up every day. It was like the hottest ticket in town. And so they had to put television monitors out in the hallways of the courthouse so people could line up to watch the trial. And of this doctor, you know, who murdered his wife and my father had a high power legal team and all these things and you know for that time right there's no johnny cochran but like for mansfield he had a high power legal team and i just thought to myself like the thing is is that you have two choices you can tell you can do the difficult thing which is tell the truth face this monster and

and honor your mother and do what you know is right or you can do nothing. And I realize, and I don't know how I realize this, but this is all a testament to my mother and how she, her upbringing and what she instilled in me.

But I realized that if I didn't do any of this, there's going to be two things that we're going to happen. One, decades later, when I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Second thing is, if my father, you know, if my father somehow gets acquitted and I don't do anything, I'm not going

to be able to live with myself. But also the scary reality is when you're testifying against your father and you have somebody who's, who has this type of behavior, if he gets acquitted, he's going to, my life is over. My life is already over, but now my life is over again. And I'm going to be reliving this nightmare every single day of my life. Hey, remember when you try to put me in prison for murdering your mom oh by the way i did it because there's no double jeopardy you know it could be it could be something as simple as that so i just um i mean it's a really hard thing to face but i did it and i said i'm going to do what's right and i'm going to go in there and i testified for two days at trial against my father and he is still incarcerated to this day

right um but you you still have how much time did he get so he got 20 years for aggravated murder which is premeditated murder in ohio at that time um and then a year and a half for abuse of a corpse but he's on old law so every time that he wants to be released he has to go before the parole board and plea his case and then they can give him more time it's not like a 20 years and you're out type thing. What do you mean give him more time? He goes to the parole board and they don't let him out on parole. Exactly.

And they keep him inside again. Nowadays, the system has changed from my understanding is where you, if you're charged with a crime, they just give you a flat rate. So it's a, you know, it's a one size fits all. Okay, you committed this crime, then this is what you're going to. And on 20 years and one day, you're out, you know, and you're on probation, right? that doesn't that wasn't occurring when he was when he was sentenced so he's still incarcerated 79 years old when he goes in front of the parole board what is does he still say oh

I'm innocent shouldn't be here or does he say I fucked up I does he do well well so I had a relationship my father for decades. Because, and I guess we can get into this, but from what I understand is, you know, he still is in denial of it. Or he's responsible for her death. But finally, in my film, when I finally confront him, because I basically, I grew up in this town and I was known for this. And I did not want that. I didn't want anyone to know me for anything, who Collier is. And so I basically went off to music school for a few years, dropped out and moved to Los Angeles because I wanted to be, I wanted to tell this story. And I was either like, okay, I'll become a rock star, become famous and tell my story and change the world and help people.

Or I'll become a filmmaker. I'll tell my story, change the world, help people. That's what I ended up doing. I ended up becoming a filmmaker. And this whole process for me was trying to understand why my father murdered my mother. So in my film a murder of Mansfield, I confront my father for the first time. And I've had you know, I had a relationship with my father. I come to visit him in prison all the time and over the phone

phone calls and and I have 400 some letters and I read them on my podcast moving past murder to expose like narcissism and gas lighting and things like that, right? But this was the first time I've ever put it to him like you murdered my mother and I'm want to know why. And he has this whole story of just that she came down the stairs and she in front of much like he told me in that morning. But he left out, but he now added the details of he pushed her. She hit her head on a piece of furniture. And when he came back to her body,

she wasn't breathing and he tried to give her CPR. Now, imagine he didn't call 911 or anything like this. Right. But in the film, as I discovered, and through my process of healing, I end up reading the case file. I found out, I find out that the back of her skull was smashed in, most likely with a hammer. So my mother's principal cause of death was suffocation because when they found my mother's body, she had a plastic bag tied around, tied over her head. So my father had had hit her in the back of the skull and tied a plastic, like, noosed her up with a plastic bag, and she suffocated to death. And my, but my father denies this. And I even ask him, I say, well, how does she get the plastic bag over her head? He was going, oh, I put the plastic bag over her head. And I'm like, oh, okay.

