Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Finding Mom's Killer | 2. The Stories We Tell

Episode Date: March 10, 2025

As police begin their investigation into Noreen’s disappearance, the Boyle family’s web of lies begins to unravel. Binge all episodes of Finding Mom's Killer, ad-free today by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge Crimes on Apple Podcasts and hit ‘subscribe’ or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access.  The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. Finding Mom’s Killer is part of The Binge - subscribe to listen to all episodes, all at once, ad-free right now. From serial killer nurses to psychic scammers – The Binge is your home for true crime stories that pull you in and never let go. Follow The Binge Crimes and The Binge Cases wherever you get your podcasts to get new stories on the first of the month, every month. Hit ‘Subscribe’ at the top of the Finding Mom’s Killer show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com. The Binge – feed your true crime obsession. A Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media production. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Bench. We all remember the stories our parents told us. Not just the bedtime stories, but the ones our parents told about themselves. The stories that summed up who they were, their place in the world, and the lives we, their children, might someday lead. As a kid, Collier Landry Boyle heard lots of these stories. There was one his dad especially liked to tell.

It was a stunner. The first time Collier heard it, he and his parents were in the dining room of an exclusive country club, hosting a party for his father's medical colleagues. Collier was eight years old, crayons in hand. So I'm just kind of doodling away, and we have all these doctors and their wives around us. My father's telling this story of how he was flying a solo mission for the Navy during the Vietnam War

over the South China Sea, and he gets shot down in his fighter plane. The smoke in the engines is billowing, and he's trying to pull the ejection lever, and his F-14 Tom Pet crash lands into the South China Sea. And he cannot get out and the water is coming in through the cracked cockpit, right, as he's slowly sinking. And he gets out his trusty bowie knife and uses the blade to cut his way out of the cockpit. He sees an island off into the distance,

and he swam to this island, and he survives in the jungle, eating bark and slugs and weights for the naval team to rescue him. And my mother is listening and nodding because she's enthralled with the story. Kalyar's mother has no doubt heard this story many times before, but Kalyar hasn't and he's captivated.

Everybody wants to believe their father is a, you know, the savior of the world. Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? Right? From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer. I'm Steve Fishman. Episode two, The Stories We Tell. Hi everyone.

This is Jonathan Van Ness. Clean water, fresh air, our health. Electricity, honey. We tend to take for granted the things that matter most, like the separation of church and state. Americans United for Separation of Church and State has been on the front lines defending your freedom to live and believe as you choose, so long as you don't harm others. Most folks don't see how church-state separation affects our daily lives until that freedom is gone. The separation between church and state covers many core freedoms like civil rights for LGBTQIA plus people, women, and racial-slash-religious minorities, or reproductive justice and freedom.

But those rights are not a given. Every day, Americans United works at the state and federal level to make sure these freedoms and more are protected for every American to enjoy and benefit from. They can't do this alone though. Join Americans United for separation of church and state and growing the movement,

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Collier Landry Boyle is 11. It's been a few years since he's heard his father tell that story of wartime daring do. A lot has changed. Collier's mother, Noreen, has just disappeared. His father, Jack, is in tears, telling friends that Noreen has walked out on the family, though he doesn't seem particularly interested in helping the police find her. Collier, on the other hand, is in a panic. He's established a partnership of sorts with veteran police lieutenant Dave Messmore.

So every day that I go to school I'm trying to like check in with Dave, whether I ask him to come to the school to talk to me or I'm just checking in with him on the telephone. He would call me frequently and I'd talk to him whenever I could. He was just worried, did and I'd talk to him whenever I could. He was just worried, did you find my mother? And I said, no, Collier, not right now. I'm working on it, though. And just to reassure him.

For Lieutenant Messmore, this wasn't just lip service. He was becoming fond of this odd, overly polite kid. Without his mother, Collier seemed all alone in the world, like he needed a parent. Did you feel like Collier was interested in making a relationship with you? Well, it kind of developed that way. I don't know that he was interested in it,

but he had nobody else to confide in. Right then Collier needed someone to confide in. The story he'd been telling himself about his childhood had just been rewritten. And in Collier's memory, that childhood was idyllic. When he was growing up, his father was a Navy physician, and the Boyles lived on a base in Virginia. A Navy base isn't fancy, but for Collier, it was a place of wonder.

