11-Year-Old Boy Testifies Against “Cold-Blooded” Dad In Mom’s “Meticulously Contrived” Murder

When a friend reported Noreen Boyle missing on Jan. 2, 1990, police in Mansfield, Ohio were surprised to find her husband, Dr. John Boyle, uncooperative and unconcerned about his wife’s disappearance. But while Dr. Boyle refused to speak, his 11-year-old son had no problem sharing his fear for his mother’s wellbeing.

“The night I last saw my mother, Dec. 30, 1989, I heard something that scared me,” said Collier Landry, Noreen and John Boyle’s son, on A Plan To Kill, airing Sundays at 7/6 on Oxygen. “At about 3:15 in the morning, I wake up to the sound of what I think is a scream, and then I hear two loud thuds. Separated by about sixty seconds apart. And in between those thuds I hear this muttering. It was my father’s voice. And I realize something is seriously wrong.”

Collier Landry helped lead police to uncover a web of lies, including his father’s affair and illegitimate child, all ending in the discovery of his mother’s body.

“At that point, we knew Dr. Boyle killed his wife,” David Messmore, retired Mansfield police lieutenant, said on A Plan To Kill. “This was meticulously contrived to place her under that concrete and have control over her for the rest of his life.”

John and Noreen Boyle met at a drive-in diner when she was 17 and he was 19. Although they had a son, Collier, Noreen’s friends alleged her husband frequently cheated on her.

“For a long time, she forgave certain things, I’d say,” said Shelley Bowden, Noreen’s best friend, on A Plan To Kill. “But then she filed for divorce in November. The month before she went missing.”

Dr. Boyle’s colleagues at his hospital also told police he often had affairs.

“They described him as being out with other girls, constantly,” Messmore said. “People at the hospital said he spent most of his time away from his family. It was very common for him to make passes at nurses and try to make dates with them. One nurse said that she’d had an affair with Dr. Boyle. And he became so obsessive and frightening to her that she quit her job and moved to Florida.”

His colleagues weren’t the only ones afraid of Dr. Boyle. His son, Collier, was as well.

“My father had this Jekyll and Hyde sort of way that he would be with people,” Collier said. “He had a very bad temper and he could flip at the drop of a hat. I grew up walking on a lot of eggshells around my father … it was always the threat of the violence. And that’s what really drove my mother and I together, because we had each other for safety, security. My mother is my protector.”

Less than a year before his mother went missing, in May 1989, Collier told police he went to a party with his father and met Sherri Lee Campbell.

“Summer of 1989, I started to notice this division between my parents,” he said. “I would see him sleeping on the couch.”

In June, he and his father ran into Sherri again while out running errands.

“I notice that she has a ring on,” he said. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘I know that ring, because I’ve never seen a ring like it, except on my mother’s hand.’ It was custom made. No one had it. And she was very proud of it.”

He told police his father and Sherri kissed.

“Later, he says, ‘I need you to do me a favor. Don’t tell Mommy about Sherri,’” Collier said.

But he didn’t listen — telling his mother about his father’s affair. On Nov. 17, 1989, Noreen Boyle filed for divorce.

“Once she filed for divorce, the escalation with my father was, ‘I’m going to destroy your lives,’” Collier said. “At the end of November, she said something to me that I’ll never forget. She said, ‘Collier, I want you to know that if anything ever happens to me, your father had me killed.’”

On Nov. 13, 1989, Dr. John Boyle bought a home in Erie, Pennsylvania, and insisted on being in the home by Jan. 1, 1990.

“The realtor told them, ‘You know it’s kind of strange, he wanted to know what kind of soil the house was built on,’” Larry Pishitelli, engineering specialist, said on A Plan To Kill.

Police said the doctor also asked what was under the basement floor.

“He said, ‘Well, I’d like to think about lowering the floor so my son and I can play basketball down there,’” Messmore said. “I mean, as a realtor, she said she’d never heard anything like that before. And Collier said his father never played basketball with him.”

The realtor told police purchase of the house was co-signed by the doctor’s “wife,” Sherri Boyle.

“She described his wife as a young, pregnant girl,” Messmore said. “I was shocked. I thought, ‘That’s probably the girl that Collier saw.’ I think when he found out that Sherri was pregnant, he wanted to get rid of his wife and replace her, and still maintain his property and money.”

Police traced Dr. Boyle’s purchases through his checking account, and found he ordered cement and indoor/outdoor carpeting in the day’s leading up to his wife’s disappearance. He also wrote a check to hardware store.

“The company remembered him very well,” Pishitelli said. “They said he rented a jackhammer, and we remember him because we charged him $10 extra because it was over the New Year’s Eve holiday weekend, and he complained about that.”

On Jan. 25, 1990, police searched Dr. Boyle’s Erie, Pennsylvania home, and dug in the floor of the basement.

“One investigator said six inches down there’s a green tarp … investigators pulled up the tarp and there was a body. I looked at the pictures I had, and I said, ‘That’s Noreen Boyle,’” Messmore said. “There was trauma to the head and a plastic bag had been tied around her head.”

At Dr. John Boyle’s murder trial in June 1990, police testified he bought the house in Pennsylvania with the intention of killing his wife and burying her under the house.

“Dr. Boyle waited until the middle of the night and then he killed her,” Messmore said. “He was gonna walk on her for the rest of his life.”

Collier Landry testified against his father at trial.

“I knew that if I didn’t take every opportunity I could to do what I did, it didn’t matter if I risked my life,” Collier said. “I didn’t care … because at the end of the day he’s not gonna get away with it. And that to me superseded everything.”

A jury found Dr. John Boyle guilty of his wife Noreen’s murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison. His next parole hearing is on Oct. 1, 2025.

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