Witnessed: Devil in the Ditch - Finding Mom's Killer | 5. Lost Boy

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Collier makes an unexpected request of Dave, the cop who found his mom’s killer. 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

Listen to all episodes of Finding Mom's Killer ad free right now by subscribing to The Binge. Visit The Binge channel on Apple Podcasts and hit subscribe at the top of the page or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. The Binge, feed your true crime obsession. I lost everything in my family. I'm alone. I just want some sense of normalcy, right? In the summer of 1990, with his mother, Noreen, dead and his father, Jack, in prison, there was only one thing on 12-year-old Collier Landry Boyle's mind.

What will happen to me? Family courts like to place children with relatives, and Collier's uncle, his father's brother, was willing. But the judge wasn't for it, saying, it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why Collier wouldn't be placed with the brother of the man who murdered his mother. There was his mom's sister, but she didn't want Collier.

He reminded her of Jack and of everything that had happened. What about the foster parents who'd been looking after Collier? They did adopt, but only wanted his little sister, not him. Collier felt abandoned, except for one person. Dave Massmore was with me at the absolute lowest point of my life.

We had a bond that no one will take away. He was sort of like the father that I wished I had had. For the past six months, Collier had been living with his foster parents, but most weekends, he headed over to Lieutenant Dave Messmore's house. I just wanted to be a kid and I really loved their family and so I wanted to really experience all of that. We just got hooked on him and really liked him.

As you know by now, Dave isn't really a heart on theve kind of guy, but he liked having Collier around. He did things that he hadn't done before. You know, he liked being around my kids, and they taught him how to play basketball, and he bought jeans. I remember seeing him ride a bike around our neighborhood for a while, and he came back all sweaty and everything. He said, boy, this is fun.

I said, yeah, I know it is. Oh my gosh, a sweet, smart little boy. He was something else. That's Sue Messmore, Dave's wife. He looked up to Dave as his protector. I mean, he had every faith in Dave. Collier bonded with Sue as well over his favorite mother-son activity.

My sister and I, we went shopping one Sunday and Collier was over at our house, so we took him to our mall and we went shopping. Forgetting that he's listening to everything you're saying, I said, oh, this jacket is so cute. I really like it, but I don't think I'm gonna buy it. Sue thought it was too expensive. Dave wouldn't be happy when he saw the price tag,

but Collier had a different view. Well, he chimes in, well, Mrs. Messmore, you should buy that jacket. You deserve it. Well, he actually talked me into buying the jacket. When they got home, Sue joked that she was going to hide the day's purchase from Dave. And Collier said, well, Mrs. Messmore, if Detective Messmore can find my mother, he certainly could find these packages.

We didn't know what to say. Was he obnoxious? he certainly could sign these packages. We didn't know what to say. Was he obnoxious? Well, no. He was just... He was beyond his 12 years is all. He acted like a little adult. There was another reason

Collier was drawn to the Messmores. You know, he always ask me, do you think my dad really did that? And I said, Collier, it was a trial, and I'm convinced, and you should be convinced now that he did it. As horrible as this whole thing is, unfortunately your father's responsible for it.

Dave felt bad for Collier. He's been traumatized too much, way too much for an ordinary person. Oh we love Collier, yeah. Not long after the trial ended, Collier was in the car with Dave and Sue. One of their weekends together, he stuck his head between the front seats. He said, I need to talk to you. And I said, OK. And he said, would you and Sue consider adopting me? And I went, oh, God, I didn't think about that. And I said, well, Kaia will have to talk

about that a little bit. And I felt like Kaia had no one. So I looked at him like this little boy who really was like an orphan. It just broke my heart. We had talked a lot about it. And yes, it was a decision. What were your hesitations? I don't know. I guess the problems that he might have.

Emotional problems that he might have. And could I handle that? And we decided that if we did get him, we would go into counseling. I would want to know exactly the right way to handle questions if he had questions for us. Collier wanted to be here with us, and we wanted him to be part of our family. Well, Sue and I talked for a day or two, and we kind of agreed that we could do it.