He's like, I'll put the plastic bag over her head because I didn't want her to look at me. Like, oh, yeah, you didn't while you were murdering her? Of course you didn't. So there was all these really just strange things that he has in his defense. So I guess the first time he was up for parole was in 2010. And I had actually gone to the parole board and vouched for his release for two reasons. One is I wanted to curry favor with him because I wanted to tell this story. I'd always wanted to tell a story. And I knew that he wasn't getting out because there was a laundry list of people that were going against him.

And I had no means for him to come live with me in California. I could barely take care of myself. You know, he couldn't move in with me now. I don't have the ability to take care of someone else. And I just knew it wasn't possible. But I knew that it would curry favor with him because I wanted his participation to be able to tell this story. And so I would visit him in prison and I would phone calls with him and stuff.

And I had a very surface relationship with my father for 25, 26 years. I'm never really getting into the nitty gritty. When he did, when he was first up for parole, he did come to me. He did tell me that he was, quote, responsible for her death because his behavior led to my mother's murder. Because my father's always maintained as the one-armed man or somebody else did there. He's got all these theories. Like when he was in prison for years later, he was getting everyone riled up with theories that she was in a Chinese baby smuggling ring and gold smuggling ring. and had a file ring and selling sex slaves and just like crazy, crazy shit, you know,

Q and on type stuff, you know, just so out there. And it's just obviously grabbing for straws. But so I don't know in the parole files what he actually has really said, but his story has always been maintained of that he's quote responsible for her death, that he pushed her, that it was an accident. And that's been the whole thing. Now, he didn't give that story a trial. He said she left.

She got into a car and left. They got into the fight. She threw the purse out and the credit cards. No jacket gets down the driveway and leaves, which of course is a lie, right? And there was really no circumstantial evidence as far as like fingerprints and blood in his car. As far as I know, I did recently find out that he had rented a cold storage for her body. and because he had given his ID so he could store the body while he dug her grave in the house. Well, what about, I'm sorry, what about the girlfriend that signed for the house?

I mean, she signed, she, I mean, I know that's, you know, like identity, kind of a, you know, she had to know something was odd that she's signing for her and, you know, like she was never questioned. What was her? Well, no, she was definitely a question. and she took the fifth of the trial, and my father was going into business with her uncle, who was a chiropractor, you know, they were going to do disability medicine, which is like workman's comp and things like that. That's what they were going to do together. And he was like a sketchy character from what I understood. But here's the thing is that she told me that she wrote

Sherry Boyle because she thought they were going to get married. And he'd always told her that she was separated. He was separated from my mother and they were divorced and all this stuff. stuff. But when you're, you know, she was 27, 28 years old when all this happened, you know, when you're in a relationship with a narcissist and the manipulator, like, you know, it's very easy to run mental gymnastics around someone, especially someone like her. And she, she just believed it, hook, line, and sinker. And she said that he came in before the real estate agent came back in and he told her to put that N period initial in front. And she didn't really understand why, but she just did it. And so she was always under this impression that my father, I mean,

for a long time I had to sort of reconcile with the fact like did she know about my mother's murder because I blamed her in a lot of ways because I was like not that she caused my mother's murder and that she was a participant in it but that she was that she was guilty by association because my father was having this relationship with her and that's why she was that's why my mother was murdered in the first place which isn't really true um my father is a psychopath and she was also pregnant so I have a half sister that was born 12 days before my father was arrested and it's you know she was in a position and she thought like she had the whole world on her at her doorstep she's going to marry this doctor she's going to live this amazing life she's going to start a new life she had already been through a series of marriages or in relationships that didn't work she had two kids from those relationships or marriages and she's going to marry a doctor it's like the fairy tale for somebody who's, you know, from the Midwest. I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to have this amazing life, right?

And you hit the jackpot. The sad thing is that my father was also hitting the jackpot. He had a girlfriend that was 20 years younger than him. He's having a new baby. He's got all this money. He's getting ready to make. Somebody told me that my father was going to make $160,000 a year working 10 hours a week at this sort of consultation practice that he was doing in Erie, Pennsylvania.

