Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Steve Fishman. You know me as co
Speaker 1: host of the Burden. I want to recommend another hit
Speaker 1: true crime series today. It's called Finding Mom's Killer. I
Speaker 1: hosted this one too, and it's really good. Okay, Imagine
Speaker 1: an eleven year old boy teams with a middle aged
Speaker 1: detective to solve a murder. That's all I'm going to say.
Speaker 1: We're dropping the first episode for you today to hear
Speaker 1: the rest of the series. Look for Finding Mom's Killer
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 2: Raison right, old lad, you swear truth, truth, and that's
Speaker 2: what the truth around you got.
Speaker 3: Will you tell us who you are? I'm Callier Landry Boyle.
Speaker 4: Do you tell us how old you are? Now?
Speaker 3: I'm twelve years old.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen ninety and we're in a courtroom in Mansfield, Ohio.
Speaker 1: The prosecution star witness has just taking the stand. He's
Speaker 1: about to describe something that happened one faithful night a
Speaker 1: few months ago.
Speaker 5: You awoke at three to three point fifteen am. I
Speaker 5: believe it was your time, okay, and what it woke you?
Speaker 3: I heard the two bangs, and I heard the scream okay,
Speaker 3: and that's when I heard the footsteps.
Speaker 5: Then you got up in the morning, Yes, I did.
Speaker 5: And what was the first thing you did?
Speaker 3: I looked at my mother's bedroom.
Speaker 5: Were you alarmed when you got into the bedroom or yes.
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: Why was that the bed covers were all messed up,
Speaker 3: her bedclothes were just lying a pile.
Speaker 4: Crazy was going through your mind at that time? What
Speaker 4: were you thinking?
Speaker 3: Where's my mother?
Speaker 4: Cold?
Speaker 1: Landry Boyle wasn't your average twelve year old.
Speaker 4: He was very smart. He was very determined.
Speaker 1: So when his mother went missing, Collier decided it was
Speaker 1: up to him to find her. From Sony Music, Entertainment
Speaker 1: and Orbit Media, this is Finding Mom's Killer.
Speaker 4: I'm Steve Fishman.
Speaker 1: This is the story of how a precocious kid joined
Speaker 1: forces with a most unlikely partner. Together, they set out
Speaker 1: to solve the mystery of his mother's disappearance. Along the way,
Speaker 1: they'd unearthed one terrible family secret after another episode one
Speaker 1: a little vacation. On New Year's Day nineteen ninety six
Speaker 1: months before that twelve year old boy took the witness stand,
Speaker 1: the Mansfield, Ohio Police Department was swamped with the usual
Speaker 1: holiday stuff barbrasly conduct so when a forty four year
Speaker 1: old woman named Noren Boyle was reported missing. It was
Speaker 1: not a top priority.
Speaker 6: She was listed as a missing person by some of
Speaker 6: the friends of hers, not family. But that's not unusual.
Speaker 1: This is Lieutenant Dave Messmore of the Mansfield Police. When
Speaker 1: Noring Boyle's disappearance landed on his desk, he didn't think
Speaker 1: much of it. A couple of uniform patrolmen had been
Speaker 1: sent over to her house to check things out. Their conclusion,
Speaker 1: nothing to worry about.
Speaker 6: Somebody will run off, they have a dispute with their spouse,
Speaker 6: and they'll run away, and they come back, and you know,
Speaker 6: there's only so much you can do with a missing person.
Speaker 1: As you might have gathered, Lieutenant Dave miss Moore isn't
Speaker 1: exactly the excitable type in appearance. He kind of fades
Speaker 1: into the background. He's got thinning hair, a lampshade mustache,
Speaker 1: sensible glasses. He takes his time. He's methodical. He assumed
Speaker 1: Noreen Boyle was just an unhappy wife in an unhappy
Speaker 1: marriage who needed a little alone time. Then one day
Speaker 1: at his office he received a phone call from a
Speaker 1: close friend of Noreen's.
Speaker 6: And she said, I'm telling you this is not right.
Speaker 6: Noreen would never do that, and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 6: maybe she would just upset. No, no, I'm telling it.
Speaker 6: I said, I'll stop over and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: So on January tewod Dave climbed into his department issued
Speaker 1: used oldsmobile and drove over to Noreen Boyle's house. Now
Speaker 1: Dave was the Mansfield Police Department's head of major Crimes.
Speaker 1: He wasn't supposed to go chase down leads on low
Speaker 1: priority cases, but Dave low key, laconic, Dave is full
Speaker 1: of surprises. By this point, he'd been on the force
Speaker 1: for fifteen years, and he developed a reputation for striking
Speaker 1: out on his own, for bucking his superiors.