So the Mesmores filed for adoption, and it was in the hands of a judge. A few weeks later, Dave and Sue were driving through Texas, visiting one of their kids. Dave stopped to make a call to his adoption attorney, who said the judge had made a decision. And the judge says, you don't think I'm going to put you with the guy that locked up your dad, do you? He says, you're not going there under any circumstances.

I cried. I cried. I cried. Sue couldn't comfort Collier. He was back in Mansfield in a courtroom, standing next to his state-appointed lawyer. He cried too. It was such a gut punch. I just felt broken in that moment. So who wanted Collier now? I never was a Huggy Huggy person. Ever. ever. From Sony Music Entertainment and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer. I'm Steve Fishman,'s not hoagie.

We're not that type of people. This is George Ziegler. He was a wealthy businessman in Mansfield, now retired. And as he himself admits, he's a gruff, blunt guy, not too generous with praise. I never got it. Don't expect it. he's a gruff, blunt guy, not too generous with praise. I never got it, don't expect it. I don't need it. And I don't see why people do need it.

I never know if dinner is good. Not bad. Ever since the awful events of December 31st, 1989, it seemed like Collier had been steadily losing his family, one member at a time. First his mother, then his father, then his uncle, his aunt, his foster family, his little sister, and then finally the Mesmoors,

who'd been his hope for a normal, loving home. Enter George and Susan Ziegler. The Zieglers had been married for over 20 years. Like almost everyone else in Mansfield, they'd been engrossed in the Boyle trial. I just kept telling George, what's gonna happen to those poor kids? The Zieglers knew the Boyles a little.

Their son went to the same private school as Collier. George and Noreen both sat on the school board. She just seemed like a typical doctor's wife, you know, dressed to the nines and acted like she was in the nines. You know, I wouldn't say snotty, but a little aloof. Not that it put George off Collier. George liked Collier, even if he was a rather unique kid. He was totally different than anybody else in the school as far as dress and acting.

I mean, it was very distinct. The Ziegler's had never considered adoption, but they didn't want Collier to wind up in some random household in a strange new city. I didn't think it was right that he loses his mother, his father, all his friends at school, and go someplace he doesn't know anybody. So the Ziegler's applied to adopt Kallier.

And to their surprise, they were successful. Or successful with the courts. One party wasn't convinced. As soon as Kallier walked into the Ziegler's home, he made them a proposition. I asked the Ziegler's if they would consider giving me up for adoption to the Mass Moors. So they could adopt me and then they could give me up for adoption and Dave and Sue could take me.

I said, fire. I said, I understand that. When we started this, we understood that. We have you until you're 18 years old. If you don't like it after that, you can leave and we could live with that. If he left at 18, we never heard from again, we could live with that. It wasn't like we wanted to own Collier. No. We were just there to be there for him. The Ziegler's wanted the best for Collier, but after spending his whole young life as the apple of his mother's eye, Collier found he had some adjustments to make.

It's sort of like you're more than a house guest, and I felt like their son, but there's also this part of you that feels like you're not quite 100% there. The first couple couple years were awkward, for sure. I was trying to figure out my life and just going to therapy and then just felt like there was something wrong with me all the time. They made me even pay for his counseling that he got. Court ordered. Court ordered counseling we had to pay for. And then every time we wanted to do family therapy,

then it just didn't work out. I didn't understand why I had to be there. Yeah, he didn't want to be there. A lot of this grief stuff that they have today, you know what I mean? Somebody stubbed their toes, they'll have a grief counselor there. When Collier cried, he did it alone in his bedroom.

The Mesmoors were feeling the separation as well. Here's Sue. We thought the more people that love Collier, the better off Collier is. So the Mesmoors asked the Ziegler's to meet them. One night, they went to dinner at a restaurant. We just said, we know that you are his adoptive parents, but we want to be a part of his life. An aunt and uncle, not to interfere, nothing like that. And they absolutely said no.