I mean, he had it made. And there was no reason to murder my mother. And if anyone, it would have been flipped because my mother probably was one who should have killed him because he was winning the divorce because he had all the money he restricted her accounts and was controlling everything but my father had supposedly told my mother and this i believe came out in court that he told my mother you're coming to eerie with me one way or another and my father wanted to have his cake and eat it too like any good narcissists psychopath sociopath sociopath does and one of the things

that uh oh no i lost my train of thought but but yeah he was able to pull the wool over sherry campbell's eyes again it took me a long time to sort of reconcile this and go okay she's not because she's not guilty she's guilty by association right do i think that they helped plan my mother's murder no i think that my father is just so good at manipulating people and gaslight people That, I mean, he's a psychopath, and all of this was just literally premeditated and carefully thought out. That's the difference between like narcissism, psychopathy or sociopathy. Psychopathy is it has a plan and you're very calm and it's very executed. It's very methodical.

Jeffrey Dahmer is a psychopath, people like that, right? And my father's the same way. So. I would say sociopath. sociopaths get into a fight in a bar and they immediately get to a argument they immediately get into a fight a psychopath just kind of says okay goes to a he gets in his car drives to a gas station fills up a thing of gas goes to your house and burns it down with you and your family in it correct correct both not good both not good one has a plan though but one has a plan that's very methodical and very well executed and that was my father now the fault for all these personality disorders is there also is a massive degree of hubris that is involved with these types of personalities like dumb cops will never figure this out I can do wherever the fuck I want you know what I mean and that's what my father's attitude was

and ultimately he got caught by an 11 year old kid right because he was sloppy because I was determined because I knew what he did and it yeah it's it's fucking wild man when I talk about it and like I said today

it's like been 33 years since I found out that she was murdered and he was arrested and it was the trial this entry in my hometown I mean in Richland County Ohio it was just

I can't imagine you know I think at the top of the conversation you were bantering and we were talking about, you know, crime. And you mentioned something like, oh, it takes years, sometimes these things. I think now if this crime had been committed, you know, there'd be every YouTuber and every TikTok are talking about it, much like they're talking about the Idaho 4 and this, in a Walsh case and, you know,

whatever the case is of the moment, right? And all these people speculating on forums and things, I think that that would have been, that would have been what's happening right now, you know, and all this content be floating out there. And it'd probably be years before my father would be brought to trial, right? And now, as you know, the system is all about plea bargains and things of that nature. That's how they get people, right? So who knows?

And he would have probably had higher power lawyers that would have done it pro bono just for the clout of the case and this, that, and the other. So there's, you know, when I think about the timing of everything, it was a very swift justice that was dealt. My father was arrested January 25th. My father was convicted on June 25th. So, you know, well, I've quite, so do you still speak with them? I haven't spoken to him since around 2020, around the pandemic, because his prison was the one that was taken over by the National Guard in Ohio when the guards all got COVID. So it like made international news. And so I had communicated with him to make sure he was okay. Also because my father and I shared the same blood type. And I wanted to see that was when COVID was out and everybody was talking about blood types and things like that. I thought, okay, I'm asthmatic. Is he sick? Right. And he was quarantined. He had COVID, but he had no symptoms. I was like, okay.

Okay. But no, he's still incarcerated and fairly healthy for a 79-year-old guy who's been eating shitty prison food for 33 years. Do you plan on? You plan on? Yeah, and I've been slowly like contemplating, you know, reaching out to him again. I mean, I have letters from him, recent letters. I had a stalker that just, well, I guess it would be almost a couple years ago now, January, 2021, she was

starting a pen pal relationship with him. Then she would send me her correspondence with him because I would ignore her. Right. So that was fun. There are odd people out there for sure. But it has been, you know, I have spent

my life trying to cope with all of this in a way that is healthy in a way that is positive and in a way that is you know can affect change in the world you know

and I started a podcast last year and you know it's called moving past murder and I share my personal story and I talk about how these things relate to me it's you know

part true crime part mental health and I you know I share my father's letters from prison I talk to people I play like I have all these taped interviews and my father did from prison like five years after he was convicted