Planes landed so close it felt like they were right next door. He spent hours digging up old military relics in the backyard. And his parents, Jack and Noreen, doted on him. They made a home in which a little boy could forget himself completely, even when his imagination got the better of him. Like one day when he was watching a favorite cartoon. There was a matador in a bowl, and I remember, I'm going to be the bowl. And my mom was like, dinner is ready. And I run with my eyes closed and I run smack dab into our

land's end table and I split my head open. They take me to the naval base where my father worked at the hospital right there, the clinic. My mom's freaking out and he's stitching me up, you know. and I remember I was like crying and my mom was feeding me like salami and provolone cheese because we didn't get to have our dinner, but he stitched me up and it was like one of those moments of like my dad being there to save me. If Collier thought of his father as a hero, then his mother was his soulmate.

I mean, my mother was my whole world. The sun rose and set with her, you know? I just loved being around my mom. I would help her like shop. She loved to go to museums, the theater. She loved cultural things. Noreen took Collier everywhere. From an early age, he'd join her for lunch dates with friends. She loved cultural things. Noreen took Collier everywhere.

From an early age, he'd join her for lunch dates with friends. He was her escort for plays and art openings. Her style consultant when she picked out designer clothes or home decor or fancy jewelry. I remember one time my mother was like shopping at Tiffany's. There was a Rolex counter. There was this sales girl working at the counter and I got her to let me try on a Rolex. My mother was mortified because first of all, we're not buying you a Rolex.

The second of all, she was mortified that I had talked the sales girl into letting me put this, whatever, $5,000 watch on my wrist and walk around the store with it. I just thought it was fun to play grownup. And she just got a kick out of that because she just is like, that's my little boy. Like he just charms people into doing things for him,

I guess. My mother used to say, he's 11 going on 40. That's what she would tell people. Clearly, Collier wasn't a scrappy little kid coming home with mud on his jeans. Noreen didn't even like him wearing jeans. She dressed him in slacks and polo shirts. She cooked him gourmet meals. He loved her cooking. And she made sure his manners were perfect.

If we were going somewhere, I was expected to behave a certain way, where I was maybe upholding my aristocratic family, if you will. After all, as Noreen reminded Collier, they came from good stock, money, and glamour. My mother's last name was Schmid. We were related to Schmid's Brewery in Philadelphia. And she was related to Grace Kelly, Princess Grace of Monaco. race of Monaco. It wasn't just Noreen's side of the family. Collier's father, Jack, said that his ancestors were prominent blue bloods from Philadelphia's famous Maine line, which made Jack and Noreen a good match, both descendants of American

Brahmins. They certainly looked the part. Jack was tall and handsome, with a mop of dark curly hair. Noreen was petite, blonde, beautiful. And Collier, he was their perfect precocious son, eager to entertain his parents. My mother had a station wagon where you know you have the front seats, then you have the middle seats, then you have the back seat that faces out the back, right? On road trips, my parents would be playing, you know, the Philharmonic. And I'd be over the orchestra pit, which was the back of the station wagon, conducting

as if I was conducting the orchestra. Maybe I was using a soda straw as my baton, maybe. They thought it was hilarious. For people from a distinguished lineage, Anofriel's Navy base was hardly the place to reassert their ancestral glory. Clearly, the Boyles were meant for finer things. So when they got the chance to leave, they jumped at it.

In 1983, they moved to Mansfield, Ohio. Now Mansfield, population 50,000, might not have been a hive of culture, but it was a step up. Jack and Noreen had decided it was time for private practice and a larger payday. The Boyles bought a modest house in a posh neighborhood. They put Collier in private school, and eventually they expanded their family, adopting a little girl from China. Jack's practice took off.