Speaker 4: He once put away.
Speaker 1: A friend, a fellow cop no less from murder. People
Speaker 1: learned it was best not to get in his way.
Speaker 1: Another time, he had a kid with a knife cornered.
Speaker 1: Other cops debated the next step.
Speaker 4: Dave rushed him.
Speaker 6: I black tacked him and just knocked him cold.
Speaker 1: Dave, without blackjack, figured he'd head over to the Boyle
Speaker 1: residence have a word with Noreen's husband, a prominent local
Speaker 1: doctor named Jack Boyle. He arrived at the house, walked
Speaker 1: up the front steps, rang the doorbell.
Speaker 2: It was like late morning, early afternoon. The doorbell rings,
Speaker 2: and is this guy in a sport coat with him
Speaker 2: bushy mustache, glasses, taggy pants named Dave were.
Speaker 1: This is Kylier Boyle. He was the kid you had
Speaker 1: testifying at the top of the show. He's a lot
Speaker 1: older now. When Lieutenant Dave Messmore arrived at the Boyle residence,
Speaker 1: it was Collier's grandmother, that's his father's mother, who answered
Speaker 1: the door.
Speaker 4: Klia hovered in the background.
Speaker 2: I'm standing there over my grandmother's shoulder, and Dave was
Speaker 2: setting to my grandmother, well, you know, I likes to
Speaker 2: talk to the doctor, and you know, just kind of
Speaker 2: curious what you know. He was just very calm. It's
Speaker 2: a very calm guy, very collected, I mean, very detective,
Speaker 2: like you know what I mean, just looking around, looking
Speaker 2: at things, taking everything in just I'm going to get
Speaker 2: to the bottom of this type of thing. And I
Speaker 2: remember he kind of charms his way in and my
Speaker 2: grandmother's like, I'm going to call my son, and she
Speaker 2: goes and she leaves to go make the phone call
Speaker 2: in the kitchen. And I knew at that point that
Speaker 2: was like my one shot, because here I am alone
Speaker 2: with a police officer.
Speaker 1: Klier made an impression on Dave. This was a kid
Speaker 1: who dressed in chinos and penny loafers. He had a
Speaker 1: perfectly quaff brown bob. He looked like a tiny adult.
Speaker 6: It was not like a little eleven or twelve year
Speaker 6: old you'd normally talk to. He was just very astute,
Speaker 6: very well spoken. Whenever his grandmother would walk away, he'd
Speaker 6: say things that make you wonder if there was something wrong.
Speaker 2: And I say to Dave, I look him dead in
Speaker 2: the eyes and I say, my mother would never leave me.
Speaker 6: He said, my mother would never leave without me or
Speaker 6: without me knowing where she was going.
Speaker 2: And I think he's looking at me in a very
Speaker 2: peculiar way, like who is this kid? But I could
Speaker 2: he could just tell her was so adamant.
Speaker 6: He said something happened, and I said, okay, I'll work
Speaker 6: on that.
Speaker 4: Kye was surprised.
Speaker 1: He hadn't expected this who suddenly showed up on the
Speaker 1: doorstep to actually listen to him.
Speaker 2: I could just tell when I said to Dave, my
Speaker 2: mother would never leave me, something has happened to her.
Speaker 2: He just looked at me like he could tell that
Speaker 2: I was serious. I remember in that moment that there
Speaker 2: was this hope.
Speaker 4: Dave did take Kyyer seriously.
Speaker 1: Still, he didn't have any clues to follow, just the
Speaker 1: concerns of an anxious adolescent son.
Speaker 4: Dave.
Speaker 1: He decided to talk it over with his wife, who
Speaker 1: refers to him as Hubby by the way.
Speaker 6: Well, she said that doesn't sound right. She said, that
Speaker 6: doesn't sound like a kid that doesn't know where his
Speaker 6: mother is. And I said, well, so I'm gonna go
Speaker 6: back and see if I can't talk to him some more.
Speaker 1: Once again, Dave headed to the Boyle residence, where he
Speaker 1: was met once again by doctor Jack Boyle's mother, Collier's grandmother.
Speaker 6: And she said, what do you want? And I said, what,
Speaker 6: I kind of like to talk to you and Callier again, Well,
Speaker 6: when do you come around bothering people like this? I said,
Speaker 6: I'm not bothering anybody. I just like to solve this
Speaker 6: and find out where she is. I said, when is
Speaker 6: doctor Boyle going to be home? Well, he should be
Speaker 6: back the night. This is starting to bother me.
Speaker 1: So later that evening, yet again, Dave drove to the
Speaker 1: Boyle residence. For those keeping score, that's his third visit
Speaker 1: of the day.