of like him spouting these conspiracy theories and I have new ones that have just come to surface. I find letters. I find people that reach out to me. And, you know, being abandoned by my whole family and having to grow up in foster care. And I was finally adopted after about a year. I was adopted by a really great family in the area. And they were strangers pretty much. But they had a very large family of like brothers and sisters. So I had a lot of cousins. And that was a unique experience. And it was really challenging growing up with them in a lot of ways because they took on a kid. I don't think they quite realized what they were getting into, but they just wanted to

help. And, um, you know, we couldn't go anywhere without people knowing who I was. So they had this relative anonymity and all of a sudden they adopt this kid. It's a whole other thing. And they, you know, so that was a rough go for them growing up, but we have a wonderful relationship now. And we have for decades, you know. Right. And they've been very supportive and very understanding. And even, you know, I remember my adoptive father would, I would get these letters from prison from my father and my, and he would break them down and my father would be like manipulating me.

He would say things like, oh, I really wish that I could have a filet of fish sandwich right now. I would give anything to have McDonald's. And he was like gaslighting me and trying to, or not gaslighting me, but trying to manipulate me to feel sorry for him because he's incarcerated. Because my father was always constantly working on and probably still to this day would be working on trying to have me rescind my testimony. He tried for years. And I even went as far as my father had hired a lawyer while he was incarcerated for an appeal

and had alleged all this new evidence that the body that was in the grave that they pulled out from the grave was not my mother's. So I gave permission to have that body exhumed when I was like 16 years old, 17 years old, and gave DNA testing to further prove that it was her. just to give my father a benefit of the doubt just for my own piece of mind I wanted to know like is this is this real

and obviously it was her yeah and then as far as it's coming to Los Angeles becoming a filmmaker because I was obsessed with telling the story and finding out at the core of it was to find out why my father murdered my mother

and going as so far as enlisting a two-time Oscar winner to direct this project and then getting into the prison And that was years of my life. I spent going back to Ohio, seeing him in prison, getting to know the prison staff. They had a production facility in the prison where he's at now. And I would go into that facility.

I would go into the actual prison and sit and teach him. Because they had a production facility, I would teach him how to use editing software. And I would help them order cameras and show them how to shoot and show them how to do graphic design and teach inmates this. And then I would sit with my father, like not in the visitation room and just chat with him and then be teaching these people. was just to build this whole bond so I could get in there and be able to tell this story. It was really extraordinary to be able to do that and very cathartic. And even though confronting my father and asking him, why did you murder my mother, I ended up realizing that it was such a great discovery because even though people were like,

well, you didn't get your answer, you didn't get your why. I'm like, yeah, but I did get the answer by telling me, nothing, you tell me everything because he's a psychopath. And I think that if my father had told me why, if he had said, I murdered your mother because of X, Y, and Z, that would never be good enough because I'd have even more questions. This way I'm able to put it to bed in my mind and go, no, you're just, just, you realize when you're talking to somebody like that and you're and this is who they are, that you realize that some people are just born. evil. And my father's one of those people. Yeah, I was going to say, if he owned up to it completely,

you know, then there would actually be some atonement or, you know, redemption there for him. And that's not who he is because the person that does this doesn't ever want that. Does I mean, you know what I'm saying? He's still trying, even to his dying breath. You know, maybe when he realize, maybe when he realizes, yeah, I'm not getting out of this. Maybe he does it. but I doubt it. But, you know, to probably go to his grave saying, you know, the one-armed man. Well, it was always like what he did say is, and then there's a story of the knife. And that comes out halfway in me confronting him.

She came at me with the knife. I didn't know what to do. I'm like with the knife. I want the knife. What are we talking about here? The golden child? I'm just like, oh, okay. So where did this come from?

So there's all these stories. There's never going to be, you know, For him, there's never going to be, I murdered her because she was in the way of me starting a new life that I wanted. Or she. I wanted to take the money I was going to be making. But she wasn't even winning the divorce. That's the thing is she wasn't going to take all this money. And even the police were like, she had more motive to kill him than he did her.