Patients liked him and sent their friends. It was a family business. Jack doctored, Noreen kept the books. Soon the Boyles amassed symbols of success. Three cars, including a BMW and a Range Rover. Noreen started collecting Louis Vuitton purses. Eventually she'd owned seven. Jack had a reputation as a devoted and hard-working physician. He even did house calls like an old-fashioned country doctor. And tagging along was one of Collier's favorite father-son activities. I was taking tap dance lessons, so I would tap dance for the patients,

and then I had this little harmonica, which I still have, and I would play, like, the harmonica and, like, sing and do a whole little thing to entertain. And so in the summer of 1989, Collier didn't think much of it when his father invited him to come along on an appointment way out in the country. We go to this party in the middle of the sticks. These are, you know, I mean this with all due respect, but these are breadnecks. These are beer drinking, quad riding, you know, salt of the earth type of people.

I looked around and I thought, this is a whole different world. And here I am in my little penny loafers, you know, my little polo shirt and little shorts. Eventually Jack introduced Collier to his patient, a woman named Sherry. She was 28, a mother of two, and lived just down the road. And I remember Sherry got on the quad and she said,

do you wanna ride the quad with me? And I was like, okay. I was like, I'm here. I'm like, I'm gonna have fun, right? Collier jumped on behind Sherry and they drove off. Collier was a long way from trying on Rolexes at Tiffany's, but he was having a great time. This Sherry lady, he thought, she's fun.

Eventually, Collier headed off with Sherry's kids. They ran around the woods and skipped some stones on a nearby lake. Then Kaliya realized he hadn't seen his dad for quite some time. I look back and my father is walking with Sherry talking to her and he has his arm around her. They're in this very serious conversation. And later on we say our goodbyes and we get in the truck and I ask my father, who is that woman? He tells me she's daddy's patient and she's terminally ill.

And daddy was consoling her. I was like, oh, that's terrible. That's absolutely terrible. Collier felt bad for Sherry, but he'd done plenty of house calls with his father. He'd seen his father attend to plenty of sick patients. Actually, it sometimes felt like his dad was always out seeing sick patients. A lot of times he would come in late at night or he would be gone by the morning. To Collier, it seemed like his dad was never home.

In fact, Collier and his mother rarely saw him. I didn't really know what their marriage was other than it looked normal. I mean, but what is normal? Who doesn't love the good things in life? Even though I enjoy a little luxury, it doesn't mean I can always afford it. Until I discovered Quince. Quince is my go-to for luxury essentials at affordable prices. Quince offers a range of high quality items at prices within reach. Like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters starting at $50, washable silk tops and dresses, organic cotton sweaters, and 14 karat gold jewelry. The best part? All Quinn's items are priced 50 to 80% less

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Ooh baby, that's my jam. With Sunwing's first dibs on summer savings, let us curate something stronger than what you've been listening to. Because while your playlist screams, I need a vacation. stories told about Dr. Jack Boyle, the well-heeled husband, the selfless country doctor, the courageous Navy pilot, and also, as some knew, a guy who loved a home-cooked meal, though most of the time he had to fend for himself around the Boyle residence.

It's always saying, you know, he eats on the run and hardly eats if he goes home. He doesn't cook. This is Mark Davis. Mark was born and raised on the outskirts of Mansfield in a big family where there was always room at the dinner table. Soon after he met Jack, he learned

about the doctor's chronic malnutrition and offered to help. I said, well, come on out. My mom's a good cook. You can come on out sometime. So he just kind of absorbed himself into the atmosphere. When he first met Jack, Mark was a mechanotherapist, a kind of physical therapist. He and Jack had offices near each other,

which was how they crossed paths. I was in his office one time and I saw a picture of him on a jet and I said, you were a jet pilot? He said, yeah. I said, how'd you get your training? He says, they needed pilots and they just throwed me in one and that's how I got trained. Mark, who enjoyed model planes, was impressed. Soon, Jack was a regular at the Davis dinner table. Most of Mark's extended family lived nearby and a bunch would regularly show up for dinner. I've always lived out in the country and we

live a simple life. We didn't put up an air, and I think that's what he wanted, a simple life. He got to know my mom pretty well and called her mom. So Jack was like part of the family. Yeah. Mark liked Jack, and he was kind of flattered that the prominent doctor took to him too. Despite their different backgrounds, their friendship was easy. They'd prank each other, needle each other, like when Jack tried to ride Mark's bulldozer. And he was horrible at it. I said, boy, for somebody to fly jets, you sure know how to

crash a bulldozer. He was just, he he couldn't run he was a big ox. To Mark Jack seemed great rich but not snobby educated but not pretentious at home in the country and always up for a good conversation and a good meal. So Mark got to thinking. I would drop a little suggestion to him, and you ought to meet my niece. She's really pretty and nice. I'll tell you what, if you want a good cook, she's a good cook. I told him, I said, well, she's single. Next thing I knew, they were seeing each other. Mark Davis's niece, Sherry Campbell, the fun 28-year-old who was supposed to be terminally ill, the patient Collier met that day at the country party.

