MANSFIELD – A murder that rocked the city of Mansfield more than a quarter century ago may be returning to its roots.
“A Murder in Mansfield,” the documentary film centered around the shocking killing of Noreen Boyle by her husband, Dr. John Boyle, is pondering a local screening in Mansfield, the city where it all happened. According to the film’s director Barbara Kopple, the screening could potentially happen in Mansfield this summer.
The film’s central character, and one of its producers, is Collier Landry. At 12 years old, Landry was the chief witness for the prosecution and testified against his emotionally and physically abusive father. Landry said he has not spoken to his father since filming the documentary, and if he appears at his 2020 parole hearing, it would not be in support of Boyle’s release.
Kopple said bringing the documentary to Mansfield is a testament to the community embracing Landry after a tragic time in his life.
“Showing it in his hometown with all the people that supported him and loved him and took care of him, they have a right to see this, and see how important they are to making him whole and unbroken, and what a beautiful and courageous person they put together,” Kopple said.
A two-time Academy award-winning documentarian, Kopple and her crew followed Landry as he revisited Mansfield 27 years after his mother’s murder, interviewing family members and friends about his experience and exploring the consequences of violence on his own life. Now a cinematographer himself, being in front of the camera was a new experience for Landry.
“That was not always the original intent, at all,” Landry said in an exclusive interview with Richland Source. “It was more of maybe me shooting it and interviews and things like that. And then when Barbara became involved and as things progressed, she said this is the best story, because she’s an amazing filmmaker.”
“It was a very natural thing to have happened,” Kopple said. “(Collier) knew he had to put himself out there if this was going to be a film with a soul to it, he couldn’t be behind the camera. It’s about him and his life and his world — the things he cares about, the things he’s afraid of, things that give him pain and people who give him joy.”
The documentary began shooting in December 2016, and premiered for the first time in November 2017 at DOC NYC, an annual documentary film festival in New York City. The film made its Ohio premiere at the Cleveland International Film Festival on April 12, 13 and 14.
Over the course of those three days, many Mansfielders made the trip to Cleveland to screen the film. One audience member was Jeff Martin, a Bellville resident who knew Landry from his days of living in the Woodland neighborhood and attending Ontario High School.
“Our parents knew of each other, and when we knew he was getting adopted and moving to Ontario my parents let me know what was going on, and told me if he needs help with anything to help him out because he’s been through a rough time,” Martin said.
Martin described “A Murder in Mansfield” as an emotional ride — particularly the climactic scene where Landry confronts his father. Dr. John Boyle was convicted of his wife’s murder in 1990 and is currently incarcerated at Marion Correctional Institution, where will be up for parole in October 2020.
“It would be hard for someone to do; he’s more man than I would be,” Martin said. “To revisit those childhood memories and bring all that up again, I don’t know if I could do that.”
As a documentarian, Kopple watched Landry ride different waves of emotions throughout the filming process.
“Sometimes he’s very brave and sometimes he’s needy and sometimes he cries, and sometimes he just feels so good because what he feels he’s accomplishing,” she said. “It’s no one thing, it’s a lot of different things working together to put together this beautiful, complex human being.”
For Landry, working through those emotions on camera was a difficult but needed personal journey.
“It was interesting because I was not prepared to do that,” he said. “But the whole process in general was cathartic, to really get through the trauma of what happened. I never envisioned that it would play out the way it does in the film.”
Which, for Kopple, is the joy of documentaries.
“You can’t be happy or sad about the result in documentary,” she said. “We don’t have a script, life is what it is and you go with it, and it’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