He was going to get out of it and have money and a new family and a new life. My mother was the one who was going to suffer. I was going to be the one that was going to suffer. So she, you know, him committing this. crime was not um it's not logical but this we're not dealing with a logical person and the fact that he just still has to have all these reasons and excuses just shows the psychopathy and everything behind me because at the core of this he's a narcissist he's a psychopath and he's someone who it's their fault it's what she did to me she was going to divorce me yeah dude you

impregnated another woman and you're going to go start and like why would she be married to you and we see this happen all the time right this is not something that's new that these people behave like this and they say well you know and his comment of you're going to come to erie with me one way or another she did and my father ultimately wanted to be able to go down to that basement and look down and say i fucking told you so bitch or whatever he was saying You know, he wanted to know that she was right there beneath his feet. And that's a psychopath. Right.

So do you have a relationship with your step-sister? So my half-sister was, well, but there's two, but it's totally fine. My half-sister and I had a relationship up until when I made the documentary. She was going to participate, and then she decided not to. and I had offered both her and her mother a chance to be a part of it. And she was actually going to be a part of it. And I think her mother convinced her. I don't think she did to not do it.

But I wanted Sherry to be able to tell her side of the story. So people didn't look at her and go, oh, well, you're at fault. And of course, giving people these opportunities, they don't take them. And then when something comes out, then they are looked at or they're excoriated for their behavior. And then they're like, well, I didn't do this. And it's like, well, yeah, this is my adopt, as my adoptive parent sold her. This is why Collier was trying to get you to participate. So you can tell her your side of the story.

So they chose not to do it. That everybody's upset that people have an opinion about her. Well, guess what? You didn't tell your side of the story. And I gave you plenty of opportunity to do that. Exactly. Listen, I have the same thing happen all the time. I contact people and they, and then, you know, no, I don't want anything to do with it.

Okay. Well, and I always explained to it, then you realize that somebody else, most likely law enforcement, will tell your side of the story. Well, they'll tell your story. And they're probably not going to do it the same justice. or tell it from your you know your perspective yeah and then it comes out and they go you made me sound this way or you this or they this or that wasn't true and that well you had a great opportunity to clear all of that up you know so it's so funny too because sometimes it's

like like sometimes it's even minor like when i would read articles about myself I would get all been out of shape and upset over minor details. And of course, I was before I started writing. And once I started writing, I was like, eh, that's not a big deal. Eh, that's pretty accurate. I probably wouldn't have said it that way. But yeah, you know, and everybody, so I look back now and I think, it's about 95% accurate. And the few things they got wrong were stupid.

My Audi wasn't, wasn't white. It was silver. you know you know what I mean it's just stupid like like you don't know anything that my Audi was silver like it's really not crucial what's what's funny is so when you make a film about your life right and and I wasn't really supposed to be in it I was going to be part of it and I was going to be shooting it and then we kind of called an audible at the last minute and so I'm like I mean I look terrible like I'm wearing like set clothes type thing like like a fat grip you know anything but I was people were like oh what was the editing process like and look I work as a film

editor and I edit content and I you know I make movies and shit like that but I was like I didn't want to be any part of that process because of course everything would come in vanity so like what you were saying like with the color of the audience and there's all vanity things like I was like I was like I look fat here I sound stupid here like don't don't put this in but it's like that doesn't serve the narrative of the story like and no one gives a fuck what color your Audi is no one gives a shit about the sweatshirt that I was wearing what they give a shit about is the content and what we're talking about, which is amazing in a lot of ways. But, yeah, you know, and sometimes these things can become a solipsistic endeavor,

and I'm very grateful that that's not what this turned into because it's a very powerful, powerful documentary, and it's not even true crime. I mean, I'm so new to this world of true crime, you know, discovering all these people and seeing this whole sort of underbelly that exists. I mean, like I said, I was just working with the company, you know, with Vice doing this. well where where is the documentary so you can uh so my the documentary is actually on my patreon okay but i made it with an investigation discovery you can find it on amazon you can find it on hulu but uh and investigation discovery has it or discovery plus now um but it's also my