Speaker 6: On the door when I got there was a letter
Speaker 6: and it said, no one in this house has permission
Speaker 6: to talk to the police. And I was assigned by
Speaker 6: an attorney.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 1: A note on the door wasn't going to stay, Lieutenant
Speaker 1: Dave messmore So.
Speaker 6: When I knocked on the door, the attorney answered the door,
Speaker 6: and I said, what's going on here? Well, the doctor
Speaker 6: doesn't really have anything to say. His wife walked out
Speaker 6: and left. There's nothing he can really tell you. I said, well,
Speaker 6: I'd like to talk to him. Said, well, he doesn't
Speaker 6: want to talk.
Speaker 4: I said, hmm hmm.
Speaker 1: That's Dave's characteristically restrained reaction to any new suspicion. So Dave,
Speaker 1: now suspicious, decided he'd start looking into doctor Jack Boyle.
Speaker 1: As it turned out, doctor Boyle's patients really loved him.
Speaker 4: They described him as.
Speaker 1: Funny, intelligent, gregarious, caring, the kind of doctor who'd go
Speaker 1: above and beyond, who'd make house calls and stay up
Speaker 1: all night.
Speaker 4: At the bedside of a sick patient.
Speaker 1: Even at the police department, Dave discovered his fellow cops
Speaker 1: were fans.
Speaker 6: Some of the guys that work for me were ex Marines,
Speaker 6: So they said, yeah, we know about doctor Boyle. He's
Speaker 6: the next Navy doctor, retired Navy doctor and blue Jets
Speaker 6: over in Vietnam, and he's just a great guy.
Speaker 1: Plus, one of Jack's friends said he was devastated that
Speaker 1: Noreen left. She recalled Jack sobbing on the phone to her.
Speaker 1: She's gone, She's gone. And then Dave learned something that
Speaker 1: made Norene's disappearance seem understandable.
Speaker 6: Apparently there was some talk of divorce, but I didn't
Speaker 6: know exactly what the circumstances were.
Speaker 1: In fact, Noreen had filed for divorce less than two
Speaker 1: months before, and it was contentious. There were fancy cars
Speaker 1: to fight over, a lot of money in the bank,
Speaker 1: child sport alimony, joined credit cards. Maybe Dave's original hunch
Speaker 1: had been right. In the midst of a rough separation,
Speaker 1: with both parties sleeping under the same roof, Noreen just
Speaker 1: needed a few.
Speaker 4: Days to herself.
Speaker 1: She'd probably return home soon. Still, Dave had doubts. Why
Speaker 1: was her husband being so evasive and why did her
Speaker 1: son insist that something was wrong. Dave decided it was
Speaker 1: time to get more details from his prime source, the
Speaker 1: one inside the Boyle household. He phoned the private school
Speaker 1: that Klier attended and requested that the principal arrange a meeting.
Speaker 1: This is just what Kyler had been hoping for. I
Speaker 1: knew it was my chance right there to just get
Speaker 1: it all out right. I don't know if I'm ever
Speaker 1: going to get this opportunity again. On January eighth, nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: Klier Landry Boyle sat down with Lieutenant Dave Messmore in
Speaker 1: an elementary school classroom, the kind with those small chairs.
Speaker 1: Dave is six feet tall, but he figured it'd be
Speaker 1: good to be on the same level as Collier.
Speaker 4: It'd make him comfortable.
Speaker 6: You know. I had a lengthy conversation. He described to
Speaker 6: me what he heard that night that she went missing.
Speaker 1: A little more than a week earlier, December thirtieth, Collier
Speaker 1: and his mother were sitting at a table having chili
Speaker 1: for dinner.
Speaker 2: And we saw my father's truck coming down the driveway
Speaker 2: with my grandmother inside. Then my grandmother came in and
Speaker 2: my father stayed for a second.
Speaker 4: He then left.
Speaker 2: Around eight o'clock eight thirty. My mom was like a
Speaker 2: time for bad. I gave my grandmother a hugging a kiss,
Speaker 2: the good night, and I gave my mom a hugging
Speaker 2: a kiss good night.
Speaker 4: Then Collyer headed upstairs to his bedroom.
Speaker 1: He may have struck people as a miniature adult, but
Speaker 1: his bedroom was definitely that of a child.
Speaker 2: I had little collectible Garfield stuffed plush toys on the dresser,
Speaker 2: and then I had my Batman clock on the wall
Speaker 2: because I loved the movie Batman.
Speaker 4: I wanted to be Batman.
