Collier Landry

speaker

214 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2025 last heard Jan 2025

Collier Landry’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Murder In America · EP. 183: OHIO - The 11-Year-Old Who Helped Solve His Mom's Murder · 3 Jan 2025 podcast

Now Collier really wanted to be adopted by Dave Messmore and his wife, and they wanted to take him in. But since Dave Messmore was the lead investigator in Noreen's murder, it was a conflict of interest, so the judge wouldn't allow it. In Collier's documentary, A Murder in Mansfield, he read a journal entry from this time. And it had me in tears.

It read, quote, my counselor told me that she believes in happy endings. I don't. But Collier said that eventually things began to look up for him. Following his father's conviction, he stayed in Mansfield and he was adopted by the Ziegler family who gave him a great life.

There's part of me that didn't want to believe for a while that my father did it, even though I think I went through a period in my teenage years and, you know, like, could my father be innocent? Did I really hear what it was? Did I really do that? Okay, no, that really happened. Because you don't, ultimately, you don't want to believe that. Like, that's the worst thing imaginable.

Your father murders your mother. That's horrific. You know, these are your parents and this is what you, you, like, you don't want to believe that that's the case. So... You know, I had to really get, I really had to come to terms with that and reconcile with that.

But I decided at a very young age, I was, you know, you know, I was in college and I was like, I remember, not to sound hooey-dooey about it, my mom came to me in a dream and said, you need to forgive your father. Or maybe I was still in high school, actually.

like you need to forgive your father and move on because it's only going to affect you it's not going to affect him you know and so i reached out to him when i you know you know we would trade letters back and forth um but you know my my adoptive parents would read the letters and they would explain to me like this is manipulation this is gaslight like this is he's manipulating you to feel guilty for him to feel bad about testifying or whatever you know and he's gonna fight this injustice and it's all it's all you know

It's sad, too, because that's my father. Like, that's my father. Like, that's what he created. That's his legacy.

At 14 years old, Collier even wrote his dad a letter that read, "...I know you're never going to tell me why you killed mommy. I know you'll never tell me why you cheated on her so much. I don't think our friends and family will ever forgive you for killing my mommy." "'molesting my two cousins, lying, "'and everything else I might've missed.

"'But I want you to know that if you pass on soon, "'I forgive you. "'I still love you, Dad. "'Never forget that. "'I really hope you face up to what you've done "'and realize that it is wrong. "'Much love, Collier.'" The maturity it takes to write something like that is admirable.

And sadly, even after this, Jack Boyle not only continued to maintain his innocence, but he also wrote some horrible letters back to his son, calling him evil and a brat for saying those things.

Now, once again, I implore everyone to go watch the documentary, A Murder in Mansfield, because Collier reads some of the letters he and his dad wrote back and forth to each other, and you will be completely shocked at the things Jack Boyle would say to his son. But eventually, Collier knew that he had to move on.

He didn't want to be defined by this crime that had already taken up so much of his life.

Things always work out the way they should anyways. And I stayed in the community where all of this happened and I became very determined to not let this define me, to not be that person, to not let, you know, it's just hard because you live under a stigma. You live under, you know, people just like, you know, you walk places and it's, whispers, stares everywhere. And that really affected me.

That affected my adoptive parents. That affected the family, friends everywhere. Because everybody knows me. I was on television. You know, it became this whole, you know, thing. And it was just, but I was like, I'm going to, I want to get out of here. I want to move to a place where nobody knows who I am. I ended up moving to Los Angeles, you know,

got into the entertainment industry worked as a model and then did music stuff and then moved to behind the camera because i was like i need to tell this story and that's where i ended up and i share my story on shows like this to hopefully give people hope who have experienced massive trauma or violent crime you know to know that like you can make it like you can lead a good life i mean look i'm far from perfect i have many flaws

But, you know, I wake up every day with hope in my heart, with gratitude for where I'm at and just put one foot in front of the other and lead the best life that I can. And that's all a testament to my mother who really instilled all this into me in such a young age.

Collier never once believed his dad's new story, but ever since 1990, people all over America remembered him as the boy who testified at his father's murder trial. Over the years, many people also wondered whatever happened to him. With the cards that Collier had been dealt, it would have been expected that he went on to live a very difficult life. But luckily, that wasn't the case.

After his mother's murder and father's incarceration, Collier really made something of himself. And a few years back, he decided that he wanted to share his story with the world. So that's when he came up with the idea to create the documentary, A Murder in Mansfield. And he knew that in it, he wanted to confront his father once and for all.

But I wanted to really sit down with him and ask him, why did you do this? Why did you murder my mother? Because there was no reason to, you know, he had a mistress, he had a baby on the way, he had a new house, he had a career, he was starting to make lots of money as a physician, you know, there's no reason. There's no reason to do this.

That was the thing that I was always, that sort of drove me to make the film, to talk about these experiences, to share, and to be vulnerable with what my story is so others can learn from it, right? And heal from it.

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