ST. JOHN’S –
Greg Parsons sits throughout from me at a eating room desk in downtown St. John’s, Newfoundland.
He flips by a big household photograph album, the old school variety with plastic-covered pages that defend the pictures inside.
The album holds no joyful recollections. Instead, it’s web page after web page of ache and struggling.
A household photograph of Greg Parsons (proper) with his mom, Catherine Carroll (W5)
Greg Parsons has spent a long time making an attempt to make sense of the time the pictures signify. It’s a time of unfulfilled justice. A time he needs he might neglect.
In 1991, when he was simply 19 years outdated, Greg found his mom’s brutalized physique within the lavatory of her condo. Catherine Carroll had been slashed and stabbed 53 instances. W5 has the audio recording of the determined name he made to 911.
“My mother…she’s dead. She’s just on the bathroom floor. Oh my God…there’s blood everywhere.”
It should have been the worst day of Greg’s life. The fact that it wasn’t gives you an idea of just how much this man has endured.
The photo album Greg is showing me is filled with crime scene photos: His mother’s apartment, meticulously documented from every angle. The gruesome photos of what Greg saw that morning in the bathroom. His partially clothed mother — her body twisted, her face unrecognizable. And so much blood.
Greg Parsons has saved it all, along with stacks of documents, maps, transcripts and computer files for what has become a decades-long battle to get justice for his mother. And for himself.
His story, a labyrinth of twists and wrong turns, is the subject of a W5 one-hour special. We have unearthed hours of archival footage, viewed secretly-recorded police stings and interviewed key players in a saga that began 31 years ago and continues to this day.
On January 10, 1991 — eight days after finding his mother’s body — Greg Parsons was charged with her murder. He was convicted in a trial that focused largely on gossip and a song that Greg and some of his friends had written called “Kill Your Parents.”
Screenshot from file footage of Greg Parsons in court docket (W5)
It would take years for science to clear him and to catch the actual killer — a person named Brian Doyle — as soon as Greg’s good good friend.
Greg Parsons says the justice system failed his mom, firstly for wrongfully convicting her personal son, and secondly for permitting the actual assassin, Brian Doyle, to plead responsible to a lesser cost of second diploma homicide.
In 2003, Doyle was sentenced to life in jail with no likelihood of parole for 18 years, a sentence he unsuccessfully tried to have lowered.
In 2003, Brian Doyle was sentenced to life in jail with no likelihood of parole for 18 years, a sentence he unsuccessfully tried to have lowered (screenshot from file footage)
Greg believes there was ample proof that the crime was premediated and sexual in nature and that Doyle ought to have gone to trial on a cost of first diploma homicide.
That proof comes within the type of a secret recording of Brian Doyle throughout an undercover police sting the place Doyle is seen callously bragging concerning the killing. In the video he describes sneaking out of a celebration unnoticed carrying another person’s sneakers and returning to the celebration after committing the crime.
Parsons says a retired police officer gave him the videotapes about seven years in the past however he couldn’t carry himself to look at them till he was making ready for Doyle’s first parole listening to, 4 years in the past:
“I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe what I am looking at. I can’t believe the lengths…the Crown’s office went through to manufacture me as the murderer and here they’ve got the guy with motive, means, opportunity and meticulous planning…and he was given a sweetheart deal for second degree murder.”
Because there was no trial, the tapes have by no means been entered into proof. W5’s documentary would be the first time the Canadian public will see the video.
Brian Doyle has served 20 years behind bars. In 2020 he was granted day parole, but it surely was revoked the next yr after he did not disclose a relationship to his parole officer.
In August, 2022, Doyle was again earlier than the parole board, the place, for the primary time, he acknowledged that the crime was sexually motivated, telling the listening to it was “sexual rejection” that triggered his rage.
The board granted Doyle a conditional launch to participate in a three-month rehabilitation program. If profitable, Doyle will then, once more, have the ability to apply for full parole.
For Greg Parsons, it’s a unending nightmare. Surrounded by a long time of proof, he tells me: “I fear for the world because he’s a manipulative, pathological liar. He has not been rehabilitated. He never got properly punished for his crime. He’s not going to be out for more than a year and he’ll be back in. And I hope it’s not for murder or rape. I don’t want to be the person to say ‘I told you so’.”
Watch W5’s documentary ‘The Murderer’s Best Friend’ on Saturday at 7pm on CTV