Speaker 2: Then next to me on the wall there's a painting
Speaker 2: of a small little sailboat with a little boy inside,
Speaker 2: and it says call you that my mom had a
Speaker 2: muralist paint on the wall.
Speaker 1: So safe in his bedroom with his Batman clock and
Speaker 1: his Garfield dolls, Colier fell asleep and then in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night something woke them.
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I heard a scream and.
Speaker 4: I was kind of frozen in my bed for a second.
Speaker 2: I didn't get up, and then I heard this loud
Speaker 2: thud boom, and then I heard this really low muttering,
Speaker 2: and I can see my little sailboat on the wall.
Speaker 2: And then I looked at the dresser with the little Garfields
Speaker 2: and I see the Batman clock up on the wall
Speaker 2: and it's like three seventeen three eighteen am, and then
Speaker 2: another thirty sixty seconds later, I hear another one of
Speaker 2: those loud thuds, and I remember thinking something terrible is happening,
Speaker 2: and then started hearing these footsteps creak slowly down the hall.
Speaker 2: And I always slept with my door open, so I'm
Speaker 2: curled up, but i can see out of my peripheral
Speaker 2: vision the edge of the door into the hallway, and
Speaker 2: I'm counting the footsteps, and all i want to do
Speaker 2: is look up, but I'm just staying still. And then
Speaker 2: the footsteps stop and I can see two feet in
Speaker 2: the doorway. I can see them out of my peripheral vision,
Speaker 2: and I can see my sailboat mural on the wall,
Speaker 2: and then I can see the Batman clock and everything
Speaker 2: inside my body was screaming, don't look up. As I
Speaker 2: was laying there, the feet still in the doorway, I
Speaker 2: was telling myself, if I can just make it through
Speaker 2: this moment, that I'm gonna be okay.
Speaker 4: And as I'm thinking of all that, the feed leave.
Speaker 1: It's the night of Norman Boyle's disappearance, and Collier is
Speaker 1: in bed. He's heard strange noises, strange voices, strange footsteps,
Speaker 1: but when everything goes quiet, he manages to fall back
Speaker 1: to sleep. The next morning, when he wakes up, the
Speaker 1: first thing he does is run to his mother's bedroom.
Speaker 1: She isn't there. She always makes her bed first thing
Speaker 1: in the morning, but this time the sheets are a mess.
Speaker 2: And I go downstairs and my father is sitting on
Speaker 2: the couch in the living room, watching television with a
Speaker 2: towel wrapped around his ways, like he had just got
Speaker 2: done taking a shower. I said to him, where is
Speaker 2: my mother? And he's still was watching television. He didn't
Speaker 2: answer me, and I said where is my mother? And
Speaker 2: he looked up at me so matter of factly, Well,
Speaker 2: mommy took a little vacation call here, And I said, well,
Speaker 2: what happened? Well, your mother came down. She was hollering
Speaker 2: at me, and she got so angry at me. She
Speaker 2: threw her credit cards at me. And then he said,
Speaker 2: I saw these headlights come through. I reached for my glasses.
Speaker 2: Your mother left. She starts walking away. She walks through
Speaker 2: the kitchen, leaves out the back door, and she goes
Speaker 2: down the driveway and I rushed to go to the window,
Speaker 2: and I see her get into that car, and the
Speaker 2: car drives away. He goes, Okay, so we're not going
Speaker 2: to call the police. We're gonna let her come back.
Speaker 2: We're not going to call the FBI. He leaves, and
Speaker 2: at that point, my grandmother has gotten up. My grandmother
Speaker 2: says to me, Okay, well you heard what your father said.
Speaker 1: Kanya did hear what his father said. But he'd actually
Speaker 1: been preparing for a moment just like this. He knew
Speaker 1: his parents were going through a divorce. It was screaming
Speaker 1: in the house, tempers flaring, and Kanye, like his hero Batman,
Speaker 1: was always ready for action.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I did is I saved
Speaker 2: my mother's friend's phone numbers. I wrote them all on
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and I stuck them in this
Speaker 2: little stuffed garfield that I had, this little Santa Claus
Speaker 2: garfield I stuck inside the hat. And my mother had
Speaker 2: just got a cordless phone, so I grabbed the phone.
Speaker 2: I run upstairs, I grabbed the list. I locked myself
Speaker 2: in my mother's bathroom and I just start calling everybody
Speaker 2: on the life US and I start telling them what happened.
Speaker 2: And I said, my father said it not to call
Speaker 2: the police, but I'm telling you call the police.
Speaker 1: Nordine's friends did call the police, and that's how word
Speaker 1: of her disappearance made its way to the Mansfield Police
Speaker 1: Department and to Dave Mesmore's desk, and now sitting in
Speaker 1: the classroom, there was one more saying.