The Ziegler's felt Collier needed to integrate into their family. And the Mesmoors might unintentionally get in the way. The Ziegler's were already encountering challenges. People outside of an area like this, a rural area like we're in, they don't understand that that was one of the first cases that was actually publicized on TV. So, tire became very noticeable around town. I didn't realize that we wouldn't be able to go out in public.

For six months, we didn't go out. I mean, we didn't go to dinner. Everybody be looking at us and whispering, you know. And it was causing me issues in school and people, you know, kids picked on me and stuff. We always thought everybody adored him. We didn't realize there were people out there that didn't. We didn't see that part. Collier had all the problems of a normal teenager,

but with higher stakes. The Ziegler's didn't always appreciate his rich imagination. Did Collier always tell the truth? No. Where do you think he learned that from? No. Where do you think he learned it from? His parents.

His parents? They never told the truth. They lied to each other. Noreen had her secrets and Jack had his. Yeah. They would always catch me in little lies and they were worried that I would end up like my father and they wanted to do everything in their power to make sure I didn't end up like my father. The Ziegler's did the best they could for Kaliya. They took him in, nurtured him,

protected him, loved him in their own way. They were generous. They bought him a new car for his 16th birthday. But Collier was an unusual kid who'd gone through something unimaginable. He still felt alone, rejected, a lost boy. The Ziegler's couldn't understand what he'd been through. Who would? Well, there was one person who just might. And so Kaya reached out.

This is a fucking complicated situation, you know what I mean? I think I was always seeking my father's approval. Imagine, a son reaches out to his father, the father convicted of murdering his mother. Just months after the trial ended, Collier did just that, writing to his father in prison. They'd go on to exchange hundreds of messages, with copies of most of them, and they're a treasure trove of insights. They're heartbreaking, disturbing, sometimes almost unbearable.

In the early letters, Jack seems desperate for a relationship with Collier. He's careful, encouraging, full of praise. He calls Collier by his childhood nickname, Bumper, and signs off, I love you and miss you, XXX000. He even sends presents on Collier's birthday, like a jewelry box he made out of Popsicle sticks. Jack writes often. Collier responds less often.

Maybe it's the tenor of Jack's letters. He gives Collier fatherly advice, but it's generic and stern. At one point he writes, "'As I have repeated over and over to you, your education is the number one in your life.'" Elsewhere he writes, "'Don't procrastinate.

It's a bad habit. It's like Jack doesn't know anything about Gaglier. He could be writing to anyone's kid. Hi bumper, good morning. It's Sunday, August the 7th. At one point, Jackson's's call you a video. It shot in the prison against a painted background. Sky mountains, a red race car.

It's like a prisoner's dream. Jack is in his blue prison uniform, gray haired and wearing glasses. And I thought I would come down to PNN, the Prison News Network. The video is awkward. It's as if Jack doesn't have much to say. We had lunch and I drank two glasses of milk and a glass of juice. I had some Cheerios, generic Cheerios.

But there's one moment in the video that's strikingly different in tone. It's like Jack is speaking in code. I'm working on the project that we discussed and I'll try to get your letter out as soon as I can. It'll be predated, of course, and I'll put some instructions in there. What is this project?

Jack has something specific in mind. Nearly as soon as he'd arrived in prison, Jack started filing appeals. He insisted on his innocence, casting himself as the victim of a vast conspiracy. I will continue to fight to be free of this illegal conviction," he wrote. And you know what would really help in that fight? If Collier, the person who knows him best, the prosecution's star witness, would change his story. If he would say he'd lied on the stand.

In one of his many letters to Collier, Jack makes this request. The letters between Jack and Collier are much more powerful if you can hear them. So we got some AI software to recreate the voices of Collier and Jack. Here they are reading their actual letters. I did not kill Mommy. I'm not responsible for her disappearance.

