MANSFIELD — David Messmore never had to see John Boyle released from prison.
I suspect that made the retired Mansfield police captain happy.
Or, at least satisfied, I hope.
Messmore — whom I met when I arrived in Mansfield 36 years ago — passed away Jan. 11 at OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital at the age of 82.
His death came about four months after Boyle — the Mansfield physician Messmore helped put behind bars in 1990 — was again denied parole for killing his wife, Noreen. The former osteopath must wait another five years for another shot at freedom.
Ironically, it was because of Boyle that I first met Messmore in early 1990, just a couple of months after the murder. We met after Boyle was arrested in late January that year.
The Mansfield News Journal had hired me as a health reporter. (The standing joke was they found the unhealthiest person they could find and made him the health reporter.)
Steve Hudak, NJ’s excellent cops-and-courts reporter at the time, broke the news when Messmore, at age 46, solved one of the biggest missing person cases in the city’s history.
As a lieutenant in charge of the Mansfield Police Department’s major crimes unit, Messmore led a team that found the body of Noreen Boyle buried beneath the concrete basement floor of a new home John Boyle was buying in Erie, Pa.
Messmore’s great detective work led to one of the most sensational murder trials in Richland County history six months later. It also led to a proper conviction in a case Messmore took personally, given the children left behind.
The names of Messmore and Boyle will be forever linked — in the same way we recall good and evil.
Hudak was working almost exclusively on the Boyle stories. Editors assigned me to fill in around the edges, which is how I first met Messmore, a 1961 Mansfield Senior School graduate who didn’t buy John Boyle’s post-homicide lies for a second.
Messmore was ‘good police,’ as they say
The moment I sat down in Messmore’s office to discuss other criminal investigations, it was clear to me this was a good man.
Good police, as they say.
Fairly soft-spoken, but you knew exactly what he meant when he said it. No nonsense. Fair, but no time for any BS from a young reporter. Respect had to be earned, not given away freely. You knew where you stood with Messmore.
After Boyle was convicted in June, Hudak moved on to reporting work at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The NJ moved me to cops and courts full time, and I had many opportunities to interview and work with Messmore.
He always made it interesting. Messmore was a detective, someone who knew how to conduct an interview, ask probing questions and wait patiently for responses. That meant he also knew how to be on the other side of questions.
I was working at the Springfield (Ohio) News-Sun when Messmore retired as a captain in 1994. But we renewed acquaintances when I came back as managing editor of the NJ in 1997.
He had left the MPD, but never stopped working and serving the community he loved and using his investigative skills.
He worked for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. He did investigative work for the Ohio Department of Agriculture. He later conducted investigations for several defense attorneys in civil and criminal cases and was hired by Common Pleas court judges to assist with investigations.
But his service extended beyond law enforcement and criminal justice. He served on the Richland County Mental Health Board, the Mansfield Planning Commission, and as chairman of the Mansfield Parks Board.
It was times covering the planning commission a few years ago that Messmore and I really started talking again. He had not changed. Still calm. Still inquisitive. Still even-keeled. Unflappable. He was perfect on the commission.
‘(The crime) has had a profound impact on my wife and I’
The last in-depth interview I had with Messmore came for a story in 2018 when John Boyle’s son, Collier Landry, was in Mansfield to unveil a documentary on the crime, “A Murder in Mansfield.”
I was assigned to talk to some of the principals involved in the investigation and trial, including Messmore.
We talked about all aspects of his work, including the early days of the probe when his own bosses weren’t thrilled that he was looking at the prominent physician as a suspect. But he never wavered.
Good police.
After I learned of his death, I went back to revisit that story and those quotes from seven years ago as Messmore recalled the case.
“I took Dr. Boyle’s refusal to talk (to me) and an attorney meeting me at (Boyle’s Hawthorne Lane) door as suspicious. My (initial) brief discussions with Collier at first struck me as very sincere. He was adamant that his mother would not leave him. He was right,” he said in 2018.
“No one was (initially) interested in the investigation but me. My supervisor questioned my interest and didn’t want to embarrass a doctor.
“(Then Richland County Prosecutor) Jim Mayer almost refused to send anyone with me to Erie. The community and citizens in general are fascinated that a ‘healer’ can perform a viscious act on a wife. That is puzzling. My thoughts were that no one is above the law,” Messmore reminded me in 2018.
Messmore felt pain for Collier and his adopted 3-year-old sister.
“It has been excruciating for Collier over the years. He overcomes the grief with the examination of the crime and its effects,” Messmore said in 2018.
It also had a significant impact on the detective who led the charge to solve the crime.
“(The crime) has had a profound effect on my wife and I. When we had Collier visiting after I had him removed from Dr. Boyle’s care, we bonded with him, and he had no one else to care for him,” he told me for the story in 2018.
“No aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. He asked us to apply for custody, and after discussing it, we did. The court investigated and recommended his placement with us. Everything went fine until (Juvenile Court Judge) Paul Christ got Collier in front of him and said, ‘You don’t think I’m going to put you with the guy who locked up your dad?’
“Collier broke down and cried and was removed from the court. I think everyone who knows about the case feels some sadness for Collier,” Messmore said.
After Messmore died, Collier Landry, living in California, took notice, posting simply on his Facebook page:
“My mother can finally embrace him and thank him for being that great man who saved her son. Rest easy, Dave. Thank you for everything. You will be missed.”