patreon that people go to my patreon you can just subscribe and it's on there and you can get a whole bunch of other content i've got like you know i've got letters from my father in prison i do episodes of podcast ad free and there's a player there you can download all the episodes i I'm on episode of the 74. And there's a whole, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a, there's a bunch of content on there and it sort of, you know, shows my life and a lot more of the stuff that I'm doing. And, but yeah, that's where they can find the documentary. So you just said you have the episodes on the, on Patreon, but do you have your episodes

on your YouTube? Yeah, so I have episodes on my YouTube and I do ad-free ones on Patreon. but yeah so my you do everyone can find me at my website which is call your landry.com uh you find me on TikTok Instagram wherever at call your Landry um and you can join my Patreon through there but everything is on my website the podcast because the podcast is called moving past murder which was something that I started as a continuation of what the documentary was which was you know I made the documentary I made that because I was very, very passionate about growing up that when we looked at

cases, because I had from my own personal experience, you know, the bad guy goes to jail, the victim is dead, the state gets this restitution, the gavel hits and we say next, like what's next, right? Like, next case, next case. And we never examine the consequences of violence, the consequences of communities on ancillary victims, friends of the victim, family members, of the perpetrator, and what it's like, and also to expose, like, this is what it's like to not only have your mother murdered,

but having it done by your father. So you're both the son of the victim and the perpetrator. There's not a lot of people that are in this world that can experience that and talk about it. So I made the film to show that and to show what healing is like, but also I do that further in the podcast, moving past murder,

to show my process of going through all this. Like I said, it's part true crime, part, mental health you know and it's it's me exposing things that I go through and you know I do it on TikTok too but the podcast is a way to really find me how what on YouTube or just yeah it's on YouTube it's on Apple Spotify where I get a podcast from yeah how often are you posting so I do every a new episode every week okay every every Friday new episode comes out of moving past murder yeah I have a new podcast. I'm starting called Survivor Squad. We're just getting ready to release, which I host, co-host with Tara Newell from Dirty John. How, um, how, how is it getting guests?

Like, um, so I have a sort of mixture. I reach out to people or people come to me. They, they've seen the film. They've heard they've watched the podcast. They've seen the story. And I have so many people, one of the things that is really, one of the things that is really powerful. about making something and being so vulnerable is that that vulnerability and authenticity really resonates with people. And so I get messages out the woodwork of people who have seen the film

who've listened to the podcast that it has resonated with. They've just said, thank you so much for telling your story because it has helped me so much in my own personal journey of healing because I never got justice or I'm a victim of sexual assault.

a lot of, unfortunately, a lot of people are victims of child sexual abuse that reach out to me because, uh, they, they haven't healed from that trauma, you know, the adverse childhood effects, the ACEs, as they call it. And they say to me, you know, watching you do this, first of all, they're, they're horrified by what, by what happened to me. And they're like, well, I, I, what I do has happened to me is pales in comparison to you. And I'm like, well, yeah, but it's not it's not it's not a it's not a try it's not a contest right it's like everyone's trauma affects them only uniquely like no like yeah my shit is so horrific but like that's the exception not the rule that doesn't discount the way that somebody's been through through

their own trauma but i'm so glad that the message helps them and helps them heal and get on that journey and feel reassured of that journey that they're on to heal themselves because that's a really powerful thing. And I know my mother would love that I was doing that for people. So, yeah, it's been a really amazing journey. But as far as guests, you know, just people reach out to me. They say, I'd love to be on the program. Or I reach out to them like you.

I reach out to them and I say, hey, I love to have you on the podcast. You know, and I think people have interesting stories. And I like to, you know, like I said, it's true crime mental health. But I'm trying to steer away from necessarily true crime as this, you know, not salaciousness of it all, it's more of, I want to talk to people who've been through extraordinary circumstances because we've all experienced trauma. We all have. If you were born before 2020, we have all experienced some sort of trauma with COVID, right? That's a traumatic event that the world experienced, unless you live in a cave in Afghanistan or something like

that. So there is a, there, we all have had to deal with certain tremendous circumstances in our life or extraordinary circumstances in our life and how to come through and build resilience. And, you know, I tell people all the time, I say, you know, it's not what you've been through that defined you. And this is what I aim to show through all the work that I do is it's not what you've been through that defined you. It's what you take from that and what you do next that defines you. And some people can go through, you know, I had a psychologist tell me when she because, you know, you're the outlier. If you were sitting under a bridge in East L.A. with a needle in your arm saying,

fuck the world, no one would blame you. You have every right to do that. But you don't live you that way. And, you know, there are people that can just literally take this up. They're angry. They hate the world. This injustice happened to them. They've been through all this trauma.