When she was around him, she was starry-eyed. I mean, just like a little puppy, you know, just staring at him like, I'm so happy. And they acted like lovebirds. And what did you think of the relationship? I was happy about it. I thought, man, he's a good guy and making a lot of money, and she'll be happy with him. And I know he'll be happy with her.

Just one little problem with his budding romance. To my knowledge, you know, he was a single doctor. Collier had no idea what was going on between his father and Sherry. For all he knew, she was his patient. But he had begun to realize that all was not well between his parents. My parents were never really affectionate with one another.

I don't ever really recall seeing them hold hands or embrace or anything like that. It had been a while since they had been, you know, I would imagine together in any sort of way. A lot of times he would be sleeping on the couch and that's how I would find him in the morning. I definitely seen them argue, but I never knew what it was about. What Caillou did know was that the arguments could get heated and that sometimes his father could get real angry.

My father would have this temper that you could just set off at the drop of a hat. And there was no telling what would set him off. We would go outside to play catch and he would end up trying to throw like fastballs and hit me in like the groin or my head to teach me how to be a man. Despite his father's temper, Collier treasured their time together. He was an 11-year-old boy. He wanted to be around his dad, wanted to impress him, to earn his praise. And so, on Father's Day 1989, a few weeks after that party in the country, Collier happily

accompanied Jack on another father-son trip, this one to his office to pick up some paperwork. On the way home, Jack wanted to make a little detour. So my father says, I'm going to stop, get a tan real quick. So we stopped at the tanning salon and outcomes Sherry. I was like, oh, that's the woman from the other week, you know, the patient. And Sherry comes out of the tanning salon with these two radio control cars.

And she's like, happy father's day. And my dad's like, oh, what a nice surprise. And she's got the batteries and everything. And as she's, you know, handing everything over, I look at her, her hand and I notice a ring on it. My mother was very into jewelry and handbags and clothing and all these things. So I was always a kid who paid attention to like watches,

jewelry, all that stuff. So I see this ring and it's unmistakable because it is identical to a ring that my father had given my mother that was a diamond slide ring. And it had this like shaft and the diamond slid back and forth in the shaft of the ring. And I looked at it on her finger and I looked up at her and I said, oh, I like your ring. My mommy has a ring just like that. I had never seen that ring before, other than on my mother's hand.

And then she looked at my father and kind of giggled. And I take the batteries and I'm all excited because I'm playing with a radio control car in the parking lot. And I look up and I see my father making out with Sherry. I mean, I just, I'm standing there in the parking lot, just kind of looking at them like, what is, I'm just trying to go back to like play with the car. And I just keep looking like what is happening here? So my father says we have to go. I get in the front seat and my father gets in the car. My father says to me, I need you to do daddy a favor. I need you to

tell mommy that I gave you the radio-controlled cars as a gift for getting good grades this year in school. That's the first time that I can remember my father asking me to lie to my mother. So we go home, and I tell my mother to lie. Inside, I'm just sick to my stomach, and I'm just torn up inside. My stomach is in knots. And then the next morning I wake up, my mom says, why don't you go play with your radio control car?

Take the radio control car out in the driveway and I'm playing with it. And I'm so, all it is just playing back in my head over and over and over again. The ring, the kiss, the party, like all these pieces. And I go in and my mother's on the porch and I started telling her about everything. I feel so embarrassed. I'm feeling all of this like wave of emotions.