I'm not part of any plot against her. I am innocent. So Jack has an angle. He wants Collier to help him go free. And while Collier's correspondence may have started simple, just a desire to connect, his own intentions seem to shift. Collier writes to Jack much less often, and even when he does, there's a lot of teenage boy stuff.

Sports, grades, girls. In March 1991, nine months after his father's conviction, Collier pens a one-page letter in the labored script of a fledgling cursive writer. He's thirteen. There's some preamble. Dear Dad, I've been so busy with school I haven't found time to write. How was Easter?

Did you do anything sort of special? Then Collier's tone changes. He's direct. You can hear his emotion, his confusion. Dad, just to get this off my chest, why did you kill my mom? Don't get me wrong. I do love you even though you have hurt me. My family and my mother.

You are my father and I owe you a great debt. I am proud to be an heir to the Boyle name, disregarding my family's faults. I love you, yours very truly, Collier. Now that is an incredibly generous letter. You can feel that Collier is torn up inside. He knows his father's a killer, but he offers his father love,

says he's proud to be a Boyle. A convicted murderer might consider himself lucky to receive such grace. But Jack, in his subsequent letters, guess who he blames for his conviction? Guess who he accuses of being the real liar. I have much anger for your trial, Antics. Maybe I should say performance.

I am here because of your testimony in part, not because I committed a crime against Mommy. Jack keeps proclaiming his innocence, keeps demanding Collier recant his testimony. Later, when Collier makes it clear that he will not do that, Jack seems to become an entirely different person. In November 1992, he writes Collier an eight-page, single-spaced, typewritten letter. Frankly, it's difficult to read this letter.

It's menacing, vicious, and personal. Keep in mind, this is a father writing to his 14-year-old son, a kid who, despite everything, has just offered Jack a loving relationship. Collier, I'm in receipt of your recent communication. Your poisonous communication is simply the app product of some nearby cesspool, the stank of which seems to have been foisted upon your brain. This is a furious letter.

It's also a weird letter. Jack's prose is so different, so supercilious. Who is this person? You blaspheme God's name in your vitriol to me. Yes, it is readily apparent to a casual reader of your communication that it is Lord Lucifer whom you serve and who holds your soul. If this letter weren't so ugly, there'd be something funny about it. Is Jack trying to channel Shakespeare the Bible? As he continues, Jack claims that his only mistake in life was treating Collier too well. So, now I'm the Fall Guy.

Now you're trying to make me the bad guy. Why don't you look in the mirror and see the bad guy is your own hate and anger. For it is I alone who allowed you to be pampered and spoiled and satisfied your every want. I see you have continued to wallow in self-pity and that is truly sad. You are still trying to play the innocent victim.

Grow up and act like a man. This pathetic poor me act will not serve you. You unctuous brat, you shameful coward. You are an outcast and too stupid to realize it. You infect all around you. I'm at peace with myself. Are you? John Boyle. A-222633. No X's and O's at the end of this letter, just his prisoner number. Collier takes a couple of months to write back. In the meantime, Jack has returned all of Collier's letters, including this next one, unopened.

Too bad, it's reasoned kind. It's almost too forgiving. In January 1993, Collier writes, Dear Dad, I recently received your package of the letters you sent back to me, so I will keep them for you. Why are you all of the sudden so angry with me? Is it because I didn't sign the paper that said my testimony was untrue? This really bothers me because I don't sign the paper that said my testimony was untrue? This really bothers me because I don't want you to be angry with me. I just wish you could admit your guilt and go on with life. I need to know what really happened so that I can start to deal with it.

There is always going to be a doubt in my mind whether or not one day Mommy is going to come ring my doorbell and say here I am and I will always doubt Whether or not you killed her. I want you to know that I do still care about you and I hope the feeling is mutual love Collier So 14 year old Collier is in the middle of. His emotions pull him one way and then the other. Mommy will knock on the door.