Speaker 4: Kylier wanted to.
Speaker 1: Make sure Dave understood he wanted their meeting kept confidential.
Speaker 2: Dave told me when I was speaking to him he
Speaker 2: would keep everything that we said secret because I didn't
Speaker 2: want to get in trouble and I wanted to find
Speaker 2: my mother.
Speaker 1: For his part, as Dave interviewed Kyllier that day, he
Speaker 1: thought this kid just might be onto something.
Speaker 6: He was beside himself. He didn't cry, but it was
Speaker 6: emotional only uh distraught, and he convinced me that there
Speaker 6: was something wrong. I had never encountered a child that
Speaker 6: young to be so well spoken. It was not like
Speaker 6: a little eleven or twelve year old you'd normally talk to.
Speaker 6: He was just very astute. At that point, I couldn't
Speaker 6: really pass it off to another detective.
Speaker 1: The interview ended. Kyie went back to class, then home.
Speaker 1: He knew Dave would be stopping by that night.
Speaker 4: And he was on edge.
Speaker 2: My grandmother was making dinner. My father comes home, and
Speaker 2: then Dave comes to the door again. I was anxious,
Speaker 2: right because I've defied my father, and I'm, you know,
Speaker 2: trying to be an earshot at the door, trying to
Speaker 2: see what's going on, and also trying to see, Okay,
Speaker 2: is he going to say anything? He doesn't do is
Speaker 2: to say, oh, I've talked to the kid, or he
Speaker 2: doesn't ay, you know what I mean? So I knew
Speaker 2: that I could trust him. Then I got partner. Now
Speaker 2: I got somebody who's going to help me find out
Speaker 2: what happened to my mother, Me and Dave.
Speaker 1: And so Kylier and Dave are now a dynamic duo,
Speaker 1: the precocious preteen and the mild mannered, middle aged detective.
Speaker 1: It's like something out of a comic book.
Speaker 4: Did you think of Batman? I did think of Batman?
Speaker 4: What did you think? I had to find out what happened.
Speaker 2: But I also was dreading the fact that Batman was
Speaker 2: an orphan who lost both his parents. You want to
Speaker 2: be the dark knight, the detective, but at the same
Speaker 2: time you do want to lose your family.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: Kylier, of course, wasn't quite Batman, more of a Robin,
Speaker 1: you know, the boy Wonder, the junior partner, and in
Speaker 1: that role, he was determined to help Dave track down
Speaker 1: his mother.
Speaker 2: That really galvanizes me into doing this like amateur sleuth,
Speaker 2: detective work or whatever, you know, gonna I'm gonna find,
Speaker 2: start gathering clues. I'm going to look for anything that
Speaker 2: I could find that was out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1: And Lieutenant Dave Messmore was determined to hold up his end.
Speaker 6: He was in despair. I just wanted to get it
Speaker 6: done and I want to be able to tell Collyer
Speaker 6: that we found his mother.
Speaker 4: So now Dave's all in.
Speaker 1: Jack Boyle won't talk to him. That makes Dave pretty suspicious,
Speaker 1: and so he decides his next step take a closer
Speaker 1: look at the good doctor.
Speaker 6: The more you talk to other people that are acquainted
Speaker 6: with him, that you find out an awful lot about
Speaker 6: that person. And in his case, he had a completely
Speaker 6: different personality. You know, he was always laughing and choking
Speaker 6: around with people.
Speaker 7: But that wasn't him, that was a facade.
Speaker 1: Finding Mom's Killer is a production of Orbit Media creator
Speaker 1: and host Steve Fishman.
Speaker 4: That's Me.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Drew Nellis our producer and production
Speaker 1: coordinator Austin Smith. Our story editor Emil Klein, fact check
Speaker 1: by Ryan Alderman, mixing and sound design by Scott Somerville.
Speaker 1: Our lawyers are at Davis Reich Tremaine from Sony Music Entertainment.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Jonathan Hirsch. Special thanks to Emily Rassik,
Speaker 1: Steve Ackerman, Katherine Saint Louis, Sammy Allison Fisher, stevens Ria, Julian, Dan,
Speaker 1: Bobkoff at WME. We'd like to thank Evan Krassek, Marissa Hurwitz,
Speaker 1: and Ben Davis. We want to also thank Carl Hunnell
Speaker 1: at The Richland Source for the generous use of his
Speaker 1: podcast studio and a really warm thank you to Call
Speaker 1: Your Landry for sharing his story and for his production assistance.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed this episode of Finding Mom's Killer. You
Speaker 1: can hear the entire series on Apple or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.