She thanked me for telling her the truth. And I remember she very calmly got up and she asked me to go outside and she went into the kitchen to use the telephone. And I heard lots of words and lots of screaming telephone and all I could think about was my sort of childhood facade or family life as I knew it was over. So let's get back to January 1990, six months after Collier saw his father kiss Sherry. Collier's mother has just disappeared, and he's reporting to Lieutenant Dave Messmore regularly with clues.

The kissing, the ring, all of it. Dave doesn't exactly jump up and down with excitement. So every time I'm telling Dave about any of this stuff, it's almost kind of hard to get a read on Dave because he's just very like, hmm. He'll go, hmm. So every time he would go, hmm, I knew that he was thinking like, oh, that's weird.

That was his way of reacting. He never let on that like that was a clue or anything like that, but he did because it was like, huh. That's worth noting. He's writing it down in his little book. Dave doesn't say much because Dave didn't have much. He hadn't been able to find Noreen and Dr. Jack Boyle still wouldn't talk to him. So with little else to go on, Dave decided to dig into the good doctor a little bit more. He started hearing stories, lots of them. Yeah, he had told people that his family was very important back in Pennsylvania where they lived.

Mainline Pennsylvania people, none of that was true. In fact, Jack came from a modest family. His dad was a firefighter and Jack didn't grow up with privilege. He'd gone to medical school on a scholarship and also had a part-time job. By that point in Dave's investigation, he'd started interviewing nurses. He was pretty well known around the hospital and the doctor's areas for having girlfriends and picking up girls. People I talked to, they said that he's pretty much a philanderer.

The more I talked to, the worse it got. And I thought, well, it's not a normal situation. He's not a family man. Dave was a family man, family man a lot to him. And this philandering thing, it offended him. I talked to a nurse who had been dating him off and on. And she left town. And she went to Florida.

She was afraid of him. He found her condo. She said she came home and found that he'd broken in there. He took all of her clothes that he had purchased for her and threw them into a bathtub and then urinated on him. As if that wasn't enough, the woman said Jack had left something disturbing for her. It was a photograph of himself dressed in his formal white Navy uniform, dozens of medals pinned to his chest, standing with his arm around a much younger woman.

As an indication that I guess that he didn't stay around with me, but I picked up another girl, that type of thing. This is how bizarre he is. I mean, he's got a real deep, deep problem. And what about Collier's favorite story? The one about Dr. Jack Boyle's heroism on the high seas during the Vietnam War? I called the Navy investigators in the Pentagon, and they looked him up and... And what did he do?

Nothing. He never set foot on a boat. He couldn't fly. His whole life is a lie. Of course, when his mother first disappeared, Collier didn't know most of this. What he did know was that his mother was gone, his father was involved with another woman, and something felt very, very wrong. And then, according to Collier, on January 1st, just one day after Noreen went missing,

the Boyle household got a visitor. That night, Sherry drops in with a pork roast and sauerkraut, because it's New Year's, and she just comes in and starts playing house. Like, oh, I made you guys dinner and this and that. And I'm like, this is awful, thinking of myself, because she's a terrible cook. And my father's like, oh, this is so good.

And he's eating it and he's telling her how great the food is. And they're just talking. And I get up and I leave the table at some point, because I just didn't want to be there. Later, Collier found out that his father had had many girlfriends. Many, many, many, many. Still, his family had worked in its way.

But Sherry was different. She's the one who got pregnant. I'm not going to do that. the binge on Apple podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page. Not on Apple? Head to GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. As a subscriber you'll get binge access to new stories on the first of every month. Check out the Binge channel page on Apple podcasts or GetTheBinge.com to learn more. our producer and production coordinator, Austin Smith, our story editor, Emile Klein, fact check by Ryan Alderman, mixing and sound design by Scott Somerville,

our lawyers are at Davis Wright Tremaine. From Sony Music Entertainment, our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Special thanks to Emily Rassick, Steve Ackerman, Catherine St. Louis, Sammy Allison, Fisher Stevens, Rhea Julian, Dan Bobkoff. At WME, we'd like to thank Evan Krasik, Marissa Hurwitz, and Ben Davis. We want to also thank Carl Hunnell at The Richland Source for the generous use of his podcast studio. And a really warm thank you to Collier Landry

for sharing his story and for his production assistance.