They bottle it up inside. They say, fuck the world. I'm just, this is, it's not fair. I'm just getting it and they can be they they they they they harm others they continue the cycle of abuse not only on themselves but others or you can take that and you can say this I've been through this shit and I'm not going to let this affect those around me negatively I'm going to turn it into a positive and look I'm up here talking about this I'm far from a perfect person absolutely but I am someone who I feel can look themselves in the mirror every day and go,

I've done the best I can, the best I could, do the best I could when I was younger to honor my mother and carry that through my life and try to be positive. But I'm also a perpetual optimist, which I found out was a trait my mother had, so it's an apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Yeah, I was going to say, it's definitely perspective. yeah life is not going to use it as a crutch to fail for the rest of your life no yeah but listen so many people do yeah so many people do what you're doing you're you're you're literally taking something that is i mean granted it was a something of your own creation but still you could

also come i mean how many people come out of prison and reoffend you know recidivism is a real thing you know and you and you chose yeah exactly fraud is actually the highest recidivism rate higher than really yeah murder is the lowest yeah yeah yeah because if most of them get out and they they never reoffend that you know it's usually it's very circumstantial and and you know of course they're under the microscope the rest of their life and you know so you know very few people do they actually get out and commit them are murdered again i mean they're out but very seldom when does that happen yeah i'm talking about the people to get out yeah yeah um and then there's you know then drugs then you know so it keeps going but yeah fraud's the worst interesting you know

especially because the people that commit fraud have such psychological problems like it it is all just it's narcissism and just straight arrogance and it's so hard to know how to easily manipulate the system and then not do it because you're so desperate to prove how smart you are you know which is also why most people get caught you know it's it's hard to just shut your mouth like commit the crime shut your mouth it's not really so much about the money as it is about letting everybody know how smart i am you know so then you get caught well there you go stupid the same thing that gave you the guts to pull it off is the same thing that is your detriment yeah you know which was definitely you know my you know definitely my undoing was that

i just allowed you know just shot my mouth off allowed too many people to know what was going on and included too many people and was not, you know, nearly as careful and, you know, it just kept, just caught up with me and caught out with me and caught out with me, you know. And then, of course, every time I got lucky and got away with it, I just became more brazen. I didn't get away with it because I was lucky. I got away with it because I was just that good. And I'm like, once again, like, oh, this is bad. This is bad.

You just got lucky. Walk away. No, no, I'm just that good. Okay. Okay. So I thought I was pretty clever right up until the judge said, yeah, you're not so clever, buddy. No, not that clever. Yep, my YouTube channel is YouTube.com forward slash call your Landry.

My podcast is called Moving Past Murder. I post new episodes every Friday on YouTube and on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast from. I also create individual content for YouTube shorts and on my YouTube channel, I'm offering a membership soon. You can find all things Call Your Landry at www. call your landry.com. I have a large TikTok following as well. Find me on TikTok at Collierlandry. Everything is at Collierlandry. So check it out. And thanks for having me, man. I'm super stoked to talk to you too. Hey, I appreciate you guys watching. And if you like the video, do me a favor and hit the subscribe button, hit the bell, leave, you know, leave stuff in the

comments. And I'll respond. And also, I'm going to, we're going to leave, call yours. the YouTube links and all of his links in the description box. And I appreciate you guys watching. Thanks a lot. Join my Patreon. If you like these videos, it helps me more than you know. Also, I have,

listen, I have, I've got multiple true crime books that are out there. By all means, check them out. They're on Amazon and Barnes & Nobles and there's audibles. And I really appreciate you guys watching. Thank you very much.

and I will see you.