Daddy didn't do it. Some part of lonely, guileless Collier still wants to believe in his father, wants to believe that the pieces can be put back together. And then one day, Collier's hopes seem like more than just hopes. I saw this interesting story about Jack Boyle killing his wife, or maybe not his wife. And I thought, oh, that sounds like a hoot. It was a lot of fun, and it was a huge news case, so I got a lot of free publicity. This is Tom Adgate.

Back in the 90s, he was an attorney in Akron, Ohio, or as he puts it, I was a man of the hour in Akron at the time. In July 1994, Tom was skimming his hometown paper, the Akron Beacon Journal, when he stumbled upon an interesting article. The newspaper, one of the most respected in Ohio, was running a four-part investigative series questioning the conviction of Dr. Jack Boyle

for the murder of his wife. The headline that day read, Noreen Boyle is dead, isn't she? Somehow Jack and I got in contact with each other, and he didn't have any money. So I just did it as a lark. The article posed an explosive question. Was the body buried in the basement of that house

in Erie, Pennsylvania? Really, Noreen Boyles? There were, in fact, a lot of problems with the initial autopsy. We have a copy of the report. It said the dead woman had brown eyes, but Noreen's were sparkling blue, just like Collier's. The autopsy also recorded the body as heavier than Noreen was, and shorter. But what Tom really latched onto was what was missing. The autopsy had not found a gallbladder, but Noreen did have a gallbladder. So that was the whole basis of my motion that that's not her in the coffin.

He didn't kill his wife because his wife's not there. It was a good motion. Jack still proclaimed his innocence and Tom didn't press him. He represented a lot of murders. He knew the game. I mean, you know, when the body's buried in the basement of your snowmunder cement, I mean, it's you. But I said, well, it could be true.

Tom Adgate is an odd character in this tragedy. The court jester playing it for comedy. Thanks to the media frenzy around the trial, the Boyle case was already a circus. Always room for one more clown, right? Still, in order to prove that the body was or wasn't Noreen's, the body had to be exhumed. And that couldn't happen without approval from Noreen's next of kin, her then 16-year-old son Collier. For Collier, there wasn't much comedy in the situation.

You're telling me that maybe my mother's body isn't my mother's? I mean, you're telling me that there's a possibility that maybe my mother's alive? Of course it gave me a shred of hope. So Collier signed off on the exhumation. The body was interred in Baltimore, where Noreen's sister lived. Soon enough, Tom Adgate and a crew of lawyers, cops, technicians, and reporters were convoying

east. She was buried in this beautiful Baltimore cemetery, up on a hill with a tree over it. I mean, it just couldn't be more idealic. And then we load the casket into a coroner's van, and then we have a whole procession, six hour procession back to Akron, to the coroner's office. Seemed like there was 20 of us in that morgue. The pathologist got to work and it quickly turned

out that the body did have a gallbladder. So much for that. Even so, the DNA was shipped off for testing. In the four years since the trial, DNA technology had improved. Now these tests could definitively prove a body's identity. All the DNA and everything came back to her. So it was just a bad autopsy last time. So that was that. Noreen was dead. Jack's conviction stood. Collier was an orphan. Tom Adgate's legal arc was over. Nothing had changed, including Jack's intentions. He was still determined to get out of prison, no matter how long it took. And he was still desperate for help from the person he saw as the key to his freedom, his son.

So his endorsement would be very good. Crucial A and B, D word, yeah. Yes, that's Dr. Jack Boyle, still in prison and still hoping to get out. And later this year, he just might. This August, at age 82, after 35 years in prison, Jack expects to go before the parole board. Maybe that's why he recently gave me a call.

Jack? Steve? Jack? Hey Jack, here we are. Here we are. Over the course of many conversations, Jack has had a lot to say, including about what really happened the night of Noreen's death. Jack, you're saying that it was an accident? accident.

Finding Lums Killer is a production of Orbit Media. Creator and host, Steve Fishman, that's me. Our senior producer is Drew Nellis. 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 Rasek, 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 11 Labs for their genius with AI and 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. you